Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill — House of Lords, 2015-01-28
Topic: Civil Rights
Elizabeth Rose Berridge (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I rise as the last member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights—a long cast of players—to make representations in relation to this amendment. As noble Lords will be aware, the Joint Committee’s report recommended removing universities from the ambit of the Bill. However, I take on board the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, about those in institutions for 15, 16 and 17 year-olds. I am grateful to the Minister for continuing to engage with the Joint Committee on Human Rights since we published our report. I have no doubt that what was presented to us was that there was a problem going on on campus, with certain groups holding extremist ideologies being given a platform and not being challenged on their views I wish to build briefly on the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, in relation to the ambit of the criminal law here. Our response to some of these problems has obviously been to take terrorism offences and expand the ambit of the criminal law further and further down to preparatory-type offences, which we never would have envisaged 20 years ago. For instance, Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006 concerns the encouragement of terrorism. Section 1(1) states: "This section applies to a statement that is likely to be understood by some or all of the members of the public to whom it is published as a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducement to them to the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism or Convention offences" Offences such as that are designed to go further down the chain and to catch preparatory-type offences. That offence might just apply to printed published statements. I have not had the time to double-check that If one remembers that one adds on to all these preparatory offences the group of offences called "inchoate offences," which are attempting to do that offence, conspiring to do that offence or inciting to do that offence. That takes the ambit of the criminal law a long way down in terms of the statements that we are talking about in this House. It has not been made clear to us what views this is aimed to prevent being expressed on our university campuses that are not within the realm of free speech, as offensive and as contrary to British values as some of us might think those views to be, but are outside the ambit of the extensive criminal law Finally, in relation to the point raised by the right reverend Prelate, I had assumed that religious institutions were somehow caught by the definitions of educational institutions. It is noteworthy that General Synod has an exemption under the Bill. In relation to the trust that has not been built up, perhaps because this is fast-track legislation and there has not been extensive consultation, somehow there is now concern among some in the church community that Clause 21 would require the vetting of speakers at carol services that take place on university campuses. I am not sure how one gets from Clause 21 to thinking that that might be a risk, but it indicates to me that more trust needs to be built through consultation if we are to have a clause of this nature.