Judiciary and Fundamental Rights

John Hemming Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I aim to be very quick. I found chapter 23 very interesting, as it is the first time that that chapter has been used for the accession of a country. We have perhaps now hit the Groucho Marx threshold for Europe—that we would not be allowed to join the EU because our standards are not high enough to do so. It is somewhat complacent to imply that the standards of our judicial system are always higher than those in Croatia. I spent some time comparing and contrasting the case X v. Croatia and RP and Others v. the United Kingdom. If I have enough time, I will come back to that later.

If we look through the document outlining the EU’s response, we find the following statement:

“The EU underlines the importance of Croatia improving publication of and access to final court decisions both in the interests of the development of case law and consistent judicial practice, and in view of wider public dissemination.”

Well, the UK has a massive problem here. Many judgments are not handed down by the judge—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. That is not relevant to our debate, which concerns the documents before us about Croatia. I would be grateful if, in the few minutes left to him that will enable the Minister to reply, the hon. Gentleman stuck to this evening’s subject of debate.

[John Hemming]

I think it important to examine the issues raised by chapter 23, however, and to compare X v. Croatia with RP and Others v. the United Kingdom. In the former case, a mother’s mental capacity was removed from her and she was told that she had no locus in the Croatian courts. She had a second opinion, which was taken through the whole Croatian court system. The domestic court system was involved in exactly the same way in the latter case, but the woman had no second opinion. In my view, the Croatian system is far better.

I highlighted the issue of judgments in the accession document. There is also the question of the anti-corruption commission. The document states:

“The EU also calls on Croatia to ensure full implementation of its system for monitoring and verification of assets declarations of public officials and judges”.

According to the Groucho Marx test, this is now a club that we would not be allowed to join, because we do not operate that sort of system here.

I think it complacent to assume that countries such as Croatia are behind the United Kingdom. The chapter 23 requirements have already pushed Croatia into doing things that we do not do here. The hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) may be pleased to find that in future years we might be expelled for not complying with the conditions with which Croatia complies, but I do not take the same view as him on the European Union. I think that extending the EU is a good idea. Most of the people who argue that we should leave it argue that we should be in the European economic area, which allows freedom of movement throughout Europe. I also disagree with the hon. Gentleman about whether people qualify for habitual residency as a consequence of declaring self-employment, because I do not think that such a declaration qualifies people for habitual residency immediately.

I think that we should consider not just Croatia but whether we satisfy the conditions in chapter 23, but given that I cannot cite any examples of how we fail to satisfy those conditions, I will leave that to the Minister.