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Terrorism Bill

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sunderland, South. [Hon. Members: ““North.””] I am sorry; I meant the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Bill Etherington), although it is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin). I have heard the hon. Member for Sunderland, North speak on two occasions in recent weeks, and on both occasions he has treated the House to a remarkably sound first-principles exposition. Today’s debate offers the House an opportunity to take stock, to reflect on yesterday’s events and the debates of the past few weeks, and to consider—in a more measured way than was possible yesterday—how we should proceed from here. It is unfortunate that the Home Secretary is not present, because I was going to say something nice about him. I have had substantial disagreements with him on this subject over the past few weeks, and I believe that he has made a number of mistakes—and that mistakes have been made for him, notably by the Prime Minister. Nevertheless, he responded to the immediate aftermath of yesterday’s vote with a remarkable degree of personal dignity, for which I give him credit. I must qualify that by saying that he rather blew it today with some of his comments about certain of his hon. Friends. The Home Secretary also said that he found Liberal Democrats difficult to debate with. I considered that to be a remarkable piece of praise, for which I should thank him. I would have thought, though, that compared to debates with some of his own Back Benchers, debates with Liberal Democrats would be models of straightforward simplicity. The replacement of the 90-day period and the amendment to 28 days has removed a major barrier to our support for the Bill. It indeed gives me and my hon. Friends some reassurance that we can begin to work with this Bill. For that reason, I place on record the fact that we will not oppose the Bill on Third Reading today. If others choose to divide the House, we shall not be with them. We nevertheless view the legislation very much as work in progress. It is beyond doubt that there remains substantial scope for improvement. I want to take some time to highlight a few of the remaining areas of concern from the point of view of my right hon. and hon. Friends. On clause 1, it is important to reflect and acknowledge that we have come a very long way from the original views expressed by the Government and the Home Office earlier this summer. The continued inclusion of glorification within the clause, however, remains unsatisfactory, as does the formulation of recklessness, which needs to be fixed. Those matters will be dealt with again in the other place. The concerns of academics about many of the offences in part 1 have not had a proper or full airing. They will also have to be dealt with, sadly, in the other place. We also want to put on record the fact that we remain concerned about the lack of proper statutory defences in respect of clauses 6 and 8. Clause 17 deals with the commission of offences abroad and it is right to welcome the substantial amendment and restriction of the clause’s scope that the Government put into the Bill yesterday. It is still far from a model of clarity, however, and it may help the House if I read out the amended provision in clause 17, which refers to"““an offence under section 1 or 6 of this Act so far as it is committed in relation to any statement, instruction or training in relation to which that section has effect by reason of its relevance to the commission, preparation or instigation of one or more Convention offences””." The vagueness of the term ““relevance to the commission”” remains problematic and could eventually cause some difficulties. It would be an excellent point for our noble Friends to deal with.