Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, of course, I do not dissent from that. I think that that is true. Nevertheless, one of the difficulties about the fact that this treaty was never scrutinised by the House is that we have had no chance to assess whether the degree of sacrifice that we are being asked to make in terms of individual rights is properly balanced by the new challenges that we face. It is particularly difficult in the context of a bilateral treaty with the United States, because United States criminal law, unlike any other criminal law in the world, has this enormous extra-territorial outreach. It can reach out to individuals in the United Kingdom who have never even set foot in the United States and it can use these provisions in the treaty to extradite them. In my submission, it is above all with arrangements in the United States, because of the extra-territoriality of the criminal law which is wholly unmatched by our criminal law, that we need to look with particular care at the provisions included in this treaty. But there is absolutely no sign whatever—