UK-Rwanda Partnership

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

Regarding the second point, that question was asked the other day in a different context, and I suggested to the right reverend Prelate who asked me that perhaps the Church should look at paying its vicars more. After all, it is one of the more sizeable landowners in this country and can probably afford it. The Human Rights Act is disapplied in a couple of very specific circumstances, which are outlined in Clause 3 of the Bill.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I will follow up on the question from the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. Setting aside the arguments about the law and human rights and all that, the basic justification for this policy is that the Rwanda scheme would offer a deterrent which is necessary to stop channel crossings. It is therefore of fundamental importance to the argument to know how many people can be sent to Rwanda under the scheme. The Court of Appeal said that 100 were allowed. Will the Minister therefore contradict the Court of Appeal and tell us the real number, and will he tell Conservative Central Office to stop putting out propaganda that thousands of people can be sent to Rwanda, which is just ridiculous?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

From the noble Lord’s last remark, it sounds like he has answered his own question. However, as I said in my opening remarks, the numbers are uncapped. I do not know the context of the Court of Appeal judgment in this regard, so I cannot comment on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

As I said when the most reverent Primate asked me the question, global circumstances would clearly suggest that that is a very good approach. Clearly, also, those conversations are ongoing in high-level diplomatic circles. But the fact is, as I said earlier in answer to my noble friend Lord Lilley, that the world is also looking for solutions to this problem on a bilateral basis.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I return to the Minister’s reply to my question about numbers, because they are important in the question of whether this will be an effective deterrent. His answer was that the scheme is uncapped, but what is the present capacity of Rwanda to take asylum seekers from the UK? The Government must know that: they have given Rwanda £140 million and are in the process of giving it more, although they will not declare that number to Parliament. What is the capacity? Is the Court of Appeal right that it is 100? Is he saying that the Court of Appeal is wrong?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The Government do know that number but unfortunately, I do not, because I forgot to ask the question this morning. I will have to write to the noble Lord; I apologise.

Illegal Migration Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his questions. First, I can reconfirm that safe and legal routes exist. As I have repeatedly told the House—

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

From Iran?

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Perhaps the noble Lord could listen for a moment. As I told the House, the UK resettlement scheme is one that permits the Government to accept refugees who have been approved by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and are taken directly from conflict zones. This scheme grew out of the Syria and Jordan schemes, and it is a principled and fair way in which to resettle those in need of protection. It has the advantage, as noble Lords will immediately notice, of providing protection to those who need it, not based on their ability to cross Europe and pay a people smuggler to get them across the channel on the basis that they are in sufficiently good health to survive the journey. The present safe and legal routes that exist are much fairer and more appropriate.

In the second part of the noble Lord’s question, he gave a list of countries from which people crossed the channel, but he omitted, of course, Albania, a safe third country which is a NATO member and EU accession country. Given the vast numbers who come by that route from safe third countries, I simply do not accept the premise of his question.

As to his suggestion that in some way the trade and co-operation agreement would be renounced as a result of this Bill being passed, I do not accept that contention for one moment. The Government are of the view that the measures in this Bill are compatible with our international obligations—and time will tell.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I entirely agree that the Modern Slavery Act was a landmark provision, but sadly that too has been the subject of very extensive abuse. As we set out in the Statement, it is clear that people are being advised to claim that they are victims of modern slavery in order to avail of the respite and the long period for conclusive determination of modern slavery claims, which was passed by this House and the other place as a measure of compassion for modern slaves. The measures in this Bill do not undermine our principle of acting to stop this evil practice of modern slavery.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

We have had only one Labour person.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, it is the turn of the Labour Benches, but I hope that if people ask short questions and get short answers, we will get through everyone.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that we cannot solve this problem by unilateral domestic action alone? We have to have co-operation with European countries that are facing similar problems of asylum and refugees. Does he also accept that this co-operation is going to be very difficult to deliver if we are seen to be unilaterally going against the European Convention on Human Rights? This is fundamental, because it will not only stop co-operation in this area but threaten co-operation in areas such as trade. It is a foundation of the Good Friday agreement and is vital to Britain’s standing in the world.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I agree that international co-operation is a vital part of the jigsaw; that is why we reached fresh agreements in December with the Governments of Albania and of France and why the Prime Minister is meeting President Macron on Friday. To that extent, I agree with the noble Lord. However, I do not agree that the United Kingdom cannot act unilaterally, because we need to stop people taking these risky journeys across the channel—one of the busiest and most dangerous sea lanes in the world. That requires special legislation to be passed by this Parliament, and this Bill satisfies that.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 5th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had some very fine speeches in this debate. I particularly congratulate my noble friend Lord Rosser on the devastating critique of the Bill that he launched at the start. I will be with him all the way in his opposition to this measure.

We have two objectives in tension here: we need to allay legitimate public concern about illegal immigration, but we must meet our duties, which are both moral and legal, to refugees. There may be no perfect solution to this dilemma, which is likely to get worse in years ahead. There will be structural changes in population movements as the result of climate change, there is already a growing number of failed states in the world and there is a retreat from democracy to authoritarianism, so the pressures will grow and it will always be difficult.

However, I think there is a centre ground, and it was the centre ground that my noble friend Lord Dubs espoused. We cannot have unlimited immigration—there has to be control—but we as a nation should meet our fair share of responsibility for dealing with the victims of abuse and atrocities in other parts of the world and people who cannot any more live safely in their own country. We must meet that fair share and acknowledge that we are not doing as much as other European countries. I hope the Minister will confirm that we fall short of what other European countries are doing.

My second big point follows up on what my noble friend Lord Reid of Cardowan said. We make progress in balancing those responsibilities only through international co-operation. Let us look at the question of chasing these horrible gangs. We have to work with the security services and the police on the continent, but we have put obstacles to doing that in our way by the Brexit settlement we have negotiated. Will the Government re-examine that so that we can more effectively co-operate with security services in other countries?

Thirdly, on the speedier resolution of asylum claims, we have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on the borders question as a result of Brexit. Why are we not trying to ease the passage of goods at the borders and spending some of this money on speeding up asylum decisions?

Fourthly and finally, we must tackle the problem of refugees at the root. We have made what I regard as unacceptable cuts in our foreign aid budget, but if we are making cuts to it then the priority is to work even more with our partners and friends on trying to tackle the refugee problem at root. Are we doing that? No. Priti Patel is standing there shouting abuse at the French. How do the Government justify that as an approach to international co-operation in tackling the refugee crisis? Lying behind this is the fact that the Government know that their claim that they would be able to stop immigration as a result of Brexit is false. When will they admit it?

EU Bilateral Agreements for Asylum Seekers

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Liddle]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in negotiating bilateral agreements with European Union member states for the return of asylum seekers arriving in the United Kingdom.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, we are in discussions with a number of EU member states and other third countries to reach bilateral arrangements for the return of asylum seekers and intend to open further talks with others. The political declaration agreed by the UK and the EU alongside the TCA noted the importance of this issue and our intention to engage bilaterally with member states on such arrangements. These take time and it would be inappropriate to disclose the nature of those talks.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her Answer, but is not the answer that very little progress has actually been made? It would be nice if she acknowledged the fact that it is because of Brexit that we have lost the right to return asylum seekers who could have claimed asylum in other EU countries. More to the point, without these agreements, does it not make the Government’s plan to legislate to make all unauthorised arrivals on UK shores illegal not only unjust and possibly in breach of our international legal obligations but completely unsustainable?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I say to the noble Lord’s final point that everything we are doing complies with all our international obligations, including the refugee convention. I see the noble Lord shaking his head, so let me underline that this allows for differentiated treatment where a refugee has now come to the UK directly from a country of persecution and did not

“present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.”

That is from Article 31.

Immigration Rules: Statements of Changes

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with a substantial amount in the speeches that have preceded me, and I agree wholly with the process objections to the way these statutory instruments are being handled. I think there is merit in trying to stimulate the wider debate about what the Government’s immigration policy actually is, which the noble Lords, Lord Horam and Lord Hodgson, have both launched into.

I was a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee at the time we considered these instruments, and our very able officials who looked at these huge documents complained that even the Explanatory Memo on the first of the instruments—the 507-page one—

“was not clearer on the policy aims of these changes and what the impact will be.”

On the second of the instruments, they complained about

“insufficient information to gain a clear understanding”

of what the Government were trying to do. So, we look forward greatly to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, so she can elucidate what this is all about.

If I could just make a political remark about Brexit, the whole debate on immigration was about taking back control. It is clearly not control by the British Parliament, is it? Surely, the Minister must recognise that. It is hardly, I suspect, taking back control to Ministers, because I doubt many of them will have gone through these 500-page statutory instruments in great detail. All we are talking about is Home Office officials trying to interpret what Ministers want in these statutory instruments. I suspect that the record of the Home Office, in the way that it has mishandled other questions, will prove to be repeated in this instance.

On the substance of the issue, clearly, the referendum was won on the basis of cutting back EU immigration. All the time, however, non-EU immigration was always higher than EU immigration, yet it was completely neglected in the public debate. Where are we going on non-EU immigration now? There is clearly something of a circular effect on EU immigration, as people who came here for economic reasons are going back, at least to some extent, because prospects are not so good as they once were.

However, what is going on regarding non-EU immigration? Is what the noble Lord, Lord Green, says true, which is essentially that immigration is being opened up to people with level-3 qualifications from all over the world? We deserve an answer from the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. If that is the case, it is a huge change of policy that ought to be debated fully in hours-long debates in Parliament because it is the kind of issue that the public are concerned about. I believe in immigration, and I am quite liberal on immigration questions. In a diverse country, we win more from it than we lose. However, one has to have immigration control. One cannot just be open to the world. The question is: what numbers are the Government contemplating? Will they give us an answer on that?

A criticism of the Home Secretary is that she likes to pretend that she is pursuing a tough immigration policy. One gets all this stuff about how people who arrive here claiming asylum who have not come by a legal route are going to be sent back. It is not clear, of course, whether any country is prepared to take them back and I very much doubt whether any European countries through which the asylum seekers have travelled would be prepared to do so. There is a lot of bluster about the toughness of the Government’s new asylum policy, but is it a cover-up for the fact that, actually, our borders are being opened up in a totally unprecedented way to non-EU citizens? The British people deserve an answer to that question.

Covid-19: UK Border Health Measures

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Yes, my Lords, the Government are led by the science. It is up to SAGE if it wants to publish papers but it is absolutely not compelled to do so. It has published its minutes up to 1 May. As I said before, SAGE advises the Government and it is up to the Government to make decisions based on that advice.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I would like to follow up on the penetrating questions asked by the noble Lords, Lord Taylor of Holbeach and Lord Lansley. Surely it must be the case, and surely this is the logic of the scientific advice, that whether you need quarantine when you arrive from a particular country depends on the rate of infection in that country. If countries have very low rates of infection, why on earth are we worrying about arrivals from those countries? Should the principle of differentiation between countries according to their rates of infection not be a fundamental part of this policy if it is to be continued at all?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, that is why the UK is engaging with different countries and airlines on all sorts of considerations while it considers what the next stage of this process will be. The Government are very keen to review this as soon as we possibly can within the next three weeks, and then the next stages of decision-making will be stated.

High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 14th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Mair, on a maiden speech of great distinction and quality. I am sure that he is going to add a lot to this House. I also congratulate the noble Lords on both Front Benches on their robust opening speeches. I am a strong supporter of this project, although not without reservations, and I thought that they both put their case very well.

I suppose I ought to declare a personal interest as a very regular user of the west coast main line, travelling up and down to Carlisle virtually every weekend. I am grateful for the modernisation of the line which took place about a decade ago because the journey now takes three hours and 20 minutes. When I first made the journey as a little boy about 63 years ago, I think that it took six hours and 40 minutes—so we have seen progress. But in the 1950s and 1960s when I was growing up in Carlisle, progress was thought to be the motorway. Well, the last time I tried to drive up to my home in Cumbria during the day, it took me 10 hours. In the old slogan of the 1980s, we do truly live in the age of the train—and therefore this project seems to be the right one.

I will concentrate my remarks on how the project relates to something else that I am concerned about, which is the rebalancing of the British economy and the northern powerhouse agenda. Connectivity in this rebalancing exercise is extremely important. We have a generation of new entrepreneurs in Cumbria, but often their clients and businesses are located outside the county. They need rapid connections if they are going to base their activities up north. I am the Pro Chancellor of Lancaster University, and a lot of our research depends on partnerships with other institutions and interaction with people in universities elsewhere—so, again, connectivity is of great importance. Of course, if we are to benefit from tourism to the Lake District and Hadrian’s Wall, again connectivity is of great importance. Speed does matter, and that is why we need to continue to improve the quality of the railways.

What I am rather put off by is the idea that a cheaper and better way to improve the quality would be more of the kind of piecemeal improvements to the west coast main line that we had to go through a decade or so ago. I used to enjoy some lovely trips on the Carlisle to Settle railway when we were diverted from the main line, but I have some rather less happy memories of windy Sunday afternoons on Newcastle Central station waiting to use the east coast main line. I have no great enthusiasm for this concept of piecemeal improvements. It seems to me that HS2 is on the right track in that respect. Transport can make a vital contribution to the rebalancing of the economy.

One thing that worries me about this project is whether it will actually happen or whether the Treasury will take fright half way through. It is a concern that this is the London to West Midlands Bill, not the London to Manchester and Leeds Bill. In terms of rebalancing the economy, there is no doubt that the high-speed line will contribute greatly to integrating Birmingham and the West Midlands into the booming London and south-east economy. But if that was all that happened, it would have a very adverse effect on the north. In fact, it would be a case where half a loaf was worse than nothing. We must fight very hard to prevent that.

There is also a big question as to whether HS2 will be accompanied by the investments we need to improve the transport system in the north, particularly in east-west communications. Of course, the obvious east-west communication is HS3 and that can easily be linked into HS2, as other Members have pointed out. Further north, in my part of the world, the Carlisle to Newcastle railway was built in the 1830s—and when you go on it, it still feels like it. The Cumbrian Coast Line is a disgrace when it should be a tremendous attraction and a way of linking west Cumbria and Sellafield to Carlisle, with regular fast connections to London. It should be a tourist route with the highest potential.

So there is a lot of work for the new Rail North to do, and a lot of investment is needed if the full benefits of HS2 are to be realised. I suspect that the problem is that we need to change our strategy as a country. We need to develop a national strategy in favour of much larger public investment than we have seen in the past two decades. If we are limited to the total level of public investment that we have now, it is very unlikely that the money we need to create a real northern powerhouse will be forthcoming; Crossrail 2 is likely to take higher priority. We must get the public finances right and our expenditure and income into balance so that we can spend the money on investment, which is truly important.

My third and final point is a very parochial one. It concerns what is now being said about how the benefits of this scheme will cross the north. I was rather appalled, when I looked at the forecasting of the economic benefits of HS2, to see from the service model of what would flow from the thing when it is fully introduced, that there would be one HS2 fast train to Glasgow an hour that would stop at Preston and then would not stop again until it got to Glasgow. That seemed to me to be pretty appalling for the far north-west of England. I know that this is only a kind of planning assumption; it is not a timetable. But it is very important, rather as the noble Lord, Lord Birt, said, that we have to find a way of connecting Liverpool into the HS2 plan. It would be absurd for the fastest trains not to make a stop in the far north-west at Carlisle. In the 19th century, it was such a railway junction and such a transport centre for the Scottish border northern region that seven railway companies operated out of the station.

These are my concerns. Will it ever go beyond the West Midlands? Will investment be available for the improvement of the rest of the transport in the north, and will the benefits be spread across the whole of the north? I think that they should be. Hesitation on these matters has been a national disease, as the noble Lord, Lord Mair, said. We have to be decisive here and I fully support the Bill.

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.

EU Drugs Strategy: EUC Report

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, this is another admirable report from our European Union Select Committee. I would like to praise the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for his very forceful introduction, with which I think from this side of the House we wholly agree. I also thank the Home Office for a very detailed response to the committee’s report. We do not always get that but this was an example of a department doing its job properly.

Most noble Lords in this debate have focused on drugs policy generally. We have had a lot of excellent expert contributions. As someone who is not an expert in this field, I have learnt an awful lot. This is the sort of debate that the House of Lords should have where, I hope, we can contribute to more intelligent public debate on these issues. In my brief remarks, I shall focus on the role of the European Union in drugs policy and the Government’s view of what that role should be. It strikes me that this is an entirely proper question to ask when, last week, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, William Hague, launched a review of the balance of competences between Britain and the European Union.

I suppose that there is general agreement that one good thing about the EU is that it is a laboratory for policy experiment. While I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, that there are major cultural differences between the member states, there are also a lot of socio-economic similarities. We are all post-industrial societies. Europe is quite unlike the United States, in that trends towards social liberalism, secularism and individualism are very much the social trend in Europe. Some of the problems that lead to drug use are very common across our societies, such as the polarisation of skills that lead to a lack of prospects for young people, which is where some of the most tragic instances of drug use arise.

There is a role for comparing national policies and practices as a contribution to evidence-based policy, but in order to do this properly the role of an agency, such as the highly praised EMCDDA, is very important. Therefore, the first question I ask the Minister is to seek an assurance that the Government will continue to support the work of this agency and that Britain backs its continued existence, and will support it in future budget negotiations.

More than that, there is an EU competence in this area. One would hope that the Government would endorse that. A lot of people think of Europe as simply a free trade area or a common market, but of course one of the features of a common market with its free movement is that a lot of things cross borders that we do not necessarily like. Drugs are the classic example. It is a very proper issue for a union that is about promoting free movement also to be about trying to deal with some of the adverse consequences of free movement, of which drugs, cross-border criminality and drug trafficking are good examples.

Most of the member states of the EU have accepted that logic. It is a logic that is not driven by some mystical dream of a federalist project, but by the facts of life, and the need for co-operation to tackle these problems. During my time as an adviser in Government, I always thought of the Home Office as one of the most sovereigntist of the Government departments in terms of clinging on to national sovereignty. It is interesting that its response to the report shows an acceptance of the need for an EU role which is welcome.

The justice and home affairs agenda has grown enormously. In 1992 it was simply a question of intergovernmental co-operation and a separate pillar. All member states agreed at the time of the Lisbon treaty that it should be properly brought into the community system of decision-making. Do the Government agree that there is a proper role for the EU in drugs policy? Will that be one of the outcomes of the review of its competences? When we are thinking about the balance of competences, it is not a question of whether they are for the nation state or for Europe. In most cases, as in this case, the primary responsibility will rest with the nation state, but there is a useful and important European Union supporting role. I should therefore like the Minister to confirm that he agrees that the European Union adds value in this area, and that this is not an area where the Government would seek to repatriate powers, if indeed they are seeking to repatriate powers at all. The question is not one of competence but of whether powers are exercised in conformity with the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality.

Will the Government, in response, endorse their support for institutions such as Europol? Will they agree that there is a possible role for minimum legislative standards? I see that the Home Office response offers a pragmatic judgment on that, which is that it depends on whether or not they work. Will the Government support that view? What is the Government’s position on measures to deal with the proceeds of drug trafficking and to deal more firmly with money laundering?

Today is possibly an important day in the history of Britain’s troubled relationships with the European Union because, when we woke up this morning to read our Daily Telegraph, we saw in that newspaper the important statement by the Prime Minister that he, “would never”—I repeat, “never”—

“campaign for an ‘out’ vote in a referendum”.

Do the Government agree that the EU’s role in helping to tackle cross-border crime and drug trafficking is one of those modern cases for the European Union in the 21st century that this Government wholly endorse?