Clause 1 - Service of overseas process
Crime (International Co-operation) Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
Mr James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)
I am grateful for the Minister's response. As my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath has just said, it was a little unwise for the Minister to suggest that my hon. Friend was seeking to undermine the amendment. He was actually supporting the point that I made about the words, ''if possible''.
On amendment No. 3, I follow the Minister's reasoning when he says that it is for the issuing court to decide whether process was served properly. Nevertheless, if the Secretary of State had included something on the form that that could take, the Bill would have been considerably enhanced. I accept the comment of the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland that simply removing the words ''if possible'' would perhaps circumvent that, because the clause would then start to stipulate what service means. As I said in my opening remarks, the gist of amendment No. 8 is to ascertain what the Government mean by the words ''if possible''. As the hon. Gentleman said, that is vague, inelegant wording. In the Minister's example of where service is not possible, the recipient abjectly and flatly refuses to sign it. No Member would say that recipients should be able to get away with that. They should not be able to stand with their hands in their pockets and say, ''I am not taking it. I am not signing for it.'' That should be deemed to be service, and it could be dealt with by amendment No. 3. In the same way, the example of where it was not possible to get a receipt could also be dealt with.
There are many, and much looser, situations in which it would not be possible to get a receipt, or where that might be deemed to be so, for which it would be helpful if things were written down. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland referred to Scottish law, under which leaving a document on a burned-out site appears to be adequate. I was not aware of that, but I suspect that some people would question whether that method of service was adequate. However, if that is what Scottish law says, so be it.
Some definition would have been helpful, but having said that, this is not a major group of amendments and I do not wish to detain the Committee any longer. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.