Criminal Justice (European Investigation Order) Regulations 2017

Debate between Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Baroness Ludford

Wednesday 6th December 2017 Grand Committee

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome this short debate. The European investigation order is a valuable instrument. Therefore, I am pleased that the Government are implementing it. I was involved with it when I was a Member of the European Parliament. I was the lead MEP for the liberal group and involved in all the co-decision negotiations with the Council in finalising it. It has been a source of regret to me and, I think, to my political colleagues in the European Parliament that successive British Governments have not fully taken part in the fair trial rights side of the EU programme alongside enforcement measures such as the European arrest warrant and the European investigation order—that partly relates to what has just been said.

I am a patron of Fair Trials International and a huge admirer of its work. The EIO is a sort of European arrest warrant for evidence. A fair criticism of the European arrest warrant is that it was occasionally used as a fishing expedition. It was meant to be used only from the perspective of charge and prosecution.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

“Trial-ready” is the word.

[Baroness Ludford]

I do not think that that is in the EAW framework decision, but it was much discussed in the Julian Assange case with Sweden. Certainly, you had to be on the brink of those further stages of charge and prosecution—not when you just wanted to interview someone and were trying to collect evidence. I hope that the EIO will take the weight off the European arrest warrant and stop it being misused. That is all good. The EIO is for evidence; the search is for interception. It is much more efficient for police and prosecutors than relying on the rather clunky EU mutual legal assistance convention of 2000, which has never really worked. As the committee points out, it would be a very retrograde step to fall back on the MLA convention, just as having to fall back on bilateral extradition agreements under the aegis of the Council of Europe will be an alarmingly backward step if the UK is unable to stay in the European arrest warrant if we Brexit. So, like the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, I echo the question put by the committee about what concrete arrangements the Government propose to continue the efficiency and effectiveness that the EIO will deliver, as the European arrest warrant already does. In one of the committee’s reports, the Minister apparently said that,

“he hoped that close cooperation between Member States on security matters would continue, but the precise nature of future relations would be the subject of negotiation”.

Many of us are really quite eager to know how the Government propose to continue this essential cross-border police and prosecution co-operation.