EU Justice and Home Affairs Measures

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

You are exactly right, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is in fact the debate that we should have had last week. It is a debate about 35 different measures, including the European arrest warrant. It covers the 11 measures that we voted for last time, but also the 24 measures on which we did not have the chance to vote last time.

Those measures include a series of different things. We need the supervision order, under which a UK national could spend time in the UK pending trial, rather than in a foreign jail, to rectify the rare cases in which that happens. Joint investigation teams are needed to tackle cross-border crime, as was shown by Operation Golf, in which co-operation between the Met and Europol and data sharing stopped child-trafficking rings that were bringing teenagers to London to be raped and forced into prostitution. We need co-ordination on the freezing and seizing of the assets of organised criminals and terrorists. We support continued co-operation on confiscation orders and freezing orders. We need to exchange criminal records. Pilots in London have shown that a significant proportion of foreign nationals arrested already have convictions abroad.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Operation Golf was conducted in my constituency, and I hope to talk about it if I get the chance to speak. It would not have been possible without co-operation between the British and Romanian authorities, including on the Romanians’ subsequent use of an extradition warrant. Is it not wrong—in fact, disgraceful—that we did not have an opportunity to discuss the joint investigation teams during the previous debate?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. It would have been so simple to cover those measures in the initial debate on a straightforward motion tabled by the Government. I think that it is unprecedented that the Opposition table what should be a Government motion and ask the Government to vote with us on the very measures that they supported in the first place.

The 24 measures include football banning orders, which we welcome, to stop hooligans travelling to matches in Europe. We need to participate in Eurojust to gather evidence on cross-border crime. We need Europol to support and co-ordinate cross-border investigations. We need co-operation to prevent drug trafficking, and we need the European Police College to share best practice.

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[Mrs May]

I understand that the political scenario has changed over the years, but the Justice Minister in Belfast and the Justice Minister in Dublin in the Republic of Ireland have been keen to impress on the Government their concern to ensure that the UK remained in the European arrest warrant, precisely because it now provides a much smoother and easier process to enable extraditions to take place successfully.

[Mike Gapes]

The Home Secretary is making an excellent case for the European arrest warrant. Why did she not put that forward two weeks ago? She could have made the case then.

[Mrs May]

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman but I cannot remember whether he was in the Chamber for the debate a week ago on Monday. However, I made exactly these sorts of argument in that debate. Other right hon. and hon. Members would have been able to express their concerns about or support for the European arrest warrant had that debate not been curtailed by his Front-Bench team.

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[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the pro-European views of the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry). I agree with everything he said and wish to reiterate one of the points he made: of the 4,000 criminals arrested in this country under the EAW, 95% were foreign nationals. We need to make that point. The EAW is a mechanism to get bad people out of our country to be put on trial and then, I hope, convicted for crimes carried out usually in other countries. By contrast, under the “reckless” position put forward yesterday, good people—Polish plumbers and their families—would be deported to other European countries, while, presumably, the criminals, after we have left the EU, would not be, because we would not be part of the EAW. That is the position of the party that claims to be speaking in the national interest; in fact, it is doing the exact opposite.

We benefit from immigration. EU migrants have made a great contribution to our country over many years. Our prosperity has been increased by the higher economic growth that resulted from nationals of the A8 accession countries coming here to work on our bus and transport systems, our health service, our shops and retail establishments, as architects and teachers and in all kinds of other occupations—even as priests. I have an excellent Catholic priest in my constituency who now runs morning services for the English-speaking community and afternoon services for the Poles and Lithuanians. We are benefiting from the migration of Europeans to our country, but at the same time we have to work with other Europeans in the interests of our country.

In my remaining time, let me say a few brief words about Operation Golf, which I mentioned in an intervention on the Home Secretary. The Europol website has a section called “Operational Successes”. Operation Golf is the first of a list of many dealing with different countries. Operation Golf was a joint investigation team operation by the Metropolitan police and the Romanian national police. It targeted Romanian organised crime; it led to the arrest of 126 individuals and the searching of 16 addresses in Ilford, most of them in my constituency; and it led to the freeing of a large number of children who were being used in organised begging gangs.

This operation went on between 2007 and 2010. In 2011, the Romanian authorities used the European arrest warrants to get the extradition of a man described as a “real life Fagin”. This man, Nelu Stoian, was extradited to Romania along with others to be prosecuted for their crimes. That would not have been possible without the external arrangements we have and the European arrest warrant. We should be proud of the fact that we are part of that, and we should recognise that it benefits our country.