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Terrorism Bill

I am grateful to the noble Lord for tabling Amendments Nos. 62 and 64. Like Amendments Nos. 59 and 61, they seek to amend the repeat statement provisions we have already discussed in part. They would remove the reference to ““capable of being”” understood and replace it with ““likely to be”” understood. The ““likely to be”” understood formulation proposed in the amendment mirrors Clause 1. I understand why the amendments have been tabled, but Clauses 1 and 3 are two distinct parts of the Bill. The difference in the current drafting is designed to reflect that. In Clause 1, a statement must have been made to an audience. The court is then required to make an assessment of whether the audience to whom the statement was made is likely to understand that statement as an encouragement. In Clause 3, however, a different assessment is made. The police have to make an assessment of whether a statement made available to many people via the Internet is capable of being understood by certain persons as an encouragement. The difference is that in Clause 1 we know the audience, while in Clause 3 the police do not specifically know who the audience to which the statement is being made is, and of those potential people, whether they are likely to be so encouraged. The amendments would limit unduly the ability of the constable to issue a notice. Currently, it may well be that in issuing the notice, the constable is aware that the statement is unlikely to encourage others to terrorist acts because it has, for example, been posted on a website run for the benefit of children’s education. However, he may be concerned that the statement is such that certain people, if they were to see it, might understand it as such an encouragement and that, in serving the notice, he may make the web host aware of it so that it can be taken down. This assessment is not one of whether persons are likely to understand it as such an encouragement, but where it is capable of being so understood. The consequence of the amendment would be to prevent the constable issuing a notice in the circumstances I have just outlined. He would issue a notice only where he could reasonably make out that such a statement existed and there were persons viewing that statement who would understand it as an encouragement. That would limit unnecessarily the utility of this clause. In anticipating the argument against that—what if the constable does not get the judgment right, which has been put in the past; what if the statement appeared in such a place or in such a way that those viewing it were not likely to understand it as such an encouragement, even though it was possible to see that other people in the world might consider it as such an encouragement and the notice was still used—there would be two options. The web host, on looking at the material in question, might choose to take it down anyway. Alternatively, the web host might leave it up if he was confident that it was not a statement that people viewing his website would take to be encouraging either because of its nature or because of the nature of his website. The amendments do not allow for that possibility and limit the utility of the notice issuing provisions to no clear benefit. For the reasons I have set out, I hope that the noble Lord will be content to withdraw the amendment.