STATUTE LAW REVISION: SIXTEENTH ... - Law Commission

authorised to make seizures under the 1873 Act. The words proposed for repeal
in this section are otiose and unnecessary but, as mentioned in paragraph 8.15,
the rest of section 17 needs to be retained to provide effectively for the discharge
of the United Kingdom’s international obligations. Sections 18 to 23 are all
ancillary to the exercise of the jurisdiction of slave courts to adjudicate on and
condemn slaves, goods and vessels as provided by section 5, which is proposed
for repeal. The sections are obsolete and unnecessary.
8.8 Sections 24 to 26 apply to the Slave Trade Act 1824. Section 24 provides for the
1873 Act to be construed as one with that Act but contains some obsolete words
which are proposed for repeal. Section 25 (recovery of forfeitures under sections
3 to 8 of the 1824 Act) is proposed for repeal consequentially on the proposal to
repeal the sections in question. Section 26 is a venue provision for the
indictment and trial of offences against the 1824 Act. While most of this section
is of continuing utility, its last paragraph, providing for the removal of a prisoner
from a colony to the United Kingdom for the trial of a slave trading offence, is
unnecessary and has apparently never been used. The repeal proposed in the
Merchant Shipping Act 1995 is consequential.
8.9 Section 28 32 applied the Act to cases tried before the Act was passed and is
spent. Section 29 enabled the Act to be extended to future treaties by Order.
The power has not been exercised since 1892 33 and all the treaties are obsolete.
Section 29 is therefore unnecessary and of no practical utility.
8.10 The definitions in section 2 of “foreign state”, “Vice-Admiralty Court”, 34 “British
slave court”, “slave court” 35 and “existing slave trade treaty” are unnecessary as
a result of the repeals proposed in the rest of the Act or are obsolete.
154 Other Acts
8.1 The repeals proposed in sections 2, 9 and 13 of the Colonial Courts of Admiralty
Act 1890 are consequential on the proposal to repeal section 5 of the Slave
Trade Act 1873. Section 11(3) of the Criminal Justice Act 1925 concerns the
venue for the trial of the offence of forgery or uttering where that offence “relates
to documents made for the purpose of any Act relating to the suppression of the
slave trade”. As enacted, section 11(3) referred to offences under the Forgery
Act 1913, section 2(2)(j) of which made it an offence to forge various documents
in Slave Trade Act proceedings, and section 6 of which made it an offence to
utter a forged document. The reference to the Forgery Act 1913 in section 11(3)
was repealed by the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981 and there are no other
extant offences falling within the description in section 11(3). The subsection is
therefore redundant and obsolete.
32 Section 27 was repealed by the Extradition Act 1989, s 37 and Sch 2.
33 See n 7.
34 By virtue of the Colonial Courts of Admiralty Act 1890, s 2(3), this is to be read as “Colonial
Court of Admiralty”, ie a court of law in a British possession declared to be a Court of
Admiralty or having therein unlimited civil jurisdiction (s 2(1)).
35 See n.27.
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