Clause 37 - Revocation and suspension of a travel restriction order
Criminal Justice and Police Bill
3:45 pm
Mr Charles Clarke (Minister of State, Home Office; Norwich South, Labour)
The clause sets out the circumstances in which a person who is made the subject of a travel restriction order will be able to apply to the court for suspension or revocation of the order. Those are quite separate provisions and it may help if I explain the distinction.
Suspension is to cover circumstances where overseas travel is needed for urgent, exceptional, compassionate reasons, whenever that might arise after the travel ban takes effect. The explanatory notes cite the example of the need to travel overseas for urgent medical treatment. Applications for revocation are to cover other circumstances, where the offender wants to apply for the travel restriction to be lifted, such applications to be made after two years in the case of an order made for four years, four years for orders of between four and 10 years duration, and five years in all other cases. Amendments Nos. 165 and 166 deal with applications for temporary suspension, amendments Nos. 163 and 164 to applications for revocation.
I shall deal first with amendment No. 164 for brevity, because I dealt with the relevant arguments during debate on the previous clause. I shall not repeat those arguments, but simply urge the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment once she has had a chance to consider the points that I made.
Amendments Nos. 165 and 166 refer to applications for temporary suspension and would weaken the provision for such applications. Both would lessen the test to be applied by the courts when considering applications for suspension of travel restriction orders. That is unacceptable and would risk undermining the orders. An ''essential'' business appointment overseas—such as the example of a conference in Paris cited by the hon. Lady—might be offered as a reason to justify the suspension of the travel restriction order, and indeed there might be such a meeting or conference. However, that could all too easily provide a simple cover for illegal activities.
Indeed, if we do not make the sort of distinction that the Government have in mind, there would be little point in having separate suspension and revocation mechanisms. A drug trafficker bent on continuing his illegal trade could simply apply to have the order lifted as required, availing himself of sick relatives or urgent business trips as necessary. Under the lesser tests proposed by the amendments, such circumstances might all be reason to grant suspension of the travel restriction order.