Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Michael Ellis and Ann Clwyd

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ann Clwyd]

That was to have been my very next point. It is amazing that in the past 10 years, there have been just two successful applications for arrest warrants, and that they were then either withdrawn or not acted on.

[Michael Ellis]

Does not that 80% failure rate indicate that people have been making frivolous and vexatious applications? Also, is it not right that proper evidence should be tendered to a court or other authority before the issue of an arrest warrant that could have international ramifications?

[Ann Clwyd]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is not aware of the facts. The fact that there have been 10 applications and that only two were granted means that the judges who currently implement this legislation are absolutely spot on. They do not take frivolous applications—quite the contrary: they are only too careful. They are experienced judges, not ordinary magistrates. The current system works comparatively well, and no one can point to any frivolous applications.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ann Clwyd]

I am concluding; I am sorry.

It is already too hard to try to bring war criminals to justice. Sadly, there are already too few prosecutions. Let us not make it even harder.

[Michael Ellis]

It might be useful to inject some legal realism into the debate. At present the law in England and Wales provides for no real evidential threshold, and contains no requirement for a prosecutor to check the credibility of a claim before an arrest warrant is issued. In other words, all that is required is for an individual to go into a police station or the equivalent and make an allegation. That allegation amounts to a prima facie case: the establishment of a prime facie case is the smallest burden that must be borne. Attention-seeking lawyers and campaign groups are being given an opportunity to use the arrest warrant process as a campaign tool. To describe it as providing immunity from prosecution is completely wrong in law, in fact and in degree, and if newspapers have described it thus they are simply wrong.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Michael Ellis and Ann Clwyd

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

Does the right hon. Lady not accept that many countries with similar legal systems to our own—Canada, for example—have established a similar system? In the Canadian context, the Attorney-General or deputy Attorney-General has to give leave before the exercise of their universal jurisdiction power. Many other countries have similarly fettered the misuse of universal jurisdiction, which has often taken the course of party political or other politically biased purposes, and they have not had any difficulties in respect of the point the right hon. Lady is making. Where Lord Diplock and others refer to interference of the state, they did not apply it to this test.

[Ann Clwyd]

I hope the hon. Gentleman will seek to catch Mr Speaker’s eye, as he obviously has a speech in the making. I have experience of trying to get an indictment against some of the Iraqi war criminals in other countries such as Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Belgium. The closest we came to getting an indictment was in Belgium, but that was thwarted at the last moment because somebody brought an indictment against Sharon, and the Belgian Government changed the law. Sometimes the pressures can be very different, but we do not have time to go into the details of this now.