| Extradition Bill
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Mr. Tom Harris (Glasgow, Cathcart): I am thoroughly enjoying the hon. Gentleman's peroration. Will he clarify that his view, and presumably that of his party, is that someone from another country who commits a crime in the United Kingdom that is not a crime in their native country should not be prosecuted for that crime? Is that what the hon. Gentleman is saying? Mr. Maples: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was hinting by referring to my peroration, but while I am getting there, I have not quite got there yet. If we seek the extradition of, for example, a German citizen for a crime that we allege he committed here, it should be a matter for the German courts. They have procedures for that. If one of their procedures is that dual criminality is required, we should have to establish dual criminality. I have no problem with that. It is the present system. It is a fallacy to assume that if the Bill had not been introduced and if the European framework decision were not implemented, foreigners could come here, commit crimes and never be extradited back to the United Kingdom to face trial. They would have the defences that their own domestic law provides for or against extradition, but that is all that they would have and that is what they have now. There is an assumption that somehow the judicial proceedings of all our European partners are of equal validity. I doubt whether any Member has not had a case of a constituent languishing in jail—usually a Spanish jail—waiting to be charged on some relatively minor drugs offence such as the possession of cannabis. We have all had those cases. Frankly, the Spanish judicial system in that respect is a disgrace. There was the case of the British plane-spotters in Greece. If the Bill had been enacted and those people had returned to the United Kingdom before they were charged, they would have had to be extradited. No doubt the Greeks could have framed a charge that related to terrorism in some way. That is a scandal. We then saw the farce of those proceedings. I have no problem with the judicial proceedings in France, although the House of Lords does. Rachid Ramda has been able to drag out his appeal on the basis that he cannot get a fair trial in France because he is an Arab and a Muslim. I have no problem with that. I do not have any problem with most European judicial systems, but I have a problem with Spain and Column Number: 036 Greece. I also have a problem with some of the countries that might become members of the EU such as Turkey, which will automatically accede to the framework decision and become beneficiaries of this legislation. If we go down this route, let us approve these countries on a one-by-one basis. Let us ensure that if we allow our constituents to be handed over to foreign judicial authorities, those authorities have standards of procedure, fairness and independence of judges with which we are happy.Mr. George Howarth (Knowsley, North and Sefton, East): If someone is apprehended for a crime committed in Spain and arrested, charged and convicted, does the hon. Gentleman believe that they ought to serve the sentence? Mr. Maples: Yes, of course. If a British citizen who was in Spain, committed a crime and was arrested in Spain, it would be entirely a matter for Spanish law. Anyone who commits a crime in a foreign country takes the risk that he will serve some time in jail or be given some other punishment. If the hypothetical German had been arrested and tried here, exactly the same would apply. We are talking about extraditing someone from his own country to the other country. Mr. Howarth: Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the only difference between the case that he agrees with me about and that of someone coming back to the UK, is that it is all right if one gets back to the UK, but if one is arrested in Spain, one should go through the judicial process? Does he believe that if one commits a crime in Spain and manages to get the UK, the same principles do not apply? Mr. Maples: A British citizen in Britain is entitled to the protection of British law. A German citizen in Germany is entitled to the protection of German law. A major part of our job is to look after the freedoms and legal rights of citizens of this country, especially our constituents. I see no problem with that. If the hon. Gentleman's thesis is correct, why have we built up over two or three hundred years a body of law on extradition, which I think was codified in an Act in the late 19th century? Such protections and freedoms have been around for a long time. We all know that charges can be trivial or brought for political reasons. That is one of the things that concerns me about the judicial systems of some European countries. It obviously concerns the Government because they have introduced a couple of clauses that I do not think are required by the European framework directive or were mentioned in the consultation document. One relates to extraneous consideration and the other to human rights. Obviously the Government have some concern that extraneous considerations might come into the decision of a foreign judicial authority in issuing an arrest warrant; otherwise, why is the provision in the Bill? As an extraneous consideration, it is mainly to do with race and religion. Which countries should we be worried about because they might prejudice a trial or keep someone a prisoner on other ostensible grounds when the real reason is connected with race or religion? Why is there a need to reintroduce Human Rights Act protections Column Number: 037 when we know that all our European partners are party to the European convention on human rights? Such countries have standards to maintain and if they do not maintain them, they can be challenged. So why are we introducing a clause that allows a judge—indeed, compels him—to examine whether human rights are being protected or threatened by extradition procedures? Surely that shows that the Government are concerned about the adequacy and fairness of the judicial systems of some of our European Union partners. Will the Minister deal with that in his response?
9.45 amI have no problem with the provisions on category 2 countries, but the wider consequences of the Bill will come back to haunt us or our successor MPs. We will find that some of our constituents have been extradited to a country in whose judicial system we have little faith. They will languish in a foreign jail, perhaps without trial or even a formal charge, because of ambiguities in the arrest warrant. The provision refers to ''the accused'', but it would be better to refer to those ''facing charges''. Many of our continental partners have investigating magistrates who are entitled to arrest people as part of their investigation, which we could deal with through amendments. It is important to establish whether people whose arrest is sought by an investigating magistrate can be extradited under these procedures. We will all encounter cases where people have been extradited to other countries with no defence whatever: they can say nothing to a British court or a democratically accountable British Home Secretary to prevent their extradition. Let us consider Spain or Turkey. The Prime Minister is anxious for Turkey to become a member of the European Union, so let us say that it does so in five or six years' time. Judicial systems in those countries fall way below the standards of our own. A constituent might languish in jail without charge or trial for a long time in the most appalling conditions with no opportunity whatever, as I said, to mount an argument in a British court to help them. A piece of paper produced by the foreign authorities will simply be rubber stamped by a British court, denying all grounds for a substantive appeal and any discretion on the part of the Home Secretary. The defence that the action was not a crime in the United Kingdom will not be valid. It will result in some scandalous consequences and I am amazed that Government Back Benchers—I understand why the Minister has to go along with this nonsense—are unprepared to stand up for the long-won freedoms of our constituents against the procedures that are set out in the Bill. We shall come on to possible ways of improving the provisions through amendments, but if we pass the clause as it stands, part 1 will be a scandalous dereliction of Members' duties to the freedoms of our constituents. Column Number: 038 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Bob Ainsworth): The hon. Gentleman's contribution was well worth waiting for: his outrage has been splendid. He was enraged because we had not put into the Bill the list of the 32 offences for which dual criminality can be dropped. That is indeed appalling and we should have done so! This is our second sitting, having had Second Reading before Christmas, and where is the Opposition amendment proposing to include that list? I cannot see it on the amendment paper. If the Opposition feel so strongly about this matter and are so outraged about it—I do not blame the hon. Gentleman personally; he obviously has different priorities from those of the occupants of the Opposition Front Bench—why has no amendment been tabled to allow us to debate the issue? The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon was also outraged about delays, but he knows full well that I cannot go into the detail of individual cases. To suggest that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is holding up cases because he is not bothered to deal with them is outrageous and silly in the extreme. As he should know, the present legal arrangements allow defendants and their lawyers to make repeat representations and to give new evidence, all of which has to be examined and re-examined. As he said so clearly, it is possible for extradition arrangements under current legislation to be spun out for years. That is happening now and cases cost a fortune—on average £125,000—which is why we need reform. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath rehearsed the assertion that the Bill will be corpus juris by the back door. Mutual recognition is the alternative to corpus juris. We have to deal with the consequences of EU membership and the freedom of movement across borders that we have. Unless we are prepared to tolerate a situation in which two different sets of rules apply depending on whether someone manages to cross a border that is simple to cross, which my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth) exposed clearly in his two interventions, we cannot ignore the need for the reforms. We have the option of going for some form of corpus juris, in which case we would not have a generic list that has to be defined in the warrant of the issuing state but instead define exactly at a European level what is an extraditable offence. The road to corpus juris in Europe is that rather than mutual recognition, for which the Government have pushed and the principles of which are enshrined in the Bill.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 2003 | Prepared 9 January 2003 |
