Clause 34
Counter-Terrorism Bill
10:45 am
Douglas Hogg (Sleaford and North Hykeham, Conservative)
I always like to agree with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, but this is one of the occasions when I am jolly uneasy about the amendment. My general rule, as the Committee will know, is to take the libertarian view and I ask myself: what is the impact of the criteria set out in my hon. and learned Friend’s amendment? It seems to me to tighten up the circumstances, against the interests of the convicted person.
I can well comprehend a range of circumstances when “other effects” will go outside the financial effects. If somebody, for example, owns a car—I am sorry to come back to the car, but it is a rather good example—forfeiting a car might not only have a financial effect, but it might preclude a person from being able to live where that person has chosen to live, or go to work, or other such consequences. As the power to forfeit extends to anything—I use the word advisedly, because it is in the language of the statute—I want the court to be able to consider as wide a set of consequences as is possible. [Interruption.] If my hon. and learned Friend is seeking to intervene, I will certainly give way.