Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)

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, and there was no underhand purpose in doing that. As I said to the Committee at the time, multiple organisations have routinely been proscribed at the same time, according to the circumstances of the time. That is my “We’ve always done it this way” defence, but we have in fact always done things this way, under every political party in government to date. There will be instances in future when it is again necessary for organisations to be packaged together for a proscription debate. I understand the purpose of the point made by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti. I have discussed this matter with my colleagues who deal with these matters in the House of Commons. I want to reflect on it, but I ask my noble friend to allow us the time to do so, because I do not believe that such legislation should tie the hands of the Government in how they approach proscription. Let us reflect on these sensible points in order to allow a single debate and independent votes. I will leave it at that for the moment.