2014 JHA Opt-out Decision

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend makes his point, which I will come back to, in a powerful way. The issue has two distinct elements. We could get away with UK safeguards without amending the framework decision, but would they then be whittled away by the Luxembourg Court? My hon. Friend is right to raise that point.

I have mentioned a series of cases, all of which are appalling miscarriages of justice. The point I want to make—this is difficult for our coalition partners, who feel strongly about civil liberties and have strongly supported extradition reform when I have raised it in this House—is that if people are concerned about extradition and blunt extradition under our arrangements with the US, they cannot turn a blind eye to what has been happening under the European arrest warrant, because this is not about the odd case but systemic. Britain’s senior extradition judge, Lord Justice Thomas, stated publicly in his evidence to the Baker review—this has already been alluded to—that the EAW system has become “unworkable” and that unfairness is a “huge problem”.

This is not about a piffling, odd case here or there, or the trivial cases that get cited and bandied around left, right and centre; it is about serious cases such as that of Symeou, who was, in effect, wanted for killing someone, and Colin Dines, who was wanted for a very serious fraud. We all accept that those are extraditable crimes—that is not the issue. The question is whether we trust the investigating prosecuting authorities and courts in some of these other countries and whether we turn a blind eye to some of the appalling prison conditions.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

My hon. Friend mentioned the case of my constituent Andrew Symeou. Is not the core of the problem that the European arrest warrant fundamentally rests on a concept of mutual recognition and mutual trust that all systems are the same and have equal fairness and human rights? Only last week at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe conference, Hungary, a member of the European Union, was condemned by parliamentary delegates for wrong practices, which surely cannot allow mutual trust to continue.

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend is spot on. In fact, Lord Justice Thomas has said that the EAW

“presupposes a kind of mutual confidence and common standards that actually don’t exist.”

None the less, for all the flaws in the EAW—I recognise its law enforcement benefits as well—I do not take a particularly dogmatic approach to it. The optimum solution would be not to ditch the EAW altogether, but for Britain, having exercised the block opt-out, to press for safeguards as a condition of opting back in. The problem with that, however, is that I understand that the Government regard renegotiation of the framework decision as unfeasible within Europe because there is no majority to support it. Incidentally, that blows a hole in the Liberal Democrats’ stance of saying that we can achieve safeguards through negotiation if we opt back in straight away. That is naive: we would lose all our leverage. I will come back shortly to what I think is the way forward.

The other cheerleaders for the EAW seem to point to the Hussain Osman and Jeremy Forrest cases, but we should not need extradition to get British fugitives back from Europe—a point fundamentally missed too often in this debate. Those kinds of people, particularly British nationals—whether they be in Spain or whether they are Jeremy Forrest, Hussain Osman or any of the other names that are bandied around—should be deported, not extradited, straight back home without fuss or fanfare. The point is that, far from being the cure, EU law in the form of the 2004 citizenship directive, which Labour blindly and irresponsibly agreed to, has whittled away the power to deport nationals back home, which is another clear area where Britain should seek repatriation of power. If we had stronger national powers of deportation, we would not have had to become so reliant on this blunt EU extradition regime.

Another argument is that extradition under the old Council of Europe conventions would be slower. That is true, but it does not mean that any fugitives would go free. Their return might end up being delayed for a bit, and I can see that that would be annoying for the police. But, in the absence of adequate reform of the EAW, the slightly slower surrender of crooks in return for protecting the innocent is not the worst situation we could be in, at least for a limited period during which we negotiated more balanced extradition treaties, either bilaterally or, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) said, multilaterally with the EU, which now has a distinct legal personality. All the Opposition’s scaremongering about diluting public protection if we tinker with or seek to reform the European arrest warrant is nonsense.

The Government have tabled proposals to introduce safeguards into UK law to prevent further miscarriages of justice under the European arrest warrant. I welcome those proposals. There will be certain questions to consider in this context. Can we go far enough in taking off the rough edges of the warrant without falling foul of the framework decision, particularly given the fact that the Luxembourg Court will have the final word in interpreting these cases? I urge the Joint Committee on Human Rights, as well as the other Select Committees, to look into this matter. It has already produced a report on extradition in which it looked at the adequacy of the European arrest warrant, and it would be well placed to give a discreet analysis of this issue within the available timeframe. I shall withhold my final judgment on what we should do about the European arrest warrant until then.

Even with adequate safeguards, our opting back into the EAW would give the Luxembourg Court jurisdiction over the fate of British nationals. I would be interested to know whether Ministers have laid down a marker about our wider justice and home affairs relationship and specifically about the future role of the Luxembourg Court. I am talking here about the wider renegotiation of the justice and home affairs relationship. I appreciate that that is not technically within the terms of the block opt-out, but I believe that this is an opportune moment at which to lay down such a marker. Doing so would give many Conservative Members reassurance.

I can support the motion because I support the block opt-out, and I look forward to debating all the individual measures. The critical issue for me at this juncture is to receive assurance that the message has been delivered to Brussels, loud and clear, that this crime and policing opt-out process is just the appetiser, before we begin the wider renegotiation and repatriation process that Britain wants and needs.