---

Mr. William Cash (Stone) (Con): Will the Home Secretary give way?

Mr. Clarke: No, not at the moment.

The reason the Government believe that we need to deal with glorification in our law is clear. People who glorify terrorism help to create a climate in which terrorism is regarded as acceptable. They help to persuade impressionable members of their audiences that they have a moral duty to kill innocent people in pursuit of whatever ideology they have espoused.

In recent times, we have seen threats from extremists who claim to represent Islam. Leaders of the Muslim community in the UK and elsewhere have quite properly and very strongly made it clear that such views do not represent true Islam. However, there are, nevertheless, people who may be influenced by those
 
16 Mar 2006 : Column 1667
 
who glorify terrorism and conclude that they have a duty to kill and injure innocent bystanders in the misguided belief that they are bound to do so.

I should also remind the House that glorification features in the Bill as an example of what is encompassed by the concept of indirect encouragement. It is not self-contained. Glorification as an offence is a subset of indirect encouragement as an offence, and can be committed only if the conditions surrounding the main offence are met. Key among those conditions is the requirement that there must be an intention that others should be induced to commit terrorist offences or subjective recklessness on this point. Glorification without intention of emulation or subjective recklessness cannot constitute an offence.

Mr. Grieve: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

Mr. Clarke: No, I will not give way.

That is a very important safeguard and gives the lie to some of the fanciful claims that have been made about perfectly innocent statements falling foul of this legislation. In part we can have such confidence because of the requirement in the Bill, as this House passed it, for the glorification to relate to conduct that could be emulated in existing circumstances. The amendments from the Opposition parties remove this requirement. I am quite willing to believe that the proposers did not intend to extend the scope of the offence in this undesirable way, but they must speak for themselves, as I am sure the hon. Member for Beaconsfield will do in a moment, and justify their own drafting.

Another important consideration in this debate is that the creation of an offence of glorification was a specific commitment in the manifesto on which my party fought and won the general election less than a year ago. That goes hand in hand with the question of which House should prevail in any dispute between the two Houses. In Committee and on Report the House voted explicitly on the question of whether this Bill should contain references to glorification. It endorsed the proposition by majorities of 16 and 25 respectively. The Bill then had an unopposed Third Reading and proceeded to another place.

The other place is a revising Chamber and can invite this House to think again. That is precisely what happened in respect of glorification, and other aspects of the Bill as well. Although I disagreed with the views of another place, I made no complaint as to its conduct up to that point. However, the Bill then returned to this House. On 15 February we had a lengthy debate on the whole issue and voted by a majority of 38 to include glorification in the Bill. We thought again, as the other place requested, and reaffirmed our original decision. At that point, I would have expected the unelected House to concede, and I am disappointed that it did not do so.

The elected House must prevail and I hope that the motion standing in my name will pass by the largest possible majority, so that it is clear to Members of another place what form Members of the elected House want the legislation to take.

Mr. Grieve : I rise to respond to the Home Secretary and to speak to amendments (b) and (a) to his amendment in lieu.
 
16 Mar 2006 : Column 1668
 

The Home Secretary has failed to explain the scope of his proposal, from which flow a large number of the problems with which the House is grappling. He came close to touching on that matter a moment ago, but whenever he comes close to it, he veers off, because an explanation would make nonsense of the Government's entire argument.

The glorification of terrorism is not being made an offence, thank goodness. If the glorification of terrorism on its own were made an offence, it would mean, as we have said on many occasions, that anybody who celebrates Robin Hood, the peasants revolt or Spartacus would be liable to prosecution. Furthermore, the poor old Taoiseach would be liable to prosecution when he comes over here after celebrating the Easter rising next month in Dublin, which he intends to do. Mercifully, that is not the Government's objective.

The Government's approach must be based on the Prime Minister's ego, because there is no other rational explanation. Having produced a Bill that contains draconian and powerful provisions to criminalise the indirect encouragement of terrorism—something that we support—the Home Secretary has insisted on including in clause 1(4) a most extraordinary subsection, which suggests that the courts should have particular regard to an example that he is offering: the possibility that glorification falls within the scope of indirect encouragement. At the same time, he has provided the suggestion that members of the public would reasonably be expected to infer that what is being glorified is being glorified as conduct that should be emulated by them in existing circumstances—I think that the Taoiseach would still be in some difficulty, because quite a few people in Northern Ireland think that any celebration of the Easter rising does exactly that.

The key point is that every single judge and lawyer to whom I have spoken has highlighted the fact that including such a concept is woolly, opaque and unclear, that the word, "glorify", is not known in our law and that the definition of "glorify" as praise or celebration is very poor. The provision appears to be deliberately aimed at people who might wish to celebrate as part of their culture episodes that would fall within the Government's catch-all definition of terrorism. Above all, it is entirely unnecessary in meeting the Government's objective, and the Home Secretary has said nothing this afternoon to explain why it needs to be included in the Bill.

Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East) (Con): Surely the Home Secretary's claim that judges will take it as a signal if this is cut out has no merit. The judges will know perfectly well that it was cut out because it is unnecessary given that any offence that it would catch would be caught under existing legislation.

3 pm

Mr. Grieve: There is no doubt that in many respects the Bill is a belt and braces job. As we pointed out to the Government, the truth is that there are perfectly good laws on the statute book that could be used instead of clause 1 or many other clauses. I must admit that I will probably not lose a huge amount of sleep over that, provided that the legislation that we enact is rational, fair, makes sense and, if I may say to the Home
 
16 Mar 2006 : Column 1669
 
Secretary, does not provide a lawyer's field day of casuistic arguments whereby every person who is prosecuted under the glorification clause will take the courts up hill and down dale day after day, and eventually be acquitted, probably on the direction of a judge, because it is all completely unintelligible.

Mr. Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth, East) (Con): Does my hon. Friend know whether, following the Danish embassy demonstrations, the police have requested any additional powers that they do not already have?

Mr. Grieve: The police certainly do not need additional powers to deal with a demonstration outside the Danish embassy. I was rather depressed to read today that although some prosecutions have been started, there are problems in identifying some of the people who participated because, of course, nobody was arrested at the time or shortly thereafter. That is a policing matter, but it is not exactly encouraging for those of us who wish to see that sort of behaviour stopped—something that I suspect is true of every single hon. Member.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Andy Burnham): ID cards might have been quite useful.

Mr. Grieve: If nobody knows who is holding up the placard because that person is wearing a dish dash in such a way that all that can be seen is his eyes, what possible use would an identity card be? I am afraid that Government Front Benchers are living in fantasy land as regards terrorist offences, and one need only engage in any sort of debate for the fantasies that are besetting them to become increasingly apparent.

I say this to the Home Secretary: we have genuinely been trying to see whether we can reach agreement with the Government on the problem that has been posed by the Prime Minister's ego and his slavish adherence to the word "glorification". If one is French, that word does not feature in the debate at all, because the equivalent word is, "apologie", which means "vindication" and is entirely different. For those in the international community, the failure of this House to enact the glorification clause would not be the most seismic event ever, because what they actually want to see is terrorists and those who encourage terrorism brought to justice. That is the matter on which the House should be concentrating.

Mindful of that, we tried to see whether we could reach some measure of agreement. That is why the amendments that I have tabled, on which, I am glad to say, we will be able to vote before voting on the Home Secretary's proposition, would provide the framework for doing that. The Home Secretary's suggestion that the word "listening" might not encompass viewing or reading struck me as having force. Indeed, if there had been an opportunity for a full debate and vote in the House of Lords, it might have been possible to do something about that there. That classically illustrates how our parliamentary procedure does not work very well. Here we have an opportunity to remedy that minor criticism.
 
16 Mar 2006 : Column 1670
 

On top of that, as the Home Secretary will have noted, we have removed the word, "describing", in relation to terrorism because he said that it is possible to glorify terrorism without describing it—I think that it is quite difficult, but I can see that it is a drafting argument—and replaced it with the word, "referring". Can the Home Secretary give me any example of where it would be possible to glorify something without referring to it? I have to say that I do not think that that argument would get very far.

---