Oral Answers to Questions

Andy Burnham Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. It was important to create the role of a directly elected individual who is accountable to the public for local policing, but we called such individuals police and crime commissioners precisely because we wanted to see the role evolve. My right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary and I are already in discussion about how the role might evolve in relation to the rest of the criminal justice system.

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

May I commend the Home Secretary for her announcement this weekend and for her decision to put the national interest before self-interest, unlike others? When she began as Home Secretary, she took a Eurosceptic stance, opting out of dozens of EU measures, but she has since opted back in to many—most recently, on the sharing of fingerprinting and DNA. Is it fair to say that the realities of office have shown her the value of EU co-operation in tackling crime and terrorism, and changed her mind on Britain’s membership of the EU?

[Mrs May]

I have always been very clear about the value of co-operation when it is in the British national interest. We decided to propose to the House that we should opt back in to 35 measures in relation to protocol 36—justice and home affairs measures—precisely because we believed that they were in the national interest.

[Andy Burnham]

I think I will take that as a yes. Yesterday, on the “The Andrew Marr Show”, the Prime Minister was explicitly clear that our membership of the EU helps Britain fight terrorism, but within minutes he was directly contradicted by one of his own Cabinet Ministers, who claimed the UK’s EU membership made a Paris-style attack here more likely. This would be bad coming from UKIP, but coming from one of our most senior members of the Cabinet, it is downright irresponsible. Will the Home Secretary take this opportunity to reaffirm Government policy on this crucial issue and condemn this baseless scaremongering?

[Mrs May]

The Government’s position on this issue is very clear. As I have just indicated in answer to the first question the right hon. Gentleman asked me, I am very clear that there are many areas in which co-operation with other member states in the European Union is to our benefit in terms of the national security of this country and dealing with criminal matters. As I indicated in response to earlier questions, we do of course take security at our border very seriously, and that is why we have the checks we do at our border.