EU Justice and Home Affairs Measures

Lord Beith Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I just want to place on record the fact that the Select Committee on Justice, although it was severely critical of the Government’s handling of the matter from the beginning, has supported the five measures that the Government wish to opt into. I am pleased that my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Government have been firm in their determination to opt in.

[Yvette Cooper]

That is the bizarre thing about this whole situation. We had the opportunity to demonstrate the House’s support for these measures to everyone, particularly the courts—we know that Eurosceptics have made challenges in the courts to any aspect of legislation that they can challenge. Why do we allow them to do that without having a vote that shows the House’s strong support for the measures? The right hon. Gentleman is right that Select Committees have supported them, and the debate in the other place also showed support. Many Lords who strongly objected to the process that had been followed, even in that House, said that they supported the measures and wanted the opportunity to signal that support. We need to send that important signal, whether on football banning orders, the European arrest warrant or the other co-operation measures, and we now have the opportunity to do that.

We need co-operation to stop international crimes such as human trafficking and online child pornography, and to protect people and get justice for victims. So last week, I told the Home Secretary that I would support her motion. Today, I am glad she has said that she will support mine. These are unusual circumstances, and there were many other issues that we would have been keen to debate this afternoon, from the bedroom tax to the national health service. However, we thought it was right to ensure that the House had the opportunity to meet the Prime Minister’s promises and demonstrate its support for these crucial international crime-fighting measures. We need to demonstrate the strong support throughout the House for co-operation with Europe. We have the opportunity today to have a straightforward vote on the European arrest warrant and European co-operation measures, and to do what it says on the tin, even though the word “Europe” is in the title. I hope that the whole House will support the motion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

Let me say to my hon. Friend, as I did to a previous intervention, that I fully accept the concerns that a number of right hon. and hon. Members have about the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, but this is not an issue confined to the measures we are considering today. As part of the opt-out/opt-in decisions we take for measures brought forward in the justice and home affairs area post-the Lisbon treaty, we look at the question of jurisdiction because the jurisdiction of the ECJ applies to those measures as well. We have opted in to a number of measures on the basis that a balanced judgment of the importance of those measures and the benefits they bring outweighs the concerns that my hon. Friend has raised. He uses the term “in perpetuity”, but as I said, if we have a Conservative Government after May 2015, we will have the opportunity to renegotiate a relationship with the European Union and a number of issues can be dealt with within that. Both the Prime Minister and I have indicated that we think free movement should be included within it, and I believe that our relationship with the European Court of Justice is another candidate for consideration in those negotiations.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I want to point out that the Government were right not to opt in to a series of standards measures where we are already well above the standards precisely, because it unnecessarily imported European Court of Justice jurisdiction into our own system.

[Mrs May]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. The Government made a conscious decision not to ask to opt into those minimum standard measures, precisely because of the impact that doing so would have had in relation to the justice system.