Clause 13
Fraud Bill [Lords]
5:30 pm
Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon, Conservative)
Let us suppose the party to the civil litigation was obliged under the clause to concede that part of the property that had been accumulated had been invested in a drugs enterprise. Would he be protected under the first line of subsection (2), as further defined in subsection (4)? I respectfully suggest that he might very well not be, which would be a grave lacuna in the protections under the Bill and likely to be incompatible with the European convention on human rights. If a party to civil litigation—let us say that he is a trustee—is obliged to answer that part of the property has been invested in a drugs enterprise, and if he answers honestly, as he must, he could, as I read the Bill, be prosecuted on the strength of his admission, because drugs enterprises would not necessarily include fraudulent conduct. Will the Solicitor-General give urgent and genuine consideration to the real risk that there is a lacuna in the clause and particularly to the compatibility of its provisions with article 6, among others, of the convention.