Police and Justice Bill

It is the reality of where we are. The United States has a system that is part federal and part state. Within that system there is an allowance for difference. We cannot recast the United States into a way that we would prefer. I turn to some of the very specific issues raised by noble Lords. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, suggested that we would be strengthenedif this Committee resoundingly supported this amendment. However, that is not the likely consequence or reaction that the United States may have to such an act. We have to look very carefully indeed at the basis on which we could logically justify removing the United States from Part 2 and the order in which it currently fits while allowing other states—which may also not have a treaty that inures to their benefit—to have the benefits and stay in the same place. That is a real difficulty. The noble and learned Lord also asked me to deal with the issue of forum. We basically find ourselves in the following position: having extended inclusionto the United States, we would be removing it notwithstanding the fact that, as Ambassador Tuttle made clear in the article he put in the Financial Times, it has honoured requests from us. It has surrendered people from its jurisdiction to ours and believes that, in so doing, it has behaved honourably and well and in comity to us. So in practice the question would be: on what basis do we say that the US has behaved so improperly that it should be deprived of a benefit granted to it, a benefit from which we too have already benefited? I have heard nothing this evening that would give me comfort about what I could say to them to explain that. I am aware of the frequently expressed concernof the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, about the designation of the United States; indeed we have debated the point on more than one occasion. The amendment would require the United States once more to provide prima facie evidence with its extradition request, as it did before the Extradition Act 2003. I was grateful to the noble Lord for his acceptance that the prima facie evidence standard is greater than the United States has ever asked from us. As a result, on Amendment No. 191, we think thatan insistence on precise reciprocity of evidential requirement between our two jurisdictions before the United States could be re-designated would be flawed. The amendment is unnecessary because the arrangements currently in place achieve, as I have tried to indicate, a reasonable balance. The forum argument can be well dealt with by virtue of what happened in the Enron Three case. The forum issue could quite properly be discussed. The court considered all the issues on those matters that the noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, has set out. We believe that the current system allows those issues to be dealt with in an efficacious way.