My Lords, I rise to address the whole issue of Clause 16 and Amendments 70 and 71, relating to paragraphs 15 and 18 of Schedule 2. Time is getting on. I have been very brief in my previous three efforts during the debate. I will not take much longer, but I have carefully measured what I will say.
These provisions are lamentable and should not disfigure our statute book. It used to be an invariable principle that criminal offences could be created only by statute. For example, we had a little history lesson earlier, going back to the reign of King Henry VIII, with his famous Henry VIII clauses. Even his subservient Parliament did not give him power to create criminal offences without a statute. The principle has been broken over the years. It is open to the Minister to say that this sort of legislation has happened before and precedents have been set; he may very well do so. Bad precedents should be overruled, not least in this House.
What is pernicious about this legislation? It is secondary legislation that will give power to a single Minister, by regulation, to create criminal offences for conduct that contravenes not statute, but laws made by secondary legislation. It is secondary legislation on secondary legislation, at the end of which, in Clause 16, there may be a 10-year sentence. The mind boggles. Has this been thought through? It does not stop there; that is only the start. The legislation will also simultaneously enable the same Minister who created the criminal offence to redefine the rules of evidence, as they apply to the offence he has created—talk about being judge
in your own court—and the Minister creating the offence will be given power, by regulation, to provide for defences as he sees fit, if he sees fit.
That is an astonishing combination of powers. Put in this way, regulations will govern a newly created offence or offences and say, “This is an offence of strict liability. What if the bank that got it wrong when it decided that it would lend money to somebody, failing to appreciate that he was designated, didn’t know? Too bad. This is an absolute offence”. That could be included. They could also say, or a Minister could decide, that those sorts of offences are so precious to our allies and our foreign obligations—let us not overlook terrorism, which is in the Bill—that we had better say that the burden of proof should be on the defendant, to prove that he was not a terrorist or breaking the sanctions. That is assuming that there will be a defence at all. Without going into every detail of the rules of evidence, the regulations may provide that all or any of the laws of evidence, which are designed to protect the defendant from an unsafe conviction, may be abrogated by ministerial decree. I assume, as I did at Second Reading, that we will be allowed a trial, but at the end of the trial, if there is conviction for an absolute offence, 10 years’ imprisonment is available.
I hope the Committee shares my view that this is shocking. It is not the way we should create criminal offences and administer criminal justice. It gives too much power to one individual. With great respect, I am not thinking of this Minister or the shadow Minister. We are legislating for 10 or 20 years. Do we want to give this power to anybody who may come to power? Do we want to give these kinds of powers to any Government that we may get? I reckon not. This is too much power in the hands of the Executive. If we let this through it will be a precedent for which Ministers for the next 50 years will sit on this side of the House and say, “But it’s happened before. It’s a precedent”. What sort of a country will we be?
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