Justice and Home Affairs Opt-out

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for reminding us all of his excellent memory of historical facts and dates. I am afraid that I cannot comment on that particular remark by Tony Blair, although I can comment on most of his remarks.

There is clearly concern about the way in which the Government have gone about seeking—or rather not seeking—the views of Parliament, and the lack of votes on this matter. Today we heard from three Select Committee Chairs: the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash), the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz). I shall not repeat the unprecedented criticisms of the Government’s approach by not one but three Select Committees, namely the European Scrutiny Committee, the Home Affairs Committee and the Justice Committee. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) expressed concern about the lack of consultation with the Scottish Government, and a number of other Members in all parts of the House referred to the lack of scrutiny being given to the decisions on which the Government are embarking.

Labour Members will approach the substance of the issues on the basis of what will help us in the fight against crime, rather than what will help us to ensure that our Back Benchers are soothed and reassured, which has been the Government’s approach. I wait to hear what the Justice Secretary has to say on the issues that have been raised today, but I live in hope that, rather than hearing the usual EU-bashing or ECHR-trashing, we shall hear a considered response to the important issues raised by Government Back Benchers and, indeed, by other Members in all parts of the House.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford has already described in detail our views on many of the measures that the Government are proposing to opt back into. Let me now touch briefly on some of the measures that fall into my own area of responsibility. They were dealt with in the Justice Committee’s report, and, today, in the excellent speech of its Chair, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed.

The Government propose to opt back in to five of the six mutual recognition measures, which we welcome. On the financial penalties framework decision, it is right that member states collect financial penalties regardless of which country the offender lives in. There should be no hiding place for offenders just because they live in a different country from where their crime was committed. The measure has been used considerably over the last few years. The Justice Committee confirmed that in just the short period between June 2010 and September 2012 we received penalties collected by other member states of £90,000 and collected for other members £50,000 in penalties.

On the previous convictions framework decision, courts must take account of a defendant’s previous conviction in other member states. Even the Justice Secretary has conceded that this measure was needed and is not part of a Europeanisation of our justice system, but is in fact central to our efforts in fighting crime. This is a key tool in helping us to fight crime and allowing our courts to have access to information from other member states on previous convictions.

Prison transfers are a massive issue, and not only within the European Union. Just last week Jamaica refused to ratify a transfer agreement with the UK which would have seen many of the Jamaicans behind bars in our jails sent back home to serve their sentences. We know it costs around £40,000 a year to keep someone in a UK prison, and with more than 10,000 foreign nationals behind bars—1 in 8 of the whole prison population—that represents a cost of £400 million a year to keep foreign criminals in British jails. If for nothing else, for purely financial reasons we should be doing more to send back to their home countries those foreign nationals who have committed crimes on our soil. The Prime Minister made big and wild promises back in 2010 personally to intervene to send back tens of thousands of criminals, but that is yet another broken promise to add to the long list. Since then, only a handful have been returned to their home countries.

To be fair, I accept that there are difficulties in negotiating prisoner transfer agreements with other countries. The setting up of the EU prisoner transfer framework, signed in November 2008 and brought into force in December 2011, was not a walk in the park, and I sympathise with the problems all Governments have had in negotiating these agreements. However, with about one third of all foreign nationals in our prisons being from the EU, this ought to make a difference to the numbers behind bars. I note that the Justice Committee reports that more needs to be done, and the Justice Secretary might want to tell us about some of the problems he has been having in negotiating these agreements in relation to the opt-in.

It would also be useful if the Justice Secretary were to tell us what else he is doing to make sure other member countries are stepping up to the plate on this issue. To date, too many are not playing a full part in the scheme, meaning that the scheme as originally planned and the agreement that has been signed have not borne the fruit we all would have liked to see.

The Government also propose to opt back into the judgments in absentia framework decision and the European supervision order, both of which play a key role in stopping criminals evading justice and allowing citizens to be returned to their home country for a period of non-custodial pre-trial supervision. Out of the mutual recognition instruments, the only measure the Government have chosen not to opt back into is the probation measures framework decision, but from reading the explanation given by Ministers it is clear that there is not a principled objection to this framework decision; there is rather a concern about how it might operate in practice. Will the Justice Secretary tell us more about his views on where the concerns may lie in practice rather than in principle?

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

Unfortunately, I did not have time to give notice that I would participate in this debate; we only got notice of it yesterday.

I have a constituent whose father went to the courts in this country under the European arrest warrant and was told that the EAW was not to be enacted here and it was not valid. He thought he was free and he travelled to the Netherlands with his wife, but was arrested on arriving there. He is now in Poland. He is a seriously ill man in hospital, but it would appear that the Government have not put in place measures to allow the courts of this country to make a decision on an EAW and then to make it clear to other countries that they do not believe it to be valid. It gives people in this country the odd feeling that they are not likely to be arrested throughout Europe under an EAW which can then still be enacted elsewhere.

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend gives one of the many examples of how there can be problems operating the EAW in practice. We hope that during the course of the negotiations on the changes to which the Home Secretary referred, some of the problems that have been shown in real time are addressed.

The Government have chosen not to rejoin all six of the minimum standard measures. They cover corruption involving officials; counterfeiting of the euro—there are two on this; fraud; counterfeiting of non-cash means of payment; and corruption in the private sector. In these cases, the Government argue that UK law is already of a sufficiently high standard to meet or exceed the requirements. My right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary went through some of the other areas the Government have chosen not to opt back into, which are redundant because of the progress made over the past few years.

The Chairs of the European Scrutiny Committee, the Home Affairs Committee and the Justice Committee reminded us that for the first time in history three Select Committees have come together with a joint report, all expressing unhappiness with how the Government have approached the process of the opt-out and opt-in. I am not going to rehearse the points they made. They have concerns about the lack of impact assessments, the fact that there is no motion that can be amended let alone voted on, and the fact that colleagues in the House of Commons will not get a chance to debate and vote on the measures the Government decide to opt into or out of until it is too late.

The hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) made an honest and refreshing speech about the different perspective he has from those who speak on behalf of his party in government. He explained his support for the opt-out and not the opt-in. His speech was followed by the most different speech we could have heard. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire explained his unhappiness about the fact that the Government had not consulted the Scottish Government. He lives in hope that the referendum in September may lead to a different perspective for the people of Scotland, but he also, in a weird part of his speech, sought to argue that we are better together with the EU but that Scotland was not better together with the rest of the UK. That was an interesting argument.

The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) made a very interesting speech, too. She is one of the founders of the Fresh Start group and expressed concern about the lack of democratic accountability and flexibility, and referred to the House of Lords scrutiny Committee. I agreed with her when she said that the status quo with the EU is not an option, however. She made a useful speech.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was scathing in his critique of the Government, which is nothing less than we would all expect. He talked about his concerns about the priorities and processes by which we got to where we are, and he repeated the question he posed in the Home Secretary’s speech about what Parliament would be allowed to vote on and when. He referred to the options the Government have—primary legislation, a statutory instrument, a treaty or a motion with the ability for it to be amended or not.

I am not sure whether the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary should be worried that the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) said he agreed with and supported the approach they were taking. He mentioned his concerns about the impact on Europol in particular if there was any time lag, and also about the benefits of co-operation.

The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) will not thank me for saying this, but I thoroughly enjoyed his speech. He said he was speaking up for the authentic voice of the Eurosceptic Conservative party, and he reminded us of his analysis of whether the opt-in would be a transfer of power and why in his view that demands a referendum. He argued that, because the European Commission and the ECJ were now in play, that should involve a transfer of power. I am sure that the Justice Secretary will respond directly to that point.

I also enjoyed the speech from the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), who used his six years’ experience as a Foreign Office lawyer to explain why he felt that these matters were more about political will than about the advice given by civil servants. He gave examples of some of the real-life cases that had been challenged as a consequence of the European arrest warrant. I hope that we can seek improvement now that we have that empirical evidence. He challenged all of us to provide empirical evidence to persuade the British public of the need for better co-operation with our European partners. That is a challenge that we all need to take up, especially in the light of the Deputy Prime Minister having been trounced by Nigel Farage in their two recent debates. We need to have the facts at our fingertips when we have this debate.

The hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) also made an interesting speech. He reminded us of what I am sure he will not mind me calling the miscarriages of justice in the past few years as a consequence of the European arrest warrant. He was scathing in his attack on the approach to the European Union taken by his friends, the Liberal Democrats. I am sure he will not mind me saying that we expect nothing less from him.

We have had a good debate, which has lasted just over four hours. A lot of questions have been asked, and I look forward to hearing the answers from the Justice Secretary over the next 15 minutes. Let us hope he can finally answer them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

Let us be clear: what the last Government said about the charter of fundamental rights was simply an untruth. There are many quotes in which they clearly talked about an opt-out from the charter, but that opt-out does not exist. We on the Government Benches have our differences on aspects of human rights law, but there is unity across the coalition on the role and presence of the charter of fundamental rights. None of us wishes to see it become part of UK law, and none of us wishes the ambitions of some in Brussels who talk about it being extended into national law come to pass. We will resist that absolutely. As my hon. Friend knows, we are testing the current legal position in the courts, and I have no doubt that I will be giving further evidence on this subject to his Committee in the near future.

[Michael Connarty]

I am sure that we will debate the charter of fundamental rights report, which divided the European Scrutiny Committee when it was finally read. To return to a question I asked earlier: why are the Government still in the situation where a UK court can decide that a European arrest warrant is not valid and that the person does not have to return to the country demanding their return—in the case I am interested in, that country is Poland—but when they leave the UK to go on holiday elsewhere in Europe, it appears that the Government have not put in place the ability to have that judgment recognised in other countries. I have a constituent whose father is very ill, and who is now in Poland, having been arrested in the Netherlands—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. We have got the point. Let us not make these interventions too long.