Justice and Home Affairs Opt-out

Debate between Pete Wishart and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Monday 7th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

In the House, one always “follows the hon. Gentleman”, which often highlights differing views. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) on this occasion. He and I have almost diametrically opposite views when it comes to issues such as this, but I enjoyed his speech nevertheless.

In her opening speech, the Home Secretary produced a list of countries, some of which were of great interest to me, for it is always fascinating to hear about our bilateral relationships with some of our friends in Europe; but she did not refer to one nation that is a bit closer to home. My nation, Scotland, did not receive a single mention. Indeed, not one of the devolved Parliaments and Assemblies was considered important enough for the Secretary of State to mention. It should never be forgotten that we have our own judicial system in Scotland, and that we are responsible for the delivery of justice and home affairs there.

I think it reasonable to say—and I will say it to the Home Secretary, who is still present—that this opt-out is not particularly popular in Scotland. What it has in fact managed to do is unite the Scottish Government, the whole of Scotland’s legal community, all the police enforcement agencies and all the civil rights institutions in opposition. There is probably no issue that has managed to unite all those different and divergent sectors in Scotland ever before. That is how unpopular this opt-out is in Scotland. The bottom line is that we overwhelmingly do not want this opt-out in Scotland and we remain very concerned for the security and safety of our citizens in Scotland if this opt-out is pursued. We are very much concerned about the cavalier attitude of this Government in opting out of this chapter and their hope that they can selectively just opt back into the important measures that help keep people in our respective nations safe. We do not share the Government’s Eurosceptic agenda that informs this political decision and we despair at the self-defeating nonsense of all of this.

Even though we do not want this, however, and even though it is overwhelmingly opposed, Scotland will get it. That is just the way it works. The UK Government decide what they will do on behalf of the rest of the nations and Assemblies in the UK and that is what will happen.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman does not seem to want any of these opt-outs, but is not the great argument for independence in the referendum in Scotland that it means Scotland will leave the EU and opt out of everything?

[Pete Wishart]

This is the difference between me and the hon. Gentleman: he wants to opt out of Europe and be a little Englander, all self-enclosed in a joyous new future he would propose for his nation, whereas we want to reach out—we want to share with the rest of our fellow citizens across Europe all the wonderful benefits of EU membership and EU entry. That is what we will secure in Scotland and thank goodness we will not be part of the rest of the United Kingdom, pulling in one direction under the UKIP-informed political orthodoxy that is starting to emerge here. We will do it in our own way and we will reflect our own particular political values when it comes to EU membership. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that topic.

We are going to get this measure in Scotland even though we feel it is not in the best interests of the communities we represent, but, as the hon. Gentleman alluded to, this will end soon when we have the referendum in September. No longer will we have our devolved responsibilities dictated by this Government. The Secretary of State will have seen the correspondence from the Scottish Ministers—the screeds of concerns, the evidence from the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee—but she will of course ignore them. That is what happens; we put forward our concerns and they are first ignored and then binned. This is what this Government still laughingly call the respect agenda.

Colleagues in the Scottish Government have stated repeatedly to UK Ministers the value we place on EU police and justice co-operation measures. We have pointed out that we have our own distinct legal system that needs to be dealt with differently, and we have our own processes of bringing serious criminals to justice and our own particular European partnerships for tackling growing levels of cross-border crime.

For us, the measures in the home affairs and justice chapter are extremely important. They are not something to barter in a game of Eurosceptic or Russian roulette with UKIP. They are measures that ensure that people accused of serious crimes are brought to justice quickly and efficiently. Unlike this Government, we very much support the sharing of information between police forces. We want to see improved joint investigations of cross-border crimes. We think it is a good thing to have better identification of people using false documents and the efficient transfer of criminals back to their own countries.

This has been done with no or little consultation. Scottish Ministers have repeatedly written to explain the possible implications of this decision on Scotland’s devolved justice system and to state clearly their very strong preference to remain fully opted into these measures, but the Government simply brought forward their intention to proceed with this opt-out without even a cursory discussion with the devolved institutions. That just is not good enough any more.

The lack of real discussion and the failure to listen to the devolved Administrations demonstrate this Government’s Eurosceptic arrogance at its worst. We all know why they are doing this. It is all because of the threat of UKIP at the polls, so they have got to be seen to be doing something—anything—about the big Brussels bogeyman.

It would be as well just to have Nigel Farage on the Front Bench trying to get this through. Of course UKIP has not got a Member in the House, but it pulls the strings in the House all the time, and this Government just respond by taking that agenda up. I do not know who will win the battle of the Eurosceptics, but it looks as though UKIP is going to win the battle of the European election polls in May. The point is that you cannot out-UKIP UKIP; they are the masters of Euroscepticism. This Government will never beat them in their race to the bottom to try and be harder on Europe and try to scare people out of Europe more and more. We do not do UKIP in Scotland—we barely do Tory; we have only one Tory Member of Parliament—yet we are going to be dragged into this Euro race to the bottom as the parties attempt to win Eurosceptic votes in the May elections.

The Government say that they are going to opt out of the home affairs chapter, only to opt back into the important stuff. The stuff that they will not opt back into is mostly dead and never used, as the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) said, but we could be put into a dangerous period of limbo—a gap during which the important stuff will not apply—that could diminish our security and safety. We have been forced to opt out of everything, including important measures for investigating cross-border crimes and bringing serious, organised criminals to justice.

Those measures include the European arrest warrant, which has been the focus of most of the debate today. Yes, the Government say that they will opt back into the European arrest warrant, but there will almost certainly be a lag period, and that is what concerns us the most. We know that there are those on the Tory Back Benches who do not like the European arrest warrant; we have heard from them today, and they remain disappointed that the Government will seek to opt back into the measure. For them, the warrant is a totem of EU badness—something that sums up Brussels, and must go—whereas to us, it is central to European justice and security, and to the safety of our communities. It has done a great deal to bring dangerous criminals to justice.

I suspect that opposition to the European arrest warrant is based on Euroscepticism, but our experience of it in Scotland is totally different. We have heard today of the example of Moira Jones. The European arrest warrant was instrumental in securing the conviction of her murderer, in that it allowed clothing and other property to be seized before it could be destroyed. That helped to lead to a successful prosecution. The speed with which extraditions take place is important, and long-drawn-out processes can be avoided only by using the warrant. We have none of the issues with the warrant that have been mentioned by other hon. Members. It has been particularly successful in Scotland, and it is something that all our law enforcement agencies welcome.

I shall give the House another example of how the European arrest warrant is working for us in Scotland. In January 2012, Grzegorz Gamla committed a violent attack and murder in Edinburgh. He was arrested within five hours of the issuing of the arrest warrant. That was achieved through the European arrest warrant system, but it was also facilitated by direct contact between Scottish prosecutors and the authorities in Poland under the European judicial network, which the Government say that they will not opt back into. Those two cases show how the ability to act incredibly swiftly using the arrest warrant allowed the criminal process to proceed much more quickly than it would otherwise have done.

There are other important Europe-wide security and policing arrangements from which we might find ourselves excluded for an unspecified period. We have heard about membership of Europol and Eurojust, for example, as well as practical police and judicial co-operation measures and joint investigative teams. The Government have said that they will opt back into most of the important stuff, but they are not seeking to opt back into the European judicial network, which underpins much of the good work of the European arrest warrant. We have been told by Scotland’s police and legal community that that network is invaluable to Scotland, but once again, the concerns expressed by our legal community have been overlooked.

This is all so unnecessary, and it represents a real threat to security and safety in Scotland. We do not share the ingrained Euroscepticism that now infects this Government at the highest level, and we refuse to have our political agenda determined by the threat of UKIP in the polls. The bottom line is that any gap between opt-out and rejoining has to be kept to a minimum. The longer the gaps and transition periods that have to be dealt with, the greater the likelihood of the problems that we have been discussing occurring.

Our preference would have been not to have the opt-out in the first place, but we are part of a UK that barely listens to us and that is pursuing an almost opposite set of political values and a different political agenda from ours. This will be resolved in September when we vote yes overwhelmingly in the independence referendum and Scotland gets what it wants on these issues, at which point we will secure our membership of the European Union on our terms.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Pete Wishart and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

Yes, and I will tell the hon. Gentleman something else: an independent Scotland will sign up fully to the European convention on human rights and take our responsibility in that regard very seriously. We will not be cavalier, as this Government seem to be in their approach to some of these very important human rights. I look forward to the day when Scotland, as an independent nation, will take very seriously its responsibilities to protect our citizens and ensure that they are properly protected by international laws and regulations.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I do not understand why the hon. Gentleman does not have the courage to claim that Scotland would be the successor state and would therefore inherit membership of all those bodies, leaving England, Wales and Northern Ireland free from the European Union?

[Pete Wishart]

I invite the hon. Gentleman, who I know takes a great interest in these matters—

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Pete Wishart and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Tuesday 10th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Lady is ignoring the detail of the Bill and carrying on with the absurd scaremongering to which we have been listening for more than a week. A farmer in my constituency who is in receipt of subsidies would have to register as a third party and, according to the terms of clause 27, spend more than £5,000 to be in any way affected by my amendment. If only the farmers in my constituency were so rich that they were scattering £5,000 hither and yon, my own campaign might be the beneficiary of such largesse.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman famously campaigned with a notable third party—his nanny—in the Glenrothes by-election. If she was in receipt of payment from the hon. Gentleman, would she have been in contravention of what his amendment suggests?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

That is a gloriously roundabout way of examining this issue and it gives me an opportunity to pay tribute to a wonderful nanny who campaigns for me and who is now hard at work looking after my four children, which is a great thing for her to be doing. She was a volunteer when I campaigned in Glenrothes and therefore would in no sense have been caught by this clause. Although any payment that is made to her does come from me, it is not money that I receive from the public.