Brexit: UK-EU Security (EUC Report)
Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Maclennan of Rogart (LD)
My Lords, this is a very important report and the way the noble Baroness introduced it today was helpful and clarified the detail. We need to implement this absolutely excellent report. When will the negotiations start? If we have a hard-Brexit response from the members of the European Union it might be difficult to promote the detail of this report. This might be done in the lead-up to Brexit and we should accept the recommendations of the committee chaired by the noble Baroness.
The options available to the Government are, to some extent, contrary to what they have said. They have said that they want to legislate in Westminster, in place of the European Union. However, I think that the law enforcement agencies would like to see the current arrangements maintained. The evidence which the committee took was overwhelmingly in favour of the status quo. There is a mutual interest across Europe in ensuring that the safety of citizens is secured when the UK leaves the European Union. We would be wise to open discussions before we get into Article 50 and the arrangements for exiting the European Union.
The European Union institutions should be accessible to the United Kingdom to enable it to secure close co-operation with the police and law enforcement in the other 27 member states. Europol is a very strong organisation. Data show that Europol’s response is much quicker than that under the previous arrangements. Given the existence of Eurojust, the Schengen information system, the European arrest warrant and extradition agreements, there would be no quick fix if we went back to the 1957 arrangements. The European arrest warrant has resulted in quicker extradition arrangements. The oversight and adjudication of the European Court of Justice should be accepted in these cases. However, that does not mean that the other measures of the European Court of Justice need to be accepted. British influence has helped develop policies in this area. We will lose out if the European Union develops policies with no contribution from Britain. When the United Kingdom leaves the European Union, it will also leave the 35 pre-Lisbon treaty police and criminal justice measures that the Prime Minister described as vital when she was Home Secretary. I hope she will recognise that these 35 pre-Lisbon treaty police and criminal justice measures will require to be saved.
Bill Hughes, the former Director-General of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, warned that,
“the UK is seen as a major and leading partner”,
in the development of security. That seems to be worthy of maintenance. To bring back control of the laws to Westminster would change what Bill Hughes put forward as worthy of continuing. It is incompatible to maintain the current access to law enforcement intelligence held in Europol if we do not accept the need to belong. Accountability now is to the European Commission, the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Parliament. These issues should be accepted by the nation.
On data sharing, the Schengen information system contains information that 35,000 people are wanted under a European arrest warrant. Each of the police and criminal justice measures that the UK rejoined in December 2014 are worthy of being maintained now. Extraditions these days under the European arrest warrant take days rather than months or years. The arrangements suggested by the committee are worthy of implementation, and before the Brexit negotiations occur.
Drugs Policy
Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Maclennan of Rogart (LD)
My Lords, I support the case of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for legalising cannabis. It is a drug that helps and does not seem to harm. She has made the case very strongly. I note that the British Medical Journal has also called for the legalisation of illicit drugs. It is a source of expertise and is evidence that drugs can be helpful to those needing pain killers and could help stop illegalities. The international trade in drugs is colossal, particularly for heroin and cocaine. The current ubiquity of drugs in this country is a function of their illegal status.
I wish to draw attention to what is happening in Glasgow, where it is proposed that fixed rooms should be set up to enable people to inject under supervision, particularly heroin and morphine. Drug-related deaths in Glasgow so far this year amount to 345—quadruple the number of decades ago.
The nature of drug addiction is causing the international trade in drugs to be colossal. The ubiquity of drugs and the corruption and violence which illegality confers should be eliminated from society. The illegality of drug addiction spreads infection, and injecting equipment left in public areas is dangerous. They should be legalised.
Max Rendall wrote a book in 2011 called Legalize: The Only Way to Combat Drugs, in which he expresses the view that legalised drugs could be regulated and controlled. I wish to recommend this book to Ministers. The author is very knowledgeable about the problems in this area.
I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for bringing forward this debate.
EU: Justice and Home Affairs (EUC Report)
Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Maclennan of Rogart (LD)
My Lords, I ask the indulgence of the House to speak in the gap. This is a very well timed report; it is extremely thorough; and the response of the Government has been for the most part positive. Coming as it does before the Council meeting to consider the first full application of Article 68 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, it could not have been better timed.
It seems to me that there are a number of important elements in this report which I am glad to note that the Government have broadly adopted. It is generally considered that the Stockholm programme was too detailed and too large to be implemented entirely in the five-year gap, but it has given some guidelines to what is now required. The new guidelines were needed since the Stockholm programme expires in December 2014. A number of the objectives were time-bound. I think also that it is right to recognise that the work that is being done in justice and home affairs by national Governments and the Commission in bringing forward legislation does need to be considered carefully, evaluated and to be evidence-based—a view that was expressed by the committee itself.
I am interested to see that the Government adopt the view of the committee that,
“transposition of existing legislation by all Member States”,
is necessary to enable full co-operation and full equality of approach to the growing problems of crime. It is also encouraging to hear them state:
“Without full and consistent implementation businesses, Governments and citizens cannot be confident that legislation that applies in one Member State will apply in the same way in another”.
That seems to be very much the essence of collaboration in dealing with the growing problems of international crime. It is highly sensible that that view has been taken.
The timetable for review expressed by the Council is encouraging for the evaluation and effective implementation of the measures proposed. As to the scoreboard, I agree with the chairman of the committee, the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, in suggesting that, to make sure that the work is done by other countries, it would be sensible to have such annual scoreboards.
The Government state in respect of drugs that they must operate within the budget, the MFF. I have to ask whether the budget is adequate for that purpose, because the drug problem is growing and spreading.
Immigration Bill
Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Maclennan of Rogart (LD)
My Lords, I wish to support the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, by recalling two anecdotes. He very forcefully and persuasively deployed the arguments about students from abroad, external to the European Union, coming to this country. One anecdote is about when I visited Tanzania with the late George Thomson and met Julius Nyerere. He had studied in a university in Britain and had translated Shakespeare’s plays into Swahili. The ties with Tanzania were greatly fostered by that personal encounter at a particularly difficult time when we faced apartheid in South Africa.
The second anecdote relates to a visit I paid to Hong Kong some years later when I met the director of development and housing, who had also been to a British university. When I inquired about who were the construction engineers developing various important developments in Hong Kong, virtually every single one of them was British. I think that reflects the truth of the general principle that we should encourage people from overseas to come to this country as students not only because of the money they pump into our education system, but also because of the long-standing ties that they foster when they go back to their own countries.
Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)
My Lords, I support the first amendment in this group, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for the following reasons. Each Bill introduced into Parliament has an impact assessment. I have considered the methodology of the impact assessment for this Bill. It refers to costs and benefits, but I think there is a fallacy built into the methodology. The section on employment and monetised benefits states:
“There may be additional employment opportunities for UK residents”.
This must be based on an extraordinarily narrow focus, even if it is not economic sense, to say that employment opportunities will be opened up for UK residents. It sounds like a bit of UKIP propaganda to me; I cannot see how the rationale for it works.
Why is this important? It is important because it is a long way from the sort of impact assessment to which the noble Lord, Lord Hannay and others, including the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, have alluded. If, for example, we were to see a catastrophic fall in the subcontinent, are we seriously suggesting that the impact assessment on UK plc national income over the next generation would be zero? Of course it would not be zero; it would be negative. It is unacceptable that the impact assessment can be framed as narrowly as this.
In this regard, I ask the Minister to do two things. One is to revisit the impact assessment and to at least have a go at the wider context. The analogy that crosses my mind is that 10 or 15 years ago we could have said that we did not need to spend any money on Heathrow Airport because aeroplanes could land there and if there were a few more in the next year that would be fine, failing to see that our market share in Europe, compared with Charles de Gaulle, Frankfurt and Schiphol, would now be in a state of crisis, unable to serve all the places in China, for example, that can be served by these other airports.
Secondly, I ask the Minister to do a survey, and to put it in the Library, of the situation in other EU countries. We are talking about a distinct group, non-EU students coming into the EU, and although we control our own borders, at least to some extent—obviously not with the EU—we are not covered by a common external immigration policy. I am not suggesting that we should be. I am suggesting that we do a benchmark study. Australia, the United States and possibly Canada are the only countries that have been mentioned so far: the “white Commonwealth”, as it was once called. However, it is important to know what the practice is on this question of students in the other EU countries. Do they have to deal with the fearful rigmarole that we are confronted with here? Is the damage to Britain’s reputation part of the cost-benefit analysis? Of course it is not. I have great sympathy for the civil servants trying to do these cost-benefit analyses in so many fields nowadays. With HS2, can you actually look at the cluster effect on Manchester and Leeds and so on in the north of England? Possibly not, because it is very hard to do. It is very hard to quantify the cost benefits for that, and civil servants would get no extra brownie points for introducing, alongside key monetised benefits, things where it is difficult to monetise their value.
In conclusion, will the Minister agree with me, and with the spirit of what has been said by many noble Lords, that one cannot look at an impact assessment in the narrow terms on this rather thin piece of paper that I have here, which it is probably obligatory on Whitehall to use? Will he agree to look into the two matters that I have specifically asked about? This involves our world market share in so many areas, and that concerns the future of our country. Some might say that this is missing the point and that the point is to reduce the number of overseas students. I ask the Minister if it is outrageous to suggest that the policy is to reduce the number of overseas students, the rationale being that statistically they pose more potential danger to the country. We must spell this out. Before Report, there is scope for these matters to be teased out a lot more than they have been so far.
EU: Police and Criminal Justice Measures
Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Maclennan of Rogart
Before my noble friend sits down, will he give us a categorical assurance that the opt-out will not result in a referendum or referenda having to be held in respect of what the nation has to opt back into? It appears that the opt-out moves responsibility and competences back to this country, whereas the opt-in would move them to the European Union and it might fall foul of the Government’s own Act.
Lord McNally
My Lords, that is hypothetical and we could spend the rest of the night on it. I have made a very clear statement of government policy, and it does no service to the House at all for hypotheticals such as that to be thrown across.
Crime and Courts Bill [HL]
Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, we set out in Committee the reasons for Clause 27. It demonstrates a current anomaly in legislation that allows high-harm individuals to return here to appeal the decision to cancel leave, despite being excluded from the United Kingdom by the Secretary of State.
Exclusion from the United Kingdom is a key tool in tackling those who seek to cause harm to the United Kingdom. Exclusion is used to tackle a range of conduct including terrorist-related activity, serious criminality and engagement in unacceptable behaviours. The exclusion power is used sparingly and is reserved for those who are considered to be the highest-harm cases. It is therefore crucial that once the Secretary of State makes such a decision, it is given full and immediate effect. It should not be undermined by a separate immigration decision, taken only to give effect to the exclusion, and the accompanying rights of appeal.
Of course any such decision by the Secretary of State should be open to challenge and review by the courts. No one is denying that. However, the Government believe that, given the nature of these cases, it is wholly reasonable that judicial scrutiny of the facts should be carried out while the individual remains outside the United Kingdom. When noble Lords consider the type of conduct that has led to these decisions by the Secretary of State, it seems to be an entirely reasonable and proportionate proposition.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
The point has already been made in this debate that if such an appeal is made, the appellant is put at a very grave disadvantage as a result of difficulty in communicating with counsel and in speaking to witnesses who may have something to say that is relevant. The rule of law cannot be properly discharged if the Minister cannot find more support for the absence of the appellant.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I tend to disagree with the noble Lord. I cannot see why it should be possible to allow somebody whom the Secretary of State for the Home Department has decided to exclude to return to this country purely to pursue an appeal against that decision. I do not accept that that is reasonable and that is why we have included this clause in the Bill.
EU Drugs Strategy: EUC Report
Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Maclennan of Rogart
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for introducing this debate. Reports from his sub-committee of the European Union Committee have demonstrated a move in a positive direction. The debate which the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, has indicated is lacking in this country needs to be accelerated and made more audible. Illegal drug trafficking is the biggest trade in the world. The harm it does is scarcely measurable because the victims do not always come forward to indicate what has happened to them.
The report appears to make some very powerful points and, to some extent, I am a novice in this area. It is novel but highly welcome that the report, at paragraph 97, supports,
“the exploration of alternatives to … new psychoactive substances, such as placing them within regulated markets similar to those that already exist for alcohol and tobacco, which attempt to control use through education and treatment rather than criminalisation”.
The report is also helpful in displaying the evidence which was given by some of the most authoritative voices about this subject, such as that of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in its 2010 report, From Coercion to Cohesion. Its executive director, Mr Costa, said:
“Moving from a sanction-oriented approach to a health-oriented one is consistent with the international drug control conventions”.
That seems to me to be a lesson that this country needs to learn.
I very much hope that this committee’s report will constitute a prelude to a discussion about the treatment of drug addicts in this country. Although we wholly understand the view of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and the committee that this was not part of their mandate to consider, none the less, when we get into discussion within the European Union about what the shape of that European policy should be, we will certainly be listened to if we are seen to be open to the arguments being deployed by those who are most knowledgeable and are sensitive to the possibilities of development of this policy in our own country.
It seems that the cost of drug addiction is not properly understood by the public in terms of the scale of its impact on our economy, although it is perhaps understood in terms of its impact on individuals. I found the economic analysis of costs and consequence of treatment of drug misuse from a National Treatment Outcome Research Study very telling. It reported that illegal drug taking requires a workforce of 5,000 customs officers and 18,000 police officers. More startling, it states that the victim costs of drug-related crime were £9.7 billion annually. That paper was produced by Messrs Godfrey, Stewart and Gossop.
I have also found extremely compelling the arguments deployed by a very personally involved practitioner of drug treatment, Mr Max Rendall. He wrote a book, published in the autumn of last year, entitled Legalize: The Only Way to Combat Drugs. The book is very well researched and forcefully makes the case for diminishing the attitude that drug abusers are criminals and strengthening the concept that they should be regarded rather as patients. That is also the message that comes out of the report of the sub-committee.
The presumption I make in intervening in this debate is that this is a subject for non-experts as well as experts, because the problem is of such a massive cost to our country that we have to get across the need to deal with it. I am happy that in the Government’s response to this paper the Minister included a reply that the Government wish to combine their legislative approach with drug demand reduction, supply restriction and recovery-focused treatment approaches, to address the complex issues that harmful drug use poses. It has to be recognised—and it was by the report—that there has been no appreciable decline in demand flowing from the EU drug strategy of the past seven years. We must address that deficiency. The Government can make a significant impact on public opinion in this country and should look again at the possibility of legalising the taking of drugs. That will enable regulation to be much more effective than it can be in the present situation.
Identity Documents Bill
Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Lord Sewel
I briefly follow my noble friend Lord Howarth on the substantive issue of the Commons reason. This is a sensitive issue and there are clear conventions that we should not in this House criticise the proceedings of another place—and I would not dream of doing so. However, I wonder whether I can take Members of this House back to another period of Conservative government. I recognise that a declining number of Members of this House were in here at the time of the last Conservative Government. Those of us who were used to delight in the tussles between my noble friend Lady Hollis and my friend but, alas, noble opponent at the time, Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish, on pensions legislation. Frequently, Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish had to make concessions and was sometimes defeated. The effect of those concessions and defeats was that this House increased government expenditure. That Conservative Government never cried financial privilege.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
My Lords, before the House reaches a judgment on the Commons reason, there ought to be absolute clarity about the intention of the House of Commons. It is far from clear in the reasons that have been provided that it is the intention of the House of Commons to claim financial privilege. A single reason is given and that is that the amendment that we are considering, which was carried in this place, would impose a charge on the public revenue. In opening the debate, my noble friend explained that as the Government giving priority consideration to the taxpayer over those who have paid for their identity cards. That does not sound like the invocation of the right of the House of Commons in respect of financial privilege. Without some greater authority indicating that that was the Government’s intention, there seems no bar to this House paying serious consideration to the law officers’ views on the legality of what is proposed under the terms of the human rights convention. I hope that the House will not be forced to take a decision without those views being made abundantly clear and without absolute clarity about the intentions of the Commons in bringing forward this sole reason for their disagreement. To my mind it is far from clear. We will establish a bad precedent if we determine that claims can be made lightly, not by the Commons themselves, that their privilege in this respect has been breached.
Lord Maxton
I shall be brief, although I thought that the actions of the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, were provocative, to say the least, forcing some of us to make longer speeches than we would have done otherwise.
On the relationship between ourselves and the House of Commons, the important question was asked why we were allowed to vote on the amendment in the first place if, in fact, it was not legally our right to do so. If we voted for it and it went back to the Commons, surely we should be allowed to look at it again and vote on it again if we so wish.
I am one of very few people in the House who came out publicly in support of the ID card and opposed this piece of legislation. I think that we will come back to the issue. I listened to some of the debates last night on the register and the census and that sort of thing and I thought to myself that, if we all had ID cards, it would all be irrelevant and we would not need to go through that process. I am still not at all clear in my own mind as to what the standing is of the ID cards that have been issued. The Government are claiming that the cards are their property, so surely they should ensure that every one of them is returned to them. They should not be leaving that in the hands of private individuals; it is up to the Government to say that the cost of claiming back all the ID cards would be as much as paying compensation to those who have them.
The other point is one that I have consistently raised. Can someone actually use the ID card—perhaps in an exchange between two people, such as a barman or pub owner and a young person? The youngster might say, “I’ve got an ID card”, and show it to the barman, and the barman could say as a result, “That’s fine, I accept you’re over 18”. Is it legal for that person to do that? If the card belongs to the Government, surely the person has no right to use it in that way. Can we get an answer to that question from the Minister? We seem to be in limbo on it. I do not quite know what the standing is of the ID cards held by individuals if they are not being compensated for them in any way whatever.
Controlling Migration
Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, it is historically well based to assert that migration has been extraordinarily beneficial to this country. We have had immense advantage out of being an open society. The noble Lord asks whether we could be behaving in ways that disadvantage countries that need to retain their own talent. That is a perfectly fair point that goes to the core of successful development policies—because we do not have successful development in developing countries in the absence of the talent that they need to lead. That is one of the many reasons why we need to break the link between allowing or inviting people to come here and benefit from our education system and possibly taking subsequent employment without using this as a route to settle down here and leave their own countries, where they might benefit their own communities. I take the point absolutely. The policy that we are trying to pursue and that will draw some in—and we wish to see them here—is not designed to deprive countries permanently of their leadership talent.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart
My Lords, in the light of the Minister’s indication that there would be a limit of 1,000 people from scientific, academic and artistic communities and in view of the fact that this country has a high reputation in these fields, is it not a little unwise to announce an inflexible figure? Can she indicate how many people falling into that category have been applying for permits to come into the country? What consultation will she make in future to ensure that the number is sufficient to enable us to maintain our reputation in these fields?