My Lords, the amendments in this group go to a simple but crucial issue. The Bill proposes to give the Minister the power to create criminal offences by regulations. The proposal is slightly obfuscated by language, with the Bill saying that the regulations may not,
“create a relevant criminal offence”,
but the intention is that they will and the words are good enough to do so.
I know that your Lordships have kindly listened to me on this subject on a number of occasions and I will not go on about it more than I have to, but there is a simple principle: it is wrong for a criminal offence to be created without proper—not notional and not theoretical—parliamentary scrutiny. The fact that it has happened before, which it has, merely signifies—I am sorry to say this—that Parliament, including this House, was not sufficiently alert to the deviation from constitutional principles.
My objection is to the lack of scrutiny. Very recently during debate on the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill, your Lordships gave a very strong indication to the Government that this was a concern that occupied the attention of all sides of the House. The result is now a significant government amendment to the original proposal. In the subsequent debate in the Public Bill Committee in the other place last week, on 6 March, the Minister, Sir Alan Duncan, acknowledged that the Government accepted,
“that the powers of the Executive to create criminal offences and regulations should be subject to appropriate parliamentary scrutiny”.—[Official Report, Commons, Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill Committee, 6/3/18; col. 119.]
Although he did not say so, the Government must have implicitly accepted that the theoretical arrangements for parliamentary scrutiny were inadequate, because the Minister then went on to reflect on possible options for improving the processes. It was this that culminated in the government proposal that, if offences were to be created by regulations, there must be “good reasons” for their creation and, once the Government had
concluded that there were indeed good reasons, they then had to be justified by a detailed explanatory and open report to Parliament.
I leave open the argument that “good reasons” should give way to “necessary” but that is for another occasion. However, I acknowledge that, in the context of that Bill, this was a significant advance that would greatly increase the opportunity for genuine scrutiny by Parliament and therefore diminished Executive control. Today, I shall not set out the details of the proposed amendments to the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill because they are government amendments, but it would make a great start for the Minister if he would indicate that, at the very least, the government proposals in the sanctions Bill will be carried into this one. I beg to move.
5.30 pm