Clause 8 - Sending requests for assistance
Crime (International Co-operation) Bill [Lords]
3:30 pm
Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)
I can speak to these amendments briefly. As the Minister, Committee members and you, Mr. Hurst, will realise, amendments Nos. 19 and 20 are really alternatives to one another for the Minister and the Government to consider. We are probing the restriction in subsection (3), which amendment No. 19 would omit. As the Bill stands, the provision is restricted merely to cases of urgency, and we wonder
whether that restriction is necessary. Amendment No. 20 would provide the other way of looking at the matter: the Secretary of State could make regulations saying what is urgent. As I have already said, we are not generally in favour of giving the Secretary of State more order-making powers. If I had to plump for one amendment, I would say that I am putting more of my effort into amendment No. 19, which would be helpful.
On the question of what is urgent, perhaps it would be appropriate to mention that my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) and I had some extremely interesting and useful discussions with those involved in such issues in Holland, which we visited a year or so ago. Colleagues who know me well will be aware that I always try to wear a tie appropriate to the occasion, and I am today wearing the tie that I was given—as was my hon. Friend—by the Netherlands Centre for International Police Co-operation, which is known in Dutch as Politie, in The Hague.
We spoke to senior officers in Holland who have to deal with some of those cases, which are sometimes urgent. There was quite a lot of urgency when we were there, because we were present on the day that the Dutch Government collapsed. As my hon. Friend will remember, one of the senior officials who briefed us from the Dutch Cabinet Office had to leave the meeting because something urgent had happened—his Government had just collapsed, and he had to rush back to the office. That is not the sort of urgency that we are talking about in the Bill, but hon. Members from both sides of the House of Commons benefit enormously from the international meetings that we have to consider such issues, and how such matters are dealt with in other countries.
I hope that the Minister can understand the basis on which we are putting the issue forward. We do not think that the provision should be restricted to ''cases of urgency''. It is not necessary to have that restriction in the Bill.
I shall briefly refer to the Liberal Democrat's amendment No. 122, to which, no doubt, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome will speak in a moment, and which is in this group. The Liberal Democrats are suggesting replacing
''the Treaty on European Union''
with ''treaty obligations''. I do not know whether there will be a split on the Liberal Democrat Benches. In a previous Committee, on which I served with the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, I referred to the fact that he represented the Eurosceptic tendency in his party. I do not know where the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome comes from, but I was interested to see that the amendment was tabled. I wondered whether the hon. Gentleman was looking forward to yet further treaties to the current treaty on the European Union. If he is, I am suspicious about the amendment. We will hear what he has to say, but at present I am not persuaded of the thinking, as I foresee it, behind the amendment No. 122.