Amendment to the Motion

Part of Procedure and Privileges Committee - Motion to Agree – in the House of Lords at 4:15 pm on 28 February 2024.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Lord Wolfson of Tredegar Conservative 4:15, 28 February 2024

My Lords, I will try to assist the Senior Deputy Speaker and highlight the issue. I certainly understand the problem when you are dealing with a charge in overseas jurisdictions. There are essentially two issues. One is dealt with expressly in the guidance, although in the actual Standing Order the committee is given a broad discretion to take all matters into account. But the sole matter that is looked at in the guidance, and the point the Senior Deputy Speaker has focused on a number of times this afternoon, is whether somebody is charged abroad with an offence that is not an offence in the UK. I am sure we all understand that in those circumstances it would be quite right for the committee to meet quickly and to lift the bar.

The concern I have, I think shared by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is about the other case: where somebody is charged in an overseas jurisdiction with an offence that is an offence in the UK, but where that jurisdiction is one where the authorities, for one reason or another, are out to get that person, and where a charge in that overseas jurisdiction does not represent the sort of thorough review of the evidence that a charge in this jurisdiction does.

I wonder whether the way through might be a clear acknowledgement from the Senior Deputy Speaker that the investigations and assessment by the committee in those circumstances would not be limited to the narrow question of whether the charge in the overseas jurisdiction is also an offence in the UK, but would also include the wider question of whether, in all the circumstances, one can reliably assume that a charge in that jurisdiction carries the same weight as a charge in this jurisdiction would.