Criminal Finances Bill
Debate between Lord Davies of Stamford and Lord Blair of BoughtonTuesday 28th March 2017
(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord has said that his amendment is merely probing. Clearly, the purpose of a probing amendment is above all directed at trying to influence the Government, but the other purpose is to see whether anyone else in the Committee rather agrees with the line of it, which may also be useful information for Ministers when they are taking final decisions on what the shape of the Bill should be.
The noble Lord made a very good case. We all know that legislation of this kind is essentially a matter of balance. On the one hand, we are imposing on people constraints and breaches of privacy and liberty. We are also imposing on them costs, because it is likely that to be able to respond to orders such as these they will have to pay accountants to do work. As the noble Lord said, we may be talking about amounts of wealth that are a substantial portion of the portfolio of the individual citizen being investigated. To respond to the investigation, the individual may need to spend significant amounts of money on accountancy or other professional advice. We should be very careful and aware of the costs of doing such things. We should also be aware that there is always a temptation for an authority, if it has a power, to use it and say, “There’s no downside. Let’s just put in a request to the High Court to have one of these investigations”. The noble Lord is therefore right to emphasise the need to protect the citizen to make it absolutely clear that an authority before making such a request, or a court before acceding to it, must be really convinced that there is a case for doing something quite exceptional—the state asking an individual to declare his or her private affairs. I therefore agree with the sense of the noble Lord’s amendment and I hope the Government take it seriously.
