Terrorism Bill

: What I shall say about my amendment, No. 69, will follow comments that have already been made and will, I hope, begin to show the possibility of a way of dealing with the problems that we confront—the type of civilian murder promoted by al-Qaeda, and also the type of international obligations that we need to introduce in response to events such as Beslan—while avoiding other problems, which have been well highlighted. One of the more disconcerting aspects of the debate so far has, I am afraid, been the tendency of Ministers not to acknowledge that there is a problem with the definition. I hope that at the end of this brief debate, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will at least acknowledge that there is a problem, which needs to be explored between now and Report. My amendments may not be perfect, but nor is the Bill. Attention has already been drawn to the anomaly of it being legal to invade Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein, but illegal to support the Iraqi people if they acted in the same way. I want to discuss the problem of definitions more narrowly. There is nothing magic about the definition in the Terrorism Act 2000. It is not based on international law. Other definitions are significantly different. The European Union Council framework decision, for example, lists much the same offences, but involves a much higher threshold. It refers to ““seriously intimidating a population””, to"““unduly compelling a Government . . . to perform or abstain””" from certain acts, and to"““seriously destabilising or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social structures of a country or international organisation””." Those are high thresholds and they do not exist in our own national legislation. It is true that we have to ratify the Council of Europe convention, but it does not define terrorism. We are free to define terrorism as we want, as long as we include certain specific offences, so there is no single agreed definition of terrorism. I am looking for a wording that we can apply to the new situation—the international spread of terrorism aimed directly at the mass murder of civilians.