§ Order for Second Reading read.
§ 3.46 p.m.
§ The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. J. E. S. Simon)I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This Bill makes the necessary preliminary changes in our municipal law to enable the Government to ratify the Geneva Conventions which the Government of the United Kingdom signed—with one reservation, with which we agree—in 1949. No doubt during the Committee stage there will be an opportunity to discuss how this is done. It would have been desirable to have the discussion on Second Reading, for this Bill marks a considerable departure in our criminal law. It makes liable to the criminal jurisdiction of our domestic courts persons accused of certain offences wherever the breaches are committed and regardless of the nationality of the accused.
There is very limited precedent for such a provision in our law, but we believe that this departure is necessary, if we are to honour certain new types of international obligation now recognised as morally binding. The House would normally have wished to discuss such a matter thoroughly, but the hour is now late and I believe there is general agreement with what we propose and that the House wishes we should put ourselves in a position to allow of the early ratification of the Conventions. Under those circumstances, I hope that a Second Reading will be given to this Bill.
§ 3.48 p.m.
§ Sir Frank Soskice (Newport)As the Minister has said, this Bill makes a pronounced departure from the principles deeply imbedded in our criminal law. On the other hand, if this country is to enter into Conventions such as those referred to in the Bill, such a procedure must be inevitable. Therefore, I wish to say at the outset—these Conventions, in particular having been negotiated during the lifetime of the last Government—that I and, I believe, my colleagues are certainly prepared in principle to accept the departure from the criminal law which this Bill involves.
717 As the Minister says, it involves taking proceedings under our own criminal law against foreigners in respect of crimes committed abroad, and it involves our own courts in trying to interpret language used in the Conventions which possibly does not approximate to the accuracy and preciseness of language we generally use in formulating our own Statutes. This is a Bill which quite obviously is one which, if the principle upon which it is based is accepted—I think that the whole House accepts it—is susceptible to fuller investigation in the Committee stage.
Clearly, the House in Committee will want to examine with anxiety and care whether the language in the Bill goes beyond what is necessary to honour the obligations which we have undertaken in the Conventions, but it seems to me that, if we are to move along the path of growing international co-operation, these Conventions, and conventions like them, are absolutely indispensable. That being so, we must be ready to shoulder the obligations that they impose.
The Bill is designed to enable us to do so by making the necessary changes in our own domestic law. If the House gives it a Second Reading, no doubt the Bill will be carefully examined in Committee. On that understanding, I hope that the House will be ready to give it a Second Reading after the comparatively perfunctory examination that we have been able to give it today.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Bill accordingly read a Second time.
§ Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Brooman-White.]
§ Committee upon Monday next.