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Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, I am most grateful to noble Lords who supported this amendment and to the Minister for his very full reply, which will justify study in Hansard. The Minister said that some of the points I made had nothing to do with the Bill. I think that when your Lordships read Hansard they may not agree with that. I was trying to get out of the Minister what the present situation is with regard to the immunities we have granted to the European Union and its bodies. I went through the list of 18 bodies that he was kind enough to supply in writing to my noble friend Lady Rawlings because they show the scope of the present immunity and therefore what the scope of immunity is likely to be. That is very germane to this Bill. Therefore, I do not accept the Minister's reprimand on that account.
In response to my noble friend Lord Stoddart of Swindon, the Minister said that Mr Mandelson could be sued for libel if he was speaking in his private capacity but not if he was speaking in his capacity as a European Commissioner. He went on to say that obviously anything that Mr Mandelson says against John Humphrys will not attract immunityat least I
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understood him to say that. I find that rather interesting. It is worth further study to see whether the noble Lord has that right.
The Minister pulled my leg about dogs but both in Committee and now he has not answered the question whether, if one of these people's dogs were to bite someone in the street here, those people would attract immunity. From what he said I assume that they would not. However, it seems a perfectly reasonable question to ask.
Further to the Minister's Written Answer of 11 January he still has not informed me who are the "other officials and servants of the Communities" who have these immunities. Perhaps the noble Lord will examine that question and write to me before we come to the next phase.
I do not accept that the remarks I made are not germane to this Bill. It would be helpful to be told what these people do which justifies these immunities when they are not given to other international bodies, commercial bodies and so on. The Minister says that they need it to fulfil their functions. I am afraid that does not answer the question. It is a case of, "Bang, bang, you are dead and we are not playing". Before we come to the next and final phase of the Bill it would be very helpful to be informed by the noble Lord in writing what these bodies do which requires this kind of immunity. On the assumption that the noble Lord will be good enough to answer the other questions that I have left with him, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire moved Amendment No. 4:
"PRIVILEGES, IMMUNITIES AND FACILITIES REPORTS
(1) This Act shall not enter into force until a report has been published, setting out the current framework for granting diplomatic privileges and immunities, for assessing the appropriate level of such privileges and to whom they should apply.
(2) The report, as set out in subsection (1), shall be debated by both Houses of Parliament.
(3) Once the conditions of subsections (1) and (2) have been met, a report shall be published each year setting out the privileges, immunities and facilities conferred under this Act in the previous year."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, Amendment No. 5 is consequential to Amendment No. 4 so I shall speak to the two together. This is the mildest and most modest of amendments that I hopeas we have heavily signalled our intentions to the Governmentit will be possible for the Government to respond in such a generous way that we may not need to divide the House, but we shall see.
The background to the amendment is the difficulty that many of us had when we started to study this issue in discovering what the situation is regarding the current framework for granting diplomatic privileges and immunities, or for assessing which privileges and immunities go to which organisation under which conditions. Inquiry to the Lords Library, the law
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department of the London School of Economics and the Foreign Office legal advisers left me still extremely confused and very short on recent material on the subject. There are some rather heavy weight international legal treatises but most of them refer to cases from the 1950s or 1960s. It would therefore seem appropriate for the information of Parliament to ask Her Majesty's Government to draw up a report on where we now stand. One would hope that such a report would circulate to other governments and help to promote a broader series of discussions and negotiations. We were told on one of the previous amendments that we must address the "functional needs" of appropriate international organisations. In that case, the House is entitled to know what are such "functional needs".
We recognise that much of this proceeds through inertia. We give to each new agency, whether EU, global, or regional, the privileges and immunities that had been granted to their predecessors five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, and longer. However, we are in a process of rapid change. Globalisation, as the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, has written about almost endlessly over the past 20 years, is now well upon us. New agencies and new intergovernmental organisations appear every year, and this is a process that is likely to continue. We also recognise that it is extremely difficult for national parliaments to get any handle at all on this process. Governments negotiate, they present to Parliament the treaties they have concluded, and the subordinate legislation follows from those treaties. Here is an opportunity for a national parliamentour Parliamentto ask: where are we, and why? Where do we think we are going? What principles do Her Majesty's Government think they are following as they move through these negotiations?
We recognise that many global intergovernmental organisations need such immunities. As I said in Committee, I was at one point this summer in the middle of a UN convoy in south Ossetia, and I felt desperately in need of all the privileges and immunities that one could possibly have under such circumstances, and about which the armed people surrounding our convoy did not seem to be at all concerned. Not all intergovernmental organisations need all of these privileges under all circumstances. I hope that we shall hear from the Government Front Bench that the Government are willing to inform Parliament of the current situation and background as they understand it of international law. Perhaps they will give us an opportunitynot of course before the election but in the foreseeable futureto debate the principles that they think they are following. I beg to move.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, I hope it does not embarrass the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, too much if I rise to support these amendments. I can see that, if accepted, this process might have the effect of getting some of the more unjustifiable of these immunities and privileges to wither on the vine over a period of time, which would be better than nothing.
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Certainly, as far as concerns the organisations that are not part of the European Union, this would be an excellent step in the right direction. If the Government are in good faith, which I am sure they are, when they say that they believe that such organisations need these immunities and privileges to function in the way that they do, I feel sure that they will want to issue the report that is asked for in this amendment.
Baroness Rawlings: My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, and the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, in this amendment. It goes much further than my amendment to Clause 5, and it addresses the wider issues of immunities and privileges with regard to all international organisations, not just those within the European Union.
I do not wish to take up the time of the House by reiterating too much of what noble Lords have said. As discussed in Committee, many of the original Acts to be amended date back to the 1960s and, as such, in a world that has developed increasingly complex international relations and levels of international bodies and organisations that mesh on regional and national levels. While the Minister informed the House that privileges and immunities are effectively awarded on a case-by-case and needs-must basis, we want some more information on how that is achieved in this modern day world and on how the duties that have yet to be awarded will be working.
The immunities awarded to UN workers for the oil for food programme were much in the news this weekend, and that prompts me to question them further. On the one hand:
"Even after the publication of the interim Volcker report, Mr Sevan's status with the UN remains strangely blurred, and UN officials seem to have remarkable trouble defining it. Does he still have diplomatic immunity? Yes. Has he retired? Yes, but he still has the status of a contract employee, at $1 per year, maintaining his immunity. Does he have a pension? Yes, but it is not yet being paid".
"Mark Malloch Brown, the eloquent British official who Mr Annan recently promoted to be his chief of staff with a brief to 'renew' the organisation . . . said. 'But these are extremely serious charges of wrongdoing and no one will be shielded from prosecution. If there are criminal charges, the UN will fully co-operate and waive diplomatic immunity of staff members, whoever they are'".
Even the Secretary-General, who set up the Volcker inquiry, has expressed himself shocked at the behaviour, ordered disciplinary action, and promised to lift the diplomatic immunity of any UN official facing criminal prosecution. These waivered immunities were in the news twice last week. As the noble Lord, Lord Saltaire, spelt out so clearly, this illustrates the point that in this modern global world, with so much legislation around protecting the citizen, the treaty is clearly out of date and needs reviewing. That highlights why we need to look at the question of immunities and privileges again. In this vein, I hope that the Minister will consider the amendment carefully.
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