Clause 2 - Request for arrest and surrender
International Criminal Court Bill [Lords]
2:45 pm
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham, Conservative)
Earlier, Mr. Cook, when I was unable to get my papers in order, you promised that you would allow me to return to my second point. I thank you for that courtesy, and I shall try to detain the Committee only briefly. It is a technical point that stems from our first day of consideration in Committee. I asked the Minister about the declarations and the phrase ``none in mind''. He said in his response:
``We cannot go back to rake over and unilaterally rewrite the Rome statute, which has been agreed internationally. That is not the purpose of the Bill; the purpose is to sign up to it.''—[Official Report, Standing Committee D, 10 April 2001; c. 64.]
I do not disagree with that. That was not the point I was making, and that is the premise on which I start now.
Clause 2 deals with arrest and surrender. Article 91.1 of the treaty states:
``A request for arrest and surrender shall be made in writing. In urgent cases, a request may be made by any medium capable of delivering a written record, provided that the request shall be confirmed through the channel provided for it in article 87, paragraph 1 (a).''
Article 87.1(a) states:
``The Court shall have the authority to make requests to State Parties for cooperation. The requests shall be transmitted through the diplomatic channel or any other appropriate channel as may be designated by each State Party upon ratification, acceptance, approval or accession.
Subsequent changes to the designation shall be made by each State Party in accordance with the Rules of Procedure and Evidence.''
That goes to the heart of my point. The statute says that each state party, upon ratification, will designate appropriate channels. On ratification, what will the Minister designate as an ``appropriate channel''? As the statute says, the request may be
``made by any medium capable of delivering a written record''.
Does the Minister intend to use e-mail as a vehicle for the transmission of such a warrant or of papers pertaining to it? If not e-mail, what will he designate on ratification? What will he lay out before us for approval and how will we get that approval? If e-mail is going to be used, what are the security implications—for example, what about tampering? The White House has said that it will no longer take e-mails. It is a simple question but a technical one: what appropriate channels will be designated by the Government under article 87.1(a), and will all that apply to Scotland, or will Scotland have powers to designate its own medium?
I hope that I have been brief in making my genuine request for information, which relates to my original point that we need some form of clarification following ratification, which the Minister did not fully understand when he replied to me on the first day of Committee. I look forward to hearing what he has to say now.