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Terrorism Bill

moved Amendment No. 4:"Page 1, line 6, leave out ““a direct or indirect”” and insert ““an””" The noble Lord said: This group of amendments removes the words ““direct or indirect”” in relation to encouragement. In addition to this amendment, I wish to speak also to Amendment Nos. 26, 28, 31 and 63. If Amendment No. 4 were agreed to, the Bill would refer only to encouragement, without splitting encouragement into direct and indirect forms. Why is a reference to indirect encouragement necessary? The Bill defines one type of indirect encouragement of terrorism in Clause 1(4). Whether Clause 1(4) should be retained at all is a subject for debate in a different group of amendments and I will not discuss that now. Clause 1(4) is not an exclusive definition of indirect encouragement, it is what I might call an ““includes definition”” and not a ““means definition””. The question for this group of amendments is: What else—if anything—do the Government have in mind as being indirect encouragement of terrorism? The concept of ““indirect”” encouragement of terrorism is frankly extremely vague. It is most unsatisfactory if people can drift into a criminal offence with statements which do not openly, or by necessary implication, encourage terrorism. That is particularly important when freedom of speech is an issue because people should have clear guidance on what they can and cannot say. Subsection (4) gives some guidance for one category of indirect encouragement—the so-called glorification—but not for indirect encouragement as a whole. Will the Minister therefore explain what indirect encouragement may involve? Why is it necessary to have separate categories of direct and indirect encouragement instead of simply a single category of encouragement? I note and accept the views of the Joint Committee on Human Rights that indirect encouragement of terrorism can be a legitimate offence. However, the Joint Committee also made it clear that any such offence must be narrowly defined and at present it plainly is not. Indeed, it is not defined at all. If the Government want to make indirect encouragement an offence, they should come back with a clear, complete and narrow definition of it. I beg to move.