Justice and Home Affairs Opt-out

Debate between Keith Vaz and John Redwood

Monday 7th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash). I thank the Government for allowing us the opportunity to have this debate today, and I thank the Home Secretary for the way in which she began the process of constructing a dialogue with Parliament. The Chairs of the three Select Committees—myself, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee—met the Home Secretary when the process began, and we agreed what I thought was a timetable to enable Parliament to express its views on these important matters.

Both Parliament and the Government stuck to that timetable. The Home Secretary wanted parliamentary scrutiny through the Select Committees by the end of October. We did our best to ensure that our reports were agreed by then, and we presented our reports to the Government with the expectation—although I accept that there was no promise—that Parliament would be able to vote on the measures before the Government began their negotiations. The Home Secretary has strongly expressed her feeling that Parliament needs to vote on something. In other words, let her get on with the negotiations, let us see where we go, let us look at the direction of travel and, once the package is ready, Members may determine whether they support it.

The personalities of the three Select Committees, not just their members but their Chairs, are quite different. They are not people we can get together and expect agreement from on every word of every report, but all three Committees, and all three Chairs, agreed unanimously that Parliament should not only debate the matter but vote on it.

Only the usual suspects are here today, with the exception of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), who has taken time off from preparing for the London marathon next week to attend this marathon session. I suspect that if there was a vote at the end of these proceedings, we would have had a much better attendance and Members on both sides of the House would have come forward to express their views.

The Government have said that the three Select Committees have deliberated and produced reports. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) tabled 125 questions, so he ranks alongside the Select Committees as far as scrutiny is concerned. That is probably enough to enable the Government to know the direction of travel and to complete the negotiations, but I do not think it is enough, and neither does the Home Affairs Committee. We feel that a vote today would have been the best way to give the Home Secretary the mandate that she needs to go to the Council of Ministers and to other European Justice and Home Affairs meetings to discuss the measures that she does or does not want to opt into. I am sure she is a very strong negotiator. She is before the Home Affairs Committee tomorrow, and I am sure she will put up a robust performance, as she always does, but she would have given an even better performance before the Council of Ministers and her various European colleagues if she had had the backing of the whole House.

I was concerned to read the note that was recently issued by the current presidency of the Council of Ministers, to which I referred in my intervention on the Home Secretary. Statewatch has published what it says is a note from Greece, which currently holds the presidency:

“Due to national procedures with the UK Parliament, the Presidency is of the understanding that the UK Government would need to finalise its position on the re-opting list by June 2014, so that these national internal procedures can take place before the UK parliament’s summer recess. Therefore, it would be appropriate that the list of acts which will be subject to re-opting in be ‘politically’ agreed by June.”

Of course, that is not a note from the Cabinet or a leak from the Home Office. It comes, apparently, from the presidency. Perhaps there is a misunderstanding about the way in which we work. The Home Secretary has said today that she will get her list ready by December and that Parliament will then have an opportunity to vote. Given that Parliament is not usually given a great deal of time to deliberate such matters, I imagine that once the measures have been agreed, there will not be a huge amount of notice before Members come to the House and vote on these issues.

The Minister for Europe, in a written ministerial statement on 20 January, said:

“I hope that today I have conveyed to the House not only the Government’s full commitment to holding a vote on the 2014 decision in this House and the other place,”—

that has been re-emphasised by the Home Secretary today—

“but the importance that we will accord to Parliament in the process leading up to that vote.”

If there was a need to know the view of Parliament, it is contained in the joint report. The three Committees decided that the best course of action would be to have a good debate on the Floor and for individual Members to decide, in their own way, what they wished to vote on. I am quite certain that when this matter comes before the House, I will vote in a different way from some members of the Home Affairs Committee, because we have not taken a view on every single measure. One point that we have put before the House is that we think it vital, even if the Government decide to put the whole package before the House, that we have a vote on the European arrest warrant.

I do not believe that we have got it right with the changes to the European arrest warrant that the Home Secretary has announced. I support the European arrest warrant. I think, for the reasons given by both Front Benchers, that it is a vital tool when dealing with people who have committed terrible crimes. The Home Secretary mentioned one case in which somebody had stabbed someone 86 times. Of course it is right that we have a quick power that enables us to ask a colleague in the European Union to hand over someone who is suspected of committing a crime of that seriousness, and that that person should arrive as soon as possible. The shadow Home Secretary is absolutely right to support the European arrest warrant.

However, time and again Members of this House have raised worries, including in evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, that the European arrest warrant has not been used very well in a number of cases. The hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) has spoken about the Andrew Symeou case. The Select Committee heard evidence from the constituent of the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), Michael Turner, who was extradited to Hungary and incarcerated for month after month, but never faced any charges. We were therefore very concerned about the practicalities of what was proposed.

The Home Secretary said in her evidence to the Home Affairs Committee that she felt that she had made the changes that were necessary to deal with the concerns of Members of this House through the proportionality test. However, the evidence given by a number of individuals, some of whom were from Germany, indicated that that was not enough to protect a citizen who was the subject of a European arrest warrant that was issued for frivolous reasons.

[Mr Redwood]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the work that he is doing. Like him, I think that it is fundamental that the House has a vote on the European arrest warrant. It is a very flawed device. My big worry is that it is this House that must be the fount of our liberties and our criminal justice, not a foreign court.

[Keith Vaz]

That is a very important point. We need to be able to debate these issues and vote on them. The European arrest warrant is one such example.

The Government estimate that the unit cost of executing an incoming European arrest warrant in the United Kingdom is approximately £20,000. If we round up the 999 requests that were received in 2011, the estimated cost was £20 million. Some of the figures are extraordinary. Poland issued 3,809 arrest warrants. I had promised not to mention the arrest warrant issued for the man accused of stealing a wheelbarrow but cannot resist. Another example was a warrant for a man who absconded from a Polish prison while on day release. There was another warrant for someone alleged to have been involved in a minor drug offence. Another man subject to a warrant had given false details on an application for a £200 bank loan that, in fact, had already been paid off. They were all the subject of a European arrest warrant—there were 3,809 arrest warrants from Poland alone.

The number of surrenders from all countries to those 3,809 arrest warrants was 930. The UK issued 205 arrest warrants—we have a better surrenders record at 99. Germany issued 2,138 arrest warrants and had 855 surrenders. The total number of European arrest warrants received by member states is higher. Germany received 14,034 requests under the European arrest warrant scheme, the UK received 6,760, and Poland received only 296.

I travelled to Poland and met officials. I asked prosecutors why Poland kept issuing European arrest warrants for crimes that would not be regarded as very serious in our country—we would certainly not issue the EAW for such crimes. The prosecutors were very open, saying that issuing warrants was required by the law. If a judge issues a European arrest warrant in Poland, the Polish police are obliged to execute it, telephone the authorities in the UK, Germany or another country, and ensure that the warrants are executed. They were looking at ways in which they could limit the issuing of warrants. A much better use of the Home Secretary’s time would be to negotiate with some of those countries and tell them that they would make their cause much easier for us to follow, and make the European arrest warrant easier for us to defend, if they did something about their domestic law, as we have done. I am saying not that we are a model, but that we are doing extremely well in using the arrest warrants only for the most serious cases—those that the Home Secretary and shadow Home Secretary have described.

I would have liked the opportunity to vote on the Europol regulations. As the House knows, 3,600 internationally active organised crime gangs operate in Europe. We need Europol. We have a British head of Europol— Rob Wainwright. He was re-appointed by the Home Secretary and appointed by the previous Government. Mr Wainwright does an excellent job. We need to be in Europol and need to opt back in to that arrangement. That would enable us to be part of trying to deal with those very serious issues occurring all over Europe.

There are other examples, such as the measures dealing with the criminal records information system. We need to share such information but cannot at the moment because of the issues we are discussing. Members of the House would have liked the opportunity to discuss those matters and vote on them.

Although we will not be allowed a vote in the House tonight, I hope the Home Secretary will look again at the reports of the three Select Committees and allow hon. Members a vote as soon as possible. I hope that, when she winds up the debate, she will tell us whether the timetable set by the presidency is the right one—should we make our decisions politically by June, before the recess, and vote on them in December?—because that will give the House a clearer view as to how to proceed.

Debate on the Address

Debate between Keith Vaz and John Redwood

Tuesday 25th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

I entirely agree. I have in the past been actively involved in British industry, and 3% per annum efficiency gains is a normal target. It is not done by undermining the product, reducing its quality or providing the customer with a worse service: it is done while giving customers a better service and raising the quality of the product, through technology, training and energising and motivating the work force through reward and incentive. We need to do that in the public sector now, on a large scale, because we have had 10 wasted years in which the Government made no progress and put too much money in without asking for enough back—doing too little for too much. We now need to create a public sector that does more for less in the important areas such as health and education, and does less for less in areas such as ID cards and the authoritarian state that Labour introduced.

We are meeting at a time of grave crisis for our European neighbours in the euro area. As one who campaigned strenuously and volubly against the United Kingdom joining the euro, I take no great pleasure in saying that all the things that we thought could go wrong with the euro are now unfortunately doing so, even without this country. I am very proud of all those who joined us in that campaign and kept sterling out. It is the one thing that the Government most recently ejected from office got right—they managed to stay out of the euro. That was a very sensible judgment on which I always congratulated them and backed them at the time. Had Britain gone into the euro, the state of British public finances and the different nature of the British economy and its founder currency, sterling, would by now have shattered the euro. Our great contribution to euroland unity was keeping our currency out, and I think that I could now find many German and French people and experts who would agree that we have made their problem a lot easier by not being in the euro.

When we used to say, “Beware of Greece! That is why we need to control our deficit”, the previous Government were always keen to tell us, “Oh, but Greece is in a totally different position.” Well they were wrong in this sense: if we do the figures properly, we see that total borrowing in Greece, in relation to its economy, is no bigger than total borrowing by the UK Government in relation to our economy. Colleagues have set out endlessly that the true debt and liability of the state in Britain is £3 trillion, not just under £1 trillion, as the previous Government used to say. Furthermore, our deficit is every bit as big as Greece’s, as we know from the awful figures that we have seen. So in that sense, we are just like Greece, and if the markets have got to the point with Greece where they are saying, “We will not carry on lending you money, because we think that you have over-borrowed”, we could get to that point in the United Kingdom too. It is that argument that has brought several Liberal Democrats round to our way of thinking, which is that we need urgent action. During the election we saw the Greek crisis being enacted at the same time as we were talking to electors, making it clear how dangerous the situation was.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Of course, the right hon. Gentleman has held these views for as long as I have been in the House, but the Prime Minister made it clear, after he met Chancellor Merkel, that it is in this country’s interests that the euro succeeds. It might well be that we do not join in the next five years, but we want it to succeed. Does he agree?

[Mr Redwood]

Of course, and I said that it came as no pleasure to me to say that unfortunately what we saw as the failings of the euro are now coming true. I was going to deal with the right hon. Gentleman’s point: it is in Britain’s interest to try to tackle the problems with our eurozone friends in a way that does not penalise this country. They are, of course, an important trading bloc in the world and an important market for ourselves.

I would like to finish my earlier point, however. There is a very important difference between the United Kingdom and Greece: whereas when Greece needs to borrow a lot of money, it cannot print the money to do so, and whereas when Greece wants, or has, to repay the money, it cannot devalue the currency to do so, the United Kingdom can do, and has done, both on a heroic scale. The reason we have not yet got into the Greek situation is that the whole of last year’s massive borrowing requirement was simply printed. The money was printed and injected through the banks into the public sector, so that we avoided the market pressures that Greece experienced. Greece could not do that because she shares a currency managed by the European Central Bank. The previous Government presided over a devaluation of the currency of about a quarter, so, although we will obviously not renege on our debts, the previous Government reneged on them by the back door, saying to all the foreign holders of those debts, “You will only get back three quarters of your money or interest.”