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Terrorism Bill

The whole purpose of this part of the Bill is to enable us to ratify the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism. In order to allow us to ratify the convention in this respect, we can create an offence that is broader than, or has the same scope as, the offence envisaged in Article 5 of the convention—as the noble Lord knows—but not one that is narrower. In considering whether our offence should have the same scope as that offence, we have taken into account the particular mischief which we feel we need to tackle, as well as existing UK law. In fact, if we were to adopt the construction suggested by the noble Lord—““persons””—it would be, if I may say so, more illiberal than our current structure. Amendments Nos. 3 and 15 would replace references to ““members of the public”” with references to ““persons””. The Committee will know that the offence envisaged under Article 5 of the convention is concerned with making messages available to the public. The Government feel it is appropriate to have the same scope as that offence. It is not appropriate for this offence to target private communications. Although our decision to target only public statements may be inherent in the notion of ““publishing”” which is included in the current draft of Clause 1, we see no reason why the clause should not make it explicit that we are describing public communications by referring to members of the public as well. Given that the offence is not directed at private conversations, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, will accept the slightly tighter wording. I know that he would hate this provision to be seen as more illiberal than it needed to be. I must confess, I could not believe this draft when I first saw it, given where it comes from. I hope, with my explanation, the noble Lord will be content that the Government are trying to be liberal—with a little ‘l’—on this, and will join with us in our liberality.