EU: Police and Criminal Justice Measures

Lord Grenfell Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, I hope that noble Lords will indulge me if I repeat a quotation that I used some time ago in your Lordships’ House from the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who said:

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”.

As the final Back-Bench speaker in this debate I take his advice to heart. I have nothing more to add to the debate, and I have taken almost everything away from the speech that I would have made if I had spoken earlier. Of course, that does not guarantee perfection, but it might result in brevity.

I will say a word about the question that the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, raised—and I am sorry that he had to scratch from the debate. On 15 July, the Home Secretary was asked the same question by Mark Reckless MP. She answered:

“I do not believe that opting back into these measures would trigger a referendum under the powers that the Government have”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/7/13; col. 783.]

Note the words “do not believe”. We do not want the Government’s best guess on this—we want certainty. Are the Government incapable of interpreting their own European Union Act 2011? If so, I am astonished. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, can reassure us on this point.

I have much sympathy for part of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on which he is choosing not to divide the House. It takes the Government properly to task for their cavalier attitude towards—and I might say disdain for—your Lordships’ European Union Select Committee in waiting until today, of all days, to publish their response to its report. As a former chair of that Select Committee, I felt outraged. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, is initiating an inquiry in his committee into the role of national parliaments in the European Union. This Government, who never cease to trumpet the urgent need for closer parliamentary involvement in EU affairs, must cease to betray their spoken intentions with actions that undermine them. I venture to speculate that, had the Motion been set for a later date, we would still be waiting for the Government’s response. They have been panicked into producing it, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on having applied the necessary shock treatment with the wording of his amendment.

Of course, the Government’s Motion refers to a set of circumstances that we on these Benches do not accept. We do not start with the premise that the UK should ask for a block opt-out under Protocol 36—least of all when there is no certainty that our seeking to opt back into measures deemed to be in our interest will meet with the approval of our European partners. The Select Committee’s warning that a blanket opt-out would damage our internal security and the administration of criminal justice has fallen on deaf ears, despite the fact that, as the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, emphasised in his speech, the committee reached its conclusion after listening to the expert views of leaders in the legal, law-enforcement and prosecutorial professions.

In order to opt back into the measures they need never have opted out of, the Government will now opt out of everything and hope for the best. If ever there was a risk of seeing several healthy babies thrown out with the bathwater, this is it. Of course, that is what the wilier and wilder Eurosceptics are itching to see happen. They are happy to support the blanket opt-out, but for them the greater prize would be the failure of the Government to achieve the opt-back-into some if not all of the 35 measures listed in Cm 8671. The Government, with their unwarranted optimism that they will secure from their European partners a successful opt-back-in, risk damaging our national interest and humiliating themselves.

Why does the Prime Minister insist on a wholly unnecessary risk? We know why. It has little if anything to do with improving our internal security or the administration of justice. It has much to do with the security of the Prime Minister and the administration of his divided party. Is that how we must now define “national interest”? The Government risk writing a shameful page in the history of our relations with our European partners if they go on in their current manner on this matter. I believe firmly that the Government have lost the plot—and tonight, they have certainly lost the argument.