Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord West of Spithead]

103: After Clause 20, insert the following new Clause—
“Unmanned aerial vehicles
(1) A person commits an offence if that person without lawful authority or reasonable excuse (the proof of which shall lie with him) operates or controls an unmanned aerial vehicle, and—
(a) for the purposes of terrorism, the vehicle is fitted with—(i) any firearm,(ii) any explosive (whether in the form of a bomb, grenade or otherwise, and whether a manufactured or adapted device),(iii) any article (not falling within either of the preceding paragraphs) made or adapted for use for causing injury to or incapacitating a person or for destroying; or(b) he operates the vehicle within an area which the Secretary of State designates as restricted under this section.(2) The Secretary of State may by regulations designate areas in which the operation of unmanned aerial vehicles may be restricted or prohibited in order to reduce the risk of terrorism-related activities within the United Kingdom.
(3) Regulations under this section shall be made by statutory instrument; and any such statutory instrument may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.
(4) The Secretary of State must review the operation of this section and lay a report before each House of Parliament at least annually after the section comes into force, which must include a review of the use of unmanned aerial vehicles—
(a) in connection with terrorism-related activities, and(b) by any public body or agent in connection with countering terrorism-related activities.(5) In this section—
“unmanned aerial vehicle” means any unmanned aerial vehicle controlled or overseen by a human operator, and
“terrorism” has the same meaning as in Chapter 2 of Part 1.”

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[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

I declare an interest as a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drones. A number of factors made me feel it was necessary to introduce the amendment. The first is that there is no definition of unmanned aerial vehicles. They are commonly known as drones although it tends to upset people in the military if you call them that. I have found it difficult to consider anything of 20 grams or less carrying a man. That is so inconceivable that I think the term “drones” can be used. There is no definition in existing primary or secondary legislation. The closest to a definition is “small, unmanned aircraft”, which is in Article 253 of the Air Navigation Order 2009.

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[Lord West of Spithead]

I thank the Minister for his response. Before I come to that—because I was a little disappointed—I will say that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is absolutely right. We have to be quite careful about how we go about this. Indeed, I have got no praise for the way I have put my amendments, but I believe that this needs to be looked at. The Minister makes the assumption that we are happy with current legislation, but current legislation is not adequate. Certainly the Civil Aviation Authority and the airline pilots association do not think it is. We need to think hard about this. Overall, the noble Lord was on side with my worries, but—

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

Again, I am sure that the cross-government group that is considering gaps in legislation will take account of this debate, including the noble Lord’s comments.

[Lord West of Spithead]

I thank the noble Lord for that. At the moment, some of these things are slightly opaque. That is the problem. It is very difficult to find out what is going on. It would be much better if we had a clearer view with a more open debate about it. It is interesting, for example, that the Military Aviation Authority has just published RA 1600, which is a reclassification of some drones and it is paving the way for much greater use of military drones in UK airspace. So when we have a lot of military drones operating there, again, the risk of these other drones becomes even greater. This is something we have to get our mind around.

Interestingly—I had not thought about this before—the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, mentioned tracking mechanisms, which of course are making huge leaps and bounds in technology. You can get ones that are really tiny. Maybe that would be a way, if the drones showed up on secondary radar, for example. I do not know whether that has been looked at—and the reason that I do not know whether it has been looked at is that there is no openness in terms of discussion, which worries me.

I will need to reconsider the Minister’s comments and think about them and look at Hansard. Until I have done that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 103 withdrawn.