UK Parliament / Open data

Coroners and Justice Bill

My Lords, I am sorry to disagree with the noble Lord, but I have a couple of questions that I want to put to the Government and it looks as though I would not be in a good position to do so if the Minister spoke now. I therefore hope that the House will allow me a couple of minutes to put the questions. I am sure that we will then have the debate that the noble Lord wants. Speaking in support of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and my noble friend Lady D’Souza, we are grateful to the Government for their initial move in Committee to make these crimes retrospectively recognisable under British law. They are now recognised from 1991, which catches a considerable number of potential criminals in Serbia, the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. We are also grateful for all the work that the Minister, his colleagues and officials undertook in trying to meet our points. However, I still believe that presence minus would have produced a cleaner, clearer outcome than residence plus. The effort that the Government have made in Amendment 65B is acceptable, but it is more complicated by going down the presence minus route. To some extent, it amounts to the approach of the Red Queen saying, "Residence is residence because I say it’s residence". Nevertheless, I shall not look that gift horse in the mouth and would like to ask three questions. First, much of the interest in this subject was triggered by the Rwandans who the Government tried to deport back to Rwanda, where they would have stood trial, and who the Court of Appeal, quite correctly in my view—it is not my job to say so, but nevertheless—decided would not get a fair trial in Rwanda. It then turned out that they could not get a trial anywhere and they got off. I would therefore like to know whether subsection (1)(g) in new Section 67A in his amendment would, if it had been in force at the time when that occurred, have caught that sort of person. Secondly, subsection (1)(c) of the new section refers to, ""an individual who has leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom for the purposes of work or study and who is in the United Kingdom"." Can the Minister throw light on whether that covers those who come here for military training or courses? It sounds as though it does, because military training and courses are study, but I would like to hear that from the Minister. Of course, in certain countries, the military are only too likely to be those who are capable of committing, and in some cases have committed, such crimes. Thirdly, can the Minister throw light on the impact of these fairly complex provisions on people who get long-term business visas, often for six months? Would they be caught if they fell within the scope of the categories that are applied? I repeat that the Government have made a fair try of closing a loophole that should never have existed. We do not want in this House to go into how it came about in the first place, but I am sure that we do not want it to be there. Moving away from it is highly desirable. The more toughly and clearly we move away from it, the less these people will come to this country. Therefore, the problem that the Government see of an excessive demand on resources is self-solving: the tougher we are, the less they will come. The clearer we are that the culture of impunity will not be tolerated by this country, the more we will help the worldwide cause of preventing these appalling crimes.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
713 c1068-9 
Session
2008-09
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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