Extradition Act 2003 (Amendment to Designations) (No. 2) Order 2005

I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and to the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, for their support in principle. I anticipated that they would both adopt that position, and I am most grateful for the questions raised in connection with the adoption of the order by Italy. Italy was the only country outstanding among EU member states to implement the European arrest warrant. It was not included in previous orders because the country had not passed the necessary domestic legislation to implement the framework decision on the European arrest warrant scheme. It has now done that, and it has taken us so long to bring forward the order today only because of the delay in Italy’s domestic arrangements. My understanding is that its domestic legislation fell in line with ours on 14 May. The noble Baroness asked whether accession states had now all completed implementation. The answer is ““Yes, they have all completed the process””. Therefore, we have universal coverage. She also asked about the level of extradition traffic between the United Kingdom and Italy. Procedures are in train in Italy; there is no question of that. In 2002, the Italians made 15 extradition requests to the United Kingdom, and we made no requests to them. In 2003, they made eight requests to us and eight again in 2004, while we made two requests to the Italians in 2003 and three in 2004.