My Lords, this is an amendment of a rather different character. It is really a probing amendment and it picks up a point that I also raised at Second Reading yesterday evening. In order to understand the point, one has to know a little more than the wording on the Marshalled List. I draw attention to a provision in the Bill which has to be read together with provisions in RIPA, in particular Section 22. Section 22(6) states:
“It shall be the duty of the … operator to comply with the requirements of any notice given to him under subsection (4)”.
The last but one subsection of that section—subsection (8)—states:
“The duty imposed by subsection (6) shall be enforceable by civil proceedings by the Secretary of State for an injunction, or for specific performance of a statutory duty under section 45 of the Court of Session Act 1988, or for any other appropriate relief”.
However, Clause 4(10) of the Bill seeks to insert in that subsection of RIPA the words,
“including in the case of a person outside the United Kingdom”.
I am not clear whether the enforcement measures which are forecast by the provisions in Section 22 of RIPA are intended to be applied extraterritorially. This is an important point of practice, concerning how one achieves a measure such as an injunction or some other measure by service upon somebody abroad, and then how this is enforced against that person.
I practised for 24 years in the Court of Session, and was its president for the past seven years. I am very well aware of the problems one has in dealing with people outside the jurisdiction. Some of these problems indeed related to people in England, not Scotland, and one had to be extremely careful that measures were in place to enable any order a court pronounced to be enforceable. Underlying this is the point the Minister made yesterday, that because of the challenges which are now being made one wants a system which is properly laid out and is foolproof, which will be effective and will command respect.
My concern is that there may be something lurking here at the very back of Clause 4 which is defective, because it has not been properly explored and thought through. Like the noble Lord, Lord Davies, I was extremely grateful for the letter written by the Minister’s advisers, which covered a lot of ground in great detail. However, on this point there is a reference to my intervention. The very last sentence on the bottom of the third page states:
“Where absolutely necessary, RIPA provides for enforcement by injunction through domestic courts”.
Indeed it does, and domestically there is no problem. The question is whether it is intended that it should be enforceable in courts in other parts of the world, and whether attention has really been given to the mechanisms that would be necessary to achieve that, in discussion with the various courts including the Court of Session. If the noble Lord was able to guide us a little more on that point, that would be extremely useful. It would reassure us that we are passing a measure which will command respect throughout the world, as it is intended to do. I beg to move.