Written evidence to be reported to the House
Counter-Terrorism Bill
4:00 pm
Sir Ken Macdonald: I said that I thought that it needed careful examination, and the reason for that answer was that normally, if a case is terrorist connected or terrorist aggravated, it will be charged as a form of terrorist offence—for example, terrorist financing, encouragement of terrorism, or another of the many new offences that we have at our disposal. I think Miss Hemming and I both struggle a little to imagine a situation in which we would be prosecuting a case in the Crown court and only tangentially, perhaps at sentencing, suddenly revealing our view that it is a terrorist-aggravated offence. We would then have to prove that beyond reasonable doubt, which would suggest that it should have been sensible to prosecute it as a terrorist offence in the first place. The measure can work, if that is what Parliament wants. I was expressing some hesitation about the extent to which it might be useful, but that is a matter for Parliament.