Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill — House of Lords, 2018-10-29
Topic: Civil Rights
John Attlee (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, Amendment 20 in the group is in my name. The Committee has looked already at why journalism is vital so there is no need to repeat those arguments in detail. I accept that the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, may be a better solution than mine, which would create an explicit exemption for journalists travelling to or remaining in a designated area Since the new offence does not require a person to have any harmful intent, it risks capturing those who mean no harm at all and are acting in the public interest, even if the Government of the day do not think so. Journalists travelling to an area to cover events and inform the public are one obvious such group. Following our debate on the first amendment, I accept that I will have to go away and consider carefully what I mean by journalism and journalistic purposes, but the same problem arises with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson Ministers have stated that journalists are not the target of the offence and would qualify for the broad defence of reasonable excuse. I listened very carefully to what my noble friend Lord Howe said about that. However, the same problem that I described when speaking to my Amendment 6 arises, namely that journalists may be unjustly interfered with or arrested. It needs to be clear in the Bill that journalism is exempt. Amendments 21 and 22 would provide for prior authorisation from the Secretary of State. Although that may have its merits for certain sectors, it would be highly undesirable for press freedom as it would allow the Government to whitelist or blacklist journalists and could operate as a de facto licensing system which the press has, rightly, always resisted Although there are good reasons for an open-ended reasonable excuse defence, as my noble friend has outlined already, the amendment does not circumscribe it. Given the scope of the offence, the Bill should anticipate the most obvious scenarios where people will have good cause to travel to or remain in a designated country and provide certainty to those people. That is exactly what would be done by the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson The combination of the lack of an intent requirement and the vagueness of the reasonable excuse defence means that whether an offence is committed becomes a matter of prosecutorial discretion entirely. That is undesirable for legal certainty and the rule of law. In practical terms it would delay, even deter, correspondents from travelling to an area where events are unfolding. Civilians suffering humanitarian catastrophes will not be able to tell their stories to the wider world and the British public will not be able to hear them and do whatever they can to help Ministers and other noble Lords may push back against my arguments by pointing out how hard it is to define "journalist" or arguing that terrorists might try to pass themselves off as journalists. I argue that where there is doubt over an individual claiming to be a journalist, the police, prosecutors and the courts can test their bona fides. Some people will wrongly claim the defence; that does not mean that it should not exist. The same argument applies to Amendment 17, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson Amendment 17 may well meet my concerns but I am slightly worried about its proposed new subsection (2)(d), which would provide an exemption for a "registered charity". It might be worth considering restricting the exemption to either a UK registered charity or one that is accredited by the United Nations in some way, because I have been aware of some charities in an operational area being rather less than pure.