Clause 172 - Interpretation
Extradition Bill
3:00 pm
Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)
I simply wanted to get that off my chest and put it on the record, Mr. O'Hara.
I make the serious point that it will be increasingly difficult for Committees considering important legislation to examine all the matters that are before them, especially if Members are missing. Under the old arrangements, there was an opportunity, more or less, for Committees to finish. Their sittings did not overlap with the sittings of the main Chamber as much as they do now. That is something that you might seriously take up as a member of the Chairmen's Panel, Mr. O'Hara. It is not a facetious point.
I hope that the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, who is in the main Chamber, may have given his hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon, who represents a constituency at the other end of the country, some insight into Scots law that he is about to share with us. I do not claim to be a Scots lawyer, although I once had to go on a crash course on Scottish matters as I used to do a great deal of work in Corby when I was a lawyer in the midlands. As some hon. Members will know, Corby was a steelworks town at that time. Much of its population had been transplanted from steelworks in Scotland to otherwise rural Northamptonshire. For some years, I regularly used to prosecute at the Corby magistrates court. Corby residents would ask me what the PF said. I had to be aware that if one came from Glasgow, as the residents' families did, the PF was the procurator fiscal. One needed to be aware of Scottish terminology, so I acquired a little indirect knowledge of what happens north of the border.