Terrorism Bill

I will in just a second. I think that the body of law that we have in this country protects us quite adequately against such extremes. I always concede that the hon. and learned Member for Medway (Mr. Marshall-Andrews) is an up-to-date, practising and very distinguished lawyer, whereas I am very out of date and long extinct, at least in legal work. I shall not repeat what he has said already, but I have no doubt that no prosecutor would have any difficulty when it came to producing an adequate charge under the general heading ““incitement to violence””. Such an offence is quite easily covered by the ordinary law of the land, and under the terrorist legislation that the House has passed over recent years. It is interesting to note that, until recently, no one was prosecuted for such incitement, even though some cases have been very blatant. For example, preachers have used very extreme language that must have caused offence. Their praise for the work of ““heroic”” terrorists must have been calculated to incite others to repeat and emulate it. The attitudes of the Government, the police and the prosecuting authorities have undergone a remarkable change in recent times. I have no doubt that some of the more blatant cases have not been prosecuted because the police and prosecuting authorities have decided—as a matter of public policy—that, however offensive statements might be, it would do more harm than good to bring them before the courts. I cannot agree with an approach that I consider to be unbelievably nervous and cautious. I should be very surprised if Home Office Ministers had not been involved in discussions in which it was decided that the good that might be achieved by making martyrs of some preachers by sending them to prison—and there is no doubt those drawn to self-publicity would quite enjoy that martyrdom—would be outweighed by the trouble that would be stirred up among the extreme elements of misguided youth in our cities. With hindsight, I say that that decision may not have been wise. It is extraordinary, however, that the Government’s opinion has swung so far away from that position that, as a matter of public policy, we now have to add a new offence that goes far beyond what is necessary to cover incitement to violence by extreme religious and political leaders. The Bill will make unlawful quite ordinary—albeit controversial—statements that many people in this country might make in the course of exercising their undoubted right of free speech. It is totally unnecessary to introduce the indirect offence of encouraging terrorism, especially when the Bill uses such mild words to describe what a person might do. Plainly, clause 1 has been designed to make it extremely easy to convict people for making comparatively moderate statements. This Committee stage is subject to a guillotine and, although I accept that the Government have been more generous than has been the case in the past, there is no point in my repeating the countless examples that have been given in the debate already of the words from literature, for instance, that would be caught by clause 1. As has been noted, the words of the Prime Minister’s wife would also be caught. The whole point of the clause appears to be to make a new offence of encouraging, directly or indirectly, the preparation or commission of an act of terrorism. Yet the word ““encourage”” is not especially strong. Warm words might be sufficient to trigger the offence of encouragement. For instance, a person might say that he or she understands why a course of action is taken, or that the shock or dismay caused might not be too great. There is no need for someone to urge another to go out and perform a terrorist act, as the use of polite and understanding language could clearly be taken as encouragement by someone already inclined to perform such an act. What on earth is meant by the term ““other inducement””, in the context of someone who is starting to think about preparing an act of terrorism? Perhaps the draftsmen had in mind newspaper stories—I suspect that they are somewhat exaggerated—that suggest that a vision of heaven is held out to some misguided fanatics, who consequently believe that they will enjoy all sorts of earthly and sensual delights if they die as martyrs.