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UK Extradition Arrangements

I start by congratulating the Backbench Business Committee on securing this debate and the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on how he introduced it. I also place on the record my pleasure that, after the unfortunate way in which the debate was punted into Westminster Hall, we now have it on the Floor of the House. I thank those concerned and those who campaigned to ensure that these huge petitions were responded to properly. When I was first elected to the House, I never would have dreamed it possible that public campaigns and public concern could result in a debate in the House of Commons. We spent years trying to secure debates on the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four and several other cases that turned out to be serious miscarriages of justices and which, in the current atmosphere, would undoubtedly have attracted the same number of petitioners as the cases being discussed tonight. We should welcome the fact that Parliament has manoeuvred itself into a position where it can be more responsive to public concerns and justice issues. I hope that it continues. After all, that is what we are sent here for—not only to write laws and change laws but to consider issues of miscarriages of justice. I want to refer briefly to three cases and then make a couple of general points. I shall not talk at great length about the first one because others have done so. The case of Gary McKinnon has been well reported and documented, and his mother and family have campaigned so assiduously on it, as has his own MP and many others. It is time that we understood that the McKinnon case goes to the heart of a whole load of inadequacies, of both our system and our relationship with the United States, which, as the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) pointed out a minute ago, is not a reciprocal arrangement, but something fundamentally different.