Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Clause 3

Obtaining or viewing material over the internet

I beg to move, That this House agrees with Lords amendment 1.

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Lords amendment 2.

Lords amendment 3, and amendment (a) thereto.

Lords amendments 4 to 11.

Lords amendment 13.

Lords amendment 16.

I inform the House that the Speaker has selected amendment (a) to Lords amendment 3 tabled in the name of Stephen Twigg.

After that jovial urgent question on proxy voting, I feel like some purveyor of doom, as the Security Minister, having to break the positive note, for we are dealing here with some of the most serious issues facing our society. At the outset, however, I would like to thank Members across the House for their work to improve the Bill and for their cross-party approach to nearly all parts of it. If our security and counter-terrorism policies are to be successful, they must bring with them as many people as possible.

Many of the Lords amendments follow up on earlier debates on the Bill in this House and accordingly I trust that they will command the support of all Members on both sides of the House. I will focus my remarks on the substantive amendments. Clause 3 updates section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to make it clear that it is an offence for a person to view or otherwise access via the internet information likely to be useful to a terrorist. Although section 58 as currently drafted includes a reasonable excuse defence, the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) argued in Committee for greater certainty for those who might have a legitimate reason for accessing terrorist material. The Government had previously offered assurances that those legitimately engaged in journalism or academic research would be covered by the reasonable excuse defence, but to provide further reassurance, Lords amendment 1 makes this explicit in section 58.

Although the designated area offence received widespread support when it was inserted into the Bill on Report in this House, the shadow Security Minister said at the time that it would need further scrutiny in the House of Lords. Their lordships lived up to their role as a revising Chamber and proposed amendments to clause 4. Initially, the Government could not support all of them, but on reflection we agree that they do improve the operation of the new offence. The designated area offence is designed to establish a clear ban on travel to a tightly defined area or areas outside the UK, where such a ban is necessary for the purpose of protecting the public from a risk of terrorism, with a criminal sanction for breaching that ban.

I am pleased that the designated area offence, for which I and others have long been pushing, has survived in some form, but does the Minister not share my concern that some of the get-outs now listed in the Bill could be very easily exploited? For example, how can it be proven that somebody was not going to a designated area to attend a funeral, if that is what they say?

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, but if someone goes to a designated area, their reasonable excuse will have to cover all their activities. If they say they are going as a doctor but also commit a terrorist offence or crime, that reasonable excuse will effectively fall away. Everything they do will have to be covered by the reasonable excuse; they are not de facto lifted out of having committed an offence. It is important to understand that going to a designated area with a legitimate reason, such as aid work, and then engaging in some other activity will not prevent them from being in breach of statute and therefore guilty of an offence.

I seek clarification. In previous debates, I understood the designated area approach to mean that just being there would create an offence, but in his response to the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), the Minister seems to be suggesting that the prosecuting authorities would have to find evidence not just that the individual was there but that they were doing something other than what they said they were doing.

The original offence always required a reasonable excuse. The right hon. Gentleman will be a supporter of the European convention on human rights. Of course, people have certain rights to travel—to visit family or carry out certain other important activities, for example—and the House would consider the restriction of such activities to be a very serious matter. We have to bear it in mind that people travel legitimately. We are not in the business of drawing a circle around somewhere and saying no one is allowed in. That said, someone would have to have a reasonable excuse and present it so that it can be tested and investigated.

Their lordships have said—and I agree—that there are legitimate reasons for entering war zones. Among others, I am thinking of aid workers and Crown servants working for the UK Government or the United Nations. They would have legitimate reasons for being there, and we do not want to shut those off to people, but we do want to make sure they have a reasonable excuse. As is often the case in legislation, however, there was some concern about whether to have an exhaustive list, and risk missing something, or an indicative list, and we have opted for an indicative list.

Some people are concerned about the delivery of humanitarian aid—an amendment on that has been selected today—but I have made sure that the reasonable excuse of delivering humanitarian aid is tempered by the provision in proposed new subsection (3E) in Lords amendment 3 that

“the reference to the provision of aid of a humanitarian nature does not include the provision of aid in contravention of internationally recognised principles and standards applicable to the provision of humanitarian aid”.

That provision is there because, as we have seen before I am afraid, terrorist groups sometimes use humanitarian aid as cover to go somewhere. Ignoring recognised principles, they pick those to whom they deliver the aid and carry out other offences while doing so. By taking that approach, we preserve the freedoms we believe in while sending a clear message that there are areas we do not want people to go to and that going there could in itself become an offence.

As the Minister will recall, some of the concerns that I expressed during the Bill’s earlier stages turned on the issue of free movement within this country, particularly for UK citizens moving from one port to another. In some cases there had been a casual appropriation of former anti-terrorism provisions whereby no suspicion was required, yet people were challenged and checked as to whether they should be travelling. The Minister honourably indicated that he would engage with me on the issue, and he has done so on two occasions. May I ask him whether he has now formed a conclusion on how we can best protect ordinary UK citizens travelling internally from one port to another, and ensure that they are not being checked under counter-terrorism provisions?

The hon. Gentleman has made some very valid points. Provisions in schedules 3 and 7 to the 2000 Act relating to intra-UK travel allow people to be stopped and checked without suspicion. I think that one of the best ways in which we can prevent abuse of that tool is to publish figures. I told the hon. Gentleman at a recent meeting that in September I would publish figures showing how many people had been subject to such checks while travelling within the United Kingdom, and I think we can start that process of opening up.

I also think that if any of our constituents are subject to such checks, we must always ensure that the police do their work in a manner which is timely and considerate, and which secures the best results for them and the individual who has been stopped. That is not a matter of legislation, but a matter of handling things sensitively. Perhaps we should also be more efficient when it comes to obtaining information, so that there is time to check people before they leave the country.

One reassuring fact is that the vast majority of checks carried out under schedules 3 and 7 involve people who are returning rather than leaving, so there is less disruption than there is when someone is going off for a holiday, for instance. However, I give the hon. Gentleman an undertaking to ensure that the figures are published in September, and I shall then be happy to discuss the issue with him further.

May I briefly return the Minister to the list of reasonable excuses? Will he confirm that it would not be up to the prosecution to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they did not apply, but that a person defending a charge would be required to produce some basic evidence that they did apply?

Yes. That is important. Someone who claims to be an aid worker or a doctor will be expected to prove that. It is not possible simply to pick one of the excuses and use it as a defence. We should expect it to be necessary for the police to investigate any case in which a person returns from a designated area, to establish either whether that person may pose a risk to the public, or whether they fall outside the offence by virtue of travelling for one of the specified purposes or can otherwise rely on a “reasonable excuse” defence.

If a person from this country were to go to one of the prohibited areas and then come back, would it be automatic for that person to be picked up if he or she had not been given permission to do something there? Is it possible that the security services—which, I presume, fully support this measure—would say, “Let him or her run, because it is more in our interests to watch what they do”?

As I think my hon. Friend will know, when it comes to intelligence and investigations, such decisions are operational. Should our police or intelligence services suspect that someone has committed an offence but there is nevertheless more to discover, that is a risk that they will have to take. They will take it into consideration and make a decision. Of course, any prosecution under the Crown Prosecution Service must meet a number of thresholds. It must be established, for example, whether the prosecution is in the public interest, or whether there is a likelihood of success. However, if someone does not provide a reasonable excuse, that person is potentially open to prosecution and to being sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.

It is regrettable but a fact of life, given the challenges posed by end-to-end encryption, secure communications, and the ability to obtain evidence from people who we may know from intelligence—but not in evidential space—have been up to no good, that we must seek a way around the current issue. When I attended the G7 in Canada last year, it was clear that every state represented at the table, from Japan to France, faced the same challenges. We must reduce the number of offences of this type, and we hope that the Bill will make a difference. We want it to deliver a strong deterrent to ensure that people are where they are for the right reasons, and to make clear there are other ways to better people’s lives in their communities than going to a designated area for reasons that may turn out to be spurious.

To ensure that the power to designate an area is used proportionately, Lords amendment 5 provides that regulations designating an area will automatically cease to have effect after three years. That will not, however, prevent further regulations from being made to designate the same area should such a designation still be required to keep the public safe from the threat of terrorism.