---

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

With the leave of the House, I should like to respond to the genuine and sincere comments that hon. Members have made. Many contributions have gone beyond the narrow confines of the order, but it might be appropriate and of use to the House if I, with your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, addressed those broader issues. I understand what my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) says about organisations that are loosely associated, or not at all associated, with proscribed organisations, but have an interest in broader political issues. However, I part company with him on the notion that there is anything but clarity in the 2000 Act about de-proscribing. Let me briefly describe our experience with the People's Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran. A collective—if I may use that phrase—of Members of this House and the House of Lords took the case for de-proscription to the Home Secretary. I understand that anyone is free to do that, but in the case that I am considering, it was a significant group of Members of this House and the other place. The Home Secretary, in her wisdom, said—I still believe rightly—that we would not de-proscribe. The principals involved then rightly took the matter to the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission, not straight to a court of law. The commission, in its wisdom, said that the People's Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran should be de-proscribed. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary then took the case to the courts and lost. In the narrowest terms, the process is clear. There are problems with organisations that are loosely associated, or not at all associated, with the principal proscribed organisations, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East mentioned. The law deals with some, but others are in a greyer area. My right hon. Friend knows that the second form of proscription undergoes a different parliamentary process and involves laying an order, which is subject to the negative resolution procedure. That happens when the organisation that we wish to proscribe is an adjunct to the original proscribed organisation, which might be described as the precursor. For example, the PKK was proscribed and Kongra-Gel was seen as simply another element of the same terrorist organisation. The latter was proscribed through negative rather than affirmative order, because we could establish evidential connections.