Police and Justice Bill

I begin by welcoming the Minister to his new responsibilities. Far be it from me to give him advice, but I assure him that the Home Office need not be a dysfunctional Department. I wish him well as he discharges his new responsibilities. My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), the shadow Attorney-General, has expressed the widely shared reservations on this issue with his usual admirable clarity. That will enable me to be relatively brief in adding my voice to those who have expressed concern about the matter. On 31 March 2003, the day that the treaty was signed, the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), made a written statement to the House. He said:"““Before the treaty can come into force it needs to be ratified by the United States Senate””—[Official Report, 31 March 2003; Vol. 402, c. 42WS.]" The Lord Chancellor gave a similar assurance in another place. However, the provisions of the Extradition Act 2003 and the associated secondary legislation mean that those assurance have turned out to be completely worthless. This afternoon, the House has the opportunity to hold the Government to their word. If we are to take seriously our central responsibility of safeguarding the liberties of the individual against unfair, arbitrary or oppressive action by the Executive, we will seize that opportunity. It is difficult to imagine a more one-sided or unfair set of arrangements than those in existence at present. The treaty is itself one-sided: its effect, and that of the Act, is to lower substantially the requirements that the United States Government have to satisfy to secure the extradition of those who are accused of offences under United States law. What was previously reciprocal and similar has become unbalanced and one-sided. Today, we have the opportunity to put things right. As we have heard, the United States Senate has still to ratify the treaty. In plain language, the United States has not honoured its side of the deal: the ratification legislation is stuck in the Senate and shows no sign whatever of getting unstuck. That is hardly surprising, because as my hon. Friend pointed out, the United Kingdom has removed any incentive for the Senate to proceed. If, to gain the advantage that the treaty would, and the Act does, confer on the Government of the United States, the treaty had to be ratified by the US, it is a fair bet that more progress would have been made. By designating the United States, for the purpose of the Act, without the minimal degree of reciprocity that ratification would provide, the Government of the United Kingdom have surrendered the only lever of influence they possessed to secure what we assume is their objective. Fortunately, the House has the opportunity today to do what the Government themselves should have done. New clause 8 would remove the United States of America from the list of territories in paragraph 3(2) of the designation order and that would give the US Senate the incentive it needs. If and when the treaty is ratified the matter could be looked at again and the US could be restored to the list, as a subsequent amendment provides. I hope that the delay that the passage of new clause 8 would achieve would enable a fresh look to be taken at the arrangements in the treaty so that they can be revised. As has been said more than once, the arrangements are one-sided, and my hon. Friend has explained why. Some of the cases that have arisen since the Act came into force in that one-sided way have given rise to widespread concern. In Committee, the Minister’s predecessor asked why the United States was being singled out for expressions of concern. I refer not to the hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint)—now a Minister of State at the Department of Health—who was in the Chamber briefly a few moments ago, but to another former Home Office Minister, the right hon. Member for Salford (Hazel Blears), who is now Minister without Portfolio. The answer to the right hon. Lady’s question is simple and twofold. First, as far as I am aware, no cases in respect of other jurisdictions have led to the same concerns. The proof of any legislative pudding is in the eating; it is in respect of the arrangements with the United States that cases of concern have arisen. That is no accident, and it brings me to the second point, to which my hon. Friend and the Liberal Democrat spokesman referred. The United States has a particular view on extraterritoriality. It claims for itself jurisdiction over acts that have not been committed in the United States and for which other countries, including ours, would make no similar claim. That should mean that any arrangements for extradition with the US need to be scrutinised with great care if the liberties of Her Majesty’s subjects are not to be jeopardised. To make those points is not in any sense to be anti-American, and it was unworthy of the Minister’s predecessor to make silly allegations of that kind in Committee. Some Opposition Members—I certainly include myself in this—have devoted a lifetime of energy to the improvement of relations between this country and the United States. That objective is not well served by the current unbalanced extradition arrangements between our two countries. Indeed, if they are allowed to continue they are likely to do significant damage to that relationship. I hope the House will make good use of the opportunity before us today to minimise that damage by restoring a degree of equity to the arrangements for extradition between our two countries.