Derek McDowell (Labour)

I will bring it promptly to the attention of the District Court rules committee. With regard to court rules, there is a separation of powers issue at stake. Under the courts legislation, every court has a rules committee, which consists of judges, lawyers and so forth. The way in which such committees operate is that they make a rule and I have to concur with, or sign off on, that rule.

I will ask the committee to urgently address the question of endorsing on warrants their expiry time and date. I hope it will be positive about it, although it may come back with some reason it should not be done, one which I cannot imagine. Assuming it is a good idea, which seems to be the view of everyone in this House, it should not take too long. It would just require an additional rule to be put in place or, alternatively, a slightly different form to be used. That should not take very long.

As to when one uses primary legislation and when one uses other systems, the House will remember that in the Civil Liability and Courts Act, I inserted many provisions in primary legislation which the rules committees argued should be left to them to provide for in rules. I did that because I wanted the entire package to move forward and did not want to leave it to the committees to take the initiative and for me to simply sign off on rules, when and if the committees got around to making them. I wanted to put the onus on the committees to make the new rules.

In view of the strong views expressed in this House, I would be surprised if there is not an appetite for making the warrants clearer and giving them a stated expiry date.