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Terrorism Bill

My Lords, I add one more voice to this chorus asking the Government to think carefully about this. I quickly pick up a slightly different example from any of those so far put before the House. The assumption behind this Clause, and indeed behind the Bill, is that we have some fairly clear idea about where terrorism is coming from, and that it largely emanates from Al-Qaeda and other global terrorist networks. That is probably true. Yet my political memory goes back to other examples of terrorism which are much involved with the training of people, some of them in this country. Many of us will recall, for example, that there were training camps run by the IRA and the Provos, and also by the Loyalists, in parts of the United Kingdom. I remember as a junior Minister in the second Wilson administration that there was a serious case—the noble Lord, Lord Judd, will probably remember this too—of Colonel Stirling actually running training camps in Scotland, the purpose of which was to support a putsch against the Wilson government. That was not a legend, that was actually a fact. Much more recently, there have been other examples of terrorist camps in a country which would normally expect terrorism to come from inside. I gave at Committee stage the example, again a genuine one, of extremist right-wing groups in the United States running training camps in the Rocky Mountains, training people in arms, explosives and terrorism, the object being to overthrow the United States government. They admittedly were largely mad, but that did not stop them being in training. What really worries me is that, as my noble friend Lord Thomas has said, in effect what we are looking at is a clause so narrowly drawn and so extremely heavy in its danger of sentences being brought against people who attempt to investigate this, that there is a real possibility that this whole area would be overlooked. The reason it would be overlooked is because, as we all know, it is the tendency of intelligence organisations to concentrate on—rightly so—the current major threat. They often do not notice nor have they the resources to target areas where they are not looking for trouble to arise. I seriously hope that the Government will look at the matter again and consider adopting something like my noble friend’s amendment, because I am profoundly concerned about the effects of the provision, in not only in the obvious but the less obvious areas of terrorism. We have no reason to believe that terrorism in Northern Ireland has completely ended. It is possible that there might be other terrorist groups of an apparently small and insignificant nature that could nevertheless resume terrorist activities. I hope that the Government will very carefully think again, as this is a really serious issue and not one to be lightly dismissed.