EU: European Justice and Home Affairs Powers

Debate between Lord Baker of Dorking and Lord McNally

Monday 15th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

I shall not go there. Instead, I assure my noble friend that the invitation before the House, and indeed the country, is to let us make these very important decisions on the basis of evidence and informed opinion. I am very confident that if we approach this on the basis of evidence and informed opinion we will make the right decisions for the country.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

My Lords, I was the Home Secretary at the time of the Maastricht arrangements. Let me remind your Lordships of what Maastricht did. It said that matters of criminal justice and police powers should remain matters for independent states within Europe. In fact, John Major described it on coming back from Maastricht as one of the great independent pillars of that settlement. That independence has been eroded over the years by the natural effluxion of powers to the centre, which is remorseless in the case of Europe. Therefore, I very much welcome the statement that we will resile from undertakings and then pick and choose which we think are advantageous to our country. This seems to be an excellent exercise in subsidiarity and may well be the shape of things to come.

[Lord McNally]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Baker, for that intervention. I think he would agree that things have moved on from Maastricht, not least in a matter that I think the noble Lord, Lord Reid, referred to—that many of the challenges that we face in these areas are transnational and international. That is why, while looking at the issues with an eye to subsidiarity and the responsibilities of the nation states, we also have to look at them from the realities of the much more international, transnational and global operation of many of the criminal forces that we are trying to counteract. That is why I rely on proper evidence-based examination of the decisions that we are taking forward.