Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and International Committee of the Red Cross (Status) Bill

Lord Verdirame Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Verdirame (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I welcome this Bill and I commend the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, for sponsoring it. It is a privilege to speak before the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich. As a relatively new Member of this House, I look forward to his speech and I am sorry that it will be a valedictory speech.

I will focus my remarks on the ICRC. Of the two institutions, it is the one with which I am more familiar, both through my practice at the Bar and through my work as an international law academic. In fact, my academic home for many years was the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law in Cambridge, which hosted the ICRC and British Red Cross researchers who worked on the Customary International Humanitarian Law Project. Promoting and working for the faithful application of IHL is one of the core functions that the ICRC has under the Geneva conventions, but of course most of the ICRC’s work is on the ground. Its key functions under the conventions include assistance to victims of armed conflict and, very importantly, serving as an intermediary between parties to armed conflicts. It is especially for this work that the ICRC needs at least some of the privileges and immunities normally accorded to international organisations.

That said, the grant of privileges and immunities is not something that should be agreed to lightly. It means, in effect, that organisations, individuals and their activities are placed outside the reach of the law. The approach of the Bill, quite sensibly, in my view, is to look at the International Organisations Act 1968 as the model. That means that the specific extent of the privileges and immunities that are to be granted to the ICRC and to the CPA is going to be set out in an Order in Council. There is, however, one important difference. Section 1(6) of the International Organisations Act provides that the Order in Council

“shall be so framed as to secure … that the privileges and immunities conferred by the Order are not greater in extent than those which, at the time when the Order takes effect, are required to be conferred”

under the relevant treaty; in other words, in deciding how much immunity and how many privileges are to be granted to an international organisation, His Majesty’s Government would begin by looking at what the relevant treaty says. These treaties will normally be very complex and detailed legal documents such as the UN Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the Specialized Agencies.

In the case of the CPA and the ICRC, we do not have a treaty that sets out all of the detailed provisions. In paragraph 4, the Explanatory Notes say:

“It is proposed that the Government will conclude written arrangements with the ICRC and CPA which will set out the parameters of the status change. They will include the privileges and immunities which the Government has decided to confer on the organisations”.


Differently from the case of international organisations under the International Organisations Act, we will get the legal document that specifies the extent of the privileges and immunities after the legislation. The document will not be the result of a treaty-making process, but it will reflect what the Government consider appropriate to grant. As I said, the analogy between the ICRC and international organisations, while not a perfect fit, is the best we have. I appreciate that the approach proposed by the Bill remains the most practical one.

It is important to be reassured that the arrangements, which will eventually be agreed with the ICRC and the CPA, will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. The arrangements will not be a treaty, so they fall outside the scope of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. They do not need to be laid before Parliament prior to ratification and there will not be a ratification process in that sense. Given that the arrangements will end up shaping the extent of the immunities that these institutions will be granted under our law, it is appropriate that your Lordships’ International Agreements Committee should scrutinise them.

Others have touched on the important issue in Clause 2 around the protection of confidential ICRC information. I think the reasons for this are compelling, and the definitions of the key terms of “protected ICRC information” and “confidential” are clear and would work well. There is a separate provision on evidence in Clause 3, which mirrors a mechanism we have under other immunity statutes: that the Foreign Office can provide certificates that are conclusive as to the issue of fact relative to the question of immunity. The Foreign Office—I know this from personal experience, having worked on a number of these cases—uses the power very sparingly, and I am sure it would continue to do so. With that in mind, I very much welcome the Bill, and I too wish it a speedy passage.