Extradition (Provisional Arrest) Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Inglewood and Lord Mackay of ClashfernThursday 5th March 2020
(4 years, 8 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Extradition (Provisional Arrest) Act 2020 View all Extradition (Provisional Arrest) Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 3-I(Rev) Revised marshalled list for Grand Committee - (4 Mar 2020)
Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)
My Lords, if I may, I shall raise one small point. We are talking here about the ability to effect an arrest, not an obligation on the person who discovers and identifies somebody who is suspicious and to be arrested. To clarify, if it against public policy for somebody to be extradited, there is no obligation on the person concerned who has been granted this power to carry out the arrest. Is that correct?
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
My Lords, I assume that the process of extradition occurs under judicial control after the arrest and after the person arrested is in the custody of the judiciary or under the control of the arrangements made by the judiciary. That is quite important. In most of the speeches made at Second Reading, we distinguished between the Executive and the judiciary. They are two distinct parts of government. It is the Executive’s responsibility to take people before the judiciary, which is then responsible for how they are treated, subject to the Executive sometimes being part of the treatment afterwards. It is important to distinguish between the two. Therefore, it is acceptable that the authority deciding whether this arrest should go ahead is not a judicial authority but the responsible executive authority.
As far as both amendments are concerned, the information sought is reasonable and might be subject to risk, but it would be very easy, particularly if there seemed to be any public concern about the matter, for a parliamentarian to raise this as a Parliamentary Question, rather than have an obligation on the Secretary of State to keep to a time when there might not be much in the way of information to put out. I can see why these arrangements are a subject of public interest, but the Parliamentary Question system is a good way to deal with that as and when they seem important.