| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Clause 2
12.45 pm
Mr. Forth: I beg to move amendment No. 3, in page 3, leave out lines 20 to 25.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): With this, it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 4, in page 3, leave out lines 27 to 29.
Mr. Forth: These amendments have two quite different aspects that are important in their own right. One of them refers, coincidentally, to a comment made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), who reminded the House that the more difficult it is to define an offence, the more difficult it is to obtain a conviction. We are well into that territory here.
In his enthusiasm to make this Bill as all-embracing as possible and to ensure that individuals can be caught in several different ways, my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford (Mr. Burns) has excelled himself. This clause contains a definition of offences, which includes
The Bill contains an even less easy definition, which is
I am concerned that if those words remain in the Bill, that will encourage the authorities--I am not keen on that word, but at least it is more neutral and less pejorative--to spend an enormous amount of time and energy pursuing those offences that are so poorly defined. One can imagine setting out to prove in a court of law that someone had attempted to conspire or incited to commit one of the related offences or, worse, aided and abetted, counselled or procured the commission of an offence.
What does "counselling" the commission of an offence mean? I do not know whether it is a term of art in the law or whether it is a new provision dreamed up by someone. I think I understand "conspiracy" and "incitement"--if pushed, I might even understand "aiding and abetting", but I am not sure whether I will ever understand the legal
definition or implication of "counselling" the commission of an offence in the context of the individuals about whom we are talking.
All morning, we have heard references to the kinds of odious individuals who are involved in football offences, including disorder. They are mean-minded and violent individuals, and it is a complete mystery to me how counselling the commission of an offence will apply to them.
I might not usually be too worried about that, but we are legislating. If the House is to allow itself to be put in the position of endorsing such wording, the Bill's sponsor and the Minister must be prepared to set out--to satisfy me, if no one else--how they envisage a conviction could be obtained in a court of law for counselling the commission of an offence.
As I have said, I have doubts about "aiding and abetting" and "procuring", to say nothing of "conspiracy" or "incitement". My worry is not only that the provision might encourage the authorities to occupy much of their time and effort in pursuing prosecutions of those offences, but, on the other side of the coin, that the wording could, at worst, draw into the net many individuals who are barely, if at all, involved in the commission of those offences.
It is obvious that most of the right hon. and hon. Members who have participated in these debates have a clear idea of the people with whom they want the Bill to deal: those who commit, or allegedly commit, offences or cause disorder at football matches. When one start to talk about conspiracy, incitement and counselling, we potentially draw in a much wider group of people who have a much more tenuous connection with the offences, and subject them to all the processes that we have been discussing.
I shall give an example. My right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border is very fond of car parks, and he has been telling us with pride how the shady people of NCIS, with all their intrusive surveillance mechanisms, hang around in car parks and listen to people's conversations. They then finger their collars, whisk them off to a luxurious cell, give them a cup of tea and tell them that they have been nicked.
That would be bad enough, but what worries me about the wording that my amendment seeks to remove is that somebody who may be having an innocent conversation with one of the aforesaid people might readily be drawn into that process. The NCIS man will be waving a copy of this legislation, if it ever becomes an Act, and will say, "Oi mate. I'm having you for counselling the commission of an offence. I saw you in the act of counselling. You were standing in the car park talking to an odious individual, and our high-powered, sensitive devices that intrude on individuals' privacy told me that the conversation that you thought you were conducting privately involved counselling the commission of an offence."
I am slightly overstating the matter to emphasise my point, but I hope that I shall be reassured that what I have described will not happen. That, however, is my reading of the Bill. I suspect that in their enthusiasm for the Bill, its promoter and the Minister have allowed it to be drawn so widely that it has the potential to draw into the process
a large number of people. That increases the risk of miscarriages of justice and of court proceedings going wrong. It further strengthens the arguments about rights of appeal that have, rightly, been put forward during the proceedings. I hope that we shall take the issue very seriously and examine it closely.
The Bill's promoter may want to argue that the provision is absolutely essential to the Bill's viability. The Minister may tell me that the provision about conspiracy, incitement, aiding and abetting and, in particular, counselling, is absolutely essential if the Bill is to have the intended effect. I remain sceptical. I should have thought that the panoply of existing law and the huge, shadowy organisation that moves mysteriously in society, trying to identify people of whom it disapproves and to drag them to court, would be quite sufficient, but it seems that we are going even further.
We ought to know much more about that provision. Let me make it clear that I want to delete it. The burden of proof is on those who want to leave those words in the Bill, and it is not unreasonable for me to expect them, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford, to explain clearly how they believe those words add to the Bill. That is my first concern.
Amendment No. 4 deals with something equally worrying. Clause 2(2)(a) reads:
I am asking my hon. Friend the Member for West Chelmsford and the Minister whether they are absolutely satisfied that the provisions of this part of the Bill are as they should be and that there is no possibility of serious miscarriages of justice. The subsection is drawn extremely widely:
This part of the Bill worries me the more I think about it. We are no longer focusing on the people with tattoos who behave outrageously, carrying and using offensive weapons and so on; we are talking about another group. Earlier, we were talking about those who counsel others to do something. It is a bizarre thought that the sort of people who commit the offences with which we are concerned will be subject to counselling. As I have said, I want to hear more about that.
"any attempt, conspiracy or incitement to commit that offence"
and references to
"aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring the commission of that offence."
I have scant knowledge of the law, but I believe that it is well known that it is difficult to obtain a conviction for the offence of conspiracy--and rightly so. That is because one is involved in all sorts of areas that are rarely subject to the normal availability of evidence and so on. Cases are based much more on hearsay evidence, subjective judgment and the like.
"any attempt, conspiracy or incitement"
on the one hand, and
"aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring the commission of that offence"
on the other. I am worried that, if that definition remains in the Bill, it may encourage the misuse of resources by the shady NCIS organisation, which has untrammelled surveillance and other powers about which I am becoming increasingly alarmed. I am sure that, if I were summoned to attend upon NCIS, I might never emerge from the building.
"For the purposes of paragraphs . . . above--
I think that I understand the purpose of that provision but it gives rise to misgivings on my part. It strikes me that certainties will exist if somebody is in attendance at a football match--presumably with CCTVs everywhere in our lives, he will be spotted. The Minister proudly said earlier that actions captured on video would be beyond doubt. It may be that if an individual attends a match and misbehaves in the way that is defined in the Bill, he can be dealt with legitimately. However, the Bill goes beyond that, obviously deliberately.
(a) a person may be regarded as having been on a journey to or from a designated football match whether or not he attended or intended to attend the match".
"a person may be regarded as having been on a journey to or from a designated football match whether or not he attended or intended to attend the match".
That is throwing the net very wide.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |