Mr. Michael Meacher (Oldham, West and Royton) (Lab): It is always a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), and I agree with a great deal of what he said.
As expected, the Home Secretary offered a very robust defence of the Bill. No one doubts that it was the Government's duty, and his in particular, to take all appropriate steps to protect the population against terrorism, especially in the light of 7 July, but any Bill designed to achieve that purpose must be tested against several criteria.
First—and this question was rightly posed by the hon. Gentleman for Aldridge-Brownhills—is the Bill a necessary addition to the existing corpus of law to prevent acts of terrorism in the UK? Last year, the Director of Public Prosecutions told the Joint Committee on Human Rights that there was
"an enormous amount of legislation that can be used in the fight against terrorism."
Indeed, the common law of incitement and the Terrorism Act 2000 already provide very considerable scope for prosecution. For example, the Bill's new offence of encouragement of terrorism has been justified on the grounds that it is intended to criminalise incitement to murder, yet acts of incitement to murder or terrorism are already punishable by life imprisonment. In fact, I suspect that any difficulty in bringing prosecutions at the present time is much more likely to arise from the self-imposed ban on admissibility of intercept evidence, which in my view should be lifted, than from the absence of a prosecutable offence. Therefore it is not clear that the Bill passes the first test.
The second test is whether the Bill is drafted tightly enough to catch those against whom it is allegedly directed and not those who may unintentionally be trapped by loose drafting? It is certainly to be welcomed that, after considerable concern has been expressed, the original proposal about glorification of terrorism has now been dropped. But encouragement of terrorism is still drawn extremely broadly. In particular, as others have said, it allows acts to be criminalised without the need for intention by the person committing the offence. That is wrong and we must return to that next week.
Moreover—almost everyone has mentioned this—the definition of terrorism under clause 1 is so wide that, contrary to what I think the Home Secretary was saying, it would criminalise calls to overthrow oppressive regimes where democratic means do not exist. In my reading of the definition, it would have caught those supporting the African National Congress and its methods in the fight against the apartheid regime. It would also have caught those calling for action involving, for example, violence against property, even if not violence against the person, against such regimes as North Korea, or Burma—that has been mentioned—or Ceausescu's regime in Romania, and would have criminalised those who called for action against the Nazi regime in Germany.
Mr. Hogg: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it goes much further than that, because people who write about that in a historical sense are also caught?
Mr. Meacher: Yes; I take that point and I support what the right hon. and learned Gentleman has said on this. A definition that catches all those examples goes far too wide, and in my view the Bill does not pass that second test.
A third key test is whether the Bill is drawn so loosely that it is likely to be used rather more indiscriminately in future years against persons who are not necessarily the ostensible targets? There is plenty of evidence historically that that has been the result of using wide definitions. The best example, of course, is the stop and search legislation. Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which has been mentioned, has been used against anti-war protesters and arms trade protesters as well as, most notoriously, the 82-year-old Walter Wolfgang.
Ms Dawn Butler (Brent, South) (Lab): On stop and search, does my right hon. Friend agree that there are serious concerns about the additional powers that have been offered to the Metropolitan police, and that they need additional training? We must ensure that they are given additional training because any abuse of those powers will cause a further deterioration in race relations in this country?
Mr. Meacher: I very much agree with my hon. Friend, but I would go further. The existing drafting of the stop and search legislation has led to its being used in a massive number of instances, but hardly any have led to prosecution, and there is suspicion—which may well be founded—that the legislation is being used by the police for wider purposes. I do not think that the fault is police training; it is the laxity and looseness of the original definition in the legislation.
There are already suggestions that clause 10 might be used against animal rights protesters. Whatever one feels about that, whether one uses anti-terrorism measures against them or other protesters is another matter—[Interruption.] This is arguable, but it is not being proposed that that is the purpose of the Bill.
Mr. Shepherd: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Meacher: I will give way for the last time.
Mr. Shepherd: The Home Secretary confirmed on Monday in front of the Joint Committee on Human Rights that it could be used against animal rights protesters.
Mr. Meacher: That only confirms my point. The Bill is intended to deal with the problem of acts of terrorism, such as those which the country faced on 7 July. For it to be used in this much wider way is not sanctified, and it is for us here in Parliament to make that clear. However, those who might be affected include not only animal rights protesters, but those protesting against a revival of civil nuclear power, the replacement of Trident or genetically modified crops. It is no answer to say that prosecution could be pursued only with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions. We should oppose the provisions because such catch-all legislation undermines the legitimacy of our anti-terror efforts precisely when we need to build a consensus around them. We should also oppose the insidious switch from defence of the state to defence of property—or whatever the prevailing ideology of the Government of the time happens to be—that is apparent in the Bill.
The fourth test is whether the Bill will undermine the rights and liberties of the free society that it is purportedly designed to protect. Everyone agrees that the balance between liberty and security is a difficult issue. By far the most contentious issue, as we have heard this afternoon, is the proposal that terrorist suspects should be detained for up to three months. That is more than 20 times the pre-charge detention limit for murder. It would allow the equivalent of a six-month custodial sentence without a charge being brought. Apart from the breach of the habeas corpus principles and article 5 of the convention on human rights—I disagree with the Home Secretary on that point—it is difficult to believe that the provision is really necessary. The Association of Chief Police Officers says that it is needed because of the potentially huge amount of material and the possible involvement of several jurisdictions, but the same argument applies to much white collar fraud, for which pre-trial detention is limited to only four days, or one twenty-fifth of the time proposed in the Bill.
An interesting Foreign and Commonwealth Office document, which has not been mentioned today, makes comparisons between the proposals in the Bill and existing practice in other countries. In almost every case, they have a much shorter pre-charge detention limit than that proposed. Most terrorist arrests will usually follow months of previous investigations, which would allow large amounts of evidence to be compiled. If, occasionally, that were not so—if an event had happened that the police were not expecting—a much better compromise would be for a suspect to be charged under existing legislation and further charges added later, if appropriate. If that requires changes to the PACE code, so be it. The 90-day provision is the most serious in the Bill and it must be addressed.
A fifth test is whether the Bill will alienate those sections of the population whose support is vital to isolate and defeat the supporters of terrorism. In that context, any measures that cause Muslims to be treated unfairly—or to perceive themselves as being treated unfairly—would be counter-productive. Legislation that is too widely drawn, like this Bill, might well make Muslims who strongly condemn attacks very wary of contacting the police and volunteering crucial information. They might feel that their legitimate but critical views of middle east policy would make them vulnerable to prosecution. Equally, the banning of organisations that do not advocate terrorism, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir—however objectionable their views are—would drive them underground and make intelligence gathering more difficult. The Bill is not acceptable on that score either.
My sixth and last point is somewhat wider, but essential. Does the policy behind the Bill take account of the wider underlying causes of terrorism and seek to redress them? That question goes a long way beyond a Home Office Bill, but it is a crucial component of our whole approach to terrorism. While in the short term we should certainly take all reasonable steps to protect our own security, we should never lose sight of the fact that one of the major roots of terrorism is the widespread perception of a fundamentally unjust and untenable political situation in the middle east. That recruiting ground for terrorism and al-Qaeda will be removed only when we have a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq, the creation of a viable Palestinian state and a reorienting of the fundamental—
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