Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill — House of Commons, 2018-09-11
Topic: Law and Crime
Robert Ben Lobban Wallace (Conservative, Centre-right): I know that throughout the passage of the Bill we spent days with the PSNI. On the point about the DPP, I will make sure that the hon. Gentleman gets an exact answer on that from officials. As he will know, I have first-hand experience of what can go wrong and of the consequences of trying to take a flag or something from a proscribed organisation. Certainly, taking away a flag in certain parts of Northern Ireland has, in the past, acted as an instant lightning rod for a riot or a breakdown in civil order, and there were definitely better methods that could be used to police a parade. There is also an obligation on the police to make sure that policing is done in a way that allows a legitimate march to go ahead, but that does not provoke a public order disaster. That is why police discretion is important I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is trying to get at, which is that, in Northern Ireland, the matter is not straightforward. A flag does not have pure terrorist content. Different parts of the community will interpret other people’s flags. There is also a historical basis in organisations having a flag which links to the first world war. Things are not as straightforward as people think. I have been very cautious in introducing this amendment to make sure that my experience—and, obviously, the hon. Gentleman has greater experience—of Northern Ireland is not forgotten. I do not want to see flag protests becoming more and more polarised than they were in the past. I will happily get back to the hon. Gentleman in relation to the DPP in Northern Ireland I turn now to Government amendments 2 to 4 to clause 3, which close a widely recognised gap in the law with regard to the viewing of terrorist material online. Following the helpful debate in Committee and considerable discussions with the Labour party and its Front-Bench Members, I took the decision that it was best to drop the concept of the three clicks. Throughout the passage of this Bill, I have been open to suggestions from all parts of the House. I agreed completely that, first, the three clicks would not survive the test of time and that, secondly, we would not end up with good law or achieve our aim. I undertook to see how we could improve on this, and I listened to the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds). I am 48—just about a kid of the ’80s—so I remember the Spectrum and the ZX81, but I think it is best that legislation in the digital age looks like us, sounds like us and is not written by people who probably switch on a computer once a year Instead of splitting hairs about clicks and everything else, we came to the view that it was right in principle for the Government to update legislation for the digital age with provisions on the collection or recording of information that is likely to be useful to terrorists. The provision applies consistently to information that is accessed online, rather than as under the current measure, which only covers information that is downloaded. When the previous legislation was written regarding downloading content or taking copies, broadband was very slow—if it existed at all—so the only way people could watch content was by downloading it first. Now with superfast or fast broadband, people are streaming everything. This creates a loophole that can be exploited and that we have to close.