Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between Nick de Bois and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick de Bois]

I am very happy to answer that question. The clauses the hon. Gentleman voted for in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill had exactly the same wording. If he would like to review those cases, he will get a very good picture. I am surprised he did not show the same concern then as he seems to be showing now, or should I have expected that?

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

On messaging and deterrence, one of the critical issues is the certainty of being caught and the severity of the sanction, which we are trying to toughen up. Does my hon. Friend know the view of the Metropolitan police? Based on what he has said, it seems that a lot of people are being caught but the sanction is not tough enough. Do the police support the new clause?

[Nick de Bois]

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner wrote to the Government several months ago urging them to introduce the measure. The police fully support it and they do not like the fact—and they are right not to like it—that an increasing number of multiple offenders are not getting custodial sentences. They want a better response so that cases are worth prosecuting.

2014 JHA Opt-out Decision

Debate between Nick de Bois and Dominic Raab

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.

UK Extradition Arrangements

Debate between Nick de Bois and Dominic Raab

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Raab]

I thank the hon. Lady for shedding light on some of the legal advice on that.

In my view, the regime in place under the European arrest warrant suffers from far more serious and widespread flaws than the UK-US arrangements, despite the important concerns that have been raised in that regard. If we consider the appalling treatment of Andrew Symeou, we will see the egregious nature of the flaws in the system. Greek police beat identical statements out of witnesses, which were later retracted, and Andrew spent practically a year in appalling prison conditions. He was left with a flea-ridden blanket in a baking-hot cell crawling with cockroaches and was abused by guards. He witnessed a prisoner being beaten to death for drug money. The trial proceeded at a crawl, with translators who spoke little English. Eventually he was cleared after a two-year ordeal.

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

My hon. Friend is making an excellent argument. He refers to my constituent, Andrew Symeou. Not only did Andrew go through all that before eventually being freed, but the human price his family paid was shocking. They had to put their lives on hold for up to four years, including two years in Greece.

[Mr Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Andrew’s father, Frank, gave evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, and I am sure that we will hear from the Chair of the Committee later. The damage done and the human suffering not only to the direct victims, but to their families, are very clear. One of the major flaws of the Baker review is that it did not talk to or take evidence from the victims or their representatives.

Extradition

Debate between Nick de Bois and Dominic Raab

Thursday 24th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend for that historical context, and I certainly accept it. It is important to have a practical, operational background about the numbers of cases, so that the debate does not become a dry, lawyer’s debate about the terms of the treaty or the Extradition Act 2003.

We have legislation in place to inject a dose of common sense and discretion into the McKinnon case and other such cases. The Government ought to bring that into force as a matter of priority.

I understand the US’s concern. I have spoken to officials from the US embassy, and I understand their concerns regarding the treaty’s operation. They make quite strong arguments about the discrepancy between the evidential thresholds. None the less, in the US’s extradition treaty relations with, to name but a few, Brazil, Mexico and Australia, the domestic authorities in those countries have the right to decline extradition in these and much wider circumstances. Why should Britain, a stalwart ally, not request such a modest adjustment?

The problems created by the European arrest warrant have proven to be even more serious and far more widespread than those created by the US treaty. First, there are cases that are exemplified by the case of Andrew Symeou. Andrew, a British student, was whisked off to Greece under a European arrest warrant for involvement in a fight at a nightclub that left another man dead, which is a serious offence. Andrew was extradited, despite eye-witness accounts that he was not at the club at the time.

Fast-track European Union extradition is based on the assumption that standards of justice are adequate across Europe. We all put our faith in that assumption, but I am afraid that the Symeou case and many others show that that assumption is a sham and a fraud. We cannot understand the operation of the EAW without understanding that fraud—the assumption that all the justice systems operate to a similarly high standard.

Let us look at the Symeou case. Greek police beat identical statements out of witnesses, which were then retracted. Andrew Symeou spent almost a year in squalid prison conditions before being bailed. He was left with a flea-ridden blanket in a cell exposed to a sewer and crawling with cockroaches. He was abused by guards and witnessed another prisoner being beaten to death for drug money. The trial proceeded at a snail’s pace, with court translators who spoke scant English. He was eventually cleared in June this year, after a two-year ordeal, and he was left to rebuild his life.

The independent Baker review, commissioned by the coalition to look into the operation of our extradition relations, makes absolutely no recommendations for preventing such horror stories being inflicted on other innocent people—I use the word “innocent” advisedly, although that was clearly the case for Andrew Symeou. The Symeou case highlights the need for a higher evidential threshold—a prima facie test—to militate against the risk that fast-track extradition goes ahead on manifestly tainted evidence or spurious grounds.

The Baker report merely suggests that, over time and with effort, the justice systems and prison conditions across Europe will get better. All of us in the Chamber may well hope for that, but that view is naive at best and reckless at worst. I urge the Government to ignore that legalistic and simplistic analysis and think about what innocent people such as Andrew Symeou actually go through in real life.

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

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way on that point about my constituent. I, too, congratulate him on securing the debate.

While in prison, many of Andrew Symeou’s human rights were fundamentally breached. Does my hon. Friend agree that unfortunately, the Scott Baker report clearly believes that, because there is mutual recognition and all EU members have signed up to the European convention on human rights, we are not right to presume any fundamental breaches of human rights?

[Mr Raab]

That is exactly the point, and exactly why the assumptions that underwrite the European arrest warrant are fraudulent. I cannot think of any other way of putting it.

It is not good enough just to sit back and hit and hope on the Greek justice system getting better. For one thing, it may be getting worse. Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index is a well regarded measure of standards of justice in national administration and legal systems. On a score of one to 10—one being the most corrupt—Greece has fallen from 4.2 to 3.5 in the past 10 years.

Even if there were grounds for optimism that the Greek justice system would improve over time, which we all hope for, we need to protect our citizens right now—not in five or 10 years’ time, but today. That is why we need an amendment to the European arrest warrant framework decision, a prima facie test, a proportionality safeguard, and the other recommendations made by the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

In fairness to the Baker review, it acknowledged the case for an amendment to the EAW to accommodate a proportionality test, which is one of the other crucial safeguards that are required. However, in other areas the report ignores, almost wholesale, major flaws in the current arrangements. It casually disregards evidence that shows that warrants are being issued for investigation rather than for prosecution.

That important point is best illustrated by the evidence given by Michael Turner to the Joint Committee. Michael Turner set up a property business in Hungary in 2005. When it failed, as some business ventures do, he paid off his staff, filed for bankruptcy and returned to Britain. Three years later, he was extradited to a Hungarian jail, accused of defrauding on certain administration fees. He was detained in a prison that was formerly run by the KGB. He has now been allowed to return home, but he remains under investigation. At the time of the extradition, the Hungarian authorities assured the UK courts that they were ready to prosecute: that this was not a hit and hope; they were trial-ready. Yet six years after the alleged offence took place, Mr Turner has not been charged with any crime whatever. The extradition that threw his life into turmoil was little more than a hit and hope fishing expedition. Again, the Baker report remains oblivious, if not blind, to the basic injustice and the human toll that that kind of ordeal takes on those affected. I am talking about not just the victims but the families.

European Union Bill

Debate between Nick de Bois and Dominic Raab

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Evans, for calling me to speak in this debate on clause 9, which is one of the Bill’s key provisions. The treatment of justice and home affairs merits close scrutiny in the Bill. The EU is increasingly seeking to broaden and deepen its authority in this important area. We need only to consider the inception of the Stockholm programme, to which the previous Government signed up, on policing, justice, asylum and borders. It is also illustrated—if further illustration were needed—by the 13% budget increase for this policy area in this year’s EU budget, which is higher than that for any other area. That is a sign of the ambition in Brussels to move bit by bit towards a pan-European legal system, at odds with our distinct history and tradition of justice reflected in the common law, our safeguards for personal freedom and our adversarial court system.

[Nick de Bois]

My hon. Friend has touched on a matter of great importance. I welcome the safeguards. It seems to me that justice in other countries is very different from justice in ours, principally on the basis of mutual recognition that many things are the same. It concerns me that we must keep as divorced as possible from the system in France, for example. Even a former French Justice Minister said, “The assumption here is that one is innocent until one is proven guilty, but in reality, with our magistrates courts, it is the other way around.” That will be difficult to reconcile and we must have very strong safeguards.

[Mr Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and I agree entirely with him. We can already see an example of that in the European arrest warrant. We have jumped in and we are now reviewing its domestic implementation and the potential for the international instrument. The presumption of innocence is just one area, as my hon. Friend has suggested, where we have a fundamental difference of legal cultures. I do not think that either party should show that any disrespect.

Brussels certainly has ambitions in that area and with those ambitions in mind I want to point out that there are disappointingly few decisions on JHA policy in the Bill for which, although there is no referendum requirement, parliamentary approval is required before the Government take a decision to opt in. For example, as I understand it the decision to opt into the European investigation order would not have required Parliament’s approval under the Bill despite its ramifications for operational policing and the lack of safeguards for innocent British citizens. Immigration and asylum policy is also left out despite the fact that the EU is currently proposing far-reaching changes in that very important area.

I would be the first to accept that the British people cannot have a referendum on every item of JHA policy, but why cannot their elected representatives have a say on every opt-in to ensure proper democratic scrutiny? I am very encouraged by the Minister’s written statement, which I have looked at closely and which effectively endorsed the principle of a parliamentary vote on JHA opt-ins. That is an important step forward and, as other Members have made clear, it is extremely welcome. As the statement made clear, such a provision would depend first on the discretion of the European Scrutiny Committee and its Chair to call a debate and table a motion. That is fine with the current Committee and Chair, but—if we can possibly imagine this—if it were one day to have a less meticulous Chair or more integrationist members, that check might be diluted. Secondly, the provision would depend on the discretion of Ministers about whether to make Government time available.

It would strengthen the Bill considerably if the arrangements to which the Minister agrees in principle could be spelt out in practice in legislation. I know many Members would welcome such a step.

There is an even more important issue to consider than the individual opt-ins. Britain has to decide by June 2014 whether to accept European Court of Justice jurisdiction over police and justice measures that predate the Lisbon treaty or, alternatively, to opt out altogether. After that date, the full body of pre-Lisbon legislation will come under the control of the Luxembourg Court, so this decision has enormous constitutional implications for our criminal justice system. It represents a unique opportunity for this country either to regain control of our justice agenda or, if we so decide—let us not rule out this option—fully to embrace a pan-European model. I am clear in my own mind that we should preserve our distinct justice system which is famous the world over. It guarantees our personal freedoms and defines the British sense of fair play.

Beyond the technical niceties of the Bill, something bigger is at stake—from habeas corpus to the presumption of innocence, which my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) mentioned, or to free speech, which is poorly protected in France and seems to be disappearing in Hungary but is still cherished in Britain. These abstract legal concepts define our citizenship, our identity, our culture and ultimately our way of life. I respect the fact that others may disagree on this; some may wish to argue the merits of the Napoleonic legacy or the pros and cons of the continental civil law tradition, while others may claim that a pan-European amalgam might just get the best of both worlds. That is fair enough, and those are perfectly respectable positions, but what is not acceptable is for that kind of decision on a matter of that kind of magnitude to be quietly nodded through without the formal debate and approval of the House. I welcome the policy commitment in last week’s written ministerial statement, but we need a commitment that the decision to opt in en bloc will be subject to parliamentary approval and not just a debate, and it would be relatively easy to do that in the Bill.

To conclude, I support the aims of the Bill and much of its content. It has the potential, at least, to transform the country’s relationship with Europe and to restore some transparency and legitimacy to the much-shrouded decision making in Brussels.