Justice and Home Affairs Opt-out
Debate between Mark Reckless and Lord Beith(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I must first explain to the House that I had to leave during the middle of this debate, after the opening speeches, to speak in a discussion upstairs about a statutory instrument that directly affects my constituency.
I have the pleasure of following the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). It is a pleasure because of his eloquence, but eloquence and judgment do not always walk together, and on some matters he is simply wrong, including about the European arrest warrant. My belief is that if 100 criminals go free in the absence of the European arrest warrant, that would be an extremely bad state of affairs for our constituents. That is entirely separate from the question of ensuring that no innocent person is convicted in our courts. Long may we strive to achieve that second objective.
Mark Reckless
In response to the right hon. Gentleman’s first point, how many of our own citizens—who had done nothing wrong and been convicted of no crime—is he prepared to see detained in foreign prisons in return for those 100 people going free?
Sir Alan Beith
One measure that we are opting into ensures that people do not have to be detained in foreign prisons, but can be returned to the United Kingdom to serve under bail conditions in the United Kingdom. That is another reason why I think that we should look at the measures individually and decide which are in the national interest and beneficial to our citizens because they afford some protection to our citizens abroad or because they help to protect our citizens in this country from criminals who flee elsewhere having done terrible harm.
Sir Alan Beith
I want to make a little progress.
I want primarily to speak about the Justice Committee’s work on this matter, but I cannot forbear to mention that the Government have handled their relationship with Parliament very badly in this regard. This debate is a somewhat belated and limited response to the view of the three Committees that there should have been an early opportunity to debate and vote on the measures so that the Government knew the House’s views, with that being supported by impact assessments at an early stage—we still have not had any—and a much earlier indication of the Government’s intentions.
There have indeed been intensive discussions. The hon. Member for North East Somerset implied that they took place at a table with all the Conservatives on one side and all the Liberal Democrats on the other. I know that it was more complicated than that on several issues, as I am sure the Justice Secretary is well aware.
I want to turn to the measures for which the Ministry of Justice is responsible, and on which the Justice Committee reported. Of the total of 16 such measures, the Government propose that the UK should rejoin seven. Our report examines the case for and against rejoining all 16 measures, and we concluded in broad support of the Government’s approach. There are six mutual recognition measures—on financial penalties, previous convictions, prisoner transfer, probation measures, judgments in absentia and the European supervision order, to which I referred a moment ago—and the Government propose to rejoin them all, except for the probation measures framework decision.
We agreed that the Government was right, in the national interest and in the interests of effective cross-border co-operation in criminal justice, to seek to rejoin five of the measures. The Government support particularly strongly the UK’s participation in the prisoner transfer framework decision, stating that a top priority is to reduce the number of foreign nationals in UK prisons, while the decision is also an important part of the overall reform package of the European arrest warrant. My support for the European arrest warrant is accompanied by the belief that it was right to take active steps in various areas to try to reform it and make it better serve its purpose.
One of the five measures, the European supervision order, enables a defendant or suspect under non-custodial pre-trial bail or other supervision to be returned to their home member state to await trial there. It would not of course apply to people granted unconditional bail, who would be free to return to their home member state in any case. We urged the Government to implement the measure without further delay, and their response stated that they intended to do so as soon as practicable.
On the probation measures framework decision, which provides a basis for mutual recognition and supervision of suspended sentences, post-custodial licences and community sentences, we noted the Government’s concerns about its practical operability, but we stated:
“In view of the potential value of the Framework Decision we consider that the Government should pursue the matter in their negotiations on the opt-in list to see whether these concerns can be dealt with. We would not wish to rule out participation in the measure if concerns about its drafting can be overcome as part of the forthcoming negotiation process or at a later stage.”
In their response, the Government spelled out in more detail their objections to the measure, including that it falls within the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, while saying that they support the measure in principle. I still hope that they will make some effort to deal with some of the practical difficulties, because the measure may be of real benefit.
There are six minimum standards measures, which set out EU-wide minimum penalties and sanctions for corruption involving officials, counterfeiting of the euro, fraud and counterfeiting of non-cash means of payment, and corruption in the private sector. Two of the measures will be replaced by a new directive, covering counterfeiting of the euro, which the UK has decided not to opt into. The Government do not propose to rejoin any of the remaining four measures. They pointed out that we already at least meet the minimum standards, and rejected the arguments that were put to us in evidence that leaving the measures could cause reputational damage. We stated that
“the arguments for opting into the…minimum standards measures are primarily symbolic, and our view is that those arguments do not outweigh the disadvantages of bringing wide areas of criminal justice in the UK unnecessarily into the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union.”
The remaining four measures under the aegis of the Ministry of Justice comprise one on data protection in police and judicial co-operation, one on a data protection secretariat, a Schengen agreement on road traffic offences and a measure on conflicts of jurisdiction. The Government propose to rejoin the first two, but not the last two. We broadly agreed with the Government’s line, although we stated that the arguments were finely balanced as to whether the UK should rejoin the framework decision on settlement of conflicts of jurisdiction, because it provides a framework of guidance for member states to put in place to protect against parallel legal proceedings on the same matters being taken in different member states. The Government’s position, which they maintained in their response, was that it had no additional practical value because best practice arrangements are already in place.
Our broad conclusion was to support the Government’s choice of opt-ins on Ministry of Justice measures. The Government closely coincide with our views. Those views are on the record for the consideration of the House to which we report, and it remains a matter of regret to me that we were not able to register our views in the House earlier and in a more concrete way. However, this debate has been a useful means of reminding the Government about where it has support, where there are differences of view and, in particular, where the Select Committees charged with such responsibilities have looked carefully at the measures and given their advice.