Clause 1 - The National Identity Register
Identity Cards Bill
4:30 pm
Tony McNulty (Minister of State (Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality), Home Office; Harrow East, Labour)
I take the point, but many activities that are party to a terrorist act could not in any sense be defined as terrorism; for example, using a false identity to hire a car, house or hotel room, or creating a misleading trail through credit card payments on a false credit card. Such acts would not be covered by the amendment either as an act of terrorism or as a serious crime
''giving rise to an offence triable only on indictment'',
which is another part of the amendment. Nevertheless, they would be elements of a terrorist act that we would need to chase down in the public interest to secure our overall goal of wider national security.
I appreciate that the amendment refers to
''preventing or detecting terrorist acts'',
but that is also too narrow in terms of the broader definition of national security, not least in the context of actions and activities that could be remote from the end game, the terrorist act, but that are ultimately part of it, because of what the intelligence forces or otherwise know.