My Lords, Amendment 31 is grouped with Amendment 33. Both are amendments to Clause 6, which extends the circumstances in which terrorist offending abroad may be prosecuted in the UK, whether or not the offender is a UK citizen and whether or not the conduct is also an offence in the jurisdiction in which it took place. The overall effect of the amended provisions of the Terrorism Act is that an individual committing one of the offences within the relevant section would be liable under UK law in the same way as if he or she committed the offence in the UK. In practical terms, that person would only be prosecuted if he or she was present in the UK, though that presence could, of course, be achieved through extradition.
The offences which this Bill adds are: the dissemination of terrorist material; the wearing of clothing or displaying an item in public so as to arouse reasonable suspicion the person is a member or supporter of—in view of our debate on Monday, I have written down a query about whether that should be “supportive of”—a proscribed organisation; and making or possessing explosives under suspicious circumstances. Under these provisions, it would also no longer be a requirement that the offence be listed in the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism.
I very much enjoyed the tutorials, from which we all benefited, from the very senior lawyers who took part on the debate in Monday. I am tempted to let them go first but the amendment is in my name, so that would not be entirely the thing to do. I move these amendments, as I did on Monday, on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Our report of 4 July commented on some of the evidence we had received, including that from the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation Max Hill QC. He said:
“placing an individual … on trial in this jurisdiction in front of judge and jury means that you need to prove a level of awareness as to the offence at the time the person committed it. If there is no equivalent offence abroad it is difficult, at the point of proof, to demonstrate that the offence has been committed”.
We also reported on the evidence of Professor Clive Walker who talked about creating,
“a potential clash between UK law and the law of the country where the activity occurred”.
He went on to say that,
“foreign law which has chosen not to incriminate or prosecute the display of support suggests that UK law should not intervene”.
Similar points were made about the removal of the requirement for equivalence with the convention.
The committee’s report expressed our concern:
“The extension of extraterritorial jurisdiction to certain offences such as support for a proscribed organisation may be problematic in situations where there is not an equivalent offence in the country concerned”.
We took the view that this would,
“offend the principles of natural justice and sufficient foreseeability of the effect of one’s actions. It would mean a foreign national, with few links to the UK, could be prosecuted in the UK if he/she attended a protest or waved a flag overseas, in support of an organisation that is lawful within that overseas jurisdiction … We recommend that further consideration is given as to whether it is justified to bring domestic prosecutions against those who have no (or very few) links to the UK at the relevant time for conduct overseas that was perfectly lawful in the jurisdiction where it occurred”.
The Government have argued that the oversight of the Director of Public Prosecutions or, in certain cases, the Attorney-General, is a safeguard and that prosecutions would have to be proportionate. We did not regard this as a sufficient answer, nor did we regard as sufficient the Government’s comment that we need to deal with conduct in failed states which do not have the rule of law. All this raises, among other things, the issue of how evidence is found in such a place for use in a prosecution here.
Amendment 31 would delete the extension to the Section 13 offence in respect of uniforms and flags. Amendment 33 would limit the extension to where the relevant conduct is criminal in the country concerned,
or where the individual is a British national or has been present in the UK for six months or more over a period of 10 years. That was a way of expressing that the individual has significant links with the UK. I beg to move.