Extradition (Provisional Arrest) Bill [HL]

Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Excerpts

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

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their words of welcome. There will, indeed, be plenty to keep us busy on the home affairs front. Amendment 3 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, concerns the period of detention. It seeks to delete the provision that, in calculating the 24-hour period within which an arrested person must be brought before the appropriate judge, no account should be taken of weekends, bank holidays and the like, as she explained.

It might be helpful if I first reassure noble Lords that this provision does not arise from any desire of law enforcement agencies to detain individuals for prolonged periods without judicial oversight. The Government have been very careful to ensure that sufficient safeguards exist against this. Our operational partners have already proved themselves effective at producing wanted persons before courts within strict timeframes. The practical question at the heart of this issue is one of being certain that, when a person is produced at court, an appropriate judge is available to hear their case. The key aspect perhaps is that, rightly, the requirement under the Act is for the person to be brought before the judge, not simply for a judge to consider the case on paper. I hope that addresses the point raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. If the Bill were to be amended along the lines suggested, it would render the power largely unworkable; in some instances, because of perfectly normal court closure times, if a judge were not available for the wanted person to appear before them—

[Lord Judge]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord. It is questionable whether the word “brought” requires the physical presence of the judge and the particular person so that they should be facing each other directly. Nowadays we have all sorts of technology that enables people to encounter each other while not in one another’s physical presence.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay]

To be clear to the noble and learned Lord, it is the statutory intention that the person should be brought before a judge in person. It is an additional safeguard and a better situation for them to be seen in person before a judge. If the Bill were amended along the lines suggested, it would make the power operationally unworkable because, in some instances, normal court closure times would preclude that. As we have discussed, it could mean, practically, that arrests could not be made on a Saturday or on the Sunday before a bank holiday.

[Lord Judge]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord again. This is his first outing and we are throwing bouncers at him. If that is the problem, we need to amend the legislation to make it clear that “brought before” does not mean that there is a personal, direct, physical confrontation. I would be very willing to talk to him about this at any time but, so far, I am not entirely satisfied with what he has had to say.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay]

I thank noble Lords for their forbearance on this, my first outing. It is our intention to replicate the existing provisions under the Extradition Act. It may be helpful for me to speak to the noble and learned Lord and others in greater detail about the statutory intention of what the Government propose. We seek to mirror the provisions already there, which are caught up in the usual formulation of “as soon as practicable” that already exists in the Extradition Act. There are precedents for these arrangements for provisional arrest under Part 1, under which a person may be provisionally arrested without warrant and brought before the appropriate judge within 48 hours of their arrest, subject to exactly the same conditions as set out in the schedule under discussion here.

My noble friend Lady Williams of Trafford has already cited the letter sent by the Director of Public Prosecutions to the Security Minister earlier this week, which welcomes the way the Bill, as drafted, will avoid unnecessary delay and ensure initial judicial scrutiny as early as possible, before the case proceeds through extradition proceedings in the usual way. It is for that reason that the Government are not persuaded that the amendment is needed. I hope that gives some reassurance to the noble and learned Lord, the noble Baroness and others.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I did not expect it to go in this direction, but I thank the noble Lord for his explanation. I am left a bit thrown and not entirely satisfied. I decided that I would not bring my iPad into Committee to scroll up and down through the 2003 Act; I reckoned it could wait until later, but clearly I should do so.

If this provision is to mirror the 2003 Act, which talks about bringing someone before a court as soon as practicable and in any event within 48 hours, that still does not meet the provisions of new Section 74A(4) because, as I said, if someone is picked up on a Friday afternoon, 48 hours lands them on a Sunday. There is an important point of principle in this: the way it operates—the noble Lord used the term “workability”—in terms of the position of the Executive and the work it has to do with the police and the rights of the individual who is the subject of this. That is why the judiciary is involved: to ensure that that person’s rights are properly protected. It looks as if the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, wants to intervene.