Examination of Witness (Questions 180-199)
HON. JOE
BOSSANO MP
6 FEBRUARY 2008
Q180 Chairman: May I ask you, then,
about the airport issue? Are you still opposed to the airport
customs and immigration arrangements that were part of the Cordoba
agreement?
Joe Bossano: Yes. The new agreement
provides for a change in the regime once the air terminal is extended.
The Cordoba agreement provided simply for a corridor to be built
from the existing terminal to the Spanish frontier, to avoid the
arrangements whereby people now get a bus in La Linea to come
to Gibraltar and take an aircraft to Spain. The Government subsequently
announced their intention of going beyond what was required by
the Cordoba understanding and investing something of the order
of £30 million in the building of a new terminal. From a
point of view not having anything to do with Spain, but rather
with public expenditure, we do not support that.
Although there were initially 14 flights a week
to Madrid—one run by GB Airways and the other by Iberia—GB
Airways pulled out altogether and Iberia cut its flights from
seven a week to two a week. We have a terminal in which, until
something new happens, we are investing 30 million quid to provide
for a weekend flight to Madrid and a daily flight to Gatwick.
We do not think that is a good way to spend public money, but
that has nothing to do with the foreign affairs dimension of the
issue.
As regards the arrangements, what we are seeing
now is that, even though something like 60% of the traffic that
goes from Gibraltar to Madrid is of Spanish origin—that
is to say, not of Spanish nationality, but originating on the
Spanish side of the international border—people from Spain
prefer to come into Gibraltar, do some shopping, because we have
much lower prices than in many commodities, and catch the Gibraltar-Madrid
flight from the Gibraltar end, rather than take the La Linea bus.
The bus is operating at very low occupancy levels. That is going
to be replaced by a system whereby, technically, nobody will be
able to board the aircraft in Gibraltar and exit the aircraft
in Spain on landing. Once the extension is there, they will be
deemed to have entered Spain before boarding the aircraft and
to have remained in Spain after landing, because the exiting from
Spain arrangements take place after landing and the entering Spain
arrangements take place before boarding.
To us, that is totally unnecessary, and we therefore
support the existing arrangements, which give people the flexibility
to choose to fly Gibraltar-Madrid or La Linea-Madrid. There are
lots of unknown elements in the new arrangements, which will only
be tested once they are put in place. Suppose somebody has shown
his passport at La Linea, and something happens between him showing
his passport and getting on the aircraft. Where is he? In no-man's
land; still in Gibraltar; or has he now left Gibraltar and is
in Spain? Those things indicate the peculiarity of the arrangements,
which are intended exclusively to allow Spain to argue that, in
fact, they do not concede that it is an international flight between
Spain and Gibraltar, but a domestic flight between one part of
Spain and another.
Q181 Chairman: May I clarify one
thing? The new terminal is not yet under construction.
Joe Bossano: No, it was announced
in May last year, before the general election, and it was due
to go to tender. The last time that I asked in Parliament about
this, I was told that three companies had tendered to do the work
and that all three were Spanish. As far as we know, to date, the
tender has not been allocated.
Q182 Mr. Keetch: May I ask about
the Odyssey, Mr. Bossano? It seemed to us to be an extraordinary
incident, but its ramifications are deeply constitutional and
potentially important. Give us your understanding and your picture
of it.
Joe Bossano: The view on our side
of the political fence is that, if an American company or a Panamanian
ship does something that is against the law, the answer is for
the people who think that it is against the law to take the necessary
legal steps to enforce the law. Of course, the Spaniards argued
that, because they did not concede any territorial waters under
the treaty of Utrecht, we do not have any territorial waters.
You have already had the views of the Foreign Office on that,
in which it says that the Odyssey was intercepted by Spanish vessels
three and a half miles away from Gibraltar. The United Kingdom
chose, in our case only, to claim the three-mile limit, even though
in all the other Overseas Territories, they claim the 12-mile
limit, and in the Falkland Islands they have a 200-mile economic
exclusion zone.
Q183 Mr. Keetch: That would take
in most of the Mediterranean. It would be difficult to enforce
a 200-mile limit there.
Joe Bossano: Remember that the
median line that the Foreign Office put in the paper to you—I
imagine, to confuse you, because that is its strategy normally—applies
only in the Bay of Gibraltar. There is no median line on the eastern
side; the next bit of land is when you hit Morocco. You may not
have 200 miles, but you can certainly extend the 12-mile limit,
as in La Linea. If you go in a straight line from La Linea into
Gibraltar in the sea, you are in Spanish waters after three miles,
and then you are in international waters, because the United Kingdom
has chosen not to extend our territorial waters to the same 12-mile
limit. Obviously, for one reason, and one reason only, if Spain
does not recognise three miles, it will not be chuffed at having
to recognise nine more.
The constitutionally important dimension is
that the United Kingdom has the responsibility for protecting
and defending the territorial waters of its Overseas Territories.
Therefore, what they should have done a long time ago, and what
they should do with no further delay, is to increase the three
miles to 12 miles and ensure that people are made to respect our
territorial waters, as is the case in every other colony.
Q184 Mr. Keetch: Just remind me,
when a British nuclear submarine got into difficulties and was
in port in Gibraltar a few years ago, were you part of the calls
from people in Gibraltar that it should be removed, on the basis
that you did not want it there?
Joe Bossano: No. We objected to
it being repaired there, because when I was a branch officer of
the Transport and General Workers Union and the Ministry of Defence
wanted to cut back on the work load of the dockyard and make people
redundant, we tried to persuade the Ministry of Defence that we
should be permitted to do repairs on nuclear submarines. The Ministry
told us that it could not allow us to do that, as the facilities
could not be upgraded in Gibraltar, because we were too small,
the population was too close and it was too dangerous. As the
population is still the same and the size of the Rock is still
the same, it cannot cease to be dangerous just when it suits them.
That is the only thing I objected to.
Mr. Keetch: We will not pursue that.
Chairman: It is one of the great advantages
of being an experienced person who has been around a long time.
Joe Bossano: Thirty-six years.
Chairman: Andrew, you wanted to ask about
pensions.
Q185 Andrew Mackinlay: Briefly, in
the previous Parliament when the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr.
Hain) was here, he referred to the pensions thing repeatedly as
a scam, and he blamed the Gibraltar Government, as distinct from
the United Kingdom Government. I never really got my head round
that, but I notice that the British Government now seem to have
resolved the scam. Can you just take me through that?
Joe Bossano: Yes, I think that
they have done worse than that. They have actually perpetrated
a scam against every non-Spanish contributor. That is what the
British Government have done. I feel particularly strongly about
this because I was in government when pensions were frozen, and
I had the difficult job of freezing pensions for all the contributors;
it was done for one reason and one reason only, which was to save
British taxpayers money.
The United Kingdom said to me, "Look Joe,
okay, you have convinced us that we have the responsibility for
paying the pensions because Geoffrey Howe promised to do this
in 1986, but what we are not prepared to do is give Spanish pensioners
annual increases, because you decide to give them to pensioners
of all other nationalities. Therefore, either you pay for the
pension increases or you freeze everybody, so that we don't have
to pay." It was Hobson's choice, so we froze them.
What they have just done as a result of Cordoba
is to recognise that the freeze was wrong; they have unfrozen
the increases retrospectively to 1989 at a cost of £30 million
or £40 million, bringing the total cost to the British taxpayer
to £250 million, in exchange for a contribution that the
Spanish workers made in the 15 years that they were there, of
one shilling and five pence before decimalisation. The total contribution
in the 15 years was £250,000. The payback for those contributions
has been £250 million, £1,000 for every pound contributed—the
best social insurance scheme in the history of mankind. That is
a scam.
Q186 Chairman: Can I take you up
on the figures? You quoted two different figures, £30 million
and £250 million. As I understand it, the estimated cost
to the UK taxpayer, according to the National Audit Office, is
about £100 million.
Joe Bossano: They are probably
not calculating the costs from 1 January 1986, which is when it
started. They are probably calculating the costs from the most
recent backtracking that has taken place. The original bill would
have been even more. The fact is that it is less than it would
have been if they had paid at the beginning, simply because when
the United Kingdom made this last agreement, it agreed to pay
the surviving pensioners and the heirs of pensioners who died
after October 2007. Since then, the latest additional cost is
likely to bring the total bill—the total cost past and future—from
1 January 1986 up to when the final Spanish pensioner dies, and
his final descendent disappears, to somewhere in the order of
£250 million. The £30 to £40 million is the cost
of the element agreed in Cordoba.
Chairman: Thank you. That is helpful.
Paul, you wanted to come in on another issue?
Q187 Mr. Keetch: Yes, I wanted to
probe you on something. We did not have a general election in
September—although many of us wanted one—but you had
a general election in October. Tell us what the results were.
Joe Bossano: The result was that
the Government won with 500 votes more than the Opposition, which
means that, if 250 or 300 people had had the wisdom to change
sides, I would now be addressing you as the Chief Minister.
Q188 Mr. Keetch: But compared with
them, did you do better?
Joe Bossano: The number of extra
voters who cast a vote in this election was 1,411, and my share
of that extra vote was 1,341. But it was not enough.
Q189 Chairman: Can I ask you about
the Cervantes institute, which is dedicated to teaching Spanish
as a second language and promoting Spanish culture? That has been
one of the issues in the Cordoba agreement, and it is supposed
to start its activities in 2008. What is your view of it, and
do you believe that there could be any benefits to Gibraltar from
it?
Joe Bossano: We are bilingual,
and I think that you need to appreciate that in all linguistic
communities, in the United Kingdom, in Spain or in any other nation
state, the standard variant of the language happens to be the
variant spoken by the part of the territory that conquered the
neighbours.
The only reason why standard English is the
English of the south is that the English conquered the Scots and
not the other way round; otherwise the standard language would
be the one with the Scottish accent. In Spain, the Castilians
conquered the rest, and that is why Castellano is the standard
variant of Spanish. The variant that we speak in Gibraltar, which
has imported long words from English, Genoese and a number of
other elements in our population, is closer to standard Spanish
than, say, Catalan or Galician. I do not think that our language
will improve, and I do not think that our insight and understanding
of the Spanish character needs improving. I think that we have
got them sussed out completely.
Independently of that, we have no objection,
in principle, to all member states opening cultural institutes
in Gibraltar, renting buildings, employing cleaners—preferably
TGWU members—and paying rates. We simply object to taxpayers'
money being used to provide a public building to a foreign Government
to open a cultural institute, when the declared objective of that
foreign Government is to increase to possibility of Hispanicisation
of the Gibraltarians, of which there is no prospect, and reducing
British influence in Gibraltar, of which, again, there is no prospect.
From a public finance point of view, I know that part of what
you look into is contingent liability and the proper use of public
funds. Therefore, we are doing our bit, in our corner of the world,
to make sure of that.
Q190 Chairman: To be clear, this
is a facility whereby the building is being made available by
the Government of Gibraltar?
Joe Bossano: Voluntarily. It is
not part of a deal. It is not that the Spanish said, "We
want £40 million for our pensioners and a building for the
Cervantes institute." They did not put it that way. The Gibraltar
Government, out of the kindness of their heart, wanted to offer
it. We have youth clubs and senior citizens clubs—I happen
to be the president of the senior citizens' club in Gibraltar—that
could do with this kind of public building, if the Government
have nothing better to do with the money.
Mike Gapes: Could we now move on to the
constitution?
Q191 Sandra Osborne: I come from
the south of Scotland, and Gaelic was never my first language,
but the British Government are putting substantial resources into
teaching people Gaelic.
May I ask you about the new constitution? I
know you have concerns about the preamble, but one of my colleagues
will ask you about that. Concerns have been raised that the Executive,
under the new constitution, have too much power over the police
and the judiciary. Would you agree with that, and do you have
any other concerns?
Joe Bossano: I was in the Select
Committee that was set up in 1997. You have read my paper. [1]This
is something to which we attach great importance. I have been
in the Gibraltar Parliament for 36 years. My involvement in politics
started 44 years ago, when the United Nations first decided that
Gibraltar's decolonisation had to be by agreement with Spain.
That was what made me go into politics at the age of 25, and I
have been campaigning for decolonisation for two thirds of my
life. Obviously, before I pass to the other side, I would like
to see the job finished, so this is a very important issue for
me. The dynamics of the internal mechanism of the constitution
is a problem in a small community.
In the United Kingdom, one can say that there
are politicians who are in charge of the police, the administration
of justice, and so on. With Gibraltar, however, we are talking
about a community of 10,000 families. That is what Gibraltar is.
We see ourselves as a micro-state, a mini-nation and a people
with its own identity, but we are really little more than a small
tribe on a speck of limestone at the beginning of the Mediterranean.
In a small community, people are interlinked by family, marriages
and neighbourhoods, so, in some respects, it may sound as if it
is talking in favour of colonialism. Believe me, it is not. As
a socialist, I have been ideologically committed all my life to
the concept of decolonisation.
In some respects, however, the figure of the
Governor—the figure of somebody external to the system—rightly
or wrongly, tends to inspire more confidence in its impartiality.
In small places, if people apply for jobs and one guy gets promoted
and others do not, even if there is no basis for it, they will
look for the family links that explain the promotion, rather than
saying it means that the person is better. Therefore, it is a
sensitive area.
There is now a Police Board and a Minister for
Justice. There was a Justice Bill that we voted against in the
House because we had reservations as to whether we wanted a politician
in charge of that. It is one thing to say we do not want the Attorney-General
to be in Parliament with a vote because he is not elected, and
another thing to say we want someone who has a vote and who is
elected to be more involved in the administration of justice than
has been the case in the past. It is a new thing in our society.
I have concerns about it, and perhaps it is too early to say whether
those concerns are justified or not. I can assure you that whatever
things the Governor was doing in Gibraltar, there was never any
worry about him using the police on orders from the Foreign Office.
The concern we had about the Governor was whether he was pushing
a particular line, for example when we had the Hain-Straw initiative
to sell us down the river. The Governor had a job to do in trying
to persuade us that we should paddle in the direction they wanted
us to go, which we did not do, obviously.
Q192 Mr. Pope: I am amazed by your
view that the English beat the Scots. It certainly does not feel
like that.
In your submission to the Committee, you mentioned
concerns about the wording of the second preamble to the constitution.
[2]Could
you say a few words about what effect you think that has had on
the prospect of delisting at the UN?
Joe Bossano: It is important to
be conscious of the views of the chairman, Sir Julian Hunt, who
was the ambassador for St. Lucia. He is very pro-Gibraltar and
very sensitive to our views on self-determination. He said delisting
is not the objective; delisting is the result. It is not that
there are criteria for delisting. There are criteria for having
achieved full self-government. In my view, the United Kingdom
Foreign Office is still playing a double game. It moved with the
second preamble, quite frankly, because I made clear to Geoff
Hoon, when he came to Gibraltar, that we would campaign for rejection
of the new constitution unless they gave a public commitment in
the House of Commons—which they did in answer to a question
from Lindsay Hoyle—and in the United Nations, and put in
the text that the United Kingdom recognised that we were exercising
self-determination. In the first chapter, on human rights, we
mention the provisions in the Human Rights Convention of the United
Nations that talk about the inalienable right to self-determination.
The second preamble is where we ask the British Government to
say specifically that the act of voting in the referendum was
making use of this right. They did not want to put it in the preamble.
Instead, they put it in an answer to a planted question in the
House and they said it in the UN.
The Spanish Government were in the loop even
during the negotiating period. The proof of that was that, before
we finished on the last day, the Spanish Government came out welcoming
the result that was not yet public, which was the removal of that
second preamble.
The United Kingdom claims that we have exercised
self-determination. We passed a motion in our Parliament asking
people to vote in a referendum that was to be the use of that
right. In international law, in chapter 11 of the charter of the
UN, it is absolutely crystal clear that you only exercise self-determination
to come out of a colonial relationship and enter into a new one.
The moment that that happens, the obligation of the United Kingdom
as an administering power under article 73 e of the charter ceases
automatically. The United Kingdom makes no attempt to go to the
UN and say: "In the case of Gibraltar, they have now exercised
their right to self-determination, and therefore, we are no longer
sending you progress reports." Ask yourselves how the UK
can have decolonised us in January of last year and still be reporting
on the progress we are making towards being decolonised. We are
supposed to have gone past that by now.
So, the answer is that they said to us what
we wanted to hear to keep us happy, and they said to Spain what
Spain wanted to hear to keep them happy, and they have been playing
this game for the 36 years that I have been involved. Therefore,
I am here today to try to enlist your help in getting them to
come clean and get off the fence. If the decolonisation process
is not finished, we will campaign until it is.
The UK Foreign Office has got to be tasked about
one thing: for years it was castigating the UN C24 by saying that
it was being too doctrinaire in saying you are either a colony
or you are independent and that, in fact, self-determination and
decolonisation did not necessarily equate to independence. I remember,
for years, the British Government arguing in the UN, quite legitimately—and
they succeeded in persuading the C24—the question of how
you can say that the Pitcairn Islands, with 47 people, can only
be decolonised by becoming independent. What do they do: open
47 embassies and that is it? Then they run out of population!
Logically, one has to say that the remaining
colonial territories are also entitled to the inalienable human
right of self-determination. They also are entitled to aspire
to emerge from a colonial relationship with a power like the UK,
France or Holland. But in each case, it is no longer "one
size fits all." What is possible for Bermuda or Gibraltar
is not necessarily possible for Montserrat or Pitcairn. Therefore,
I feel this Committee has a role to play in closing the colonial
chapter and helping to bring about solutions that meet the criteria.
Then the UK, as the administering power, is perfectly entitled
to go to the UN and say, "The fact is that we have given
this amount of self-government to Gibraltar because, in their
circumstances, that is what they are capable of handling. But
we are not going to give the same to Montserrat, St. Helena or
the Falklands—with 2,000 people in the south pole—not
because we do not want to, but because they might not be able
to do so much for themselves."
That was what we were promoting in this new
constitution for Gibraltar. We think the content of the constitution
is capable of meeting that yardstick and our approach at the UN
is to say that if it is the UN that has rejected this, let the
UN tell us where it falls short. But, unfortunately, at the General
Assembly in December, the UK supported a resolution that was identical
to the one with the old constitution: still requiring our decolonisation
to be on the basis of a negotiated settlement with Spain. There
is a caveat at this stage that that will not happen without the
consent and support of the Government of Gibraltar.
Let me tell you that when I started in 1964,
the UK's position was stronger. It was held that the treaty of
Utrecht did not curtail our right to self-determination, even
to the extent of independence. The UK was defending in 1964 the
position that the Gibraltarians and the Falkland Islanders were
not barred from independence and that they did not go because
they did not want to. That position has not been restored.
Mr. Pope: I think that the UN has difficulties
with the concept of people exercising their right to self-determination,
but not wanting independence. That has caused real confusion with
the C24.
Q193 Sir John Stanley: One of the
key relationships between this country and the Overseas Territories
lies in the limited number of appointments that are made out of
this country to senior posts in the various territories. Would
you like to make any comments on how satisfactorily you feel the
present system for UK-made appointments is carried out and on
the level of consultation that takes place? Do you have any comments
on the length of the terms for which people are appointed and
on procedures that apply if it becomes necessary, for any reason,
to terminate an appointment before the end of the due term?
Joe Bossano: The appointments
that are made by the UK in Gibraltar—now and under the old
constitution—are the Governor and the Chief Justice. When
I was in government, we wanted to continue to have a military
Governor, because in our view they tend to have a closer affinity
with Gibraltar because of its military history. People who are
of a sufficiently high rank are sufficiently used to giving orders
that they can resist taking them from the Foreign Office. Also,
they have already retired and are therefore not on a promotion
ladder to go anywhere else, so they can not be leaned on.
We had a very clear-cut set of criteria, whether
they were an air commodore, a brigadier, a field marshal like
John Chapple or a naval officer. In our experience, our military
Governors have been tougher defenders of the Gibraltarian interest
than civilian Governors. We have had few civilian Governors, and
I am happy to say that we now have a Royal Marine as Governor.
As you all know, the Royal Marines were involved in the battle
to capture Gibraltar in 1704, so presumably he will want to keep
what was captured then.
Again, when the present chief justice was appointed,
it was not the choice of the Government of Gibraltar. The Gibraltar
Government appointee, the head of the civil service who sat on
the Public Service Commission, came to me for input. I told him
that the only guy who we could say we would like, of the people
who were there, was the only person that we knew. That man happened
to be somebody who had been Attorney-General in Gibraltar. I thought
that he had put up a very tough fight against the Foreign Office
to get us a land memorandum, under which land would be transferred
to us from the Ministry of Defence without us having to pay. He
therefore seemed like a good guy to have in Gibraltar. However,
it is not possible to see these people's limitations.
I do not think that we are equipped in some
areas to assess the qualities of the appointees. We have to assume
that people are being sincere when finding somebody to do a job
in Gibraltar and that they are doing it for the right reasons.
We have to assume that they are picking people who have the right
skills, knowledge and experience to do what is required of them.
The staff who serve the Governor's office and
the Deputy Governor are UK civil servants who are seconded to
Gibraltar. They are therefore not appointed for a specified time
in Gibraltar. They may spend a three-year tour of duty there,
but effectively they have a career that includes time in Gibraltar,
but which will finish up in another Government Department. I do
not think that we have any problems in that area.
We have never had the kind of problems that
other Overseas Territories seem to have with their Governors.
I came into government from being a trade union leader. Trade
union leaders have the reputation of not taking no for an answer.
I never had any problems with the Governors who served in my time
in government. We had a sufficiently close relationship and friendship.
They would always say to me, "I have been instructed to tell
you—" and then tell me what they had been instructed
to say. We would then have lunch together and they would tell
me what they really thought. That worked very well.
Q194 Sir John Stanley: So you have
no proposals that you want to put to us for any changes to the
present system. Although we will not go into any details on the
Schofield affair, are there any lessons that you feel need to
be drawn from it?
Joe Bossano: I can tell you that
we voted against the Judicial Services Bill because we were not
happy with it. When Chief Justice Schofield talked about making
representations about the changes, our position was, "I believe
that the people in the system are better equipped than I am as
a politician." If somebody wants to argue with me about wage
bargaining or trade unionism I feel that I am qualified; I have
done that for many years of my life. If you ask me what the best
way to ensure the independence of the judiciary is, all I can
tell you is that I am 100% committed. I said that even if there
were no real difference but he felt more comfortable, I was quite
happy to support whatever the Chief Justice wanted, because I
could not see any downside to it. The legal profession in Gibraltar
is very big in relation to the size of its population; I think
that we have more lawyers than almost any other corner of Europe.
[Interruption.] Are you a lawyer by any chance?
Mr. Pope: No. There are way too many
lawyers in this place.
Joe Bossano: All I can tell you
is that I have never had a very high regard for the legal profession,
because I am used to living in a world where we call a spade a
spade. The lawyers then diverge into the colour of the spade,
the weight of the spade and the length of the spade, depending
on the client. That world, which I do not understand and which
I do not particularly like, now seems to be running the show.
If the Chief Justice was arguing that there would be a greater
level of independence if there was less political involvement
in the appointment system, I would have had no difficulty. We
were committed in the election campaign to coming back to the
United Kingdom and saying, "From the position of the newly-elected
Government of Gibraltar we have no problems in accommodating anything
that the Chief Justice is asking for; we see nothing wrong in
doing it."
Q195 Mr. Keetch: When we were in
Gibraltar in July the Chief Minister told us that there had been
a huge change in relations since the appointment of Sir Robert
Fulton. How do you get on with the Governor and have you noticed
this huge change in relations?
Joe Bossano: I do not know where
that huge change is supposed to be. There is greater fluidity
at the frontier because after 24 years they have done what they
promised to do 24 years ago. All I can tell you is that the latest
thing that the Spanish Government have done has been to put a
protest because—
Q196 Mr. Keetch: This was about the
appointment of the Governor.
Joe Bossano: I am sorry. I thought
you were talking about the Spanish.
Q197 Mr. Keetch: No, I was talking
about the relations that you have with the Governor, or the relations
that the Chief Minister has with the Governor.
Joe Bossano: I have had no problems
with any Governor as leader of the Opposition and no problem with
any Governor as Chief Minister. The problems might be either with
the Chief Minister we have or with the Governors we have had.
If there are problems between two human beings, which of the human
beings is at fault depends on a value judgment. I have tended
to like most Governors more than I like the Chief Minister.
Chairman: I think we are aware of that,
Mr. Bossano. That is a healthy relationship between the Leader
of the Opposition and the ruling party. We have just seen it today
as well.
Q198 Andrew Mackinlay: I am trying
to get to the bottom of the constitutional position of the office
of Chief Justice. It is not clear to me whether he is a creature
of the United Kingdom or a creature of Gibraltar. In the United
Kingdom, the removal of a judge requires, I think, votes in the
Houses of Parliament—long-enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
I would have thought that the Chief Justice of Gibraltar or any
other Overseas Territory was a creature of the United Kingdom
appointments process. I do not know if you can help me on that.
If I am wrong and he is a creature of Gibraltar or other overseas
territory, it seems that we do not have comparable constitutional
safeguards regarding the removal, discipline or suspension of
any Chief Justice. It seems to me a hallmark of democratic processes
and the independence of judiciary that there has to be some impeachment
process, which we have in the United Kingdom. I am asking whether
these Chief Justices in Overseas Territories should be subject
to UK safeguards and/or impeachment processes. If not, ought there
to be an enshrined comparable safeguard, in micro-terms, in the
Overseas Territories?
Joe Bossano: The only thing I
hesitate about, Andrew, is in trying to explain something which
I am not really equipped to give you definitive answers on. All
I can tell you is that the provisions in the new constitution
are not very different from the provisions in the 1969 constitution.
In terms of disciplining a Chief Justice, I would tend to look
at these things from my own personal background. If this guy were
being disciplined in any other job, I would look at it as a branch
officer, saying, "What would I argue in the disciplinary
proceedings?" I am not very clear on what it is that the
Chief Justice is supposed to have done wrong that has led to him
being suspended with full pay and brought into a disciplinary
proceeding.
I can tell you that the idea—it is not
a requirement of the constitution, but a requirement of the legislation
introduced by the present administration before the election,
and one which we were committed to change—that you should
have, as head of the judiciary, a head of the Court of Appeal,
which is permanently in the United Kingdom, seems to me to be
wrong and unacceptable. No legitimate reason has been given, and
the only one I can think of is the protocol list. Some people
care more about status than others. I am not the kind of guy who
notices the red carpet. I usually make the mistake of going in
the tradesman's entrance. For some people, however, a red carpet
is important. Of course, in the protocol list, the Chief Justice
is in the queue ahead of the Chief Minister. I do not believe
in queues, anyway, so it never mattered to me where they put me.
Since the head of the judiciary is no longer
in Gibraltar, when we have, for example, the Armistice day or
Trafalgar day ceremony, they are not around to have a car with
a flag in front of the Chief Minister's car. I speculated, thinking
aloud in Parliament, whether this had had any influence on the
decision to change the system, because I could see no other reason
for wanting to change it. Therefore, I think there is a negative
side to it. I believe that the man running the judiciary in Gibraltar
should be permanently in Gibraltar, all the year round, and not
2,000 miles north. However, the constitution does not require
it, and does not prohibit it. The Government of the day has chosen
to do it, they are elected, and it is their democratic right.
I would not want to appeal to the Foreign Affairs Committee or
the House of Commons to overrule the elected Government of Gibraltar,
because that would be a retrograde step from the point of view
of decolonisation.
Q199 Chairman: Thank you. Can we
move on to a topical point? We are debating the Lisbon treaty
today. Do you have any comments about the way in which Gibraltar's
interests were represented during the intergovernmental conference
and the negotiation process that led up to the agreement on the
Lisbon treaty?
Joe Bossano: There is a long saga
of mismanagement on the part of the United Kingdom in terms of
protecting Gibraltar's position. This is one of the things that
has worried me almost since the day I was elected to the Gibraltar
Parliament, in July 1972. The first legislation on which I was
asked to vote in the House of Assembly was the accession treaty
to the European Economic Community in 1972, so that we would join
with the United Kingdom: the equivalent of the Act that you passed
here. As a newly elected parliamentarian and legislator, believing
that I actually represented the people and had the right to express
views and change things, I asked if I could move some amendments.
The Attorney General said, "No, no, you are not allowed to
move amendments, it has already been signed." That was my
introduction to the European Economic Community as a newly elected
Member of Parliament in October 1972. Since then, we have had
a whole cycle of occasions when things have been done—I
remember that an agreement was made in Amsterdam at three in the
morning and the Foreign Secretary fell asleep. When he woke up,
something had been done about Gibraltar which he had missed and
was not able to recuperate. I believe that that continues.
One of the fundamental things that I have never
got clarification for from the Foreign Office in all the time
that I have dealt with this, has been the concept that we are
in the European Union as a European territory for whose external
relations a member state is responsible. Linguistically, I look
at that definition and I say, "If I am part of a territory
for whom a member state is responsible, I cannot also be a part
of the member state that is responsible for that territory."
The UK argues that for community purposes we are part of the UK,
but for UK purposes we are not. That is the system that was introduced,
and is one of our bugbears. In the system that was introduced
consequentially on this interpretation, none of the EU laws operate
between Gibraltar and the UK. All the new laws operate between
Gibraltar and the European Union, as if Gibraltar did not exist
and we were in the UK. That is now being enshrined and carried
forward in the Lisbon treaty.
I am not sure that it is possible to unravel
that after so much time, but the way that it has been handled
from the beginning has been transposed with every stage of the
consolidation process that has taken place since the original
European Community, through to the European Union, and now to
the Lisbon treaty.
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