Justice and Home Affairs Opt-out

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to be called to speak, after a characteristically entertaining contribution by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). I agreed with a lot, though not quite everything, of what he said. It is also interesting to speak after the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who made a fantastically strong case for the benefits of staying inside larger organisations. It was an excellent case for why Scotland should remain with the United Kingdom. I congratulate him on making such a strong case here, and I look forward to hearing it elsewhere.

It is good that there is general agreement among the three Front-Bench spokesmen of the three main parties, and indeed the Scottish nationalists and others, that the UK needs to remain opted in to many of these measures—the most significant ones. That is very important and I am pleased to have seen it. I pay tribute to both the Home Secretary and the Lord Chancellor for resisting some of the siren calls from their Back Benchers. They understand the importance of these measures and it is important that they stick with that.

I have a number of fears about where we might head. One, which I hope can be addressed, is the fear of a gap—that there may be a pause between us pulling out and going back in—and the consequences that that would have. This was mentioned earlier. There are some provisions for temporary measures and so on, but what would happen to the head of Europol, who is a Brit? Can he continue as head of Europol if we are outside, whether for a minute or a month? Would that cause problems? Would anybody agree to temporary transitional arrangements if that meant that the person in charge came from a country that was not part of Europol? That is a big worry.

The bigger worry, however, is that we might accidentally fall out of all these measures without that being the intention of the vast majority of the House. That could be because negotiations fail and we simply cannot reach an agreement—there was much in what the hon. Member for Rhondda said about the concern that many of our European partners have about our attitude to European co-operation. What happens if someone tries to cause trouble and we cannot close the negotiations? That also applies to other suggestions. If we have a formal, fixed vote before negotiations, that will make it incredibly hard to have a proper negotiation. There are a number of core measures. There are also a number of peripheral measures. If this House says, “These are the absolute lines,” it makes it very hard to create a proper negotiation—actually to have a discussion with the European Union. That could lead us to falling out unintentionally.

I am aware of what happened in the House on the issue of military intervention in Syria. There was a proposal from the Prime Minister to have military intervention without UN approval, and there was a proposal from the Leader of the Opposition to have military intervention without UN approval. There was a small group across various parties—about 50 of us—who did not want intervention without approval, but because neither side would agree with the other’s version of the wording, our small band won. I am delighted about that, but I would not want the small band of people who want us to be out of all these measures to win because of a disagreement between the two sides.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

On a point of clarification, I thought that the Syria vote was on the option to keep a military option on the table, not an option to go to war.

[Dr Huppert]

My hon. Friend is right on the technicality that there would have been a second vote, but the principle ensconced in both was to have military intervention without the UN approval that some of us wanted. However, that is not the subject at the heart of this debate.

I share the concerns expressed about whether the whole effort has been worth while. The shadow Home Secretary is not in her place. I do not always agree with her, but I did agree when she said that the things we will not remain opted in to are, generally speaking, the less important ones. They are the ones that do not matter; they are more trivial. That is by design, but it also means that the entire balance will not have been changed as a result of this. The Home Affairs Committee agreed unanimously that if the Government proceed with the option as proposed, it will not result in any repatriation of powers. Some of us think that is a good thing—that collaboration and co-operation are worth having—but others have concerns. Has it been worth the huge amount of parliamentary, ministerial and official time and effort in negotiating with partners to achieve what will probably—hopefully—be a very small effect?

It is important to highlight why this matters. We have had a great deal of discussion about process, but we should remember why it is important. Our work with our partners in this area of policing and criminal justice is one of the great benefits of European Union membership. There are other benefits—on trade, free movement and a stronger voice on the international stage—but that ability to share information to catch UK criminals on the run and to bring them back to face justice at home, and to fight international terrorism and crimes such as child abuse, come from our participation in the European Union’s justice and home affairs measures. Europol is an incredibly important element in the fight against organised crime. We would suffer badly if we lost that. Cases such as Operation Rescue involved huge co-operation with 12 other countries, with Europol playing a critical role in intelligence and analytical support which resulted in the safeguarding of at least 230 children worldwide, 60 of whom were in the United Kingdom, and the arrest of more than 180 offenders, 121 of whom were arrested in the UK. That is the sort of thing that would be put at risk by those who are simply allergic to anything that mentions the word “Europe”, and there are a number on the Conservative Back Benches, though fortunately not on the Front Bench. We do take that lead. It is not a coincidence that the head of Europol is a Briton.

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[Bob Stewart]

Is my hon. Friend suggesting, or in agreement, that we might give some power to Europe provided that that power enhances our sovereign law?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

If we opt into any of these measures and they are justiciable by the European Court of Justice, we are, through that act itself, ceding sovereignty to the European Union, because it is part of building up a single state.

What does a state have that makes it a state? What is the essence of a state? At least one important part is the ability to control law and order. We are opting back into the things that are most clearly creating the powers of a federal state of the united states of Europe—a single state that is the European Union. That will mean that we are no longer a member of an international organisation like any other, such as the United Nations or NATO, from which it would be easy to withdraw, should we wish, although I am not suggesting for a moment that we do so.

Of the 35 areas that we are asking to opt back into, three illustrate the fundamental importance of the sovereignty issue. The first of those is the European arrest warrant. The decision over who can arrest a nation state’s citizens must be an essential right of that nation state in determining this exceptional power that it gives to its police officers. In our case, the power that constables who hold the Queen’s warrant have to restrict somebody’s freedom comes directly from the Crown as part of the expression of the power of the state. To decide that an arrest can be determined abroad without any of the necessary British legal procedures involved is a move very firmly towards a federal state. Crucially, the question of who is or is not arrested will no longer be determined by a British court but by the European Court of Justice, over which we have no absolute control. We may have one justice there, but it is not a court to which we send ambassadors; it is a court that is independent in its exercise of European law as opposed to British law.

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[Bob Stewart]

I seek clarification from my hon. Friend. Interpol has a red arrest warrant. Is that in any way connected, because I have been arrested on a red warrant in the Crimea?

[Mr Raab]

I want to be very careful in not passing judgment about any arrest warrant on my hon. Friend that may be pending, not least with the Select Committee on Defence hustings looming, but my understanding is that the Interpol red notice is more of an alert than a binding warrant for surrender.

We need to look not only at what is going on within the EU. It is suggested that EU law provides best practice, and yet one might get a different view if one asks a senior Swiss diplomat, as I did recently at the Fresh Start project, which was organised by my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom). I asked the senior Swiss diplomat: “When you look at the whole area of EU justice and home affairs and at crime and policing, is there anything that you miss or want?” He said, “Absolutely nothing. The reality is that good law enforcement is done by the phone—by good operational contacts. It is a question of how you make things work in practice. It is not done by hyperactive legislation.” I then asked a senior US diplomat whether the US would ever consider sacrificing so much democratic control over law enforcement in its relations with any neighbour in north or south America, and whether the US would ever go down that route if it is such a great idea for the EU and Britain. They said: “Absolutely no chance.” No other region of the world is remotely thinking about enhancing the integration of law and ceding democratic control in justice and home affairs.

I understand that the crude political tendency is to dress up Euroscepticism, or any substantive critique or analysis, as the product of an insular, little-Englander mentality, but when we look globally, we see that no one else is going down that route. Why is Britain not taking into account the best practice from around the world, including in our Commonwealth partners such as Australia and New Zealand, and in the US and Canada? Why are we not looking at our excellent law enforcement relations with those countries? Why is the EU always presented as having the best law enforcement relations in the world when that does not seem to be based on any empirical evidence?

We should take advantage of the power we have in the Lisbon treaty to reform our relationship with the EU in the vital area of justice and home affairs. This is an important strategic crossroads for Britain. If we do not reform justice and home affairs now, using that important treaty lever, when will we do so? We always have promises of jam tomorrow. Such a reform would be an important precursor and complement to the wider EU negotiation that the Prime Minister has very wisely said Britain needs.

It is incredibly important that we take this opportunity to stand up for the liberty of British citizens, and for the democratic prerogatives of the House and the people who send us here. If we cannot have operational co-operation without ceding democratic control, we should have the courage of our convictions and say no. I want strong law enforcement and operational co-operation with our EU partners, but not at any price.