Extradition (Provisional Arrest) Bill [HL]

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

3rd reading & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 15th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock [V]]

I am very happy to support this excellent amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Kennedy. I hope that if the Government do not accept it, he will press it to a Division.

The first aspect of the amendment is, as my noble friend Lady Kennedy has just spoken about, consultation with the devolved Administrations, an issue that I will come to in a moment, but also, rightly, with NGOs, as my friend also said. I had a lot of dealings with human rights NGOs and those involved with press freedom when I was general rapporteur on media freedom and the safety of journalists for the Council of Europe, and I found them very helpful for knowing up-to-date information about each country that we dealt with.

As far as the devolved Administrations are concerned, there is—with no disrespect to the noble Baroness, Lady Williams—an awful lot of talk of consultation but very little real, meaningful consultation with the devolved authorities. For example, on Covid recently, the Prime Minister talks about consulting but for a month now he has not chaired a meeting of COBRA in which the First Ministers have been involved. That is not the consultation that could be taking place, so we have to write it into legislation. The Joint Ministerial Councils, which ought to be working, are not working effectively, while the European arrest warrant was abandoned by this Government in spite of objections from the Scottish Government and other devolved Administrations. Consultation must be written into this.

The second reason I strongly support my noble friend Lord Kennedy’s amendment relates to the red notice system. I want to mention the terribly tragic death of Harry Dunn at the age of 19, with his whole adult life ahead of him, in a hit-and-run accident. It was really terrible. The driver of the car, Anne Sacoolas, an American citizen, the wife of a diplomat, escaped justice by fleeing from the UK back to America. That was disgraceful. Her diplomatic immunity itself was very doubtful. Can the Minister confirm that an Interpol red notice has been issued in relation to Ms Sacoolas? I think the Prime Minister has said that she should return, but what are the Government doing to insist on that and take action?

For those two reasons, I strongly support the amendment. As I say, I hope my noble friend will take real courage in his hands and call a Division on this matter if the Government refuse to accept his very strong and persuasive arguments.

[Baroness Ludford (LD) [V]]

My Lords, in Committee on 5 March the Minister said:

“The Government have no intention of specifying countries likely to abuse the system to political ends”—


that is, the Interpol system. Obviously, that was an important pledge, but it does not conflict with the need for Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, with an assessment of the risks and a statement confirming that the territory does not abuse Interpol red notices.

I also agree that devolved Governments and NGOs should be consulted. Fair Trials International, of which I have been a patron for two decades, has long campaigned to ensure that Interpol does better at filtering out abuses of its system before information is sent out to police forces across the globe. When abusive “wanted person” alerts slip through the net, victims should have redress through an open and impartial process. There is no court in which to pursue an appeal. Fair Trials has highlighted shocking cases of injustice and the devastating impact that these alerts can have on those affected. Bill Browder has said that your life as a human being is over.

Fair Trials has helped dozens of people who have been subject to abusive Interpol alerts from countries including Russia, Belarus, Turkey, Venezuela, Egypt, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. FTI has also worked constructively with Interpol to develop realistic reform proposals. It held a positive meeting with Interpol’s secretary-general, Jürgen Stock, to discuss reforming the red notice system.

In the context of mounting political pressure for reform, changes were introduced in 2015, when Interpol announced that it had taken the first steps towards implementing reforms, including the introduction of a new refugee policy. Then, in 2017, Interpol introduced a number of further reforms, including greater independence, influence and expertise of the supervisory authority, the CCF; better transparency and respect for equality of arms; reasoned and public decisions on individual cases; and a working group to review red notice operations.

The Minister said, again on 5 March, that

“the UK is currently working with Interpol to ensure that its rules are robust, effective and complied with. The former chief constable of Essex was recently made the executive director of policing services for Interpol, the most senior operational role in that organisation. A UK government lawyer has also been seconded to the Interpol legal service to work with it to ensure that Interpol rules are properly robust and adhered to by Interpol member states.”—[Official Report, 5/3/20; col. 364GC.]

Can she tell us any more about what further changes and reforms have been introduced since 2017 to prevent abuse? Although that is essential, I still hope that she can tell us that she will accept Amendment 2.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot imagine that the Minister is going to tell us anything other than that the Government would consult the appropriate authorities before exercising the power under paragraph 7 of the Schedule, so the obvious question is: if the Government are committed to consulting, why will they not put it in the Bill, given the extent of the concerns that have been raised?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hamwee [V]]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, has added his name to Amendment 3, as the noble Lords, Lord Kennedy and Lord Anderson, did to a similar amendment at an earlier stage. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Ludford, who dealt with the matter on our behalf on Report, when, with the leave of the Minister, it was agreed that it be taken at Third Reading.

We often hear from the mover of an amendment: “This is a simple amendment.” Often, it is not quite that simple, but I believe this one is straightforward. When the Secretary of State lays regulations under new Section 74B(7)

“to add, vary or remove a reference to a territory”—

it is the addition that is the issue here—those regulations should apply only to a single territory. What I hope makes this simple to noble Lords is that there is nothing to prevent several instruments, each relating to one territory, being laid at the same time so that several territories can be specified within a matter of minutes of each other. But the crux is that Parliament should be able to reject one territory while happily accepting others.

In Committee, I used the examples of the Netherlands, a country which we respect, and Turkey, whose human rights record has regressed. I will use another pair today. I couple them only to distinguish between them: Sweden is a country we admire; Venezuela is one we do not, in this regard. If Parliament is presented with the choice of rejecting Sweden from the system because it wants to reject Venezuela, or accepting Venezuela because it wants to accept Sweden, how can Parliament possibly do the job we are all here to do when faced with an SI which is not amendable? The Minister has said previously that she would not present an SI that includes a country whose extradition requests we could not have confidence in due to their human rights record and would risk Parliament refusing extradition arrangements with a country that respects the rule of law. What the noble Baroness as an individual Minister might do is not the issue. I do not for a moment challenge her as an individual. This is a matter of system and procedure, not for an individual.

The previous amendment, which has just been agreed, referred to political motivation, and we must all be aware of the different criteria that different countries apply to the decisions they take as a state. Given the issues around relationships with countries regarding arms sales, for instance, is it any wonder that noble Lords are concerned about extradition to a country whose values, including valuing human life, are not our values?

The shortcomings and difficulties in procedures for dealing with secondary legislation are not a new point, but the fact that no amendments are possible is the most relevant one today. But, for once, we have a solution, which is to deal with these proposals one country at a time. I cannot understand an objection which seems to amount to no more than “It wasn’t invented here” or “not common practice”, to use the phrase used in Committee.

I need say no more, as I know that other noble Lords will contribute to the debate. Unless the Minister concedes, which I do not expect, I will test the opinion of the House, but for the moment I beg to move.

[Baroness Ludford [V]]

My noble friend Lady Hamwee has covered the strong case for this amendment and, to be quite frank, I cannot see on what grounds the Government can resist it. There is no good argument on administrative, parliamentary or human rights grounds not to have one territory per SI, so that Parliament can carefully discriminate between those territories where we are happy to have a law enforcement relationship and those that are, quite honestly, unreliable.

The way that the Government have resisted this improvement throughout the passage of the Bill in your Lordships’ House raises some concerns. Those are not linked, as my noble friend said, to the person of the Minister, but to any and every Government. We know that there will be pressures on this country, which has chosen—wrongly, in my opinion—to exit from the EU and make itself vulnerable to pressures in the context of seeking trade agreements. Those pressures are being discussed in a lively way, as they were last Wednesday in our Second Reading of the Agriculture Bill, when we discussed chlorinated chicken, hormone-treated beef and so on, and one can foresee similar kinds of pressures when countries seek favours from the United Kingdom in order to give us a trade concession. It would be all too tempting for a current or future Government to throw in a favour in a completely different area, such as law enforcement co-operation, in order to win a point for one economic sector or another in a trade deal.

In order to stop any such development in its tracks, it is completely reasonable to ask the Government simply to let Parliament decide on a country-by-country basis whether we want to add them to this system of provisional arrest. The onus is really on the Government to convince this House why it is reasonable to lump them together and not allow us to decide territory by territory, which is the obvious way to proceed.