Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL]

Lord Brougham and Vaux Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 15th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judge (CB)]

My Lords, I am going to add to the trumpet sounds of praise for the Minister and thank him for everything he has done so far. However, I do not want to damage his ministerial career further by not taking him on. I am taking him on in relation to Clause 16.

In the days when there were no regulations but the King thought that he would like to rule the country by proclamation and to create criminal offences by proclamation, the response of Parliament was that it is,

“the indubitable right of the people of this kingdom not to be made subject to any punishment … other than such as are ordained by the common laws of this land, or the statutes made by their common consent in parliament”.

The King sought to be able to make criminal offences by proclamation and Parliament told him he could not. That is a principle to which we should have adhered. We have not. I am not going to try to turn back the last 25 years of history but this is quite a significant moment. Parliament was prepared to tell the King—who could have sent you off to prison and did send people to the Tower when he disagreed with them—that this would not do. My submission to the House is that this current provision simply will not do. I acknowledge that the clause is improved to some extent by the proposed government amendments but it provides a vivid example of what has become unacceptable, for this very simple reason: it vests vast powers in a Minister of the Crown.

In discussions with the Minister, I have been able to understand that he has clearly conveyed his wish to ensure that where sanctions of whatever kind are currently and lawfully in existence, particularly those which emanate from our membership of the EU, they should continue. I agree with him: the EU and our current relationship with it is why we have sanctions against Syria and Russia. I do not for one moment wish to diminish the possibility of those continuing. They should not lapse just because we would cease to have any international obligation with the EU, but I simply do not understand why we cannot make provision to deal with such a situation. I am not trying to row back. I accept the need for sanctions to be continued against Russia and Syria, and against whomsoever we have sanctions, but it should be capable of amendment. This provision, I agree, would do that but it would also do much more—and my concern is with the much more, which is quite unnecessary.

The starting point is that the entire system envisaged in the Bill is about government by regulation. There is in truth no primary legislation here; all of it is regulations. I call it a bonanza of regulations and your Lordships might use any word you like to describe it, but that is what the Bill consists of. In addition, we have two perfectly good provisions for dealing with UN sanctions and sanctions based on our obligations under international law, under treaty. Then we have a whole lot of new regulations to deal with the prevention of terrorism, the interests of national security, the interests of international peace and security, the furtherance of a foreign policy objective of the Government of the United Kingdom and, as a result of today’s debate, four more provisions. All those are domestic issues. The issues relating to UN resolutions or sanctions, EU resolutions and treaty obligations are fine, so far as they go. But as to the rest of it, it is all domestic.

We will end up with a situation in which provision will be made by regulation to enable the Minister to decide what offences should be created to deal with what are in truth domestic matters, which it is unlikely would not be at least matters of controversy. Foreign policy is a matter of controversy. What is “national security”? How should counterterrorism work? These are all issues which we have to grapple with on a daily basis. We would end up with a Minister, by regulations based on regulations, being able to create an offence which would send you to prison, presumably on conviction, for 10 years. That is a major provision.

I can deal with this briefly; I have said my piece more than once in this House on it. This clause is devolving enormous powers. I have no hesitation or worry about it devolving enormous powers to this Minister but we do not know who the next Minister will be, or the Minister 10 or 20 years from now. The Bill will continue in force for 10 or 20 years; I suspect the hope is that it will continue indefinitely. In the wrong hands, these powers are not merely enormous but dangerous. There is no need for them. So my objection to this clause, and the provisions I am addressing, is simply this: we are allowing an accretion of alarming power to a Minister of the Crown—to the Executive. That power in relation to the matters I am raising, which is to say not the United Nations issue or the international treaty issue but all the other issues, should not be dealt with by regulation. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Brougham and Vaux) (Con)]

I must advise the House that if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 46 and that, in the same grouping, if Amendment 47 is agreed to I cannot call Amendments 48 or 49 due to pre-emption.

[Lord Pannick]

Perhaps I may add one brief point to what was said so powerfully by the noble and learned Lord, which is to remind the House of what was said by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, of which he and I are members. The committee’s eighth report of this Session, which was on the Bill, stated in paragraph 21:

“We are deeply concerned that the power in clause 16 may be used to create an offence for which a sentence of imprisonment for up to 10 years may be imposed, and that rules on the evidence to demonstrate that the case is proved, and defences to such charges, are subject to ministerial regulation. We consider that such regulation-making powers are constitutionally unacceptable and should not remain part of the Bill”.


The Minister has dealt in Amendment 46 with the second part of that criticism, which is the quite extraordinary suggestion in the original Bill that a Minister, by regulations, should have power to alter defences to charges and to address rules on evidence, such as the burden and standard of proof. This was a quite extraordinary suggestion and I hope that the House will never again see such a provision presented in a Bill by Ministers. However, to his credit the Minister has accepted in Amendment 46 that that provision should be removed. What remains is the suggestion that Ministers should have the power to create offences for which a sentence of imprisonment of up to 10 years is imposed—and on that I entirely agree with what the noble and learned Lord said.