Terrorism: Interpretation

Part of Orders of the Day — Terrorism Bill – in the House of Commons at 4:45 pm on 10 July 2000.

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Photo of Charles Clarke Charles Clarke Minister of State, Home Office 4:45, 10 July 2000

The parliamentary reporting process established in the Bill will ensure that the review made available to the House every year takes account of all aspects of the operation of the legislation, including the aspect raised by my hon. Friend.

My hon. Friend makes a serious point, and is right to raise it in this context. However, the approach that I intend to take is to ensure that, once the institution proposed in the Bill is established and fully operational, the full record of the debates on the matter is made available for consideration.

I turn finally to the points raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham. I appreciate that his intention is to extend the scope of the application of the "influencing a Government" definition of terrorism to cover situations where chemical, biological or other agents rather than conventional explosives are used in a terrorist attack.

As the Government explained when the amendments were tabled on Report in the House of Lords, the disapplication is intended to cover a set of circumstances that are rare, but which should not be ignored. Those circumstances would arise when an individual or place is attacked by a terrorist group whose intention is to "take out" that person or place for its own sake, rather than as a means of influencing a Government or intimidate the public.

In introducing the disapplication, the Government felt that we needed to strike the right balance between ensuring that the most likely circumstances in which such cases might occur were covered, and broadening the disapplication so much that it undermined the usefulness of the insertion of the important new limb into the definition. That is how we came up with the formula concerning the use of firearms of explosives. I acknowledge that the amendment does not cover all the ways in which assassinations could take place. For example, it does not cover drowning, poisoning or other ways in which people can be killed which do not involve guns or explosives. However, it would cover the types of incidents involving chemical and other agents set out in amendment (f), tabled by the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham. That is because the most usual ways in which such agents are released involve the use of explosives. I hope that that offers some level of reassurance that the sort of circumstance envisaged in amendment (f)—and I think that it would be fair to call it a rare sub-set of what is already a rare category of terrorist attacks—is usually likely to be covered.

I hope that I have dealt with the points raised in the debate. We made it clear from the outset that we recognised that the definition of terrorism was key to the whole Bill, and that we were committed to getting it right. We have tried to listen to concerns expressed at all stages of the debate in the House, and we have made a range of changes to try to address those concerns. We believe that the definition as amended in another place is an improvement, but we do not believe that the further modifications proposed add up to further improvements.

We must have a workable definition that is broad enough to cover the range of circumstances that we can reasonably anticipate might confront us, without going too wide. The definition must be easy to apply, even under extreme time pressures. We believe that we have achieved those objectives in the definition as amended in the other place, and I hope that the House will support the Government amendments.