Police and Justice Bill

Of course I wish to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) on his sterling defence of the Essex police force. However, I wish to draw attention to an opportunity that the Bill gives us to rectify a matter of serious and widespread public concern, which has already been addressed by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone) and my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert). That matter is the extradition arrangements that we have with the United States, and what we may expect from America and what they may demand from us. I do not wish to indulge in an anti-American polemic, but I wish to suggest a speedy way in which the problem could be rectified in a way that would reassure the Americans that those suspected of serious criminal offences will be speedily yielded up to them—in a way that they would expect from their most important international friend and ally—while at the same time protect the rights of UK nationals. I am grateful to right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House who have signed my early-day motion on the subject. I hope that the Government will agree that the neatest solution would be to insert a line into the Bill—along with the many other amendments to the Extradition Act 2003—to incorporate article 7 of the European convention on extradition, so that any country may refuse extradition if the offence may be deemed to have been committed in whole or in part on its territory. I shall explain why I believe that change to be essential. There are currently several cases before the courts that arise directly from the Extradition Act 2003. I know of one of those cases particularly, because it affects one of my constituents, who is one of three bankers who are being electromagnetically sucked—hoovered, even—across the Atlantic without any duty on the Americans to produce any prima facie evidence. I have no direct evidence of whether the Americans are right or wrong to say that my constituent has committed the offences, but everybody—including the American authorities—agrees on one point. Insofar as there were any offences, in this case and all other analogous cases, they were committed by UK nationals, in this country and against UK interests. If there was a crime, it was a British crime. We may ask, therefore, why we are exporting our nationals to the US so willingly, when the natural forum for trial is obviously this country and when it is inconceivable that we would willingly export our nationals to any other part 2 country—any other country in category 2.