Clause 76 - Conduct and benefit
Proceeds of Crime Bill
12:30 pm
Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)
I share the general concern expressed by the hon. Member for Lewes on behalf of his party about retrospective legislation. It has always seemed to me an important principle of English law that Parliament should be sovereign, but that it should not be able to create, with the stroke of a pen, criminal offences out of activities that were not previously criminal. The Government will have to work extremely hard to convince not only the Opposition but the world outside that such a draconian extension of the law is justified. Although we want to hit the Mr. Bigs to whom the hon. Member for Glasgow, Pollok and other hon. Members have rightly repeatedly referred, we must make sure that the law appears to be fair and does not retrospectively criminalise. If the Bill is brought into force in anything like its current form, great swathes of conduct and property that were not the subject of the law beforehand should not be criminalized from the moment that it is enacted.
I mentioned to the hon. Member for Lewes that I was concerned about the European arrest warrant. Committee members might be aware—not least from today's press, following the fiasco of yesterday afternoon's European Standing Committee B on the European arrest warrant, which had to be abandoned after 50 minutes, and is due to be recommenced de novo on a date that we do not yet know—that great concern is being expressed about the possibility that the Government are about to say that people in this country can be at risk of arrest for things that are not an offence in this country, but which might be declared, under the generic title of ''swindling'' or ''xenophobia'', to be offences in another country.
The same concern applies in the present instance. That is why the two matters are related. People should not be at risk of arrest in this country for activities that are not offences in this country, and people should not be at risk of being dealt with by a new Act of Parliament for things that were not criminal before it was enacted.
Important principles are at stake. Although I do not expect that the debate will be lengthy, I hope that the Minister will address the matter seriously. I also hope that Government Back Benchers will contribute to the debate; many of them have a proud record, both in the House and in their previous careers, of standing up for the rights of the individual, of being public supporters of organisation such as Liberty and Justice, and of ensuring that our legislation is not too draconian.