The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 (c. 3) is an Act of the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...

. It received Royal assent on 12 February 2019 and came into force on 12 April 2019.

Provisions

Part 1 Counter-Terrorism

Chapter 1: 'Terrorist Offences' makes provision for the amendment of and creation of new terrorist related offences unde
Section 12
of the

Terrorism Act 2000 The Terrorism Act 2000 (c.11) is the first of a number of general Terrorism Acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It superseded and repealed the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989 and the Northern Ireland (Emer ...

. Clause 1 makes it an offence to express an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation in circumstances where the perpetrator is reckless as to whether a person to whom the expression is directed will be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation. This article contains quotations from this source, which is available under th
Open Government Licence v3.0
© Crown copyright. Clause 2 amends Section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000, making it an offence to publish images of: items of clothing or any other article (such as a flag) which would arouse suspicions that the person is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation. Under Section 58 of the

, it is already an offence to download information that is "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism." Clause 3 amends this to include streaming of such material, where it is not stored offline. Section (4) further amends Section 58 (3) of the 2000 Act by adding that it is a reasonable excuse to collect such material if they did not realise the document or record was likely to contain information likely to be used by a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or whether the possession was for the purposes of journalism or academic research.

Part 2 Border security

Part 3 Final provisions

Justification

The act was proposed to address activities of "hostile states". According to the Home Office, "After the spate of terrorist attacks of last year and the deadly nerve agent attack in Salisbury, our intelligence services and police made the case for an update of existing legislation and some new powers to help meet their operational needs and respond to the evolving threats posed by terrorism and hostile state activity." Home Secretary

Sajid Javid Sajid Javid (; born 5 December 1969) is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care from June 2021 to July 2022, having previously served as Home Secretary from 2018 to 2019 and Chancellor of the Exchequer f ...

said, "This important piece of legislation will allow the police and

MI5 The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Go ...

to disrupt threats earlier, and ensure our laws reflect modern use of the internet. It will change existing laws to better manage terrorist offenders and permit more effective investigations."

References