The UK’s Justice and Home Affairs Opt-outs

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Gerald Howarth

Thursday 10th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

I agree with the Prime Minister and with my hon. Friend on that point.

The Prime Minister recently told the “Today” programme that he wants to pursue a relationship with our European partners based on “trade and co-operation” and on being “an independent nation state”. I have to say that I cannot find any strand of consistency between the measures in this Command Paper and the aspirations expressed by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.

May I remind my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who is not in her place at the moment, of what we said in the House about the European arrest warrant when we were in opposition? My right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary, as shadow Home Secretary, said in 2009 that it “undermined civil liberties”. My right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, as shadow Justice Secretary, said in 2008 that

“once such things are subject to the European Court of Justice and the Commission…the Government will lose all control over standing up for United Kingdom interests in these areas”.—[Official Report, 29 January 2008; Vol. 471, c. 176.]

He also pointed out that the European arrest warrant

“is very different from…an international treaty obligation that the United Kingdom could decide not to follow if it infringed the human rights of those affected. We will be surrendering the final say about that entirely to a supranational body.”—[Official Report, 29 January 2008; Vol. 471, c. 175.]

The Foreign Secretary, as shadow Foreign Secretary, chided the previous Government for not keeping their promises on the EU when he said:

“Time and again they have made promises that they would not hand over powers to Europe, particularly on justice and home affairs, and time and again they have done exactly that, not least through the treaty.”—[Official Report, 4 March 2008; Vol. 472, c. 1684.]

My right hon. Friend now has to eat those words.

The Conservative party manifesto of 2010 promised

“three specific guarantees—on the Charter of fundamental rights, on criminal justice, and on social and employment legislation—with our European partners to return powers that we believe should reside with the UK, not the EU.”

Why have we abandoned that? It was based on a speech the Prime Minister made when in opposition, in which he promised to negotiate the three guarantees, one of which was

“limiting the European Court of Justice’s jurisdiction over criminal law to its pre-Lisbon level, and ensuring that only British authorities can initiate criminal investigations in Britain.”

Why have we abandoned that?

Much more recently, the Prime Minister wrote in The Sunday Telegraph on 16 March 2014 that one of the key changes he would seek in a renegotiation with the EU was:

“Our police forces and justice systems able to protect British citizens, unencumbered by unnecessary interference from the European institutions”.

Why have we abandoned that already? What did he intend to convey to voters in advance of the European elections? Surely not that he intended to do exactly the opposite a few weeks after the close of poll.

This year’s Conservative European election leaflet stated:

“We stand for a new relationship with the EU, bringing power back to Britain and away from Brussels”,

by, among other things,

“taking back control of justice and home affairs”.

If the UK intends to bring powers back in our renegotiation after the next election, it is a strange way for the Prime Minister to begin setting out his stall by giving up the very powers he said he would not give up.

That raises the question about the pressure on Ministers to continue supporting the process of EU integration because of coalition politics. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary’s blank denial that there could be any alternative to the European arrest warrant underlines that she may well have fallen prey to such pressures. Notwithstanding the fact that the main party in power has a different policy and was elected having opposed Nice, Amsterdam and Lisbon, Whitehall appears to be continuing to implement those treaties according to a policy of business as usual. More powers are being transferred from the UK to the EU, with EU legislation encroaching ever more on our justice system, as though there had been no change of Government.

I do not doubt that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is acting on advice and with complete integrity, but it may help if I, as Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, remind the House how advice to Ministers works in a coalition. The civil service is enjoined to serve the Government as a whole, not individual party agendas or the different agendas of individual Ministers. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that no serious consideration has been given to any alternative policy of negotiating a permanent bilateral agreement on these matters, like the 170 or so sovereign states that are not members of the EU.

If my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary had been minded to ask for credible submissions to support such a policy and then to act on them, it is not only the status quo in her Department, the Foreign Office and elsewhere that she would have had to fight. She would certainly have had the support of the Conservatives in that—if we were a majority Government, I doubt she would have had the support to act in the way she is acting now—but in this coalition, the quad would have vetoed that policy. It is, therefore, hardly surprising, four years since her appointment, that little work has been done on any alternative policy.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I think it is terribly important that we explain to the public what the quad is about, because it is Westminster-speak and I do not think the public understand that no policy is pursued by civil servants unless four individuals—the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury—sign off on them. Unless they do so, civil servants will not deal with those policies. That is what has stuffed us on the Conservative Benches.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am not suggesting for a moment that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is not sincere in her belief. All I am saying is that the incentives against obtaining alternative advice are massive. If someone goes against the grain of the coalition, they are likely to be stopped at the end of the process anyway, so what is the point? And so we finish up in this position.

That episode highlights how impossible it is to put any political will behind the Prime Minister’s stated aim of a renegotiated relationship with the EU as long as we remain in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, who take a fundamentally opposite view to ours.

Trident Alternatives Review

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Gerald Howarth

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey), who was a very good and collegiate colleague in the Ministry of Defence. I am sorry that he was not able fully to carry out this work, because had he done so, I suspect the result would have been a lot better than this inadequate document that has been presented to the country today. It has taken two years to produce what has amounted to a mouse.

It is important that we remember the context. In 2009, the leader of the Liberal Democrat party, who is now the Deputy Prime Minister, said in this House that

“we should admit that we neither need nor can afford to replace Trident.”—[Official Report, 1 July 2009; Vol. 495, c. 297.]

That is where the Liberal Democrat party was a few years ago. It now appears to agree that we should continue with the deterrent, albeit on a part-time basis. However, this is not the end of the story. This is not the party’s defined position. The document does not represent the settled policy of the Liberal Democrats. That is to be settled by their whacky members at their party conference later this year. Therefore, whatever is said from the Dispatch Box, or by Liberal Democrat Members, is not the final word on this matter of huge importance. One thing that can be said of the document is that at least it has sparked this important debate, which has produced some extremely impressive speeches that I hope will gain wider currency across the country.

I wish to make three points. First, the deterrent has deterred. It has worked. We therefore do not need to invite people to make an act of faith.

[Mr Jenkin]

I listened carefully to the honest and courageous speech by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), in which she said that the more countries that have nuclear weapons, the more likely it is that they will be used. Does my hon. Friend agree that the only time nuclear weapons have been used was when only one country had them, and that as more countries have acquired them the likelihood of their being used has decreased? No nuclear weapon has been used since more than two countries have had nuclear weapons. Does that not tell us something?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

It does, but, if I may, I will come on to my hon. Friend’s point in a moment.

My second point is that, yes, the deterrent has worked and it worked during the cold war. The argument is that the cold war has ended and so we no longer need the deterrent. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) said, we cannot predict what threats we might face in the next 30 or 40 years. While there appears today to be no immediate nuclear threat to our country, we know that other countries either have, or intend to acquire, a nuclear capability, and that there are approximately 17,000 nuclear weapons in existence.