UK-US Extradition Treaty

I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Clegg) on obtaining the debate and on the way in which he opened it. I also congratulate the shadow Attorney-General on the extremely cogent points that he made, and I find myself in total agreement with the speech of the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick). In those circumstances, it will not be easy for me entirely to avoid repetition. However, in the light of the Solicitor-General’s continued assertion that black is white, and of his continued refusal to accept the most convincing propositions put in the debate thus far, some repetition may not be entirely out of order. The first and overriding duty and responsibility of the House is to safeguard the liberties of the individual against unfair, arbitrary or oppressive action by the Executive. That is what we are here to do, and the question before us this afternoon is whether we can rise to the challenge of fulfilling that duty and discharging that responsibility, or whether we will allow the Government to ride roughshod over individual liberties. The difficulties that we are debating arose out of two serious mistakes that the Government made. The first was to agree to a set of arrangements for governing extradition between this country and the United States, which lack reciprocity and are one-sided. The House need not take my word for that, because chapter and verse have already been provided. On 16 December 2003, Baroness Scotland, the Minister responsible for these matters, said as much in the other place. She said that, under these arrangements, the test that we have to meet when we seek extradition to this country is, and I quote her exact words,"““a higher threshold than we ask of the United States, and I make no secret of that.””—[Official Report, House of Lords, 16 December 2003; Vol. 655, c. 1063.]" In the light of that absolutely categorical statement, it is, to put it mildly, incomprehensible that Government spokesmen from the Prime Minister down have since continued to claim that the arrangements are reciprocal. They are not.