Brexit: UK-EU Security (EUC Report)

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my entry in the Members’ register as a practising lawyer. As one who not only gave evidence to your Lordships for your report while in my “metamorphist” state between the European Parliament and this place, but who has spent the last 10 of my 17 years as an MEP and party spokesman on these very subjects in Brussels, working constantly on getting ever-closer co-operation between Governments, police and intelligence agencies, I thought I would offer a few thoughts at this time.

I congratulate the committee on an excellent report, which demonstrates, as I have mentioned in many places and on many occasions, a thoroughness and quality almost unique to your Lordships and their excellent staff. There is so much to endorse, but in my limited time today—thus allowing other noble Lords perhaps a little more time to speak—I will concentrate on just the most critical areas, to my mind, which must be properly sorted out before the Brexit negotiations are concluded. My evidence to your Lordships’ committee stands as a supplement to any remarks I make this evening.

It took me seven years as rapporteur to negotiate the EU PNR agreement between the 28 states, which incidentally is right now, as we debate this evening, being vigorously introduced. It took similar periods for other measures in which I played a leading role, such as the European Criminal Records Information System, which has already been referred to; Schengen; SIS II; the Prüm system for exchange of DNA and fingerprints; the joint investigation teams, which we introduced over 10 years ago in the European Parliament; Europol powers; and of course all the extremely complicated but necessary data protection legislation. I thought no job could get any tougher than the one I held when I was UK Immigration Minister in the 1990s, but that proved a little premature.

We have now reached a level of co-operation that has never been seen before but which is increasingly vital to keep abreast of terrorism and major criminality. We are now able to deal in “virtual real time” as opposed to historical exchanges of information or data necessitating bureaucratic or constitutional delays, which of course used to put us all at greater risk. However, real time comes with obligations. In order to maintain trust and confidence so that such material can be released, there have to be common rules and ultimately common redress and accountability. Currently that lies in Europe or through its institutions, as well as in our national Parliament. The European Court of Justice, although, as we know, largely limited to treaty interpretation, has a vital role in ensuring that all participants operate with the same safeguards. Post-Brexit, how do we deal with a situation where the remaining 27 states are still obliged constitutionally to turn to those institutions but we are not?

Recently, we have heard a number of interesting remarks from Ministers, among them:

“As part of the exit negotiations, we will need to consider the full range of options to ensure effective cooperation after the UK leaves the EU”.


That was my honourable friend in the other place, the Home Office Minister Ben Wallace, on 19 August last year. Last December my honourable friend David Jones said:

“Europol is of importance. As part of the exit negotiations, the Government will discuss with the EU and member states how best to continue co-operation on a range of tools and measures, including membership of Europol”.—[Official Report, Commons, 1/12/16; col. 1655.]


And my right honourable friend Brandon Lewis said in January:

“In my conversations with colleagues across Europe, I have been encouraged by their view that it is essential to find a way for our shared work on security to continue, but we do have questions about how that should happen in practice and we need to work through answering them”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/1/17; col. 958.]


They are of course right to acknowledge the importance of getting this right, but how do they achieve it? It is definitely one policy area where a so-called hard Brexit or indeed any time vacuum is simply not a responsible option. There is no World Trade Organization equivalent in this vital area to fall back on.

Despite my known reservations, perhaps in a spirit of helpfulness I might offer a little advice. First, we need to recognise that our European partners will not and cannot yield the control of all these measures from the present intra-institutional arrangements. Secondly, as the Economist Charlemagne column has suggested this week in reference to a “Norwegian option”, as it put it, we must recognise that even the great repeal Act will at best freeze the European legislation and its parameters at the date of its implementation, when in fact we need these measures to be dynamic, as I would term it, and tuned to future changes and safeguards; the article refers to that. All EU legislation is now designed to a lesser or greater extent to be dynamic, mostly as a result of the work we did after the Lisbon treaty of 2009 when the European Parliament acquired a greater say over all these measures.

So, even if my colleagues along the corridor and, I am afraid, some in this House turn apoplectic at times at the initials “ECJ” or “EP”, in my opinion we should try to agree some new legal protocols. I myself was involved in the Protocol 36 mechanisms regarding our opting out of and then opting in, to various measures. Protocols are useful things. We will certainly need to agree a new legal protocol here so that we can accept changes when and if they are made subsequent to our adoption of European legislation through the great repeal Act.

Negotiating from this parallel position to find a means ourselves of changing such protocols needs skilful negotiation and a large dose of ongoing good will. Whether we can get round the strict ban in a number of areas on sharing information and data with third countries is a matter of real concern to me, but I believe it is achievable if the right device is found. A similar approach may have to be deployed in a large number of other areas where we plan at a specific date to take on large pieces of EU legislation.

At times, I wonder whether the extent of the post-Brexit challenges is totally appreciated by some people—obviously, I exclude my noble friend from this—particularly in this vital field. I know that the Brexit debate spends a lot of time on matters other than those we are debating, but I have given most of my recent political life to the cause of protecting our citizens, through co-operation with our European partners, from the fast-multiplying threats of terrorism, evil criminality and cybercrime, while ensuring, as far as possible, their freedoms and rights as individuals. Surely, that is the primary duty of us all in the undoubtedly difficult phase of national life we are now entering.