Terrorism Bill

No, because I want to talk about intent. Clause 1 provides in essence that encouragement is committed if a person makes a statement to people who are likely to understand it as an inducement to carry out terrorist acts. A person does that, first, if he knows or believes that the effects of his remarks on his audience are likely to be that they will understand them in that way. I do not think that anybody could object to that; indeed, I do not think that Opposition Front Benchers object to it. I would say to the hon. Member for Beaconsfield that the phraseology, ““knows or believes””, embraces the concept of recklessness that features in amendments Nos. 79, 2 and 6. That is absolutely right, because the law on recklessness was reviewed in the case of R v. G last year. There is now a subjective test of whether the defendant knew of the risk and, if he did, nonetheless unreasonably took it. The point about recklessness is covered in the legislation. Amendment No. 20, which was tabled by the Liberal Democrats, covers similar ground. I hope that they will withdraw it. The second set of circumstances in which a person can commit the offence—this is subject to more debate—is where he has reasonable grounds for believing that the effect of his remarks on his audience is likely to be that they will understand them as an encouragement to commit acts of terrorism. That imports an objective test of his belief. From what Members have said, one could think that this is a completely novel formulation in this Bill, but it is not. In fact, a change was recently introduced in the offence of rape whereby there is an objective assessment of somebody’s belief. The person is no longer able to say, ““I believed there was consent””; the test is whether he had reasonable grounds for believing in that consent. That is an objective test. There is also precedent in relation to money laundering offences in the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Such tests have been introduced in various areas. I point out to my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen and other Members that I know that there is concern about including intent in the convention offences, and recklessness—it is right to include that and it has support—as well as whether we move further, to the possibility of negligence and whether the offence could be carelessly committed. Some of those points have legitimacy and I want to look at them carefully, but I want an offence where we can prosecute people who create a climate within which people feel that terrorist action is a valid response to their concerns. I want to look carefully at those points but I am absolutely determined that we ensure that we have an offence on which we can prosecute. For too long, we have not had such provisions on our statute book, which has meant that people can get away with saying the kind of things that we have all heard, and which concern our constituents, without our being able to prosecute.