OFFENCES UNDER PART II (Hansard, 25 January 1984)

§ Mr. Waddington
I beg to move amendment No. 23, in page 7, line 40, leave out from 'above' to 'he' in line 42.

Mr. Deputy Speaker
With this, it will be convenient to take Government amendments Nos. 27 to 30.

§ Mr. Waddington
These are drafting amendments. Amendment No. 23 is designed to eliminate unnecessary repetition and amendments Nos. 27 to 30 are designed to remove possible ambiguity in the drafting. They do not alter the effect of the clause.
The need for an improvement in the wording of clause 9(2) was drawn to our attention in Committee by the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) and, although the method of making that improvement has been more complex than he or we envisaged at the time, we are, as always, grateful to him for his contribution to the clarity and certainty of the legislation.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell
I beg to move amendment No. 24, in page 8, line 3, after 'the' insert 'presence in or'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker
With this, it will be convenient to take the following amendments: No. 25, in page 8, line 3, leave out from 'Britain' to 'of in line 4 and insert 'or Northern Ireland'.
No. 26, in page 8, line 4, leave out from 'of' to 'he' in line 10 and insert 'any other person in contravention of an exclusion order'.

Mr. Powell
I hope that the amendments will enable me to earn another golden opinion from the Minister or his advisers. The difficulty that subsection (2) presents at first sight is the difference between knowingly concerned in arrangements for securing or facilitating the entry and in Great Britain, Northern Ireland or the United Kingdom knowingly harbours". It does not seem obvious that harbouring covers knowingly being concerned in arrangements for securing or facilitating the presence of a person in Great Britain. In other words, if a person is in Great Britain, the only offence is harbouring him. If a person is not in Great Britain, Northern Ireland or the United Kingdom, as the case may be, the offence is knowingly being concerned in arrangements for securing or facilitating his entry.
If the term "harbours" includes making arrangements for securing or facilitating a person's remaining in the countries concerned, there is not the lack of symmetry between the two paragraphs that there appears to be. However, that does not seem to be the natural meaning of "harbours".
The amendments would provide that knowingly concerned in arrangements for securing or facilitating referred both to entry and to remaining or being in the country concerned. The opportunity has also been taken to substitute "the United Kindom" for Great Britain, Northern Ireland or the United Kingdom". It is an apparent paradox to separate by the disjunctive "or" the parts of the United Kingdom from the United Kingdom itself. 978 If the Minister says, "Aha, but what I have in mind is a foreigner roaming around in the United Kingdom and this is to catch him as he is passing from Great Britain to Northern Ireland," I suggest that he will need a much more elaborate qualification of the terms of subsection (2) to secure that effect.
I hope that I have succeeded in making clear to the Minister the difficulty that prompted my hon. Friends and myself to table the amendments and that he will refer to the paradox involving Great Britain, Northern Ireland or the United Kingdom".

§ Mr. Waddington
I am sorry to disappoint the right hon. Gentleman, but, just as there were no orchids for Miss Blandish, there are, on this occasion, no accolades for Mr. Powell. I cannot accept his advice.
Amendments Nos. 24 and 26 would replace the offence of harbouring a person subject to an exclusion order with a new offence of being knowingly concerned in arrangements for securing or facilitating the presence of an excluded person in the part of the country from which he has been excluded by order.
The effect would be possibly to widen, and certainly to blur, the scope of the offence. "Harbouring" is a well-established word which has been interpreted by the courts on many occasions. Everybody knows that it means giving shelter to a person in one way or another. "Facilitating the presence" of a person does not have a comparably clear meaning. Presumably it would encompass the provision of shelter. I do not know whether it would include finding the man a job. It might; it might not. It is certainly not a concept known to English law and we should be rash to throw overboard the well-known offence of harbouring, and substitute for it a new offence of knowingly being concerned with arrangements for securing or facilitating the presence of an excluded person.
Amendment No. 25 would remove the reference to the United Kingdom for subsection (2)(a), presumably on the ground that the references to entry to Northern Ireland or Great Britain are sufficient. I accept that argument in principle, but the three references reflect the three types of exclusion order in part II of the Bill — from Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom. I think that to remove one of them would detract from the clarity of the clause.
The Government amendments that we have made to clause 9 are designed to clarify the references to areas and territories from which persons are excluded in relation to those in which the offences are committed. We undertook to examine what the right hon. Member for Down, South said in Committee about the possible ambiguity to which the word "there" gives rise in clause 9(2) and we have done so in amendments that the House has already approved. We met the right hon. Gentleman's point in a different form from that which he proposed.