Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 22 March 2011.
Bill Aitken
Conservative
I agree with James Kelly, although perhaps for different reasons. As is generally known, I am a great supporter of the common law, which I believe has served Scotland well over the centuries. However, James Kelly is right to support these amendments today, and we will support them too.
The Cabinet secretary has had to lodge lengthy, convoluted and complex amendments, but when one looks at them, one sees that the issue is fairly simple. We are tied into the provisions in the 2010 act, and the issue of disclosure has quite appropriately caused tremendous excitement—to say the least—in Scottish legal circles in recent years.
The fact is that we have to operate under a code of disclosure. Many of us spent a great deal of time on providing input to the code, and it was agreed largely unanimously. Although what is being done today may seem on the face of it unnecessarily complex, it is necessary; otherwise there would be an inconsistency in the approach that is taken in two major pieces of legislation, which would be unfortunate to say the least.
Amendment 1 agreed to.
After section 13
Amendment 5 moved—[Kenny MacAskill]—and agreed to.
Schedule 2—Consequential amendments
Amendment 6 moved—[Kenny MacAskill]—and agreed to.
The phrase stems from the 5th Amendment of the US Constitution; prohibiting individuals from being subject for the same offence to be "twice put in jeopardy of life and limb", and refers, in the strict sense, to three protections: protection from being retried for the same crime after an acquittal; protection from retrial after a conviction; and protection from being punished multiple times for the same offense.
When employed strictly, the mechanism can be used as a defense - for example, the policemen who beat up black motorist Rodney King in 1991 in Los Angeles, CA, were acquitted of assault in a county court, and as a result, could not be tried for those crimes in Federal court, and mirror court cases in the Southern United states in the 1960s where racially motivated crimes were not actively prosecuted nor convicted in local courts. A more pronounced example is that of U.S. citizen and terrorist Timothy McVeigh; sentenced to death for murdering eight U.S. federal employees with a bomb (as federal law only covers the federal employees killed in the explosion, a state court could have tried him for the deaths of the other hundred.
In 2003, Home Secretary David Blunkett abolished this strict form of double jeopardy; retrials are now allowed if there is 'new and compelling evidence'.
In addition, an optional protocol (specifically, the Seventh Protocol, Article Four) of the European Convention of Human Rights, which protects against double jeopardy, states: "No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again in criminal proceedings under the jurisdiction of the same State for an offence for which he has already been finally acquitted or convicted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of that State."; only Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom have not ratified this optional convention.
As a bill passes through Parliament, MPs and peers may suggest amendments - or changes - which they believe will improve the quality of the legislation.
Many hundreds of amendments are proposed by members to major bills as they pass through committee stage, report stage and third reading in both Houses of Parliament.
In the end only a handful of amendments will be incorporated into any bill.
The Speaker - or the chairman in the case of standing committees - has the power to select which amendments should be debated.
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.
However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.
War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.
The cabinet normally meets once a week in the cabinet room at Downing Street.
