§ Mr. DonaldsonTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) on how many occasions his Department has issued consent certificates to remove the rule of specialty in respect of extradition proceedings where consent was granted to(a) the Irish Republic and (b) other countries which have extradition treaties with the United Kingdom; [92949]
(2) if he will list the legal causes upon which consent certificates were granted in extradition proceedings on account of (a) the extradited person making known an outstanding offence not known to the requesting authority, (b) the requesting authority discovering an offence which was not known to them at the time of the initial extradition request and (c) any other reason. [92950]
§ Kate Hoey[holding answer 26 July 1999]: It is very rare to depart from the rule of specialty in respect of extradition proceedings. Formal certification to waive the rule is only required in relation to our extradition arrangements with Ireland, where in recent years just two such certificates have been issued.
In one of these cases, the offence for which specialty was waived related to a suspected murder. In this case, the Irish authorities knew of the offence at the time of the request, but had insufficient information to include it with other lesser offences listed in the request for the individual's return. In the other case, the waiver certificate is currently subject to court proceedings, and so I cannot comment as the matter is sub judice.
Figures relating to other countries are not recorded. Officials estimate that there have been three or four specialty waivers in the past three years, but exact numbers, and the reasons for them, could only be obtained with disproportionate cost.