The UK’s Justice and Home Affairs Opt-outs

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), and as I have not done so previously, may I congratulate him on the knighthood that has been bestowed on him, which was very well deserved, and may I also say how pleased I am to see the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) here today, because I understand it is his birthday? What a glorious way to celebrate a birthday, talking about the European arrest warrant and the prisoner transfer agreements!

I welcome this debate. As the House has heard from the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), the Chairs of the three Select Committees wrote to the Justice Secretary and the Home Secretary asking for an early opportunity to debate these issues, and our letter was received very courteously and we now have a debate as a result of our representations. In the view of the Home Affairs Committee it would have been much better if this debate had taken place before the negotiations began. That was one of the recommendations we made after we took evidence from the Home Secretary and others about these important measures, because we felt strongly that if Parliament had made its views clear before the Home Secretary and Justice Secretary started their negotiations, that mandate would have bolstered them in their negotiations with their European partners. Unfortunately, such a debate did not take place before the negotiations began.

I agree with the Chairman of the ESC that there ought to be a vote on this issue. I am glad the Government have said they will have a vote. I would be surprised if there was not a debate before the vote. Even though we are probably only going to have the usual suspects here, I think it should be a long debate, rather than an hour-and-a-half debate, because these are very important measures. What we have asked for—I will come on to this later when we look at the European arrest warrant—is a separate vote specifically on the European arrest warrant. The Committee produced a unanimous report, and those who serve on the Home Affairs Committee have different views on the European Union, so getting a unanimous decision on something of this kind is quite difficult. The Committee unanimously decided, however, that we should be asking for this because of the representations we had received from so many people, including hon. and right hon. Members, about the way in which the European arrest warrant operated.

We have heard what the Home Secretary has done, and I welcome all the steps she has taken, and also the views of the Opposition Front Bench in Committee when it looked at the way in which the arrest warrant was operating. We heard specific evidence in the Committee from, among others, the hon. Members for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) and for South Dorset (Richard Drax) about individual constituency cases where the European arrest warrant had gone wrong. I and the Committee accept the principle of the European arrest warrant. We believe this was an important measure to enable countries that are members of the European Union—and, indeed, beyond, through bilateral agreements —to bring back into the country and offer up those who are wanted in respect of criminal matters. So the principle is fine. However, our concern was the practice, and the examples we received caused us enormous concern.

There was the Andrew Symeou case, which was told to us by the hon. Member for Enfield North, and the case of Michael Turner—a gentleman who was extradited to Hungary and incarcerated there and who never faced any charges and who is a constituent of South Dorset—and other examples that caused Members to say that the European arrest warrant was good in principle but not necessarily good in practice and had caused their constituents a great deal of concern.

As we have heard, the number of requests to our country far exceeds the number of requests that we make. The total cost of executing an incoming European arrest warrant in the United Kingdom is approximately £20,000. The 999 received by the United Kingdom in 2011 are estimated to have cost around £20 million. So this is not justice on the cheap. It costs a great deal of money to execute these warrants.

Our concern was the way in which they were being requested by certain European countries, and I have mentioned Poland but there were other examples. Indeed, if we look at the requests made of Germany and other countries where people are wanted, we see the figures are just as high. The Home Secretary has great negotiating skills, charm and powers of persuasion, which I saw for myself at the Police Federation conference earlier this year, so she is no pushover, and I am sure she went in there and negotiated strongly on behalf of our country, as Ministers have to do, especially knowing the views of Parliament. The fact is, however, she does not have control, and neither does the Justice Secretary with all his great skills and ability, of the Polish judiciary. They do not have control of the Latvian system of justice. They do not have control of the way in which these warrants are issued in the first place. They do have control over the execution, but not over the issuing.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

There are some other issues around the European arrest warrant and trying to reform it. While we might want to have reforms that make it function better, is it not the case that the European Commission, in co-decision with the European Parliament, has to have the final say on these matters? So we might want to have this reform, but it might never come forward, and that is a fundamental problem about the opt-in, because we give these powers away completely once and for all.

[Keith Vaz]

I defer to the knowledge of the hon. Gentleman with all his vast experience of European affairs. Having served as an MEP for so long in the east midlands, he sought asylum here in the House of Commons and he has rightly raised one of the big issues. We can negotiate, but at the end of the day it is an issue that we need to confront. How are we going to persuade the European Commission on these very important matters?

We have heard about the wheelbarrow case—the man accused of stealing a wheelbarrow who was the subject of a European arrest warrant—and those absconding from prisons on day release or those accused of minor drugs offences. There was a man who gave false details on a £200 bank loan that had already been paid off. A warrant was issued, it had to be executed and that cost £20,000. So the Home Secretary is right to give us the headline examples—as the shadow Immigration Minister also did—of people who commit terrible crimes in other parts of Europe and whom we feel obliged to give back as quickly as possible, but many, many examples go the other way and that shows there are still problems with the warrant. The Home Secretary has made big efforts to make these matters more effective by introducing the forum bar and giving more powers to the judges to look at such cases, but that is not enough when European partners are not prepared to reform their judicial systems, where so many warrants are being issued.

The Home Secretary is often reluctant to tell me about her travel plans after she has been to some of these countries but I am sure that, like me, she has been to Poland. I went there with members of the Committee and we talked to prosecutors there. The first question they asked was, “Are you coming to talk about the European arrest warrant?” We said, “Yes we are, because we are really concerned. Why are the Polish judges issuing so many warrants when, in our view, they are not merited?” These warrants undermine the principle of the EAW when they are issued for such trivial reasons as the theft of a wheelbarrow. Obviously, it is extremely important for the person who has lost the wheelbarrow, but in the whole history of the world, to coin a phrase of the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), it is not that important—it is certainly not worth £20,000. So more work needs to be done.

Even when that work is done, the Committee is very clear that we must have a separate vote on the EAW. We are happy to have the package as a whole put before the House. I am not sure how many of these 35 measures can go through the House within a parliamentary day, but we draw a line in the sand about the EAW: Parliament is concerned about it and we therefore need a vote.