Police and Justice Bill

That is a fair comment but not a genuine concern. We can expect from our Government due protection of British citizens, which should take the form of prima facie evidence, except where there are genuinely reciprocal arrangements for another standard of proof, which we have with several countries. I agree with the comment of the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen that, had the matter been approached properly through a sensible debate and negotiation on the treaty, we could have arrived at a satisfactory conclusion. I also agree that, prior to the latest treaty, we had an imbalance in the other direction. I believe that the American authorities had a marginally higher hurdle to overcome than the British authorities, and I have always made that plain. But I think there was a greater similarity between probable-cause and prima facie evidence, in that both required evidence to be produced and an opportunity for the person accused to refute that evidence before a court of law. That is the difference between the situation then and the situation now: the imbalance is now in the opposite direction. That evidence is not required. The Minister got into a bit of a muddle when trying to distinguish between evidence and information in this context, but British citizens are clearly at a disadvantage by comparison with United States citizens. I am arguing first that they should not be at that disadvantage, and secondly that the British Government should not have put them in a position in which they could be at that disadvantage, because it is the duty of the British Government to protect the interests of British citizens. Perhaps the ““process”” point mentioned by the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen, to which I shall return shortly, explains the extraordinary neglect on the Government’s part in consideration of the treaty in the first instance.