Terrorism Bill

In this debate, as in the earlier one on the Identity Cards Bill, the Government have revealed a curious attachment to a single, ill-defined word. The debate on identity cards highlighted their somewhat spectacular redefinition of the word ““voluntary””. Now we are dealing with a Government—or more precisely a Prime Minister—who appear to be absolutely insistent on another word, ““glorification””. A petulant insistence on the use of a particular word does not make good law. The Government’s position is weak on three counts. First, as was said earlier, there is no legally understood definition of the word ““glorification””. It confuses the law, creating unnecessary imprecision and fluidity. That should not happen to a law that deals with such an important issue as tackling terrorism. The Joint Committee on Human Rights objected to the term on exactly that ground—legal imprecision—and we have still not heard a compelling argument from the Government to refute that view. Secondly, the provision adds nothing other than confusion to existing laws that are deployed effectively to tackle many of the problems that it is supposed to address. The arrest yesterday of a number of protesters who used sickening and inflammatory language on their placards when demonstrating against the anti-Islamic cartoons published in Denmark shows that current laws against incitement appear to be working fairly well, although there was some delay in that case.