Clause 58
Policing and Crime Bill
5:00 pm
Vernon Coaker (Minister of State (Policing, Crime & Security), Home Office; Gedling, Labour)
The amendment deals with provisional arrest. I should like to make some introductory remarks and then respond to questions that hon. Members may have. Provisional arrest is an important tool in the fight against serious and organised crime. There are cases, although rare, in which the urgency of the situation and the complexity of the case, lead member states to ask one another to arrest someone before the full European arrest warrant has been issued. Where the UK receives such a request, and there are reasonable grounds for believing that the full European arrest warrant has been or will be issued, it is open to UK law enforcement officials to arrest the person in question.
When someone is arrested under the provisional arrest powers found in section 5 of the Extradition Act 2003, section 6 requires that the person be brought before a court and a full European arrest warrant provided to the judge within 48 hours of arrest. While in the vast majority of cases this will prove unproblematic, there are two scenarios where the right time limits contained in the Act can cause problems. The first of these is where the 48-hour period runs over a weekend or a public holiday. In that situation no court would be open before which the person in question can be brought. This could result in a serious criminal being able to avoid extradition simply because of the date on which they were arrested.
The second problem with the current provisions arises in very complex cases where the member state seeking extradition is simply unable to get the formal documents justifying extradition in order within that 48-hour period. Clause 58, as drafted, sought to address these problems by allowing an application for an extension of 48 hours to be sought to both the period within which the full documents must be provided and the period in which the person must be brought before the court.
On reflection I feel that there is better and fairer solution to these problems which Government amendment 230 and Government amendments 231 to 238 seek to provide. The first change to note is that it is no longer open to the requesting state to apply for an extension of the 48-hour period within which the person in question must be brought before a UK court as the sole problem we are addressing here is that arising where the 48-hour period falls over a weekend or a public holiday. I feel that the better approach is simply to exclude these days from the calculation of the 48-hour period. We see no reason why the person arrested should not be brought before a UK court within the original 48-hour period where it does not fall on a weekend or a public holiday. I hope that that is helpful because I certainly think it is a better way of doing it.
That change and the terms of the other amendments also mean that it is absolutely clear that in the very rare cases where there is a need to apply for an extension of the period for supplying the documents justifying extradition, such an application will always be made while the person who is arrested is present in court, whether in person or by live link, so that they may resist the application and be in a position to apply for bail. Again, I think that is a significant improvement on the clause as drafted. I hope that the Committee will feel that these amendments represent a careful and considered attempt to reduce the scope of the provisional arrest amendments so as to make absolutely sure that they strike the right balance between the need to safeguard the liberty of the subject while ensuring that the UK does everything possible to fight serious international crime.