New Clause 9 - The Channel Islands and the Isle of Man
Crime (International Co-operation) Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
To a certain extent it is a good example. Ceuta and Melilla are, however, treated as parts of metropolitan Spain for the purposes of its domestic law, whereas we do not treat our Crown dependencies as part of metropolitan United Kingdom—if that is the appropriate term—as far as our jurisdictions are concerned, which poses a problem.
As I said, I do not seek the full integration of the Crown dependencies into the United Kingdom jurisdiction. While we take responsibility for the foreign policies of those Crown dependencies, however, it is incumbent on us to find ways to implement the treaty obligations and international agreements that we enter into. Whether those agreements fight crime in general, financial crime in particular or terrorism, which is one of the reasons for the Bill, we must find ways to bring the law in Crown dependencies into accordance, as far as possible, with UK law. It is, however, beyond the competence of Parliament to do that. The hon. Gentleman's new clause—he will forgive me for saying this—is an artificial construct. I know that he understands that it is for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to negotiate with the Crown dependencies in order to encourage their support and involvement. Nevertheless, the responsibility is heavy.
I have asked the Minister a number of questions about that issue. She is going to write me a compendious letter telling me everything there is to know about the relationships with the various territories. In all seriousness, I ask her to take the
issue forward because we risk our domestic arrangements appearing to be less than complete when we fail to address those problems. We have been rightly criticised in the past on, for example, the law in Gibraltar not being what we would wish it to be to deal with finance and smuggling. Spain took the opportunity to make a valid argument against us, which I did not like because we should be able to negotiate from a position of strength.
Similarly, the British overseas territories in the Caribbean do not always behave as we would like them to, given the various international criminal activities that take place in that sphere. Nearer home, the Schengen agreement does not extend to the Crown dependencies, but its spirit surely should. We should encourage as much correspondence as possible on those laws.