Posted by racingsnake
@ 10:47 AM GMT+00:00
03 Nov · Thu 2005
Physical security wins vote for Blair
Home Secretary Charles Clarke is now having to review his anti-terror law proposals after significant opposition in the House of Commons united Libertal Democrats, Conservatives and some Labour MPs. Two of the proposals were due for a vote: the proposal to create an offence of 'glorifying terrorism', and the proposal for detention for up to 90 days without charge.
When the first of these passed by the narrowest possible margin, 300 votes to 299, Clarke asked for a vote on the 90-day measure to be postponed by a week, presumably calculating that it was most likely to be voted down.
These two comments come from the Guardian newspaper:
"Charles Clarke, the home secretary, was forced to grant the concession or face the possibility of the first defeat for a government since 1995. Hazel Blears, minister of state for policing and security, had earlier had to offer to redraft the clause on glorifying or encouraging terrorism as it became clear that even such loyalist MPs as former Home Office minister John Denham were going to rebel. David Winnick, the Labour backbencher who had tabled the amendment which some thought might defeat the government --- extending detention to a compromise period of 28 days --- promised to withdraw it after Mr Clarke offered to hold urgent all-party talks on the issue over the next week."
And when all else fails, blame it on the European Union:
"Ms Blears (Home Office Minister) defended the measure by insisting that Britain had to introduce the new offences of indirect support for terrorism to comply with a new anti-terrorism convention agreed through the Council of Europe.
She offered to look at redrafting the clause making it possible to be prosecuted even if the person did not know they were encouraging terrorism."
Some concession... so the proposals would, until re-drafted, make it possible for someone to be prosecuted even without an intent to offend? That seems to me to break yet another fundamental legal principle, that of mens rea, which is the requirement to prove that the accused actually intended the crime to happen (the prosecution must also prove actus rea; that the crime did take place).
It seems absolutely right to me that a bill drafted so as to remove the need to prove mens rea should be thrown out. I also think it is legitimate to ask what on earth was the mens rea of the drafters? Did they really intend to override that legal principle, or was this incompetent drafting?
Today's "irony or conspiracy" footnote:
Apparently, it later emerged that the single missing vote could have been that of Liberal Democrat Vince Cable, who had stepped away from the chamber in order to meet some lobbyists who had been caught up at security. He himself was then unable to return to the chamber in time to vote. It is safe to assume that as a Liberal Democrat he would have voted against the proposal.
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