Terrorism Bill

My Lords, I beg to move Motion A, that the House do not insist on its Amendments Nos. 5, 11, 15, 28, 31, 32 and 34 and do agree to Amendments Nos. 34A and 34B proposed by the Commons in lieu. I urge noble Lords to accept the decision of the other place when it decided not to agree with your Lordships’ amendment in respect of glorification. I also invite noble Lords to accept the two amendments in lieu which were made by another place and to reject the various amendments that have been tabled to Motion A. The two amendments in lieu made by another place are minor tidying-up provisions and I do not intend to devote much time to them. However, I should point out that Commons Amendment No. 34B responds directly to criticisms which your Lordships made of the drafting. I hope that it will be welcomed. The key issue is whether this House should again disagree with another place and seek to restore the wording which your Lordships adopted at Third Reading, or a modified version of that wording. If, as I hope will be the case, your Lordships do not insist on your amendment, your Lordships will accept that the Bill should contain provisions relating explicitly to the glorification of terrorism. That is important because people who glorify terrorism help to create a climate in which terrorism is regarded as acceptable. This should clearly be outlawed. Your Lordships will also remember that, in outlawing the glorification of terrorism when it is an encouragement to terrorism, our legislation will be in line with decisions taken at an international level. The word ““glorification”” is not something that the United Kingdom has just plucked from the air but features in the preamble to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1624. That resolution speaks of:"““Condemning also in the strongest terms the incitement of terrorist acts and repudiating attempts at the justification or glorification . . . of terrorist acts that may incite further terrorist acts””." It is also expected nationally that we should outlaw glorification when it is an encouragement to terrorism. I say this because the public elected the Government on the basis of a manifesto which included a commitment to outlawing the glorification of terrorism. Let me remind your Lordships what the manifesto said:"““we will introduce new laws to help catch and convict those involved in helping to plan terrorist activity or who glorify or condone acts of terror””." I respectfully suggest that that could not have been clearer. We should demonstrate to our electorate that we take its views seriously; we should demonstrate too that we are concerned to protect its interests by creating an offence that is legally sound and can act as a deterrent. The Members of another place have given effect to the wishes of the electorate not just once, but three times. There have been three separate votes on the precise question of whether the Bill should include references to glorification. Each time they have voted on the matter the majority in favour of referring to glorification has become larger. We are, rightly, a revising Chamber. We can invite the other place to think again. That is what we have done. The other place had a very full debate on this subject two weeks ago and the elected Chamber, in giving effect to the commitment in the manifesto, has now made it clear that the Bill should refer to glorification. If your Lordships oppose the appearance of the word ““glorification”” in the Bill this House would be opposing both the elected House and those who elected its members. It would be doing so in favour of an amendment which is defective for three reasons, which I will explain in turn. The reference in the wording inserted by your Lordships to ““listener”” limited the scope of the provision. It confined the definition to statements that are capable of being heard and so, for example, would have excluded those written on placards. In that respect, your Lordships may be interested to know what the shadow Attorney General, speaking in another place, said on the issue. His first reaction was the optimistic and intriguing suggestion that the meaning of the word ““listening”” could include ““reading””. I will not comment further on that suggestion. More revealingly, however, he went on to say on 15 February (at col. 1437 of the Official Report) that he accepted texts could be ““improved or changed””. I am pleased to note that Amendment No. 34C standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, seeks to address that particular weakness. By contrast, I confess to some surprise that the Motion A1, from the Liberal Democrat Benches, makes no such concession. I will be interested to hear how the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, puts the difference between listener and reader. However, even with the changes that the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, seeks to make, the wording which your Lordships sought to insert in the Bill causes problems. I have taken that in tabling the amendments the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, is seeking to address the point about glorification, about which we are concerned—I absolutely accept that. But instead of being an exemplary description of what indirect encouragement could be, it is an exhaustive description. In other words, the offence is limited so that it is committed by making available to the public a statement directly encouraging terrorism or a statement indirectly encouraging terrorism but only by actually describing it in such a way that the listener will infer that he should emulate it. But the use of the word ““describing”” means that the Bill would not catch, as the original wording would, glorification, praise or celebration of an act of terrorism that does not actually describe the act. The revised wording put forward today by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, does not address those points. The second objection to these amendments is that those who seek to recruit terrorists do so not just by directly encouraging terrorism or by provoking people to commit violent acts, but by glorifying terrorism and terrorists. They may claim that terrorists are heroes whose actions should be copied, or that terrorists go straight to paradise when they die. The single word that best captures this is ““glorification””. It is this clarity of meaning that makes that word so important: not only does our electorate know what it means, and not only is it defined in the Bill with total clarity for the courts, but those who seek to recruit terrorists also know what it means. If this word appears in the Bill, it may—