My Lords, with the leave of the House, I would like to suggest that consideration of Commons Amendments 24 and 136 be postponed to another day. I hope that anything which had that effect would meet with the approval of the House and, not least, of the Minister because, as we all know, we are very pressed for time.
The purpose of these amendments is to introduce what is known as a forum bar in extradition proceedings. A forum bar, which is an additional ground on which extradition could be refused, was introduced in 2006 but it was never brought into force. The reason, as given at the time by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland—and I wish she was in her seat—was that it would have put us in breach of our bilateral treaty obligations with all our extradition partners. She was, surely, right about that. On 8 September 2010, the Home Secretary announced a review of our extradition arrangements. Sir Scott Baker, a recently retired Lord Justice, was appointed, with two colleagues, to consider the question of our extradition arrangements generally and the forum bar in particular. They produced a massive report which I have beside me here and they came down firmly against a forum bar for all the reasons set out in Part 6 of their report, which I will not repeat. They thought it was much better that,
where there is a contested forum, the forum should be agreed between the prosecuting authorities in the two competing jurisdictions, not by the court in one or other of them. Sir Scott Baker’s report was published on 20 September 2011 and nothing happened until October 2012 when the Home Secretary accepted most of its recommendations.