UK Extradition Arrangements

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Raab]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that clarification.

In practical terms the arrangements are unbalanced too. On the latest data available—I thank the Immigration Minister for his letter correcting earlier replies to parliamentary questions—29 UK nationals or dual nationals were extradited from Britain to the US since 2004. Five Americans were extradited from the US to Britain.

Obviously, states extradite their own nationals and third parties as well, but we in the House are rightly concerned about the treatment of those removed from the home country. In front of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the US ambassador disputed some of the earlier data that I spoke to in the Westminster Hall debate, complaining about untrue accusations being made by MPs and adding:

“The constant use of skewed arguments and wilful distortion of the facts by some to advance their own agendas remains of great concern to the United States”.

If there is any dispute about the facts it is not with me or any Member of this House, but with Ministers from the previous Government who failed to record consistently data on the issue between 2004 and 2007. I emphasise that all the figures cited today and in the previous debate were from Government replies to parliamentary questions. Neither the ambassador nor the US embassy, when I later followed up, were able to correct the figures with data based on their own records, so I find it regrettable that the charge of

“wilful distortion of the facts”

is being bandied around without His Excellency being in command of a few of his own.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

I am greatly enjoying what my hon. Friend is saying. I am a thorough supporter of the idea that the extradition rules should be reviewed, but I am still grappling, in the American case, with the difference between the two tests. Will he give us a sense of how they might come apart?

[Mr Raab]

The fundamental question is the difference between reasonable suspicion and probable cause. As paper tests, I do not think there is an enormous amount of difference between them, but as Alun Jones QC, whose article in The Daily Telegraph I commend, has spelled out, the practical operation—the judicial scrutiny that is available in the US because of the US constitutional guarantees—is higher. That is the key difference.

For all the talk of the evidential burden and the question of reciprocity, in my view, the critical issue in the US arrangements is forum. That is the label for how one decides where, in cross-border cases, the appropriate jurisdiction lies. The Gary McKinnon case is the leading case attracting great controversy at present. At root it is about the injustice in dispatching someone with Asperger’s syndrome hundreds of miles from home on allegations of computer hacking when he was apparently searching for unidentified flying objects. Gary McKinnon should not be treated like some gangland mobster or al-Qaeda mastermind.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

Further to the point about the case of Andrew Symeou, when the European arrest warrant was introduced, did the introducing authorities look at the standards of law, order and punishment across the European countries in order to assure themselves that such conditions could not occur?

[Mr Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I will move on to the level of scrutiny later, but the short answer is that the level in that case was not nearly high enough. The question today is whether we in this House have the will to stand up and ensure that the trauma of the Symeou case and many others is not inflicted on other innocent people. Let us be very clear that Symeou was innocent, as are many of the victims under the European arrest warrant.

The Symeou case exposes the fatal flaw in the European arrest warrant. Fast-track extradition in the EU—I think this will answer my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman)—is based on a leap of faith and an assumption that all European justice systems are of a decent standard. That assumption is a sham. The justice systems in many European countries are well below any acceptable minimum standard. The Baker review proposed no safeguards to prevent a repeat of such miscarriages of justice. The report expressed the aspiration that penal conditions and justice systems across Europe will get better in time. In fact, standards of justice in some of the countries concerned are getting worse. According to Transparency International’s corruption perception index—just one benchmark, but an important one—corruption is getting worse in Greece, Hungary, Italy and Bulgaria. Even if standards of justice improve across Europe, as we all hope they will, our duty is to protect our citizens today, not in five or 10 years’ time. That is why it is important to take action now and not accept the “hit and hope” counsel of the Baker review.

The Baker review failed to take evidence directly from the victims and hear about the trauma that innocent people and their families have been through. In contrast, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, chaired by the hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis), took evidence from a range of victims, including Frank Symeou, Deborah Dark, Michael Turner and Edmond Arapi.