UK-US Extradition Treaty

The point of this debate is to deal with the issue of whether there is an imbalance between the various requirements of the treaty and the Extradition Act 2003. When the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam put his case, he seemed to be arguing about the Act, not the treaty. The Act enables people against whom there is a reasonable suspicion of having committed serious offences imprisonable for more than one year to be extradited to another country. The Liberal Democrats seem to want to suspend that provision in relation to the United States in particular. It will be interesting to discover what the Conservative position is. Yesterday, we had the bizarre situation whereby Baroness Thatcher went into the Lobby in another place to vote to deny to the United States the sort of provisions that are currently available to Russia, Azerbaijan, Albania and a whole range of other countries with which we have a similar provisions.