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Terrorism Bill

moved Amendment No. 62A:"Page 14, line 18, leave out from ““substitute”” to end of line 29 and insert ““five years””" The noble Lord said: My Lords, I hope to be brief, bearing in mind what I imagine are the strictures of the Chief Whip. This is a new issue, but I believe it to be important, and I hope that the Government will look seriously at it. The amendment would create a maximum penalty of five years for withholding an encryption key, for all offences. I must make it clear that the amendment is probing. The more I look at the amendment, the more I have fears that it might be defective. Having said that, as I said earlier, it is important and I hope that I can get a serious response from the Government. The purpose of the amendment is to question whether the difference in length of sentence between cases of national security and other cases is appropriate. This issue is particularly relevant to cases, for example, of serious fraud, predatory paedophiles and serious organised crime. With powerful encryption software becoming increasingly available and more widely used by criminals in cases such as these, it would seem logical that a criminal under investigation for such offences would prefer to face a two-year sentence than any of the likely charges resulting from the availability of that encrypted evidence to the police. The police have made it known that they find it increasingly hard to de-encrypt material that could contain evidence that would be vital to bring such charges. Indeed, there are growing numbers of cases where charges have not been brought due to an inability to de-encrypt material held on computer hard drives. Not only would such criminals not be punished to the full extent that they deserve, but the withholding of the encryption material would mean further victims and suspects could not be identified. Clause 15(1) states,"““for ‘two years’ substitute ‘the appropriate maximum term’””," but Clause 15(2) states that in cases of ““national security”” there is a maximum of five years, ““in any other case”” two years. It would be helpful if we could have a definition of precisely what the maximum sentence was going to be in many cases. Having said that, I hope that the Government see the problem here. There might be those who prefer to refuse to help the police with that de-encryption, because they reckon that a two-year sentence—the maximum available for such refusal—would be better than a sentence that they might get beyond that. I therefore ask the Government to give serious consideration to the issues raised by the amendment. Again, I apologise for not bringing this up earlier, because I think it is more a point for in Committee, but it was only made available to us at a late stage. I think it is one on which the Government should give a serious response. I beg to move.