Terrorism Bill

The effect of my motion is simple. It effectively reinstates the wording which this House has previously decided on and rejects the attempts of the other place to remove all references to glorification from the Bill. I can be brief in my remarks because I set out in detail what was wrong with the amendments made by another place when we last discussed the issue on 15 February, and I do not intend to return to that debate. I am pleased to say that one objection to those amendments has been removed. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) has perhaps realised that his assertion that he was"““not wholly persuaded by the argument that listening cannot encompass reading.””—[Official Report, 15 February 2006; Vol. 442, c. 1435.]" is not really sustainable. I accept that today’s amendments from the Opposition parties do at least seek to remedy the weakness that we reflected in the debate that we had last time, but the reference solely to ““listener”” was not the only thing that was wrong with the amendments. The amendments from the other place are defective because instead of containing an exemplary description of what ““indirect encouragement”” could be, they provide 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 it but only by actually describing it in such a way that the listener will infer that he should emulate it. To put that simply, the use of the word ““describing”” in the Lords amendments 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. Although the amendments that have now been tabled by the Opposition parties do not rely on the word ““describing””, the same type of objection still applies to them. The use of the word ““comprises”” makes them exhaustive.