EU Police and Criminal Justice Measures: EUC Reports

Lord Blair of Boughton Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

My Lords, I am a very new member of Sub-Committee E, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, and am therefore a real novice in this field as it is related to politics. I am just beginning to grasp the fact that there are things called reasoned opinions and explanatory memorandums which float around the various sub-committees and in and out of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

However, I am not a novice in criminal justice, policing and home affairs. I have listened with care to the detailed comments made by noble Lords and want to take a different angle from that taken so far. I want to talk about tone, and for a practical reason which I shall explain. During many debates that I have listened to in your Lordships’ House, particularly on education, a number of noble Lords have emphasised the importance of soft skills. Soft skills include language, the right approach to negotiation, facilitation, and concern to mediate and compromise rather than taking a fixed and unmovable certainty.

There can be no doubt that during the past 20 years the UK has been a leading light across Europe in the fields of justice, home affairs and policing. Many of the current structures and approaches in place across Europe have been designed and driven by the British. UK policing is also referenced as best practice across Europe, and I have heard it so referenced many times. Yet now we are seen to be withdrawing.

Last October, I made a visit to Brussels with the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, and the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, who is not in her place today. Again and again as we spoke to officials of the Commission and the Parliament, of all nationalities in Europe, we heard sadness and bewilderment about what the UK was doing in relation to this opt-out. This opt-out was at the centre of their concern. They could not understand why the UK Government were moving in this direction. British officials in particular were concerned that this would diminish UK influence which it would be difficult to rebuild.

Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has explained, the Government have the right to exercise the opt-out. Indeed, it was a right negotiated—in my view unwisely, as others have said—by the previous Government. I also welcome the decision by the Government to opt back in to 35 measures. However, I ask the Minister to reflect with his colleagues on language, on their narrative, and on their approach to the next stage of justice and home affairs negotiations.

Let us consider the European arrest warrant. Of course there have been problems, but, on analysis, one sees that almost all those problems are not with the warrant itself but are problems abroad in relation to lengthy pre-trial detention, which would have happened when people had been extradited even if the EAW had not existed.

I just hope that the Minister and his Home Office and Ministry of Justice colleagues will start, as they renegotiate the opt-in, to emphasise the successes of the European arrest warrant, such as the solving of the Irish border criminal justice problem after 70 years. No return to the Costa del Crime is wanted. Or there is the arrest in Italy of Hussain Osman, the attempted bomber of 21 July 2005. These are marvellous successes that the new system brought in. No country in Europe can combat terrorists, paedophiles and organised criminals without the European Union justice and home affairs structures and processes. Putting it bluntly, an argument with UKIP should not be the reason that representatives of a responsible Government do not admit or celebrate the successes of some of those structures.

This is not just political but practical. Over my career, I have watched confidence being built between the police forces of Europe. I know it is there now; it was not there before. There were 90 years of distrust between the UK police forces and the Garda Síochána. There were decades of frustration between UK and Spanish police. There was the obvious sign of rapport when the Greeks called in Scotland Yard to investigate the murder of the British attaché in Athens. The co-operation with the Italians I already mentioned was almost inconceivable in the years before the JHA reforms. We need to hold on to these achievements—and recognise that holding on to them is the purpose of the renegotiation. The renegotiation does not sit by itself but has a purpose to make people safer across Europe.