Terrorism Bill

If nobody knows who is holding up the placard because that person is wearing a dish dash in such a way that all that can be seen is his eyes, what possible use would an identity card be? I am afraid that Government Front Benchers are living in fantasy land as regards terrorist offences, and one need only engage in any sort of debate for the fantasies that are besetting them to become increasingly apparent. I say this to the Home Secretary: we have genuinely been trying to see whether we can reach agreement with the Government on the problem that has been posed by the Prime Minister’s ego and his slavish adherence to the word, ““glorification””. If one is French, that word does not feature in the debate at all, because the equivalent word is, ““apologie””, which means ““vindication”” and is entirely different. For those in the international community, the failure of this House to enact the glorification clause would not be the most seismic event ever, because what they actually want to see is terrorists and those who encourage terrorism brought to justice. That is the matter on which the House should be concentrating. Mindful of that, we tried to see whether we could reach some measure of agreement. That is why the amendments that I have tabled, on which, I am glad to say, we will be able to vote before voting on the Home Secretary’s proposition, would provide the framework for doing that. The Home Secretary’s suggestion that the word ““listening”” might not encompass viewing or reading struck me as having force. Indeed, if there had been an opportunity for a full debate and vote in the House of Lords, it might have been possible to do something about that there. That classically illustrates how our parliamentary procedure does not work very well. Here we have an opportunity to remedy that minor criticism. On top of that, as the Home Secretary will have noted, we have removed the word, ““describing””, in relation to terrorism because he said that it is possible to glorify terrorism without describing it—I think that it is quite difficult, but I can see that it is a drafting argument—and replaced it with the word, ““referring””. Can the Home Secretary give me any example of where it would be possible to glorify something without referring to it? I have to say that I do not think that that argument would get very far.