Serious and Organised Crime: Prüm Convention

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is right. The Danish question is one of the greatest importance. Denmark had a referendum, having trusted their people, which I believe we may be doing at some point. But of course we are not trusting them on this measure, because it is instrumental to catching terrorists, and the people cannot be trusted to decide whether they want to do that or not. No, this must be done by the Government after a three-hour debate—though lucky us to get even a three-hour debate. Last year we did not get a debate on the European arrest warrant. We had it on something else.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman appears to be suggesting that we have a series of bilateral agreements with 20-something EU member states, but is that not essentially what is being done tonight, albeit in a more efficient way?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is only partly right—a bit of a curate’s egg, if I may say so, but it is regrettably rotten in parts. If the agreement is done in this way, it comes under the competence of the European Court of Justice and infraction proceedings can be brought by the European Commission. Why is that important? I accept that protections are built into Prüm, and that there are limits on the application of what the ECJ can do, but it needs to be seen as part of a whole package. We are agreeing today that the investigatory function in relation to data held by Governments should be centralised at a European level. We agreed a year ago that the arrest function should be centralised with a European competence. So we have investigation, we have arrest, and we have a proposal from the European Commission for a European public prosecutor—so far, resisted, but this measure was resisted a year ago, and the European arrest warrant was not Conservative party policy until a year ago.

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman sees where I am going. This is part of a package of creating a European criminal justice system. It comes one by one and bit by bit. On every occasion, the measure is said to be essential and we are told that there is no opportunity of doing it differently, but if there is no opportunity of doing it differently, why is my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister racing around European capitals trying to organise a renegotiation? If there is never any other possibility, is that not banging our head against a brick wall? Surely we should be saying—the Government intimated this a year ago, but there has been no delivery at all—that we will make the European arrest warrant and all that goes with it part of the renegotiation. We would go back to the status quo ante—where we were prior to the Lisbon treaty: that we do these things on an intergovernmental basis.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Stone—I am sorry, I mean hon. Friend; he ought to be right honourable; it is extraordinary that Her Majesty has not yet asked him to join the Privy Council—pointed me in the direction of Denmark. Denmark has said no. Denmark will want to make arrangements with fellow European Union states to exchange data with their friends and allies, and we could make arrangements with our friends and allies to exchange data and do all the sensible things of which everyone in this House is in favour. It is the right thing for us to do, but it is better than that. If we did it on an intergovernmental basis we might decide that there are some EU member states whose criminal justice systems are not up to it. That is an important point. My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) referred to his constituent and the disgraceful way in which he was treated in a country where we do not have the same confidence in the criminal justice processes that we have in, for example, Germany and France, or, for that matter, the United States and Canada. Such an arrangement would give us greater flexibility, and there are a number of ways in which it could be done. We could have intergovernmental agreements with the European Union as a body. The EU has legal personality, so it is possible to do it on that basis, but maintain control and keep the rights that we enjoy, and stop the rush—that is perhaps an exaggeration, as the last debate was a year ago, but it is a rush in European terms—to establish a single criminal justice system.

It is worrying that a Government who portray themselves in election campaigns, propaganda and statements as Eurosceptic, when it comes to the details of what they are doing, turn out to think that the answer is more Europe. They then say that this has to be done because we are in danger if we do not do it. The only reason we are in danger is that we assume that the EU and its member states are not rational in their dealings with us, so we must always give in to them. One of the greatest Prime Ministers that this country ever saw, William Pitt, said:

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”

This argument is dependent on the necessity. I do not wish this Government to be tyrannical, nor do I wish to be a slave.