That assurance turned out to be completely erroneous. This afternoon the House has the opportunity to hold the Lord Chancellor to his word. If it is to take seriously its central responsibility of safeguarding the liberties of the individual against unfair arbitrary or oppressive actions by the executive it will seize that opportunity.
It is difficult to imagine a more one-sided or unfair set of arrangements than those which are presently in existence. The Treaty is itself one-sided.
Its effect is to lower very substantially the requirements that the United States Government has to satisfy in order to secure the extradition of those who are accused of offences against United States law.
In return some changes were made to the requirements which the United Kingdom Government has to satisfy in order to secure the extradition of those who are accused of offences against United Kingdom law. Those requirements would, under the Treaty, be significantly more onerous than those which the United States would have to satisfy, of which more later.
The United States Senate has still to ratify the Treaty. In plain language the United States has not honoured its side of the deal. The ratification legislation is stuck in the Senate and shows no signs of getting unstuck.
This is perhaps not entirely surprising because the United Kingdom Government has removed any intentions for the Senate to proceed. If, in order to gain the advantage while the Treaty would confer in the Government of the United States it had to be ratified by the United States, it’s a fair bet that more progress would have been made. By bringing the Treaty into force without the minimal degree of reciprocity that ratification would provide the Government of the United Kingdom has surrendered the only lever of influence it possessed to secure what we assume to be its objective.
Fortunately this House today has the opportunity to do what the Government itself should have done. New Clause 8 would insist the United States of America from the list of territories in paragraph 3(2) of the Designation Order. That would give the United States Senate the incentive it needs.
If and when the Treaty is ratified the United States would, if it were considered desirable and appropriate, be restored to the list.
But I hope the delay that the passage of New Clause 8 would achieve would enable a fresh look to be taken at the arrangements in the Treaty so that they could be revised.
There is no doubt that those arrangements are one-sided. The United Kingdom Government has to show probable cause that the persons it wishes to extradite committed the crimes they have been accused of. The United States Government only has to set out the accusation.
Some of the cases which have arisen since the Treaty came into force in this one-sided way have given rise to widespread concerns. They have shown that the provision of the Treaty, as applied to the United States, were ill-considered and need to be revised.
In the discussions which took place in Committee the Minister’s predecessor asked why the United States was being singled out for expressions of concern. The answer is simple and twofold.
First, there have not been cases in respect of other jurisdictions which have led to the same concerns. The proof of any legislation’s pudding is in the eating. It is in respect of the arrangements with the United States that cases of concern have arisen.
And that is no accident which brings me to the second reason. The United States has a particular view on extra territoriality. It claims for itself jurisdiction over acts which have not been committed in the United States and for which other countries, including our own, would make no similar claim.
This should mean that any arrangements for extradition with the United States need to be sanctioned with great care. If any one-sidedness is to be accepted it should be the other way – there is no justification whatever for what we have at present.
To make these points is not in any sense to be anti American and it was unworthy of the Minister’s predecessor to make silly allegations of that kind in Committee. Some of you on this side of the House, and I certainly include myself, have devoted a lifetime of energy to the improvement of relations between this country and the United States.
I do not believe that objective is well served by the current unbalance extradition arrangements which exist between our two countries. Indeed I think they are likely to do significant damage to the transatlantic relationship. I hope the House will make good use of the opportunity before it today to minimise that damage by restoring a degree of equity to the arrangements for extradition between our two countries.
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