Clause 3
Crime (International Co-operation) Bill [Lords]
11:00 am
Mr James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)
We now move to what is almost a reflection of the first two clauses: the service of UK process abroad. It deals with British courts that have decided to serve a process on someone living outside the UK. The amendments all relate to the issue of language again.
Amendment No. 9 relates to subsection (3) and the person to whom the request is issued and the subjectivity of the belief that the person on whom it is served does not understand English. The amendment would insert the more comprehensive test of ''any indication or evidence''. As the provision reads at present, whether the person on whom the process has been served understands English is decided purely at the discretion of the person who has asked for the process to be issued. That is the test: there is no other safeguard. That is highly subjective.
In all this part of the Bill, which deals with the service of UK process abroad, hon. Members from all parties must be concerned about the interests of British justice, and with ensuring that people living abroad who receive process from a UK court comply with that, so that if, for example, that means returning to the UK to face trial, they do so.
Our principal concern must be to uphold British justice. Therefore, it is very important that the individual who receives the process understands what it says and means. It would be wrong for it to be taken at face value if one person—the person at whose request the process has been issued or made—believes that the person on whom it has been served does not understand English. Let us be reasonably blunt about this: some people might automatically think that such persons understand English because they live in an English-speaking country. There are many African countries where English is spoken, but that does not necessarily mean that everyone in those countries understands English, or the form of English in which the document is drafted. That returns us to the point made by the hon. Member for North Down.
That is why we drafted an amendment that would remove the purely subjective test of the assessment made by an individual and would replace it with one that states,
''where there is any indication or evidence''
that the person on whom the process is to be served does not understand English. That is a more substantive test, and it would be more likely to ensure that we know for certain whether the person on whom the process is being served is going to understand it.
The other two amendments in the group address the issue of what happens when people do not understand English. The Bill simply states that the court must be provided
''with a copy of the process, or of so much of it as is material, translated into an appropriate language.''
That is, again, far too subjective a statement about what is an appropriate language. Therefore, we have tabled two alternative amendments.
Amendment No. 10 would replace ''an'' with ''the'' to make the provision refer to ''the appropriate language''. Some effort must be made to establish what language the individual who is to receive this process understands. They may understand more than one language, but somebody needs to make an effort to establish that, rather than for it simply to be said that, ''Well, we will send it off in the local national language and we will assume that they understand that. Therefore the process is served.'' If we are interested in ensuring that the British judicial process is completed, that might not be adequate.
I offer two examples, both of which are from within the European Union, because it is not necessary to go further afield. One of them comes from just across the water in Belgium. It may be thought that French is ''an'' appropriate language for a Belgian citizen—I suspect that most people would assume that it is—but, as many of us know, a significant number of Belgian citizens do not speak French.