50th Anniversary of the Expulsion of Asians from Uganda

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes (CB)]

My Lords, I warmly thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, for her inspiring speech, as well as other noble Lords for the extremely inspiring and moving speeches we have heard today.

When John Major was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, as we became friends very rapidly, he very kindly agreed to come and speak at one of my routine ward meetings in Stanmore, my biggest and most important ward in Harrow East when I was its MP. I drove him up in my car; we did not talk because he was so tired from work, so I said, “We’ll start talking when we get there.” The chairman of the ward, who gave the function in his house, was an interesting new man whom we had not really got to know called Mr Dolar Popat. It was a very routine occasion, though more social than others. John Major enjoyed it, they enjoyed it and he made a very good speech.

The following day, I said to John Major, “Thank you for coming; I appreciate it very much indeed. You were a great help. It was nice of Dolar Popat to offer his lovely house for this purpose.” He said, “Yes, and by the way, I hope you won’t mind me saying so, but ward chairmen in Conservative associations up and down the country are routinely not particularly inspiring. This young man did rather a good job, and I think he will probably go far in life.” I said, “That may be prescient, but I don’t know; only time will tell.”

Going back to 1972 and the events that have been discussed today by so many noble Lords, I had started working for Edward Heath in the 1964 election, I then helped him in the 1966 election—he also helped me, as I was standing—and particularly in 1970 when we came in. At 30, Winston Churchill junior, the noble Lord, Lord Deben, and I were the three youngest to come into the House. Edward Heath was a very gruff and difficult man in many ways, and was known for not being good at socialising, including in his constituency of Bexley. However, I found his compassion coming out when he said, “Hugh, we are going to have settlement zones in Harrow and Leicester to help the Asians who have been expelled by Idi Amin.”

I remember one of the people at the function when the noble Lord, Lord Popat, was ward chairman saying, “We don’t want Asians coming into this country from anywhere, because there are too many Jews in this constituency already.” That was the beginning of the contact. What the noble Lord has achieved in his career has been remarkable. His book was very inspiring indeed.

Edward Heath would not back down. He said, “We’re going to do this. We’ll take a thousand in Harrow to start with, and in Leicester, and see how that goes. You tell the association that that will happen.” Some of the members were very difficult about it; some said some very nasty things, but most did not. When the Asians came—as they did many years later into Harrow, by coincidence—they immediately made the local borough economy dynamic. Just a small number of Asian businesspeople had that effect on the local area, which was prosperous but slow-moving.

That was such a remarkable achievement that the impression it left remained with me for ever, as did my admiration for Edward Heath—not least because we both loved the European Union and he was the architect of our entry into it. Those two things may be among the greatest things he did. Unfortunately, it all went wrong very quickly after 1974, but we have to remember that none the less.

We must thank the Asian communities for what they have done for this country. They have provided a superb example of what can happen when foreign people come to stay, work and live here and become citizens, with or without British passports. They contribute so much to the good of British society. That attitude must now be reinforced, because there are still some dark forces in dark corners of constituencies up and down the country where that view is not held. We must fight that vigorously and make sure we stand up in future for what is just and right for those communities and the whole of the British public.

European Union: Migration

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Dykes]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they expect to use article 45 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to secure a new policy for the admission of migrants to the United Kingdom from the European Union.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government’s White Paper on exiting the EU was published on 2 February. It sets out the Government’s priorities and the broad strategy for exiting the EU and made it clear that we will take back control of our own laws. There are a number of options as to how EU immigration might work once we have exited the EU; we are considering those options and will consult businesses and communities. Parliament will also have a critical role to play.

[Lord Dykes (Non-Afl)]

Of course, the so-called main pressure is really from non-EU migrants. Why did not the Government, many years ago, use Article 45 of the TFEU, particularly paragraphs 3(a), (c) and (d), to impose necessary civilised restraints on migrants coming in with authorisation to do so, so that the horrendous hostility to immigrants from all over would not have been so evident in the referendum on 23 June?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I cannot be accountable for what happened in the past. We have been a very, very generous country in terms of letting people come here for the purposes of work. There was a very clear message sent last year about controlling the numbers of people who come into this country from both EU and non-EU countries. That is what we intend to do and we will keep Parliament fully involved in the process.

EU: Asylum Seekers

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Dykes]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their policy regarding possible proposals for co-ordination from other European Union member states regarding the rescue of Middle East and African asylum seekers in Europe.

[Lord Dykes (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the opportunity to raise this important subject at this particular juncture, notwithstanding the fact that the Interior Ministers’ meeting in Luxembourg yesterday finished without a definitive conclusion about what is to be done about this highly complex matter. I imagine, therefore, that the European Council will be following this up next week and the week after. I am particularly grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Bates—the Minister in charge of this debate today—has come to address us at the end. I welcome anything he can say that will give us guidance on what happened in Luxembourg yesterday and what looks likely to be the position in the future. This is an extremely worrying and very important matter.

I am equally glad that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, is the Opposition spokesman. He is the well-known chairman of the British Council All-Party Parliamentary Group and very knowledgeable on this subject. It is a very important subject because there is a drastic danger of a lack of a proper humanitarian response now because of the pressures, which are understandable. It is easy for people to dismiss those pressures—the fears of people in recession and austerity in different countries about their own jobs, families and livelihoods when they think that people are going to come into a country too easily without going through the proper immigration process—but they are entirely understandable.

I was very pleased indeed at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday when the Chancellor George Osborne—answering because the Prime Minister was abroad dealing with the other negotiations on Europe—and the right honourable gentleman Hilary Benn exchanged views. Mr Benn said,

“as more and more people gather in Libya to try to cross the Mediterranean, HMS Bulwark is doing an extraordinary job in rescuing frightened people. But we learned yesterday that its deployment is under active review”.

In response, Mr Osborne gave an assurance to Mr Benn that despite the fact that we have withdrawn support from Mare Nostrum—a very controversial and unwelcome decision, in my view—a continuing priority would be given to this. I was particularly glad that he said that,

“I can give the right hon. Gentleman the assurance that we will continue to play our full part in the search and rescue operation in the Mediterranean … Taking people out of the water and rescuing them is essential—we are a humanitarian nation and we need to deal with those issues”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/6/15; col. 312.]

But it seems worrying that HMS “Bulwark”, which came home only recently and has done a marvellous job rescuing quite a large number of people in a short time, is suddenly now to be taken off for some kind of maintenance. I would like an explanation of that.

Be that as it may, it remains very heartening that in this country a majority of the population questioned in polls and private polls say that they are in favour of us rescuing some of these very unfortunate people, according to a fair share to be worked out in the European Union. It did not help at all that the British Government gave the impression, before and after the election, that they did not want any of these people to come here—any at all. That then made it impossible for the other member states to do anything other than respond to their hard-line, right-wing, anti-immigrant and sometimes racialist parties which were saying that they were also going to be difficult about it.

By the way, I happen to know the Italian ambassador in London, Signor Terracciano—an outstanding ambassador. I deliberately embarrassed him when I met him the week before last by saying that I would very eccentrically be tempted, with other colleagues in this place, to propose that the Italian navy and the Guardia Costiera—the coastguard—should be given the Nobel Peace Prize. I believe that since early 2014 the Italians alone have rescued 190,000 people, which is a fantastic achievement. That needs to be in the background when discussing this miserable matter. If the European Union, one of the wealthiest parts of the world, with 500 million people, cannot take in a relatively small number of genuine refugees—they must be genuine and they are, as far as I can tell, coming out of misery and some dying in the process—that is a very sad state of affairs. There is a danger—which I do not want—of Britain being a bad member of the EU club on this as on other matters. We have far too many opt-outs already, and we should be playing our full part in this and dealing with the other states.

In the mean time, the northern Italian states, bearing in mind their political complexions, are being very difficult about having too many migrants, as they put it. Greece is dealing with its own problem of survival and staying in the eurozone, if it can. If the mighty European Union cannot help a small country such as Greece, that is a matter of shame, in my view. However, that is a different subject. Greece is now having to cope with people arriving on its islands. The numbers are not too large at the moment; none the less, they need help. I pay tribute to the Red Cross for its work both on the Greek islands and in the Italian rescue effort. Since then, there has been an attempt to bring about an agreed European Union solution, but we need to make sure that this is done properly and with great care.

This is a change of subject as it is a reference to immigrants in general. I was very impressed by my good friend Ken Clarke. Before Christmas, when there was a furore about there being too many immigrants and so on in this country, which I think is totally exaggerated and based on fantasy rather than fact, he said, “What’s all this fuss about immigrants? They make British society more exciting”. That is a pretty provocative remark to make when there is so much tension and there are so many reactionary views on this subject, but I entirely agree with him and understand what he means.

Coming back to the refugees, it was very interesting that a German spokesman specifically in charge of the whole crisis said in Berlin the other day, “We actually welcome a lot of the genuine refugees from Syria coming to us because of their skills and qualifications”. Germany’s generosity on numbers, followed by Sweden—a small country and also very generous—makes the numbers that we are proposing to accept a matter of shame for us. Once again, the Government need to apologise for having left the Mare Nostrum set-up, and I ask them to give us a proper answer about what they are going to do in the future to get back on track with the collective European Union effort.

That is the key point. Once member states start taking their own individual lines, refusing to deal with the others and saying, “We’re going to be the bad member of the club. We disagree with this”, the European Union comes under the usual pressures from its members’ own electorates—understandably—and the situation slides down into chaos, with nationalism, chauvinism and all the things that we do not want to see in this country and elsewhere in the European Union. The whole purpose of the European Union is that it is not only humanitarian but inter-national, inter-nation and inter-all the communities of the national, sovereign member states working together. We must get back to that. The United Kingdom has a lot of ground to make up to get back to that position, having trailed behind on so many issues recently, not least the rather bizarre negotiations that are now taking place on changing some of the terms of our membership. It remains to be seen what will be done about that.

The Guardian of 16 June contained the disturbing headline:

“EU states bicker over migrant quotas as thousands keep crossing Mediterranean”.

Of course, it is very difficult for them to get an agreement. Paragraph two of the article says:

“Brussels is struggling to effect a new quota system for sharing refugees, with EU interior ministers due to meet today—

as I said, that was yesterday—

“in Luxembourg … But with tens of thousands pouring across the Mediterranean mainly into Italy, Rome appears outraged at the European infighting and is threatening to retaliate”.

This puts Signor Renzi and his Government in an impossible position. Britain started that process, I am sad to say. It was the first country to say that it did not want to take anybody, and has taken just a small number. That led to the rot setting in regarding the co-operation in this field that is necessary.

The article goes on to say:

“East European states reject the commission proposals, Britain and Denmark are opting out of them, the Germans support them, France and Spain are lukewarm, and Italy is furious that it may be left to deal with the tens of thousands arriving on its southern shores. If no equitable deal is struck to share the refugee burden, warned Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister, Rome would start issuing the migrants with temporary visas allowing them to travel elsewhere in Europe and would stop receiving the hundreds of boats arriving from Libya”.

Issuing those visas would be contrary to the Schengen rules and procedures, and that, too, would be a bad mistake for Italy to make. We need to make sure that this is all done in concert, with people working together and restoring the solidarity of the European Union when it deals with crises, and we need to make sure that the United Kingdom reverts to being a good and positive member of the European Union once more.

EU: Justice Opt-outs

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Dykes]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what recent discussions they have had with the Government of the Republic of Ireland on the United Kingdom’s justice opt-outs under the Lisbon Treaty.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, on 20 November, the Prime Minister notified the Council of the UK’s wish to rejoin 35 EU police and criminal justice measures listed in Command Paper 8897. On 1 December, decisions were adopted by the European Commission and Council formally approving this application. Ministers have been in regular contact with their Irish counterparts throughout the process and the Home Secretary wrote thanking the Irish Justice Minister earlier this week.

[Lord Dykes (LD)]

I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Given that the Irish wisely kept miles away from the bizarre pantomime of opt out and then opt back in unleashed on the British Parliament by the two Conservative Secretaries of State, contrary to the advice of the European Union Select Committee, would my noble friend not agree that now the important thing is to emphasise the list of the renewed opt-ins, particularly the European arrest warrant, which is critical to the successful co-operation of the Irish and British police?

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend is right that it is critical to have the European arrest warrant in place to avoid any operational gap—which we did as a result of the documents being deposited and agreed on 1 December. It is important that that continues, as is the case with all 35 measures. It is also good that we have retained and repatriated powers from the 100 that we did not opt into.

European Union: Justice and Home Affairs

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the chairman of Sub-Committee E, of which I am a member, and thank her for her work and leadership of that committee. I very much agree with the individual points that she made in the latter part of her remarks.

It is also appropriate to echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, as chairman of the European Union Committee, and express our thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, as chairman of Sub-Committee F, for the work that he has done with the members of that sub-committee in dealing with the origins of this matter and the apparent muddle that has unfortunately arisen over time, which needs clarification from the Government on a continuing basis. Many more questions will come up later on. With extraordinary forensic ability, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has led the way in how to be a deep, delving chairman of a scrutiny sub-committee. That is to the benefit of this House and the country.

In fact, we are rightly proud in this House of the elements of our scrutiny system, particularly on European matters, which are in many ways deeper for obvious technical and operational reasons. I make no criticism of our Commons colleagues, but theirs is a different kind of exercise, which is more or less like sifting through a large catalogue of different measures as quickly as possible and trying to get agreement in a hurry. We sometimes have more time to consider, but on this occasion the timetables are determining the discipline needed by the Government to respond in good time to make sure that we get this right. There are still considerable doubts about the whole origins of this policy formation and the policy stance taken by the coalition Government on these complicated and complex issues. This needs to be clarified in the future very much on a basis that will reassure Members of all parts of this House and Members of Parliament in general that the Government are going to be on the right track.

The origin of these proposals in the previous Administration was something of a failsafe or reserve position—that is how I saw it, although perhaps I misinterpreted it—to reassure colleagues in this House and particularly in the Commons that mistakes would not be made in terms of the disappearance of the third pillar and our ability to reach proper decisions on complicated legal and judicial matters that would be made, in the oft-quoted phrase, in the national interest. If only, as my noble friend Lord Teverson said, we could work out what that phrase actually means. The definition of the policy framework put in place by the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, on behalf of the previous Government when they were going through the procedures for the enactment of the Lisbon treaty legislation was that it was something which would not be used all that frequently. It would be a reserve position, like some aspects of the European Union Act 2011. Some colleagues, including myself, were not very enthusiastic about that legislation; none the less, it set out a reserve position to be used occasionally, not frequently.

I suppose that the political pressure coming from the Eurosceptic portion of the main party in the coalition when the contents were being developed—important policy items that were driven by the Commission’s proposals and the responses from the Council of Ministers—meant that inevitably it looked as though an extra Eurosceptic atmospheric element was being implanted into some of those areas which really would not serve the nation properly. We had proof of that in the responses made by the technical practitioners and officers in the judiciary and the police forces of this country, who, with only one or two minor exceptions, disagreed with the Government on their original proposals. That was the telling reality which the European Union Committee and its sub-committees had to face.

I do not want to go on for too long, so I shall conclude my remarks with some general points that illustrate the background to this matter. The muddle continues, which means that at the end of this debate the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, who is an extremely popular Minister, will have to give some searching answers in order to reassure the House that this is moving along on the right lines. Some of us want to increase the number of opt-ins. I believe I am right in saying that many of us feel that some of the original decisions were hasty and foolhardy, having been made without proper consideration—two prime examples are the European arrest warrant and Eurojust.

It all comes back to the background to this. Many of us wish to see our continuing membership of the European Union armed, as we are now, with the Lisbon treaty, which is an exceptionally satisfactory treaty. Noble Lords will recall that we as the Liberal Democrat party in opposition, alongside the Conservative Party, did not wish to propose any amendments to the legislation that was to back up the content of the Lisbon treaty. That, I think, was the right position to take. It underscored the general feeling among most Members of this House, including the Cross-Benchers, that our commitment to membership of the European Union and our commitment to the future development of the European Court of Justice need not cause the anxieties that some Ministers in the bigger party of the coalition still feel about these European matters.

There is no fundamental attack on our sovereignty because no one is quite clear about the definition of “sovereignty”, let alone “national interest”—a term for which it is very difficult to give a satisfactory definition. I bet that it will not be given during this debate. “Sovereignty” is even more difficult. The definition given by some Eurosceptic MPs in the Conservative Party in the House of Commons and UKIP is probably for the kind of sovereignty that last existed in this country in 1912, before the First World War. Apart from perhaps the exception of countries in the world with very large populations such as India, the United States, Brazil, China and Indonesia—a very interesting developing country—there is no real intrinsic definition of what sovereignty means. The idea therefore that we are damaging our national interest or losing sovereignty by agreeing with judicial, police and anti-crime measures—which should just be common sense—and by working together with other colleagues is really of no interest whatever. This country already has more derogations, opt-outs, exceptions, exclusions and objections regarding individual policy areas of the developing European Union than any other single country. I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, did not—quite rightly—mention any of the member states that support our position apart from, once, Holland. Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, said, in the context of the negotiations, it would not be right to reveal those as negotiations proceed.

None the less, there are statements by Ministers in other member states’ Governments about these matters. I live in France as well and occasionally have a chance to look at the press there and in other countries such as Germany to see what they say. I think I am right in saying, without being foolhardy, that, of the 28 member states, no other one really supports our position on these matters at all. There may be individual items where there would be hesitation. I think the EPPO, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, is a very good example: it is probably premature and needs further thought and so on, and there is a logical reserve there about subsidiarity. That is perfectly respectable—most legislation in this country is still national rather than European. The latter is the minority. The layer of legislation, rules and disciplines for us in the treaties and European law obliges us to be a hard-working member of a united European collective of sovereign member states, agreeing by treaties between each other to do things together. That of course does not reduce individual national sovereignty but increases it automatically, while also increasing the collective sovereignty of the whole European Union.

In thanking Ministers for their responses, including the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, for his upcoming response to the debate today, I say to the Conservative part of the Government that it needs more self-confidence in the UK as a European member state, rather than the hesitations, withdrawals and drawing back, which seem to be so old-fashioned and immature. That is unusual for a country which has a remarkable history of a self- standing and self-confident parliamentary democracy.

Muslim Brotherhood

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Tuesday 8th April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wright of Richmond]

My Lords—

[Lord Dykes (LD)]

As this is manifestly a sordid plot from Saudi Arabia, would it not be more interesting if HMG had conversations with the Saudi Government about allowing women to drive cars in that country?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

That question is not worthy of my noble friend. The noble Lord, Lord Wright, was trying to get in, as I had named him.

European Public Prosecutor’s Office: EUC Report

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands. He has laid out the case as to why this proposal to establish a European public prosecutor’s office does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity with forensic skill, and I will try to avoid repeating what he has said.

I was a member of Sub-Committee E, both at the time of issuing this subsidiary assessment and of the publication of the report, The Fight Against Fraud on the EU’s Finances. That report found that there appeared to be a significant level of fraud within the EU budget, and that official figures appeared, at least to us, to significantly underestimate the volume and value of that fraud. Therefore, at first blush one has some sympathy with a proposal that appears to have as its objective, the sharpening up of the organisational response to these defects. Further to that, our report found significant weaknesses in the work of the European anti-fraud office, known as OLAF, which included tensions between the supervisory committee and the executive arm of the agency; frequent turnover of representation so that consistent policies were not followed through; an absence of classification of fraud offences, which the noble Lord referred to; a reluctance to name and shame countries where it appeared that fraud was taking place; and last but not least, a lack of will among member states to report and follow up suspected cases of fraud.

To be fair to the commission, it has put in place a number of measures to improve OLAF’s operational efficiency, notably the regulations adopted just six weeks ago on 11 September. However, one of the more depressing features of the Brussels bureaucracy—at least to a Euro-agnostic like me—is the tendency, where an organisation is not operating up to par, not to undertake a serious attempt to improve the efficiency, but instead to pile on top of, or in this case alongside, that organisation yet another body to look after it. It is almost certain that an EPPO operating alongside OLAF and Eurojust will surely only serve to undermine OLAF’s work at this time, when the recent changes just introduced, as I mentioned, should give it a new sense of purpose and direction.

I particularly share the view expressed in the report that the anticipated costs of running the EPPO are woefully understated; a net annual cost of just €6.1 million is surely not credible. The reason for the subsidiarity judgment is that the fight against EU fraud needs to be developed from first principles, and they can be done without the introduction of the EPPO. The Commission needs to improve the clarity of its budgeting system; improve its own systems for overseeing that budget; and work more closely, where appropriate, through OLAF and Eurojust with member states so that they investigate and prosecute fraudulent activity with vigour and purpose.

The noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, quite rightly focused on the impact of this proposal on the national criminal law systems of individual member states. He was right to do so and I support him. However, I believe that even if it were possible to overcome these principle objections—and I, for the record, do not believe this would be possible—establishing the EPPO would, on purely practical grounds, likely offend the principle of subsidiarity and undermine the existing organisations of OLAF and Eurojust at the same time.

My concern on this point was underlined by the Written Statement published in Hansard on 15 October, which states:

“Vice President Reding presented her recent proposals for the creation of a European Public Prosecutor’s Office … There was support, in principle, from a large proportion of Member States … but less agreement on issues of substance, including scope; structure; competence; powers; jurisdiction and governance”.—[Official Report, 15/10/13; col. WS 52.]

In effect, the EU member states could not agree how this thing should be proceeded with on any practical level, and that is why I support this reasoned opinion.

[Lord Dykes (LD)]

Since my noble friend described himself as a Euro-agnostic, I do not think I would offend my friend—not noble friend—on the Labour side if I called him a Euro-realist or sometimes a Euro-hesitator about a number of aspects which he analyses with great precision. I am an unashamed Euro-enthusiast and yet, none the less, I think there is agreement about this particular document and report as was seen in the way in which we couched our recommendations having studied this matter carefully.

The European Union is evolving after the Lisbon treaty in what I hope will be a gradually accelerated fashion. It is inevitably slowed down by the realities of economic austerity and slowed down in the national economies of all the member states, not just the leading ones. That is a reality that we see, as well as the constant difficulty of blending different national cultures in all sorts of areas. Perhaps one of the most difficult areas is the law and the legal sector, because of the noticeable difference of the Anglo-Saxon legal system, mainly in the UK and Ireland, the Roman legal systems of the other member states, mixed with some of the new member states since 2004.

That is just the reality; it is not to be hostile to the evolution of Europe by annunciating those realities that we are facing in all sorts of complicated sectors. This one is particularly complicated, and I think that this is an occasion where the member states expressed a general support for the notion and the concept, but maybe for the future, as the noble Lords, Lord Rowlands and Lord Hodgson, mentioned without going into the details. Subsdiarity must be a real element of the Lisbon treaty in order to provide reassurance to the national publics of each member state, particularly the one in this country, which is particularly fragile in its Euro-hesitation; this disturbs me greatly because I think it is unnecessary, but it is because of the fight between the political parties and the rise of UKIP. It is necessary to balance all those things and not to rule out this concept for the future.

There is every prospect that the EPPO concept itself will gain confidence if it goes slowly forward but the national legal systems demand that the national prosecutorial authorities have the upper hand in the initial stages of that timeframe, which may be quite long, over a number of years, to gain reassurance. We have the co-operative tradition anyway between the forces of law and order in the European cockpit. Europol is proving to be a great success—under a UK executive head, I am glad to say—and is developing apace, and so are the other instruments that were mentioned by the two previous speakers in this debate.

If that is the way to do it, it may be that in future the EPPO will have a pragmatic construct, a special piece of instrumentation by way of a regulation agreed between the Council and the European Parliament that would include the national prosecutorial authorities inside the EPPO system to reassure the public, who will feel that subsdiarity will have therefore been satisfied. Our need for subsidiarity in a number of areas needs to be expressed. People should not be nervous about doing that. This is a classic example. I am very glad to be on the same committee as the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, and to support enthusiastically this recommendation.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Rowlands for his explanation of the committee’s report. There seems to be a remarkable degree of agreement between us all this evening. I am pretty sure that the Minister is not going to demur from that.

This is a very detailed technical issue and it is quite clear from the speeches we have heard that not only does it deserve detailed scrutiny, it has received that scrutiny. This is not a new proposal. It has been raised on a number of occasions. The negative response from the Government is not new either.

Even before the 2001 Green Paper from the Commission first proposed a European public prosecutor, the idea had been discussed, particularly in discussions on the Nice treaty, when an outline proposal was put forward but then dropped through lack of member state support. In response to the Green Paper, the European Scrutiny Committee in the other place reported in 2002, saying that it was,

“unnecessary, particularly given the existence of Eurojust”.

At that time, the committee identified a number of concerns. Those concerns remain, for example: the combination of prosecution and investigative functions; the power of the EPPO to commit a person for trial and determine the location of the trial; the creation of differing standards of criminal responsibility for fraud depending on whether or not it related to fraud on the community’s financial interests; the lack of democratic accountability for the prosecution function; and, of course, the breach of the subsidiary principle and dilution of member state responsibility for prosecution of fraud.

Since then, the creation of a specialist EU prosecution authority has been raised again but still has not gained the support it would need to proceed. The 2011 European Scrutiny Committee echoed the concerns of the 2002 committee when, in recommending the 2011 communication for debate in the European Committee, it cautioned against the “inappropriate and unacceptable” use of national criminal justice systems in acting against crimes against EU finances.

However, as my noble friend Lord Rowlands made clear, it is fair to say that this proposal has not been thought up in a vacuum. It seeks to address a genuine problem and we recognise the seriousness of that problem, which is that there needs to be greater protection of the EU’s financial interests and we need to see further improvements in how the EU deals with fraud. The level of suspected fraud against the EU budget is obviously and rightly a source of concern. The report refers to the Commission’s estimate that it stands at around €500 million, or £425 million, in each of the last five years. British taxpayers bear part of the cost of that fraud, which is totally unacceptable. We must seek new and better ways of tackling this fraud, preventing it and bringing those responsible to justice.

The question that the European Union Committee was looking at was: is the EPPO the best way of achieving this? We again concur with the committee’s conclusion that it is not. We made our position clear when in government, and that has not changed. Our position remains, as my noble friend Lord Rowlands outlined very clearly, that the proposal for an EPPO breaches the subsidiarity principle. It is clear that the national-level approach, supported by existing EU mechanisms, is more appropriate.

When we signed the Lisbon treaty, we made it clear that although the treaty could allow for such an office, we were strongly against it, as the noble Lord will recall. We insisted on a “double lock” to ensure that it could not be established. Indeed, your Lordships’ House was, as always, very diligent in its scrutiny of this measure and, following debate, supported the position made very clear by my noble friend Lady Ashton of Upholland in 2008, when she said:

“We have secured legally watertight safeguards in the treaty against any move towards a European public prosecutor or subsequently, and just as important, towards extending that prosecutor’s role. It is what we would call a double lock”.—[Official Report, 9/6/08; col. 454.]

We were not just opting out at that point but securing essential safeguards for the future, which we are able to use today.

That double lock meant that, in order to proceed, the UK would first have to opt in and then, even if a future Government decided that they wanted to opt in, there would still need to be unanimity, and that would be retained for any decision to establish a prosecutor or extend the powers of any such prosecutor. Therefore, we concur with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, on behalf of the EU committee, that the creation of the EPPO was not the appropriate response to tackling fraud.

EUC Report: Money Laundering

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes]

My Lords, I am sure that the whole House will very much appreciate the sensible comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick. It has been some time between the publication of the report in January and this debate. Perhaps there is an important point there about the need for greater speed on a matter of enormous interest to large numbers of people. I commend the report in every way and, on these Benches, we give full support to the main points to which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, referred and to the other details in the report.

I must declare an interest as a member of the full European Union Committee, which by implication and by asserting itself in the background has given its support to this report. Sub-committees’ reports are always published as reports of the whole committee. I hope that the Minister will respond positively to some of the important points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. I add my support to his comments at the end of his speech about the problem of ship ransoms, which needs to be dealt with.

The need to find a balance in these matters is always difficult, as the noble Lord declared. I agree, and the balance will be a question of continued supervision and surveillance as time goes on, and is not an easy matter. However, we live in a world where not only technology but international capital transactions and flows have improved. As has been said, there has been the removal of national and collective exchange controls of one kind or another—particularly in this country many years ago. There have also been other developments on a rapid scale in the use of the internet and communications systems. People with crime as their intention and activity, rather than just ordinary citizens in different countries, use the same systems and technologies as others to pursue their very evil objectives in the field of terrorism and the organisation of serious crime, which is in many ways a worldwide phenomenon on a gigantic scale. The statistics are very chilling indeed when one begins to examine those matters in depth.

Therefore, that balance and government rules on access to details on any database that is growing exponentially have, as has been said, produced a great deal of anxiety among the highly educated citizens of advanced countries and others in the world who are wondering how this balance will be maintained in the future. It is very difficult.

It is not right for us automatically to begin to criticise the authorities and the Government for how they deal with this because, for them, it is a difficult balance. They must support the agencies of protection for us—the secret services as well as the police authorities, our other security agencies and the military—in how they defend this country by their resistance to the ominous developing activities in serious organised crime and worldwide terrorism. But they must protect the sacred freedom of the individual citizen from the ever-more intrusive snooping that public authorities can easily slide into if they do not have the necessary legislative and administrative controls and fierce determination by Ministers to ensure that that control is exercised practically to help the citizens of this country dealing in innocent transactions which are wrongly put onto a database for reasons that need to be explained.

I was very impressed with some of the suggestions made in the latest report which, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, followed the original report under the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, from the same Sub-Committee on Home Affairs. In the recommendation for future action on page 19, paragraph 6.1 states:

“The Commissioner makes a number of recommendations to help ensure that the processing of personal data on the ELMER database complies with the requirements of the Data Protection Act and on the legislative approach to the reporting of suspicious financial activity”.

There is a mention below in the subsequent parts of paragraph 6. In paragraph 6.1.5, the sub-committee suggests:

“That the Government considers whether, in the light of experience, the current arrangements for reporting of SARs continue to be justified, whether they are both effective and proportionate and whether they could be improved. Consideration should be given to whether there is a pressing social need to justify the requirement to report any transaction which is based on a very low threshold of suspicion that handling criminal property or money laundering is taking place”.

In relation to the accumulation of names and information on the database at a very rapid rate, the exclusions announced by the Information Commissioner have been very modest. I should have thought that the number could be greater and I look forward to the Minister’s response on how he thinks that process is developing.

In the original July 2009 report on money-laundering and the finance of terrorism, the wider subject, rather than the more narrow one on money-laundering and data protection for suspicious activity, the definitional base of what is money-laundering was set out very clearly. That, too, needs more attention to detail as experience has developed of the phenomenology of money laundering, the detail of how it is done. The knowledge of public authorities about that is not perfect; they need to investigate more and share information with other Governments and collective bodies such as the European Union. We need to consider future EU legislation to strengthen the European basis for the control system without, as I said, denting significantly the precious freedom of the individual citizen, which I hope is dear to everyone in this House.

We strongly support the contents of the report and the suggestions made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, tonight, particularly his final remarks on ships’ ransom construction, and hope that they will be met with agreement in all parts of the House, subject to what my noble friend can say to us to guide us on how the Government will deal with those matters with the Information Commissioner.

Passenger Name Records: EUC Report

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes]

My Lords, I am sure that the whole House is very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, as chairman of Sub-Committee F, for presenting its report today and accompanying it with his recommendations, which also meet the Government’s own inclinations in this matter, and for his characteristic clarity and thoroughness in explaining the main issues. He is quite right to remind the House that there is further work to be done on the actual scrutiny process of the directive details themselves and that this is really just about the main issues that are encapsulated in the Motion that he has tabled today.

I welcome very much what I hope the Minister will be able to say in reply. This is an occasion, as has already been said, when the opt-in procedure is, prima facie, proceeding on a smooth basis and is one of a growing number now. The system appears to be settling in on the basis of the original Ashton procedure, set out two years ago. I welcome that too because it means that the United Kingdom can make more progress in the JHA field working with our partners than we would do on our own and can overcome some of those anxieties from some years ago about this pillar and whether we were conceding too much. For those of us who may sound old-fashioned nowadays in being enthusiastic Europeans, it seems to me that as the UK is a country renowned for having more opt-outs, exclusions, exceptions, derogations and “would you mind if we don’t” clauses in the whole system than the other member states, it does occasionally create a better impression when we do opt in with some enthusiasm, particularly in this growing field, which is becoming a major area of Community policy formation.

At the same time, I understand my noble friend’s apprehensions about some of these aspects of giving personal data in this way. This is a growing scenario in many fields of commerce as well as for many government departments and local authorities—not only in this country but all over the world and between countries. People are right to be apprehensive about what happens. Therefore, Governments and the international institutions involved need to reassure their own local and international publics that these data will be treated with the appropriate operational reverence to make sure that they do not get into the wrong hands and that there is some kind of lapsing period for the retention of data from people who are manifestly not even putative terrorists or dangerous criminals, according to the evidence.

My noble friend was also apprehensive about the list of things that can be included in the PNR list. I assume that the way in which the technology works is that people have the correct codes to feed in to the computer on the basis of the information they may have received from the security services, so that is a way in which they can do it in a tabulated process. It does not mean that they have literally to comb through every single item of data. I hasten to add that I am not an expert, but I assume that to be the case.

When the Minister comes to reply, I hope she will have time today to deal with a number of points, which I will mention quickly now, on the need for the EU-wide approach. That has already been dealt with and it does inevitably meet the Government’s ambition to make this apply to intra-EU journeys as well. It seems manifestly illogical for them not to be included and I think that the committee and the European Union Committee—the chairman is present and listening to the debate—would presumably support that wholeheartedly, as does Sub-Committee F.

A further detail that we will need to concentrate on in future is whether the committee is right to express a certain hesitation about a reply from the Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office. When it asked what he would think about opting in, he politely and rather commendably replied that the Government might want to wait for the committee to have time to give its own views and that the Government would pay attention to those. I refer here to paragraph 20 of the report. However, the chairman is quite right to add at the end of that paragraph:

“While this is a proper line for the Government to take in the light of the Ashton undertakings, it would have been helpful to have some indication of the Minister’s own views”.

I hope that habit will develop more and that the Government are not too shy of indicating even a preliminary position on that. I do not think that would be misused by members of the Select Committee or the sub-committees in their further investigation of particular subjects.

I move quickly, if I may, to paragraph 5.4.1 of the Commission’s own report to the Council of Ministers. Again, I am only speculating for the future, because it is not of course a matter for today’s debate, but there is that question of similar security procedures and the data collection of PNR in non-air travel as well as in the preliminary ticketing before PNR is collected. Paragraph 5.4.1 deals with that at some considerable length and there is something to be said for it.

Finally, I return to the other comments of my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbots, when he referred, with some nervousness, to the encroachment of the European Union on some aspects of our domestic life. That is not a phrase I would use because if you are a keen member of the European Union as well as a patriotic Briton—the two go hand in hand, as far as I can see—you do not regard it as an encroachment. You consider the whole organisation to be a club of like-minded sovereign members, with their own intrinsic national sovereignty but working through agreed and integrated institutions. With more and more agreed majority voting in the future, as I hope, we will sometimes be doing what other members want as well as what we want. That is in the nature of a club. The European Union is therefore one of the finest clubs in the world in that sense. I hope that my noble friend will get reassurance from my words because he, too, can change his mind on that in future.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Neville-Jones)]

My Lords, I join noble Lords in expressing my gratitude to the European Union Select Committee for organising this debate. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for acknowledging the Government’s willingness to give practical effect to the procedural undertakings that they have given. As a result, we have had a discussion on the Floor of the House at an early stage of consideration. The Government will take very serious account of what has been said today.

One of the things that has emerged from the debate is that the European Union Committee, the Government and a number of noble Lords are in agreement that there is concrete evidence of the utility and benefits to be derived from the analysis of PNR data in terms of passengers’ security. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, put the case for the directive containing intra-EU PNR data as well as data on third-country flights as least as cogently as I could, if not more so. Therefore, I do not need to go over why the Government consider this to be an important part of the legislation, and why they wish to continue to strive to get it included. We have consistently argued that the directive should contain this information and that it should cover intra-EU routes.

I note what my noble friend Lord Hodgson said—that this is a “nice to have” rather than a “must have”. However, I shall seek to explain why the Government take a different view for two reasons. First, the argument that it is possible to evade the information that this provision might yield by choosing another form of transport may be valid. However, that is not itself a compelling argument for not obtaining the information if you believe it to be necessary to inhibit terrorism. Secondly—this is the major point—we have had ample evidence since earlier drafts of this legislation that aviation is a major terrorist target. We cannot ignore that. Therefore, it is right, consistent with individuals’ right to privacy—I entirely take the points that have been made about that and will return to them—to provide and maintain the maximum security that we can for passengers on aircraft, otherwise aircraft may well be blown up before they reach us.

[Lord Dykes]

Further to that point, with which I agree, does the Minister agree that it is remarkable that, although the security procedures at airports are extremely irritating for most passengers and that we all suffer, there is a high degree of psychological support for those measures among passengers, who know how vulnerable air flights are?