EU: Police and Criminal Justice Measures

Lord Lloyd of Berwick Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

My Lords, I will be very brief. I rejoice that the Government have decided that, after all, we need the European arrest warrant, together with Eurojust and Europol and the cross-border police co-operation. These are on any view the most important of the 35 measures which are due for retention—if, of course, we are able to opt back in.

Given the uncertainty surrounding the opt-in process, and given the fact that we are already subject to the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union in respect of all the many police and justice measures that we have opted into since 2009, are we not taking an unjustifiable risk in opting out of what is good, including the 35 measures which are agreed to be in the national interest, in order to get rid of the other 95 pre-Lisbon measures, which are of no real importance to us, nor even of great relevance to us, one way or the other? It seems to be an unjustifiable risk we are taking for no apparent reason.

[Lord McNally]

I concede a lot of logic in what the noble and learned Lord has said. The fact is, however, that we had the Protocol 36 exercise to carry through; we have discussed it inside Government and with Parliament on a regular basis; and we have listened to the views of the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and others. We have suggested a way forward. Is it a way forward with risk? Yes it is. All such enterprises have an element of risk. However, we can move forward with a degree of confidence once we get past some of the nitpicking about who did what, where and when, and get down to the central issue of whether we can successfully negotiate with our European colleagues on matters of our national interest and, I respectfully suggest, of Europe’s interest. What has encouraged us is that the soft soundings that we have taken have led us to believe that we can carry out meaningful, fruitful discussions and negotiations that recognise the risks that the noble and learned Lord mentioned, but, because we will do this with good will and an intention to succeed, and with colleagues who have similar good will and want us to succeed, will minimise those risks.