Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Pannick and Baroness Sheehan

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 29th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

I am a little intrepid in saying this as I am not a lawyer or a constitutional expert but this seems to be a Bill that, from a layman’s point of view, lets the Government give themselves great powers through the way it designates individuals, connecting persons through descriptions, through definitions of involved people and through clauses that give powers to amend. These include Clause 39, which gives power to amend all of Part 1 so as to authorise additional sanctions, and Clause 44(2), which gives sweeping Henry VIII powers to amend, repeal and revoke amendments and enactments. To me, this seems like Jekyll and Hyde legislation. You think you are getting one thing, yet there is every ability within the proposed Act to change itself into something quite different.

I was quite concerned in last week’s debate, when my noble friend Lady Bowles talked about how Acts could be used for unintended purposes. I recall the case of Maya Evans, who read out the names of 97 British soldiers during the remembrance ceremony at the Cenotaph in 2005. Although it was a very innocuous statement that she was making—she was protesting against Britain being taken into the Iraq war; she felt that it was illegal—she was arrested and was the first person in the UK to be convicted under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. Also in the same year—I might embarrass the Labour Benches here—Walter Wolfgang was forcibly removed from the Labour Party conference. Again, he wanted to protest about the Iraq war, and shouted out “Nonsense!” and “That’s a lie!” during a speech made from the conference platform by Jack Straw. He was ejected and was stopped from re-entering the conference hall by a police officer citing the Terrorism Act.

From my point of view as a lay person, I am fully supportive of the well-informed noble Lords here who are leading the charge to make sure that the Bill does what it says on the tin and does not turn into a Jekyll and Hyde Bill.

[Lord Pannick]

Whether I am well informed or not, can the Minister confirm that in his response on Amendment 72 he gave a reassurance to the Committee that these powers would be used only when necessary? That was the word he used on more than one occasion. He will remember an earlier debate we had in this Committee on whether that word should be written into an earlier clause. If with the aid of parliamentary draftsmen “necessary” could be written in to confine the use of that power, it would mitigate substantially my concern about Clause 44(2); I speak only for myself. Perhaps the Minister and the Bill team could reflect on that before Report.