Crime and Policing Bill
House of Lords · Lords Chamber · 18 Mar 2026 · 187 speeches · Official Report
Report (6th Day)
Northern Ireland l egislative c onsent granted, Scottish legislative consent sought, Welsh l egislative c onsent withheld. Relevant documents: 33rd and 41st Reports from the Delegated Powers Committee, 11th Report from the Constitution Committee, 5th Report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights .
My Lords, we are about to start the final day on Report of the Crime and Policing Bill. There are 13 groups of amendments to complete today, and multiple votes are expected. I will briefly remind the House of some key parts of the Companion that are particularly relevant to Report. This is intended to help us make progress and proceed to votes. First-this is every Whip’s favourite line-the House has resolved that speeches should be shorter. Secondly, and importantly for today as we are on Report, the Companion states: “Arguments fully deployed in Committee … should not be repeated at length on report”. Thirdly, I remind your Lordships’ House that, while interventions are in accordance with the customs of the House, they should be brief questions for clarification; lengthy and frequent interventions should not be made. Finally, some of the topics we will discuss today are emotive and very important to many noble Lords. As my noble friend the Chief Whip has frequently reminded the House, it is in the best traditions of the House that these debates are conducted with courtesy and respect.
Amendment 409FA not moved.
Clause 183: Power to make youth diversion orders
Amendment 409G
Moved by
409G: Clause 183, page 235, line 3, at end insert- “(2A) In determining whether to make a youth diversion order in respect of the respondent, the court must be provided with evidence relating to-(a) the alternative interventions that have been considered or previously applied,(b) the reasons why such interventions were considered inappropriate, unsuitable, or unsuccessful, and(c) consultations undertaken by the police with relevant individuals, experts or agencies, which may include youth justice services.”Member's explanatory statement This amendment requires the court to be provided with evidence of any alternative interventions considered and any consultation undertaken with relevant individuals or agencies in respect of a child or young person subject to a youth diversion order application. This amendment strengthens the provision of multi-agency evidence to assist the court when undertaking the ‘necessary’ test and when making a youth diversion order.
My Lords, in moving this amendment, I will also speak to Amendment 417A. Amendment 409G would ensure that, before a court imposes a youth diversion order, it has clear evidence of any alternative interventions that have been tried or considered, why they failed and what consultation took place with the child and the relevant agencies. The point of the amendment is to ensure that there is proper multi-agency input and that these new orders are used only when they are genuinely appropriate. It would also help the court to judge whether the order is proportionate and whether the necessity test has truly been met. The amendment is designed to make them more effective by clearly showing why other interventions have not worked. Early consultation will mean fewer orders being rejected, less wasted court time and conditions that are practical and linked to the services available locally. Crucially, the amendment learns the lessons of the Southport case. There, a failure to share information meant that decision-makers were left without a full picture of the young person’s background. That led to an ineffective referral order in 2021, three years before the tragedy occurred. The amendment would help stop such failures from happening again. By requiring all relevant information to be brought together before a single decision-maker, it would ensure that multiple referrals and early warning signs are not missed. We know that proper multi-agency working, involving police, youth offending...
My Lords, before I speak to my amendment and the others in this group, I just say that, as the Green Peers are not part of the usual channels, we were not able to give our views on the fact that this very important piece of legislation is being bullied through this House by the Government. It is absolutely outrageous that we do not have another day for Report. I hold both Members of the Front Bench accountable for this. It is not acceptable. This is no way to make good law, when we are going to be very tired in the later hours and possibly in the early hours. However, on group 1, my Amendments 409H and 409J on youth diversion orders are supported by a wide range of organisations, including the Alliance for Youth Justice, the Centre for Justice Innovation, MLegal, the National Youth Advocacy Service, Sheffield Hallam University, INQUEST, the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, Just for Kids Law and the Runnymede Trust. That is quite a lot of very experienced organisations that support these amendments. Their collective expertise in youth justice, children’s rights and legal practice adds considerable weight to the concerns that underpin these proposals.
There are broader and very serious questions about the suitability of youth diversion orders themselves. Amendment 409G in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, rightly asks whether a youth diversion order is necessary in the first place. This amendment addresses the equally important question of what happens next. It aims to take a practical approach to working with what we have in the Bill. If such orders are to be introduced, the framework governing them must be rooted in what we know actually works for children. As drafted, Clause 185 gives the courts extremely broad discretion to impose conditions, without any clear duty to consider whether those requirements are suitable or achievable in practice. This amendment intends to address that gap. Proposed new subsection (4A) would require courts to consider evidence of suitability, taking into account a child’s
“age, maturity, and individual circumstances”.
It would also require consideration of whether conditions are practically available, whether they can realistically be enforced, and whether multiple requirements are compatible with one another.
This reflects what evidence from youth justice practice already tells us. Evaluation of diversion programmes, including work by the Suffolk Youth Justice Service, shows clearly that outcomes improve when conditions are tailored to the individual child, realistically enforceable and do not interfere with education or access to support services. Without those things, there is an obvious risk of children being set up to fail. When failure leads to breach and a breach is a criminal offence, we are not diverting children from the justice system; we are actually drawing them further into it.
Proposed new subsection (4B) reinforces another essential principle: that orders should not disrupt education, health appointments or support services. This is based on the fact that they are factors that help prevent harm and reduce reoffending. Undermining them could be damaging.
The amendment would also introduce a requirement for the terms of the order to be explained in language that the child can understand. Again, this is strongly supported by evidence. Studies of diversion programmes show that children are far more likely to engage when they understand what is required of them and why. Youth offending teams that take the time to explain decisions in accessible language achieve significantly better outcomes. By contrast, many children struggle to recall or understand formal processes. As one 10 year-old boy said of a formal warning, “I forgot it straightaway”.
This issue is particularly acute for children with additional needs. Evidence suggests that a significant proportion of children in the youth justice system have speech, language and communication difficulties, and many have special educational needs or mental health challenges. Research presented to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children highlights how such difficulties can affect a child’s ability to understand instructions, regulate behaviour and engage with processes. Crucially, many of these children will not ask for clarification because they simply do not understand what they have heard. They may appear compliant but, in reality, be confused and unsupported. If we do not take that into account, we risk further criminalising vulnerability.
Taken together, these amendments would introduce basic, evidence-based safeguards. They are about ensuring that youth diversion orders, if they are to exist, are tailored, workable and fair to the child. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, will press her amendment to a vote, because I strongly support it. I would like to force a vote on mine as well but, obviously, the House is going to be very tired by the end of this Bill, so I will not-she said bitterly.
My Lords, I am saddened by the attack from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on the Ministers, because they have sat through hours of debate on the Bill and listened most patiently. I have not always agreed with them, but they have responded with the utmost courtesy. They should be thanked, rather than criticised, for their efforts.
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their amendments in this group. We accept the Minister’s amendments, which seem entirely reasonable. I appreciate the sentiments behind the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb. However, we believe that they are somewhat misguided. Youth diversion orders, whatever one may think of them, will be implemented as a means of dealing with some of the most serious offences committed by people of the age of criminal responsibility. We should not be making concessions to people who have committed or intend to commit terrorism offences. We believe that engaging in these acts forfeits any right to the conditions of the noble Baroness’s Amendment 409H as a primary consideration. Similarly, regarding Amendment 409J, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, I entirely understand and acknowledge the issue she is trying to grapple with. Our position, however, is simple: court proceedings should be carried out in the language of the land. That said, the Government do offer translation services, and I ask the Minister to set out measures that are already in place to ensure that offenders understand orders that are made by the courts. Turning to the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, youth diversion orders must be underpinned by the principle of proportionality. Amendment 417A would ensure that they are being used in this expected manner. We particularly support the intention behind Amendment...
I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Doocey and Lady Jones, for their amendments on youth diversion orders. Amendment 409G, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, would require the courts to be provided with details of previous interventions, both considered and imposed, and set out consultation undertaken with other agencies. Amendment 409H in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, would amend Clause 185, which deals with measures which may be imposed by a youth diversion order. Amendment 409J, again in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, would require a youth diversion order to be issued to the respondents in simple terms to ensure that they understand what is being asked of them. I understand the sentiment behind these amendments, but I hope I can explain why the Government cannot accept them. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, we have had a lot of debate on this Bill and will undoubtedly continue to do so during ping-pong. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for his comments; we are doing our best. If noble Lords wish, we can have votes very speedily tonight-if people put their arguments succinctly and the Government respond succinctly, as I will try to do. On the amendments to date, the Home Office is drafting statutory guidance which will, I hope, help with the points raised by the noble Baronesses. That will be by the negative procedure. It will be produced as soon as possible and will include further details on the...
My Lords, I am disappointed with the Minister’s response because the current duty to consult requires the police to speak only to the youth offending team, not to social services, health, education and others who know the child. The whole point of my speech was to say that in order for these very powerful orders to be made, it is absolutely critical that everything is taken into account. That cannot happen if not all the agencies are consulted. The lessons from Southport include years of escalating warnings that were missed. No one agency had the full picture, and I believe that without this amendment that will happen again. I am disappointed because the Bill is the quickest and simplest way to require proper multi-agency consultation as a basic safeguard before such orders are made, which is absolutely essential. I would like to test the opinion of the House.
Clause 185: Content of youth diversion orders
Amendments 409H and 409J not moved.
Clause 186: Notification requirements
Amendment 410
Moved by
410: Clause 186, page 238, line 40, leave out “which made the order” and insert “to which the application under section 183 was made” Member’s explanatory statement This amendment clarifies that the relevant court for determining the police area is the one to which the application for a youth diversion order was made.
Amendment 410 agreed.
Clause 193: Variation and discharge of youth diversion orders
Amendments 411 and 412
Moved by
411: Clause 193, page 242, line 25, leave out “a youth court made the youth diversion order” and insert “the respondent was under the age of 18 when the application under section 183 was made” Member’s explanatory statement This amendment clarifies which court an application for variation should be made to.
412: Clause 193, page 242, line 27, leave out from first “court” to end of line 28 and insert “in any other case;” Member’s explanatory statement This amendment clarifies which court an application for variation should be made to.
Amendments 411 and 412 agreed.
Clause 194: Appeal against youth diversion order etc
Amendments 413 and 414
Moved by
413: Clause 194, page 243, line 25, leave out subsections (3) and (4) Member’s explanatory statement This amendment removes provision for an appeal to the Court of Appeal from a decision made by the Crown Court on an appeal under clause 194(1). The effect is that there will be an appeal by way of case stated to the High Court under section 28 of the Senior Courts Act 1981.
414: Clause 194, page 243, line 35, leave out subsection (6) Member’s explanatory statement This amendment removes provision which is superseded by my amendments to clauses 186 and 193.
Amendments 413 and 414 agreed.
Clause 196: Guidance
Amendments 415 to 417
Moved by
415: Clause 196, page 245, line 29, leave out subsection (4) Member’s explanatory statement This amendment removes provision that is superseded by the new subsection inserted by my amendment to clause 196, page 245, line 34.
416: Clause 196, page 245, line 33, leave out first “to” and insert “and” Member’s explanatory statement This amendment is consequential on my amendment to clause 196, page 245, line 29.
417: Clause 196, page 245, line 34, at end insert- “(6A) The Secretary of State must lay before Parliament-(a) any guidance or revisions issued under this section, and(b) in the case of revisions, a statement of whether the Secretary of State considers them to be substantial and, if not, of the reasons why.”Member’s explanatory statement This amendment requires the Secretary of State to lay all revisions of guidance before Parliament, even where the revisions are not considered to be substantial.
Amendments 415 to 417 agreed.
Clause 199: Reviews of operation of this Chapter
Amendment 417A not moved.
Amendment 418
Moved by
418: After Clause 201, insert the following new Clause- “Glorification of terrorism: removal of emulation requirement(1) Section 1 (encouragement of terrorism) of the Terrorism Act 2006 is amended as follows.(2) In subsection (3), for paragraphs (a) and (b) substitute-“(a) relates to one or more organisations which are at the time of the statement proscribed as terrorist organisations, and glorifies the commission or preparation (whether in the past, in the future or generally) of such acts or offences; or(b) glorifies the commission or preparation (whether in the past, in the future or generally) of such acts or offences, and is a statement from which members of the public could reasonably be expected to infer that what is being glorified is being glorified as conduct that should be emulated by them in existing circumstances.””Member’s explanatory statement This amendment seeks to ensure that the present glorification of past terrorism, including both terrorism from proscribed organisations and the glorification of individual terrorists, is criminal, to reduce any harmful normalisation of terrorism.
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee
My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 418 and to try to explain the rationale for the changes I have made since Committee. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Polak, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, for adding their names in support of the amendment. I declare that I am an officeholder in the APPG for counterextremism, a member of the APPG for terrorism and security, and a victim of terrorism. For 20 years we have had a criminal offence of “glorification of terrorism”. However, the current Section 1 is a very high bar to meet for prosecution, 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. After the debate in Committee, I sought to narrow the wording of my amendment to deal with current proscribed organisations. Noble Lords may remember that there was a concern, as the amendment was drafted for Committee, that it may capture some historic features that none of us would have seen as glorification of terrorism in today’s world. When I shared my change of amendment and sought to narrow the scope, however, the Minister pointed out in a letter to me that I might now be excluding glorification of those terrorists acting on their own behalf: those not advocating or acting on behalf of a proscribed organisation, such as the Manchester bomber. Obviously, I would not want that to be the case. I have worked with the wonderfully patient staff in the Public Bill Office to...
My Lords, I am pleased to support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, to which I have added my name. As I understand it, the purpose of the amendment is pretty straightforward: it seeks to remove the current requirement in Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006 that, for a statement glorifying terrorism to be criminal, prosecutors must prove that the speaker intended to encourage others to emulate the act. In practice, this current requirement creates a significant evidential barrier. Under the current law, it is not enough that someone praises terrorist violence, celebrates terrorist attacks or glorifies terrorist organisations; prosecutors must go further and demonstrate that the individual intended their words to encourage others to copy those acts. As a result, individuals can glorify terrorism while carefully avoiding an explicit call for imitation, and so remain technically within the law. We know that extremist propagandists are acutely aware of these legal boundaries. They deliberately operate at the margins of the law. Rather than issuing explicit instructions, they rely on suggestion, admiration and narrative. They glorify past attacks, elevate perpetrators as heroes or martyrs, and celebrate organisations that Parliament has already determined must be proscribed because of the threat that they pose. Such messaging may not always contain an explicit instruction to copy the act, but it none the less plays a powerful role in the radicalisation process....
My Lords, I have sympathy, as I usually do, with the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, but I will make two short points. First, by removing the emulation requirement, inserted very deliberately in 2006, this amendment would criminalise the utterance of unpleasant viewpoints without regard to whether they have an effect. It would become a police matter to say that the IRA did what it had to do in 1918 or that the Tamil Tigers, currently a proscribed group, fought bravely in defence of their homeland. It seems to me that this would restrict the scope of legitimate comment and be a departure from the principle that we normally criminalise behaviour only when it is liable to cause harm to others. Secondly, I heard what the noble Baroness said about Hamas and the St Patrick’s Day parade, but I wonder whether the purpose of this amendment is not better served by Section 12(1A) of the Terrorism Act 2000, inserted as recently as 2019. This already makes it a crime to express “an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation”, being reckless as to whether that will encourage someone to support it. If police or prosecutors are being unduly cautious in this area-I heard what the noble Lord said about that-they might usefully be directed to that provision of the existing law.
My Lords, I support the amendment in the names of my noble friend Lady Foster and others. It is right that we look to close the loophole. We need to look at how terrorists operate in the real world. The loophole that is there at present suggests that the current legislation’s wording is not quite fit for purpose. I agree that the refinements made between Committee and Report are useful. First, I disagree that this would in any way restrict freedom of speech. Historic debate is to be valued, and I do not believe that this would in any way restrict that. The amendment focuses on the contemporary situation. Secondly, it is important that the position of the so-called lone wolf is covered-unfortunately, we have seen more instances of this: people who want to, in effect, wear the badge of a terrorist organisation but who may or may not be directly connected with that organisation. Whether it is in Manchester or in Sydney in recent days, we have seen the horrific situation of a radicalised individual or group of individuals perpetrating such attacks, and it is right that this is covered as well. There are two principal reasons why I support this amendment and think it is necessary. The first, arguably the lesser of the two, is that it is dealing with the present. Unlike the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, and probably like most Members of this House, I have not been a victim of terrorism or had a family member who has been. All of us in that position can be thankful for that. Where...
My Lords, I also support this amendment. We have heard mention of the IRA. Those who lived in Northern Ireland through the Troubles know that Sinn Féin/IRA was the most hideous terrorist group-reduced to “Ra”. Last night, after celebrating St Patrick’s Day, five young people came on to the Tube dressed with tricolours and shouting “Up the Ra, up the Ra, up the Ra”, which only means support for the IRA. I do not think those young people fully realise the hurt and offence that gives to the victims of Sinn Féin/IRA. I fully support this amendment.
My Lords, I have a lot of sympathy with trying to tackle ways of taking away the romantic attachment to terrorism as some kind of heroic endeavour, so I completely understand the reasons for this amendment. However, I cannot see how it would work in practice at present. I cannot see how it would deal with a Rangers-Celtic match, or with people singing “The Fields of Athenry” versus those singing “The Sash”, those shouting “Up the Ra” and those shouting “No surrender”. There are slogans on both sides, all of them associated with the previous struggle. I do not know what would happen to those children if, shockingly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, explained, they have balaclavas bought for them-then are they or their parents in scope? How do we deal with that? Goodness knows what you do about Kneecap, the band. I am all for banning them because they are hopeless, but they play on the very imagery that we are discussing. We have a real problem on university campuses. Far too often, young people are cosplaying as jihadists in the way they dress. I understand that this is not a direct call to arms, but these Hamas wannabes are in a way justifying the type of-what they would call-defensive violence of 7 October. The Ayatollah Khamenei apologists justify IRGC violence, and the expert propagandism fills a society with narratives that I think are very dangerous in terms of young people being radicalised. But I just do not think this amendment can work, because I think we need to...
In some ways I can see the problem. I do not know that this amendment will tackle it. It could bring into scope a whole range of activities that are superficially offensive, and undoubtedly hurtful to anyone who has been a victim of terrorism, but mean that we do not do what we need to do, which is a much harder job-have these arguments out in public regularly and call it out, as it were. Arresting them and carting them away just turns them into a new kind of martyr, in my mind, and we do not want to give anything to their martyr status. I can see the aim, but I do not think this is the method.
My Lords, my answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, is that this amendment is not going to solve all problems in this area, but it is going to make a significant contribution. She is concerned about hard cases, and she identifies some of the possible hard cases. My answer to that is that the CPS will prosecute only in a case where it believes there is a more than 50% chance of a conviction and it is in the public interest. Many of the examples that she gives are most unlikely to satisfy those criteria.
Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown
My Lords, if noble Lords in this House do not believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, is giving the answer to a problem that is a reality within our society, then I hope that the Minister, if he is not accepting this, will tell us what the answer is. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, talked about going into the campuses and talking to these young people. You will never shame the likes of Gerry Adams, so just trying to talk them away is not going to solve the problem. I am speaking for those in Northern Ireland who went through 30 years of terrorism. Every day you went out, your loved one went to the gate and watched you get into the car, believing it was the last time they would see you. Society cannot live under that. It should not be asked to live under that. Therefore, if the Minister says this is not the answer to the problem, I respectfully ask him to give us the answer and not close his eyes to reality. We have to deal with it, and we need to deal with it now.
Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to make a few points in this debate. To be fair, there is legislation that covers the glorification of terrorism. The problem-I think the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, and others have tried to make this point-is that it is not strong enough and does not do what it is supposed to say on the tin. If we look back at the case of Fusilier Lee Rigby, two people were convicted and jailed for that. In 2021 there was a conviction for encouraging terrorism and collecting information after posting messages. In 2023 there was another conviction for sharing a video of National Action, a proscribed neo-Nazi group. In 2024 someone was jailed for encouraging terrorism. I do not want people to think that there is no legislation; there is, but the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, is trying to improve it, particularly for those victims. We hear, in summary, that the law allows for the conviction of people who glorify terrorism. The vast majority of the UK population has not been convicted of any offence and prosecutions require specific evidence. I also picked out from a report that, in the year ending March 2023, 169 people were arrested for terrorism-related activity. Only 46 were charged with terrorism-related offences and we have no idea how many were actually convicted. What we are trying to do here is to make things better. I ask noble Lords to put themselves in a situation; the examples I give are live examples. There is a group of young people playing in...
Does the noble Lord agree that, as we saw recently, it is also the extent to which, if we normalise the sense of terrorism, it feeds into future terrorism? To give an example of this, when we saw the terrible shooting of John Caldwell-thankfully, despite horrendous injuries, the officer survived-and, a day or two later, the police arrived on an estate to arrest one of the suspects, there were a number of young people in that area who were cheering on not the arrest but the potential culprit. I suspect that they were doing that through a level of ignorance, but there is the seeping in of the idea that terrorism is acceptable to a new generation. That means that, while it is bad enough in terms of the memories of those who have gone through it, it is creating the fertile ground-
I remind the noble Lord that interventions are meant to be short and to ask a question; his has gone on for quite a while.
I was just going to say: fertile ground for the future.
Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard
Yes, I think it is very important that there should be no legalisation or normalisation of glorification of terrorism, or of terrorism in general. That is what we are trying to stop here-and what we must stop; otherwise, it will allow more radicalisation of young people throughout society. I am not talking just about Northern Ireland; we need to wake up and realise that it is happening here in GB as well.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, I expressed some doubt in Committee about the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Foster. I recognised the strength of feeling around the House in favour of her position, forcefully expressed, then as now, by the noble Lord, Lord Weir, and others, in connection particularly with past events in Northern Ireland but relevant to terrorism in all its forms. The noble Baroness pointed particularly to antisemitic terrorism allegedly arising from events in the Middle East but in reality entirely unconnected with those events, as with the Bondi Beach attack, which she instanced. I was, however, concerned in particular by the possibility that the amendment as originally drafted would penalise the glorification of acts of historical terrorism that are or might now be recognised as freedom fighting, despite the methods adopted to express them and fight for a cause or viewpoint. For example, the struggles of the ANC and Nelson Mandela might be categorised as terrorism by some, and those who celebrate their struggles and their outcomes, now widely understood and approved, might be caught by the provisions. So might the actions of partisans and resistance fighters, which, again, we now celebrate and applaud because they were struggling against dictatorships. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, has recognised those concerns and redrafted her amendment so that her proposed new subsection (2)(a) requires that a statement “relates to one or more organisations which are at...
My Lords, I think it is important to look at this not just from an Irish point of view; we have to look at the big picture. It is clear that there are different pieces of legislation that govern this area, and reference has been made to other pieces of legislation. As the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, said, we are on Report and moving toward Third Reading, so there is an opportunity here. If the Government have particular difficulties with this, they have heard the mood of the House. I have no doubt that they can take that on board, and if there is something that they are not comfortable with in the drafting of this amendment, they can bring forward their own.
However, we cannot ignore the fact that there has been a huge increase in the glorification of terrorism in this country in the last couple of years. We have only to look outside the door of this building where people demonstrated week after week. We understand that there was the Palestine Action thing; people said that the Government were wrong to do that and hundreds of people were arrested, and so on. We understand that there are issues where you have to be careful what you do with the legislation, but we simply cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend that it is not happening. Look at what is going on in the universities. Universities have always been hotbeds of rebellion over the years, and we have all probably been part of it-I will not go into some of our histories around the place-but we also have hate preachers in certain parts of the country, openly and brazenly encouraging their flocks and designating certain individuals, groups and nations, legitimising what they might do if they take action against those individuals, groups or nations. We just cannot ignore it, but there is a temptation to do so, and I hope we resist it.
Therefore, if the Minister is not content with this amendment, he has it in his own hands to deal with it. If he has dealt with it when we come back at Third Reading, we can no doubt make a judgment as to whether it is sufficient. We cannot run away from this any more. It is going on all the time, and in institutions in which huge amounts of taxpayers’ money are invested we are seeing people who have reached the stage where they feel uncomfortable, even on campus. These are places of learning; it is where there is a generation of people who will in the future run businesses and create wealth, and they are bombarded by this totally unacceptable propaganda. We always pride ourselves on free speech in this country and we have all been parts of protests over the years, but things have got particularly nasty. To simply assume that we can carry on as normal is no longer acceptable.
My Lords, I shall be extremely brief. I thank the noble Baroness for her amendment. As I said in Committee, I firmly support her in seeking to amend the emulation requirement in the Terrorism Act 2006. We will of course have a more wide-ranging debate on terrorism in the next group, so I will reserve my wider comments for then.
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, for returning to the issue of the glorification of terrorism, our exchange of letters and her movement and reflections on what we said in Committee. I note the support from the noble Lords, Lord Rogan, Lord Empey, Lord Weir, Lord Marks, from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench, Lord Polak, from the Conservative Back Benches, Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown, and Lord Elliott. I will come back to comments made by other noble Lords as I progress. Let me say straight away that I have not been a victim of terrorism, but I know people who have been. I have met victims of terrorism not only in the context of Northern Ireland when I had the honour of serving there but in this job, from a range of backgrounds. I know that discussion of all these issues, including in this debate, causes great pain for those victims. However, I hope can explain why, even with the changes that have been made by the noble Baroness, I cannot accept the amendment in its current form. Let me first express and reiterate the purpose of the encouragement offence. It was introduced after the 7/7 attacks and is designed to act as a precursor offence to reduce the risk of people being encouraged to carry out acts of terrorism. The offence applies equally to statements made online or offline. It also applies even where an individual is reckless about the impact of their statement-that goes some way to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox...
Baroness Foster of Aghadrumsee
I thank the Minister for the way in which he has communicated with me throughout on this issue of the glorification of terrorism. I also thank, as I said before, the Bill office for the way in which it has engaged with me. I thank all noble Lords for their engagement on this issue. This has been a very good debate. On the other parts of the Terrorism Act that are there, I acknowledge what the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, had to say on Section 12. The unfortunate thing is that we see very few prosecutions in relation to it. This is why, to take up the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, we cannot ignore what is going on around the glorification of terrorism in the widest possible terms in the United Kingdom. With that in mind, I would like to test the opinion of the House.
Amendment 418A had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.
Amendment 419 not moved.
Amendment 420
Moved by
420: After Clause 207, insert the following new Clause- “Amendment of section 3 (proscription) of the Terrorism Act 2000In section 3(3)(a) of the Terrorism Act 2000, at end insert “, provided that only one organisation per order may be added”.”Member’s explanatory statement This new clause would require that any order made under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000 relates to a single organisation. This would enhance the ability of both Houses of Parliament to scrutinise the proscription process by allowing the possibility of voting against some Secretary of State proscription decisions, without jeopardising others.
My Lords, more on terrorism, and proscription in particular. Amendment 420 is in my name, and I support Amendment 422B in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, which would beef up parliamentary involvement, and the role of the ISC in particular, in the proscription process. I oppose later amendments that seem to limit or completely remove the role of the courts in this area. The Home Secretary’s power to proscribe a terrorist organisation under Section 3 of the 2000 Act is an awesome power. It is none the less necessary in a democratic society, because people should not be able to have private armies. We all understand that. None the less, getting these decisions right is incredibly important. In this debate, I will not relitigate any past or pending decisions. I am looking at it from the point of view of constitutional principle. The consequences of proscription are very serious, now and in the future, so getting these decisions right is very important. My Amendment 420 is very modest, and I am grateful to all noble Lords across the House who supported it last time, and to colleagues in the other place of different political persuasions who spoke to me privately, expressing their support for this type of change. At the moment, a single proscription order may contain umpteen organisations, which means that when that order is put before each House, there will be a yes or no vote on an entire list, rather than an opportunity for Members of the other place or noble...
My Lords, in the circumstances I shall confine my observations to Amendments 422A and 422B. Before I do so, I say that I strongly support the amendment just moved by the noble Baroness. Were she to divide the House on it, I would support it, but I gather that, perhaps because of the press of business, that is not her present intention. The purpose of Amendment 422A is to ensure that individuals can be prosecuted under Sections 12 and 13 of the Terrorism Act for the offence of supporting an act of terrorism only if the alleged acts amount to supporting terrorism in the sense that the ordinary citizen would understand that concept. Amendment 422A makes explicit that the necessary intent that the prosecution must prove is that the alleged acts were done with the intent of encouraging, inciting, facilitating or enabling another to commit an act of terrorism. The amendment also restricts the possibility of a demonstrator being arrested under the provisions of Sections 12 and 13 of the Act. In general, an arrest must be authorised by a senior police officer of the rank of superintendent or above. My suggestion to your Lordships is that the present situation is wholly unsatisfactory. It has been widely criticised, for example, by the judges in the Palestine Action case. In that case, judicial concern about statutory overreach contributed to the proscription of Palestine Action being held to be unlawful. It has also been the subject of much distinguished criticism-for example by...
Consider also the consequences on the individual, touched on very briefly by the noble Baroness. There are severe penalties for conviction of an offence under Section 12: on indictment, perhaps by a judge alone, a term of imprisonment not exceeding 14 years, and on summary conviction, imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months. Leaving aside the nature of the penalties, consider the impact of such a conviction. A person convicted of such an offence would have great difficulty in travelling to America, especially at this time, with this President in the White House. Also, employment opportunities could be gravely prejudiced by such a conviction. These are not consequences that should be visited on those whose essential purpose is to criticise Israeli policy in Gaza and the West Bank. Amendment 422A is intended to address that injustice.
The purpose of Amendment 422B is to ensure that Parliament has as much information as possible before a proscription order is made. During the Palestine Action case and subsequently, Ministers stressed that the proscription order had been endorsed by Parliament. That is strictly true, but it was an uninformed endorsement. That is necessarily the case, and I blame no Minister for that. It is not possible for Ministers to outline in open debate the considerations and information they have received in private which have led to the decision to proscribe, but they could give that information to the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is well versed in dealing with things of this kind. If this was done before the laying of the proscription order then the committee could make a report and this House would be much better informed. I recognise that the urgency of the matter may be such that the Secretary of State has to lay an order without being able to refer the matter to the committee. In that event, the Secretary of State could meet the committee to set out the facts in greater detail. The committee might then be in a position to report to this House. This is not a complete safeguard, but it is a great improvement on where we now are. It is in that spirit that I commend the amendment to your Lordships’ House.
As to testing your Lordships’ opinion, I have two amendments here and the truth is that I shall wait to see whether there is significant support for either or both. I do not want to waste the time of this House unnecessarily. We are going to sit late, so I shall determine whether there is significant support before I make that decision, but I commend these two amendments to your Lordships’ House.
My Lords, I shall speak to the two amendments in my name. Like many noble Lords, I was surprised by the decision of the High Court that the Home Secretary’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action was unlawful, in view of her detailed description of its terrorist activities in her House of Commons Statement on 23 June 2025. In reading the High Court judgment, I was struck by the inconsistency of the arguments of the learned judges. At the beginning of the judgment, they set out the details of Palestine Action’s Underground Manual , which is standard textbook terrorist stuff: guidance to form small autonomous secret cells and to recruit only trusted participants. Then there is operational terrorist tradecraft: instructions to use secure email and VPNs, to conduct reconnaissance, and to pick targets based on complicity with the Israeli arms industry. It then has a section on targeting and tactics, with lists of defence firms, universities, financial firms and government buildings, and practical advice aimed at serious property damage to disrupt those targets. The court then concludes that proscribing the organisation was “disproportionate” and that the Home Secretary did not follow her own policy, even though it said that “the court must permit some latitude to the Home Secretary given that she has both political and practical responsibility to secure public safety”. I submit that the Home Secretary must have the absolute right to proscribe an organisation based on the advice...
My Lords, I remind the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and the House, that the judgment in Palestine Action to which he objects is under appeal and the Court of Appeal, in due course, will pronounce on the wisdom or otherwise of the High Court decision and the legality of the Home Secretary’s decision. These criticisms, with some of which I certainly agree, are premature. What matters is not what the noble Lord thinks or what I think, but what the Court of Appeal says and, if necessary, what the Supreme Court says on such an important matter. In any event, I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who is a noted constitutionalist, that it is in principle wrong to seek to remove the power of the courts to assess the legality of judgments of the Home Secretary. Surely, it is a very valuable protection of the rule of law in this country that the courts pronounce on legality and Parliament does not remove the power of the courts to do so.
I have no objection to the court pronouncing on a point of law. However, on this occasion, it was not pronouncing on a point of law but making a judgment on the facts of the case and disagreeing with the Home Secretary on the facts.
I am not defending the Divisional Court’s judgment, but it would say that it was intervening on a point of law, because a point of law covers whether the Secretary of State was lawfully entitled to form the conclusion that she did in the circumstances. However, as I say, this is all highly premature.
I cannot support the amendment from the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. It suffers from the fundamental error that the proscription of Palestine Action does not prevent anyone protesting, demonstrating or expressing whatever views they like about the conduct of the State of Israel in Gaza or the West Bank. Again, I associate myself with some of those criticisms, but certainly not all of them. What the proscription prevents is people expressing support for a proscribed terrorist organisation, and I take the view that it is entirely appropriate that the law should seek to prevent people expressing support for a terrorist organisation.
The House may be interested to know that the Supreme Court considered this issue in R v ABJ, in which judgment was given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Reed, the President of the Supreme Court, on 26 February this year. That case was brought on behalf of Hamas. The claimants complained that it was a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights for persons to be criminalised for expressing support for a terrorist organisation. I commend paragraph 104 of the judgment to the noble Viscount, where the noble and learned Lord, Lord Reed, said:
“In particular, expressions of approval or endorsement of proscribed organisations are especially significant in the light of the growing tendency, mentioned earlier, for terrorist acts to be perpetrated by individuals who have been encouraged or inspired by material they have read or heard. In that context, the expression of opinions or beliefs which are supportive of proscribed organisations can have highly dangerous consequences. It is correspondingly important to address the risk of such encouragement. In the language of the Convention, there is a pressing social need”.
I suggest that is particularly true of Palestine Action in relation to the allegations of violent conduct.
By contrast, I express my support for Amendment 420 from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. I cannot see any detriment in each proscribed organisation being the subject of a specific order, so that Parliament can vote, if it wishes, on whether the proscription order should apply to a particular organisation, rather than having to reject the whole group. That should not involve any greater use of parliamentary time, because we can debate all the orders at the same time. I therefore very much hope that the Minister will accept the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti.
My Lords, I have prepared a full speech on three amendments in this group and the Government’s behaviour regarding the proscription of Palestine Action. I have signed Amendments 420, 422A and 422B, which, if agreed, would prevent the naked politicisation of terrorist legislation ever happening again. However, I recognise that noble Lords are anxious to get on with discussing other matters, and that we are facing a long journey into the small hours. Furthermore, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, have ably covered much of what I would have said, so I will confine myself to pointing out that the Government’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action was wrong in principle and dangerous in effect. It stretched terrorism powers to crush a protest movement, not a terrorist organisation, with a chilling effect on our core democratic rights. It felt highly disproportionate when it was being debated in this House, and that was later confirmed by the High Court. No wonder the Government needed the crude political stunt of bundling Palestine Action together with two obviously terrorist groups to force it through Parliament. These amendments matter because proscription decisions must be, and must be seen to be, grounded, proportionate and evidence-based. These amendments protect our security while honouring Parliament’s duty to scrutinise some of the gravest powers that we give to the Government. I suspect that the proposers of these amendments...
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 420 and 422B, both of which I have supported. I go to a lot of events where the right to protest is debated, and people are quite shocked when I describe how this Government bundled three organisations together so that they could push through the proscription of Palestine Action. It does not look just or fair. They do not even have to be similar or connected, as these three were not. It was interesting to listen to the entertaining noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, running through the debate on whether to proscribe Palestine Action. These amendments are about the process: about how it is done and whether it is done in a proper way. It is not proper scrutiny and it is not what this House is for when we have a blunt choice to accept or reject all three. That is not a sensible system. Proscription is a really serious step: it criminalises people for association, for support and even for what they say. Such decisions deserve to be looked at carefully, case by case, and not rushed through or passed in a job lot. If the Government are confident in their decisions about what is and is not a terrorist organisation-I assume they were confident about Palestine Action-they should have no problem with each one being judged on its own, not in a job lot. The amendment from the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, comes down to something quite simple. These are very big decisions that can criminalise association, affect livelihoods and follow someone for years. If...
My Lords, I add a few comments in support of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick-but without repeating him-on the proposed ouster clause suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, in his Amendments 421 and 422DA. The schedule of proscribed organisations is often added to and rarely subtracted from. At present it has about 98 entries, if you include Northern Ireland as well as the rest of the world. That includes a number of nationalist movements from around the world that are, or have in the past been, committed to violence in pursuit of their aims. Despite the recommendations of successive Independent Reviewers of Terrorism Legislation, the annual review of proscribed groups by the Home Office and the NIO was discontinued in 2014. As far as I know, that automatic annual review has not been reinstated. There is no requirement in law that proscription should have to be renewed every three or five years, or indeed at all. In my report on the Terrorism Acts in 2016, at paragraph 5.24, I recorded the Government’s admission, which I found breathtaking, that no fewer than 14 groups on the list no longer satisfied the statutory requirements for proscription. Even more breathtakingly, they did not try to stop me saying it. There were almost certainly other groups in respect of which the same thing could have been argued, yet most of those groups remain on the list. One group, the al-Qaeda offshoot to which the current President of Syria belonged, was recently deproscribed on the...
My Lords, I strongly support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. It seems to me entirely sensible, for the reasons set out so well by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and I agree very much with what he said about the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, that Palestine Action should not be proscribed. It is not that I have any sympathy with it-it is a deplorable organisation that does a great deal of damage. If in fact the other laws required to deal with such appalling organisations are not sufficient, the Government should bring to this House, as well as the House of Commons, stronger laws to deal with them. But it is not, in my view, a terrorist organisation.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, I will deal with this group as briefly as I can. I too support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. The idea that you can bundle together organisations and then proscribe them as a group seems ridiculous. Parliament should be faced with one organisation at a time when it votes-that is a matter of common sense. MPs must be entitled to decide on the proscription of particular organisations individually, and the fact is that many Members of Parliament resented being asked to proscribe three organisations together. Of the three organisations, the other two-Maniacs Murder Cult and the Russian Imperial Movement-were plainly terrorist organisations that ought to have been proscribed, and it was invidious for Members of Parliament to be told that it was an all-or-nothing decision. That amendment should plainly be accepted. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, that, try as he loyally might, when the noble Lord, Lord Hanson, spoke to this in Committee he could say only that this has been done before and is the way we have generally done it. That is no answer to the argument so elegantly put by the noble Baroness. Turning to the amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, I will deal with Amendments 421 and 422DA together. Both contain what are commonly called ouster clauses; they have been spoken to by the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and...
Amendment 422DA would deny the justiciability of the exercise of the proscription power. That is simply a denial of the rule of law. The challenge to the unlawful exercise of powers has become one of the most important safeguards of the rule of law in our democracy. These amendments are a direct attack on the courts upholding the rule of law in the face of unlawful decisions by the Executive. The principle that the Executive are not above the law needs protecting, and it should not be attacked in this Parliament.
Amendment 422, also proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, states that if an organisation is “de-proscribed” after a Section 13 offence, the offender
“shall be treated as having acted on behalf of a proscribed organisation for the purposes of prosecution”.
That is to ignore the deproscription, which is, I suggest, illogical.
I turn to the amendments proposed by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, supported by my noble friend Lord Strasburger. The noble Viscount said that he would press one or both of the amendments if they had significant support. Amendment 422A would import an element of intention as a necessary ingredient of offences of support for terrorism-the offence for which, as my noble friend Lord Strasburger reminded us, 2,700 people were arrested for supporting the demonstrations at the end of last year, and most have been charged.
The amendment is necessary, I suggest, as a matter of justice. Too often the response of some has been to say that it is easier to get a conviction if the prosecution does not have to prove that a defendant intends the mischief at which the criminal law is directed. Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 is directed at support for organisations concerned in terrorism. An organisation is defined as such in the Act if it
“commits or participates in acts of terrorism … prepares for terrorism … promotes or encourages terrorism, or … is otherwise concerned in terrorism”.
To secure a conviction for the support offence, it should be for the prosecution to establish that the conduct alleged against the defendant was intended by that defendant to assist in terrorism-hence the very sensible provisions suggested by the noble Viscount’s amendment.
The noble Viscount’s amendment also criminalises expressions of support for a proscribed organisation and the wearing of an article of clothing or a uniform, or publishing an image, both of which need intention. Without the proof of intention, the defendant would be entitled to a not guilty verdict. I cannot believe that it should be enough to secure a conviction for a terrorist offence to prove that a person took part in a peaceable demonstration because of some support for the political aims of the organisation, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, which is devoid of any intent to further the terrorism for which that organisation has been proscribed.
On Amendment 422B, which deals with the involvement of the Intelligence and Security Committee, my understanding from the Minister in Committee was that the ISC had already been consulted, and its advice taken. I question why it should ever be in doubt that that committee should be involved, for the reasons given by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham: that it has the information upon which to advise Parliament. I suggest that that is a well-founded amendment as well.
Finally, Amendment 422C calls for a review of any organisations related to the Iranian Government, with a view to considering whether they should be proscribed. The Liberal Democrats have long supported the proscription of the IRGC. It is sensible in the current circumstances-in the context of the war in Iran-that there should be consideration of other organisations connected with the Iranian Government. In the light of the oppressive and murderous treatment meted out to protesters and dissidents in Iran in January, it is very important to keep under consideration the issues of which organisations connected to the Iranian Government should properly be proscribed. So that is an amendment that we also support.
My Lords, this is a very large and wide-ranging group of amendments, all relating to varying aspects of the law on terrorism and the proscription of terrorist groups. Given the amount that we need to get through today, I will be as brief as possible. I have tabled Amendments 422C and 467AAA. The new clause proposed by Amendment 422C would require the Secretary of State to “review whether any organisations related to the Iranian government should be proscribed under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000” within one month of Royal Assent. It would also require the Government to publish the results of that review and give reasons for the decision. Amendment 467AAA would simply ensure that the proposed new clause came into effect on the day that the Bill passed. I acknowledge at the outset that this amendment is perhaps a round-about way of confronting a very simple but incredibly serious issue. I am, of course, concerned about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps specifically. Unfortunately, I was advised that an amendment to primary legislation that inserted the name of an organisation into Schedule 2 to the Terrorism Act 2000 would be hybridising, so I have not done so. I am in the fortunate position where I am almost certain that I know exactly what the Minister is going to say in response to this amendment: that the Government keep proscription under review at all times and, as such, my amendment is not necessary. But the fact is that the decision the Government have taken...
My Lords, I am grateful for the amendments in this group-there are quite of lot of them-and the topics that have been raised. To begin, I reiterate the critical importance of our counterterrorism framework, including proscription, in protecting the public; that is what this is about. I say in response to a number of comments by noble Lords that yes, we always keep the framework under review. As was mentioned in the debate, some organisations have been deproscribed as a result of government examination, and we are held to critical independent oversight, provided by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. Let me address each of the amendments in turn. My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti’s Amendment 420 aims to limit proscription orders to a single organisation per order, ensuring that each group is debated and voted on separately. That has had support today from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, and others. I understand my noble friend’s intention. I just say again to them-and to the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger -that Palestine Action was proscribed, along with the other two organisations, according to exactly the same test under the Act that allows proscription to take place. The exact same test was applied to each of those organisations. In July, those orders were put together in one vote for the purpose of the effective use of parliamentary time. We had a big debate in both the Commons and this Chamber,...
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
I have one question for the Minister. The statutory test that is said to have been applied in the House of Commons is the statutory test of proscription. If Members differed on the result of the statutory test in respect of the three different organisations, they were not given any opportunity to distinguish between them. That is the position, is it not?
I accept that. As I have said, the “We’ve always done it this way” test has been put to me. I am saying to my noble friend that there are valid points that potentially need examination, but I do not believe that legislating to tie the Government’s hands on this issue is the way forward. I say to my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Marks, that there is a discussion to be had about how future proscriptions are brought forward, and we intend to reflect on those points. Amendment 422DA in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, aims to prevent any challenges in court on these matters. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, summed up the Government’s objection, and I support what he said. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, re-emphasised those points, and I do not wish to add to what he said. As the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, might expect me to say, I cannot comment on an existing, live, legal examination of the Government’s reasons for that proscription. Irrespective of that, the amendment in the noble Lord’s name would remove all avenues of challenge, including those currently available under the Act. I do not believe that the Home Secretary should have unrivalled powers, even though, in this case, there is an ongoing court case, so I cannot accept the noble Lord’s amendment. Amendment 422 aims to ensure that individuals can be arrested and convicted for active conduct before a group is deproscribed. Again, the position is clear: even after a group is deproscribed,...
Amendment 422A from the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, would apply to the offences concerning support for the display of articles et cetera under Sections 12 and 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000 respectively. As I set out in Committee, these amendments, which are broadly the same as those tabled in Committee, would limit these important offences in such a way that they would become largely unusable in practice. The additional requirement for a superintendent to authorise an arrest would also be disproportionate and would take independent operational decisions out of the hands of the police, which is their proper responsibility. Despite the slight change in drafting, the amendment would still undermine the objectives of our proscription offences, particularly Section 12.
To be clear, going back to the points the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, made, those who want to oppose the proscription order can do so. There is nothing wrong with and nothing preventing anybody standing in Parliament Square and saying, “I oppose the proscription of Palestine Action”. There is nothing at all in the order we took through that says that somebody cannot stand in Parliament Square and say, “I support Palestine” or “I oppose Israel”. But when the test is put in place, as it is under the Act, of what proscription is, and Governments have that information put in front of them, we have a duty to put that before the House and to defend it.
I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, that there was a long debate in the House of Commons and a long debate in this House, and at the end of those debates, both Houses voted in favour of the proscription order for Palestine Action. I will reflect on what has been said, but I suggest that, had they been split up, there still would have been a vote on Palestine Action and there may well have been another vote on the other two orders lumped in with that. But we will reflect on that issue.
Amendment 422B from the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, supported by the noble Lord Strasburger, would create a statutory requirement both for the provision of a statement of reasons for making the proscription order to the Intelligence and Security Committee and for the committee to publish a report ahead of proscription being made. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, also supported that proposal. Let me explain why I cannot.
I have already commented in Committee on our engagement with the Intelligence and Security Committee. I served on that committee for five years, and I know the access to information it gets. I know that it can interrogate the security services, and it can hold Ministers to account. But it does so sometimes in private, with all its sessions private. Its reports are considered in private because the information to which it has access is the same confidential information that is put before Ministers of the Crown in making these decisions. I say to the noble Viscount with all due respect that requiring the committee to consider these matters and produce a report, potentially, before the Government can make a decision is, frankly, a bit too bureaucratic and potentially slow in its approach to the decisions the Government might have to take.
All matters that the Intelligence and Security Committee can review are always open to public discussion. It can produce a report post-proscription should it wish-we are open to that-and it can examine the information provided to Ministers. But I suggest that that pre-consideration would be a slower procedure, so I cannot accept the noble Viscount’s amendment.
Finally, turning to Amendment 422C, I am grateful that we now have the ability of thought transference between the opposition Front Bench and the government Front Bench: the noble Lord has anticipated the arguments I will deploy. We do keep proscription under review. We are always looking at the Iranian regime, and we are already taking actions against it. We have sanctioned 550 individuals and entities, and we have placed Iran on the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme. We have taken action, even now, in the ongoing conflict, to support British interests against the Iranian regime.
We keep proscription under review, but if I again take the noble Lord’s amendment, it would commit us to doing what we do already, so I cannot accept it. I recognise the feeling in the House on proscription. It is a long-standing practice-including for the previous Government-that we do not comment on proscription. As ever, I am open to be challenged and for the Government to be held to account at this Dispatch Box. We will take forward additionally a whole series of recommendations from Jonathan Hall KC to develop a new state threat proscription-like power; we are looking now at how we do that. It will enhance our powers to disrupt state and state-linked organisations, but I say to the noble Lord that I cannot support the amendments that he has put forward for the very reasons that he knows and that he articulated.
I have tried to be at least helpful on Report in acknowledging the points that my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti has brought forward. I hope that she will withdraw her amendment, based on those words of encouragement, but I say to the House as a whole that I cannot support any of these amendments from noble Lords on Report tonight.
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their approach to such an important debate, in particular those who made a special effort to be succinct with the long night ahead. I remind noble Lords that my amendment on one organisation per order is not about Palestine Action; it is about procedure and constitutional safeguards for the future. I am very grateful for the way in which my noble friend the Minister responded differently from the response in Committee. I am hugely encouraged by what he said. He has very graciously offered to go back to his colleagues in the Home Office and think again on this. I feel that I have to respond in kind by encouraging him to do just that, as he has so graciously offered. I so believe in the power of our argument on Amendment 420 that, when he has those discussions, I believe he will feel able to come back with a government amendment following Report. If he is not able to do so, having had those discussions, we will see what might be done at Third Reading.
I hope I was clear: I will not be bringing an amendment back at Third Reading, nor can I support the amendment that she brought forward today. I recognise the issue that she has raised and we will examine and discuss that with colleagues in relation to future proscription orders before any House of Parliament.
There we go: I was too optimistic, perhaps. None the less, I believe that my noble friend sees the power of the argument or he would not have said what he has said. There are plenty of ways in which the Home Office might consider doing one organisation per order in the future. In any event, in light of the time, and given that I do not have the support of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition or of the Government-I am grateful to the Liberal Democrats for their support-I will not try the House’s patience with a vote that I cannot win this evening. I will keep nudging my noble friend the Minister and beg leave to withdraw.
Amendment 420 withdrawn.
Amendments 421 and 422 not moved.
Amendment 422A
Tabled by
422A: After Clause 207, insert the following new Clause- “Support for terrorism: intention(1) The Terrorism Act 2000 is amended as follows.(2) In section 12 (support) after subsection (4), insert-“(4A) A person is not guilty of an offence under this section unless the conduct alleged was done by that person with the intent of encouraging, inciting, facilitating or enabling another to commit an act of terrorism.” (3) In section 13 (uniform and publication of images), after subsection (1B), insert-“(1C) A person is not guilty of an offence under this section unless the conduct alleged was done by that person with the intent of encouraging, inciting, facilitating or enabling another to commit an act of terrorism.”(4) Subject to subsection (5) a person may not be arrested in respect of an offence alleged to have been committed under sections 12 and 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000, unless that arrest has been authorised by a police officer of the rank of superintendent or above.(5) When determining whether to authorise the arrest under subsection (4), that police officer must have regard to the provisions of sections 12(4A) and 13(1C) of that Act.(6) Subject to subsection (7), subsections (4) and (5) of this section shall not apply where an arrest has not been authorised by a police officer of the rank of superintendent or above, but a police officer, having regard to the urgency or gravity of the relevant circumstances, reasonably believes that it is necessary to arrest a person in...
I am very grateful for the support of the Liberal Democrat Benches, but for a similar reason to that advanced by the noble Baroness, I am not going to trouble the House by seeking to divide.
Amendment 422A not moved.
Amendment 422B not moved.
Amendment 422C
Moved by
422C: After Clause 207, insert the following new Clause- “Proscription status of Iran-related entities: review(1) The Secretary of State must, within one month of the date on which this Act is passed, review whether any organisations related to the Iranian government should be proscribed under section 3 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (proscription).(2) The Secretary of State must publish the outcome of the review under subsection (1), and this must include the reasons for the Secretary of State’s decision.”
My Amendment 422C seeks a review of the proscription status of Iran-related entities within one month of the date on which the Act is passed. As I said previously and re-emphasise, it is clear to everyone that the situation now is radically different from the situation even last year, and on that basis I think we have a duty to protect people and I therefore seek the opinion of the House.
Amendment 422D
Moved by
422D: After Clause 207, insert the following new Clause- “AI chatbots: content promoting terrorist and national security offences(1) It is an offence to create, supply, or otherwise make available an AI chatbot which produces content specified in subsection (2).(2) Content is covered by this section if it is content which--(a) produces language promoting, or tactics or target selection for, terrorist offences or real world violence,(b) threatens national security, or(c) encourages activity which threatens public safety.(3) It is an offence to create, supply, or otherwise make available an AI chatbot which has not been risk assessed for the possibility of producing content specified in subsection (2).(4) Where a provider of a chatbot identifies a risk of the chatbot producing content of the kind set out in subsection (2), it is an offence for a provider of a chatbot not to take steps to mitigate or manage those risks before making the chatbot publicly available.(5) A person who commits an offence under this section is liable-(a) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding the general limit in a magistrates’ court or a fine (or both);(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years or a fine (or both).(6) For the purposes of this Act an “AI chatbot” is a generative AI system, including a deep or large language model, able to generate text, images and other content based on the data on which it was trained, and which has been...
My Lords, I will speak to all the amendments in this group in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Clement-Jones, the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan. I will first speak briefly to government Amendment 429B, which will give a power to the Secretary of State to bring forward regulations that could, in the future and at the discretion of the Secretary of State, ensure that chatbots are covered by the Online Safety Act. However, that very broad power is not matched by substance. The amendment does not define a chatbot or deal with the critical fact that, when a child is entrapped by a chatbot, there is nowhere to turn. Currently, the regulator has no duty to deal with individual complaints and the police do not recognise a chatbot as a person, meaning that there is no perpetrator to pursue. The amendment also fails to address harms to children. In fact, it explicitly deals only with “illegal” harms. It does not deal with the coercive elements of control or the willingness of chatbots to plan many crimes, in addition to the crimes themselves. The government amendment also has nothing to say about enforcement. Taken together, it simply adds new duties to a system that is already understood to be lacking in speed and effective enforcement. This lack of substance is compounded by a lack of clarity about scope. The amendment’s wording refers to an “internet service that is capable (or part of which is capable) of generating...
I will briefly, because of the time, set out each amendment. Amendment 422D would make it an offence to create, supply or otherwise make available an AI chatbot that produces, promotes or offers advice on violent acts or terrorism or that threatens public safety or national security. Proposed subsections (3) and (4) would establish that it is also an offence to supply a chatbot that has not been risk-assessed for these harms or has failed to mitigate identified risks. It would clarify in law that chatbots rehearsing the scenarios identified by the Center for Countering Digital Hate are simply not acceptable in the UK.
Amendment 433 would make it an offence to supply a chatbot that produces illegal content or content that is harmful to children as defined in the Online Safety Act. Proposed subsections (2), (5), (6) and (7) would require risk assessments to be conducted, including assessing for the specific risks mentioned and red-teaming, and kept up to date. They include added requirements to assess the risk of companion chatbots coercing or deliberately creating dependence through addictive design, manipulation, sycophancy or harmful features. They clarify what a sufficient risk assessment looks like.
Amendment 434 would clarify that suppliers of chatbots that commit offences under Amendments 422D and 433 could be subject to Ofcom’s enforcement powers if they are regulated services under the Act. Amendment 435 would attribute legal responsibility to senior individuals within a company that commits an offence under both the offences. People who profit from rolling out untested, unsafe products must be made accountable. Until Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk or their senior colleagues share some of the burden for ensuring safety, we will always struggle to see meaningful change.
Amendment 436 would set out reasonable defences so that it is never an offence to test a chatbot or enforce against one. Critically, Amendment 437 would establish that where there is a serious and imminent risk of serious harm, an individual can appeal to the court for injunctive relief, which could include a court ordering a chatbot supplier to halt its service temporarily. With this provision, if a parent believed their child was being groomed by a chatbot, they would finally have somewhere to go.
Together, these amendments start to tackle the issue of chatbots head-on. It took more than a decade for the world to wake up to the early warnings we made about social media. Let us not do that again. We know how this story ends: it always ends with the loss of a child or with harm to the bodies and mental health of the young and the vulnerable. We cannot wait, we must not wait and we should not pretend that waiting is neutral.
Also in this group is Amendment 441A. I will not detain the House very long on it. It would merely establish standards for broader AI search services that are also dangerous but not technically chatbots.
I anticipate that the Front Bench will suggest it has already covered this. I hope that the words I have said prove the contrary. I imagine it will say that the drafting is imprecise, that the enforcement is not consistent with the current regime, that we cannot do things by piecemeal and that risk assessments are too burdensome on business-to which I say, after a decade and a half in your Lordships’ House, that the drafting has always been subject to discussion once the principle has been passed and that the current enforcement of the OSA is a cause of frustration for government and parliamentarians alike. So, yes, it is deliberately additive-and, frankly, better-and yes, I would like to start to look at the OSA in the round, but the Secretary of State has made it utterly clear that that is not where she is at.
The current consultation is so poorly conceived that it does not even deal with enforcement, which is the central problem of the current regime. Let us not allow better to be the enemy of best. None of us in this House wants to be standing here in the weeks and months ahead mourning the death of a child from an act of violence, knowing that we could have acted but did not when we had the chance. I beg to move.
Baroness Owen of Alderley Edge
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 422D and 433 to 437. I fully support the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. Her arguments have been entirely backed up by the release only today of the report entitled Invisible No More : How AI Chatbots Are Reshaping Violence Against Women and Girls by Durham University and Swansea University. The research identifies the range of design choices and failures in safety mechanisms that enable, encourage, simulate and normalise violence against women and girls. The report found that fantasies of incest and rape were normalised, and one chatbot, Chub AI, suggested violent rape and domestic abuse as categories. I reiterate the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, about the long and bureaucratic path to business disruption measures, meaning that harm continues to perpetuate as our system is not agile enough to tackle these rapidly evolving issues. I wish to pay tribute to Professor Clare McGlynn KC for her work co-authoring this ground-breaking report and emphasise the warning she made in today’s Times newspaper. She said: “Chatbot violence against women represents a rapidly escalating threat. Without early intervention, these harms risk becoming entrenched and scaling quickly, mirroring what happened with deepfake and nudify apps, where early warnings were largely ignored. We must not make the same mistakes again”. Professor McGlynn and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, once again demonstrate their ability to warn against these emerging...
My Lords, I support Amendment 422D and the consequential Amendments 434 to 437, to which I have added my name. In Amendment 429B the Government have gone far to respond to concerns over AI-generated harms, but this amendment, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has said, gives enormous powers to the Secretary of State to decide the shape of how AI-generated services are controlled in this country. The Minister knows there is concern across the House about exposing this central part of the new tech economy to what are effectively unfettered ministerial powers. Very few noble Lords want to support a skeleton amendment like this. Government Amendment 429B gives the Secretary of State the right to amend, which is defined later as including the right to “repeal and apply (with or without modifications)”. This applies to all of Part 3 of the Online Safety Act illegal content duties in relation to AI services. Parliament will not even have an option to amend regulations on this issue. Proposed new subsection (1) in this amendment seems like a big deal to me, and the noble Lord should be very concerned. The intention seems to be that the basis of the existing regime in Part 3 will be used, but we do not know how the Secretary of State will decide to adapt that regime to fit the particularities of AI services that generate illegal content. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, pointed out, that goes a long way beyond AI services designed to mimic humans and human conversations, which...
My Lords, I support all the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I will speak to Amendment 433. Worryingly, children are increasingly turning to AI chatbots for all facets of their everyday lives. For many, gone are the days of independent, creative or critical thinking. While chatbots can help children to explore and better understand their world, there are far too many shocking cases of children receiving harmful information and becoming emotionally dependent on these platforms. As it stands, AI chatbots risk becoming the latest example of an online product that has been rolled out without the right safety guardrails in place, and children are bearing the brunt. It is as if their well-being and mental health are not important. I can hear the AI developers thinking among themselves: “Who cares? It’s only children”. Well, we should care. Childline is hearing more and more from children who are being harmed on these platforms, with cases of false mental health diagnoses, information on how to restrict diets, and the formation of emotional relationships between children and chatbots. In increasingly concerning cases, children who have experienced abuse are told by chatbots that what they experienced was not abuse. These platforms cannot be allowed to give children harmful and misleading safeguarding advice that could prevent them speaking to trusted adults or organisations such as Childline. The Government’s action to expand the scope of the Online Safety...
My Lords, I also support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and others, and thank them all most warmly. They seem to me appropriately comprehensive and detailed. I have been following the developments in chatbots for a year now: they are massive, they are rapid, they are driven by the pursuit of profit and shareholder value, and not by the welfare of individuals, whether adults or children. There is a tsunami of harm coming towards us, affecting not only the most vulnerable but the whole of our society. We urgently need this kind of regulation and risk assessment for chatbots. The comprehensiveness and detail in these amendments are simply the application of the precautionary principle to the development of new technology. Technology should not be unleashed on the world if it has the capacity to break people, to do harm and to infringe on personal liberty and well-being. We do not allow harmful technological developments without adequate safety standards in any other area. It is unthinkable that a car would be released into the public if it was at risk of harming them. Similarly, you would not put people on an aeroplane if there were a significant risk of harm. You would not even buy a washing machine if it could bring harm in your kitchen. Yet chatbots are released on the world to be experienced, in private, by young children, with all the ensuing damage. It is vital that this strengthening is put in place, and that it is put in place urgently. I...
My Lords, for the reasons that have been so excellently given already and, in view of the time, I support all the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron.
My Lords, I will also try to be brief. I completely support everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, has said. I would like to draw out two arguments that have been made to me today as to why her amendments should not be supported and explain why they are wrong. The first argument is that we should wait for an overarching AI Bill. We will be waiting for a very long time. Those of us who have worked in trying to regulate social media for the last 15 years know that we must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I wholeheartedly reject that argument. The second argument that has been made to me today-and I find this astonishing-is that the risk assessment is overly burdensome. We are regularly told that generative AI is one of the world’s most transformational technologies. That means it is capable of enormous good and enormous harm. The risk assessment in Amendment 433 is simply asking that the makers of these chatbots identify and understand the risks of harm-that does not seem overly burdensome to me. Further, it asks that the risk assessment “is kept up-to-date … takes … account … of the Online Safety Act … assesses the risks to equality of treatment of individuals … assesses the risks to … privacy … assesses the risks … from the choice of underlying models, data sets …and … is in an easily understandable written format”. I really struggle to understand how that could be overly burdensome. In fact, I would argue the absolute opposite: it is the basic...
I will speak briefly to this group of amendments. I also support what the right reverend Prelate said about not letting loose a car or medicine, and food gets checked by the FSA. I think we could all be forgiven for thinking that maybe the Government care a lot more about the money that comes from Silicon Valley than about the citizens of this country.
My Lords, I speak from the Labour Benches and first congratulate the Minister on listening to the debates we had in Committee. I thank him very much for bringing forward an amendment which is as close as I have seen this Government move to try and patch up some of the problems we are facing but, as I am going to say later, I am afraid I do not think it goes far enough. I have said in this House before, and I will say it again, that we have been outpaced by technology in this area-“chatbot” was not even a word, I think, at the time that we finally passed the Online Safety Act. The harm which has been described so graphically today in the speeches we have heard so far was unthinkable in those days. We have really opened up a torrent of problems which we did not know we were trying to solve at the time that Bill went through, even though we were proud of the Bill when it happened. Today, we at least have the benefit of two good choices about how to take this forward. The Minister has brought forward an amendment that deals with the issue but, unfortunately, to my mind, it does not go in the right direction, and I want to explain a bit about why that is the case. The problem we are facing constantly with the Online Safety Act is that what is in the wording of the primary legislation is at variance with the way in which it is interpreted and implemented by the regulator. There are good reasons for that, which we do not need to go into today, but a gap has emerged between that...
My Lords, I will be very brief. When it comes to assessing risk to children, a plastic bath duck has better risk assessment than AI chatbots. I fully support my noble friend’s amendments.
My Lords, I support the amendments in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and others; I commend them on bringing them forward. Social media companies have captured our children’s attention, and now AI chatbots are coming for their affection-and worse. In legislating against harms caused by technology, we are always going to be playing catch-up, but we need to learn quickly to play catch-up much faster. These amendments offer us the opportunity to do that, and we should seize it.
My Lords, brevity is the order of the day but, like some of my noble friends, I would like to add my support to the amendments that have been laid before your Lordships’ House by my noble friend Lady Kidron. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I have the privilege of chairing, is currently conducting an inquiry into AI and human rights. We have concluded our evidence taking, and I commend to your Lordships the evidence given by, in particular, Google, Meta and Microsoft. I also highlight some of the concerns that have been raised around child safety. My noble friend Lady Kidron gave me, the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, and others the opportunity to meet the parents of Sewell Setzer. It was an extraordinary moment. He was a 14 year-old boy who took his own life because he had been befriended by a chatbot. I was struck by a report from Internet Matters that said that two-thirds of UK children aged between nine and 17 have used AI chatbots, with many engaging often. More than a third-35%-of them say that it is like talking to a friend; that figure rises to 50% among vulnerable children. It is the obligation of your Lordships’ House to take this issue seriously. We should all be greatly indebted to my noble friend Lady Kidron for laying these amendments before us.
My Lords, I oppose government Amendment 429B in this group. I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union. Like my noble friends, I will try to be brief. As several noble Lords have already pointed out, this amendment would grant the Secretary of State at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology sweeping Henry VIII powers at a very late stage in our consideration of the Bill, thus giving this House far too little time to scrutinise them. Subsection (1) of proposed new Section 216A would grant the Secretary of State the power to “by regulations amend any provision of this Act”- the Online Safety Act- “for or in connection with the purposes of minimising or mitigating the risks of harm to individuals in the United Kingdom presented by” among other things, “illegal AI-generated content”. That will presumably include content that breaches Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, meaning that it is grossly offensive. This can include memes. In 2024, a man called Lee Dunn was sentenced to eight weeks in jail for reposting three “grossly offensive” memes on Facebook, having pleaded guilty to a Section 127 offence. How will Ofcom monitor whether AI chatbots are generating grossly offensive content? Will the Secretary of State use the powers granted to her by this amendment to insist that spyware is installed on personal computers and mobile phones? Perhaps your Lordships consider that too remote a risk, but what about requiring technology companies...
The risk of harm that we should be concerned about when it comes to this amendment is not the risk posed by AI chatbots, but the risks to the citizens of this country imposed by granting the Secretary of State these sweeping, open-ended, extraordinarily broad Henry VIII powers.
My Lords, I rise again to support the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, as I did the other day. It says on her Wikipedia page that she is “an advocate for children’s rights in the digital world”. She is right, and I hope that all Members across the House who have actually heard the debate will support her in the Lobby.
My Lords, many noble Lords who have spoken today also spoke quite vehemently about the dangers of the theft of copyright in AI. We were asking to shut the stable door before the horse bolted. Today we heard from the Government, and it is very welcome news that they are looking again at the theft of copyright and seeing if they can protect artists, musicians and writers still further. I say once again, let us move with my noble friend’s amendment before the horse bolts and let us shut the stable door now.
My Lords, I will be brief. I entirely support the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, on all her amendments. What I would say to the Government about their own amendment is that I have just had what I suppose is the privilege-although it sometimes seemed quite lengthy-of being a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, and I can tell noble Lords that the quality of much secondary legislation is lamentable, varying by department. A lack of preparation, of any Explanatory Memorandum explaining anything relevant, and of any impact assessment whatsoever, is extremely frequent. In the last year, we have had several secondary instruments relating directly to the Online Safety Act, none of which has been particularly impressive, and some of which have been debated on the Floor of this House-my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones will be well aware of that. We have expressed our displeasure at the way in which this has been brought forward and explained. All of us on the Cross Benches remember the late, lamented Lord Igor Judge. What he would think about a Government of this political hue bringing forward Henry VIII powers, to the power of 10, I cannot even imagine. If he is up there, he will be smiling wryly but he will not be impressed. My only other point is rather strange. His Majesty’s occasionally loyal Opposition were extremely good at bringing in a variety of legislation which had a lot of Henry VIII powers. They have suddenly had a conversion on the road to Damascus,...
My Lords, I express from these Benches our very strong support for these comprehensive amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, which she has characteristically introduced so well and to which so many noble Lords have spoken so eloquently in support. I also want to express our concerns regarding the Government’s proposed alternative, Amendment 429B. In this group, we confront digital harm that is not incidental but engineered by design. AI chatbots are no longer a futuristic curiosity but deeply embedded the lives of our children. They are designed not merely as tools but as confidantes, mentors, companions and, in some cases, explicit romantic partners. Their anthropomorphic features create dangerous emotional dependency. Without statutory safeguards, these bots can provide explicit information on how to self-harm. This is not a flaw but a design feature that drives engagement, and we cannot allow the generative power of AI to become a generator of despair. We are not debating theoretical risks, as many noble Lords have said today. We are debating the forces that led to the tragic deaths of Sewell Setzer III, mentioned by a number of noble Lords, and Adam Raine, in the United States. Their families are pursuing legal action in the US on the basis that deceptively designed, inadequately safeguarded chatbots can be treated as defective products, and that developers should bear full legal liability when systems encourage, facilitate or fail to interrupt a user’s...
My Lords, both the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the Government are trying to solve the same problem, but with different solutions. I have to say that I find both solutions wanting. I feel that the position I see solidifying in the House is that we must accept either the Government’s amendment or the noble Baroness’s amendment, that something must be done and that this is binary, and I am not sure that I can accept that. I commend the aims of the noble Baroness’s campaign and I hope that we can find some common ground, but I have a number of questions about her amendments. The approach that the noble Baroness has taken in her Amendments 422D and 433 is to create criminal offences for a person to create or even supply an AI chatbot that produces a selection of prohibited content. That would place criminal penalties on individuals who are involved in the creation of such a chatbot. The Online Safety Act applies civil penalties when companies violate the regulations: the companies are fined by Ofcom if they allow prohibited content to be published on their platform. These amendments would apply criminal sanctions punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment, but who is liable for these criminal penalties? Is it the software engineer who developed the chatbot? Is it the employee who presses the “publish” button that brings the AI online? Is it the senior management team who oversaw it, or the investors who commissioned it? Is it the CEO of the whole company? It is not clear...
My Lords, I shall start by saying something that needs saying. The Government believe in protecting the public, especially children, from online content, which is why we have tabled the amendments on illegal online content today.
In response to questions, pressures, discussions and amendments brought forward in this House by noble Lords in Committee, the Government have also recognised that issues such as Grok and others have been of serious concern and require government action. That is why, as a matter of urgency, I have tabled the amendment on behalf of the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Science of Technology today, why we want to establish further regulatory framework of the Online Safety Act, and why we want to push forward very strongly with that Act, to include harmful AI-generated content as part of its strong foundation to keep users safe. Because technologies and online environments are evolving, it is essential that we keep these matters under constant review.
The generation and dissemination of non-consensual sexual deepfakes by such organisations as Chatbox and Grok demonstrate the real-world importance of having a coherent regulatory framework. While the Online Safety Act already regulates many generative AI services, some AI chatbots fall outside the scope due to technicalities in their design, such as drawing responses solely from an underlying model rather than the live internet or lacking user-to-user content-sharing functionality. This uneven coverage risks leaving users exposed to illegal harms and services open to criminal exploitation. I say today from the Dispatch Box that the Government are committed to removing this ambiguity and ensuring that services such as Grok are totally regulated. That is why we brought forward Amendment 429B, to ensure that we have a regulation-making power.
Some people have criticised that regulation-making power; it is a fair point to make, but I say to them that we will consult on it and we will look at what the scope of that power is. It will be for affirmative resolution in both Houses of Parliament, where it can be rejected-and, in practice, it means that we have to look at a complex area, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, has recognised, to ensure that we frame this power broadly, because the AI landscape is complex and fast-moving. There is no stable technological line that separates one category of chatbot from another, and we intend to focus on those chatbots. Flexibility is essential to ensure the emerging services are there.
I have listened to the debate, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for initiating it. I had a chance to talk to her again, online, on Friday last week to again put the Government’s position again. I note that she has been supported by many noble Lords today, including the noble Baroness, Lady Owen of Alderley Edge, the noble Viscount, Lord Colville of Culross, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool. For different reasons than the noble Baroness wishes to have in the first place, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, has poked a hole in the Government’s approach. There is a different approach to that, and if they find themselves in the same Lobby against the Government’s amendment, they will be doing great harm to it.
I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Nash; we have had discussions with him about how we stop illegal content. I will also mention the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford and the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, who has been sending me emails even today to help me to understand his concerns-and I appreciate that. I will also mention the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Benjamin, Lady Harding, Lady Cass and Lady Boycott, my noble friend Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton. They have all supported in principle the approach taken by the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, with subtle differences in why they oppose the Government’s approach. What I would say to all those noble Lords is that we have in front of us a government amendment that will allow the Government to consider this matter in a serious way, to bring forward regulations approved by both Houses of Parliament and to make sure that we consult on those issues seriously.
Amendments 422D, 433 and 438, together with the noble Baroness’s other amendments, seek to create a new criminal framework for AI chatbots. They would establish new offences for creating, supplying or making available chatbots capable of generating illegal terrorist and other content and would provide that suppliers of chatbots that generate illegal content, as defined by the OSA, be deemed to have committed an offence and to be criminalised. These offences would carry penalties of up to five years’ imprisonment and would be linked into the Online Safety Act. I recognise the intent behind those, but the offences would criminalise individuals without requiring intent or knowledge and treat risk assessment and mitigation as a defence, which I think is of concern.
We are also concerned about the threshold set by Amendment 422D, which, although framed in counterterrorism terms, sets an extremely low threshold. It, in effect, criminalises the provision or supply of a chatbot service capable of generating content promoting low level or even legal violence, such as a boxing match. Is that the noble Baroness’s intention? Linking such offences directly to the Online Safety Act blurs the boundary between criminal and regulatory regimes. Crucially, these proposed new offences would apply only to UK-based companies and would not address overseas companies, which is an area we wish to examine seriously in our regulatory framework.
The definition of “chatbot” as set out in the noble Baroness’s amendments, raises significant practical concerns. This is a complex area and it is essential that we get it right. This is why the government amendment is very deliberately drawn broadly and why we consider it essential to engage with subject matter experts to ensure that we get the right type of service. That is not, I say to the noble Baroness, kicking the can down the line; it is about making sure that we close these regulatory gaps as a matter of urgency, but do so in a way that manages this effectively.
Amendment 437 aims to create a new civil right for individuals not to be subjected to serious harm by chatbot content. Again, the intention is understandable, but the amendment raises key practical and legal concerns.
Amendment 441A would create a new criminal offence for providers of generative AI search services where their systems allow illegal content. As with earlier amendments, this is an honourable intention, but it is the Government’s view that it is disproportionate and would not be as effective as delivering the protections in the proposed government amendments before the House today.
I firmly believe that regulation is the best means to address the risk of services unintentionally generating illegal content, which is why we have tabled Amendment 429B, so that the Government can close the gaps and ensure regulatory compliance. I say to the noble Baroness that I want us to make a difference. The Prime Minister, the DSIT Secretary and the Home Secretary have said publicly-and I speak for the Government today to say publicly-that we want to close these issues in an effective way. To do that, we need a consultation and we need to draft some guidelines. Yes, they would come before this House in a Henry VIII package, but they are there to be supported or rejected by both Houses of Parliament.
I will just answer the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. I hope I have already reassured the House that we will consult on the approach to the regulations. This is a technically complex area and the regulations must be targeted, proportionate and fit for purpose. I welcome greater scrutiny and I welcome consultation on what should be in those regulations while they are being developed. That is important.
The noble Lord also mentioned mandatory supply chain transparency. I agree with him that transparency is an essential part of any effective regulatory framework. It will be a core feature of the Online Safety Act and we will seek to replicate the Act’s existing provisions for any new services brought into scope. Under the Act, Ofcom has strong information-gathering powers and it places transparency at the heart of its duties on services. The powers allow Ofcom to request information, including in real time, as well as to enter premises and seize and access documentation, data and equipment. I give the noble Lord that assurance here today.
The noble Lord also raised the mental element gap on illegal AI content. I reassure him that we recognise that relying on the traditional mens rea concept does not work well for AI-generated illegal content. This has been a specific concern and the power has been intentionally designed so that we are able to address this in our consultation and discussions downstream.
The noble Lord mentioned defining “access control” across the AI chain. Clarity-this again goes to the noble Baroness’s points-about where the legal responsibility sits for these AI chatbots is essential. One of our concerns with the noble Baroness’s amendments is that they are not clear about which actors across the supply chain are criminally liable. By contrast-I hope this helps the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, in determining what he does in the event of a vote being called-the Online Safety Act is clear that responsibility rests with the regulated service provider and the entity that has the relationship with the end user. In addition, senior management liability is limited to clearly defined individuals.
On altering provisions for non-AI services, I say to the noble Lord that this power is tightly constrained and can be exercised only for the purposes of minimising or mitigating risks arising from illegal AI-generated content. It is not the Government’s intention for this power to be used to amend duties on non-AI services, and we do not believe it can be used in that way. I hope that has answered the points he raised.
I accept and understand that there is a clear choice here for the House and that there may be a Division. I think this House has a unified approach to wanting to stop the illegal chatbots that are causing the damage that Members have mentioned. It is unacceptable. The Prime Minister, the DSIT Secretary, the Home Secretary and I, on behalf of the Government, are saying that our amendments are a mechanism to make sure we get that right with regulation through consultation and that we bring forward proposals, which I remind the House it can reject. I suggest that the noble Baroness gives us that breathing space to ensure that we do that in a proper and effective way, and I urge the House to support the Government’s amendments. I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw hers.
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his words and his roll-call of that incredible list of speakers who supported the amendments. That was a wonderful list of people from all sides of the House, who did indeed have slightly varying reasons to support the amendment, but they were all positive. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and his Benches for their unequivocal support. I believe that the Opposition Benches are allowing a free vote this evening, and I really hope that they will use their free vote freely. I will address a couple of details, just for the record. First, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that it is a binary, I am afraid, because either we have the Government’s amendment, which has no proper scope-it will be subject to all sorts of changes on the way-no oversight, no time limit and no scrutiny, or we have something that I have made very clear that I am willing to work with both sides of the House to perfect in the next few weeks. Secondly, I say to the Minister that the Online Safety Act and the enforcement process we currently have has, so far, by civil penalty, put forward one fine of £55,000. That is where we are, and there is nothing in this government amendment or the consultation about online safety that deals with the problem of enforcement. Finally, on the points that were made, we are talking about one person in one department having absolute power to change absolutely everything that eight years of debate in this House, two years of...
Consideration on Report adjourned until not before 8.36 pm.