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Terrorism Bill

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment, for the reasons so powerfully and cogently put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd. However, the amendment has been made necessary because of the very unsatisfactory definition in the 2000 Act. I hope that it will be possible, sooner rather than later, for the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, to finish his work and come before the House with a new definition of terrorism. I venture to suggest that the long tradition of Christian thinking, both about violence by the state and about violence against the state, alluded to by the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, has a great deal to offer in the way of clarity. Drawing on this long tradition, it would be necessary to make a distinction between a terrorist act, which is relatively easy to define, and a terrorist organisation, which is much more difficult to define, and which is made particularly unsatisfactory by subsection (1)(c) in the 2000 Act, which refers to the use or threat of action where,"““the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause””." That is all-embracing and quite rightly arouses the opposition of many Members of this House. If we drew on that tradition, I would want to define a terrorist act, putting it in non-legal, very simple language, as ““an act of violence or threatened violence directed against unarmed civilians””. I would define a terrorist organisation as ““an organisation that (a) uses terrorist actions as a matter of settled policy, and, (b) uses violence of any kind, whether discriminate or not, against a regime where, in the judgment of the Government, there are non-violent means of bringing about change still available””. That second clause makes quite clear that we must all recognise that political judgments are involved and different governments will make different kinds of judgments. That should not take away from the fact that it is relatively easy to define a terrorist act. I very much hope that we will soon get a better definition of terrorism, but meanwhile I believe that it is absolutely necessary to support this amendment.