Committal Warrant in UK Law

The jurisdiction of the magistrate is derived exclusively from the statute. It arises when a person who is accused of conduct in a foreign state which if he had committed it in England would be one described in the 1870 list, (as added to and amended by later Extradition Acts) has been apprehended and brought before the magistrate under a warrant issued pursuant to an order made by the Secretary of State under section 7 or confirmed by him under the last paragraph of section 8.

If that is wrong, then in my judgment the court has inherent jurisdiction to issue ancillary orders designed to make effective orders which it has previously issued. That jurisdiction is confirmed by the authorities to which Mr Smith referred. He has decided to go into hiding, either here or abroad and has thereby sought to frustrate the court's order. An order that he surrender to the tipstaff will enable the tipstaff to execute the court's warrant.

In the present case it is not suggested that Mr Ablyazov's failure to comply with the order for disclosure of assets will impede the court's ability to conduct a fair trial of the issues in the action. Were it otherwise, the court would be powerless when faced with a defendant who refused to comply with an order for the disclosure of his assets and when sentenced to be imprisoned for his contempt of court went into hiding in order to avoid the execution of that sanction.

So far as the surrender order is concerned, an unless order will be an incentive to comply with that order. Since compliance will enable the tipstaff to execute the warrant of arrest, it is appropriate that it be imposed. If the warrant is not executed, the proceedings will, in that respect, be unsatisfactory because the committal is designed to persuade Mr Ablyazov to comply with the freezing order and so ensure a fair trial in the full sense of that phrase.

If he does not get a fair trial because of the way the judge has behaved or because of material irregularities in the proceedings themselves, then there has been a mistrial, which is no trial at all. In such cases, in my judgment, an unlawful sentence cannot stand and must be quashed. It will depend on the facts of each case whether justice requires a new one to be substituted.

The court itself has a very substantial interest in seeing that its orders are upheld. If committal orders are to be set aside on purely technical grounds which have nothing to do with the justice of the case, then this has the effect of undermining the system of justice and the credibility of the Court orders.

Warrants issued by a court of law require to be treated with the same respect as must be accorded to any order of the court. The general rule was stated by Romer LJ in Hadkinson v Hadkinson [1952] P 285, 288: