Clause 2 - Repeal of provisions of Part 7
Terrorism (Northern Ireland) Bill
11:15 am
Laurence Robertson (Shadow Minister, Northern Ireland; Tewkesbury, Conservative)
The drafting of the amendments is necessarily complicated. Clause 2 repeals part 7 of the 2000 Act and I seek to add a further section of that Act to those that are to be repealed. It may help the Committee if I read out section 75(6), to which my amendments refer. It states:
“Without prejudice to subsection (2), where the court trying a scheduled offence on indictment—
(a)is not satisfied that the accused is guilty of the offence, but
(b)is satisfied that he is guilty of a non-scheduled offence of which a jury could have found him guilty on a trial for the scheduled offence, the court may convict him of the non-scheduled offence.”
This is a probing amendment, the spirit of which is important because the legislation contains a series of scheduled offences that can be tried without a jury and by a judge sitting alone. That is unsatisfactory and should be limited to offences where it is necessary. I am a little concerned about this part of the legislation; it would be possible to go through the whole of part 7 of the 2000 Act and pull it to pieces, but that is not why we are here. However, I was concerned to see that a judge sitting alone can try a non-scheduled offence in certain circumstances. Can the Minister say how often that happens? I accept, as he glares at his officials, of whom we do not have the benefit, that he may not have the information immediately to hand, but I should like him to accept the spirit of the amendment and to write to me and members of the Committee. That is what lies behind the amendments. I believe that it is a reasonable question, given that we are all striving for normality, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.