Criminal Finances Bill

Debate between Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers and Lord Blair of Boughton

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blair of Boughton]

I am glad that I did not interrupt the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, because he and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, approach this matter from long knowledge of the law. I would like to consider the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, in relation to the investigative process. UWOs are effectively a search warrant. That is the test, and that is not beyond reasonable doubt. You have a search warrant because you think something might be happening. When you have executed the search warrant, you know whether it has happened or not and at that point, you might charge someone with a criminal offence, for which the test would be “beyond reasonable doubt”. From an investigative point of view, that amendment would put at the front of the operation a test which is almost impossible to pass unless you issue the order and effectively use a search warrant on the individual’s bank balances.

[Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in harmony with the previous two speakers. I have some experience of this area, having wrestled in a judicial capacity with more than one appeal in relation to the Proceeds of Crime Act, and I have also recently taken the chair of the board which supervises more draconian legislation than the Bill for the confiscation of unexplained wealth in Mauritius. These unexplained wealth orders are designed to deal with the very real difficulty of proving facts which are likely to be in the exclusive knowledge of the holder of wealth. It would be simply contrary to the policy to impose the criminal rather than the civil burden of proof in respect of matters such as the value of property in which a person has an interest or the very question of whether he has an interest in that property at all.