Criminal Law

Lady Hermon Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I described them as a package because that was what was open to us under the terms of the Lisbon treaty negotiated by the previous Labour Government. We have to opt back in to a group of measures. There are measures in the package that interrelate. For example, the European supervision order relates to the European arrest warrant. We cannot simply pick and choose individual measures; many of them interrelate and should be considered together.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

The Home Secretary made but a fleeting reference to consultation with the devolved institutions, but since Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom to share a land frontier with another EU member state, will she take the opportunity to put on the record that the Justice Minister in Northern Ireland, David Ford, and the Assembly support the measures before us this evening?

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point. The Justice Minister in Northern Ireland supports the measures, as does the Justice Minister in the Republic of Ireland, Frances Fitzgerald, who has made very clear the consequences if the House rejects the measures and if the Government do not opt in to them.

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[Mrs May]

We were clear about the package of measures that we wished to opt into—the 35 that we identified. We looked at all the 130-odd measures that were subject to protocol 36, and we believe that the package that the Government have published for Members is the right one to give our law enforcement agencies the powers they need.

Another measure in the package is the prisoner transfer framework decision, which helps to remove foreign criminals from British jails—prisoners such as Ainars Zvirgzds, a Latvian national convicted of controlling prostitution, firearms and drug offences and assault. In April 2012, he was sentenced to thirteen and a half years’ imprisonment in the UK, and in June this year he was transferred out of this country to a prison in Latvia, where he will serve the remainder of his sentence. Had it not been for the prisoner transfer measure, he would have remained in a British prison at a cost to the British taxpayer of more than £100,000.

As I indicated earlier, I have taken part in a number of debates on these issues. From those debates, and from the debate that we had earlier and the comments that right hon. and hon. Members have made today, it is absolutely clear that the measure that attracts the most interest from Members is the European arrest warrant.

Extradition is always an emotive subject. It raises important questions about the civil liberties of British citizens, the quality of justice in other countries, the role of our own courts and how we bring criminals to justice, and I understand those concerns. I remind hon. Members that I am the Home Secretary who blocked the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the United States, and who reformed our extradition arrangements so that, when prosecution is possible in both this country and another, British courts can block extradition overseas if they believe it is in the interests of justice to do so. I therefore share many of the concerns that have been raised about the European arrest warrant in the past. Indeed, as a member of the shadow Cabinet I voted against its transposition into British law by the last Labour Government. That is why, as Home Secretary, I have legislated to reform the operation of the arrest warrant and increase the protections that we can offer to British people and others who are wanted for extradition.

The changes that we made through the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 mean that the arrest warrant that sits in our package of 35 measures is a better and safer arrest warrant than the one operated over the past decade. Under the last Government, British citizens could be extradited for disproportionately minor offences, so the law has been changed to ensure that arrest warrants are refused for those suspected of minor offences. A British judge must now consider whether the alleged offence and likely penalty is sufficient to make someone’s extradition proportionate, and a British judge must also consider whether measures less coercive than extradition are available to foreign authorities.

[Lady Hermon]

I am grateful to the Home Secretary for taking a second intervention from me.

The Home Secretary knows well that a Mr John Downey walked free from the Old Bailey earlier this year. He had been charged in connection with the Hyde park bombing, which killed four innocent British soldiers, and was also sought in connection with the Enniskillen bombing and the murder of two Ulster Defence Regiment men in Northern Ireland. He walked free because the Northern Ireland Office had signed off a letter in 2007—not during the current Administration—for a category of people known as the on-the-runs. Mr Downey is now enjoying the air of County Donegal. Would the UK opting into the European arrest warrant help the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland retrieve Mr Downey to face serious criminal charges if the Police Service of Northern Ireland had sufficient evidence?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I say something for the sake of clarity? I do not dissent from what the Home Secretary has just said, but what I said, quite specifically, was that if the previous question were agreed to, the draft regulations would not be further considered at this sitting. I did not say, and I am not contending, that debate on these matters will be over for good. I am simply saying that the debate on the regulations would be over for today. It would of course be open to the House, which is in control of these matters, to have that debate on a subsequent day if it wished.

[Lady Hermon]

May I take this opportunity to remind Members on both sides of the House that we in Northern Ireland face an unusual threat? [Interruption.] May I ask Opposition Front Benchers to keep quiet for a moment?

The situation in Northern Ireland is very serious. Dissident republicans—the Real IRA, or whatever they want to call themselves—hide beyond the border in the Republic of Ireland. They come into Northern Ireland, and they murder people. We had a prison officer murdered two years ago, on 1 November. If his widow and his family were aware that we are jeopardising the possibility of these measures coming into force, they would be deeply concerned, as I am. Let me say to Members on both sides of the House that we must make absolutely sure that there is no time gap between these measures, which we have all agreed that we support, and the debate in the House.

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for setting that out so clearly, and she is obviously deeply concerned about that point. She intervened on me earlier in relation to a particular case, and I would add to that that while, of course, in any individual case it is up to the independent police and prosecution services to choose what to do, if we were not in the European arrest warrant it would, as she has indicated, be harder for us to extradite people who had committed offences in Northern Ireland and who were now in the Republic of Ireland. The Minister for Justice in the Republic of Ireland has been very clear that if there is any operational gap at all between being in the European arrest warrant and opting back in to it, which there would be if we reject the package of measures, that would have serious consequences because it would be assumed that the arrangements currently in place would no longer be extant.