Taking Account of Convictions (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2020

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Library and other noble Lords who helped me in my research. I decided to take part in this debate because I thought the regulations might impact on civil liberties and the evaluation of settled status. I need not have feared. I can see what the Government wish to achieve, and it fits nicely into the consideration given by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

The principle was well described in the introduction to the Commission’s report to the European Parliament and Council on the implementation by the member states of the framework decision back on 24 July 2008. I quote this because the relevance of these aspirations seems to me to be far-reaching:

“In a genuine area of justice based on mutual trust, the European Union has taken action”,


as the Minister has told us,

“to ensure that citizens are protected against crime across the European Union, while also ensuring that citizens’ fundamental rights are respected when they find themselves involved in criminal proceedings, whether as a victim or a defendant. In the European Union, where people can”—

perhaps we should say could—

“move and settle freely, this objective of maintaining and developing a genuine European area of justice requires that convictions against persons sentenced in one Member State are taken into account in another Member State in order to prevent future crimes. Equally, if new crimes are committed by the same offender, subject to preserving fairness of the proceedings, this behavioural factor should be taken into account in the framework of new criminal proceedings.”

Clearly this is a description of a desirable legal world that, whatever our Brexit beliefs, we should all want to live in. It is so desirable that it begs the question of what will happen to EU convictions in future and why we would not wish for a continuation of this level of protection for our citizens. Do these amendment regulations not in fact fix a problem that we might then have to break?