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Lord Adonis: My Lords, that is quite a long exam question. We on this side of the House believe in greater fairness, and that is what we mean by them.
Lord Redesdale: My Lords, does the research include estate agents' pricing guides for areas? From personal experience, I know that, where I live, a premium is put on one street over another because one falls within a catchment area while the other does not.
Lord Adonis: My Lords, I defer to the noble Lord's wisdom in these matters.
Baroness Knight of Collingtree: My Lords, why are noble Lords on the Government side so anxious to denigrate academic excellence so far as choice for schools is concerned, yet at the same time sport is given a totally different facet, so that only excellence in sport will ensure that a pupil gets a place in a certain school?
Lord Adonis: My Lords, we strongly support academic excellence, and we want to see it much more
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widespread, just as we want to see the overwhelming majority of children in this country having access to it. That is why we have our policies in place. We have seen a significant improvement in standards over the past eight years in the form of record results in tests in primary schools and at GCSE and A-level. We are proud of that record. On the selection referred to by the noble Baroness, a small minority of schools have sport as a specialism and want to build up real centres of excellence. They have the capacity to test on aptitude, but it is not generally available.
Lord Archer of Sandwell: My Lords, can my noble friend confirm that the present appeals system for admissions will remain in place?
Lord Adonis: My Lords, it will.
Lord Soley: My Lords, is this not a good time to remind ourselves not only that fairness is involved here but that children actually do well in a mixed social environment because they develop their social skills more fully? In that context, we want to deliver educational packages customised around the needs of individual children. In that way, we will see good academic progression along with good social skills, which has been a failing of the British educational system in that it was more stratified than it should have been.
Lord Adonis: My Lords, I agree entirely with my noble friend.
Lord Pilkington of Oxenford: My Lords, I am sorry to stand up again, but I want to ask a rather technical question. Does the Minister realise that to have a comprehensive school with a wide range of ability and to set the students according to their abilities will demand enormous resources? Speaking as an ex-headmaster, I can say that having eight sets in history costs a lot of money. Have the Government considered that providing technical education and academic education in the same school is going to cost them a lot?
Lord Adonis: My Lords, I accept that teaching well and having schools that achieve highly and extend opportunity widely is an expensive operation. That is why Members on this side of the House have been so strongly supportive of increases in education spending over the past eight years, increases that have been strongly opposed by Members on the other side. We now spend 50 per cent more in real terms on education than we did in 1996-97. However, I accept that, if the policies of the noble Lord's party had continued, it would not have been possible to have good comprehensive schools.
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Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Bill [HL]
3.07 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills (Lord Adonis): My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make provision in connection with the protection of children and vulnerable adults. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Adonis.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and ordered to be printed.
Terrorism Bill
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal): My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons amendments and reasons be now considered.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
[The page and line references are to Bill 38 as first printed for the Lords.]
5 Clause 1, page 2, line 1, leave out subsection (4) and insert—
"( ) For the purposes of this section, "indirect encouragement" comprises the making of a statement describing terrorism in such a way that the listener would infer that he should emulate it."
11 Clause 2, page 3, line 23, leave out subsection (4)
15 Page 3, line 46, leave out paragraphs (a) and (b) and insert "anything mentioned in subsections (1), (1A) and (2)"
28 Clause 3, page 6, line 25, leave out subsection (9)
31 Clause 20, page 18, leave out lines 13 and 14
32 Page 18, line 14, at end insert—
""indirect encouragement" comprises a statement describing terrorism in such a way that the listener would infer that he should emulate it;"
34 Clause 21, page 19, leave out lines 29 to 44 and insert "indirectly encourage terrorism, within the meaning of "indirect encouragement" as specified in section Terrorism Act 2006"
The Commons disagree to Lords Amendments Nos. 5, 11, 15, 28, 31, 32 and 34, but propose Amendments 34A and 34B in lieu—
34A Page 3, line 46, leave out paragraphs (a) and (b) and insert "anything mentioned in subsections (1) to (4)"
34B Page 19, line 39, leave out "of a description" and insert "that is illustrative of a type"
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I beg to move Motion A, that the House do not insist on its Amendments Nos. 5, 11, 15, 28, 31, 32 and 34 and do agree to Amendments Nos. 34A and 34B proposed by the Commons in lieu. I urge noble Lords to accept the decision of the other place when it decided not to agree with your Lordships' amendment in respect of glorification. I also invite noble Lords to accept the
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two amendments in lieu which were made by another place and to reject the various amendments that have been tabled to Motion A.
The two amendments in lieu made by another place are minor tidying-up provisions and I do not intend to devote much time to them. However, I should point out that Commons Amendment No. 34B responds directly to criticisms which your Lordships made of the drafting. I hope that it will be welcomed. The key issue is whether this House should again disagree with another place and seek to restore the wording which your Lordships adopted at Third Reading, or a modified version of that wording.
If, as I hope will be the case, your Lordships do not insist on your amendment, your Lordships will accept that the Bill should contain provisions relating explicitly to the glorification of terrorism. That is important because people who glorify terrorism help to create a climate in which terrorism is regarded as acceptable. This should clearly be outlawed. Your Lordships will also remember that, in outlawing the glorification of terrorism when it is an encouragement to terrorism, our legislation will be in line with decisions taken at an international level. The word "glorification" is not something that the United Kingdom has just plucked from the air but features in the preamble to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1624. That resolution speaks of:
"Condemning also in the strongest terms the incitement of terrorist acts and repudiating attempts at the justification or glorification . . . of terrorist acts that may incite further terrorist acts".
It is also expected nationally that we should outlaw glorification when it is an encouragement to terrorism. I say this because the public elected the Government on the basis of a manifesto which included a commitment to outlawing the glorification of terrorism. Let me remind your Lordships what the manifesto said:
"we will introduce new laws to help catch and convict those involved in helping to plan terrorist activity or who glorify or condone acts of terror".
I respectfully suggest that that could not have been clearer. We should demonstrate to our electorate that we take its views seriously; we should demonstrate too that we are concerned to protect its interests by creating an offence that is legally sound and can act as a deterrent.
The Members of another place have given effect to the wishes of the electorate not just once, but three times. There have been three separate votes on the precise question of whether the Bill should include references to glorification. Each time they have voted on the matter the majority in favour of referring to glorification has become larger. We are, rightly, a revising Chamber. We can invite the other place to think again. That is what we have done. The other place had a very full debate on this subject two weeks ago and the elected Chamber, in giving effect to the commitment in the manifesto, has now made it clear that the Bill should refer to glorification.
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If your Lordships oppose the appearance of the word "glorification" in the Bill this House would be opposing both the elected House and those who elected its members. It would be doing so in favour of an amendment which is defective for three reasons, which I will explain in turn. The reference in the wording inserted by your Lordships to "listener" limited the scope of the provision. It confined the definition to statements that are capable of being heard and so, for example, would have excluded those written on placards.
In that respect, your Lordships may be interested to know what the shadow Attorney General, speaking in another place, said on the issue. His first reaction was the optimistic and intriguing suggestion that the meaning of the word "listening" could include "reading". I will not comment further on that suggestion. More revealingly, however, he went on to say on 15 February (at col. 1437 of the Official Report) that he accepted texts could be "improved or changed". I am pleased to note that Amendment No. 34C standing in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, seeks to address that particular weakness. By contrast, I confess to some surprise that Amendment A1, from the Liberal Democrat Benches, makes no such concession. I will be interested to hear how the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, puts the difference between listener and reader.
However, even with the changes that the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, seeks to make, the wording which your Lordships sought to insert in the Bill causes problems. I have taken it that in tabling the amendments the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, is seeking to address the point about glorification, about which we are concerned—I absolutely accept that. But instead of being an exemplary description of what indirect encouragement could be, it is an exhaustive description. In other words, the offence is limited so that it is committed by making available to the public a statement directly encouraging terrorism or a statement indirectly encouraging terrorism but only by actually describing it in such a way that the listener will infer that he should emulate it. But the use of the word "describing" means that the Bill would not catch, as the original wording would, glorification, praise or celebration of an act of terrorism that does not actually describe the act. The revised wording put forward today by the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, does not address those points.
The second objection to these amendments is that those who seek to recruit terrorists do so not just by directly encouraging terrorism or by provoking people to commit violent acts, but by glorifying terrorism and terrorists. They may claim that terrorists are heroes whose actions should be copied, or that terrorists go straight to paradise when they die. The single word that best captures this is "glorification". It is this clarity of meaning that makes that word so important: not only does our electorate know what it means, and not only is it defined in the Bill with total clarity for the
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courts, but those who seek to recruit terrorists also know what it means. If this word appears in the Bill, it may—
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