Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320-339)
Senior District Judge Timothy Workman
23 MAY 2007
Q320 Chairman: There is a case called
Laporte, which I think both Lord Mance and I were on in
the House here not long ago, but overall my impression is that
that scheme would be a much simpler scheme than the European supervision
order which we are now contemplating. With an arrest warrant,
you get the arrest warrant and basically you have to execute it.
He is arrested, brought before you, and unless he has got an argument—and
there are not many available to him—the order is made and
off he goes. So there is not, on the face of it, as long as all
the paperwork is correct, much need to discuss things. It is supposed
to work in clear, simple terms. But with this, because the whole
thing depends upon getting conditions which will satisfy both
the issuing court and can be operated by the executing court,
it is a slightly more complicated scheme and, on the face of it,
one would have thought it requires rather more in the way of cooperation
and consultation. Is that fair?
District Judge Workman: It is certainly fair
on the basis which it is being looked at at the moment. I do wonder
whether it is necessary to go down that road, because I think
there are certain conditions which could be regarded as common
in all Member States, and provided those were the conditions which
were imposed I think it would be reasonable to assume that any
executing state would be able to acknowledge them.
Q321 Chairman: So you are looking
at a sort of common set of conditions which you expect to be agreed
upon?
District Judge Workman: Yes. I think we could
identify five or six common conditions which could properly be
imposed in any state and it would be a matter for the issuing
authority to decide which (if any) of those they wished to impose
by way of conditions or whether they wished to impose them all.
I would not have thought it would be necessary to contact the
executing judicial authority. It may be, perhaps, necessary to
establish the practicalities of which police station they might
have to report to, or whether the address is a valid one, but
as between the two judicial authorities I would have thought that
if you had a set of conditions which applied throughout the European
Union there would not be too much difficulty about approaching
it in that way.
Q322 Chairman: Under Article 6(2),
except for certain specific obligations under 6(1) which the issuing
authority may impose without more, it has got to get the agreement
of the executing authority to impose a variety of conditions.
I think that would include, for example, reporting to a police
station?
District Judge Workman: Yes.
Q323 Chairman: But I agree that if
you have a common set of conditions which all Member States are
prepared to say in principle they are happy to accept, then it
is just the mechanics of which police station, what times of the
week, and all the rest of it?
District Judge Workman: Yes. I would have thought
that was a fairly simple way to approach it. I am afraid I am
rather simplistic about these matters.
Q324 Chairman: The simpler the better,
I expect you will find.
District Judge Workman: It does not avoid a
number of points being taken.
Chairman: Quite. Thank you very much.
Q325 Lord Mance: Just a couple of
questions. You have said that you can ask for further guidance
under the European Arrest Warrant, and have done. How long does
that take before you get the answer?
District Judge Workman: It takes quite a long
time. I would say it measures in weeks rather than days, but probably
not months.
Q326 Lord Mance: Secondly, on the
question of conditions, one needs to bear in mind, perhaps, that
the definition of "executing authority" includes not
merely a court judge and investigating magistrate but also a public
prosecutor. Are you suggesting that some of the conditions could
be worked out without judicial involvement, e.g. with the Crown
Prosecution Service, or the police even?
District Judge Workman: No. I think if we follow
the procedures which we would normally adopt here, it would be
for the court to decide the conditions, even though the framework
does in fact allow others to carry out that task. They do not
in this country.
Q327 Lord Mance: You have mentioned
one, police station reporting, but I would imagine, thinking of
domestic bail applications, that residence and district restrictions,
restrictions on activities and medical treatment are all matters
which would normally be discussed in court?
District Judge Workman: Yes.
Q328 Lord Mance: That sort of discussion
could take quite a long time if it had to be done between two
different countries?
District Judge Workman: Yes. I do not quite
understand why it is necessary. I was trying to imagine that if
France was wishing to bail somebody resident here, if they decided
in the light of the circumstances of the offence and the circumstances
(as they knew it) of the defendant that a condition of residence,
security if necessary, a curfew, reporting to the police station
was the appropriate order, I do not think it would be for the
English court to try and second-guess that.
Q329 Lord Mance: But even the basic
question of how frequently and at which police station are matters
where normally, in a domestic situation, there is some input from
the police as well as from the court, perhaps?
District Judge Workman: Very little. If, domestically,
I conclude that I need to have a person report to the police station
daily at whatever particular hour, I fix it without asking anybody.
Q330 Lord Mance: How does the French
court in Montpelier know which police station, or what hours they
are open, or whether they would welcome daily reporting, which
they certainly would not, and so on?
District Judge Workman: I assume that if the
order was made and it was made under these provisions then the
police would have to follow that decision, but in terms of which
police station, I imagine it would be on the basis we do it now,
which is to ask the defendant which is his local police station.
There may be a need to remand the case for a telephone call to
be made to the police station by the prosecutor or the court,
or somebody, but for it to come through a court in this country
and for us then to say, "Well, actually the police station
is Charing Cross," or whatever it is, I am not sure that
that is really necessary.
Q331 Lord Lucas: What would the five
or six bail conditions be that you would choose?
District Judge Workman: I would choose security
as one, if only because I think the finance for this might prove
a little bit difficult to manage in terms of who pays to get people
to and from different countries, but security, residence, curfew,
reporting to the police, surrender of passport and probably not
to contact any specified victim or witnesses if there was concern
about that. I think all those are fairly standard conditions imposed
around the country which I would have no difficulty with if somebody
said to me, "This has been imposed by a court in Paris."
Q332 Lord Lucas: So Winchester Police
Station, when I present myself there, will be expected to take
its instructions from Paris?
District Judge Workman: If that is embodied
in the law, yes.
Q333 Chairman: Do all Member States
have facilities for all these conditions?
District Judge Workman: I am afraid that I do
not know.
Q334 Chairman: You have never had
to be involved in such things in the past? You have never had
the possibility of conditions abroad?
District Judge Workman: No, never.
Q335 Chairman: You have not been
involved in any of the discussions leading up to this particular
scheme?
District Judge Workman: No, not at all.
Q336 Lord Lester of Herne Hill: I
am trying to think of a very diplomatic and tactful way of putting
my question without causing embarrassment in other countries.
My experience is that even between us and France there are profound
differences in the way the criminal justice systems operate and
French judges are less European than British judges in certain
respects in their criminal justice system. Whether I am right
or wrong does not matter for my question, but my experience also
is that the further you travel beyond France the more one enters
problematic areas when you think of mutual judicial cooperation,
including European Arrest Warrants. My question is, what experience
do you and your colleagues have of dealing with the kinds of matters
we are now considering under the European Arrest Warrant, not
in a jurisdiction we all take our holidays in and know quite well,
called France, which we are familiar with, and words like Montpelier
which we are familiar with, but when you get to jurisdictions
we are less familiar with and whose languages we do not speak
or understand, and whose legal systems may be more remote from
ours? I do not know whether that is a diplomatic way of expressing
it, but I hope you understand what I am trying to say?
District Judge Workman: I do entirely. We have,
under the European Arrest Warrant, received requests from throughout
the European Union. I would say that probably our biggest customer
is Latvia. So there is a broad spectrum of judicial authorities
around the European Arrest Warrant. We, of course, start from
the principle that we are obliged to acknowledge that there is
this mutual trust and we work from there effectively. There has
been a number of cases where there have been challenges to the
jurisdiction which we were being asked to return people to, for
example particularly in relation to Romany ethnics who fear return
to certain countries, and the Bar provides us with a lot of information
about those countries, but on the whole in the end we have usually
been satisfied. There have been one or two cases where we have
not made returns because we have been anxious about some issue,
but I do not think ever because of confidence in the judicial
process. Again slightly delicately, it comes to mind that there
are, of course, some countries (which are not actually in the
European Union so perhaps it is not relevant) where the European
Arrest Warrant does run, but I have personally had to be cautious
about returning people.
Q337 Chairman: Where does the European
Arrest Warrant run outside the Union?
District Judge Workman: The Part 1 cases, and
Part 2. For example, Russia is one of those where the Extradition
Act will apply under Part 2, which is very similar to the European
Arrest Warrant.
Chairman: I see.
Q338 Lord Lester of Herne Hill: Just
suppose hypothetically a country (we will call it Ruritania) issues
a European Arrest Warrant for punitive, political or baseless
reasons. It is issued in that country and then the name of the
person concerned enters the European information system, so that
throughout all Member States Citizen X is then branded as somebody
to be arrested, as it were. There are no safeguards, are there,
against the issue of the warrant in the first place where it is
an abuse of power, at least not a uniformly effective one?
District Judge Workman: Not as to the issue
of the warrant, no, but as to the execution there is.
Q339 Lord Lester of Herne Hill: Yes,
but then on the execution it very much depends upon the scrupulousness
and care of the national court in the way it approaches its limited
discretion in deciding whether to give effect to the warrant or
not?
District Judge Workman: Yes, that is right.
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