EU: Police and Criminal Justice Measures

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blackwell]

No, my Lords, I would not agree, because it comes under the jurisdiction of the European Union. A measure of co-operation would be if such a thing were agreed under the European Council, which is what I would certainly advocate. We are talking not about co-operation but about legislation from a European body, and opting in to any of these measures is a one-way, irreversible transfer of the power of this Parliament to legislate on the justice, freedom and criminal acts of UK citizens.

[Lord Liddle]

What is the point of having parliamentary sovereignty if you cannot use it to catch criminals who take refuge outside our country?

[Lord Blackwell]

There is no reason why the UK cannot co-operate with other countries to do exactly that. It does not need the European Union to legislate for that. I am going to make progress because otherwise we will be here all night.

The fact is that, once we have opted in, the normal EU legislative processes take over. That means that any one of these measures, however nice or gentle they may appear now, can be changed by the EU legislative process. That means that there will be qualified majority voting on all these measures once we have opted in. The UK will not have a veto, and the UK Parliament will not be able to take a view on whether those measures are just and appropriate treatment for UK citizens because we will have opted in to something where the European legislator can decide on changes to any of these measures by qualified majority voting.

When we pass laws, we have to think not just about how Governments act now but about what future Governments may do. We have very little control over the way in which future Governments in this country may operate, and we have even less control over what may happen to Governments in other parts of the European Union. This amounts, in effect, to a huge Henry VIII transfer of powers out of this country to a body over which this Parliament will no longer have control. This is happening in a vital area of law affecting the criminal justice system and the freedoms and rights of every UK citizen. I cannot see how the UK Parliament can happily stand by and say that we should not opt out of that, and opt back in to things only where there is an irrevocable case that it is the right thing to do.

It seems to me that many of these 35 measures go far beyond what one could justify in terms of benefiting UK citizens without running the risk of democratic deficit. The European arrest warrant has been mentioned many times. Fundamentally, it allows courts outside the UK, by laws passed outside the UK, to determine that a UK citizen should be deprived of his rights and sent to another country to face justice and internment without any UK court having the right to decide whether those laws were just and whether the evidence justified it. I do not believe that any of us can stand in front of a UK citizen and justify that as being in their interest. It may be efficient—dictatorship is efficient—but it is not democratic. The Government say that they have some measures that will ameliorate the worst aspects of that. I am not sure—and this House needs to be sure—that those measures will actually stand up against the European Court before we can be satisfied that the European arrest warrant has been dealt with. The same is true of the measure on the mutual recognition of confiscation of assets, where individuals in this country can have their assets frozen and confiscated by order of a court outside the UK without any UK court having the right to challenge the evidence and interrogate whether or not those laws were being applied appropriately.

Europol and Eurojust may sound like good ideas but what may they become? Once they are evolved by QMV over a period of years, what will we have signed up to? We do not know. That is why I believe that we should opt out and negotiate things on a bilateral and multilateral basis under the Council of Europe, where we have the choice that if we do not like those measures, we can pull out and Parliament can legislate. Parliament should retain sovereignty over things which affect fundamental freedoms and justice in this country.

The noble Lord, Lord Richard, asked the Government for an assurance that the word “endorse” in this Motion meant that the Government were committed to these 35 measures. I have to ask my noble friend to give exactly the opposite assurance—that while the Government may go into these negotiations seeking reasonable agreements on these 35 measures, there will be no irrevocable decision tonight that the UK will opt in to them without this House having a much longer and more detailed opportunity to debate each one, and the Government giving us a sound justification for why they thought it was appropriate to remove sovereignty from the British people.