• Accessibility
• Email alerts
• RSS feeds
• Contact us

10.16 am

Mr. Chris Mullin (Sunderland, South): I shall make a shorter speech than I originally intended, as my righthon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) has summarised the issues with clarity and force. I shall confine myself to drawing the House's attention to a couple of quotations and asking some questions to which I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will respond.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton said, we have worked closely on this issue for a number of years. My interest arises from the pitiful letters that I began to receive from people on death row after the release of the Birmingham Six in April 1991. I receive letters from prisoners around the world, including many on death rows in the United States, but the most pitiful are from the Caribbean. I shall quote from one letter sent by a man in Trinidad who was on death row for more than 10 years before his sentence was commuted as a result of the Pratt and Morgan judgment of the Privy Council.

In a recent letter, the man wrote:

"I thought with the commutation of the death sentence I would have been given the opportunity to advance my education that would enable me to become a progressive and constructive human being so that, if and when I come out of prison, I will not have to return to the life that caused me to hurt other people to survive . . . Briefly, this is how I squander my days in prison . . . I share a cell with ten other inmates, the noise of the other inmates makes it difficult for me to sleep, read, pray or study properly. At 7 am the cell is opened. I am given butter, bread and coco water for breakfast. I then stand in an open yard hoping to get a shower. Around 10.30 am I receive rice and peas water, then I am locked back into the cell. Around 3 pm the cell is again opened and I receive supper of butter, bread and sugar water. My health has deteriorated badly. Brutality controls the prison. A few weeks ago a prisoner who was serving a life sentence was murdered by a prison officer . . . the deceased had lived 30 years of his life in prison . . . I am hoping that I will not be murdered by anyone in this institution. I continue to beg God to forgive me my sins and to forgive those who wrongfully treat me badly."

The other passage that I want to place on record comes from a distinguished Trinidadian lawyer. Several years ago, he told a BBC television programme:

"The legal aid system is a great barrier and a great handicap"

A few weeks ago, Mr. Maharaj came to see me. He is charming and courteous, and he cheerfully admits to having reluctantly changed his mind on the death penalty because that is what the voters want. To me, he seems an acute example of a politician willing to do anything for votes. That phenomenon is hardly unique to Trinidad and Tobago, but as, in his case, it involves killing people, I find it particularly distasteful.

I shall conclude with three brief points, all touched on by my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton. First, we are not talking of far away countries over which we have little influence. We have a lot of influence with many Caribbean Governments, and we should exercise it. Belize--not strictly in the Caribbean, but greatly affected by what happens there--depends heavily on the United Kingdom to help to preserve democracy and to protect it from its neighbours. Belize also receives much aid and other assistance. I welcome the provision of such help, but as my right hon. Friend said, if such countries will accept that much interference with their sovereignty, they must not be surprised when we ask what happens in their jails.

When the high commissioner of Jamaica tells me that his country has a sovereign right to do what it wants, I accept that that is so. However, we have a sovereign right not to provide Jamaica with aid, trade preferences and debt relief. The Government are rightly committed to an ethical foreign policy, seeking to forge a clear connection between the countries that we choose to help and the degree of democracy and civilised behaviour in them. That principle should be applied forcefully in the Caribbean. It is time to make our minds up, because there will be a massive bout of hangings in the Caribbean if certain politicians have their way. We have given Jamaica and Trinidad enormous debt relief over the past year, despite the problems mentioned by my right hon. Friend. Perhaps we should be a little less generous.

Secondly, a two-tier court of appeal has been proposed, comprising a Caribbean court of appeal for death penalty cases--no doubt it will be expected to dispose of cases swiftly--and a civil court of appeal that would remain with the Privy Council. Politicians know that many international companies with which Caribbean countries do business would not accept a Caribbean court of appeal to deal with civil actions. They are anxious to retain the business, so they have sought a device that will enable them to hang as many people as possible as quickly as they can while preserving their commercial arrangements. I hope that we will have no truck with that two-tier idea. It is not the direct responsibility of my hon. Friend the Minister of State, but I hope that he will pass on what I have said to his colleagues.

23 Jun 1999 : Column 1100

Finally, I hope that the Minister will express himself strongly against the recent decisions by Trinidad and Jamaica to opt out of the optional protocol of the international convention on political and civil rights. They have opted back in on everything except matters relating to the death penalty. Those decisions are a provocation, and I hope that we shall be robust against them.

I welcome the debate, and I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton for arranging it.

10.26 am

Mr. Menzies Campbell (North-East Fife): The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) has done the House a great favour by raising this subject for debate. As it has developed, the debate has justified our allocating another occasion and rather more time to it. A series of complex issues has been raised, and the House ought to consider those issues at more leisure.

Capital punishment has caused me some anxiety in the recent past, not least because I feel discomfort--even repugnance--at the notion that the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council should still have a role when the United Kingdom has finally, once and for all, abolished the last few remaining instances in which the death penalty might be applied. I hope that I do not offend the right hon. Gentleman by saying that he has a personal Richter scale of language, but today the force of his argument and his calm and rational introduction were powerful. He did himself and the House a great deal of justice.

More than half the countries of the world retain the death penalty. Last year, four of them--China, Iran, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the United States of America--accounted for 80 per cent. of all executions. Like the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier), my opposition to the death penalty arises from conviction.

I entered professional practice in 1968, three years after the abolition, to all intents and purposes, of the death penalty. I never had the burden carried by others at the Bar--especially when legal aid was less freely available than it is today--of being engaged in what used to be called capital cases. However, I successfully prosecuted and unsuccessfully defended cases in the High Court in Scotland in which, but for the passing into law of the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, capital punishment would have applied. Nothing in my experience persuaded me that my conviction that capital punishment was wrong required any revision.

At the time when their independence was gained, politicians of the newly independent countries of the West Indies opted to retain the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council because it provided legal and judicial expertise not available in their domestic legal systems. It was always envisaged that the time would come when that would no longer be so, and that those countries would eventually manage their legal systems without recourse to the United Kingdom.

The constitutions of the Caribbean countries provide that their legislatures can abolish the right of appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council by a constitutional amendment, usually requiring the approval of a two thirds majority. So the mechanism exists whereby those countries could, as it were, repatriate to themselves the responsibility that now rests with the Privy Council.

23 Jun 1999 : Column 1101

In recent times, some powerful arguments have been addressed as to whether that legal connection should be maintained. I commend to the House an article written by David Pannick, QC, in The Times of 15 June this year. It was a powerful article by someone whose reputation in these matters is very considerable indeed. He argues that independent nations should be encouraged to develop their own judicial, as well as their political, autonomy. He also argues that colonialism is still colonialism, no matter how benevolent its administration.

I found one passage of that article especially compelling. David Pannick states:

"Our senior judges are put in the unacceptable position of being asked to administer such rules."

There is a paradox contained in the argument that the Judicial Committee should cease to have any responsibility, in that the risk might be that any influence that we in the United Kingdom have would be substantially diminished. As long as those appeals come before the Judicial Committee, it can be argued that there is a degree of influence. If we repatriate--if that expression is correct--that responsibility to the Caribbean itself and take the Judicial Committee out of the process, it could be argued by some that we would have even less influence than we have at present.

As I said when I began my remarks, I do not pretend for a moment that these are anything other than complex and difficult issues. However, as long as that responsibility remains vested in the Judicial Committee, this House cannot be regarded as exempt, or barred politically or in any other way, from passing judgment on Administrations in those countries that persist in the application of a punishment that we regard as wholly unnatural.

I was interested in the reference made by the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) to the Attorney-General of Trinidad. The Attorney-General was recently quoted as saying that

" it is wrong for any country or group of countries to transplant their legal culture into the Caribbean. We respect their laws of punishment, and they must respect ours."

This debate may well cause annoyance in some countries of the Caribbean, but as long as the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council still has a legal responsibility for these matters, this House has a legitimate interest in them, and those countries cannot expect that we will be silent in the face of the continuing use of a punishment which people in this country find so repugnant.

23 Jun 1999 : Column 1102

• A-Z index
• Glossary
• Contact us
• Freedom of Information
• Jobs
• Using this website
• Copyright