The death penalty is a brutal relic – Britain must seize today’s chance to make that clear to Donald Trump

The government is not being sufficiently robust in its dealings with the US, for fear the president might hold a ‘grudge’

It was more than half a century ago, on 21 December 1964, when Sydney Silverman spoke in the House of Commons in favour of his private member’s bill to abolish the death penalty. He had a guiding moral purpose in removing the gallows from the UK’s criminal justice system: “In this darkness and gloom into which the 20th century civilisation has so far led us, we can at least light this small candle and see how far its tiny beams can penetrate the gloom.”

The bill reached the statute book the following year and, since then, successive governments have shone its rays of hope around the world.

The UK’s bipartisan policy over decades has been to retain the abolition of the death penalty at home and to argue for its abolition abroad. As recently as 31 October 2018 the prime minister, Theresa May, told the House of Commons: “Our longstanding position on the death penalty is well known: we call for its abolition globally.”

The ability of the UK to continue to use its considerable soft power to buttress this call depends – always – on its own conduct, and that will be in sharp focus this week.

Today, the House of Commons will debate the Crime (Overseas Production Orders) Bill. Labour supports its aim: a quicker and more efficient exchange of information with other countries to assist criminal investigations and proceedings. This will require treaties with other countries in due course, and the one that looms into view is with the United States, which holds substantial amounts of electronic data.

Labour’s position is that the government should not provide information in death penalty cases. Whilst they are likely to be extraordinarily rare, this is a key principle. Indeed, the House of Lords passed an amendment to this effect before Christmas. The government is claiming that if it does put this principle into law, then the US will refuse to agree a treaty at all.

This analysis is misguided. It is well-established practice that the UK has been securing death penalty assurances from the US under the current arrangements created by the 1994 Treaty of Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters.

In addition, the available evidence shows this government is not being sufficiently robust in its dealings with the US. In recent days, the High Court judgment in the case of the “foreign fighters” El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey, who are to face justice in the US, has been published, opening up internal government documents to scrutiny.

Labour has supported measures to tackle the issue of foreign fighters, and will continue to do so, but this whole issue laid bare the government’s failure to seek death penalty assurances at all. This was despite a Foreign and Commonwealth Office warning that: “It could leave HMG [her majesty’s government] open to accusations of western hypocrisy and double standards, which would undermine HMG’s death penalty policy globally, including in the US.”

Meanwhile, the UK embassy in Washington was warning of the possibility that making a request for assurances would “wind the president up to complain to the PM and, potentially, to hold a grudge”.

But the UK position on the death penalty – settled for so long – should not be compromised for fear of the reaction of any American president; it is far too precious for that. If we wish to continue to penetrate the gloom of the most barbaric of judicial punishments around the world, the House of Commons should put into law that no UK government will ever be complicit in the application of the death penalty.

Nick Thomas-Symonds is Labour MP for Torfaen