Police and Justice Bill

The right hon. Gentleman made only a brief intervention, so he was unable to cover that point. Such was my concern about the lack of reference to the United States at that time that I wrote to the permanent secretary of the Home Office during the summer asking for a copy of the briefing pack that Ministers get on such occasions—such packs can ruin many a weekend for Ministers. I simply put on the record that the briefing that I received as the Minister handling that Bill contained no reference to treaty negotiations being under way with the USA, or to any specific plans—other than the reference to other bilateral treaty partners—to include the USA in list 2. It seems inconceivable that civil servants would have provided me with a briefing that made no reference to treaty negotiations unless none were under way, and I can only conclude that the treaty signed on 31 March 2003 had not even started the negotiation process when the Extradition Bill was debated in December 2002. That worries me greatly. There is every reason for modernising our extradition arrangements with the USA, who are our most important extradition partner. But our going from a standing start to an entire treaty in about three months, given the many controversial issues that have then followed, explains an awful lot about why we are where we are. I cannot see any basis for the haste with which this was done. Nor can I understand the basis for the decision to move ahead with the change of evidence requirements, ahead of agreeing the treaty on both sides of the Atlantic. There was a problem with the extradition system, but it was almost entirely to do with our failure to extradite criminals to the USA, rather than the other way round. The USA had everything to gain from the new treaty arrangement; we, in practice, had relatively little to gain. Most of the people we wanted were here, and despite the key categories of sex offenders to which my hon. Friend the Minister referred, and one or two others, things were generally going in the right direction. This process has caused much of the concern that lies behind today’s debate.