Clause 62 - Cases that may be retried
Criminal Justice Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield, Conservative)
I said about three words before lunchtime arrived. As I think I explained to the Minister, I tabled the amendments because I found the wording of subsections (4) and (5) difficult. These probing amendments propose the options of deleting both subsections, deleting subsection (4) or deleting subsection (5).
I do not have too much difficulty with subsection (4). It is fairly straightforward. As I understand it, it provides for the possibility of someone having been tried abroad for an analogous criminal offence, because we may not have a strict analogy between the foreign offence and an offence in the United Kingdom. It provides that if the facts of the case are such that they would lead to a prosecution in this country, the offence would be a qualifying offence and a retrial could take place.
Subsection (5) is slightly more difficult because it seems to suggest that some sort of administrative proceeding brought against a person in a foreign country could constitute a qualifying offence even though it did not amount to a criminal offence under the law of that country. That must be what it says because it uses the words,
''however it is described in that law.''
I seek clarification on that matter because I am intrigued about whether, in those circumstances, it would be necessary to have retrial proceedings at all. I would have thought that, in those circumstances, it might even be possible to prosecute in this country without removing the double jeopardy rule. I hope that the Minister will enlighten me on that point so that the Committee and I can understand what subsections (4) and (5) would achieve.