ORDERS EXCLUDING PERSONS FROM GREAT BRITAIN (Hansard, 28 January 1976)

§ Dr. Summerskill
I beg to move Amendment No. 15, in page 4, line 1, leave out 'Part of'.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton)
It is proposed with this to take Government Amendments Nos. 22, 23, and 64, together with the following amendments standing in the name of the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham):
No. 65, in Schedule 2, page 12, line 12, leave out: 'to which paragraph 5 below applies and insert: 'exempted under paragraph 5 below'. No. 66, in Schedule 2, page 12, leave out lines 15 and 16 and insert: 'An order under section 5 of this Act shall be exempted for the purpose of paragraph 4(a) above where it'.

§ Dr. Summerskill
These amendments are designed to simplify the present pro- 521 visions respecting the service of notice of exclusion orders, and have the effect of placing an obligation on the Secretary of State to serve notice of the making of an exclusion order on any person who is within the United Kingdom, whether the exclusion order has the effect of excluding him from Great Britain, Northern Ireland or the United Kingdom.
At present, the obligation on the Secretary of State to serve notice of the making of an exclusion order is qualified by the provisions of Part II of Schedule 2. These have the effect that an order made by the Home Secretary, whether excluding a citizen from Great Britain or a non-citizen from the United Kingdom, has to be served only on a person who is in Great Britain, and an order made by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has to be served on a person only if he is in Northern Ireland.
The basis for this has been that notice need only be served when the person concerned is in that part of the United Kingdom against which his activities are aimed, and that the practical difficulty of requiring the security forces in Northern Ireland to undertake the task of serving notice of exclusion orders made by the Home Secretary may amount to an unreasonable burden.
We have, however, since the Committee stage, reconsidered the whole question of the service of notice of exclusion orders in the light of the forceful arguments put forward then, particularly by the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell). We accept his view that if a person is excluded from the United Kingdom as a whole, the exclusion order ought to be served on him wherever he is in the United Kingdom. We also accept that a person who is excluded from one part of the United Kingdom to another should be served with notice of the order, whichever part of the United Kingdom he is in—provided, of course, that he is in the United Kingdom."
We do not think that any obligation should rest upon the Secretary of State to serve an exclusion order on any person who is outside our jurisdiction, for example, in the Republic of Ireland. Therefore, Amendments Nos. 65 and 66 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) appear to be unnecessary, 522 because one of the Government's amendments will have the effect of deleting the whole of Part II of Schedule 2.

§ Mr. Powell
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the favourable consideration that she has given to the views put forward in Committee and, indeed, for writing to me on this subject between the Bill's two stages.
Virtue sometimes has its own reward, and one of the by-products of the Government's decision, which has been welcomed in the House today, to introduce into the Bill the principle of reciprocity has been that it has helped to clear up and simplify the unsatisfactory Schedule 2 by making it possible to eliminate Part II, which was not only obscure but which many of us thought involved substantial unfairnesses. The hon. Lady can feel that a considerable, though minor, improvement has been made to the Bill by the tidying up to which she has applied in her mind.