UK-US Extradition Treaty

Yes, but we are close allies of the United States. I strongly agree with the points made about the extradition process by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) and others, but we are where we are. I deplore the fact that the constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) will be getting on a plane tomorrow. I hope, even at this late hour, that there will be a delay, but there may not be. I do not know whether my hon. Friend’s constituent and his colleagues are guilty or innocent. I do know about the disparity in sentences so eloquently described by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, and I know that in this country it has been deemed that there are no charges to answer. Whether there is guilt for some crime committed in the United States I do not know, but I am exceptionally concerned that those people should get on a plane tomorrow or at any other time and be incarcerated in those conditions. I hope that the Solicitor-General will speak to the Attorney-General immediately after the debate. I hope that they together will go and see the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is highly regarded in the United States. He has been given the congressional medal of honour. I teased him about that at the Liaison Committee last week, suggesting that he should go and get it. He is held in high regard, and this is a serious matter because three people’s lives—the conditions in which they live their lives over the next two or three years—are at stake. I very much hope the Prime Minister will exercise the influence that he undoubtedly has upon the American ambassador and, through him, on the American Administration to say that there are certain things that we are above all enjoined to do in any democracy. One of those is to protect the welfare of our citizens, who are innocent until proved guilty. I am not suggesting that we can go back to the days of 1850, when Palmerston spoke for some hours in the predecessor of this Chamber. As dawn broke, he was speaking in the Don Pacifico debate. However, the lessons of the Don Pacifico debate are to some degree still relevant today. I took the liberty of re-reading Palmerston’s speech and I should like to quote from it. He said that"““whether, as the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say Civis Romanus sum; so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him against injustice and wrong.””" We in the Chamber may not use such grandiloquent terms today, but we still have the same duty as our predecessors had to protect the innocent until proved guilty, to uphold the dignity of mankind, and to ensure that even the closest of alliances does not lead to any supine posture on our part. So although I have a regard for the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General, and I make no comment about the merits of the case or judgments or any such thing, on the simple issue of human decency we have a duty to look after these three people and to ensure that if they have a trial, it is a fair one, and if they have to wait for their trial, they wait in civilised conditions on this side of the Atlantic with their families, not on the other side of the Atlantic. I look to the Government and to the Prime Minister in particular to ensure that that is so.