Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill — House of Lords, 2015-02-02
Topic: Mixed Topics
James Hope (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, the noble Baroness mentioned my name in her speech in support of this amendment. I put my name down to support it for reasons which I shall go into very briefly. As I mentioned in Committee, my attention was drawn to this problem by evidence which we received in the Joint Committee on the Draft Protection of Charities Bill. That evidence came in part from the independent reviewer, David Anderson QC, and in part from Muslim organisations which are interested in providing assistance to people who need humanitarian aid in places like Somalia which are difficult to penetrate without the assistance of the people who effectively run the country I shall make two particular points, without repeating what I said in Committee. First, David Anderson was critical of the definition in the legislation which he described as "monstrously" broad. It was broad for a particular reason, which one can see from looking at Section 1(5) of the 2001 Act, which contains the definition put into this Bill for its purposes. It states: "In this Act a reference to action taken for the purposes of terrorism includes a reference to action taken for the benefit of a proscribed organisation" It is that kind of scenario that may give rise to problems for a reason which was explained to us by one of the charitable groups. It said that when you go to these difficult countries, in order to get anywhere within those areas, you have to encounter and deal with the gate-keepers. The chairman of the Muslim Charities Forum asked: "How can we go through the gatekeepers to reach the neediest people in Syria, Somalia or different parts of the world", if doing so would be caught by the Section 1(5) definition One can see how the thing might build up. The police might have information that the individual passing in front of them has previously gone to these areas and has provided money, as we were led to believe is necessary, in order to get through the gate. The proscribed organisation says, "All right. We’ll let you through, but you have to pay us a certain amount of money to do that". It is a real trap. Of course, to give money to a proscribed organisation is prima facie assisting the purposes of the organisation, but the real reason for giving such money is to penetrate through the gate to provide the assistance which would otherwise not be available. These are my two points: first, the breadth of the definition and, secondly, what the evidence suggested to us is a very real problem in dealing with these areas Noble Lords will remember that in Committee we discussed an amendment to the primary legislation and, in particular in view of the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, I see that that is a very difficult thing to do at the moment without a good deal of further study and, no doubt, this is not the proper place for it anyway, although I suggest it may have to be dealt with sometime. What the noble Baroness is suggesting in her amendment is that there should be something in the code of guidance for officers so that they are alerted to this problem. Therefore, if they have that kind of intelligence, although what individuals say will not be conclusive, at least they will be aware that these people may have good reason for whatever they are said to have done which prima facie might seem to conflict with the definition in the statute. On reflection, it would seem that the code is a better way of dealing with this without getting into the difficulties of amending primary legislation, which would go right across the board and might have rather deeper effects than we can contemplate at the moment. I suggest that the noble Baroness’s amendment is quite carefully crafted and there is real merit in the proposal that she has made.