Criminal Justice and Data Protection (Protocol No. 36) Regulations 2014

Debate between Lord Lawson of Blaby and Lord Willoughby de Broke

Monday 17th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)]

My Lords, I sense the mood of the House, so I shall be very brief indeed. Who knows, maybe it will set an example to others—but I am not holding my breath.

I shall focus exclusively on the issue of the European arrest warrant, which is at the heart of this matter. There is no dispute whatever that mutual extradition arrangements between us and our friends across the Channel are vital. The issue is that identified by my noble friend Lord Lamont of whether we would do better to rejoin the European arrest warrant—to opt back into it—or to negotiate bilaterally with the other member countries of the European Union, or the European Union as a bloc.

I have no doubt that on economic grounds alone, this country would be far better off outside the European Union. If that were the case, as I hope it will be in due course, then of course we will negotiate such bilateral agreements, as we have done with most of the other countries in the world. Some of those agreements are not so satisfactory but others are perfectly satisfactory, so that is what we would do. The question, as my noble friend, for whom I have very high regard, said, is whether we can do that while remaining within the European Union. My belief is that that is not an option and that—I may be mistaken—so long as we remain within the European Union, we have to opt back in to the European arrest warrant if we want mutual extradition arrangements, which are essential.

Can my noble friend Lord Faulks, who is an outstanding legal brain and knows everything far better than anybody else in this august House, say clearly and categorically whether the alternative proposed by my noble friend Lord Lamont is an option? If it is an option, why did the Government reject it or is it, as I sadly believe, not an option? I look forward to his reply.

[Lord Willoughby de Broke (UKIP)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, and I will certainly follow his recommendation to be very brief. He is of course absolutely right to say that on constitutional grounds, extradition should be a matter for our own courts and not for the European Court of Justice. No matter how the Government try to play this and finesse it, the fact is that through this measure of opting in we are handing over the rights of extradition from our own courts to the European Court of Justice.

The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, made the point that we would be handing our citizens over to very different systems of justice. For example, there would be no habeas corpus, no protection from trial in absentia, no right to silence and no requirement for prima facie evidence to justify extradition. This is a major transfer of power that really cannot be justified by anything that I have heard so far, certainly not to satisfy the Government’s rather rushed timetable. As someone said, the Government have now had more than four years to consider this matter and here we are, only two weeks from the deadline with the Government still trying to push it through.

Neither is this all justified on the grounds of satisfying police leaders, who claim that they need these powers to protect the public from dangerous criminals. Like the Government, the police always want more powers. Some noble Lords will remember when they wanted the power to detain suspects for 90 days. After a very long debate, led by the Liberal Democrat Benches, this House denied the police those powers that they asked for. I do not think that the ceiling fell in after that.