---

Terrorism Bill

Amendment No. 99A would remove criminal liability for encouragement of terrorism under Clause 1 if it was committed abroad. This does not cover the liability for the offences either of acts preparatory to terrorism under Clause 5 or of giving or receiving training for terrorism under Clause 6. Given the width of the definition of terrorism and the width of the concept of encouragement enormous numbers of people would be potentially liable to prosecution under Clause 17 if it extended to the offence under Clause 1. Offences under Clause 2 are not included, because Clause 17 applies only to offences under Clauses 1 or 6. So the dissemination of terrorist material outside the United Kingdom would never come within the scope of prosecution under Clause 17. It is difficult to see the justification for saying that it applies to making a statement under Clause 1 and disseminating that statement under Clause 2, but at present the Bill makes that distinction. The effect is that if someone outside the United Kingdom gave encouragement to, say, militants in Kashmir or Chechnya, he could be liable for a crime under Clause 1. That is seriously over-stretching the matter. We are looking at speech crime and, indeed, it comes close to being thought crime—a word invented by a gentleman whose name was Blair, although he wrote under the nom de plume of Orwell. What is described here falls short of incitement to terrorism, and where it has no impact on the United Kingdom it does not seem appropriate to retain a power of prosecution in this country. Apart from anything else, any prosecution would be totally random, because there must be at any given time a large number of people who are potentially liable to prosecution, but the vast majority would never be discovered to have made a statement. Providing for a prosecution for encouragement as opposed to incitement of terrorism in the United Kingdom, when the offence has been committed outside the United Kingdom, and which does not relate to encouragement in the United Kingdom, does not serve any useful purpose.