Passenger Name Records

Peter Bone Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her support, but I do not agree that we should take a blanket decision always to opt in at the beginning. With some directives, of which this is one, we are clearly leading a majority of European countries towards a position that would be extremely desirable, and without which the directive would be much less powerful. As for the human trafficking directive that we agreed to opt in to last night, in that case there was more of a threat than a promise during the negotiation procedure, and we needed to know that when we reached the end of the procedure the directive would still be entirely safe for Britain. As the hon. Lady will know, one difficulty is that if we opt in at the beginning there is no chance of opting out at the end if we discover that the negotiations have gone wrong. This is a question of taking every case on its merits, and that is what we seek to do.

Oddly enough, what has happened in the past 24 hours illustrates the virtues of such pragmatism. For the trafficking directive it was sensible to opt in at the end of the process, and for this directive it was sensible to do so at the beginning. With other directives it will be sensible for us not to opt in at all, because they might be harmful. I can assure the hon. Lady that the Government will continue to operate a pragmatic case-by-case approach to such directives.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

My view is completely the reverse of what the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) has just said. It was absolutely right to opt in to the human trafficking directive yesterday after it was finalised. I am a bit worried that we are now opting in to a directive that we cannot opt out of before we see the final version, although the Minister already has concerns about it. Why does he think that we should opt in now, rather than waiting until the end, as we did with the human trafficking directive?

[Damian Green]

Because one of the crucial elements of this directive concerns travel between EU states. That, more than anything else, is what will help make British citizens safer, as 72% of the flights in and out of this country are flights between EU member states. Although the directive would still be useful if it did not cover such flights, it would be significantly less useful. We have devoted our negotiating efforts, successfully so far, towards building a coalition in the EU to promote that policy. So far, that is going well. This is a prime example of where opting in at the beginning and leading the discussions will be to the advantage of this country and its citizens.