European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between David T C Davies and Lyn Brown

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st February 2017 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

About 20 years ago, my political career was launched on the back of a failed referendum campaign, when I and many others failed to prevent the Welsh Assembly from being set up. I am reminded very much of those days at the moment because the campaign in Wales was also very divisive. All sorts of promises were made that have never actually been kept. It was a huge constitutional change for us. There were divisions, threats and altercations in Wales. When John Prescott, who was Deputy Prime Minister at the time, went to Newport town centre, one of his spin doctors ordered a young campaigner off the streets, saying, “I have the Deputy Prime Minister’s authority for doing this.” The resulting fracas made the third bong on “News at 10”. I will not reveal the identity of the person involved—[Interruption.] Yes, alright then, it was me.

As we looked upon the wreckage of that campaign, a great discussion took place in Cardiff. We said, “Only one in four people have voted for this Welsh Assembly”—it went through on a much narrower margin than the referendum that we have just had. We asked, “What are we going to do?” Some of us—I was probably one of the diehards—said, “Let’s carry on fighting it in Parliament, get back out there in the media and redo the whole campaign.” I did not think about the courts at the time but, then, we did not have any hedge funders behind us, otherwise I probably would have done.

There were wiser voices, such as those of: Lord Bourne, now the Communities and Local Government Minister; the Brexit Minister himself, my right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones), who sits on the Front Bench and does such a good job for us; and the Secretary of State for Wales. They have all done very well. Those wiser people said, “We have to accept it. We don’t have to admit that we were wrong, but we have to admit that, on this occasion, the people have said one thing and we have to go along with it.” They were so right. I was wrong to say that we should have carried on fighting it because, as a result, we got involved with the national assembly advisory group, drew up the Standing Orders and put up candidates. We are now the second party in Wales, and we are close to becoming the first party there as a result of what took place. Look how well the Ministers I mentioned have done as a result. Who knows what might happen one day?

That is the reality of what we have before us now. People are talking about divisions. There were divisions all right during the referendum campaign. Those divisions need to end—we all agree on that. However, they will not end when so many people—they were in a minority—although acting for the best reasons and feeling they are doing the right thing continue to try to fight this campaign. They should stop fighting and become part of what is going to take place now, because the people of this country have spoken.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Is the hon. Gentleman honestly saying that he would have stopped fighting to come out of the European Union if the vote had gone the other way, and with such a poor majority? Let me tell him, I do not believe he would.

[David T. C. Davies]

The hon. Lady is a peacemaker, I am sure. She has given me a few tellings-off in her time. I think that if tried to do anything like that, she would have a quiet, or even a not so quiet, word with me and put me in my place. We would have had to accept what the people of this country said, and that is what I am saying now—let us end the division.

I say this to Labour Members: look at what has happened in my political party. We were all over the place a few months ago—some fighting for remain, some wanting leave, some wanting this and that—and we have all got behind our Cabinet members and our leader. That is a lesson for this country. We have a first-rate Prime Minister, and tonight our Prime Minister is going to reflect the will of the British people. Yes, this is about bringing power back from Brussels to the people of this country, but it is also about going through the Lobby and recognising that that is what the people of this country want. I say to anyone who is thinking of not coming through the Lobby with us tonight: think about the will of the British people and be part of what is going to take place—this exciting new chapter in the history of this great country. Come with us tonight—come with the British people.

Leaving the EU: Security, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice

Debate between David T C Davies and Lyn Brown

Wednesday 18th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. There are three main issues on which the Opposition seek answers this afternoon: our ability to participate in the common arrest warrant; our future relationship with Europol; and our access to Europe-wide crime prevention databases, including the Schengen information system.

I will come to each of those things in turn, but first there is a general point to be made. As many in the House remember, our optimal relationship with the European Union in the field of security and justice was comprehensively debated during the previous Parliament. We opted out of all provisions relating to police and criminal justice so that we could have a fresh debate about which initiatives we wanted to be part of, and then opt into them again. That initiative was negotiated with European member states by the previous Labour Government and continued by the subsequent coalition. The process consisted of two years of negotiation and debate in this House, in government and in Brussels, and it culminated in Britain deciding to opt back in to 35 specific measures that we considered to be in our national interest.

Those measures included the European arrest warrant, Europol and access to the Schengen information system—the three things that I am concerned about today. I know that our Prime Minister is also concerned about them because it was she, as Home Secretary, who put it to the House on 7 April 2014 that we should opt back into the measures. It is so nice to have confidence that there will be unanimity in the Chamber this afternoon on this oft-contentious subject. However, the opt-in happened before the referendum, and now, in this post-referendum world, the Government need to tell us how they will ensure that we still have access to those measures, which we so recently decided that we needed to keep our citizens safe.

We do not have time today to rehearse the two years of debate that led to a decision to co-operate in each of the 35 areas that we decided to opt back into, so I will focus on our main concerns. There is no doubt that the European arrest warrant is a crucial tool in the fight against crime in the UK. Introduced in 2004, it provides a mechanism whereby crime suspects who have left the country—fugitives—can be surrendered back to the UK automatically by another European member state. It means that suspects who have fled can be returned in a matter of weeks or days. Crucially, it means that suspects can be returned to the UK even if the legal basis for the crime that they are suspected of committing is different from that under the law that applies in the country to which they have fled. That is because the European arrest warrant is underpinned by the principle that European Union countries agree to respect the decisions of each other’s criminal justice systems, even if they differ.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

I think that the hon. Lady has just made the point that I wanted to raise, which is that that principle means that we have to accept that justice systems across the rest of the EU are as good as ours. Does she have confidence that that is the case?

[Lyn Brown]

I have confidence that the European arrest warrant is far more powerful than any other extradition process anywhere in the world, and we would be stupid if we let it go.

Since the European arrest warrant was introduced in 2004, the UK has used it to bring 2,500 individuals from outside the UK to face justice. Let us not forget that it was the mechanism that ensured that Hussain Osman was brought to justice after he fled to Italy after a failed suicide bombing in London in 2005. The problem that we face is that the European arrest warrant is available exclusively to EU members. We will have to overcome considerable hurdles if we are to maintain the current arrangements and we are not in the European Union. In fact, as a recent briefing from the Centre for European Reform think-tank states, if, having left the EU, the UK wanted to get a similar deal,

“it would need to convince its partners to change their constitutions. In some cases, this would trigger a referendum.”

Do we really think that countries would hold such a referendum because we have decided to leave the EU?

Some countries outside the European Union have attempted to negotiate access to the common arrest warrant system. Norway and Iceland, for example, have concluded a surrender agreement with the EU that represents an attempt to get the same benefits, although it has not yet come into force. That agreement is weaker in two ways. First, it requires the alleged offences to be the same in both countries, thus losing the flexibility that comes from the agreement of member states to respect the decisions of each other’s criminal justice systems. Secondly, it allows countries to refuse to surrender their own nationals, which would make things tricky if a national of an EU country were to commit an offence on UK soil, for example.

On top of that—as if that were not bad enough—the agreement took 15 years to negotiate, and that was for countries in both Schengen and the European economic area, but as the Prime Minister made clear yesterday, there are no plans for us to be members of either. The alternative is that we fall back on previous extradition treaties that are far more cumbersome and will, in some cases, require EU countries to change their own laws in respect of the UK.

It is hard to see how any of those options are preferable to the current arrangements. I find it particularly hard to understand how this fits with the Prime Minister’s pledge yesterday to “work together more” in response to threats to our common security. While it is not difficult for an individual who has broken the law in Britain to hop on a cheap flight to another European country, I fear that it will be very hard indeed, without the European arrest warrant, for us to get them back again. For that reason, Labour calls on the Government to ensure that the current arrangements are maintained.

I turn to our second concern. This House approved regulations confirming our opt-in to Europol only a few weeks ago, and we did that because it is vital to our national security. Europol—the European Police Office, to give it its proper title—exists to combat serious international organised crime by means of co-operation between the relevant authorities of member states, including those tasked with customs, immigration services, borders and financial policing. As we know, Europol is not able to mandate national forces to undertake investigations, but it provides information and resources that enable national investigations to take place.

In the words of the British director of Europol, Rob Wainwright, whose previous career was in UK security institutions, our decision to opt into Europol is:

“Good for Britain’s security, great for police cooperation in Europe.”

Indeed, the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service confirmed on 12 December during a debate in a European Committee that Europol provides

“a vital tool in helping UK law enforcement agencies to co-ordinate investigations involving cross-border serious and organised crime”.

He also said:

“About 40% of everything that Europol does is linked to work that is either provided or requested by the United Kingdom.”—[Official Report, European Committee B, 12 December 2016; c. 5-7.]

However, when pushed about whether we can maintain our membership of Europol, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, speaking in this House last year, was able to say only that the Government will seek to:

“preserve the relationship with the European Union on security matters as best we can.”—[Official Report, 5 September 2016; Vol. 614, c. 45.]

When my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) asked him the same question about Europol yesterday, we got no more information about how that could be done.