Subordinate Legislation Committee, 12 Sep 2006
Meeting date: Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Official Report
130KB pdf
Executive Correspondence
International Criminal Court (Enforcement of Fines, Forfeiture and Reparation Orders) (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (SSI 2004/360)
The committee considered the regulations in 2004 and the Executive revoked them following reservations expressed by this committee and the Justice 1 Committee. The reservations were about the appropriateness of appointing the Lord Advocate as the person to act on behalf of the International Criminal Court with regard to the matters in the regulations.
The Executive is drawing up new regulations to allow the Scottish ministers to appoint a person to act on their behalf. That would bring us into line with counterpart regulations elsewhere and allow us to comply with international obligations. The minister has taken the rather odd course of asking the committee for support for the new regulations in advance of making them. However, as the minister says, I understand that they would
"allow Scotland to play its full part in taking action against those found guilty of various heinous crimes … which the ICC was established to deal with."
For what it is worth, I suggest that we write back to welcome in principle the drafting of new regulations because we understand why it is necessary to have someone who could help us to implement the provisions. However, we should reserve our comment on the merits of the regulations until we see them. We could write back two lines to say, "I am sorry, but we cannot say anything until you show us the regulations", but it might be more courteous to say that, although what the Executive is doing is a good thing in principle, we will wait until we see the regulations before we comment. Is that okay?
Members indicated agreement.