Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill [HL]

Lord Hope of Craighead Excerpts

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

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton]

I intervene only to say this: I did not suggest that the motive of the Government was to do this. My experience as a Minister is that you put through legislation and many years later, after emollient assurances given in the House of Lords, those pesky lawyers look at what is possible under the Act. What I have described is possible. Let us imagine if those very same pesky lawyers said, “Well, you might have difficulty getting that through with primary legislation because of the extraordinary width of the powers, but actually we’ve found these rather clever powers in the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill which allow you to do it without primary legislation”. That is the danger.

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, I do not want to take anything away from the force of the points just made by the various speakers who object to the clause more fundamentally, but I want to pick up the point the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, described as minor: the wording of the clause. If the Government are minded to keep it, I suggest they might like to look at it again. Subsection (1) is very general, and the opening words of subsection (2) state that what follows is:

“Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1)”.


The bit at the end in brackets, one assumes, does not qualify subsection (1). Is it in the right place? Is the proclamation that what follows is:

“Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (1)”,


really apposite if you are trying to restrict the scope of the powers as you seek to do in subsection (2)? It is a very interesting interaction of subsections but I suggest that it needs a little more care if the clause is to remain—I say nothing more in support of the point that the clause should not stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

My Lords, I think this is one area where the Minister will have to be in his giving mood, because there is very strong opinion on it across the Committee. What the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, said is absolutely correct: it is a “just in case” clause. What if this happens? What if that happens? If things happen, there is a process and a procedure and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said it quite explicitly: bring in laws to deal with it; bring in a Bill that addresses those specific concerns. If it is an urgent situation that we had not thought of, there are processes and procedures we can adopt.

As my noble and learned friend said, there is an opportunity here for what he calls “pesky lawyers”. I am always cautious—whenever I dealt with lawyers in my life I always took the precaution never to ask a question I did not know the answer to. That is the situation here. Because you cannot think of the circumstances, but there may be circumstances, you say, “Let us put it in the Bill”. I am sorry, that is not acceptable. There is a consensus across the board on this and it is even a clause on which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, said, the Constitution Committee and the Delegated Powers Committee are as one, as they are not on other clauses. So I fear this is one issue about which the Minister will have to think again.