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that there were insufficient grounds to justify not applying it to the dependent territories. I understand from the Home Office that although the matter was discussed at several meetings of the Committee the reasons for the decision are not adequately set out. The Committee may have been influenced by the maxim referred to by Mr Shearer, Nulla poena sine lege. However I suspect the chief reason was that it would be extremely difficult to justify to Parliament the transportation of a person from the UK or one of the colonies to a remote part of the globe for an alleged act, which would not, according to the laws of the place where the fugitive was found, be even a criminal offence if it had been committed there.
6.
It may well also be that in recent years there had been no cases of surrender of fugitive offenders which were not crimes in the territory from which they were surrendered. I have asked the Home Office if they have any information which would support this. There may have been at the time no longer any offences peculiar to certain colonies to which it was intended the new act should apply. The Ordinance in question was not in existence at the time.
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7. If we are to recommend a departure from the principle of the double criminality rule with respect to dependent territories, I t ink we must, before going to the Home Office, put up a stronger case than is set out in the draft minute to Mr Carlisle. my view it would be a mistake to argue that there is no need whatsoever to maintain the double criminality rule for dependent territories. There is obviously a case for so doing. What we have to do is put up a stronger case against its application. In order to do this we ought to obtain information of all the circumstances where it would be most desirable that the principle did not apply so far as the dependent territories are concerned. An offence against Section 10 of the Hong Kong Prevention of Bribery Ordinances 1970 is an example of a case which might justify the departure from the rule, but I do not think by itself it is sufficient.
8. I do not think it is sufficient to argue that because the Government of the UK has consented to a certain act being made criminal in the laws of the territory of a particular colony that it necessarily follows that it should regard such an offence as extraditable from this country. Furthermore to make an offence extraditable from the UK would not necessarily make it extraditable from foreign or commonwealth countries. HMG could well find
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