Although the basal ganglia play an important role in self‐generated movement, their involvement in externally paced voluntary movement is less clear. We recorded local field potentials (LFPs) from the region of the subthalamic nuclei of eight patients with Parkinson’s disease during the performance of a warned reaction time task in which an imperative cue instructed the subject to move or not to move. In ‘go’ trials, LFP activity in the beta frequency band (∼20 Hz) decreased prior to movement, with an onset latency that strongly correlated with mean reaction time across patients. This was followed by a late post‐movement increase in beta power. In contrast, in ‘nogo’ trials the beta power drop following imperative signals was prematurely terminated compared with go trials and reversed into an early beta power increase. These differences were manifest as power increases when go trials were subtracted from nogo trials. In six patients these relative beta power increases in nogo–go difference trials were of shorter latency than the respective reaction time. The findings suggest that, firstly, the subthalamic nucleus is involved in the preparation of externally paced voluntary movements in humans and, secondly, the degree of synchronization of subthalamic nucleus activity in the beta band may be an important determinant of whether motor programming and movement initiation is favoured or suppressed.