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Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her comments in moving these two orders, on which I have a number of points to make. The Agency for International Trade Information and Co-operation is a body which, as the order says, asserts that there is no public or media interest—or at least in this order. I suppose that that is right, although one of the many useful roles of this Chamber is that we can drum up a little public interest or focus a beady eye on organisations that others may think are too small to merit concern or appear on the radar screen of normal accountability.
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Nevertheless, they draw taxpayers' and public money. As the noble Baroness has explained, there are moneys to be released by the department for their use, which I think is £1 million of taxpayers' money. So it is right that we should keep an eye on these issues and even if there is no vast media interest, there is a process of accountability that must be performed.
The AITIC is a very small organisation and without a doubt its mission is valuable. Its aim is to place developing countries on more equal terms in the whole process of trade and commercial negotiation round the globe, on which it depends for getting a decent voice and a decent outcome for its development.
There is a puzzle to which I shall probably turn in regard to the later orders. I wonder why we are dealing now with all of these immunities, yet there is a significant Bill coming up only a week away from today, which is another version of an international organisations Bill. I say "another version" because we had one in 1968 and another in 1981. That will deal extensively with immunities of a whole range of organisations.
I wonder why it is that we are dealing with orders this week which, presumably, flow from the mother Bills of the past and the International Organisations Act 1968 and others, when another Act, which will no doubt give birth to another great flood of instruments and orders, is about to come up. That is puzzling, but I shall go into that in more detail in a moment.
More generally, these immunities, which we are ready to grant in accordance with our international undertakings and the undertakings of many other countries, are considerable. When we turn to the next order, I shall read out the enormous list of immunities that we are about to grant, which go a very long way.
Of course, immunities carry responsibilities. Those who are accorded the privileges and immunities under these orders in international organisations must never forget that their immunity should go hand-in-hand with proper respect for local laws and customs and that they are not just a ticket to freedom from the normal constraints of law and respect in the communities in which they happen to live and mostly work. In the case of the AITIC, we are referring to Geneva, but in other cases it is obviously the UK. They should not just be accorded a freedom to do as they wish.
That is all that I wish to say on the AITIC order. We play—I repeat—an important part in ensuring that these small organisations are watched and their activities, while supported, are nevertheless required to be in accordance with proper standards of international behaviour and procedures.
I now turn to the second order which concerns the International Criminal Court. Of course, this is a subject that we debated at enormous length in this Chamber two or three years ago. As the noble Baroness has reminded us, the decision sets up the first permanent international court in history above national control. Therefore, all the more should we be very concerned with ensuring that there is proper accountability and procedures in such bodies as this. Otherwise, they are always in danger of
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becoming too remote from the sources of their funds and their original legitimacy, which are the nation states of the earth.
However, that does not include all the nation states of the earth. We know that America has not signed on because it feels that its national procedures for dealing with international criminal behaviour, atrocities and war crimes are adequate and is concerned about handing power to higher courts. But that is their opinion. It is not our opinion: this nation has signed up. Having signed up, we now propose to give very big immunities.
Puzzle number one from this side of the House is why, again, are we doing this this week when next week we have a Bill coming forward which, in its Explanatory Notes, states:
"Under existing legislation the UK is unable to confer privileges and immunities on these organisations",
which includes the International Criminal Court? That is nonsense. That is the explanation of next week's Bill, but here we are a week before the Bill has even had its Second Reading in this House granting those immunities and privileges to one of those organisations. We need an explanation of why that nonsensical statement is to appear. If it cannot be given today, I have to say that my noble friend Lady Rawlings, who is to deal with the Second Reading of the proposed Bill next week, will wish to pursue it. There seems to be a mismatch, dysfunction or non-connection here which needs to be clarified.
Turning to the immunities, this is a very long list. I do not want to take the time of noble Lords by going through it in detail, but it includes immunities not only from personal arrest and legal process of every kind, but also exemption from taxation on salaries, emoluments and allowances; exemption from national service—this to include the families of members of the ICC and staff forming part of their households—exemption from immigration restrictions and alien registration; exemption from inspection of personal baggage; the same privileges in respect of currency and exchange facilities as those afforded to officials of comparable rank in diplomatic missions; and the right to import free of duties and taxes, except for payments of services, their furniture and effects at the time of first taking up their posts, which is fair enough.
These are generous immunities and again, they must go hand in hand with responsibilities. We need to mark that very carefully indeed. I understand that next week's Bill will extend these immunities and privileges to even more groups. We do not have the power now to extend these provisions to certain groups, so we need a new Bill to do so. There is more to come. We would like to know what that "more" is and my noble friend Lady Rawlings will certainly pursue it. However, one is left with the slightly uneasy feeling that this is a machine handing out very substantial immunities in a rather puzzling sequence, about which we would like to know more.
This is not the time to debate the nature of the International Criminal Court, which is only just getting under way. We hope that it achieves its
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mission, and does so in a way that commands the confidence of the world and does not generate in any way politically motivated intrusions into the affairs of nation states in the manner in which many expressed their fears at the time. We hope it can avoid that and do good in the spirit in which it was set up.
That is all I have to say on the matter and on the two orders. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for setting out their purpose.
Lord Dykes: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, has asked some interesting and pertinent questions and I hope that when the Minister comes to respond, she will take the opportunity to reply to those points. The Minister was kind enough to suggest taking the two draft orders together, although the subjects are totally different except for the shared concept of the application of immunities and privileges. I shall deal with them in the order in which they are set out on the Order Paper.
Turning to the Agency for International Trade Information and Co-operation, Members on these Benches and the Liberal Democrat Party welcome the approval of this draft order as the necessary instrumentation for taking forward the underlying legislation for the creation of this agency. Without straying too far from the order before us, I want briefly to speak more generally. This will be of great interest to the public at large when they begin to focus on the subject. Indeed, that will be a growing phenomenon in the future. Through this agency, third world countries, those with fewer resources and smaller populations, and those which are not as wealthy as the advanced western world and advanced countries in other parts of the world, will have the opportunity to access information on trade and co-operation of all kinds.
It is my view and, I suspect, that of most Members of this House that world trade itself certainly does need "universalisation", given the deleterious effects on the third world of many of the advanced world's international and intra-national trade arrangements—not least the effects of some of the developments within the WTO itself and the changes that will need to be made during the various rounds that are taking place on a constant basis. However, perhaps that is straying too far from the specifics of this document.
I believe that the immunities and privileges suggested for AITIC in the draft order are rational and sensible. They have a conventional look about them—if that is not too rash a thing to say. Therefore I, too, support the order.
Moving on to the draft order in respect of the International Criminal Court, we turn now to a much bigger subject—although I suppose that nothing could be as important as world trade. The International Criminal Court is brand new and its creation has seemingly been warmly welcomed in various parts of the world; this is obviously a very early stage for the body. It is getting under way right now and will take some time to develop. No doubt a lot of experiential
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evidence will be gathered in the future, which will enable the court to improve its procedures, customs and behaviour and, indeed, its juridical work. That is its main purpose in a world which is increasingly indivisible. We are one planet and there is now strong pressure for international justice in respect of those individuals—the court is reserved for individuals and not for individual countries—who commit war crimes. It is still very early days for this whole panoply of international legislation and time will be needed for it to develop.
In the mean time, in order to arm the International Criminal Court with the appropriate procedural, practical and administrative immunities that are, as we know, the convention under such international arrangements and treaties, it is important that the corpus of immunities set out in this legislation should be quite considerable. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, implied, that is not to say that one should not be concerned to ensure that these immunities and privileges apply specifically to the people directly involved in the processes, behaviour and procedures of the court and do not stray beyond that immediate remit. Presumably that would include the definition of "household", which has already been referred to in the debate. It must be the immediate, practical and functioning household rather than any wider definition.
Speaking personally, and not being a legal expert, on balance the text looks perfectly satisfactory. However, I would also welcome the Minister's reassurance on that point.
With those words, Members on these Benches support both of the orders. They address totally different subjects but deal with necessary privileges and the corpus of immunities.
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