Police and Justice Bill

My Lords, I have nothing to add to or subtract from what the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, said. His analysis exactly reflects the conclusions that we on these Benches have reached. I have only a brief observation to make about the manner in which we find ourselves in this situation. As your Lordships well know, this treaty was signed in secret. It was negotiated in secret. Indeed nobody, apart from the civil servants directly involved and the Home Secretary knew that these negotiations were going on—despite the fact that an Extradition Act was in the offing. Moreover, this was no ordinary treaty. Many international treaties, which are negotiated, signed and ratified between states, have no implications for individuals. But this treaty deeply affected the rights of citizens in this country. The extraordinary thing about this treaty is the different treatment of the rights of US citizens and those of British citizens. I know that the noble Baroness dissents from that, but in our judgment the rights of British citizens were valued far lower than the rights of US citizens. All their constitutional conditions were met, but none of those that we ought to have brought forward, but apparently did not, was met. It is a bad treaty, which should never have been signed. That remains our position. What will we do about it? There is a wider issue for us as the official Opposition to consider. We have sent the Bill back to the elected House twice, and it has come back to us twice, effectively unchanged. The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, said that there are certain designer changes, but only for the purposes of procedure. Essentially the Government have held their ground. The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, and I have sought to negotiate with the Government informally to see whether some form of watered-down forum arrangement might be appropriate, but the Government have stuck to their guns. What should the official Opposition do? Should we send it back again, with all the implications that that would have for Parliament, or should we not? We have concluded that, in our judgment, it would be wrong for us as an unelected House, having faced two repudiations from the elected House, to send this back one more time. We are the unelected House. If we were an elected House, I am sure that our decision would be different.