Clause 2 - request for arrest and surrender
International Criminal Court [Lords]
5:45 pm
Mr Des Browne (Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Labour)
I hope that mine will be a relatively short contribution. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough has brought to my attention something that I had not seen in the statute. I shall not support his amendments, which will come as no surprise to him, but he uncovered something that requires an explanation.
As I understand it, clauses 2 and 3 were designed to meet our obligations under article 89. To understand those obligations one must look at other articles of the statute. I do not propose to do that because the hon. and learned Gentleman covered all of those. If I misrepresent him he can intervene to explain where I am wrong, but his argument appears to be that those obligations are qualified in that states parties are obliged to comply with requests for arrests and surrender only in accordance with the provisions of that part of the statute and
``the procedure under their national law''.
That is the important phrase. I think that he is arguing that there is nothing to stop us, as a sovereign state, creating a procedure under our national law that allows a degree of discretion.
Having examined some of the contributions made in the other place I do not think that Baroness Scotland disagrees with that. She chooses her words carefully. She argues that it was not intended that the statute would be operated on a discretionary basis in relation to article 89. That is her interpretation of it. We do not wish to operate it on a discretionary basis. I categorically agree with that and to that extent I agree with the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan).
I cannot think of any circumstances in which we would want to operate this part of the statute on a discretionary basis, if warrants had been properly granted either for the pre-trial procedure or on conviction by the ICC. I sought to test the hon. and learned Member for Harborough by asking him to expand on that part of his argument. I respect his argument, but I do not think that advancing an ad hominem argument assists him in any way. It does matters not whose arrest is being sought, but the circumstances in which the arrest is sought, the reasons why and whether the warrant was properly granted.
We may have to envisage circumstances in which the arrest of a head of state may be sought. A former head of state has been arrested and brought before an international tribunal in Rwanda, and other senior politicians have been treated similarly. I would prefer it if we could envisage a set of circumstances where a properly granted warrant needed to be subject to some form of discretion in the United Kingdom, but I cannot think of any such circumstances at present. I have confidence in the future of the ICC and I think that it will develop a robust jurisdiction. I believe that warrants will be properly granted and there are many safeguards and procedure in the statute that require that. For those reasons I cannot support the amendment.
I said that there was something in the hon. and learned Gentleman's argument. In article 89, it appears that the court is given a level of discretion in relation to the transmission of warrants that I now do not understand. The first sentence of article 89.1 reads:
``The Court may transmit a request for the arrest and surrender of a person, together with the material supporting the request outlined in article 91, to any State''.
If the ICC is truly to be an international court that operates against the sort of people that we want it to and if warrants are sought and granted properly, why does it require discretion about the transmission of that warrant to the country in whose jurisdiction the person whose arrest is sought lives?
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
On resuming—