European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 26th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

This is Committee stage. We are allowed to go back and forth. What are the Government saying to other member states at the moment about the nature of the agreement on this that they are prepared to contemplate? Are they saying to our current partners that they are prepared to see judicial supervision in these arrangements or not? I hope the Minister will answer that very simple point.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise for not speaking at Second Reading; I took the view that I was unlikely to add anything new, bearing in mind the number of speakers. However, I have a few new things to add as a result of today’s debate. I had more than 30 years of service in the Metropolitan Police Service—which pales into insignificance when you consider the experience of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe—but I have also been briefed by the National Crime Agency lead on Brexit and by the director-general of the National Crime Agency on these issues.

It might be considered a technical point, but there is a difference between counterterrorism intelligence exchange and law enforcement. The counterterrorism intelligence tends to be of such a sensitive nature that it is exchanged on a bilateral basis and therefore is nothing to do with the European Union. When sensitive data, for example, are shared by the United States with the United Kingdom, the United States would not do that if it was on the basis that the United Kingdom would then share all that intelligence with the EU 27. However, there is a technical difference between counterterrorism in terms of intelligence and counterterrorism in terms of bringing terrorists to justice, and here we are talking about bringing people to justice using these various mechanisms.

My noble friend Lady Ludford referred to the European Court of Justice and the Charter of Fundamental Rights as two important mechanisms which allow this co-operation to take place within the European Union. In her Munich speech, the Prime Minister tantalisingly mentioned the European Court of Justice and the potential for a role for it after the UK had left the European Union in relation to things such as the European arrest warrant. The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, made the point that this is not about relationships between two sovereign nations, it is about individual rights in terms of whether an individual is going to be moved from one country to another. Perhaps the Minister can give us some clarity on the Government’s position on the European Court of Justice by explaining what the Prime Minister meant in her speech.

The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, talked about the need for the closest possible co-operation, which is what the National Crime Agency would say, and that the measure of the success of the negotiations would be how closely we can replicate the existing arrangements. I believe that the Government’s position is that they want to replicate all of these things as far as possible, and that is what I took from what the Prime Minister said. So to say that the Government cannot give away their negotiating position by saying what the objective is going to be is not, I think, true in this particular case. Perhaps the Minister will tell us that what the Government seek to achieve is as close as possible to the arrangements we have, but that is not the question. The question is how the Government are going to secure those arrangements; that is the critical question, not what they are seeking to achieve, but how they are going to do it. That is because there seems to be a contradiction between not wanting to have any jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice on the one hand and yet wanting to participate in things such as the European arrest warrant on the other.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, helped the House to introduce the very important issues around protected persons. For example, the victims of domestic violence have the protection of orders that are made in one country enforced in another, which brings a new dimension to the importance of these arrangements. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked about the importance of the protection of children through the European arrest warrant and the other measures, in particular the European Criminal Records Information System, which enables law enforcement to quickly check the antecedents of people who are suspected of these sorts of offences. These are extremely important issues in terms of bringing people to justice and in terms of protecting citizens not only of the United Kingdom but of other European states. We have heard from my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford how extradition can take years—four and a half years in the case he mentioned—whereas under the European arrest warrant justice can be brought far more swiftly.

For me, the essential question is not what the Government want the end position to be, because that is quite clear—and it is certainly what the National Crime Agency and other law enforcement officers want, and indeed what the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, has also said. The question that the Government need to answer is this: how on earth is this going to be achieved, bearing in mind their apparent contradictory stances on other issues such as the European Court of Justice?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, as we have heard, these amendments relating to reciprocal issues are key to continuing to protect and assist British citizens after Brexit, including children and protected persons, in ways that hitherto our EU membership and cross-border agreements have provided. In particular these are the European arrest warrant, the mutual recognition of family court judgments, information exchange, Europol and Eurojust.

The Government’s approach to these issues must be agreed in principle with the EU in time to be included in the framework part of the Article 50 requirements and form part of the withdrawal agreement, so a satisfactory approach to these will be key to the future vote on that deal. However, as we have heard from speakers tonight, there seems to be an extraordinary lack of urgency, especially if there is any chance—I am not sure whether this is what the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, hinted at—that a standstill transition agreement could not cover these issues. That would make it even more urgent.

I ask in particular about the Government’s urgency, or lack of it, as I began asking Written Questions on this a year ago. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, will remember it very well: it was on St Valentine’s Day last year—I do not think he chose it to be that day, but never mind—that he answered some of my questions on matrimonial and maintenance proceedings. It was very reassuring: he said that the Government,

“recognises the importance of the issues”.

Wow. There was no more than that then, nor indeed on civil judicial co-operation and cross-border disputes and family law when he replied to a similar Written Question in August. I worry about the lack of progress since then.

As the Prime Minister has remarked and others have repeated, keeping our citizens safe is the first mission of any Government. Therefore, like others, I welcome that she used the Munich speech to reiterate her desire to negotiate continued, and in some cases enhanced, co-operation with EU nations and particularly with these bodies and schemes. As we have heard, the amendments cover the Schengen Information System, the European arrest warrant, the European Criminal Records Information System, Europol and Eurojust. Given what we have heard today and in earlier debates, the Minister will recognise the importance of our continued participation in all of those, but also the challenges that that will bring to them in negotiating.

While we heard from Munich the desire for this comprehensive agreement, it is time for the Minister to offer a bit more detail and clarity sooner rather than later. It is about the direction of travel or the objectives. It does not undermine any negotiations for us, not just our Parliaments, to know what the Government want to do. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said, it is time for the Government to move from intention to reality. These issues, as has been touched on just now, are partly held up by an obsession with red lines around the ECJ. They cannot be allowed to stand in the way of some logical and sensible solutions to these problems. These issues are too important to be left to a divided Cabinet. At the moment I see a pantomime horse, or Dr Dolittle’s pushmi-pullyu, being pulled in two different directions, mostly about red lines that are immaterial to the issues we have been discussing. I hope we can hear about some direction and some practical steps from the Minister, particularly on how these negotiations are taking place.