Before I ask the Clerk to read the title of the Bill, I should explain that, in these exceptional circumstances, although the Chair of the Committee would normally sit in the Clerk’s Chair during Committee state, in order to comply with social distancing requirements I will remain in the Speaker’s Chair although I will be carrying out the role not of Deputy Speaker but of Chairman of the Committee. We should be addressed as Chairs of the Committee rather than as Deputy Speakers.
I beg to move amendment 1, in page 1, line 6, at end insert—
‘( ) Nothing in this Act changes the effect of any rule of law or any enactment in force before the date on which this Act is passed in relation to extradition requests by or on behalf of—
(a) the People’s Republic of China, or
(b) the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.’
This amendment is intended to ensure the provisional arrest arrangements proposed under this Bill do not apply to extradition requests from China and/or Hong Kong.
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 2, in page 1, line 6, at end insert—
‘( ) The power to make further amendments under this Act may not be used to make any provision in relation to—
(a) the People’s Republic of China, or
(b) the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.’
This amendment would prevent the power to make amendments under this Bill being used in relation to China and/or Hong Kong.
Amendment 7, in clause 1, page 1, line 6, at end insert—
‘( ) The power to make further amendments under this Act may not be used to make any provision in relation to the United States of America.’
This amendment would prevent the power to make amendments under this Bill being used in relation to the USA.
Clause stand part.
Amendment 3, in clause 2, page 1, line 13, at end insert
‘except in relation to extradition requests by or on behalf of—
(a) the People’s Republic of China, or
(b) the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China.’
This amendment would preclude the exercise in respect of China and /or Hong Kong of the powers under the Extradition Act 2003 in relation to British overseas territories, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, in relation to any changes made by this Bill.
Amendment 8, page 1, line 13, at end insert
‘except in relation to extradition requests by or on behalf of the United States of America.’
I rise to speak to amendment 1, but with it are a whole bunch of other amendments that I have tabled alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) and the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion). I had intended when I originally tabled them to speak on the basis that the Government needed to act, but since then they have acted—and that is never a bad thing. Although I, with my colleagues, may well have provoked the Government to act, I still want to speak, because things are happening at the moment which mean, I hope, that the Government will pay full attention to further action that may be required, stretching across extradition and into sanctions.
I thank the Government for finally agreeing to rule out the extradition arrangements with Hong Kong, but it is worth noting what has been going on since the imposition of the national security law, which is now making the lives of many in Hong Kong a misery. More than that, they now fear very much indeed not only for their lives but for their liberty in a way that none of us here, I sometimes think, could possibly imagine—or imagine what it is like to live in such an environment.
We have a historical relationship with Hong Kong, and we have a legal right, under the Sino-British treaty, to have an opinion and view on what is happening in Hong Kong. No matter what the Chinese Government may say, that is our right in international law. The imposition of the national security law runs counter to that arrangement—that treaty. On that basis, the Government have acted correctly in cutting off any potential problem that may arise as a result of the use of the extradition agreement—but there is more, even now, as we speak. Quite recently, we have seen action against a number of people who have done nothing other than use the kind of rights that we would take for granted in this House. Jimmy Lai, the owner of the largest pro-democracy publication in the city, has been charged with undermining the state. There have been arrests of young activists, some of which we have seen on television, but others go on. There have been media posts and people holding blank pieces of paper at protests. People have been arrested in shopping malls for sedition. The targeting of Hong Kong activists overseas is going on apace and gathering pace, as is retrospectively applying the law to supposed crimes that took place before it even came into force, which I find remarkable—perhaps I should not, but I do.
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A related issue is the excessive and expensive visa fees under the present Government policy for BNO passport holders, which could be prohibitive for those who wish to get passports. We have been generous in opening up and saying that individuals with BNO status who wish to get passports will have the right to get them and to travel to the UK if necessary, but we have then put another problem in their way, and we do not make it easy for them. It is surely not right that potential British passport holders should have to face these fees. BNOs are allowed to serve in our armed forces but are not yet able to become British nationals without paying a large cost. I hope that the Government will think about suspending those fees, to encourage these people—particularly young ones—to take advantage of what is essentially a lifeline. Many of the people I have met who have fled Hong Kong have spoken of their difficulties in obtaining these passports. I know that this is not directly my right hon. Friend’s responsibility, but I hope he will raise it with the Foreign Office, so that it can give its blessing.
The last point I want to make is an important one. We know about all the businesses that have been kowtowing to the Chinese Government, many of them in a shameful way, apologising, excusing and saying that it is somehow all about restoring order, despite the terrible abuses taking place. I will not go through them all, but I want to raise one that has recently been discovered. It appears that Disney worked with the security services in Xinjiang region—the place where the Uyghurs have suffered the most appalling abuse. It is those very security services that have been responsible for the forced sterilisation of Uyghur women. It is those very security services that have been rounding up those who have not co-operated and sending them to re-education camps, which have turned into labour camps, because they are now giving what I would call slave labour to companies situated in China.
That is appalling, and it is an illustration of what has been going on in China. I am astonished that, regardless of all the news there is at the moment, the news broadcasts have been pretty quiet on this issue. It is high time that we made a fuss about it. We should be the leaders on this issue. This country has a responsibility to Hong Kong and has a right to speak out. It is shameful that those companies turn a blind eye and act as apologists for a regime that brooks no dissent, is intolerant and is now arresting people for the most minor new offences that have nothing to do with normal law.
The situation is deteriorating fast. This Government need to pick up the pace, after having agreed to the extradition procedures being lifted. I urge the Government with all my heart to put China right up there as a priority, regardless of all our domestic rows and arguments, which are important. The freedom of people faced with the imposition of dictatorial regimes should always be our No. 1 cry. We should speak out when others are not able to have the freedoms that we take for granted in this House. If we do not speak out for them, who will?
Let me start by agreeing entirely with what was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith); he has argued forcefully that we should not extradite to China and Hong Kong, giving powerful humanitarian and human rights reasons, and he is right on every count.
Our extradition arrangements with the United States are not anything like as divisive as those with China and Hong Kong, but they remain deeply imbalanced and can lead to serious miscarriages of justice. As it stands, the Bill would allow individuals in the United Kingdom who are to be extradited to a list of specified countries to be arrested without a warrant. My amendments 7, 8, 9 and 10 would remove the United States from that list of countries, and I shall speak to those amendments now.
The Government say that they need the powers in this Bill because of suspects getting away if they are “encountered by chance” and it is not possible to arrest them without applying to a judge for a warrant. For hundreds of years in this country we have woken judges and magistrates up in the middle of the night to do precisely that: to carry out a police action, be it a search or an arrest. We do not bypass normal legal protections when a domestic suspect might get away, so why is this necessary in respect of individuals facing extradition? The Home Office’s own impact assessment of these new powers says that, with or without them,
“suspects are highly likely to be before the court in any event when the requesting state confirms that the suspect is at large in the UK.”
So one has to wonder why the provision is needed at all.
The methodology used in the impact assessment supporting the Bill is both opaque and bogus. It is too long to go into here, but I recommend that if Members want a confusing way to go to sleep, they should read it—it is completely useless. Even so, it asserts that the proposed change would result annually in just
My right hon. Friend is making a characteristically sensible and robust speech. Does he agree that at the moment the international rules-based system is under great pressure but matters hugely to all of us? Is the case of the United States not an example of a totally asymmetric approach to extradition, and will that asymmetry not be seen by people in Britain as most unfair and as bringing the whole process into disrepute?
My right hon. Friend is right on several counts, and I will elaborate on the unfairness in a second, but he is right also to highlight something else, which is that international rules-based systems work only if everyone sees them treating all countries and their citizens identically. If they do not do that, they fall down. An American exceptionalist approach, therefore, destroys the systems we are trying to uphold. So there is an interesting philosophical point in his intervention, as well as the moral one that I will major on.
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that when these measures came in quite a number of us on the Opposition Benches were uneasy about the asymmetry and unfairness? It is good to see him reviewing the matter at this late stage.
My right hon. Friend is exactly right, and I was one of those, although at that time I was not allowed to say so. It was not the first time I have been overruled by my boss, and it will not be the last.
Since 2007, the United Kingdom has surrendered 135 UK nationals to the United States, 99 of them for non-violent offences. Over the whole period of the Act, 80% of the offences have been non-violent. So much for terrorism, murder and paedophilia! To put it another way, there have been only three violent offences per year requiring extradition to the United States.
The US deliberately uses its extradition arrangements to cast a wide legal net around the business world, seeking to be judge, jury and executioner for global commercial deals and aims. The Home Affairs Select Committee’s 2012 reported concluded that the United States
“has the power to reach out around the world and—provided there is a very, very tenuous connection with the US—it generally has the power to prosecute.”
Or as the distinguished extradition lawyer, Robert Dougans, puts it:
“The Department of Justice effectively uses criminal extradition as a lever for US interests in commercial matters, which is not what it is for.”
This has been shown in case after case, such as those of Ian Norris, the chairman of Morgan Crucible; the NatWest three; Christopher Tappin; and a number of others, including, most recently, Dr Mike Lynch.
How does it work? Once a person extradited from the UK arrives in the US, they are treated as guilty from the moment they land. They face invasive strip searches—that is exactly how it sounds—and they are electronically tagged. They are kept in appalling conditions completely alien to the British justice system. They are shackled and perp-walked into and out of court in front of television cameras and paparazzi, so that the US Department of Justice can claim a PR victory at the expense of the presumption of innocence.
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This amendment would preclude the exercise in respect of the USA of the powers under the Extradition Act 2003 in relation to British overseas territories, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, in relation to any changes made by this Bill.
Government amendment 11.
Clause 2 stand part.
New clause 1—Annual statement on provisional arrests—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must, at the end of the period of 12 months beginning on the day on which this Act is passed, lay before both Houses of Parliament a statement setting out how many individuals have been arrested under provisions within this Act.
(2) The statement must include a list of each incident broken down by protected characteristics of each person arrested, as defined in section 4 of the Equality Act 2010.
(3) The Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a report in similar terms covering each subsequent 12 month period, within six months of that period ending.’
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to lay a statement setting out how many individuals have been arrested under provisions within this Act, broken down by characteristics of each person arrested.
New clause 2—Review of the Act—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must appoint a person to review the operation of the provisions of the Extradition Act 2003 as amended by this Act
(2) That person may, from time to time, carry out a review of the provisions of this Act and must send a report on the outcome of such a review to the Secretary of State as soon as reasonably practicable after completing the review.
(3) A review under subsection (2) may, in particular, consider operational effectiveness.
(4) The person appointed under subsection (1) must carry out and report on the first review before the end of the period of 12 months after the day on which this Act is passed.
(5) On receiving a report under this section, the Secretary of State must lay a copy of it before Parliament as soon as the Secretary of State is satisfied that doing so will not prejudice any criminal proceedings.’
This new clause requires the changes made by this Act to be kept under review, and the first review of the Act to be carried out within a year of its being passed.
Government amendment 12.
Amendment 16, page 3, leave out lines 22 to 24 and insert—
‘(4) The “designated authority” is the National Crime Agency.’
This amendment would define the “designated authority” as the National Crime Agency.
Amendment 4, page 3, line 36, at end insert—
‘( ) Regulations under subsection (7) may not add the People’s Republic of China and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China as a specified category 2 territory.’
This amendment would preclude the exercise in respect of China and Hong Kong of the proposed power under section 75B(7) of the Extradition Act 2003 to add to the list of specified category 2 territories under Schedule A1 on whose authority a valid extradition request may be made.
Amendment 9, page 3, line 36, at end insert—
‘( ) Regulations under subsection (7) may not add the United States of America to the list in Schedule A1 of specified category 2 territories.’
This amendment would preclude the exercise in respect of the USA of the proposed power under section 75B(7) of the Extradition Act 2003 to add to the list of specified category 2 territories under Schedule A1 on whose authority a valid extradition request may be made.
Government amendments 13 and 14.
Amendment 17, page 6, line 42, leave out “Liechtenstein” and insert
‘All the Member States of the European Economic Area’.
This amendment would allow for all EEA Member States (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden) to be inserted into new Schedule A1.
Amendment 10, page 7, leave out line 2.
This amendment would remove the USA from the proposed list of specified category 2 countries to which the provisions of this Bill will apply.
Government amendment 15.
Schedule stand part.
There are then all the elements that the UK Government will find themselves having to deal with, and I believe all the devolved Administrations are united in this sense as well. The evidence around censorship is really quite astonishing. References to the Tiananmen Square massacre have now been removed from all textbooks and all materials that might say anything at all about it—they are simply blanked out. There is a new cultural revolution, with teachers and students being asked and encouraged to spy on each other. If somebody says the wrong thing, or something that is considered the wrong thing, or if someone is remembered to have said the wrong thing, all such talk invokes the use of the security law. There is a new national security centre in Shenzhen to re-educate those who do not comply. Benny Tai, the organiser of the yellow umbrella protest, which is a peaceful movement—I stress that these are all peaceful movements —was fired from his teaching post at a university simply because he was party to that movement. The censorship of university content is now gathering pace, as they are filleting out anything that refers to any concerns or issues around the nature of China, and even its historical nature.
The latest issue that should concern the Government completely is that we are now seeing problems for journalists from the free world. I say the free world because it is not just a western issue; it is an issue of all those who believe in rights and freedom around the world, whether they be in the far east or in the west. The New York Times has to relocate its staff, completely—lock, stock and barrel—to Seoul after the visa renewal of a senior journalist was rejected; the threat was clearly there that the rest would follow. A senior journalist at the Hong Kong Free Press had their visa rejected. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Hong Kong described the trend as a weaponisation of visas by China. We even saw on the news the other day that the Australians are being heavily targeted—brutally targeted—and not only with sanctions; their journalists are now having to flee the country. In fact, two journalists who were due to leave were stopped from leaving and ended up in the consulate. They have now finally left, but the authorities wanted to question them for writing stuff of which they did not approve.
The whole point of this issue then comes into focus. It is the co-operation of the Chinese officials that I find perhaps the most galling. In the announcement by Chief Executive Carrie Lam that they were postponing the LegCo elections that were due to take place on Sunday 5 September—the weekend just gone—she cited covid cases as a reason for the delay. I have heard a few excuses in my time but that one really did take the biscuit, because so many other countries have had elections, both local and national, even during the covid saga. It is also worth pointing out that the Hong Kong rate of infection is lower than pretty much any of the countries that have held elections already. The idea that they can latch on to covid as some kind of excuse for cancelling elections had nothing to do with the reality; the reality was that they did not approve of the opposition and wanted to stop the election so that they had time to make sure they arrested the key elements so that they would never be able to stand. Many members of the opposition have fled here to the UK and I have met and seen them.
There are two points, really, that dismantle the whole process. I made the point earlier that a number of countries—dozens, I think—have held elections. It is part of the total crackdown and acquiescence with what is in essence an illegal process going on in Hong Kong. That brings me to the next phase. The Government are right to have reacted and to have ceased the extradition procedures, but yet more needs to be done. I like to think this is something that unites us all. The sanctions that come from the Magnitsky amendments need seriously to be deployed by the Government. When I was most recently in the Chamber for exchanges on this issue, the Foreign Secretary said that the Government would review other actions that need to be taken with regard to Hong Kong, and that they would take it as the situation develops. The situation has been developing. It has been developing at a pace which, if my right hon. Friend the Minister for Security will forgive my saying so, is faster than the pace at which the Government or the Foreign Office seem to be able to move. We have nothing to lose any more by holding back. It is not as if the Chinese Government are going to turn around and thank us, because they already think that we have caused problems, so my answer is: let us get on with it.
The deterioration of the situation has accelerated over the summer, and the US Government have already sanctioned Hong Kong and Chinese officials responsible for the implementation of the new law and for human rights abuses. I urge my right hon. Friend and the Foreign Secretary, who is not here, to move on to that and listen to Nathan Law, who fled directly after the Hong Kong Government did not agree to his standing. Others have also had to flee, and they have all called for those sanctions to be applied. I hope that the Government will listen to people whose lives have been under threat and whose families are still in Hong Kong and yet are brave enough to call for such sanctions, knowing full well that that might bring further problems for them.
“6 individuals entering the CJS more quickly than would otherwise have been the case.”
That is just six individuals a year in the criminal justice system, out of the more than 100,000 criminals we deal with in this country every year, and for that we are giving away a fundamental legal protection for the innocent, as well as for anybody else.
The Bill’s explanatory notes try to justify the legislation on the basis that it is similar to powers introduced by our European neighbours, such as Spain. Let me give the House one example of that in operation. Members will know the name of Bill Browder, who campaigned on behalf of Sergei Magnitsky, the man who died in Russian imprisonment; in effect, he was killed by the Russian state. The Russians put out a red notice through Interpol for Mr Browder, and the Spanish Government executed it. Right enough, a judge subsequently released him, but I ask the House to think how Mr Browder would have felt, sitting in a Spanish prison considering the prospect of being extradited to be imprisoned in Russia and put into the hands of the people who had killed Magnitsky. These things are not without price.
As for other European countries, a number of them have absolute embargoes on extraditing their own citizens to anybody outside the EU, for reasons that I will come to in a second, but which in essence relate to a lack of trust in other countries’ justice systems.
The Bill’s impact assessment states:
“Under the proposed new power, the police could arrest a suspect who was wanted for extradition by a trusted partner country”.
The Bill defines such a country as
“those who respect the international rules based system”—
broadly speaking, although not entirely, the United States does that—
“and whose Red Notices and Criminal Justice Systems the UK trusts”.
We like to think of the US justice system as similar to our own, but recent high-profile cases have highlighted just how wrong that is and how we cannot trust the system with the interests of British citizens.
When the 2003 extradition treaty and the associated Bill were introduced, they were sold to the House on the basis that they would be used principally for paedophiles, murderers and terrorists. I was shadow Home Secretary at the time and I remember it vividly. I remember the leader of the Conservative party at the time accepting it on those terms, because he thought it was in the interests of the country. But the people we are extraditing to the United States are mostly white collar businessmen who pose no danger to United Kingdom citizens, or indeed United States citizens.
Some of the people extradited sit in court facing allegations dressed head to toe in orange prison garb. They are then faced with enormous pressure from the US authorities to agree to a plea bargain. They are told that if they plead innocent they will face decades in these appalling conditions but if they plead guilty they will face a much lighter sentence in an open prison, with possibly half of it served back here in the UK. As the case is held in America, very often witnesses from the UK will not appear, because they themselves fear incarceration. That has certainly happened in some current cases. A massive 97% of cases are settled by plea in the United States. For a foreigner, unprotected by the US constitution, that is not a justice system; it is a very effective but not at all fair prosecution system. It is not justice.
Much of this would be better if the accused were tried in Britain, completely sidelining the need to extradite at all. The NatWest three, for example, were British citizens and their alleged crime was in Britain against a British company; at worst, they should have been tried in front of a British court, but the British authorities did not see them as having a case to answer. However, the extradition treaty does not recognise this. Anyone caught in this system faces an asymmetric and unbalanced treaty process. Unlike in the US, a person in the UK has no right to insist on probable cause before being extradited. The 2011 Joint Committee on Human Rights report called this a lack of reciprocity in the treaty, and it has resulted in the US surrendering only 11 individuals to the United Kingdom since 2007, while 135 have gone the other way. Since the United States is roughly five times bigger than the UK, this is an effective disparity of 50 in risk of extradition.