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Lord Judd: I urge my noble friend to give serious consideration to what the noble Baroness said and to treat her arguments as highly relevant to the reality of many situations. At home in my study, I have a photograph that I treasure. It is of Chief Lutuli receiving the telegram telling him that he was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring about change in South Africa by non-violent, passive means. As somebody who, as a younger Member of the other place, went through that period in political history, I can remember my tussles with my conscience on this issue. I came to the conclusion that while I could not personally embrace violence as a means of political change, I had to understand the position of the ANC because the outside world had totally failed Chief Lutuli and his fellow strugglers who used non-violent means.

That is a real situation. My experiences in Chechnya have underlined the very same kind of point. I do not apologise for mentioning that again, although I seem to do so almost every time we turn to these matters. But it is not only in Chechnya or South Africa that this remains true. I make the point emphatically that some of us who take what the noble Baroness has said seriously do not endorse violence as a means to political change. But it is important to understand why some people in desperation feel they have no other course.

I believe that this amendment has been carefully crafted. It simply puts in the Bill a requirement that the Law Officers who have to decide whether they will proceed with a case do seriously consider these matters. It does not make any particular course mandatory; it simply says that these matters must be seriously considered. It would be good, even at this stage, if the Government could consider that position carefully.

Perhaps I may also say that I am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and that we have had long deliberations on this Bill. At the outset of our report, we said that we believed that our Government's human rights responsibility was to protect the people of this country. We said that if, in the total effect of the proposals, a situation might inadvertently be made more dangerous rather than less dangerous, the Government would—albeit unintentionally, obviously— have failed to fulfil their human rights obligations because they had aggravated the situation. This issue of counter-productivity underlines many of the discussions on the Bill. It is one that profoundly preoccupies me. At times I almost think it preoccupies me more than the human rights and humanitarian arguments, because it is so central to our own well-being and safety.
 
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I simply suggest to my noble friend that if we cannot embrace what the noble Baroness has just argued, we cannot bring ourselves to understand seriously the real predicament in which some people in desperation sometimes find themselves, and we may well increase the number of people prepared to listen to the arguments of the extremists. In resisting the extremists, in winning the battle for hearts and minds, we have to fall over backwards to demonstrate consistency and a determination to uphold the values and principles of which compassion and understanding must be central, and which are so important to our way of life. The noble Baroness has put her case moderately. I believe the amendment is important. I urge my noble friend and her colleagues in government to give it very careful consideration.

Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, when my noble friend was at the Foreign Office—and I think he was a very good Minister there—did he have regard to all these points when important decisions had to be made?

Lord Judd: My Lords, that is a very fair question from my noble friend. We were fellow Ministers in the same Administration and I am sure that in his responsibilities for trade he took human rights as seriously as many of us at the Foreign Office did. We did indeed have many searching discussions in the Foreign Office about human rights at the time I was Minister. Under the urging of the Under-Secretary of State at the time, the late Evan Luard, we went through a period where—very much in keeping with many aspects of government policy these days—we required our ambassadors to assess regimes and governments abroad based on a points system. In our policies towards those countries, we could then take into account the human rights situation in the country concerned.

The Earl of Onslow: My Lords, if this country were under a severe tyranny—and I do not mean the half-hearted amateur effort that my present Government are making, I mean a really severe tyranny—I hope that I would be prepared to use violence. I hope that I would be prepared to risk my life to restore some of the things that we all hold good, including the right gently to pull the leg of the noble Baroness opposite. The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, has proposed the inclusion of a very sensible caveat, because some outside tyrannies are so awful that there is no way of dealing with them other than by internal rebellion, which, unfortunately, will always get nasty. All violence is nasty but sometimes it is justified. The Bench of Bishops will, I am sure, give me a lecture on St Augustine's "just war" because he said so. The baronage used to say that they had the right to rebel against the King when he cheated on them. That is all that the noble Baroness—I nearly said "my noble friend"; perhaps I actually mean it sometimes—Lady Williams of Crosby, was saying. Therefore I support her amendment.
 
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The Lord Bishop of Oxford: My Lords, I, too, support the amendment, for the reasons so powerfully and cogently put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, and the noble Lord, Lord Judd. However, the amendment has been made necessary because of the very unsatisfactory definition in the 2000 Act. I hope that it will be possible, sooner rather than later, for the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, to finish his work and come before the House with a new definition of terrorism.

I venture to suggest that the long tradition of Christian thinking, both about violence by the state and about violence against the state, alluded to by the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, has a great deal to offer in the way of clarity. Drawing on this long tradition, it would be necessary to make a distinction between a terrorist act, which is relatively easy to define, and a terrorist organisation, which is much more difficult to define, and which is made particularly unsatisfactory by subsection (1)(c) in the 2000 Act, which refers to the use or threat of action where,

"the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause".

That is all-embracing and quite rightly arouses the opposition of many Members of this House.

If we drew on that tradition, I would want to define a terrorist act, putting it in non-legal, very simple language, as "an act of violence or threatened violence directed against unarmed civilians". I would define a terrorist organisation as "an organisation that (a) uses terrorist actions as a matter of settled policy, and, (b) uses violence of any kind, whether discriminate or not, against a regime where, in the judgment of the Government, there are non-violent means of bringing about change still available". That second clause makes quite clear that we must all recognise that political judgments are involved and different governments will make different judgments. That should not take away from the fact that it is relatively easy to define a terrorist act. I very much hope that we will soon get a better definition of terrorism, but meanwhile I believe that it is absolutely necessary to support this amendment.

Lord Goodhart: My Lords, I wish to add a few words to what my noble friend Lady Williams so eloquently said. In Committee we tabled an amendment in somewhat similar terms but with one important difference: it would have made it impossible for the Attorney-General to give permission in cases where certain conditions were not satisfied. I was persuaded by the arguments in Committee that it was not right that there should be an absolute bar where certain conditions are met. Therefore, we have brought it back in a slightly different form, which means that instead of there being an absolute bar, the Attorney-General, in deciding whether to give his permission, must take these conditions into account. That seems to me to be very reasonable.
 
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3.30 pm

I cannot imagine that an Attorney-General would wish to instigate proceedings where violence was being exercised against a government who were guilty of tyranny, of grave oppression of its people, where there was no democratic way of removing that government, and where the acts of the terrorists were not directed against innocent citizens. Quite clearly—and this amendment takes this into account—the terrorists responsible, for example, for the massacre of the schoolchildren at Beslan have placed themselves absolutely beyond any pale and quite plainly should be prosecuted wherever they can be found. However, I strongly believe that there are circumstances in which this country should not seek to prosecute those who are undertaking acts against a tyrannical government which fall within the very wide definition of terrorism and I believe that there should be on the face of the Bill an obligation on the Attorney-General, when he decides whether to authorise a prosecution, to take those matters into account.

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