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Terrorism Bill

moved Amendment No. 47:"Page 5, line 2, leave out from ““applies”” to end of line." The noble Lord said: Clause 3 raises a number of important issues involving the Internet. There is no doubt that the Internet can be used to spread terrorist propaganda. There are 24 amendments to Clause 3. In all but one my name is the lead name. It is impracticable to deal with them in a single group. Before I get on to this group, I should like to explain how the amendments are divided and, broadly, the topic of each group. Clause 3 extends offences under Clauses 1 and 2 to Internet service providers, which may not be aware of what they are transmitting, by an artificial extension of the concept of endorsement. There is no definition in the Bill anywhere of what is meant by endorsement. For example, is it purely internal or is it external? Can you do endorsement privately—if you agree with something, are you treated as endorsing it? Or, if you express to other people your agreement with a document, how do you provide evidence of that extension? To begin with, the concept of endorsement is very unsuitable for this Bill. Except to a limited extent under Clause 2(9), endorsement is not mentioned in Clauses 1 and 2; nor is it, in itself, a criminal offence. Here we have a wholly artificial definition: if you do not comply with the notice, you will be deemed to endorse the material mentioned in the notice. The first group of amendments gets rid of the concept of endorsement and turns Clause 3 into a freestanding offence of failure to comply with a notice to stop transmitting material specified in the notice. The second group, starting with Clause 49, deals with a number of technical problems envisaged by Internet service providers and is based on briefings that I, and other Members of your Lordships’ House no doubt, have received from the Internet Service Providers’ Association and other concerned bodies. The third group—Amendments Nos. 53, 56 and 58—deals with the absence of any checks on the police power to decide what should be contained in the notice given under subsection (2). The final group—Amendments Nos. 62 and 64—deals with wording that we believe is unsatisfactory. Let me go back to the first group, which involves the artificial concept of endorsement. Internet service providers largely do not and cannot monitor the material which they transmit on behalf of the users of their services. The Government may identify electronic material which encourages or assists terrorism. If they can find the people who put that material on the Internet, they can charge them under Clauses 1 or 2 without reference to Clause 3. But, of course, they may not be able to get at the source, especially if the material comes from abroad. They can therefore tell the Internet service provider which is transmitting the material in the UK to block that material or the whole of the website from which it comes. Subsections (2) and (3) of Clause 3 provide a mechanism by which the notice can be served on the Internet service provider to tell it to stop transmitting the offending material. It does that by saying, ““If you don’t stop transmitting this, you will be treated as endorsing this material and therefore guilty of an offence under Clauses 1 and 2””. That is highly artificial and leads to unnecessarily complex drafting. It would surely be simpler and better to treat non-compliance with the notice as a freestanding offence. The amendments in this group are intended to achieve that result. Since non-compliance with the notice is a less serious offence than the original publication of the material, Amendment No. 66 provides for a maximum three-year sentence instead of the seven-year maximum for offences under Clauses 1 and 2. It is of course possible for an Internet service provider which receives a notice to say that the notice is invalid because what it is transmitting is not a terrorist publication. In practice, it will not do that because it has no real interest in doing so. An Internet service provider is not concerned with the content of what it is transmitting, it simply transmits it. Undoubtedly service of a notice effectively blocks the material that is mentioned in the notice. I spoke of that earlier. The Minister wrote to me pointing out that that was incorrect, which, strictly speaking, it is. The effect of the service of the notice will almost inevitably be to induce the service provider to block the material and not transmit it any further. Rather than having this highly artificial concept, we should say that where there is a terrorist publication—I have removed any reference to the belief of the police—and a notice is served, it should be dealt with as a separate offence and not as an offence under Clauses 1 and 2. I beg to move.