Reference
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the Foreign Jurisdiction Act, and Section 5 of that Act, enactments extended to foreign countries in which Her Majesty had jurisdiction only operated within that jurisdiction as if the foreign country were a British possession, and that the words in Section 5(2) of the Foreign Jurisdiction Act were not sufficient to make a foreign country into a British possession for the purposes of the operation in England of the enactments in question. To this I suggested to Mr. Mathew the following arguments:
(i) In so far as a preamble may affect the interpretation of a statute, a statutory provision concerning the consequences in English law of the exercise by the Crown of legislative powers in a foreign country is a matter 'relating to the exercise of H.M.'s jurisdiction in a foreign country'. (ii) The phrase 'to the extent of that jurisdiction' in 5.5(2) of the Foreign Jurisdiction Act is reasonably capable of bearing another meaning from that suggested by Mr. Du Cann: it could be interpreted as meaning that the enactments, wherever they operate (including English law), do so as if the foreign country concerned were a British possession but in so operating that foreign country is only to be treated as a British possession to the extent of H.M.'s jurisdiction in that foreign country the situation is made clearer in the case of a foreign country in which H.M.'s jurisdiction is territorially limited to part only of the country, e.g. Shanghai. (iii) 9.5(2) cannot be interpreted as excluding effects upon the operation of the enactments concerned in English law, since in the case of some of the enactments in Sch. I to the Foreign Jurisdiction Act their 'extension' to a foreign country can only reasonably be interpreted as affecting their operation in English law by virtue of 8.5(2). (iv) 5.5(1) and (2) of the Foreign Jurisdic tion Act is very similar to S.l of the Colonial Probates (Protected States and Mandated Territories) Act, 1927 (with the omission of the phrase 'to the extent of that jurisdiction' an understandable omission in the context of the 1927 Act): yet that S.l clearly intended, by its last part which is equivalent to 5.5(2) of the Foreign Jurisdiction Act, to produce effects in English law.
(v) The conclusion to be drawn, namely that $.5(2) makes Qatar a British possession for purposes of the operation in English law of the enactments in question, is consistent with - (a) S.l of the Foreign Jurisdiction Act,
which equates such foreign countries to territories acquired by the Crown
by cession or conquest; (b) 5.5(1) being the provision containing the exercise of the legislative power
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Ed (1627)
