Police and Justice Bill

There are two answers to that. First, there is the question of reciprocity itself. When the Government and Parliament of the United Kingdom assess the protection that they afford their citizens on extradition, it is reasonable for them to insist on comparable—I would argue identical—protection from the countries to which extradition is contemplated under the arrangements. The second answer to the question asked by the hon. and learned Gentleman—I am astonished that it is not clearly apparent to him, of all people—is that the European convention on human rights applies to the other countries with which we have made the arrangements to which he refers. The convention affords a degree of protection on extradition to and from those countries that is wholly absent from our arrangements with the United States. For those two reasons, we are discussing not simply a lack of reciprocity, but a lack of reciprocity that has serious consequences for the liberty of the subjects of the United Kingdom.