Extradition Act 2003 (Codes of Practice and Transit Code of Practice) Order 2021

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB) [V]]

My Lords, these are straightforward regulations and on that level I support them. It is clearly important that our police should have clarity on these issues and that the code provides a necessary update. When people are being extradited, it is clearly essential that they can access legal support and the code enables that, among other things.

However, there are broader issues with extradition. I fear that our police are caught in a situation that is still deeply unfair for British citizens. I refer, of course, to the imbalance between the UK and the US, in the 2003 extradition treaty. On 12 February last year, our Prime Minister said:

“I do think that elements of that relationships are unbalanced, and it is certainly worth looking at”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/2/20; col. 846.]


But, more than a year later, it has not been looked at. Our police are being asked to help in a process that can see UK citizens extradited to the US for crimes committed entirely in the UK and involving UK citizens and businesses.

When the 2003 Act was first brought in, it was envisaged that it would deal with paedophiles, terrorists and murderers. In fact, the subject of extradition to the US has been almost entirely white-collar crime. It appears that the US has the ability to reach out around the world on commercial crime, so our police will necessarily be involved in dealing with people not only from the UK who are subject to extradition, but in transit from other countries to the US, where they, like our citizens, will face a legal process that is weighted against them. The US legal system is very different from ours and, although it is clear from these documents that we will not extradite or aid the extradition of those who could be subject to the death penalty, we will be involved in extraditing those who could be subject to extraordinarily long prison sentences in conditions which, many would argue, are not conducive to complying with human rights legislation.

The plea bargaining system is essentially unfair. Why American citizens accept it I do not know, but surely the UK should stand up against such an unfair system of justice and safeguard our citizens, and potentially those of other countries, who are subject to the unfairly long reach of the US judicial arm.