Rules of the Court of Judicature (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) (EU Exit) 2019
Civil Procedure (Amendment) (EU Exit) Rules 2019
Debate between Helen Goodman and Stephen Doughty(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh.
I have a few questions for the Minister, the first of which is a technical one. There is no statutory instrument for Scotland, so I assume a similar process is being gone through in the Scottish Parliament or in a different statutory instrument Committee. Will he clarify that, so that we have coherence about the sanctions regime across the UK as a whole?
Secondly, I share the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland on the Front Bench about the use of secret courts and closed sessions more generally. Having served alongside those working in government and with sensitive material, in particular in the international sphere, I understand the need for such courts in certain cases, but I believe fundamentally that those cases should be very restricted. We do not want to set any wider precedent for our courts or such services.
Helen Goodman
The other thing that the statutory instrument lacks is any process for review of how the process is working—not the individual sanctions, but the process and its secret aspect.