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Column Number: 039
Standing Committee A
Tuesday 10 June 2003
(Afternoon)
[Mr. Alan Hurst in the Chair]
Clause 3
General requirements for service of process
Amendment proposed [this day]: No. 9, in
2.30 pm
Question again proposed, That the amendment be made.
The Chairman: I remind the Committee that with this we are taking the following:
Amendment No. 10, in
clause 3, page 3, line 6, leave out 'an' and insert 'the'.
Amendment No. 11, in
Mr. James Paice (South-East Cambridgeshire): I welcome you to the proceedings, Mr. Hurst. I am advised that my only words in my contribution before we adjourned were, ''The point is''. The point is that the purpose of the amendments is to deal with the issue of whether or not people understand the appropriate language, and in private conversation afterwards—I do not think that I am giving away too much—the Minister accused me of dancing on a pin on the difference between the phraseology in the Bill and that in the convention. There is a third form of phraseology, too. He will find that what he said was also slightly different. I would be delighted if I were able to dance on a pin. I never had such agility, even in my youngest days, and certainly not at my present age.
All Committee members will agree that it is important that the person in receipt of the process from a British court fully understands everything in it, including its meaning, its implications and what he or she should do about it. I remain unconvinced about the need for the phraseology in the Bill to be different from that in the convention, but I shall not pursue the matter and make a great fuss. There is much more to deal with this afternoon.
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome): I ask the hon. Gentleman to indulge in more pin dancing.
I have read the clause again during the adjournment. There is nothing in it that would get the translation to the person who is required to receive it. Unlike the Scottish version in clause 5, in which the prosecutor is required to send the copy of the translation in parenthesis to the person on whom it
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is served, elsewhere in Britain it only goes to the court. Will the hon. Gentleman reflect on that?
Mr. Paice: The pin becomes smaller.
The hon. Gentleman has alighted on an even smaller point than I made. Nevertheless, I shall consider it quickly. I admit that I had other things to do during the adjournment, but I respect his commitment to studying every nuance of the Bill. He is correct. The relevant provision simply says that if a person does not understand English, a translation is to be given to the court. That seems a little odd. Perhaps the Minister will consider that again. That is not the purpose of my amendments, however, so I cannot pursue the matter at great length.
Lady Hermon (North Down): The hon. Gentleman is making a valid and valuable point, especially as it is supported by the Human Rights Act 1998, with which he will be most familiar. Under article 6, everyone in this country is entitled to a fair trial. That specifies that
''Everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights . . . to be informed promptly, in a language which he understands and in detail, of the nature and cause of the accusation against him''.
Whether or not the hon. Gentleman is dancing on a pin, he is making a valid point about the proper understanding of the charge against a defendant.
Mr. Paice: I am grateful for the hon. Lady's support. Although I was accused of dancing on a pin, what I was saying was important. Our debate has recognised that. As the hon. Lady rightly said, it is part of the human rights measures that are enshrined in legislation. I think that the Minister has taken the message on board. I hope that he reflects seriously on everything that has been said, including the point made by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) about whether the translation should be given to the court or to the person who should read it. I shall leave the Minister to reflect on that interesting argument. Does he wish to intervene?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Bob Ainsworth): I am a little loth to intervene, but we now have red herrings dancing on pins, and that is problematical. The hon. Gentleman is worried why the notice is to be served by the court. It is an order to put responsibility on the court that is applying for the process to be issued in the first place. We must remember that the clause applies to a process that is issued
''for the purposes of criminal proceedings by a court in England and Wales''.
The court wants the process to be served, so it should ensure that it is served in an appropriate language. The court must have the responsibility to ensure that that is the case. If the person is abroad, there will be many circumstances in which English is not the appropriate language. It must be the responsibility of the court that is asking for the process to be served to ensure that it is served in a way that can be understood.
Mr. Paice: That was a semi-helpful intervention.
Mr. Heath: It was not.
Mr. Paice: It was particularly robust of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome to say that the
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intervention was not helpful. The Minister was trying to be helpful. However, we have ample meat for when the Bill returns to the House of Commons on Report. We cannot pursue the argument of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome along the lines of the amendments that we have debated today, but it was an important point. In the light of our discussions, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr. Heath: I welcome you to the Committee, Mr. Hurst.
What did the Minister mean in his intervention? It is true that process is a result of court proceedings. However, it is clear from the wording of clause 3(3) that the person who requests the issue is the prosecutor—possibly, the defending barrister—in the court proceedings, not the court itself. There is a difficulty, so I hope that the Minister will reconsider the provision. I am sure that it is not a practical difficulty, because it is obvious that it is intended that the court should cause the translation to be sent to the person on whom the process is served. However, the Bill does not say that. It says that the prosecutor or defending counsel, or whoever is making the request, makes it to the court, along with a translation. I am asking the Minister not to enter into a debate, but to consider the matter further. Perhaps he can discuss it with his advisers. What he asserts is not what the clause says. A mismatch between the intention and the letter of the law always worries me.
Mr. Ainsworth: The situation seems clear to me. I must admit that I did not spend the entire lunch break examining clause 3(3), but I will do as the hon. Gentleman suggests and re-examine the matter. I only hope that it does not dominate our proceedings on Report, which will set the House of Commons alight in no uncertain terms.
We are dealing with when proceedings in a court in England, Wales or Northern Ireland lead to the application for the process to be issued to someone abroad. In those circumstances, the person who is asking the court to do that must inform the court whether he knows that there is a problem with language and must provide the court with a translation. That puts a responsibility on the people from whom the requests originate. It gives the court the opportunity to get to know the facts and to ensure that the notice being served is in an appropriate language. That has not been problematical in the past 13 years, and the provision is a lift from existing legislation. I will do as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome says, but I am not sure that anything fruitful will come of it.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
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Clause 4
Service of process otherwise than by post
Mr. Heath: I beg to move amendment No. 118, in
Mr. Heath: The amendment deals with the vagueness in the wording of clause 4(1), which reads:
''Process to which section 3 applies may, instead of being served by post, be served on a person outside the United Kingdom in accordance with arrangements made by the Secretary of State.''
In terms of legal process, that is extraordinarily vague, but I think that it is that way for a purpose, and there may be many circumstances in other countries that cannot reasonably be anticipated. However, the rules governing service of process in the UK are clearly set out in rules of court, and one would expect, if not the same rules of court to apply, then at very least that the Secretary of State would consider that the broad categories of alternatives that might be permissible within the legal system should be set out in the rules of court. Otherwise, we are effectively throwing away both legal control and, through the fact that the issue is a matter for resolution of the House of Commons, democratic control of the process. Perhaps ''process'' comes into these debates too often, and in too many different senses; we are talking about the process of process, or the way in which process is served.
There must be some ground rules to ensure compatibility with human rights legislation—that was mentioned by the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon)—and many other things if we are to avoid challenge. That is not because there is no obligation to comply; clearly, the matter is not open to challenge in the first instance. However, once someone has come back to this country as a result of process being served, and has possibly had further processes served on him or her as a result, or has received a requirement to appear in court in the United Kingdom, the issue of whether that process was acceptable might be open to challenge, if there were no rules to govern it.
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