Clause 7 - Requests for assistance in obtaining
Crime (International Co-operation) Bill [Lords]
3:00 pm
Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 17, in
clause 7, page 5, line 14, at end insert—
'2(A) A request for assistance under this section shall include information on the procedures regarding the gathering and admissibility of evidence that apply in the part of the United Kingdom where it is proposed that the evidence shall be used, and in particular shall include details of the procedures under which evidence may lawfully be obtained for use in proceedings in that part.'.
I welcome you, Mr. Hurst, to the chairmanship of the Committee. You and I are veterans of the late night last night—I admired your patience in waiting to listen to the very last speech from the Labour Back Benches on Second Reading of the Courts Bill.
I shall deal with this clause briefly, not least because my noble Friend Baroness Anelay of St. Johns canvassed some of the issues in another place. On reading the debate of 13 Janauary 2003 in another place in Hansard, columns 35 to 38, I felt that the response to my noble Friend from the Attorney-General, for whom professionally I have enormous respect—I served on an inner cabinet, which is the general management committee of the Bar Council, when the present Attorney-General was chairman of the Bar—was not satisfactory.
Amendment No. 17 would insert new subsection 2(A), which requires there to be the inclusion of
''information on procedures regarding the gathering and admissibility of evidence''.
It is important to include that in the Bill because, as Baroness Anelay pointed out, different countries have different procedures and rules on admissibility. She made the further and particularly relevant point that our rules are about to change.
My hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) and I are very much aware of the work of our hon. Friends the Members for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) and for Woking (Mr. Malins), who lead for the Opposition on the Criminal Justice Bill. Over several weeks, they discussed the contents of that Bill in Committee, and one of the major changes that the Government want to introduce is a change to the way in which our rules of admissibility of evidence operate. The Government are changing many of the things that those of us who qualified as lawyers were taught in leading works, such as Professor Sir Rupert Cross's work on the law of evidence and other principles that have been regarded as the centrepiece of our law for 100 years since the Victorian reforms. In light of that, it is important that the Bill states a clear position, so that authorities of other countries are routinely informed by the UK of what rules will apply to the evidence gathered in those countries once it is in the UK and ready to be used in our investigative and judicial process.
The Attorney-General said that there was no international obligation for us to provide that information, and that there was no particular reason
to believe in any given case that the court that receives the request from abroad would need that information. He suggested that it would not be sufficiently familiar with existing procedures, and that it might be unable to obtain information about them if it was in doubt. However, admissibility of evidence and the way in which these matters will be dealt with are not minor technical points.
Mr. Ainsworth indicated assent.