EU: Justice and Home Affairs (EUC Report)

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, it is essential yet again to place on record the appreciation of members of the committee for the chairmanship and leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. As I have said on other occasions, he brings a wealth of relevant experience on the front line, which is invaluable as we try to discharge our duties. He is right also to praise the work of the staff of the committee. All the members of the committee found that work outstanding. It really was helpful.

I want to make just two points. First, my experience of the work of the committee has done nothing but strengthen my conviction about the indispensability of British membership of the European Union. The first reality that faces us on issues of security in the United Kingdom is that they cannot be dealt with satisfactorily simply on the basis of the United Kingdom operating as an isolated individual authority. All the challenges of the sinister and large-scale developments in international crime, to which the noble Lord has referred, and all the developments in international terrorism demand international co-operation. As soon as one begins to look at this work in any detail and break free of the superficial, melodramatic comment in the ill informed media, one sees that the safety of our people—the safety of our families—can be nothing but enhanced by the kind of work that is going on in the European Union and elsewhere. It would be absolute madness to jeopardise that in any way.

Of course there is room for improvement and of course it is absolutely right to insist upon evaluation. It is also right to be looking pragmatically at the cumulative effect of what is really on the agenda now as distinct from what was there in theory and how relevant it is. All these things matter. But the second point I want to make is that we tackle these things best and make the improvements that are necessary by the degree to which we can demonstrate our commitment to the institutions. If we are always apparently grudgingly allowing ourselves to continue to be members and always insisting upon saying, “Is this compatible with the British interest?”, it is not really a very constructive or positive approach to winning friends and increasing the strength of collective consideration of these matters at international level. We must work to improve that, but that is made possible by our membership of and commitment to the institutions being in no doubt whatever. That is why I have been so unhappy about the events of the past year, which have undermined our strength in this respect.

It is time that those of us who really care about security and the safety of our people started fighting back much more forthrightly and putting the at times almost neurotically ideological critics of the concept of such European co-operation on the defensive. They are the people who are jeopardising the safety of the British people. We ought to be saying that in no uncertain terms.

The other point I would make—and I understand the reasons for it—is that there is still a certain amount of cultural work to be done in the Home Office and elsewhere. I have terrific respect for the amount of work that is done by the Home Office. I sometimes think that it too easily becomes a whipping boy for all the criticisms and frustrations that exist. It is a tremendously important part of our administration. But there is a psychology which has not yet altogether been overcome, which is, “We do these things rather well, we do them better on our own, although some international co-operation is helpful in specific areas”. I think that is archaic thinking. My own view is that we have to adopt the psychology which I have been trying to describe and say, “There is no alternative to international co-operation. We can only be as effective as the weaker links”. Now, there are weaker links within Europe and we ought, therefore, to be putting all our time, energy and skills into strengthening the work, to shore up and improve the performance where there are such weaker links.

I am very glad that on this occasion the Government have taken the report very seriously—the noble Lord has dealt very fully with the responses of the Government. I am glad about that because I think the Select Committee work in this House matters. I would like to re-emphasise, before I conclude, a point that the Minister made in earlier debates. If the quality of our Select Committee work is to be as high as it should and could be, the greater the degree of priority given by departments—in this context, very much the Home Office—to ensuring the information available to the committee, as it goes about its evaluation and considerations, is as plentiful, as helpful, and as clear as it possibly can be, and the more that can become the prevailing discipline within the department, the better it will be. Papers that arrive without proper time for full consideration—let alone any suspicion that sometimes a department does not wanting papers to be available too soon for consideration—do not help the committee to do its work well. Things have been improving—particularly, if I may say, with the present Minister at the helm. But it is an issue that cannot be given enough attention. Either we need these Select Committees or we do not. I am convinced that we do. If we are going to have them, they need to be serviced by government departments as well as they possibly can be.