I am grateful to the Security Minister for his opening remarks, and for his tone and the consensual approach he has taken. We most definitely do not agree on everything, and we have robust exchanges across the Dispatch Box, but we try to work together constructively on these serious matters whenever we can. I am grateful to him for accepting Lords amendment 1 to clause 3, which has caused controversy in the past. The clause deals with a situation in which it was previously illegal to download these terrible recruiting videos but not illegal to stream them. We have to have a situation in which both are illegal. We cannot have a situation in which watching something later on is illegal but watching it at the time is not. This has been difficult to deal with, and there is no perfect way to capture it in legislation.
As the Minister knows, I was also concerned about the three clicks approach, and I am pleased that the Government have dropped it. Dropping it has not, as some suggested, led to a situation in which one click could lead to an offence being committed. The Bill sets out clearly that anyone inadvertently clicking in that way would not be covered by the offence. I was concerned that the reasonable excuse defence mechanism had been put on to the face of the Bill, particularly in relation to journalists and academics, and I am pleased that the Government have now accepted those concessions. It is clear that in the years ahead we will have to look at precisely how the clause works in practice, but it is important to send a clear message that streaming these terrible videos is equally as awful as downloading them and watching them later on.
On designated areas, the Security Minister quoted what I said in the Commons because this measure was introduced at a very late stage and I was unable to have that discussion with him in Committee. We do not oppose the overall aim of dealing with so-called foreign fighters, but the clause needed significant work. Again, I am pleased with the work that has been done and I pay tribute to my Labour colleagues in the Lords and those of other parties there who have put in the work and time to improve the clause. I am also grateful to the Minister for accepting the changes.
There was originally a non-exhaustive list of reasonable excuse defences on the face of the Bill. This has essentially been taken and carved into the law itself, so that people do not commit the offence in the first place if they have a particular purpose for travelling. That was important for two reasons. First, someone with a perfectly legitimate reason for doing something would inevitably have been stopped, and would have been able to raise the reasonable excuse defence only further down the line. It is therefore much better in principle that they do not commit the offence in the first place. Secondly, the last thing anyone in this House wants is to deter people with a perfectly reasonable motive from going to areas of conflict. Aid workers are an example, and I know that the Chair of the International Development Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) has tabled an amendment on that.
For completeness, Lords amendment 3 states that the offence is not committed if one or more of the purposes of the visit is to provide
“aid of a humanitarian nature…carrying out work for the government of a country other than the United Kingdom…carrying out work for the United Nations or an agency of the United Nations…carrying out work as a journalist…attending the funeral of a relative or visiting a relative who is terminally ill…providing care for a relative who is unable to care for themselves”.
That is not meant to be an exhaustive list.
In addition, the reasonable excuse defence is maintained. This relates to the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby. The reason is that if no exception is already carved into the law and the purpose of the visit is not included in the list, it could none the less appear as a reasonable excuse defence. In an intervention on the Minister, the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) talked about a burden in these cases. With the reasonable excuse defence, there is of course a burden on the defendant to raise it, but the burden to disprove it lies with the prosecution. In the carve-outs in the law that I have suggested, however, these people would not be committing the offence in the first place.
I want to press the Security Minister on how exactly this is going to work in practice. As he knows, there are two models around the world: the Australian model, which I think the sunset clause has been taken from, and the Danish model. The way the Danish model works in terms of not committing the offence in the first place involves an extensive system in which people obtain licences before they go. That is not without its problems, because journalists sometimes like to travel to certain areas without advertising the fact that they are doing so, so I am not suggesting that this would be a silver bullet or a magic solution. However, there will presumably have to be a system whereby we can show clearly that someone has not committed the offence in
the first place, as against those situations in which there might be a reasonable suspicion that an offence had been committed and in which the reasonable excuse defence was raised later. Any details from the Minister on how this will work would be appreciated.
The other Lords amendments on these issues are also important. They include the introduction of a sunset clause for the statutory instruments to designate particular areas so that they cease to apply and have to be replaced. This will ensure that the Government regularly make the case to Parliament if they wish to continue with a designation in the long term. Lords amendments 7 and 8 relate to two additional concessions. Lords amendment 7 provides that the Government have to make a statement outlining why they believe an area needs to be designated at the same time as they lay the relevant statutory instrument. Similarly, Lords amendment 8 states that when the Government revoke a designation, the change must be subject to the negative resolution procedure in Parliament in case anyone wishes to object to it. Taken together, the amendments produce a much better clause in relation to the designated areas. It will allow the Government to tackle the problem of so-called foreign fighters, of which we are all conscious, but it now does so in a more balanced, fair way, without deterring those who wish to travel to areas of conflict for perfectly honourable and legitimate reasons. No one in the House would wish to prevent them from doing that.
There are three other broad themes to the amendments in this group. The first relates to extraterritorial jurisdiction, which the Minister will be aware I have raised before in a slightly different context. The Government added extraterritorial jurisdiction to the offence of inviting or recklessly expressing support for a proscribed organisation, and concern was expressed about that by the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The Committee was concerned that the extension of extraterritorial jurisdiction to certain offences was problematic when there was no equivalent offence in the country involved. The safeguard will now ensure that extraterritorial jurisdiction applies only if the offence was committed by a UK national or UK resident. That is in line with what the Joint Committee recommended, and I welcome that change.
Turning to the independent review of the Prevent strategy, I genuinely welcome the Security Minister’s acceptance that a review is required, and I give credit to the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who has argued for one for some considerable time. As the Security Minister knows, I have visited Prevent programmes across the country, including in south Wales. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) also raised the issue of far-right terrorism, which this House must be conscious of and take action on.
My argument about the independent review of Prevent is that there is a concern that its aims may end up in conflict with or become slightly confused between intelligence gathering, what I would call the more welfarist or safeguarding aspect of Prevent, and community cohesion. There has been an issue around community cohesion, because the facilities that are available to local authorities, for example, are an important part of
that. I have had conversations in which it was clear that the pressures on local authority services are really affecting Prevent’s ability to deliver.
There are also aspects or parts of our society—in fairness to the Security Minister, he pointed this out himself—that have lost faith in the programme, and it is time to look at that. We need a programme in which everyone can have faith. None of us wants to see people living a life of violence and hatred that is driven by these kinds of ideologies. We all want to prevent people from doing that, but let us do so in the most effective way. From our conversations, I am hopeful that the Security Minister will be keen to have a wide-ranging review that can deal with such issues.
While I am on the subject of Prevent, I know that the competition to become the new independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has now closed to applications, and I hope that someone new will be appointed soon. I hope, too, that the Minister will be receptive to suggestions about how exactly to construct this independent review, so that we can have the most robust and reliable conclusions possible and, if necessary, make appropriate changes.
Lords amendment 16 is another sensible amendment, relating to bank accounts or terrorist’s bank accounts. There was an issue in the law as originally drafted in that the account would have to be in the name of a particular person. Of course, that did not take into account the fact that people can have control of other people’s bank accounts by their behaviour, and it is important that that was covered in the legislation as well.
Taken together, all the Lords amendments make this legislation far better, and it is pleasing that we end the passage of this Bill on a note of significant consensus.