Clause 17 - Statement of information
Proceeds of Crime Bill
3:30 pm
Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I assure the Minister that I will try to give that some attention. If I come up with a better draft, I will allow him—and his civil servants—to use it.
All the amendments concern whether the information should be given to the court alone, or to the defendant as well. I anticipate that the Minister will tell me that if the court is requiring the information, and there is a duty on the director or prosecutor to supply it, that information will be communicated by the court to the defendant. The Minister is nodding his head in agreement, but my experience suggests to me that that does not always happen. It might happen eventually, but it does not always happen as quickly as it should. That is why I tabled the amendments.
That might be interpreted as a criticism of the court system, and I can recall several occasions, during the course of my professional practice, when documents that the court was supposed to send out to individuals did not get sent. Given the adversarial nature of the proceedings, and the fact that the prosecutor or director is seeking the confiscation of another person's assets, I cannot think of a good reason why there should not be a statutory obligation on the prosecutor or director to supply copies, not only to the court but to the defendant.