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Terrorism Bill

My Lords, I am increasingly puzzled. It seems to me that the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, is precisely what the House needs to accept. However, the more that I look at the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, it seems that it opens up precisely the can of worms which the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Lord seeks to close by removing the subsection altogether. The more that I look at Amendment No. 9, the more it seems likely to have just as chilling an effect on the teaching of, for instance, almost any period of British history in schools, and still more in universities. Maybe that is because I have in mind that extraordinary form of words in subsection (3),"““whether in the past, the future, or generally””." That goes across the whole range of history. The same would be still truer of the history of every other continent, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, has just made clear. What puzzles me is that that noble Lord supports the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, as well as that of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick. I even wonder whether this is why the statue of Oliver Cromwell is so nearly invisible outside your Lordships’ House and the other place today. There is a wider point, which I will be grateful to have the opportunity to make now to your Lordships. It is, precisely, that there are parts of the world where the whole question of what terrorism is and what it is another generation later, when it is something regarded quite differently, is a much more live issue than in this country with its long history. We are, of course, legislating for this country. Yet it is important at every point in this Bill, much of which I find profoundly questionable, to remember the political, educational and legal influence of our work and its results elsewhere. That is especially so in those Commonwealth countries that significantly share our legal system and its traditions, not least in sub-Saharan Africa, where governments and legislators—and the often fragile and threatened human rights organisations—may each, in their different ways, look to and quote in aid both our existing law and the developing legislation. We need to be acutely and constantly aware that there are governments, in that part of the world and elsewhere, whose tendencies to oppressive behaviour are as clear today as they have been in the past. We need to ensure that, by bringing in what may be oppressive legislation ourselves, we offer neither assistance to such governments nor great discouragement to fragile human rights organisations in such countries. I look at every proposal from that standpoint, as well as from that of our own country.