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?