THE Commons will hold a rare emergency debate today on the fate of three former bankers facing extradition to the United States under Britain’s controversial fast-track procedures.

MPs cheered as Michael Martin, the Speaker, cleared the timetable for the first emergency debate of its kind for four years after calls from the Liberal Democrats to rethink the Extradition Act 2003.

The so-called NatWest Three are due to be deported tomorrow on charges of conspiring with executives of Enron, the collapsed US energy company, to commit an £11 million fraud.

They have failed to convince the courts that they should be tried in Britain and have run out of options for resisting extradition. But their removal under fast-track procedures agreed under a new extradition treaty with the US in 2003 is controversial because the US has not implemented the deal.

While the Bush Administration is said to be keen to ratify, the Senate has many other priorities. Britain has not ratified, either, but gave effect to the fast-track deal in the 2003 Act by lowering the threshold for extradition requests from the US in line with arrangements with European countries.

Supporters of the three men maintain that, if they had been able to argue about the evidence against them under the previous rules in a British court, they could have blocked the extradition or forced a trial in Britain. Ministers have indicated that they think the men would also have been extradited under the old rules.

Peers last night voted by 218 votes to 116 to remove the US from the list of countries to which people can be extradicted from Britain without a case being made against them in court. The symbolic move was designed to put extra pressure on ministers.

David Bermingham, Gary Mulgrew and Giles Darby face up to two years in a Texan jail awaiting trail. The Times has learnt that they may have a bail hearing on Friday, though lawyers are not confident they will be allowed back into Britain to prepare their case. They will watch Prime Minister’s Questions today with interest after Tony Blair last week pledged that officials were trying to influence the bail decision.

PMQs will be followed with the three-hour debate on the case, the first of its kind since an emergency discussion of Afghanistan in March 2002. The debate was secured after the requisite 40 MPs stood to acclaim a request in the Commons from Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem home affairs spokesman.

Mr Clegg said that Mr Blair’s defence of the extradition arrangements between Britain and the US last week posed more questions than it answered. He said: “The British people simply do not understand why we are stringently enforcing a treaty still not ratified in Washington, why three British citizens will be extradited on Thursday, when our own judicial authorities saw no reason to prosecute them here in Britain, and why there appears to be such an imbalance between the minimal information required to extradite a UK citizen to the US compared to the more substantive justification required to extradite US citizens to the UK.

“This is an issue of overwhelming public interest, yet it has been a real struggle to get the Government to acknowledge [its] significance.”

Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, is thought to have raised the non-ratification of the treaty with her opposite number, Condoleezza Rice, in Washington yesterday.

Mr Martin said that he was satisfied the matter raised by Mr Clegg was proper to be discussed under House standing orders and a three-hour debate would be held.

WHERE SHOULD THEY FACE TRIAL?

IN BRITAIN BECAUSE:

The three claim that being tried in Britain would enable them better access to witnesses and papers to prepare their case, which will be much more difficult and expensive while locked in a Texan jail

IN THE US BECAUSE:

NatWest did not call for charges. US jurisdiction was claimed through one meeting that the men attended with Enron executives and “wire fraud” — communications such as faxes or e-mails which passed through American computer servers

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