I am grateful to the Minister for that supplementary remark. He said in the first part of his remarks that the Government had clearly defined what they meant by serious criminality. I challenge that definition because the words ““serious criminal”” are used in only one place in the legislation; namely, in the heading of Section 72 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. Curiously enough, the section does not go on to define a serious criminal but speaks about a person, "““presumed to have been convicted by a final judgment of a particularly serious crime””."
When I thought carefully about this section, I could not for the life of me see why it did not define a serious criminal as a person who came within the provisions of subsections (2) to (4). If it did, one would be able to refer to a serious criminal in subsequent legislation. In fact, we are not able to do so because one would not want to use the very convoluted expression defined in subsection (2). But we have two definitions of a foreign criminal; that is, the definition in this Bill and the one in the Bill that I mentioned which is coming down the track. I sought in my amendment to align the definition of a foreign criminal as regards the sentencing with what we have already decided.
UK Borders Bill
Proceeding contribution from
Lord Avebury
(Liberal Democrat)
in the House of Lords on Monday, 23 July 2007.
It occurred during Debate on bills
and
Committee proceeding on UK Borders Bill.
About this proceeding contribution
Reference
694 c135GC Session
2006-07Chamber / Committee
House of Lords Grand CommitteeSubjects
Librarians' tools
Timestamp
2023-12-15 12:48:55 +0000
URI
http://data.parliament.uk/pimsdata/hansard/CONTRIBUTION_413076
In Indexing
http://indexing.parliament.uk/Content/Edit/1?uri=http://data.parliament.uk/pimsdata/hansard/CONTRIBUTION_413076
In Solr
https://search.parliament.uk/claw/solr/?id=http://data.parliament.uk/pimsdata/hansard/CONTRIBUTION_413076