Eurojust and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I agree with the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on one point and disagree with her on another. I agree that there should be a debate on the Floor of the House when the three Select Committees publish their reports. They will provide important guidance to the Government in their negotiations. Where I disagree with her is that it is not sufficient for her to say, “Even if it were true, I would not have started from here.” The question still has to be asked whether the Labour party would, if it had had the opportunity, have opted in to the Eurojust proposal or not. She conspicuously failed to answer that question, except in a way that suggested that she had been given a narrow mandate by somebody in authority in the Labour party.

I start from the proposition that Eurojust is essential and that the European public prosecutor most certainly is not. For the one to get in the way of the other is harmful. Anyone who looked at the documentation for this debate and the excellent work of the European Scrutiny Committee would readily concede that there are many complexities to this matter. However, at its heart, there is a simple issue, which is that whereas cross-border crime requires an effective apparatus that takes advantage of our being in the European Union—we want to maintain those arrangements and it would be greatly contrary to Britain’s interests not to be part of them—the creation of the European public prosecutor is neither necessary nor, in the opinion of many of us, even desirable. That it should stand in the way of British participation and the participation of other countries in Eurojust is seriously harmful.

There are two ways in which the situation that we are confronted with creates difficulties for any British Government, of whatever party political composition. The first is that the proposals on the European public prosecutor and on Eurojust are interlocking. The draft directive on Eurojust incorporates the European public prosecutor so extensively that it makes the position of a state that wants one and not the other very difficult.

The second is that the mandatory powers that are given to national members of Eurojust fly in the face of arrangements in the United Kingdom. Of course, the arrangements throughout the United Kingdom are not uniform. The arrangements in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are quite different from those in Scotland. In Scotland, the Lord Advocate and the procurator fiscal can direct investigations. There is a clear separation between investigation and prosecution in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Those differences need to be respected. If we can respect those differences in the United Kingdom, surely the European Union can respect the fact that the same objectives can be achieved by different legal systems.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman share the concern of many in this House, including the Minister, over the data that are collected by the Commission, which show that the conviction rate in the UK is 23%, when in reality it is about 75%? The data that the Commission collects centrally go against what we are trying to do.

[Sir Alan Beith]

There are many dangers in playing with those statistics. Not least, the objective of a 100% conviction rate seems to undervalue the ability of the court to determine that evidence is not sufficient to support conviction and punishment. We expect our courts to throw out cases that do not have a sound evidential basis. The whole statistical exercise is potentially dangerous and misleading.

I speak for the Liberal Democrats, rather than for the Justice Committee, because, oddly enough, this is a home affairs power rather than a justice power, and there is no doubt that we want to be in Eurojust. We do not want Eurojust to be complicated by the wholly different proposal for a European public prosecutor, and we do not want Britain’s participation to be impaired in any way.

The motion is carefully worded. It asserts that

“the UK should not opt in to the draft Regulation on the Eurojust at this time and should conduct a thorough review of the final agreed text to inform active consideration of opting into the Eurojust Regulation, post adoption”.

That wording is most ingeniously crafted. What I want it to mean is that we will make substantial efforts to ensure that we get a Eurojust regulation that meets our needs and those of a number of other member states that share our concerns and that can be allies in putting this matter right, so that there can be no doubt about our future co-operation in these arrangements, which greatly assist us in dealing with cross-border crime and catching up with fleeing criminals who dodge around the nations of Europe. That is of immense importance to us. I look forward to the Government’s active involvement in trying to get the Eurojust proposal right so that we can opt in to it in due course.