Clause 2 - Request for arrest and surrender
International Criminal Court Bill [Lords]
12:30 pm
Mr John Battle (Minister of State, Foreign & Commonwealth Office; Leeds West, Labour)
I apologise, Mr. Cook. I tend to look at those who made the comments and speak to them rather than address the Chair. I have not become accustomed to the arcane practices of the House. I hope that you do not take that comment as a criticism of the Chair and our proceedings. I apologise for not addressing the Chair.
It is unusual that the hon. Member for Reigate allowed so many interventions in his speech. He was generous in that respect. He said that he was in favour of the court and wanted it to work as a successful and important institution. We received an unequivocal statement from him and one that was rather less forthright from the hon. Member for Aldershot, when he was pressed by one of my hon. Friends.
That aside, however, the hon. Member for Reigate made another important remark, which was that we are not renegotiating the statute in the Bill. We cannot start from somewhere else. We are where we are in terms of the make-up of the International Criminal Court. He accepted that in good faith. We have moved on from clause 1 and are now debating clause 2, which is about the operation of the court. We are concerned only with the request for the arrest and surrender and handing over of people. We have discussed the size of the population of the member states. We did not discuss their GDP and the possibility of weighting.
We have also discussed the complexities of an international body appointing judges and a court. Reference has been made to the pre-trial chamber and to the job description of the prosecutor. They are all relevant themes and it is important that we discuss them at this stage in our proceedings. They will be echoed in future discussions, but it is important that we regard them as central to the purpose of setting up the institution.
The hon. Member for Reigate kept putting flags down and then later on he changed metaphor to sticking a stake in the ground. To push his analogy a little further, his amendments would drive a stake right through the heart of the International Criminal Court. They would constitute a massive let-out clause. We made clear on Second Reading and in some of our earlier debates in Committee that the United Kingdom will have the primary right to investigate here in Britain any allegation against any UN national.
That is the starting point. In other words, the International Criminal Court could step in only if we were found to be unwilling or unable to investigate such matters. In a telling intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy) underlined the words ``unwilling or unable''. They are crucial. It is important to emphasise that, if we in the United Kingdom decided not to prosecute after undertaking a genuine investigation, the ICC would not take jurisdiction. I accept that my response is more of a ``what if'' answer, but it means that the situation envisaged in the amendment of there being an ICC warrant for an arrest of a United Kingdom national would not arise.