§ Lords Amendment: No. 18, in page 9 line 6, leave out "fourteen" and insert "twenty-eight".
§ Mr. SharplesI beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment.
This is a point involving Scottish law which was raised on Report by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh, Leith (Mr. Ronald King Murray). The Amendment will meet the point that he raised.
Clause 6(6) provides that a deportation order shall not be made on the recommendation of a court so long as an appeal is pending and that, for this purpose, the appeal shall be treated as 602 pending until the expiration of the time for bringing it or, in Scotland, until the expiration of 14 days from the recommendation of the court.
The hon. and learned Member said that the need for the reference to 14 days in Scotland arose because one form of appeal in Scotland, by means of a bill of suspension, is not subject to a time limit. He asked whether this period could not be extended to 28 days. My hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate undertook to consider this point, and the Amendment is the result of that consideration.
§ Mr. Ronald King Murray (Edinburgh, Leith)I welcome both the Amendment and the kind words of the Minister of State. I would stress that it is a good thing from the Opposition's point of view that the anomaly to which I and others drew attention has been rectified. None of us on this side and no hon. Member opposite particularly wants to achieve an artificial uniformity of law between Scotland and England, where there are distinctive differences which are of value to the respectives communities, but this is not such a case. Indeed, other aspects of this Clause are directed to maintaining a relevant difference between the law of Scotland and the law of England.
But we must remember that the people who are concerned in this part of the Bill are non-patrials, and there is no reason why non-patrials who are being ejected from the country should be treated more harshly in Scotland than in England and Wales. For this reason, among others, we on this side welcome the Amendment.
§ Question put and agreed to.