Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, this amendment and the ones grouped with it, which I put forward, are suggested to us by Justice. The proposed amendments to Clauses 67 to 69 deal with a gap in the application of the Extradition Act to circumstances where it is discovered that a person arrested has charges pending or is serving a sentence in the United Kingdom. The current power to defer exists only at the time of the extradition hearing, not before. We welcome the identification of this omission. However, we feel that bars to extradition should be addressed at the point when the request is made, not once the domestic matter has been resolved at some date in the future. There are, of course, a number of bars to extradition: the requesting country may retain the death penalty or may be guilty of torture; there is a passage of time bar; the crime has already been tried in another country; the defendant suffers from a physical or mental condition through which it would be oppressive or unjust to extradite that person. Those issues should be determined at the time of the request and not left until the defendant is released from whatever period of custody or imprisonment he may be undergoing in this country, because for the whole of his time in prison he will wonder whether the bars that he wishes to put forward will be accepted by the court. If the requesting state wants to pursue the warrant when he is released, it should do so at that point when it can reissue its request to this country, and bars to extradition could be considered at that point. Our amendment would obligate the judge or the Minister to consider bars or human rights implications at the requesting stage where the current and proposed legislation does not allow them to do so. I beg to move.