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Terrorism Bill

Reference has been made to the work of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The evidence that we received is published, and it is beyond doubt that one of the most controversial issues in that evidence was the business of the definition of terrorism. It is worth taking seriously the amount of feeling that existed among some of the very articulate witnesses who came before us and put their cases extremely well. Surely it is because of the difficulties and uncertainties which we are discussing now in Clause 1 that the Home Secretary has invited the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, to review the definition of terrorism. Therefore, somebody looking at our situation from the moon might say that we were rather ahead of events. On the one hand, we have recognised that there is a need to review the definition of terrorism—and the Government have asked someone to produce a report doing that—and on the other, we are introducing legislation to deal with people who, directly or indirectly, advocate terrorism. Forgive me, but in all seriousness that is really rather bizarre. However, as the situation operates it makes it all the more important to have the certainties for which the Joint Committee has argued. If I may, I will switch from talking about the Joint Committee to talking from personal experience for a moment. I apologise for repeating something to which I have referred before, but it made a profound impression upon me. For three and a half years, I was the rapporteur to the Council of Europe on the conflict in Chechnya. I visited that country nine times during those years. I saw the consequences of the indiscriminate and ruthless bombardment of Grozny and elsewhere. I constantly heard from and met people who had suffered the disappearance of relatives, the torture of family, the road blocks and all the brutality and insensitivity that marked the way in which the Russians have conducted that operation. Now, as I have argued before in the House, not for one moment does that begin to justify the vile and wicked things done at the school in Beslan, at the theatre in Moscow or, indeed, at the stadium in Grozny. Yet with that consistent, ongoing experience of the people of Chechnya, the certainties about what is and is not terrorism—about who is and is not conducting it, and about where state terrorism or the terrorism of others starts and finishes—all become much more confused and grey than it perhaps seems in abstract, intellectual deliberations in this Chamber. Therefore, this is no mere theoretical discussion. It has real and immediate implications for people in the midst of the most terrible situations—and their friends and supporters in this country. For that reason, we need to exercise great caution in our drafting. We also need to be quite sure that anything we say is presented in as certain a way as it is possible to be.