My Lords, I draw attention to the last two sentences of paragraph 183 of the Joint Committee’s report, at pages 53 and 54. They refer to an exchange between me and the Minister speaking for the Home Office, the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde. I pointed out to him the difficulty faced, according to the evidence we received, by people who are trying
to gain access to areas where people are in dire need of food, warm clothing or whatever else when somebody there is, in effect, a gatekeeper and refuses any transit to the areas where these people are without some form of payment.
One would of course support what the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, said as a general rule—one does not want people to pay money to terrorists for any reason—but the New Zealand legislation has addressed the problem by putting in the phrase “without reasonable excuse”. Something of that kind would go some way to addressing this problem, because a hard-edged refusal to contemplate any situation where money is paid by somebody—not to assist terrorist activity but simply to get access for a humanitarian purpose—would seem to be too severe. I would have thought that there is a need for some degree of flexibility, although like everyone else I recognise that this is a very sensitive issue and the last thing one wants to do is encourage terrorism. There is a conflict of two diametrically opposed interests here, and the hard-edged and uncompromising line, as described in the noble Lord’s reply when I put forward my suggestion, is prejudicing those who are in need of humanitarian assistance.