Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Dominic Raab

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is looking at all such matters. He will have heard what the hon. Lady has said and, although I will not prejudice what further measures he is going to bring forward, I will ask him to write to her to address her specific proposals.

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I wonder whether my right hon. Friend has noticed that the people who are currently criticising him—[Hon. Members: “Give him a job.”] No, thank you. The people who are currently criticising him have a record of bullying that is second to none. A Labour Member of Parliament left Parliament because of antisemitic bullying; a distinguished BBC journalist needed bodyguards at Labour party conferences; and a current right hon. Labour Member was suspended from the service of this House for bullying. Does my right hon. Friend think, as I do, that this is at the very least hypercritical, and may be a stronger word that is not necessarily parliamentary?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend makes his point in his usual inimitable way. All I will say is that I think it is important that we all take responsibility for our actions, and that is precisely what I have done today.

Leaving the EU: Meaningful Vote

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Dominic Raab

Monday 22nd October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm once again that the choice in the meaningful vote is clear—either to accept the Government’s proposition or to leave without a withdrawal agreement?

[Dominic Raab]

My hon. Friend will know that section 13 deals at length with the procedural variations and what would need to happen in the event of Parliament not approving the deal. On the proxy debates that some hon. Members want to repeat—on the type of exit or deal we should negotiate—we have, of course, had 11 votes on single market or customs union-type variations to the Government’s negotiating mandate, and the Government in this House won each and every one.

Justice and Home Affairs Opt-out

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Dominic Raab

Monday 7th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Raab]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is the Chair of the Justice Committee, which has investigated the measure, but I am still not clear on the public protection shortfall, in empirical terms, if we do not sign up to the European arrest warrant and instead look for alternative arrangements, which I know would be slower. The Home Secretary referred to a case relating to the German constitution, but what is the empirical evaluation of the quantitative size of the public protection shortfall for which the European arrest warrant caters? I am none the wiser. I appreciate that the police would love to have fast-track extradition, but I will not nod police powers through the House that have been requested by the Association of Chief Police Officers, or by anyone else for that matter. In the same way, I would happily join forces with Liberal Democrat colleagues to face down police requests for things such as ID cards or extended powers of pre-charge detention. We need to consider the merits of each proposal.

ACPO’s evidence to the House of Lords European Union Committee has been regularly cited, and that evidence recommends that it is vital to opt back in to only 13 of 135 EU crime and policing measures. I do not suggest that we should take that at face value, but it is extraordinary that only 13 measures are regarded as being of any tangible law enforcement value. That highlights the unthinking way in which the previous Government signed up to EU measures, and they are now saying that the current Government are proposing only to opt out of trivial measures. The real question is why the previous Government signed us up to stuff that is trivial, redundant and irrelevant, not least because the trajectory of EU justice and home affairs is, sooner or later, going to encompass the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, which we know can turn seemingly irrelevant or peripheral measures into something damaging for national democracies. At the other end of the scale, it shows how much pointless legislation comes out of the EU if the police, who are regarded as the most zealous advocates of EU crime and policing, are advocating that we opt back in only to such a small proportion of the measures covered by the Lisbon treaty opt-in.

I pay tribute to the 21st report of the European Scrutiny Committee. I agree with all the points on the risk of giving jurisdiction to the European Court of Justice, because we would end up doing for crime and policing what the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has done for deportation powers and prisoner voting and is looking to do for whole-life tariffs. We should be very cautious about that.

The Home Affairs Committee’s ninth report contains some important analysis of the European arrest warrant, which it describes as “fundamentally flawed.” It is worth noting that that backs up the evidence from Britain’s most senior High Court extradition judge, Lord Justice Thomas, to the independent Baker review of extradition. Lord Justice Thomas said that the European arrest warrant has become “unworkable.” I will read out in full some quotes from Britain’s most senior extradition judge, because this is not a right-wing excursion or some rabid anti-European ideology; it is from someone who considers such cases week in, week out. In his evidence to the Baker review, Lord Justice Thomas said:

“Looking at the 27—I’ve said this to many people—this system becomes unworkable in the end… politically there is a huge problem. There is quite a lot of strong judicial feeling on this subject”—

the European arrest warrant—

“in northern Europe that both the judges and politicians in other countries need to put the resources into their systems to bring them up to standard… We’re all agreed there’s an undoubted problem, as the cases sent in by Fair Trials International illustrate. If you talk to anyone, there’s obviously a problem… One of the problems with the way in which a lot of European criminal justice legislation has emerged is that it presupposes a kind of mutual confidence and common standards that actually don’t exist.”

That is Britain’s most senior extradition judge.

Previous speakers, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), spoke about considering not only a snapshot of current co-operation but the future vision of where EU justice and home affairs co-operation is heading. I entirely agree with that analysis. We need to think of the long term, not just the short term. I know that many hon. Members are rightly fixated on the time lag and the time gap, whether we have enough time to do anything else and whether we will find ourselves, having opted out, not opting back in to measures, but at this juncture we ought to look to a long-term settlement of Britain’s relationship with Europe in the important area of crime and policing.

I fear the creeping supranationalism that is undoubtedly coming. We cannot read the text of the regulations, whether on Europol or Eurojust, not to mention the wider remit of the European Court of Justice, without seeing that that is happening. We would have to be blind not to accept that. There is a new draft regulation that would strengthen Europol’s power to demand that national police forces initiate investigations by whittling away the national right to say no. There is similar strengthening of powers to demand data from national Governments with less ability for those Governments to say no. There is increasing supranational management of the running of Europol. Of course, if we opt back in, all of that is subject to the overriding jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, rather than the British Supreme Court. I always find it fascinating that Opposition Members, including the shadow Justice Secretary, who set up the British Supreme Court, are now so willing and eager to give away its right to have the last word not only on matters affecting law enforcement and public safety but on matters affecting British citizens.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I very much agree with what my hon. Friend is saying. Of course, the matter would also become subject to qualified majority voting and we could therefore be overruled on any future developments.

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was going to come on to the other areas of creeping supranationalism.

The same is true of Eurojust. Although Britain will not opt in to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office—I very much welcome the fact that Ministers have made that clear—if one looks at the fine print, which the Deputy Prime Minister always encourages us to do, the new Eurojust regulation encourages close co-operation with the EPPO through the back door. If we opt back in to the Eurojust regulation, we will therefore have a close relationship of support for the EPPO. That is something else that needs to be looked at.

Even here at home, outside the political arena, we have had a timely warning from the High Court, and from Mr Justice Mostyn in particular, about the risks of creeping supranationalism. The last Government, to great fanfare, negotiated the British opt-out from the charter of fundamental rights. However, we found out from a case in the High Court in November 2013 that that counts for nothing. Again, so that I cannot be accused of spinning the language, I will refer directly to what Mr Justice Mostyn said. In respect of the opt-out he said:

“it is absolutely clear that the contracting parties agreed that the Charter did not create one single further justiciable right in our domestic courts. The assertion in the…protocol that no new rights are created seems to me to be a misleading product of political compromise because on any view the Charter enunciates a host of new rights which are not expressly found in the European Convention on Human Rights signed in Rome in 1950.”

He continued:

“However, my view that the effect of the seventh protocol is to prevent any new justiciable rights from being created is not one shared by the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg.”

He went on to say:

“The constitutional significance of this decision can hardly be overstated.”

That is a timely warning from another senior British judge about what is actually happening.

If we listen to our colleagues, partners and friends in the European Union, they are telling us the same thing loud and clear. Viviane Reding, the vice-president of the European Commission and the Justice Commissioner, made it very clear in a speech in Brussels on 4 September 2013 that the EU wishes to acquire the powers of a nation state in the rule of law area. She said explicitly that the EU needs a formal justice Minister and stronger powers to police national criminal justice systems, including

“detailed monitoring and sanctioning powers”.

We must not only look at the snapshot of measures that are before us now, but ask whether in five or 10 years’ time we will find ourselves enmeshed in a common pan-European justice system over which we have lost substantial democratic control. On the evidence, the answer is almost certainly yes.

I want to talk about the European arrest warrant in particular because, between the two poles of UKIP, which suggests that we should just opt out en masse, and our Labour and Liberal Democrat colleagues in this House, who suggest that there is nothing wrong with it, there is a common-sense—dare I say it—third way or at least a middle course. That is to have binding treaty relations on extradition, but to ensure that we have safeguards in place to protect British citizens. We must not make the Faustian bargain that was debated by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset of sacrificing a few innocent people to snag a few guilty fugitives.

If one looks at the data, one finds that the number of European arrest warrants that are received by the UK has trebled since 2004. The latest figures on warrants issued from the first quarter of 2013 showed that the UK receives 33 warrants for every one that it serves. A number of colleagues on the Liberal Democrat and Labour Benches have talked about the lop-sided nature of UK-US extradition, but that is nothing compared with the European arrest warrant, empirically and factually. One cannot take issue with the lack of reciprocity in our extradition relations with the US and not see the same problem in the European arrest warrant. One Briton is surrendered each week. That is up from five per year in 2004.

I accept that we needed a more streamlined process than existed before. I accept that we need a treaty basis for that. We ought to get to a stage where we can talk about reform of the European arrest warrant. I do not think that we will achieve that if we opt back in at this stage.

2014 JHA Opt-out Decision

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Dominic Raab

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I will come back to the proposals in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill and the extent to which we need to scrutinise them. I accept that this is an important opportunity to mitigate the blunt edges of the EAW, but the fact is that, at the moment, its broad net sweeps up too many innocent British nationals such as Andrew Symeou, Deborah Dark, Michael Turner, Edmond Arapi and, in my constituency, the retired judge Colin Dines, who suffered a stroke as a result of the pressure and stress of being subject to the warrant. We hope and expect that it will be dropped, but he and his family will still be left to pick up the pieces.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Is it not the case that if we opt back in, the European arrest warrant cannot be better in future than it is now, because at present it is not subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice or to enforcement by the European Commission, but then it will be? Therefore, whatever laws we pass in this House will not be determinative. It will be determined by the European Court of Justice.

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend makes his point, which I will come back to, in a powerful way. The issue has two distinct elements. We could get away with UK safeguards without amending the framework decision, but would they then be whittled away by the Luxembourg Court? My hon. Friend is right to raise that point.

I have mentioned a series of cases, all of which are appalling miscarriages of justice. The point I want to make—this is difficult for our coalition partners, who feel strongly about civil liberties and have strongly supported extradition reform when I have raised it in this House—is that if people are concerned about extradition and blunt extradition under our arrangements with the US, they cannot turn a blind eye to what has been happening under the European arrest warrant, because this is not about the odd case but systemic. Britain’s senior extradition judge, Lord Justice Thomas, stated publicly in his evidence to the Baker review—this has already been alluded to—that the EAW system has become “unworkable” and that unfairness is a “huge problem”.

This is not about a piffling, odd case here or there, or the trivial cases that get cited and bandied around left, right and centre; it is about serious cases such as that of Symeou, who was, in effect, wanted for killing someone, and Colin Dines, who was wanted for a very serious fraud. We all accept that those are extraditable crimes—that is not the issue. The question is whether we trust the investigating prosecuting authorities and courts in some of these other countries and whether we turn a blind eye to some of the appalling prison conditions.

UK Extradition Arrangements

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Dominic Raab

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Had my hon. Friend paid closer attention to the excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton, he would understand that there are differing views on that. It is well known that, with Government reports, the people are appointed who will provide the report that is wanted. That has been practised over many centuries.

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend is making his case in his usual passionate way, laced with history and forensic analysis. Does he agree that lawyers and judges give their legal opinions, but ultimately it is for accountable and elected lawmakers to decide on these matters?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Of course, we are the ones who must decide what is right for the country, and we must do so on first principles.

Although the American extradition treaty is not entirely satisfactory—I was very much persuaded by my hon. Friend’s introductory remarks—I am much more concerned about the European arrest warrant, which risks the freedom of innocent people in this country. I really would rather that we did not manage to arrest a foreign criminal if the exchange for that was allowing an innocent English person to be transported abroad—[Interruption.] Or a Scotsman, a Welshman or a Northern Irishman. I do not particularly want the southern Irish to languish in jails unnecessarily either, but that is not my business. It is therefore important for the Government to reinstate these protections. In fact, it would be quite encouraging if, in our efforts to renegotiate with Europe, we started with this.

Voting by Prisoners

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Dominic Raab

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Raab]

I give way to my hon. Friend.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. King Alfred was a good Somerset man who did his duty to rescue us not only from Vikings, but from high taxation.