My Lords, we on these Benches support this order, although we would certainly not join with the Conservatives in supporting a complete ban on Hezbollah in the United Kingdom. We have spent many years, all of us involved in United Kingdom politics, accepting the rather artificial distinction between Sinn Fein as a political movement and the Irish Republican Army as a military operation. We recognised at the time that it was important to maintain that there was a distinction, even though that distinction was never entirely clear.

We all accept that the threat from terrorist organisations in the United Kingdom and elsewhere is real but that, as an open and democratic country, political movements operating in and outside Britain have legitimate functions to fulfil and, furthermore, in our very diverse society, that charitable activities in the United Kingdom to support suffering in other countries are legitimate. I do much of my politics in Yorkshire and I am conscious that the issue of charitable activities to support humanitarian projects in other countries can on occasions be quite controversial. Nevertheless, we have to maintain those clear distinctions. We also recognise that one man's terrorist activity outside Britain is another person's armed resistance.

One of the questions one has to ask about the proscription of the political wing of Hezbollah is whether this is primarily about Iraq or the Palestinian territories. As the Minister is well aware, my party has never supported the full weight of western intervention in Iraq. Armed resistance in Iraq is not always necessarily legitimate. Hezbollah is now a political actor in the Lebanon and a member of the Government—not entirely an attractive member of that Government, but we all have to deal with movements of which we disapprove. Hamas, similarly, is a very unattractive body in many ways but a necessary partner in negotiating to move away from the Israel/Palestine conflict. Many of us intensely disliked negotiating with Sinn Fein but, again, recognised that it was necessary.

I ask the Minister how the additional criteria come in. The specific threat posed to the UK seems thin. As I understand it, Hezbollah does not intend under any circumstances to operate within the United Kingdom. We are talking about activities in the occupied Palestinian territories and in Iraq. It is probably difficult for the Minister to outline the extent of the organisation's presence in the UK, but, as I understand from the order, this is not itself a major issue. The two primary justifications among the additional criteria are: the specific threat posed to British nationals overseas—by which we mean British troops still in Iraq so long as they are there—and the need to support international partners in the fight against terrorism. Some of us wish to distinguish between the British definition of the fight against terrorism and the Bush Administration's definition of it, and are not sure that the Government should always support 100 per cent the latter. However, would the Minister confirm that the need to support international partners is one of the major motivations for this order?