Crime and Policing Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Lords Chamber

I suggest that these consequences should not follow an act of sitting in Parliament to express a view—which I happen to share—that Mr Netanyahu and his Government are guilty of war crimes. The amendments I have tabled, both of them, are intended to address this injustice, and I commend them to your Lordships’ Committee.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I am really thrilled to be supporting the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, because obviously he is so sure of everything he says that I must be doing the right thing. I will deal with Amendments 447 and 448 slightly differently, because they are different. I support Amendment 447 because it directly responds to how the law is currently interpreted by the courts. The Supreme Court has made it clear that someone can be convicted without any requirement to show that they intended to support terrorism. The offence is about the suspicion of others, not the intention of the person charged.

That might explain the law as it stands, but it also exposes the problem. Under this interpretation, people are criminalised not for what they mean to do but for how their actions might be perceived or might be used symbolically by other people. The court accepted that this interferes with freedom of expression but concluded that the interference was justified because Parliament chose to prioritise disruption and prevention. This amendment asks Parliament to look again at that choice. Criminal law normally punishes intentional recklessness. Here, however, we are dealing with offences that can be triggered by clothing, images or symbols, with no need to show encouragement, promotion or support in any real sense. That is a very wide net, and one that risks catching protest, journalism, art, research or sheer provocation.

The Supreme Court has told us plainly that if this is to change it must be done by Parliament. That is exactly what this amendment does. It ensures terrorism laws target people who genuinely seek to assist terrorism, not those whose conduct just creates an appearance or a reaction. I obviously feel very sensitive about this, being a serial protester.

On Amendment 448, the Terrorism Act gives the state some of its strongest powers, and rightly so, but with powers that strong, we should be very careful about who gets caught up in them. Amendment 448 follows directly from the same Supreme Court judgment and addresses its practical consequences. The court accepted that Section 13 interferes with freedom of expression but held that the interference was justified because the law was clear and because Parliament had chosen that. It is all our fault. That leaves people prosecuted under these provisions with very little room to explain themselves. If you carry or display something and it falls within the scope of the offence, your purpose largely does not matter.

This amendment introduces a basic safeguard—a defence for those who can show that they did not mean to encourage, incite or enable terrorism. The Supreme Court emphasised foreseeability that people should be able to control their conduct if the law is clear, but foreseeability alone is not the same as fairness. A system that criminalises without regard to intent places an enormous burden on lawful expression and legitimate activity. By putting a defence on the face of the statute, Parliament would make it clear that these offences were aimed at genuine support for terrorism, not incidental, critical or contextual engagement with proscribed organisations.

[Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, Amendment 450 seeks to amend the current Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006. I declare that I am an officeholder in the APPG on Counter Extremism, a member of the APPG on Terrorism and Security and, probably most importantly, a victim of terrorism.

For 20 years this year we have had a criminal offence of glorification of terrorism, but under the current Section 1 there is a very high bar to meet, as the person making the statement of glorification has to intend that a person hearing the statement would be encouraged to emulate the terrorism being glorified. The glorification of terrorists or their organisations is certainly not confined to my part of the United Kingdom but rather is a threat to the security of the nation as a whole. Recently, on the streets of some of our major cities, we have seen proscribed organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah lauded and that has had and will continue to have its consequences, particularly around radicalisation of our young people.

As someone who has lived with and through terrorism, I am always alert to anything which would encourage it and bring back those dark days of intimidation, murder and mayhem. Unfortunately, over the years since the cessation of IRA violence, there has been a strategy from Sinn Féin to lionise and put terrorists and their actions on a pedestal. There are many examples of Sinn Féin politicians, many of them senior figures, attending commemorations and celebrations for the lives of those who sought to murder their neighbours. In the interest of time, I will not bring any examples of that, because I have done so in the past in this Chamber, but suffice to say that apart from the pain which it causes to their innocent victims, it also seeks to normalise terrorism as a legitimate way to bring about political change.

The retraumatisation of victims is unforgivable and needs to be called out on every occasion, but public acts of commemoration also send a very clear message to young republicans that what these young men—and they were usually young men, and in some cases 16-year-olds, sent out to murder—did was in some way honourable. It glamourises what they did. To young impressionable people who have little knowledge of the life experience of the brutality of the IRA, it makes them sound like heroes, which they patently were not.

The often chanted, “Ooh ah up the Ra”, is a symptom of the continuing glorification of dead terrorists. It is, to some, a cultural chant, but nothing could be further from the truth. If we allow people, including those in positions of authority, to glorify terrorism in the way which, for example, the current First Minister of Northern Ireland does, then it normalises and sanitises terrorism and, in a cyclical way, will lead to young people being radicalised again. Witness those young people on our streets supporting the actions of Hamas, for instance. Many of them know little about the Middle East but think it is very hip and trendy to support Hamas because they hate Israel.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. If all you know about the IRA is that it took on the Brits and the First Minister says they were a great bunch of lads, then you can be forgiven for thinking that “Ooh ah up the Ra” is a grand wee chant. Those young people know little of the devastation, murder, intimidation and barbarity of the IRA because it is not something that is talked about by their First Minister.

As regards the current provisions, there have been no prosecutions under this section, to my knowledge, in Northern Ireland. When I asked the Minister a Written Question on this issue concerning England and Wales, he indicated on 2 December that there had been 52 prosecutions in England and Wales since 2011.

In 2023 the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, looked at this part of the legislation and decided that Section 1 did not need updating. With respect to the KC, I would argue that it needs change so that glorification of terrorism—in other words, glorifying the acts of a current proscribed terrorist organisation—in and of itself should be a criminal offence.

Mr Hall looked at this legislation in 2023, before the onslaught of support on our streets for Hamas; perhaps in this context he may need to look at this issue again. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, in his current review of public order and hate crime legislation, could also look at this issue.

In the meantime, I submit that change is needed for the following reasons. First, defeating terrorism is about not just militarily defeating the organisation but not allowing the narrative of those terrorists to be justified. Unfortunately, with the continued glorification of the IRA by senior politicians and others, there is a deliberate attempt to rewrite what happened in Northern Ireland. It was an unjustified, bloody, murderous terrorist campaign—nothing more and nothing less—and those of us who grew up with threats and the attempted murder of members of our family will not allow that to happen. We need society as a whole to recognise it as well. I urge noble Lords not to utter the phrase, “Yes, but it’s Northern Ireland and that’s all very difficult”. It is really not difficult. Whether you were a loyalist terrorist or a republican terrorist, you were a terrorist: someone who went out with the sole purpose of murder. Of course, the same is true of other shades of terrorists today.

Secondly, as I have already pointed out, there have been no prosecutions in Northern Ireland under the current Section 1. Why is that the case? Policing across the UK should be without fear or favour and certainly should not allow political bias or fear to enter decision-making. Unfortunately, there have recently been examples of political decision-making by police chiefs in the West Midlands and Northern Ireland.

Last week, two former chief constables of the PSNI gave evidence to the Northern Ireland Select Committee in the other place. Sir Hugh Orde and Sir George Hamilton were chief constables who took independent operational decisions. Despite policing in a very political environment, they made, as far I and many others are concerned, decisions based on policing considerations alone. They were not always popular with all the politicians, but that should never be the primary focus of a chief constable.

The two chiefs recounted instances when they had taken policing decisions and rejected attempted political interference. For Sir George, that was around the murder of Kevin McGuigan in 2015 and for Sir Hugh it was the Northern Bank robbery in 2004. On both occasions the political classes in London—and, disgracefully, Dublin—were interfering in the policing of Northern Ireland. They were trying to pressurise the two chief constables into not calling out the involvement of the IRA. They both resisted. I am very glad they did. It did not make politics in Northern Ireland any easier at that time—I remember it very well—but it was the truth. How sad then that their successor Simon Byrne decided to give in to political pressure when it was applied to him.

Unfortunately, some police chiefs do not feel strongly enough about implementing laws that may be seen as picking a side. I regret to say that some police chiefs, and indeed prosecutors, instead of applying the law without fear or favour, may be too timid and not want to rock the boat in taking a prosecution that may fail or may upset politicians or “communities”. The question is: how do you test whether all the elements of an offence are present if you are not willing to take it before the court? This amendment deals with those issues, I hope, as it removes the emulation part from the offence, and therefore makes it easier to prosecute.

Thirdly, I indicated at the start of my speech that I am an officeholder in the APPG on Counter Extremism. If we do not amend the law as this amendment seeks to do, I fear that the continued glorifying of terrorism will radicalise and lead more of our young people into terrorism. At present, there is a lack of legislation to capture extremism, but if we allow the glorification of terrorism to continue unabated, it will continue to grow, along with all the problems that it causes in our society.

Fourthly—and finally, noble Lords will be glad to hear—what sort of society do we want to live in? Do we want to allow the continued glorification of terrorism and all the inherent problems that will bring, or do we want to send a signal from Parliament that terrorism is, was and always will be wrong?

We need to stop the harmful normalisation of terrorism. I hope this amendment goes some way in doing that. Terrorism wants to put a wedge between those from different backgrounds. It wants to bring fear to ordinary citizens. In all its forms, it must be defeated. I hope that there will be support around the Committee for this amendment.