---

UK-US Extradition Treaty

The United States Government take a broad view of their legal jurisdiction. The United States has few limits to its ambitions in the context of where a crime is committed against the interests of the United States. That is a matter for the United States. It is perfectly entitled to take that view, but it should be a matter for us—for this House and the Solicitor-General—to protect British citizens from injustice and the arrogance and abuse of power. I think that the Solicitor-General would agree that he is losing the argument. Increasingly, the Government have shown that they are losing the argument by the panic-stricken measures that they are taking in dispatching Ministers off around America. I do not believe—as I think that the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) said earlier, and I wholly agree with him—that it is the will of the House or the country that these unjust arrangements should persist. Above all, and paradoxically, I do not even think that it is the will of America. It is increasingly a matter of embarrassment that unnecessary hostility and unease is being engendered in this country by this incompetently negotiated treaty. I urge the Solicitor-General to have the humility to think again.