Europol Regulation: European Union Opt-In

Debate between Lord Judd and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Monday 1st July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, as a member of your Lordships’ European Union Select Committee, I rise to support the Motion of my noble friend Lord Hannay and to follow the eloquent and powerful arguments put forward by him and the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey. They are experts in this area.

I wish to start by reading one of the committee’s recommendations on page 10, which states:

“If the Government were to opt in to the draft Europol Regulation and also exercise the block opt-out we urge them to opt back in to the Council Decisions which fall within the scope of the opt-out and which are connected with Europol’s continued operations, should this prove necessary”.

I do not quote that to criticise the committee, quite the reverse. However, this process of opting in, opting out and opting in again is like hokey-cokey politics in which the Government are indulging. They are dancing to the tune of UKIP and the Eurosceptic right in their party and putting our national security and the fight against crime in jeopardy as a result.

The Europol matter that we are discussing is complicated by the threatened block opt-out, as I said at Question Time today and as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, mentioned. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, was rather coy earlier when speaking about the differences of view between the two sides of the coalition in the discussions on this matter. We have a Conservative Minister replying to this debate and it will be interesting to hear his response. However, we get a very clear view of the position from the documents that were leaked to the Daily Telegraph, and I wish to quote briefly from one or two of them. A number of measures were binned, where we agreed not to seek to rejoin, which must cause concern.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, that one of the documents refers to,

“37 measures identified by DPM”—

that is, the Deputy Prime Minister—

“as being of less importance”.

One of the measures that Mr Clegg identified as being of less importance was:

“Joint Action … on cooperation between customs authorities and business organizations in combating drug trafficking”.

How can that be identified as being of less importance? Then we come to measures that are undecided. The document states:

“48 measures for Immediate Discussion (Differing Views in the Coalition on Rejoining)”.

There were differing views on whether it should rejoin those measures, having exercised a block opt-out on 133. Should we rejoin the measure on combating child pornography on the internet? Is there any doubt about that? Why is there any discussion about it? Why does one side of the coalition think that we should opt in and another that we should opt out?

Another measure mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, concerns,

“security in connection with football matches with an international dimension”,

where we have seen that police forces acting together have been very effective in passing on information about known troublemakers so that they can be dealt with on the spot. British police officers can go out to matches abroad and offer their help and police officers from other countries can come here and help with identifying troublemakers. However, all this is being put in jeopardy by what the coalition is considering doing because of the pressure of the 133 opt-outs. It is dancing to the tune of UKIP and the Eurosceptic right, which I know the Minister is not part of. I hope that he will take the opportunity to make that clear again today.

I now wish to consider the measures in detail. We are told—the noble Lord, Lord McNally, used this excuse earlier today—that each of them is being looked at and the reason the Government have taken so long to consider the other report of our Select Committee on the opt-out is that the measures are all very complicated. He also said that each one has to be looked at in the national interest. I always get a wee bit worried when the coalition talks about the national interest. It seems to me that it is often a case of what is in the best interests of keeping the coalition in power rather than what is in the national interest. When pressed to explain their thinking, Ministers have said that they look at the measures on a case-by-case basis as far as the national interest is concerned.

There are two key problems with the Government’s plan of action. The first is the cost to the United Kingdom of permanently opting out of some of the measures, with Europol a particular concern, as the report rightly says. The report expresses the view that,

“none of the concerns expressed by the Government … outweigh the benefits to the UK of Europol’s assistance to national police and law enforcement agencies in the fight against cross-border threats (including terrorism) and serious organised crime”.

Therefore, we are putting the fight against terrorism and serious organised crime in jeopardy through this opt-out. Rarely has an all-party report, unanimously agreed by all the members of the sub-committee and the committee, been so damning of the government line.

The second problem is the cost of what the Government hope to retain. Opting back in is not a straightforward process. The noble Lord, Lord Williamson, having been secretary of the European Commission, will know only too well exactly what has to be done. There is no guarantee that negotiations to opt back in would be successful. We might find ourselves locked out permanently of key crime-fighting tools. Ensuring that this does not happen will require a large and wholly avoidable expenditure of diplomatic capital. Our experienced diplomats would have to spend their time persuading the other 27 countries of Europe, now that Croatia has joined, that we should be allowed back in.

The rewards that the Government hope to win by such a policy are largely intangible. The measures they hope to scrap are mostly technical points relating to the definition of certain crimes. What is really driving this agenda is the streak of destructive Euroscepticism that runs through some of the Tory Back Benches. In this instance, it is clear what they mean by the national interest. As I said, the national interest is the interest of a small, bullying minority. David Cameron is trying to paint himself as a national champion, but in fact he is having his arm twisted. It is a clever piece of political spin but it is a disastrous piece of policy that could leave all of us in the United Kingdom dangerously exposed to crime and terror. I hope that the Minister will indicate that the Government will have second thoughts in light of the unanimous report from our Select Committee.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I am very glad indeed to follow the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, as I find myself in a great deal of sympathy with the argument that he has put forward.

It always seems to me that if one set out to design a nation that was dependent on its relationships with the world in almost every sphere of our significant life in Britain, it would be difficult to think of a better example than the United Kingdom. We live in a totally interdependent world. I believe strongly that the test of political leadership in our country is to demonstrate that we are determined to look to the well-being of the people of these islands of the United Kingdom, but that that can best be done only if we are in a network of international co-operative relationships, of which the European Union is one. It is not a romantic debate about whether one is a European or a Briton; it is hard-headed practical common sense about how we look to the well-being of the British people. Certainly, as far as I am concerned, any thought that we should retreat into being a sort of free-floating raft off the mainland of Europe in the turbulent world in which we live, and that we will somehow then look better to the interests of our people, is a betrayal of the British people and should be dismissed as such.

These matters of security and international crime and the rest are paramount examples of this. We all know that crime is now internationalised on an almost unimaginable scale. We all know that security and terrorism and threats of this kind operate on an international basis. All the new technology at the disposal of the human race makes all this more acute. There is no way in which we can look to the security of the British people without the maximum co-operation of those who are seeking the same objectives for their people in Europe as a whole. Indeed, that should always be a stepping stone to maximum international global co-operation, because that is ultimately the indispensible solution that we must find.