Immigration Bill

Debate between Michael Ellis and Dominic Raab

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

I admire my hon. Friend and respect his position, but my fundamental concern about his new clause is that it is being described by lawyers—from both the Labour party and the Government, it seems—as a measure that is incompatible with the legislation, will not work, and will actually slow the process down. I want us to deport as many foreign criminals as possible, but will not the new clause make that more difficult?

[Mr Raab]

I know that my hon. Friend takes a close interest in these matters, and I shall try to address his point very squarely. I urge him to intervene again if he feels that I have not done so satisfactorily, in which case I shall spell out my argument more clearly.

My new clause differs from the clauses in part 2 in that it is mandatory. Serious offenders cannot pull out and wield article 8 as a joker to trump deportation. Unless there is a tangible threat to life or limb, those convicted killers, rapists, drug dealers and other serious criminals should be sent home: they should not remain on the streets of Britain.

I spent a long time crafting and consulting on my new clause. It allows a very narrow exception to the wider automaticity of deportation when that is in the overwhelming humanitarian interests of the children involved, but the discretion is to be exercised by the Home Secretary rather than the courts. The new clause uses a Home Office mechanism, or model, to protect that discretion from human rights challenges by expressly stipulating that the only challenge can be by way of judicial review.

2014 JHA Opt-out Decision

Debate between Michael Ellis and Dominic Raab

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend. I have already quoted him and cited the important probing that he did back in those days.

Labour Members have a choice: either they misled and exaggerated the nature of the opt-out they negotiated or the Commission and the EU are demonstrating bad faith now. This Government, this House and the British public will reward neither of those basic binary options.

The Opposition’s other line of attack is to say that the Government’s intention of junking at least 100 measures is trivial because they are meaningless or obsolete. That prompts the question of why the shadow Home Secretary’s party signed up to them in such an unblinking and unthinking manner in the first place. It demonstrates that Labour Members are the dogmatists, whereas we mean to scrutinise this stuff far more carefully and substantively, measure by measure.

The motion gives the House's endorsement to the block opt-out, but it defers any opt-ins pending consultation, parliamentary debate and approval. As we have heard, a major downside of opting back into any measure is the creeping authority of the Commission and the Luxembourg Court. I think it is acknowledged across the board, certainly by Conservative Members, that whatever we do about the opt-ins, that is a serious defect in our current relationship. I believe that the British Supreme Court should have the last word on British criminal justice matters, for example, on the extradition of a UK citizen or on policing operations. I do not understand why, having created the Supreme Court amid huge fanfare, Labour Members now want to give away jurisdiction and, in effect, emasculate the word “Supreme” in its name.

One need only look at the recent ruling by the European Court on Human Rights in Strasbourg on life prison terms, the ruling on Abu Qatada, or the ongoing saga of prisoner voting, to see what happens when we submit to European judicial jurisdiction, albeit one in Strasbourg rather than Luxembourg. If anyone thinks that the Strasbourg Court is activist, they should look at the record of the Luxembourg Court, particularly in the emerging area of justice and home affairs in cases such as the Metock and Pupino judgments. I recognise that opting back into measures without accepting the jurisdiction of the Commission and Luxembourg Court is technically not within the terms of this decision process. However, have Ministers raised this now as part of the Prime Minister’s wider commitment to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the EU? Has this marker been laid down for the future? That is a vital issue.

There are plenty of other precedents and models for a more flexible relationship on justice and home affairs. Britain is not formally a party to Frontex, the EU’s external border agency, because we want to keep our national border controls, but we co-operate on risk analysis and joint operations. Does this hurt our influence or operations? No, not a bit of it. Frontex executive director Ilkka Laitinen says:

“we do not see any difference between our UK colleagues and the others”.

Outside Europe, the Strategic Alliance Cyber Crime Working Group comprising Britain, the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia—some of our closest partners—collaborates on cyber-crime and intelligence under a non-binding framework. It is regarded as the gold standard of operational co-operation. In terms of law enforcement co-operation at the operational level, Brussels is the odd one out in insisting that we sacrifice democratic control, bit by bit, as the price of operational co-operation. To what extent have Ministers explored these wider options for renegotiating our justice and home affairs relations with Brussels? I say that partly because it is a vital policy issue at stake but also because, at home and abroad, the crime and policing opt-out will be seen as a litmus test for Britain’s wider strategy of renegotiation. It is important for the credibility of that strategy that what we achieve on the crime and policing opt-out is understood as a point of departure, not the point of arrival.

Let me be clear about the positive alternative for our engagement with our EU partners on justice and home affairs. This is not all about knocking the European Union for ideological or dogmatic reasons. I see huge value in robust law enforcement co-operation at the operational level within Europe. The more flexible the EU can be on the structure of the legal form, the better operational friend they will find us in practice. Of course we want to exchange criminal records information, but we do not want the personal data of innocent British citizens washing around Europe, particularly with Governments—let us be honest about this—whom we would not trust to safeguard it. I have to say that I am not sure about trusting our own Government and Whitehall with lots of our personal data. If we do not trust Whitehall, what hope is there when it gets shipped off to Warsaw, Sofia and places like that?

Yes, we should engage in joint police operations, but there is no reason—none at all—for us to allow the initiation or oversight of such co-operation to be determined by EU authorities. There are also wider efforts to harmonise criminal law, which are wholly unnecessary and, to be frank, set a pretty bad precedent. Whether the question is which drugs to ban or how to define the delicate balance between hate crime and free speech, this House is the right place to pass British criminal law.

I want to touch on three specific measures. First, on Europol, I have no hesitation in saying that British police should share information and co-operate at an operational level. I worked directly with Europol and Eurojust when I was posted to The Hague during my time at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I see real value in the college structure that allows smoother day-to-day co-operation between national offices. Europol is not perfect as currently configured. It has all the features of bureaucracy and waste that we expect from the EU, including—believe it or not—the €35,000 contract it signed in 2010 to send flowers to itself.

For all its flaws, Europol serves an important function. However, it is not in the UK national interest to see Europol acquire supranational powers that trump national authority over our police. I am already nervous about the existing power of Europol to initiate investigations in the UK and the increasingly limited right to refuse.

The new regulation on Europol, which we will debate later, would also require UK police forces to give foreign police open access to their files. All this would be interpreted by the European Court of Justice. Step by step, the EU is heading towards a supranational model. What is our long-term vision? Should we not be saying, clearly and unambiguously, that we will not hold back willing EU states that want to go down this route, but that it is not a model we will subscribe to over the long term? I ask again whether Ministers have laid down a future marker on that point.

Secondly, on Eurojust, a college of collaborating national prosecutors is hugely beneficial. I would rather it did not splash out €300,000 on Mercedes-Benz, as it did in 2010, or €33,000 on its end-of-year bash, as it did in 2011. Still, co-operation is important.

The Commission, however, is poised to announce a new regulation to beef up Eurojust’s supranational powers and create the European public prosecutor. The announcement is expected shortly. In fact, it appears to have been delayed and one might wonder whether the reason for that was so that it would not take place before this debate, but perhaps we would flatter ourselves too much if we believed that. In any event, I ask again whether Ministers have laid down a marker whereby, if Eurojust evolves in this way, Britain must carve out a separate, bespoke relationship.

Finally, on the European arrest warrant, few Members would deny that fast-track extradition benefits the police, although I think that some of the representations from law enforcement agencies have been rather one-sided. Even Commander Gibson of the Metropolitan police has said that

“resources are stretched dealing with the amount of EAWs we receive”,

because the regime is lop-sided. For every EAW Britain issued in 2011, we got 33 back. We receive about a third of all European arrest warrants.

A lot of non-British nationals are involved and we do not have quite the same stake or interest in the safeguards to which they are subject, but the fact of the matter is that the increasingly broad net of the EAW sweeps up far too many innocent Britons who are, to be frank, hung out to dry by the British justice system.

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

I was a fierce critic of the European arrest warrant, but does my hon. Friend agree that the changes envisaged by the Home Secretary make it completely different from that which has gone before? For example, the changes to proportionality restrict the extradition of people for petty and minor offences and the changes to bail mean that individuals can be bailed pending proceedings. There is also a change to charging decisions, because previously people could be extradited before the foreign country had even decided whether to charge them or not. Those decisions, taken by this Government, this House and the Home Secretary, mean that the European arrest warrant as we have known it will be completely different, so it can and should have our support.

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I will come back to the proposals in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill and the extent to which we need to scrutinise them. I accept that this is an important opportunity to mitigate the blunt edges of the EAW, but the fact is that, at the moment, its broad net sweeps up too many innocent British nationals such as Andrew Symeou, Deborah Dark, Michael Turner, Edmond Arapi and, in my constituency, the retired judge Colin Dines, who suffered a stroke as a result of the pressure and stress of being subject to the warrant. We hope and expect that it will be dropped, but he and his family will still be left to pick up the pieces.

UK Extradition Arrangements

Debate between Michael Ellis and Dominic Raab

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

Well, that is one way of looking at it. Certainly, if we were to decide to require everyone to hold to the prima facie standard, that might be fairer, although it would be extremely expensive, bureaucratic and time consuming. For the accused person and for witnesses, the interests of justice are not served by delaying matters, so that would be the problem there. However, before the 2003 Act, I believe there was a requirement to find a prima facie standard. If not, there was certainly an imbalance between the United States and the United Kingdom in that respect. The United States had to apply greater burdens to extradite people from the United Kingdom than the United Kingdom had to supply vice versa.

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend has made the point about the paper test, but the key point made by Alun Jones QC is that the quality of evidence is assessed in extraditions both ways by the US courts—that is a requirement of the US constitution—but in neither case by the UK courts. There is the imbalance. Does my hon. Friend accept that?

[Michael Ellis]

No, I do not accept that. I agree with the Scott Baker report that there is no fundamental imbalance. It is important to point out that the United States has not denied a single extradition request from the United Kingdom under the treaty. Although the United States makes more requests to the United Kingdom than it receives, the difference is largely because the population of the United States is five times greater than that of the United Kingdom. There is no imbalance. The Scott Baker report confirms that, and I cannot support the motion.