Island enjoys ‘best of both worlds’ in its relationship with Europe
Thursday 30th June 2011, 1:00PM BST.
THE issue of whether the European Union was Guernsey’s friend or foe made the subject of a seminar organised by law firm Collas Crill yesterday.
Guest speakers at Les Cotils outlined the relationship between the two from a finance perspective and gave their view on how that relationship was being managed. They also spoke on the impact of EU legislation in Guernsey.
Commercial lawyer for the Commerce and Employment Department’s finance sector development team Jarrod Cowley-Grimmond (pictured) said the EU was becoming the global standard setter in the field of regulation of financial services.
‘It can be argued that the EU is our biggest market and to have access we need to play by the rules,’ he said.
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so to have access to the EU Guernsey ‘needs to play by the rules’.
that should be interesting. Will this include the European Court of Human Rights? If so that means that the island will have to treat ALL citizens like human beings. Can’t wait!
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coyote – the ECHR is totally separate from the EU.
Guernsey was signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights long before the EU was created. And anyway, we already have our own Human Rights Law, which enshrines the principles of the ECHR in domestic law.
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Guernsey has its own Human Rights Law? Sorry, Terry. Must have blinked and missed it. I wonder if poor Rex Towers would agree with you?
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I think it’d be a good laugh watching the doddering old puddings on the bench trying to make head or tail of the ECHR.
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pay attention coyote – Rex can return here any time he likes. He just does not want his family getting into trouble for helping to bring his life to a dignified end. His human rights are not being denied.
that Human Rights law you missed is called the Human Rights (Bailiwick of Guernsey) Law, 2000. I know, it’s a confusing title isn’t it?
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Terry
Don’t bother getting into a legal argument with Coyote, he or she knows so little about law that it could be written on the back of a second class stamp. Hence his / her view on Habeas Corpus.
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Phil
Tell me I am wrong about Habeas Corpus. Tell me that Guernsey has this law. Tell me why the police, the Royal Court and the Greffe don’t know if Guernsey has this law or not. Tell me when and where it was adopted. Tell me why ‘arresting officers’ don’t know of it when it has such important implications for those they arrest. You can’t cos Guernsey dosen’t have it. At least I can fill a whole postage stamp about the law. You’d be hard put to it to fill a pin head.
Terry
thank you for your help. Unlike Phil I am always willing to listen and learn.
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I refer coyote to clause XI of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 which extends its operation to the islands of Jersey and Guernsey. If law officers “don’t know” about habeas corpus, it may be because they believe it has been overtaken by other human rights laws applicable in Guernsey.
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Ted
The Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 recommended [indeed tried to insist] Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man adopt this Act into their laws; so too did subsequent updated versions of the Act. However the Isle of Man did not adopt Habeas Corpus until 2000 at which point there was an article by Amnesty International [I think] stating that the Channel Islands had not adopted Habeas Corpus to date.
Certainly Guernsey had not adopted this law by 1901 [ref: the case of 'A Crying Shame' {Philip Ahier} which involved an alleged kidnapping].
I don’t think it is a case of law officers believing that other human rights legislation had overtaken Habeas Corpus. To quote an English police officer who served in the force for twenty years:
‘…every arresting officer must know the basic terms of Habeas Corpus…’
because under the terms of this Act they can only hold someone for questioning for 24 hours after which they must take him/her before a magistrate and either charge them or let them go.
Occasionally the police can ask for extra time to question a suspect [usually in cases of murder or terrorism] but this is limited to three days [I believe] after which they must either be charged or released.
If Habeas Corpus had been adopted into Guernsey law how could the police and the Courts not know about it?
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coyote – my understanding of Habeas Corpus is that the English legislation does not lay down hard rules, but merely creates the principle that no-one shall be imprisoned illegally. The key is whether the imprisonment is illegal. If some other legislation grants specific rights to imprision without trial for a period (eg Terrorism Acts) then Habeas Corpus has no effect.
I agree with you in that I do not think that Habeas Corpus applies here. But I am not sure that it actually matters. It is the powers granted to the police which lay down how long they can hold you without charge, not Habeas Corpus. There are plenty of civilised places in the world that have not adopted Habeas Corpus and they protect civil liberties just fine through other, more specific, rules which grant the police their powers and set limits on those powers.
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Terry
the key is whether the imprisonment is illegal but there are very definite time limits. This has caused the police great difficulty on occasion because they have been forced to let a person go free, knowing s/he is guilty of the crime, but they have run out of time to collect sufficient evidence to bring a charge. That, I suppose, is the downside of Habeas Corpus, but the very important upside is that it protects people’s civil liberties.
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coyote – the time limits that you speak of are laid down in modern statute, not the Habeas Corpus Act, and the rules governing police detention in Guernsey are equally clear about how long the police can hold someone without charge. You don’t need the concept of habeas corpus for that.
The Habeas Corpus Act specifies what happens if someone brings a writ of habeas corbus. Until someone does that, the Act has no effect. I am sure that the Habeas Corpus Act is part of police training, but it is rarely used in practice since in reality the police are obliged to release someone long before it gets to that stage. You make it sound as if habeas corpus is called upon on a daily basis in the UK, but the most recent usage that I can find is in 1971, when IRA internment was introduced without specific legislation making it legal.
Habeas Corpus is a theoretical sacred cow in English law, but its absence from our system does not mean that there is anything wrong.
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