Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will commission an assessment of the effect on civil liberties of current statutory definitions of terrorism and the proportionality and necessity of the range of those definitions.

The UK definition of terrorism is contained in section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Safeguards are built in to our legislation. The police and the Crown Prosecution Service are required to ensure that prosecutions are only pursued in appropriate cases, where there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to do so.

David Anderson QC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, has made four specific recommendations in respect of the definition in his most recent Annual Report on the Operation of the Terrorism Acts in 2013, which was laid in Parliament on 22nd July. We are currently considering these in detail and will respond in due course.