Clause 1 — Encouragement of Terrorism
Orders of the Day — Terrorism Bill — [1st Allotted Day]
12:45 pm
Tim Boswell ((Also PPS To the Chairman of the Party), Work & Pensions & Welfare Reform; Daventry, Conservative)
As a relatively new reader of the details of the Bill, it seems to me that the distinction is between intent and effect. My hon. Friend may wish to consider a situation in which one person has a highly malicious intent to incite people and to celebrate terrorism but whose style of doing so is so objectionable to the ordinary person that it is counterproductive because it revolts them, as against another person who makes ill-judged comments about the political situation in the middle east that might be construed as encouraging people to have recourse to terrorism. Which of those two, if either, is covered by the Bill, and is it principled to draw a distinction between them?