Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Dominic Raab and David Burrowes

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Raab]

We are very mindful of any potential impact of our reform on the Good Friday agreement and the wider settlement. We will pursue our reform of the Human Rights Act with those considerations in mind.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

A key value of Tottenham magistrates court, which is earmarked for closure, has been the delivery of local, visible justice. Will the Department seriously consider Enfield’s civic centre, or other community buildings, so that young people in particular can see it as a place where first hearing youth courts can take place and deliver effective local justice?

Extradition

Debate between Dominic Raab and David Burrowes

Thursday 24th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

It is a tremendous pleasure and privilege to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell, for, I believe, the first time. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for a debate on this subject in Westminster Hall. I welcome the presence and participation of the Immigration Minister and thank him in advance for engaging proactively on such an important issue.

The Home Office is often berated for letting too many people into the United Kingdom, so it is something of a novelty for Ministers to face the reverse criticism. Yet, as the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, pointed out in its most recent report on extradition, there are flaws in and widespread concerns about our extradition laws. There are concerns about the UK-US extradition treaty of 2003, in which paragraph 3(c) of article 8 sets different evidential thresholds for the two countries. The United States did not ratify the treaty until 2007, but for clarity, my understanding is that it has relied on the lower burden of proof available to it since 2004.

Lawyers can bicker about whether there is a substantive difference between the requirement that the US has to satisfy—the reasonable suspicion test—and the requirement that the UK has to satisfy, which is showing probable cause. The fact is that, in operational terms, since 2004, 24 Britons have been extradited to the United States under the new arrangements, and just one American has been extradited to Britain. In practice, in the way they affect our respective citizens, the arrangements have practically been all one way.

The main problem, in my view—others will speak about the individual cases of their constituents—is the absence of any discretion to allow the UK to decline extradition in cross-border cases, having taken into account the interests of justice. That has been the problem in the case of Gary McKinnon, which is equally, or more about the injustice in dispatching a young man with Asperger’s syndrome hundreds of miles from home on allegations of computer hacking, when he was apparently searching for unidentified flying objects, than about the alleged offence or the evidential threshold. More misfit than terrorist, he should not be equated with some high-level al-Qaeda suspect or gangster.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this incredibly important debate and on raising the case of my constituent, Gary McKinnon, at an early stage. My hon. Friend has already mentioned the issue of disparity. Does there not seem to be a self-evident statistical disparity? I understand that, in the past 40 years, three suspected terrorists were extradited from the United States to this country, in comparison with the situation facing Gary McKinnon, who is being prosecuted on the basis of alleged terrorism.

[Mr Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend for that historical context, and I certainly accept it. It is important to have a practical, operational background about the numbers of cases, so that the debate does not become a dry, lawyer’s debate about the terms of the treaty or the Extradition Act 2003.

We have legislation in place to inject a dose of common sense and discretion into the McKinnon case and other such cases. The Government ought to bring that into force as a matter of priority.

I understand the US’s concern. I have spoken to officials from the US embassy, and I understand their concerns regarding the treaty’s operation. They make quite strong arguments about the discrepancy between the evidential thresholds. None the less, in the US’s extradition treaty relations with, to name but a few, Brazil, Mexico and Australia, the domestic authorities in those countries have the right to decline extradition in these and much wider circumstances. Why should Britain, a stalwart ally, not request such a modest adjustment?

The problems created by the European arrest warrant have proven to be even more serious and far more widespread than those created by the US treaty. First, there are cases that are exemplified by the case of Andrew Symeou. Andrew, a British student, was whisked off to Greece under a European arrest warrant for involvement in a fight at a nightclub that left another man dead, which is a serious offence. Andrew was extradited, despite eye-witness accounts that he was not at the club at the time.

Fast-track European Union extradition is based on the assumption that standards of justice are adequate across Europe. We all put our faith in that assumption, but I am afraid that the Symeou case and many others show that that assumption is a sham and a fraud. We cannot understand the operation of the EAW without understanding that fraud—the assumption that all the justice systems operate to a similarly high standard.

Let us look at the Symeou case. Greek police beat identical statements out of witnesses, which were then retracted. Andrew Symeou spent almost a year in squalid prison conditions before being bailed. He was left with a flea-ridden blanket in a cell exposed to a sewer and crawling with cockroaches. He was abused by guards and witnessed another prisoner being beaten to death for drug money. The trial proceeded at a snail’s pace, with court translators who spoke scant English. He was eventually cleared in June this year, after a two-year ordeal, and he was left to rebuild his life.

The independent Baker review, commissioned by the coalition to look into the operation of our extradition relations, makes absolutely no recommendations for preventing such horror stories being inflicted on other innocent people—I use the word “innocent” advisedly, although that was clearly the case for Andrew Symeou. The Symeou case highlights the need for a higher evidential threshold—a prima facie test—to militate against the risk that fast-track extradition goes ahead on manifestly tainted evidence or spurious grounds.

The Baker report merely suggests that, over time and with effort, the justice systems and prison conditions across Europe will get better. All of us in the Chamber may well hope for that, but that view is naive at best and reckless at worst. I urge the Government to ignore that legalistic and simplistic analysis and think about what innocent people such as Andrew Symeou actually go through in real life.