Offensive Weapons Bill

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Baroness Hamwee

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th January 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I am not sure whether the Minister wants to introduce the government’s amendments now, so perhaps I should just ask some questions. At Second Reading, I raised the role of trading standards so it is obviously welcome that it is being addressed.

There are some obvious questions about the Government’s amendments. First, why weights and measures authorities? I confess that I have not looked up the statutory definition of a weights and measures authority, but there must be one. Why is it that rather than local authorities? The Chartered Trading Standards Institute makes the point that if the obligation was placed on local authorities as a whole, they might have more flexibility in how they dealt with the issue. Secondly, why is it not a statutory duty? On that point, the institute says that, in its experience, local authorities are less likely to provide the resources to deal with a problem, let alone with the training and recruitment of staff. The issue of resources is huge, and it is the elephant in the room in this context. We are all aware of the constraints on local authorities. It is a while since I was a local councillor, and I used to think that we had problems then. I do not know how local authorities manage now to juggle the calls on their resources, so I must make that obvious point as well as asking these few questions. It is right that the role of trading standards is recognised here, as is their role with offensive weapons as a whole, given their understanding of how the communities where they work actually operate.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I apologise for missing the first few words of my noble friend’s introductory remarks on this amendment. I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said because I wonder whether the wording in the government amendment is as precise as it is intended to be. The Chartered Trading Standards Institute—I refer to my interests in terms of trading standards—says that a correct definition, if you mean just weights and measures authorities, would be,

“a local weights and measures authority”,

in Great Britain,

“within the meaning set out in section 69 of the Weights and Measures Act 1985”.

The Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland may enforce within its area, rather than simply talking in those terms. I wonder whether a broader definition would not make sense, given that in many local authorities now the trading standards function, which is so diminished, is often spread with other responsibilities. That may be something the Government want to take away and look at to make sure that what they are trying to achieve meets the obligation.

The second point about whether this should be made a duty is important as well. People I know very well in the Chartered Trading Standards Institute try to get this both ways: they complain constantly about all the statutory duties placed on local authorities, and therefore the inability of local authorities to take them seriously, but they also say, “Here is something which ought to be a statutory duty”. The psychological effect of making it clear that the Government wish to place a responsibility on local authorities to pursue their role in this matter would be extremely helpful and valuable. If the Government were to find some way of making the resources available, so that, rather than just placing the duty, they could also ensure that local authorities had the wherewithal to take effective action, that would be extremely helpful.

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Debate between Lord Harris of Haringey and Baroness Hamwee

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 3rd December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Paddick has added his name to this amendment. I want from these Benches to support the noble Baroness. At the previous stage of the Bill, I tabled a number of amendments, including to this clause, on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I am not suggesting that it has in any way abandoned concerns about the Bill, but I do not now speak on its behalf, simply because we have not had an opportunity to consider further where the Bill has got to.

One of those amendments would have imported “supports” rather than “supportive”. “Supportive” seems far more open to interpretation than “supports”, the former being much more subjective than the more active “supports”, which is, as the noble Baroness said, the term used in Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Like her, I looked back at the debate in Committee and noted that the term used by the Minister during much of it was “supports”.

New paragraph (b), adding recklessness or intention to “supports”, creates a new and separate offence, although it occurred to me only yesterday that we might have amended “a proscribed organisation” to “the proscribed organisation”.

The existing Section 12 offence is very direct, referring to “invites support”, and in the context of a meeting, albeit a small, private meeting. Under new subsection (1A)(a), it will be an offence to express an opinion without mentioning a proscribed organisation. Many people in this Chamber could probably advise me of the answer to the following question. If were to say that I could understand that a 15 year-old girl in London might find herself persuaded or groomed to travel abroad to support freedom fighters in an area where Daesh was active and there had been plenty of press reports of the situation—I refer noble Lords to the splendid novel Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie if they want to be provoked to think further about what might underlie such a situation—would I be committing an offence? The answer is probably not in this Chamber, but if I did so at a meeting at a university with a young audience, I am not sure what my position would be.

Turning to “reckless”, I believe that I would be unable to rely on a defence similar to that in the existing Section 12(4) of the Terrorism Act, allowing a person to prove, with the application of Section 118, that he or she had no reasonable cause to believe that an address to a meeting would support a proscribed organisation. I would be hard put to think of a context—which I think was the term used by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, at the last stage—other than something like this debate, where one could be fairly confident of expressing an opinion and not being reckless. The Minister in Committee focused on recklessness and said little about support or being supportive, so I look forward to hearing the response today.

Like the noble Baroness, we are not happy with how the Government appear to be moving against freedom of speech in this clause, but we have the opportunity here to make it somewhat more proportionate. I thought I should look at Article 10 of the Convention, on freedom of expression. Article 10.2 reminds us that the right is qualified— understandably, of course—in such a way as is,

“necessary in a democratic society”.

That phrase really struck home to me. I would like to think that what we are doing through the Bill is necessary in a democratic society. I am not persuaded by Clause 1 as it stands.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, in considering the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, we have to look at the two new paragraphs (a) and (b) together. In the Bill, the Government seek to eliminate various routes by which an ingenious individual who wants, in effect, to incite people to support a terrorist organisation might create a defence. It is a combination of the two new paragraphs that seems to me to be important. An individual might claim that that they are not supporting a terrorist organisation, but merely supportive of its objectives. They might express that supportive nature of the objectives in such graphic and bloodcurdling terms that it might be deemed to have an effect on those listening to those descriptions. But of course, if they then went on to claim that they had no intention of making people act and follow that particular terrorist organisation, they would be permitted to do so.

By including both being “supportive of” the general objectives and at the same time being reckless as to the consequences of that, the Bill seems to attempt to avoid those ingenious individuals proclaiming that in fact they are not encouraging people to join a particular terrorist organisation, but are merely being supportive of the objectives of that organisation and have no intention at all of making people take action on that. The fact remains that that they have been supportive of the organisation and at the same time reckless as to the consequences. My concern with the amendment is that it actually allows two routes by which people can claim a defence when they have clearly, in the most common terms, been trying to persuade people to support a terrorist organisation. That is why I think the combination of “supportive” with the reckless intent makes a degree of sense.