Stephen McPartland: My hon. Friend makes a good point. We must also bear in mind that it is not our intention to introduce search-and-seize powers under these police powers. This is part of the tiered approach we referred to earlier, with the police being able to warn people to go away before they fall foul of the law. There is the opportunity to give them that warning before any arrest.
Stephen McPartland: I am grateful to the right hon. Member. As I said, that is certainly something that we will look at and come back to.
Stephen McPartland: I understand my hon. Friend’s point, which is that we have to be careful to provide the intelligence services with the tools they need to protect our protected sites. I may not agree with the purpose of protest, but I agree with the ability of everybody to protest lawfully. People will start to fall foul of this clause when they try to scale the walls of a restricted site and to impede...
Stephen McPartland: No, because they would not be doing something designed to prejudice the United Kingdom.
Stephen McPartland: Yes. The intention is that people have to do something prejudicial to the UK’s interests to fall foul of the clause. Prohibited places are inherently sensitive sites that are likely to be the target of state threat activity. Unauthorised access to such sites could be a precursor to harmful acts such as espionage or sabotage, and it is important that we have the tools and powers we need to...
Stephen McPartland: Yes, that is the intention. Remember that the Official Secrets Act 1911 refers to sketches. We are trying to reform that Act and the others to get to a point at which we help our intelligence services to come up with ways of dealing with some stuff that could technically be considered out of scope. The idea behind the clause is that we will be able to give the intelligence community the tools...
Stephen McPartland: The purpose is to cover activity that is prejudicial to the United Kingdom’s interests. For example, if someone were bird watching and they looked at the site through their binoculars, they would not be captured by the offence because they would not be doing anything prejudicial to the United Kingdom’s interests. However, if they were sketching a site to identify how they could break into...
Stephen McPartland: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention and am happy to give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye.
Stephen McPartland: Sketches are included, because a sketch would have to be inspected. The question was: are sketches included? The answer is yes.
Stephen McPartland: Because a sketch would have to be inspected.
Stephen McPartland: I agree.
Stephen McPartland: A final time.
Stephen McPartland: I am grateful for the intervention and shall try to clarify. It is clear that the provision is not exhaustive, but the reality is someone has to inspect the site, whether that is through binoculars or making a sketch, and the purpose of that activity—that inspection—is to be prejudicial to the interests of the United Kingdom.
Stephen McPartland: I will move on to amendment 50. The condition inserted through amendment 50 removes the term “safety or interests of the United Kingdom” in the context of protests. It is the Government’s view that this is detrimental to the offence under clause 4 as it limits the range of conduct that would be considered prejudicial to the UK and risks creating loopholes that hostile actors could use...
Stephen McPartland: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention, and I will certainly look at that. A number of sites will be prohibited in law, and some sites will not want people to know exactly where they are and what they are doing because they will become targets. Once again, there is a balance to be struck in relation to provision for the intelligence community.
Stephen McPartland: It goes back to the reasonableness test: is the person conducting a reasonable activity, or is the activity prejudicial to the United Kingdom’s national security interests? For a person to be guilty of the offence, the prosecution must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the person knew, or reasonably ought to have known, that their conduct—for example, in entering the prohibited...
Stephen McPartland: I may dwell on this clause slightly longer than others, because it is the first of a number of clauses regarding a regime to protect sensitive sites in the UK. There has been a range of examples and questions. To the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood, the simple answer is yes. With regards to the Pokémon examples of the hon. Member for Halifax, the answers again are about—this very much...
Stephen McPartland: That was a range of great examples, and I will do my best to address them. The whole purpose of the clause is to provide our world-class intelligence agencies and law enforcement with the tools to respond appropriately to activity conducted in and against the UK by foreign intelligence services that wish to cause us harm. Although the Government understand and appreciate the intention behind...
Stephen McPartland: I beg to move Government amendment 1, in clause 3, page 4, leave out line 1 and insert— “In proceedings for an offence under this section it is a defence to show that the person engaged”.
Stephen McPartland: The amendment clarifies that clause 3(7) contains a defence, rather than an exception, because it may be unclear which of the two it is as currently drafted. In doing so, two changes must be made to the clause. One will insert new wording to show that clause 3(7) is a defence, and the other will insert subsection (7A), which states that the defendant must adduce some evidence to establish...