Committal Proceedings in UK Law

Taking all these considerations into account, I consider that the balance comes down in favour of ordering disclosure by Clydes of all the contact details (past and present) which they hold for Mr Shalabayev. The primary purpose of the disclosure is to aid enforcement of the committal order made by Briggs J on 27 June. In the absence of that order, I would probably not have been prepared to make the order sought. But in my view the committal order makes all the difference.

But at the same time as Mr Hammerton was seeking to establish his claim for contact, it was incumbent upon Mrs Hammerton, in seeking committal, to prove breaches of his undertakings and of the court order to the high standard of proof necessary in committal cases. Moreover, as Butler-Sloss P pointed out in Re G (para 22) Mr Hammerton was not obliged to given evidence at all in his own defence. The court was obliged to warn him that he did not need to give evidence.

The case is a reminder that respondents to committal proceedings are entitled to be provided with legal representation if they want it and that they will qualify for non-means-tested legal aid. There is an obligation on the court to ensure that this protection is made available. Where this does not happen any resulting order for committal may be procedurally irregular.

It was necessary to isolate the quasi-criminal application before the court from what had passed before and to make full enquiry (a) as to whether the appellant wanted legal representation and (b) whether he had applied for the necessary funding to do so and with what results.

If justices have been of the opinion on admissible evidence that there is sufficient to put the accused on trial, I suggest that normally on a judicial review application a court will rightly be slow to interfere at that stage. If justices have been of the opinion on admissible evidence that there is sufficient to put the accused on trial, I suggest that normally on a judicial review application a court will rightly be slow to interfere at that stage.

Section 9(2) and paragraph 6(1) of Schedule 1 require that extradition proceedings should be conducted "as nearly as may be" as if they were committal proceedings before magistrates. Committal proceedings are of course criminal proceedings and these provisions would make little sense if the metropolitan magistrate could not apply the normal rules of criminal evidence and procedure.

(I note parenthetically that, since the committal in this case, committal proceedings have been excluded from the application of section 78 by paragraph 26 of Schedule 1 to the Criminal Procedure and Investigations Act 1996 and it seems likely that the effect of section 9(2) and paragraph 6(1) of Schedule 1 to the Act of 1989 is to exclude extradition proceedings as well) On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that when the section is being applied to committal or extradition proceedings, the question is whether the admission of the evidence would have such an adverse effect on the fairness of those proceedings that the court ought not to admit it.