Clause 50
Policing and Crime Bill
12:45 pm
Vernon Coaker (Minister of State (Policing, Crime & Security), Home Office; Gedling, Labour)
The Extradition Act 2003 provides for the judge presiding over an extradition hearing to defer the proceedings when the person is being prosecuted or is serving a sentence in the UK. In most cases, that will prove to be unproblematic, but there is a loophole in the law because if the requested person consents to extradition, the 2003 Act provides for there to be no extradition hearing or for any such hearing to be brought to an end. That means that if an individual has consented to extradition, it is not possible for the extradition proceedings to be deferred until the conclusion of domestic proceedings or until a UK sentence has been served. In practice, it could be possible for someone to avoid justice in the UK by consenting to extradition.
Clauses 50 and 51 address that problem by allowing the judge to defer proceedings on an extradition request at any point from the date of arrest until the start of the extradition hearing. Government amendments 212 to 223 make some minor changes to ensure that the provisions are fully effective. The Committee will note that the 12 amendments consist of six identical amendments to each of the two parts of the 2003 Act, part 1 of which deals with extradition requests from EU territories and part 2 of which concerns requests from non-EU territories.
Notably, the amendments will ensure that when the extradition court adjourns consideration of an extradition request until a UK sentence has been served, it does not have to deal with a remand hearing every 28 days. That mirrors the approach in sections 23 and 89 of the 2003 Act and avoids the court having to schedule unnecessary hearings when someone whose extradition has been deferred is serving a lengthy custodial sentence in the UK. The amendments will ensure that the framework in place to deal with deferring an extradition request is robust, fair and effective.