Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill — House of Lords, 2018-10-31
Topic: Law and Crime
Frederick Richard Penn Curzon (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, as we have heard Clause 6 adds a number of further offences to the existing list at Section 17 of the Terrorism Act 2006, which extends extraterritorial jurisdiction over those offences. This will ensure that UK courts are able to prosecute foreign terrorist fighters who travel to the UK, having joined terrorist groups and become involved in conflicts or other terrorist activity overseas. It will also ensure that we are able to prosecute people who base themselves overseas and seek to radicalise people—the general public or targeted individuals—in the UK. It is this latter category of radicalisers, and propagandists on behalf of terrorist organisations, that the noble Baroness’s amendments deal with Section 13(1) of the Terrorism Act 2000 contains the offence of displaying in a public place an item of clothing or other article such as a flag, in circumstances which, "arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation" As a result of Clause 2, it will also contain, at new subsection (1A), the offence of publishing an image of such an article in the same circumstances Extraterritorial jurisdiction is most relevant to Section 13, and in particular to the offence the Bill will add at new subsection (1A), in a case where a person located overseas publishes images of flags or logos associated with a proscribed terrorist organisation. We have seen in the Syrian conflict that Daesh has run a slick and effective online propaganda operation, which has included exactly this type of activity—publishing images on social media and other online platforms, aimed at promoting the group, its ideology and its methods, to individuals around the world, including in the UK. Other terrorist groups, in other parts of the world, do the same. It has been a recurring theme of the debates on the Bill that this is a downside of the rapid development of online technologies in recent years. Although people have been connected and brought together in myriad positive ways, and the world has been opened up, those who would do us harm have been equally quick to exploit the opportunities of the digital age. Terrorists are no exception, and we need to update our laws to keep pace with the evolving threat. The online world simply does not respect national boundaries in the traditional sense, nor does it pay heed to geographical distance. Where this gifts radicalisers the opportunity to reach across the world to target vulnerable people in the UK, it is absolutely right that the UK Government respond by ensuring that our courts have the ability to deal with that. There is a clear operational case to justify this measure The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has explained that her concern is that a person could find themselves prosecuted in the UK, having acted in support of an organisation that is not proscribed in the country where the conduct took place, and therefore having no awareness or expectation that they could be held criminally responsible. I respect the principled stance taken by the noble Baroness but, respectfully, I do not agree that it would be right to either simply remove this provision, as Amendment 31 would do, or limit its application, as Amendment 33 would do. The reality is that there is no universal and internationally agreed list of proscribed organisations, and there is no realistic prospect of one being implemented. Even if there were, the kinds of countries in which terrorist organisations are most likely to be based are those that are the least likely to sign up to and implement such an international rules-based system Despite this, terrorists are travelling and communicating across international boundaries, in a way which poses a direct threat to the safety of the public in the UK and elsewhere. Given this, we should not deny our courts the ability to act against such individuals if they return or travel to the UK, pending the adoption of such an international list, and we should ensure that the powers available are flexible and not unduly restricted. To proceed as the noble Baroness advocates would risk sacrificing public safety and justice in the pursuit of a frankly unrealistic ideal It is right that we should be able to prosecute those who travel overseas to join terrorist organisations, and who publish propaganda in support of those groups, seeking to radicalise others back in the UK or elsewhere. That is the nub of the matter. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, was absolutely spot on in the way that he characterised these provisions. Such crimes are most likely to be committed in areas of conflict and instability, within failed states that may not have functioning systems of government with effective jurisdiction over their own territory, or in countries where there may not be clearly defined or well-developed terrorism laws equivalent to those in the UK, or which may simply take a different approach. Those are not good reasons to ignore the threat posed on UK soil by people who have published propaganda in support of terrorist groups while overseas. Simply put, foreign terrorist fighters should not be able to evade justice because the country that they travelled to, or hail from, does not have a proscription system equivalent to that of the UK.