Terrorism Bill

I agree with everything that the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) has just said. The right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) has done the Committee, and the House, a good service in tabling the amendment, and if he were to press it to a vote we would support it. It clearly goes a long way towards meeting the Committee’s concerns. The definition may not be perfect, but because it centres on the idea of using violence against civilians and non-combatants to achieve an end, it goes to the heart of defining the sort of behaviour that we can universally deplore. It is true that the use of force, even for legitimate ends, may lead to the unintended deaths of civilians, but one of the hallmarks of terrorism is without doubt the fact that it is usually aimed at civilians—soft targets—with the express purpose of creating terror and thereby bringing about change. I can think of no circumstance, not even in the midst of freedom fighting of the most legitimate kind, in which the targeting of civilians for that purpose can ever be justified.