Counter-Terrorism Bill

moved Amendment No. 36: 36: Before Clause 45, insert the following new Clause— ““Persons to whom the notification requirements apply The notification requirements apply to a person who— (a) is aged 16 or over at the time of being dealt with for an offence to which this Part applies, and (b) is made subject in respect of the offence to a sentence or order within section 45 (sentences or orders triggering notification requirements).”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, at the previous stage of the Bill, I agreed to give further consideration to how the proposed notification requirements would operate. There were two main areas of concern about them. The first was that a child convicted of a terrorism offence could become subject to the requirements. The second was that the notification requirements would apply indefinitely in the case of anyone sentenced to five years or more. After looking at these issues further—I would not want to think of it as a ““cave-in””, because I hate that expression—we have decided to make a number of amendments to the notification provisions. The first amendment, inserting a new clause before Clause 45, addresses how the notification requirements apply to young people. It will ensure that they do not apply to anyone under the age of 16 on the date that they are dealt with for a terrorism or terrorism-related offence, recognising to an extent the extraordinary ways in which young people can sometimes act and the fact that they can change. The amendments to Clause 53 address the length of time for which the notification requirements apply. They will mean that notification requirements will apply only for 10 years where someone is aged 16 or 17 on the date of their conviction for a relevant offence, regardless of the length of the sentence imposed, provided of course that the sentence is for more than 12 months. The amendments also change the notification period for persons aged 18 or over on the date of conviction. Those sentenced to 10 years or more, or to an indeterminate sentence for a relevant offence, will have to notify for 30 years under the proposed amendment rather than the indefinite notification period which is found in the existing print of the Bill and which is not appropriate. Adults sentenced to between five and 10 years will be required to notify for 15 years, once again instead of the indefinite notification period. The period for persons sentenced to between 12 months and five years will remain 10 years. The amendments to Clause 45 are largely minor and technical, and those to Schedule 6 replicate the new policy that I have just described in relation to offences dealt with before the service courts. In making the amendments, we considered the proposal to shorten the application of the notification requirements to five years but to allow them to be renewed by a court if it considered it necessary for the purpose of protecting members of the public from a risk of terrorism. We also considered whether someone subject to the notification requirements could apply to a court to have them disapplied. However, we could not envisage how a court could realistically undertake either of these tasks. If there was sufficient open evidence that an individual subject to the notification requirements was concerned in terrorism, we would expect the police to seek to arrest them with a view to prosecuting, rather than to seek to have the notification requirements renewed. If there was no evidence available that the individual was involved in terrorist activity, it would be inevitable that a court would either not renew the requirements or would have to remove them from the individual. However, the evidence might simply be unavailable as the individual was operating covertly, or waiting for their notification period to end before resuming their involvement. We also consider that the resources involved in undertaking such an exercise would be disproportionate as set against the minimal interference posed by the notification requirements, which we believe are fully justified by the risk established by the very fact of a conviction for a serious terrorist offence. We have therefore decided against adopting either of these approaches. I remind the House that the notification requirement will apply only to convicted terrorists. The police should have access to information to assist them in monitoring the people concerned following their release from custody. In addition, the requirements are not onerous: they do not stop the individual doing anything; they merely require the person to notify certain details, such as change of address, to the police and to keep this information up to date. I hope that the amendments are sufficient to address concerns about the notification requirements. I beg to move.