Extradition (Provisional Arrest) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Mackay of Clashfern and Lord Inglewood

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 5th March 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, if I may, I shall raise one small point. We are talking here about the ability to effect an arrest, not an obligation on the person who discovers and identifies somebody who is suspicious and to be arrested. To clarify, if it against public policy for somebody to be extradited, there is no obligation on the person concerned who has been granted this power to carry out the arrest. Is that correct?

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I assume that the process of extradition occurs under judicial control after the arrest and after the person arrested is in the custody of the judiciary or under the control of the arrangements made by the judiciary. That is quite important. In most of the speeches made at Second Reading, we distinguished between the Executive and the judiciary. They are two distinct parts of government. It is the Executive’s responsibility to take people before the judiciary, which is then responsible for how they are treated, subject to the Executive sometimes being part of the treatment afterwards. It is important to distinguish between the two. Therefore, it is acceptable that the authority deciding whether this arrest should go ahead is not a judicial authority but the responsible executive authority.

As far as both amendments are concerned, the information sought is reasonable and might be subject to risk, but it would be very easy, particularly if there seemed to be any public concern about the matter, for a parliamentarian to raise this as a Parliamentary Question, rather than have an obligation on the Secretary of State to keep to a time when there might not be much in the way of information to put out. I can see why these arrangements are a subject of public interest, but the Parliamentary Question system is a good way to deal with that as and when they seem important.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Mackay of Clashfern and Lord Inglewood

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 18th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

I take what the noble Lord is saying, but such a report would not be dealing with subsection (1). That is my point. Subsection (1) is the operative subsection and it deals with domestic law, and reciprocity is not a matter that can be dealt with by domestic law. The only thing we can do, as I said on the last occasion on which we discussed this, is make sure that our arrangements are suitable for reciprocity and, if the reciprocity comes, that we have the right arrangements to deal with it. That is our domestic side of reciprocity. The rest of the reciprocity belongs to the rest of Europe, and I hope it will see the benefit of this as much as us. However, as far as we are concerned, we are bringing the whole of EU law that refers to family matters into our law by virtue of this Bill, and a report about that would be otiose.

[Lord Inglewood (Con)]

My Lords, if I may, I want to make a brief comment that I should like to have made in Committee but the time was not appropriate. Like a number of your Lordships in the Chamber, I was a Member of the European Parliament for 10 years. Looking back on my experience, the most distressing aspect of the job was dealing with problems relating to family law. I make a plea to everybody concerned with this: the personal unhappiness and anguish that surrounds these circumstances is severe, and when dealing with this the Government should please remember that we are talking not about money but about people. They must find a way—I am sure they can—to resolve these horrible circumstances in the most humane way possible.