EUC Report: Internal Security Strategy

Debate between Baroness Falkner of Margravine and Lord Henley

Thursday 19th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, put it, a large number of questions have been put to me and I hope to be able to answer as many as possible in the course of my speech.

I am grateful that there is a least one question that I do not have to answer: the question posed at the beginning of his speech by the noble Lord, Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate, when he talked about the security problems in our car park. That, at least, is not a matter for Her Majesty's Government; we can leave that to the House authorities.

I start by offering my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on bringing forward the report and for all the work done by his committee. I also offer my apologies—if it is appropriate for me to apologise; I never know whether it is—for the delay between the publication of his report and the day on which it is debated. I think that that is a matter for the usual channels, not me. I see the noble Lord, Lord Roper, nod, but I am sure that he, as chairman of the EU Committee has been pressing as hard as he can to get this, along with a whole host of other valuable reports that his committee has produced, debated in a timely fashion.

The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said that he wanted to concentrate not so much on the Government's response but on where it had been less than adequate. It would be useful if I could start by saying a little about where the Government and the committee were in agreement. There is much that both the Government and the committee found to commend in the internal security strategy. We came to many of the same positive conclusions, not least that the scope of the ISS and the priorities established therein are the right ones. The Government and the committee found points of agreement throughout the strategy, including, but not limited to; support for the establishment of the EU policy cycle; the use of joint investigation teams; the value of the EU passenger name records directive—I note the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on that subject; and the role of EUROSUR and FRONTEX in enhancing border security.

Again, like the committee, the Government welcome the priority given to cybersecurity in the strategy. We see that the EU has an important role to play in raising standards in, and awareness around, cybersecurity among member states at both the EU level and—stressing points made by a number of noble Lords—the international level. We know that in security matters of this sort there are no boundaries.

In November, as noble Lords will be aware, my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary successfully hosted the London conference on cyberspace, and I shall be saying a little more about some of the cybersecurity questions later. Delegates agreed that the immediate next steps must involve taking practical measures to develop a shared understanding of the threats and to agree common approaches and confidence-building measures at an international level.

The Government also find common ground with the committee on a number of cross-cutting issues, such as the safeguarding of fundamental rights. I make it clear that this coalition Government are committed to defending security and defending civil liberties so that the Government infringe less on people’s freedoms, while providing the public with effective protection from terrorism and crime. Given the number of EU data-related dossiers which will impact upon security and the need to tackle threats to security while at the same time protecting civil liberties, we would have liked to have seen those issues addressed more directly in the ISS communication. We believe that the alignment of internal and external security policy is also an area where the Government and the committee take a similar position. The Government support the committee’s call for closer working between the Commissioner for Home Affairs and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

I should like to discuss one or two points that noble Lords raised. I start with the whole question of funding the cybercrime centre, which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, raised. He asked me to look at this area but I think he accepted, although he was sorry, that it was something that I could not help on directly. He is no doubt right. I am sure we all agree that there are other savings within the EU budget that could be looked at. We could look at the budget of the High Representative herself to see whether more money could come out of that to help with such a centre. However, we understand that the Commission will bring forward a communication later this year regarding setting up the cybercentre, and it remains the Government’s view that this should be managed within existing resources. However, the question of where those existing resources come from will obviously have to be discussed at a later stage.

The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, also suggested that oversight of Europol should be carried out by an interparliamentary committee. The Government’s view is that Europol now has fairly robust scrutiny and accountability structures in place. We believe that the Europol Council decision, which came into force in January 2010, means that the European Parliament can require the Europol director, the chair of the management board and the presidency of the Council to go before it to discuss Europol-related issues. Additional mechanisms are in place that ensure the transparency of Europol as an EU agency. They include the submission of the Europol work programme and annual reports to the European Parliament. That provides a useful job for the European Parliament, and we think that it is something it can probably do effectively. I believe that the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Roper, and its various sub-committees can also scrutinise the activities of Europol with some vigour, as they have done in the past.

My noble friend Lord Hodgson hoped that the Government would make use of the various and valuable resources within the EU agencies themselves. Our position remains that member states can and should do more to share information, not just among EU agencies but among themselves, and to put that at the disposal of Europol. Improving our information-sharing strategy with Europol is very important in terms of influencing the EU intelligence picture at a strategic and operational level. It is important to make the most of Europol’s analytical capabilities to ensure that it can identify, for example, key persons of interest and operational opportunities for multilateral co-operation.

I turn to a query raised by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. He expressed some interest in the role of the Armed Forces in EU internal security and the committee’s concern that that was an oversight in the communication. We recognise that military assets can play a very significant role in supporting, for example, disaster relief activities, but we also believe that they should be used only as a last resort where there are no civilian alternatives. Decisions in such matters are, we believe, a matter for national authorities acting on a case-by-case basis.

My noble friend Lady Falkner was somewhat concerned about a lack of co-operation between the EU and NATO. I note that concern. We believe that that can be improved and developed, including in new fields such as cybersecurity, which has been raised a great deal. We have pressed both the high representative and the Secretary-General of NATO to encourage further information sharing and increased co-ordination on the ground in all areas between those two organisations.

I turn to structures and, in particular, to the questions relating to COSI which were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, by my noble friend Lord Hodgson and by other noble Lords. We do not consider that there is a case for the standing committee on operational co-operation on internal security, or COSI—I forget how the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, interpreted those initials—but there are obviously a number of ways in which we can replace all oversight bodies that have a legislative role, such as the Article 36 committee. I want to make it clear to my noble friend Lord Hodgson, who was worried about a lack of representatives from FRONTEX, Europol and others, that my understanding is that representatives from Europol and FRONTEX attend COSI meetings as a matter of course alongside representatives of the other EU and justice and home affairs agencies—for example, Eurojust. It is important that they are there.

I should also address the question raised by my noble friend Lord Hodgson, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and I think by my noble friend Lady Falkner about their concerns about the chairmanship and whether it should rotate. I forget who suggested that they were likely to get a rather mealy-mouthed response from me on this; from her reaction, I suspect it must have been my noble friend Lady Falkner. I understand that it is a working group and subject to the same chairing arrangements as other working groups. It is chaired on the six-monthly rotational basis that works for the Council presidency. That means that we hope we have an incoming, outgoing and current chairman and we hope that they will work together over that 18-month cycle as a troika. I think it was my noble friend who suggested that this might be the opportunity to change those arrangements, but I think for the moment it would probably be best to stick to the arrangements that we have in place for that. I am not sure that the COSI chairmanship would be the right one on which to make such a fundamental change. As regards transparency, again, it operates the same rules as other groups do. In some case-sensitive operational issues these matters can be discussed, which means that certain documents obviously cannot be publicly released. That would have to be handled appropriately, as with all other information.

The last point that I want to deal with is the question of ratifying the Warsaw convention. I appreciate that there might be other points, but time may be beginning to run out. I also appreciate that I came under a certain amount of pressure from the committee when I appeared before it the other day. The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, referred to that and criticised my possibly imprecise remarks on ratification, when I said that I hoped it would happen in a year or so. I think he implied, in Sir Humphrey-speak, that that answer was not really as precise as Ministers ought to give. I have to say that, although one would like to ratify that convention, there are always concerns about ratifying and one has to get these things right.

The noble Lord referred to another convention that I was dealing with at Question Time today. We should always be very careful about any ratification; I do not think that we want to be like those countries which—dare I say it—ratify somewhat lightly, because we should consider the precise implications of ratification. In terms of the convention that I was talking about at Question Time, there are very serious concerns about extraterritorial jurisdiction, which would have a major effect on our own United Kingdom domestic law. We need to consider those carefully before we ratify and the same applies, although it is more a question of resource points, to ratifying the Warsaw convention.

As I said, a number of other issues probably need to be addressed, but time is running on—

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine]

I fear that the Minister is coming to his concluding comments and I wanted to get in before he sits down concerning the question that I asked about the forward plan, after the London cybersecurity conference of last November. Hungary is due to host the next summit and while I appreciate that he may not have the information to hand now, might he be able to write to tell us what tangible steps Her Majesty's Government are taking to implement the recommendations of the London conference?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I have some details somewhere about Hungary. I am not sure that I will be able to help my noble friend at this stage but, if I may, I will write to her in due course. As I said, I feel that I am beginning to run out of time and I am probably keeping the House up later than it ought to be. What I want to make clear is that I will respond to any points that I have not yet answered in due course by letter, but that we will keep the implementation of the EU internal security strategy under review.

As always, we are eternally grateful for the work of our own scrutiny committees: the EU Committee in this House, and all its sub-committees. They do a valuable job, and probably do a better job of scrutiny of EU matters than those of any other Chamber in any other country throughout the EU. On that, they should be congratulated. I also hope that the usual channels—that strange body which the noble Lord, Lord Roper, and I used to be members of many years ago—will take note of all the comments, particularly those of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and ensure that in future these matters are debated in a timely fashion, as appropriate.