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Terrorism Bill

That is correct. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, for tabling these amendments because it gives the Committee the chance to discuss the issue, which attracted a lot of interest when the Bill was going through the other place. The definition of terrorism is important. As, I hope, noble Lords are now aware, the Bill adopts the existing definition in Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Clause 33 makes a minor change to that definition to cover international organisations such as the UN, but that is not really the point in issue. The definition that we have is tried and tested, and the Government do not believe that it can be easily improved upon. Nevertheless, the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, has had a go at making such improvement for the purposes of the offences in Clauses 1 and 2. For the most part, the noble Lord has drawn from the existing definition but with two quite important omissions: serious attacks on property and attacks on electronic networks. I suppose that it is for that reason that my noble friend Lord Harris mentioned cyber-crime. Serious attacks on property can clearly amount to terrorism. Anyone who witnessed the devastation caused by, for example, the attacks on the City of London in the 1990s could be in no doubt on that. Those attacks caused major economic loss, and the damage to London’s prestigious financial centre cannot be quantified. I am sure that many noble Lords will also remember how terrifying it was for the people who witnessed and were troubled by it. Exactly the same arguments would apply to an attack on an electronic system. An attack on the national grid or the national air traffic control system would have profound consequences for the nation. But if we agree that such acts constitute terrorism, so should the encouragement, incitement and, I dare say, glorification of such acts. If I may respectfully suggest, it does not make sense to have one definition for terrorist acts and another for incitement of terrorist acts. Accordingly, we cannot accept the amendment. Furthermore, we suggest that the difficulties with them, which I have outlined, neatly illustrate the difficulty of coming up with a better definition of terrorism than the one that we have. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, is right to say that we must discuss those issues, but all our parties agreed that we needed this Act, and quickly. We are very cognisant of the likelihood that we will have another Bill in which we will be able to look at those issues again, but all the parties felt that we needed to do now the work that we have undertaken. I acknowledged that at Second Reading and we all committed ourselves to it. We are now dealing with the provisions that are not consensual, but we should not forget that the majority are consensual. I indicated at Second Reading that we had invited the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, our independent reviewer of the legislation, to carry out a review of the definition of terrorism. It will be important that, when the noble Lord carries out that review, he has the benefit of the views and assistance of any noble Lords who think that something has been left out or could be improved. That will be our moment to look together at what we submit to him regarding any new definition. We are very grateful to him for agreeing to take that on. He has indicated that he will consult widely and we know that he will honour that commitment. It seems that the best way to proceed is to use the definition that we have, with the minor amendment indicated. I appreciate all the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, but it would be better to progress with the work that we have now, await the review of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and consider then what the definition should be, rather than act precipitously now, before the genuine debate on whether we should improve the definition of terrorism and whether it is possible to do so. I therefore invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.