UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

HOUSE OF COMMONS

ORAL REPRESENTATIONS

MADE TO THE

BACKBENCH BUSINESS COMMITTEE

BACKBENCH DEBATES

TUESDAY 29 NOVEMBER 2011

MR DOMINIC RAAB and DR HYWEL FRANCIS

CAROLINE LUCAS

MR ADRIAN BAILEY and MR BRIAN BINLEY

Representations heard in Public

Questions 1 - 18

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Representations

Made to the Backbench Business Committee

on Tuesday 29 November 2011

Members present:

Mr Peter Bone (Chair)

Jane Ellison

John Hemming

Mr Philip Hollobone

Ian Mearns

Mr George Mudie

In the absence of the Chair, Mr Bone was called to the Chair.

Mr Dominic Raab, Dr Hywel Francis, Caroline Lucas, Mr Adrian Bailey and Mr Brian Binley made representations.

Q1 Chair: Good morning. Welcome to the Backbench Business Committee. Dominic, you have been here before, I believe. Do you want to make your pitch?

Mr Raab: Thank you, Mr Chair, for this opportunity to reconsider an earlier application, submitted on 1 November to this Committee. By way of background, this has cross-party sponsorship. The hon. Member for Aberavon, the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, is here with me; the two other key sponsors-the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife, and the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East-have both submitted letters expressing their continued support.

So what is new, since our earlier application? I have three brief points to make. First, we had a Westminster Hall debate on Thursday, thanks to this Committee, in which 24 Back Benchers from four parties participated. There was a very strong, if not overwhelming, consensus in favour of reform of our extradition laws and a Chamber debate on a votable motion. I have the Hansard here, if that is helpful to the Committee.

Many MPs spoke on behalf of victims-constituents of theirs. By way of a parliamentary barometer, it may be helpful to the Committee to know that we had greater participation in that debate than in, for example, the Westminster Hall debate on prisoner voting that preceded the Chamber debate. We had 24 Back Benchers speaking in support, compared to 16 in that debate. I think that is interesting, as a barometer. In addition, of course, we have the EDM support for Gary McKinnon and overwhelming, or very high, support for the petition on Babar Ahmad. We also have NGO support from Liberty and Fair Trials International.

By way of a brief reminder for the Committee, let me say that our motion is substantive and prescriptive. It is intended to influence Government policy. A debate would be timely. We have had no oral ministerial statement to the House of Commons on the Baker review. The Government are considering their response to that review. On Thursday, the Immigration Minister said that the Government would respond to Baker "as soon as practicable". We do not quite understand what that means, but my understanding, from further inquiries, is that it will not happen before Christmas, so my point to the Committee is that we really do have a window of opportunity for Parliament not just to debate the issue-we have, of course, had an opportunity to do that-but to influence, through a votable motion, the direction of Government, and the Government’s response.

It would be great to get a full day, but given that we have already had a Westminster Hall debate, what would be ideal, and what we ask for, is a three-hour debate to do justice to this important issue. Thank you.

Q2 Chair: Thanks, Dominic; that is very clear. Did the Chair put a time limit on speeches in Westminster Hall?

Mr Raab: Yes, there was a 10-minute time limit.

Q3 Jane Ellison: Dominic, as you know, I was there for much of the debate-at least the first hour. How do you feel about the fact that different strands of the debate were quite difficult to pull apart? What is your feeling about combining different themes, particularly Babar Ahmad and the stuff about the European arrest warrant? Do you see this as a bigger-issue debate? Do you think the opportunity to bring up individual cases will work in this debate, or are you really saying that you want the principle debated?

Mr Raab: If you look at our motion-

Q4 Chair: Do you mind reading it for the record?

Mr Raab: I will, absolutely: "That this House calls upon the Government to reform the UK’s extradition arrangements to strengthen the protection of British citizens: by introducing a Bill in the next session of Parliament to enact the safeguards recommended by the Joint Committee on Human Rights in its Fifteenth Report of 2010-12, and by pursuing such amendments to the UK-US Extradition Treaty 2003 and the EU Council Framework Decision 2002 on the European Arrest Warrant as are necessary in order to give effect to such recommendations."

Briefly, in answer to your question, there are two issues here. The broader questions about safeguards that straddle the EU and US arrangements can be brought within one debate, and I think there is plenty of opportunity for the victims, through their MPs, to express themselves and support reform, prospectively. What is dangerous is if we start combining, in that debate, prescriptive debate on individual cases. There is an opportunity to raise the issues, and I think there is a broader question about Parliament interfering in matters that are under legal proceedings. That is for you to consider; what we have tried to do is calibrate a motion that is broad enough to cover all the victims, but is really about prospective policy, and legislation going forward.

Q5 Chair: I note that you have had the Clerks check that the motion is orderly. One presumes that motions about cases would not be orderly.

Mr Raab: That is not for me to comment on, but I would be nervous about disrupting quite a carefully calibrated resolution by interfering in individual cases, personally.

Q6 Chair: Thank you very much indeed. Caroline, would you like to be next, as your application sort of follows on?

Caroline Lucas: It does.

Q7 Chair: Would you like to state your case?

Caroline Lucas: I should like to state my case. Thank you very much to the Committee. This very much follows on directly from what you have just heard from Dominic Raab, and I completely support his efforts to achieve a vote in a debate on the extradition agreements. I am very sympathetic to that, but my concern about the way in which the motion is drafted is that it simply will not be urgent enough, or come soon enough, to address the very real concerns of those 140,000-plus people who signed the e-petition on Babar Ahmad.

I was at the Westminster Hall debate last week. I sat through all of it, and was very moved by a lot of the speeches, but time after time MPs stood up and spoke specifically about the e-petition and the importance of responding to it, and time after time we said that we hoped very much that we would be able to get a resolution on the Floor of the House. My suggestion of a way to achieve that is to have a motion that reads-it is very short-"That this House calls for the urgent revision of the UK’s Extradition treaties to include a requirement for the provision of prima facie evidence for all extradition requests and the introduction of the Forum bar in all cases."

We have taken advice about that, and we believe that that could be retrospective in its application, so it could address the case of Babar Ahmad. It would mean that we would not have to kick it off to a new Session. You will see in the alternative motion from Dominic Raab that he is talking about a Bill in the next Session of Parliament. It could be 2013 or 2014 by the time we have that. Babar Ahmad could be extradited next week or next month-we do not know. There is a degree of urgency to this debate. I think that there would be a way of combining what Dominic Raab is seeking to do and the urgency of what those of us who are speaking on behalf of Babar Ahmad would like to do. I would ask the Committee to look at that, or to give us time to go away and look at it, and perhaps bring it back.

Sadiq Khan, the MP for Tooting, who is Babar Ahmad’s MP, supports my application, and I believe that many of the 24 Members who spoke in the debate in Westminster Hall would also do so.

Q8 Chair: Sadiq cannot come, I guess, because he is a shadow Minister.

Caroline Lucas: Yes.

Q9 John Hemming: I read into what you say that you have not yet had a chance to talk to Dominic Raab about whether you can agree on a sort of portmanteau resolution that resolves everything, including dealing with the urgency issue. That would be the objective.

Caroline Lucas: Exactly. I apologise to the Committee for not having had the chance to do that yet.

John Hemming: That is just life.

Q10 Chair: Can we be clear on whether you want a separate debate, or whether you think that the debate could, if a motion was agreed on, be rolled into the one that Dominic has just suggested?

Caroline Lucas: If Dominic were happy enough to talk about an urgent revision of the UK’s extradition treaties now, or as soon as possible, rather than a Bill sometime in the next Session, I think there would be a way of combining them, because I do not think that there is a requirement to name Babar Ahmad specifically; I think it might be divisive so to do.

Q11 John Hemming: I think you have difficulties in terms of whether that is orderly or not.

Caroline Lucas: Absolutely.

Q12 Chair: It is up to other Members to say, but it might be an idea for you and Dominic to come up with something that you could agree on, that is in order, and that the Clerks say is debatable. From the Committee’s point of view, that is easier for us, because we could then allocate one debate rather than two, and as you know, our time is very limited.

Caroline Lucas: I do indeed. If that is possible, I can understand that that would be the best solution. If that were to prove not possible, it would be interesting to have an indication from the Committee whether we could have an hour and a half, or some other period of time, following Dominic Raab’s debate.

John Hemming: The alternative is to have a debate with an amendment, which might suit you.

Mr Hollobone: The trouble with doing things on the hoof is that it is in field conditions. I suggest that while we hear the remaining representations, Mr Raab and Ms Lucas see if they can quickly arrive at some arrangement. It may not be possible, but if it were they could come back in five minutes.

Chair: That sounds like a very sensible idea. We will move on and come back to you and Dominic at the end.

Good morning, Adrian. Good morning, Brian.

Mr Bailey: Good morning.

Q13 Chair: A statutory code for pub companies.

Mr Bailey: Yes. May I start with an apology? I came before the Committee last week and was invited to come back today with a motion that could be considered. I have not done that, for reasons that I will explain briefly. The Government published their report to the pub companies on Thursday in the form of a Command Paper. My Select Committee met on Thursday after the publication of the report. We looked through it, and I think it is fair to say that the Government have pursued a skilful path of not doing what the Select Committee asked them to, putting up an alternative set of proposals. Basically, those proposals are exactly along the lines of what the pub companies wanted, not what the wider industry thought was appropriate, but I will not bore the Committee with all the details. We felt it appropriate to haul the Minister in front of us to explain what he was doing and to justify some of the assertions that were made in the response. I was hoping that he would come on Wednesday, which would have enabled me to go for an early debate afterwards, but unfortunately he is not available until 6 December, when we hoped to have the debate.

Broadly, I am asking for the Committee’s forbearance. We would still want a debate on a votable motion on the Floor of the House, but we cannot put the motion forward until we have heard the Minister’s response to a number of pretty probing questions from the Committee on 6 December.

Q14 Chair: The Government have changed the days that we now have and we could not have given you 6 December anyway, so you have not lost anything by that. Basically, you are saying that you will want to come back after that.

Mr Bailey: Yes, as soon as possible after that. I would also make the point that the Government are talking about implementing some of their proposals by the end of this calendar year, so we would greatly appreciate a debate, if possible, before the recess.

Q15 Chair: One of the things that we are having trouble with at the moment is that the Government are giving us indications of days, but changing them almost at the last minute and giving us other days. I am sure that we will have days before the Christmas recess, but it is not yet at all clear to us when.

Mr Bailey: I understand that.

Q16 Jane Ellison: Following on from that, bearing in mind that you hope to have a debate quite soon and still want it before Christmas, can you be ready to go at relatively short notice, because that is the reality of what we might face?

Mr Bailey: Yes. Certainly the members of the Committee are steeped in this issue.

Mr Binley indicated assent.

Mr Bailey: They have very strong views, as you can tell from my colleague on my left-geographically, not politically.

Mr Binley: Oh, I don’t know.

Mr Bailey: There is also huge support within the all-party group on pubs, and I have no doubt whatsoever that there will be plenty of support for the Committee proposals in the Chamber.

Mr Binley: As the Committee well knows, Select Committees are about scrutiny of the Executive. This is a long-running saga. We have had four reports on the issue since 2004. The third report from a Committee of which I was a member received a promise from the Government of the day that should the voluntary code proposed in the report not work, they would agree to legislate for a statutory code. We asked the present Government, at the very first meeting with the Secretary of State, whether he would hold to that promise, and he categorically said that he would. He has now changed his mind. The Government have changed their mind, and to ensure proper scrutiny we should have an opportunity to debate that change of mind in the Chamber of the House of Commons, and that is why we are before you.

Q17 Chair: As you know, we are very keen as a Committee that Select Committee reports are discussed wherever possible, and with a substantive motion if that is what the Committee wants.

Mr Binley: Thank you.

Chair: Before we go back to the earlier matter, I just want to read something that the Committee is mindful about concerning ministerial statements. The first issue that the Committee addressed was ministerial statements. That was initiated by the Committee and Mr Hollobone moved the motion.

We will consider ministerial statements when we deliberate in private, and there is a suggested motion that I want to put in the public domain, so that people will be aware that we are considering it. It reads: "That this House expects Ministers to make all important announcements relating to government policy to Parliament before they are made elsewhere on all occasions when Parliament is sitting and expects information which forms all or part of such announcements not to be released to the press before such a statement is made to Parliament, as recommended by the House of Commons Procedure Committee first report of session 2010-11 (HC 602). Further considers that Members who believe the protocol has been breached should first report this to the Speaker for his judgment; in the case of a minor breach the Speaker may take appropriate steps that in more serious or more complex cases he would defer the matter to the Committee on Standards and Privileges for further investigation." That is in line with the recommendations of the Procedure Committee. We will not debate this now, but we will consider it in private session.

Mr Mudie: Obviously, this does not apply to autumn statements, does it?

Q18 Chair: Now, I said, George, that we will not discuss it in public. I am sure that a copy can be made available to the media.

Dominic, Caroline, do we have a marriage of minds?

Mr Raab: Of sorts. It may be more a civil partnership than a marriage. We can talk about the reasoning, but I think we have agreed on a slight tweaking of the wording in my draft motion. After the words "strengthen the protection of British citizens: by" we would introduce the words "as a matter of urgency", then the only other change is to delete "in the next session of Parliament". There will be a fine legal argument about retrospectivity and interfering in individual cases. In a way, that can be done through an amendment or a debate in the House, but we can certainly leave it open for more urgent legislative proposals to come forward if there is parliamentary time. As Caroline has mentioned, it may be possible. We can debate the Government’s legislative time frame, but I would be reluctant to scupper the motion wholesale, with the Government saying, "We just do not have time to do what is in the motion." That is the idea behind the compromise.

Chair: That is helpful to the Committee. As always, we will get back to you later today to say what has been decided.