Extradition Act 2003 (Amendment to Designations) Order 2007

My Lords, to me falls the signal honour of congratulating the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, on his maiden speech. He has had a glittering career, as I am sure your Lordships are all aware. Following Dartmouth, the noble Lord has served in one capacity or another in no fewer than 14 ships. Most memorably for the noble Lord, and for all of your Lordships, the noble Lord was commanding the frigate ““Ardent”” on 21 May 1982 in the South Atlantic when she was mortally struck. The noble Lord was the last to abandon his doomed ship, subsequently receiving the Distinguished Service Cross for his gallant conduct and exemplary leadership. The noble Lord’s career as a staff officer proved as distinguished as it had in battle. He became Commander-in-Chief Fleet in November 2000 and in September 2002, as your Lordships well know, he was appointed First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff. In 2004, already an admiral, he was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath. We are so fortunate to have among us a man of the stature of the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead. Your Lordships’ House is immensely enriched by his arrival. I assure the noble Lord that he will find that Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition are rather more urbane than his opponents in the South Atlantic. Metaphorically speaking, the noble Lord may, from time to time, detect the rattle of small arms fire; but missiles are rarely launched. The choice of extradition as the subject of the noble Lord’s first speech could not better exhibit the noble Lord’s reputation for courage. A little while ago the Government sought the agreement of your Lordships’ House, under Article 3 of the Extradition Act 2003 (Designation of Part 2 Territories) Order 2003, to remove the obligation of the United States of America to establish a prima facie case in our courts against someone for whom it requested extradition. For motives that your Lordships have never been able to fathom, the right honourable gentleman Mr Blunkett, then Home Secretary, had made this astonishing unilateral concession in a treaty negotiated and signed in private. Not even his Minister of State knew of these events. That was one of those occasions when missiles were fired in your Lordships’ House. Happily, we are not faced with a similar situation today. Only one of the three treaties merits some words of caution and that concerns Algeria. The part 2 designation here retains the obligation on the Algerian authorities to make out a prima facie case. However, even if such a case is satisfactorily made out, our obligations under both the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Convention on Torture prohibit us from returning someone to Algeria if there is a real risk of torture. I am aware that the Government have signed a memorandum of understanding with Algeria about the treatment of deportees and that, previously, in 2004 their Government promulgated a charter for peace and national reconciliation. However, until then Algeria was indisputably engaged in the systematic abuse of human rights. Are the Government carefully monitoring the human rights situation in Algeria and in particular the fate of deportees? Can the noble Lord assure us that no one will be extradited to Algeria if, in the Government’s view, there is a discernibly real risk of torture, and that if they and the individual concerned disagree about the nature of the risk, it will be open to the individual to argue his case in the courts of this country? It is worth reminding ourselves in this context that the Government’s obligations go beyond the merely diplomatic. Any citizen of this country involved in the enforced return of an individual to a foreign country, whether he knows or ought to know that that person is in real risk of torture, is complicit in the conduct of the delinquent state by virtue of the International Convention on Torture. He is therefore committing an international crime for which he can be prosecuted in his domestic courts or in the International Criminal Court.