Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Brake Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

As the hon. Lady will appreciate, the case is live, and that is the reason—I have no doubt—why the CPS has been guarded about any response that it can give to her. She has raised a number of very specific questions, however, and I respectfully suggest that the best thing to do is for me to write to her and to try to answer the specific matters that she raised at the end of her question.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

What role can the Attorney-General and the Government play in ensuring that there are no more Babar Ahmad cases?

[The Attorney-General]

I have to try to work out where the right hon. Gentleman’s question is coming from, but the main complaint about the Babar Ahmad case is the length of time that it is taking. As he will be aware, proceedings started on 5 August 2004, and in this country proceedings, including the refusal of leave to appeal to the House of Lords, were completed on 6 June 2007. The problems and delays since then are in fact due to the European Court of Human Rights, and that ties in with my answers to earlier questions about the inordinate length of time that it takes to bring such cases to the European Court of Human Rights—with consequences, in the case of Babar Ahmad, that are plainly undesirable.