EU: Personal Data

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords, the Minister has made a handsome apology and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wills, that that should be an end to this. My noble friend does not suggest that the process has been well conducted or that it will happen again. It is not helpful for noble Lords to accuse the Government of bad faith or dishonesty, as the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, has. That is unworthy of him and of this debate.

To complete the chronology of what happened, as we know, the Commission published its proposals on 25 January. Very quickly, on 7 February, the Ministry of Justice called for evidence by 6 March. On 14 March, a report was published by the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee, which analyses this matter in depth on pages 42 to 63. There was then a debate on 24 April, which was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. What he did not say is that in the vote on whether to take note, those who agreed with him were defeated by 267 to 24. No one can say that what happened in the other place was in any sense an absence of parliamentary scrutiny. I have had the privilege of serving on the EU Sub-Committee on Justice and Institutions three or four times during my time in this House. I take great pride in the fact that scrutiny is conducted better in our Parliament than in any other throughout the European Union.

I have listened very carefully to the Minister and read—as has the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, apparently—the Government’s explanation in the other place of why they took the course that they did. In his speech, the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, did not reply at all to any of the arguments that were put forward in the other place and here on the Government’s course of conduct. In the other place, the Minister, Mr Blunt, said that there were three main reasons for deciding not to opt out. The first was that,

“the directive is at a very early stage of negotiation”.

The second was that,

“the legal base of the measure gives the UK an effective exemption on the issue about which we are most concerned: internal processing of data”.

He went on to say:

“Thirdly, and most important, exercising the opt-out would endanger our continued ability to share information across borders without necessarily freeing us from the bureaucratic and unwelcome obligations potentially created by the new directive”.

He continued:

“If we were outside the directive, our ability to negotiate essential data-sharing agreements”—

of which there are many examples—

“could be significantly undermined”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/4/12; cols. 886-87.]

The Minister in the other place said:

“Let us be clear about what is at stake here. Rules enabling the sharing of data have made a tangible difference to the United Kingdom, and we take steps that imperil them at our risk and at risk to our citizens. Let me give an example, which concerned a 32-year-old Romanian national who was arrested in the United Kingdom on suspicion of raping two women within the Metropolitan area. A request for conviction data identified that the suspect had a previous conviction for rape in Romania. Just prior to the trial, the individual disputed the Romanian conviction, but through close liaison with the central authority and the police liaison officer at the Romanian embassy in London, a set of fingerprints relating to the Romanian rape conviction was obtained and proved the conviction beyond doubt when they matched against the suspect.

An application to use the previous conviction as bad character evidence was made by the prosecuting counsel and was granted by the judge, allowing the Romanian rape conviction to be put before the jury. The defendant was convicted of four counts of rape and other offences … in July 2010. The defendant was given an indeterminate prison sentence, with a recommendation that he serve at least 11 years in jail”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/4/12; col. 888.]

And so it goes on.

What the Minister explained in the other place was that the information was obtained exactly under the regime which the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, regards as an encroachment on our criminal law and our domestic legal system. To the contrary, the ability across frontiers to share data of this kind is entirely in the interests of protecting our citizens against crime and their public safety.

As regards the other interests at stake—

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

The noble Lord of course is right that I think what he has just said. But far superior to that is the continuing cession of our sovereignty and the supremacy of our courts to the European courts and the Commission. That is the overriding objection that I have. I have read the debate in the Commons and I cannot believe that the Romanian could not have been convicted under similar arrangements without the continuing cession of our sovereignty.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

I do not think that your Lordships would need a full debate on the value of the two European courts in protecting the rights and freedoms of our citizens. But, as I was about to say, the other rights and interests at stake are those of personal privacy, freedom of expression, protecting the security of the state, protecting us against crime and, in one aspect of what we have before us, ethnic profiling data-taking being prohibitive but with a necessary exception for equality where it becomes necessary in the interests of equality to do so. All those rights and freedoms, which are also part of our domestic law, are protected not only by our own courts but by both European courts. If a European bureaucracy or a European piece of legislation violates our basic rights and freedoms, the Luxembourg Court and the Strasbourg Court have the capacity, and they exercise it, to protect us against the abuse of power by European institutions. That is why the dislike of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, of supranational or European jurisdictions is entirely misconceived. We need cross-border legislation and measures but we also need safeguards, which we get from those two European courts.

I therefore warmly welcome the pragmatic and careful approach taken by the Government over these measures. I very much hope that we will continue in exactly this direction.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

Will the noble Lord tell us whether these protections which we enjoy from the European Union apply to British subjects extradited under the European arrest warrant? Is he happy with the way in which that initiative has developed?

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

The Joint Committee on Human Rights on which I serve has expressed some concerns, as has one of our members, Dominic Raab QC MP. I share some of those concerns but I do not think that this is an occasion for us to debate whether we think all European measures might be improved.

EU: Personal Data

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke to my Motion. I have two or three brief comments. First, the noble Lord, Lord Lester, opined that the procedure in the House of Commons on this matter was adequate. All I can say is that I have read Hansard as I am sure he has, and that was clearly not the opinion of the chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, Bill Cash.

A number of noble Lords have said that—

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

I am not clear about the attitude of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, to parliamentary sovereignty. The other House, the elected Chamber, has voted overwhelmingly in the Government's favour. Why is that not more significant than the view of Mr Cash as chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee?

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

I accept that the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly to opt into this measure, but it was the scrutiny procedure that came under discussion in the House of Commons. Who knows? Perhaps if the scrutiny procedure had been adequate, the result might have been slightly different. Of course I agree that the House of Commons was always going to vote this sort of thing through. That is one of the troubles with our democracy.

A number of noble Lords said that we might as well sign up to all this because if we did not have it we would have to have alternative arrangements. It would all be very complicated and there will be more administration and so forth. I am indebted to a thought on this point from the Open Europe think tank, which is a mildly Eurosceptic organisation. It makes this point, which is important because the noble Lord, Lord Wills, and many noble Lords mentioned it in our debate:

“There are various international agreements in place outside the EU’s legal framework, mostly Council of Europe conventions, including one on extradition, which the UK could continue to use should it cease to apply EU crime and policing law post-2014. Although they do not cover all areas, and are often more cumbersome than the EU measures, the fact that the UK has a fall-back option means there is no need to ‘rush … ’”,

to opt in.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Lester of Herne Hill

Tuesday 5th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

Another example is that, in the protocol to the treaty of Lisbon, there is a provision giving power to national parliaments to be able to refer to the Luxembourg court issues where the national parliament considers that the principle of proportionality is being breached by legislative proposals emanating from Brussels. That is an example of where the treaty of Lisbon enhances the powers of national parliaments.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, the noble and Europhile Lords are struggling to find examples.