Sir Jeremy Wright

We need to be clear about which provisions relate to which offences. The offence that I think the Minister has heard concern expressed about, and to which amendment 3 relates, is the offence under proposed new section 17A of the National Security Act 2023—in other words, the offence of supporting a designated organisation. The provisions that relate to protections for those who are acting on behalf of the UK state apply to the other two offences, not to the 17A offence, do they not? The Minister is of course right that there is a difference between the way in which the UK state needs to interact with another state entity and the way in which it needs to interact with a terrorist entity, but these offences relate to individuals not to states or, indeed, the designated body. We are talking about offences that might be charged against individuals who are themselves accused of supporting that designated body. Is not the point here—the point has been made several times—that we are setting up an additional hurdle in order to prosecute successfully for an offence of supporting a designated body? As the Minister heard me say on Second Reading, what I am concerned to understand is why that is not duplication, in effect, of the designation process itself, which distinguishes an innocent, perfectly rational state body from one that is up to no good for all the ways described in the designation process. Why do we need the prohibited purposes test in addition to the designation process?