As I think my hon. Friend will know, when it comes to intelligence and investigations, such decisions are operational. Should our police or intelligence services suspect that someone has committed an offence but there is nevertheless more to discover, that is a risk that they will have to take. They will take it into consideration and make a decision. Of course, any prosecution under the Crown Prosecution Service must meet a number of thresholds. It must be established, for example, whether the prosecution is in the public interest, or whether there is a likelihood of success. However, if someone does not provide a reasonable excuse, that person is potentially open to prosecution and to being sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.
It is regrettable but a fact of life, given the challenges posed by end-to-end encryption, secure communications, and the ability to obtain evidence from people who we may know from intelligence—but not in evidential space—have been up to no good, that we must seek a way around the current issue. When I attended the G7 in Canada last year, it was clear that every state represented at the table, from Japan to France, faced the same challenges. We must reduce the number of offences of this type, and we hope that the Bill will make a difference.
We want it to deliver a strong deterrent to ensure that people are where they are for the right reasons, and to make clear there are other ways to better people’s lives in their communities than going to a designated area for reasons that may turn out to be spurious.
To ensure that the power to designate an area is used proportionately, Lords amendment 5 provides that regulations designating an area will automatically cease to have effect after three years. That will not, however, prevent further regulations from being made to designate the same area should such a designation still be required to keep the public safe from the threat of terrorism.
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In its original form, the Bill extended extraterritorial jurisdiction to four further terrorism offences in order to ensure that individuals could be prosecuted in the UK for crimes committed overseas. During its passage, the Government identified two further terrorism offences to which extraterritorial jurisdiction should be extended, namely the offence of inviting support for a proscribed organisation and the new offence of recklessly encouraging support for a proscribed organisation, provided for in section 12(1) and (1A) of the 2000 Act. Lords amendments 9 and 10 amend clause 6 to that end, while Lords amendment 11 limits the extraterritorial jurisdiction in respect of those offences, and the offence in section 13 of the 2000 Act, to UK nationals and residents. That limitation addresses the concern expressed in the Lords that it would be unjust for a non-UK national or resident to be prosecuted in this country for activity overseas in support of an organisation that was not proscribed in the country where they lived, or where the activity took place.
Lords amendment 13 would require the Home Secretary to establish an independent review of the Government’s strategy for supporting people who are vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism, namely the Prevent programme. The hon. Member for Torfaen has acknowledged the excellent work undertaken under the programme. He and his colleagues in the Lords have argued that it is simply a question of good governance to review regularly whether policies and programmes such as this are working as intended, and are as effective as they can be. Essentially, that is the purpose of the post-legislative reviews that have now been in place for some years.
The review of part 5 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, which provides the legislative foundation for the Prevent programme, is in any event due to take place early in 2020, just 12 months away. Given that, I have decided that the time is now right to initiate a review of Prevent. Communities across the country are behind the policy and are contributing to it because, like us, they want to protect their young people from being groomed and exploited by extremists.