§ The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Blunkett)Section 8 of the Criminal Justice (Terrorism and Conspiracy) Act 1998 requires the Secretary of State to lay before both Houses of Parliament at least once in every 12 months a report on the working of the Act. The reporting requirement applies to the whole Act but, following the repeal of the terrorism provisions (sections 1–4) consequent on the coming into force of the Terrorism Act 2000, the conspiracy provisions (sections 5–7) are now the only extant provisions. They are unrelated to the antiterrorism sections and their review is a free-standing exercise.
Section 5 of the 1998 Act—which, by sections 6 and 7, is applied to Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively—provides that agreements in England and Wales to commit acts that would amount to criminal offences triable in a foreign jurisdiction can be tried as criminal conspiracies in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, though ordinarily there would not be jurisdiction to try them in the United Kingdom (UK). The purpose of the review of the conspiracy provisions is not so much to determine the extent to 13WS which the provisions remain necessary (which is the purpose of reviewing the terrorism provisions) as to assess how, and in what circumstances, they have been used.
Lord Carlile of Berriew QC, who acts as reviewer of the conspiracy provisions of the 1998 Act, has made enquiries into the operation of those provisions and reported his findings to me on 22 August 2002. He found that there has to date been only one use of the provisions, in April 2001, in the case of Pravin Patel and others in the Leicester Crown court. The conspiracy in that case was to supply false UK passports in Gujarat, to facilitate illegal immigration into the UK and illegal tourist entry into the USA. Two of the eight defendants—who received sentences of 15 months' imprisonment suspended for two years and five years' imprisonment—were prosecuted under the provisions of the 1998 Act without which these offences would not have been triable in the UK. This case indicates a proper use of the Act on sound evidence and in the public interest; and that the legislation worked well for the purpose for which it was intended.
On Lord Carlile's recommendation, I intend to abolish the requirement for annual review of the extant procedures of the 1998 Act when a legislative opportunity occurs. The terrorism provisions of the Act having been subsumed in the Terrorism Act 2000; there is little point in continuing to have a separate review of the remaining provisions, particularly when they are so rarely used, are not confined to terrorism and no other conspiracy or extra-territorial jurisdiction provisions are subject to such review.
14WSLord Carlile's report has today been laid before Parliament and copies have been placed in the Library.