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Terrorism Bill

moved Amendment No. 43:"Page 4, line 30, at end insert—" ““(e)   that the publication to which the conduct related was received by a library in consequence of its obligations under the British Library Act 1972 (c. 54) or the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 (c. 28).”” The noble Baroness said: I am delighted to move an amendment that moves away from the issues we have been discussing in such detail and at such considerable length and I hope that the Government will find the first amendment to which I shall speak easy to accept. There are moments in life when details can throw an extraordinary shaft of light on issues much bigger than themselves. Anybody who reads the British Library Act 1972 will see that we were living in a world that was very different from the one in which we are living after 9/11. The Act is full of the ideal of creating a knowledge society, giving access to people globally to learn about huge ranges of information, wisdom, writings and publications from which they would benefit. It is a world that sets out huge, exciting ambitions for the British Library as one of the great sources, one of the beacons, of that world of knowledge, equalled only by the Library of Congress in America and one or two other libraries in the world. The Act has inspired the British Library not only to collect a huge number of publications from all sorts of sources globally, but also—this is not yet as well known, but it soon will be—to establish a fantastic network throughout the world for access to information, publications and the other things that are part of what a great education ought to be. I recommend to noble Lords who are working their way out of the detail of this somewhat depressing Bill that they spend a minute or two in the library reminding themselves of the world that we were trying to build in 1972, at least as far as education and libraries were concerned. We have come a long way from that to Amendment No. 43 which protects the British Library and that ambition by excluding the British Library from the provisions of the Bill as regards the dissemination of publications. Many noble Lords, not least the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, who I am sure will speak briefly in this short debate on these two amendments, will be well aware that the law lays upon the British Library, and the other deposit libraries within universities—for example, the Bodleian, Cambridge University Library and Edinburgh University Library—the duty to acquire everything that is published and to catalogue it, care for it, make it available and archive it. It is typical of the British Library that it is already trying to set up archives about some of the astonishing events of our time; for example, the recent terrorist actions of 7 July 2005. It is the job of the British Library to make sure that the great events, and even the small events, of our lives are catalogued, cared for, made available and eventually archived so that we look after the history of our country and that of many other parts of the world as well. That responsibility is particularly embodied in the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, which was rather surprisingly passed some time after the first few terrorist outrages but still stuck closely to the ambitions that I outlined quickly by accounting for some 1.5 million new publications every year. An astonishing sea of information and knowledge is coming in to the British Library and is protected by it for the benefit of the whole of mankind. Those two Acts of Parliament, both carefully considered and enthusiastically passed, comprise a heavy duty upon the British Library and its fellow deposit libraries, which they carry out to the best of their ability. Indeed, it is fair to say that the library system in the United Kingdom is, if not the finest, among the finest, in the world. We owe it to our heritage and to posterity and it is of vital importance if we are to build a knowledge society. It is something that we have to protect. This legislation—unwittingly, I suspect—could very well seriously damage it. Therefore, we believe that this simple amendment would protect the deposit libraries from finding themselves in a statutory tug-of-war in which it would be impossible for them to satisfy all the obligations laid upon them by statutes passed by Parliament. It is completely unsatisfactory to leave the situation as it is with libraries simply unable to do both the things that they are called upon to do—unless we can better clarify the obligations under Clause 2. The purpose of the amendment is cleanly and straightforwardly to exempt deposit libraries from the effects of this legislation. Of course, it would not cover any proposal to intend an act of terrorism or anything of that kind, which would be highly unlikely but, in the extreme case, could just be possible. I commend the amendment to the House. Before I sit down, I shall speak briefly to Amendment No. 44, which concerns a different issue; that of the maximum penalty attracted by offences under Clause 2. I commend to the House the proposal that the maximum penalty should be sharply reduced from seven to three years. It is already clear from the debates we have had that a lot of people who had no intention of being involved in a terrorist offence could still be caught. That is the nature of the fears that many of us have been expressing, including my noble friend Lord Goodhart and the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland. Therefore, it is swingeing to have a maximum penalty of seven years in a group of offences so unclearly stated and, in some cases, so difficult to understand how to avoid. I shall not pursue the amendment at this hour of the Committee’s deliberations, but commend it to the House. If we withdraw the amendment, we shall bring it back at a later stage because we think that these sentences are wholly disproportionate. I shall add that the clear advice of the Joint Committee on Human Rights is that disproportionate offences carrying disproportionate penalties would not satisfy the European Convention on Human Rights and it is very questionable whether this penalty would. I beg to move.