Coroners and Justice Bill

As I have spelt our previously in this House, the amendment seeks to adjust a procedural aspect of current legislation—namely, to extend the retrospective and extraterritorial application of the International Criminal Court Act. In brief, the International Criminal Court Act 2001 enables there to be prosecution in the UK courts of those suspected of perpetrating crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, irrespective of where those crimes were committed. However, the criteria insist that the suspect be a UK national or resident in the UK and that the crime was committed after 2001 when the ICC came into force in the UK. The result of this anomaly is that there are at present perhaps up to a 100 people suspected of such serious crimes currently in the UK. Recently four Rwandan suspects deemed to have committed crimes prior to 2001 were released. It cannot be good practice that justice is neither done nor seen to be done, or that the UK might possibly be regarded as a safe haven for perpetrators of war crimes and genocide. Ultimately these suspects must be forced to account for their crimes if the universal will to eradicate crimes against humanity is to be achieved. The amendments address the timing, presence, immigration, extradition and internal conflict aspects of the ICC, among others, thereby enabling the UK courts to have jurisdiction with respect to crimes committed after 2001. To avoid the retrospective application of the law, the courts could only have this jurisdiction if the crimes were committed at a date at which these crimes infringed UK law. This has already been demonstrated in citing existing legislation dealing with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by virtue of the Geneva Conventions Act 1957, the Genocide Act 1969 and the statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which pronounced crimes against humanity as criminal under customary international law. It has been argued that the UK law should be brought into line with other common law countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and, very recently, the USA. We are, therefore, extremely grateful to the Government for their successful efforts to do just this. We learnt today that the Government have accepted that crimes in the categories of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed since 1991 will henceforth come within the jurisdiction of the UK courts, based on the precedence established by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Furthermore, the Government are exploring the possibility of providing more certainty as to who may be considered to be a UK resident. However, this continues to trouble those of us who have signed up to these amendments, and those research organisations which have provided the background. It is surely not right that suspects of such serious crimes can avoid charges and possible prosecution by virtue of a refusal to take up any form of residence. As things stand, that can and does happen. A casual visitor to the UK, whether for holiday or perhaps medical treatment, must come within the arm of the law if they are a suspected genocidaire or perpetrator of other serious crimes. We therefore press the Government to come up with a more inclusive definition of residence to address that remaining anomaly, so that we can consider the matter on Report. Once again, I express my thanks to the Government for having come so far in meeting our concerns. I beg to move.