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Terrorism Bill

moved Amendment No. 99:"Page 16, line 23, at end insert ““and" (c)   the action involves harm or the threat of harm to a national of the United Kingdom”” The noble Lord said: Amendment No 99 would add a new paragraph to Clause 17(1); that is, paragraph (c). The clause concerns the commission of offences abroad. As things stand, persons of any nationality who commit abroad any of the offences stipulated in the Bill will be subject to criminal prosecution if or when they come to this country. The purpose of the amendment is to limit the extra-territorial—I think the expression used in another place was extra-terrestrial—effect of the Bill to those circumstances in which the offence involves,"““harm or the threat of harm to a national of the United Kingdom””." I am aware that one of the problems we face in this Bill is that there is no international definition of terrorism; but we nevertheless have to deal with the law as we find it today. I suspect that the answer that the Government will give me when I sit down—which I assure the noble Baroness will be quite shortly—is that we all have the protection of the discretion of the Attorney-General; and that the Attorney-General will use his legendary common sense to make sure that prosecutions occur only in appropriate circumstances. But the fact of the matter is that the Attorney-General’s discretion in this Bill is wholly unconstrained. He can make such judgments as he thinks are expedient in the political circumstances of the time. It is not difficult to see what serious pressures he will sometimes be under. A situation may arise where a regime which is broadly friendly to the United Kingdom, but nevertheless totalitarian and repressive, is plagued by what many people would call ““freedom fighters””. Some of those freedom fighters may find their way to these shores. As soon as the head of the regime discovers that they are here, there is no doubt that strong representations will be made to the government of the day in the United Kingdom to bring proceedings against the freedom fighters. The Attorney-General, as the Minister responsible, will not be able to escape those pressures. To give a completely different example, what about an asylum seeker? What about somebody who has been an opponent of a repressive regime and has said things in the course of his opposition which fall foul of the Bill, but who then comes to the United Kingdom in order to apply for asylum? He would be caught by this provision, unless our amendment is accepted. Serious problems can arise if we do not constrain the Clause 17(1) offence in the way we suggest, or some other way that has the same effect. I beg to move.