EVIDENCE (COLONIAL STATUTES) BILL. (Hansard, 8 August 1907)

§ * THE EARL OF ELGIN
My Lords, I need only say a very few sentences in explanation of this Bill. It is brought in in order to remove a grievance which exists in the Colonies from the fact that at present Colonial laws are regarded in English Courts as foreign 223 laws for purposes of proof, and have to be proved by the oral evidence of an expert. This inconvenience was mentioned by the Governor-General of the Commonwealth in 1905 to the late Government, in a case in which a man had been acquitted in England of embezzling his wife's money on the ground of absence of evidence that the Married Woman's Property Act had been adopted in Victoria, and the Ministry of the Commonwealth, through the Governor-General, drew the attention of His Majesty's then Government to the case, and to the advisability of its being considered whether legislation should not be undertaken to remove this inconvenience. The matter was under consideration by the late Government, I believe, but no Bill had been introduced when they left office. The present Government has therefore had the matter before them, and we have introduced the Bill to which I have now to ask your Lordships to give a Second Heading. This Bill provides that copies of all Colonial and Indian laws shall be received as evidence in English Courts if purporting to be printed by the Government printer without further proof, and makes it felony to print, or to tender in evidence, a false copy of any such law. Your Lordships will observe that this applies to laws passed in British Possessions, and the term "British Possessions" is defined in the Bill to mean any part of His Majesty's dominions exclusive of the United Kingdom, and, where parts of those dominions are under both a central and a local legislature, shall include both all parts under the central legislature and each part under a local legislature. But there is a proviso also in the Bill that His Majesty may by Order in Council extend the provisions to Cyprus and other Protectorates so that they may have the advantage of them. This Bill has been presented in the other House of Parliament and has been passed without objection. I may mention that it was considered by a Standing Committee of the House, and the only material alteration that was made in it was an alteration in a penalty that appears in one of the clauses of the Bill. Under these circumstances I ask your Lordships to give it a Second Reading.

§ * THE EARL OF HALSBURY
It seems to me that no possible harm can be done by the Bill. I confess that some part of what the noble Lord says the Bill accomplishes appears to me to be unnecessary, but I presume he has had advice on the subject, and that he has decided that it is necessary in all the respects he spoke of. But I should have thought that in dealing with a Commonwealth case it was not necessary to prove what the Commonwealth law was, because the Court of Appeal is sitting in theory as a Commonwealth Court.

§ * LORD ALVERSTONE
My Lords, I should like to say that I think there is a real necessity for the Bill which the noble Lord has introduced. Only a short time ago there was a very important case before us in which there was not the smallest doubt of the existence of certain Australian statutes, but the law officers of Crown were obliged to admit that they could not rely on those statutes because they had not got formal proof of what the law was. I am quite certain that in the interests of justice it is necessary that the Bill which has been introduced to your Lordships should be passed.