EU: European Justice and Home Affairs Powers

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, when I read reports in the press and heard about this Statement this morning, I had hoped that we would get some clarity from the Statement about exactly what the Government’s plans involve. Having listened to the Home Secretary and the noble Lord, I am not much wiser. Rarely can a Statement have been so devoid of detail.

I have expressed my concerns before that Home Office Bills, specifically in relation to crime and courts, have come before this House before the detail has been worked out. The community sentencing clauses, for example, used a procedure of recommitting a Bill that I have never seen before in 15 years in both Houses.

I suspect that I know why. It is not often that we get Conservative Party policy from the Dispatch Box, particularly from a Lib Dem Minister, and that probably explains why there is a lack of clarity. If the press reports are to be believed, Liberal Democrat sources have played down the significance of today’s Statement. If I have understood the report correctly, the Home Secretary and the Minister today have “limited authority” in what they can say, because government policy has not yet been agreed. The Minister cannot go as far as the Prime Minister—I doubt that he would want to—when he said that the Government would opt out of all police and criminal justice measures.

I cannot recall any other Statement of such significance where a Secretary of State has announced that the Statement represents the Government’s “current thinking” and has added that “discussions are ongoing within government”. We all know what that means: it is the pro/anti EU tension at the heart of this Government that makes this announcement confused and shambolic and seem like yet another example of policy being drafted on the back of an envelope.

Several questions about the detail need to be answered. I apologise to the noble Lord for referring to detail, but the House deserves to have some. If the European arrest warrant had not been in place, what action would have been available to UK police in co-operating with their French counterparts to ensure that the French police were able to arrest Jeremy Forrest and ensure that he and Megan Stammers were returned to the UK in the same timescale? No one is suggesting that the European arrest warrant is perfect, but the independent Scott Baker report commissioned by the current Home Secretary strongly recommended keeping it. Yes, it could be improved and updated, and that very process is taking place now; it is being reformed. As a further example of this Statement being premature, the Government do not even know at this stage what they would be opting out of.

The European arrest warrant is responsible for nearly 600 criminals being returned to the UK to face trial. It has allowed 4,000 citizens from other European countries to be sent back to their home country or another European country to face justice. In light of some of the Government’s briefing on this issue, your Lordships’ House might like to be aware that 94% of those sent back to other European countries to face trial under the European arrest warrant are foreign citizens.

The Home Secretary has said that the Government may want to opt out—because no one is sure yet—and then may consider opting back in again. There is a process for opting back in, but can the Minister say what happens in the mean time—in that gap between opting out and trying to opt back in? What processes will be in place, and what happens if the opt back in is refused? My understanding is that Denmark has had around 50% of its applications to opt back in refused.

If the UK opts out of policing and criminal justice measures, what process do the Government envisage putting in place to deal with some hugely significant issues? These include: counterterrorism; the sharing of criminal records, including those of sex offenders; conventions to protect member states’ financial interests in the event of major international economic crime; minimum standards of collection of customs and police information to tackle cross-border crime; co-operation on the identification of laundered money; co-operation between member states in tracing and freezing criminal assets; and the setting up of Europol. That list is not exhaustive.

It would have been far more satisfactory if the Minister had been able to give us some clarity today, if he had been able to say which of those areas he would want the Government to opt back in to, and if he had been able to say why the Government think the position is so unsatisfactory that they are considering opting out of the entire police and criminal justice powers. Which of these are so offensive that the Government are prepared to put at risk European co-operation on some of the most serious and abhorrent crimes that damage British citizens? The Statement gives no reasons for the Government taking this view. There is no justification for this view, and there is no information on which provisions the Government think are valuable and would want to opt back into.

We have a process from the Government but we do not have a policy. The reason is that this is still only the Government’s current thinking, as the Minister stated, and discussions are still ongoing within the Government. Will anything ever change? It seems an absolute shambles. On issues as serious as this, this House and the public deserve better. This sounds too much like a political gimmick drummed up on the back of an envelope.