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Terrorism Bill

I thank the noble Lord for his brilliant summing-up of the debate so far. I agree with him—I am afraid that the amendment is fatally flawed for all the reasons that have just been given. I, too, fully understand the import of the concern expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, and the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. However, my noble friend Lord Mackenzie made a very powerful point, driven home by the noble Lord and, indeed, by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, who rightly says that if you were to allow this, in all probability you would have an attempted judicial review in relation to every single exercise of discretion. I know that that is not what anyone would want. The second limb of the amendment is equally problematic. It effectively excludes all attacks on property, so consent to prosecution would never be given in such cases. Of course, attacks on property are never as bad as attacks on people but I do not think any of us could, or perhaps should, forget the attacks made by the Provisional IRA on the City of London in the 1990s. They caused damage amounting to hundreds of millions of pounds and were unquestionably terrorist attacks. Similar acts in the future would deserve to be treated as terrorism.