EU Police, Justice and Home Affairs

Alan Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

The Whips will be pleased to know that I support the motion, but I do not have too much problem with the amendment. The problem is the timing of the amendment because it deals with generalities when we need to start talking about specifics, particularly if the Home Secretary’s pledge that this should be a matter for Parliament to decide is to be honoured. Truth to tell, the opt-out in article 10 to protocol 36 was negotiated as an insurance policy to give us the time and ability to look at all the measures. We must remember that police and criminal justice issues were not part of the European Union until the Maastricht treaty—which was agreed by the previous Conservative Government—introduced them, and even then there was no competency for the European Court of Justice. That was a big change, and if we could have negotiated the option to look at each individual policy and decide whether to stay in or out we would have done, but that was unachievable. No other country is subject to article 10 to protocol 36, and the transition we managed to achieve is exclusive to this country.

We are in a process of considering how we deal with this crucial matter. The Home Secretary mentioned that we were getting confused about the timetable. I heard no confusion about that from my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary, but the Prime Minister was certainly confused. On 28 September 2012 he said that the opt-out decision had to be made before the end of the year, and he added:

“We’ll be exercising that opt-out.”

Soon afterwards in October, the Home Secretary came to the House of Commons to clarify that and say that the Government’s “current thinking” was towards an opt-out.

In terms of a parliamentary process—remembering that Scotland and Northern Ireland have separate legal jurisdictions—there was no consultation whatsoever with the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Scottish Government, or the Northern Ireland Administration, let alone with Committees of this House, before the Home Secretary announced that Government thinking was to opt out. Given how the process started—the Prime Minister getting the deadline wrong, and the Home Secretary’s lack of any consultation before saying where Government thinking was leading—you will forgive us, Mr Speaker, for having a certain concern about how it is going.

In July last year, the Foreign Secretary announced a review of competencies between the UK and the EU. Again, we are concerned about how that process is being dealt with, and I struggle to think of the kind of competencies that such a review will address—indeed, there is a fair amount of suspicion that this is some kind of Wilsonian trick. Leaving that aside, one would think that such things would be relevant to the 130 measures to which we must opt in or out. However, the process for the balance of competencies will begin looking at police and criminal justice measures in spring or autumn 2014, after the deadline for the decision to opt in or out has passed. That, to me, is incomprehensible.

We are, therefore, left with extreme concern about how the current thinking came about and about the absence of proper input from Parliament. Nine months have passed since the Home Secretary’s statement to the House. Apart from a couple of minor points I picked up in her speech today, the position remains exactly as it was nine months ago.

The House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union has produced a splendid report, but without any information from Her Majesty’s Government on the measures they might seek to rejoin when they exercise the opt-out. Conservative Members make a valid point about the importance the Opposition place on the European arrest warrant. In a sense, the suspicion, which might be valid, is that the Opposition would accept the other 129 measures just to keep the precious EAW, and that we believe the EAW is that important. However, we have not heard from the Opposition Benches—[Interruption.] I am sorry, I should have said Conservative Benches. We have not heard from Conservative Members their equivalent to the EAW if they opt out completely. If they read the motion from Her Majesty’s Opposition, they will see that we think a number of measures are important. However, I do not get any sense of what measure is worth risking our being unable to opt back in to all 130 measures. Why is the Government’s thinking to opt out rather than to opt in?

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman perhaps gives the House a greater insight into Opposition policy than the shadow Home Secretary has. I take it from what he says that he believes Labour party policy is to opt in and not to opt out of any of the measures.

[Alan Johnson]

My point is that the Government came to the conclusion that they are minded to opt out. We have no idea where that thinking came from—there was no consultation with anyone. It is just as valid for the Government to be minded to opt in, but we have no sense of what big issue prevents them from doing so.

The Home Secretary said in October and has repeated today that some of the measures are useful, some are less useful, and some are now defunct, but she has never defined which measures are useful. There was a small concession in her speech, but the House of Lords EU Committee—an important Committee of the democratic process—had to do its work completely in the dark, with no sense of what was useful, what was not useful or what was defunct. Eventually, she gave three examples to the Committee of defunct measures, but as my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary has said, if the measures are defunct, they are harmless, and we need not worry about them because they will be weeded out and tidied up. The defunct measures are not the important part of the debate; the important part is on useful or not useful measures.

In its report, the House of Lords Committee, which is not the Labour party—in fact, most members of the Committee have been hostile to the Labour party throughout their political careers—states:

“The most effective way for the UK to cooperate with other Member States is to remain engaged in the existing EU measures in this area.”

The Committee’s current thinking, therefore, is to opt in to those measures. It says that clearly and backs it up with strong arguments—it interviewed a cross-section of people, including the Home Secretary.

The Christmas quiz is this: what is the common theme to all 130 measures? They were all agreed by unanimity. They were all agreed under a system where the UK had the veto. They were all then brought before this House and were agreed by various Committees—my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) was the Chair of one of them—to be scrutinised. Not a single one of the 130 measures was foisted on the UK against our will by a hostile European Administration. Even if the Euro myth of creating a superstate with an integrated criminal law, as propagated by some of the swivel-eyed loonies, were true, nothing in the 130 measures would contribute towards that aim. In fact, the opposite is the case: the vast majority relate to a mutual recognition of the diverse systems throughout the European Union.

There is as good an argument for the Government to be thinking about moving towards opting in as opting out, but I am persuadable. I just want to know where the Government stand as we get closer to 2014. I want the Justice Committee and the Home Affairs Committee to consider the matter. I want the arguments to be revealed.

My main concern is the European arrest warrant. I overcame minor antipathy to the other 129 measures to keep it. If we pull out and try to renegotiate, we will be in a much weaker position. The case has been made not just in the House of Lords Committee, but in the Scott Baker report commissioned by the Home Secretary herself. There are things we could do to improve the warrant—a proportionality test was a major issue raised by Scott Baker. I have to say, however, that adopting the European supervision order that would allow British citizens to be supervised in the UK until the trial in the requesting member state is being held would go an awful long way to meeting the objections of Scott Baker and of others on both sides of the House.

Politics is about the personal more than anything else. The shadow Home Secretary mentioned the savage murder of Moira Jones. I met her mother Beatrice when I was Home Secretary. The current Home Secretary would have had the same difficult job to do. When I met Beatrice Jones, she pointed out to me that the murderer of her daughter fled this country immediately. A European arrest warrant was issued 14 days later. Two days after that, he was arrested in Slovakia and brought to justice. I promised Mrs Jones that I would do my best to ensure that the European arrest warrant remains. I plan to keep that promise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) who, along with other Members of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, will consider the list of opt-ins and opt-outs when the Home Secretary eventually sends it to the Committee, to the Select Committee on Justice and to the European Scrutiny Committee. I agree with a lot of what he said. International co-operation in the EU is vital and Europol and Eurojust are important. I have just returned from a visit to Europol and was very impressed by the work done by Rob Wainwright and his team. I am glad that the Home Secretary is giving the House another opportunity to debate the issue in July before she decides whether to sign the important regulation that will allow us to be part of framing the next steps for Europol.

I congratulate the former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), and the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), on all the work they have done. My thanks go more than to anyone else to the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), for giving us the chance to discuss this measure in her precious Opposition time—and to do so in prime time, rather than at the end of the day, which is when we normally discuss European issues. I repeat what all other right hon. and hon. Members have said about the importance of data-sharing, of knowing who is coming into our country and who is going out and of ensuring that those who have committed crimes and need to be returned to their country are returned as quickly as possible.

European co-operation also means that if there are problems with certain measures, we should consider them. There are problems with the European arrest warrant, although not with the principle or vision behind the scheme. We certainly need it, for the reasons given by the shadow Home Secretary. The difficulties are that some EU countries are issuing European arrest warrants for fairly trivial offences and at the moment each extradition under the European arrest warrant costs £18,000. The total cost to the British public in 2012 of actioning these warrants was £27 million, and figures from the Council of Europe showed that other European countries made 6,760 extradition requests to Britain in 2011—that is more than 130 a week, representing a 48% rise year on year.

I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) will speak in this debate, but since he came into the House he has highlighted the importance of this issue, and other right hon. and hon. Members from across the House have given specific examples of when their constituents have not been, in their view, fairly treated by the operation of the European arrest warrant.

In the same 12 months when the 48% year-on-year rise took place, the United Kingdom made just 205 requests for suspects wanted for crimes here and only 99 were handed over. Poland generates four in every 10 arrest warrants sent to Britain, and there has been an example of someone being extradited back to Poland and charged with stealing a wheelbarrow. I do not know whether that justifies £18,000 of taxpayers’ money, but it seems like a lot of judicial time and expense for something fairly trivial. I am glad that the motion talks about not only supporting the European arrest warrant, but reforming it, because asking individual countries such as Poland to think carefully about what they are doing is extremely important.

[Alan Johnson]

My right hon. Friend is making an interesting speech. Does he accept that one of the problems from Poland is that the Polish prosecution service does not have the discretion not to prosecute? Does he also accept that the work going on within the European Union with Poland has led to a 40% reduction in applications? Their number is still too high, but it is declining.

[Keith Vaz]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about that and it explains why part of the process is to talk to these countries and bilaterally engage, not on how they could improve their system, because that would be too patronising, but by explaining the effect their system is having on our country. That is why I welcomed your recent historic visit to Romania, Mr Speaker, when you were the first Speaker of the House of Commons to address the Romanian Parliament in session. The importance of your visit and of the discussions that my right hon. Friend has mentioned is that we can try to persuade other EU countries of the need to co-operate. With Romania, that came through Operation Golf; it came through smashing those gangs that had ensured that so many young Romanian women and men had been trafficked. If we do not have this dialogue, it cannot work.

There are a few months left before this Government bring the measures before the Select Committees. I know that it is the Home Secretary’s decision, but the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), is very assiduous, and I know he enjoys appearing before the Home Affairs Committee—and we enjoy having him—so I say to him that we would prefer that not to be done the week before the House votes, as is sometimes the case. Until I raised the issue of Europol with the Home Secretary she had not replied to my letter and told me that there was going to be a debate on Europol in the first week of July.

I am sorry if I sound like the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash)—perhaps I am turning into him—but the issue is that Parliament cannot scrutinise the measures in the European Parliament, and that is why the EU gets such a bad name: we get these measures in the British House of Commons far too late, we do not have enough time to debate them, only the usual suspects turn up at the debate and people think there is something wrong with all of us just because we want to talk about European issues. The best way to avoid that is to let us have this list quickly.

We are deciding on our programme in the Home Affairs Committee and we are going to visit Poland to talk to the Polish chief justice and others, including the judges. These are the people who are issuing the European arrest warrants in such numbers—as I said, 40% of these warrants come from Poland. We can arrange all that only if we know when the list will come to us. I hope that when the Minister winds up we will have a decision on that.