The Home Office is the Government Department responsible for extradition. It is long-standing policy and practice to neither confirm nor deny the existence of an extradition request ahead of a person's arrest. Table 1, as follows, sets out how many UK citizens have been arrested pursuant to extradition requests made to England and Wales since 1 January 2003; and how many UK citizens have been extradited.
Since 1 January 2004, the UK has been operating the Framework Decision on the European arrest warrant (EAW) with other member states of the EU. The Home Office has no involvement in the operation of the EAW. The Serious Organised Crime agency is the designated UK authority for the receipt and transmission of EAWs in the UK. Table 2, as follows, gives the number of UK nationals (a) arrested and (b) surrendered under the EAW procedure.
Arrests pursuant to the extradition requests received Extradited1 2003 21 12 2004 31 18 2005 5 1 2006 14 6 2007 6 0 Total 77 37
EAWs received Extradited1 2004 12 5 2005 42 11 2006 49 26 20072 48 22 Total 151 64 1 A person is not always extradited in the same year an extradition request/EAW is made. 2 These figures are from January to October 2007.