Peter Bone
Main Page: Peter Bone (Independent - Wellingborough)Department Debates - View all Peter Bone's debates with the Home Office
(10 years ago)
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Mr Raab
I thank the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, who makes a valid point that I will come on to address. There is certainly an element of truth in what he describes.
I want to pay tribute to the changes that the Government have made. I recognise that some additional checks have been introduced. However, as Fair Trials International—we should bear in mind that it has handled these cases—and, today, Liberty have made clear, those checks are wholly and woefully inadequate to stop the flow of injustices. The proportionality test is too skewed in favour of extradition; the safeguard to prevent “hit and hope” warrants is too flimsy; there is nothing to deal with mistaken identity; and, perversely, appeal rights were weakened, not strengthened. We never got a chance to scrutinise those measures on the Floor of the House, because they were slipped through in Committee. That is a shame, because I, and colleagues, would have wanted to be able to try to strengthen the safeguards. It should have been debated on the Floor of the House on Report. I twice tried to table amendments, but we were given no time.
It is crystal clear from the rising volume of EAWs that Britain receives that we will have more problems ahead. This year the number of EAWs we received reached almost 8,000—a record number. With this broad net, it is almost inevitable that more and more innocent Britons will face rough justice and be caught within it, and, as a result, be subject to Kafkaesque courts and gruesome prison conditions.
I do not think that the checks are inadequate: I know that they are, because since July, when they came into force, I have been contacted directly by another victim, Keith Hainsworth, a 64-year-old tutor of ancient Greek. In July, with his wife, he visited the Peloponnese region of Greece, where they pottered around ruins and old churches, at the time of a local forest fire. The couple’s hire car was spotted in the vicinity—by a well-known local mischief-maker, as it subsequently turned out when they got to court—and on the strength of that alone, out of the blue, he was arrested in October in France under an EAW on his way back from a weekend away in Paris. He was apprehended by British customs officials who took his passport. He was denied basic rights. He spent a month under house arrest in France. He was surrendered to the Greeks to be held in awful conditions for 30 hours. He was charged for a bottle of water. That is what you get as a Brit abroad in some of these jails. When he finally faced a Greek judge, the court was in almost comic disarray at the farce that had come before it and dropped the case immediately, but not without Keith Hainsworth and his family having been traumatised and subjected to a legal bill of £40,000. Let us ask ourselves how many of our constituents could afford to pay that. If it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone, and nothing in the new legislation will stop it.
I want to pick up on a point made by the former Justice Secretary, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who is no longer in his place. Ministers have been very candid in saying that there has been no renegotiation of the EU framework decision because there is no renegotiation to be had. It is clear that there is no possibility of revising the framework decision. I might take a different view if there were, but that is not on the cards. That tells us that we have a stark choice: either we opt out and negotiate a bespoke extradition treaty with the EU, as one member not 27, that allows streamlined extradition—no one wants to go back to the bureaucracy of the past—but with proper safeguards, or, mark my words, we will continue to hang our constituents and British citizens out to dry. The Home Secretary made it very clear today that there is a legal basis on which to do that; the issue is political will, on our side and on the EU side.
We have heard a string of scare stories about the operational cliff edge that police would face if we opt out, but no one is suggesting that we opt out and do nothing. That is not a serious suggestion by anyone in this House, so we do not need to dwell on it for too long. If someone wants to intervene on me, I would be happy to take a question on that. We cannot have it both ways. It cannot be suggested that Britain would somehow become a safe haven for the worst criminals if we are outside the EAW, when that is precisely why all our EU partners have a strong mutual interest in agreeing a new extradition relationship, as long as we had made our position clear.
This debate is not just about extradition; it is about something far bigger. Everyone wants strong operational co-operation with our EU partners, but we are a global nation and we should be able to do that, as we do with many partners from around the world, without sacrificing democratic control. Why is it only with our EU partners that giving up democratic control, whether to the ECJ or to harmonise laws, is the strict red-line condition on co-operation, when it is not such a condition with the Australians, the Canadians or the Americans?
The long-term direction of travel is very clear, as Viviane Reding set out in a speech for the Commission last year.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. When the three Front Benches agree on a law, is it not normally a bad one?
Mr Raab
I take my hon. Friend’s point, but it does not matter how many people agree—or how many law enforcement people stand up and do the bidding of whoever—because our job is to scrutinise the proposals. I must tell him that very few people who support opting in have given me examples of victims to whom they have spoken. When I sat on the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I spoke to a range of victims, and others now approach me regularly. What has been lost in this debate is not only their voice, which is why it is so important that we are having the debate, but the systemic nature of the problems.
In the time available, I want briefly to make it clear that the direction of travel is very obvious. The Commission makes no secret of the fact that we are heading towards a pan-European code and an EU public prosecutor, with the ECJ presiding and ultimate accountability being to an EU Justice Minister. We see such stepping stones being paved in the package of measures that we are opting in to. We see it with the new EU public prosecutor, and Jonathan Fisher QC has made it clear that our opt-out from it is in tatters and is already ineffective. If we do not take this opportunity to step back, when will we get a better moment to renegotiate our relationship in this vital area?
Michael Ellis
I consider myself a Eurosceptic and I do not wish to see such a slippery slope. I wish to see criminals brought to justice. Like my hon. Friend, I do not wish to see people being allowed to use this jurisdiction as though it were a safe haven for criminals and people at large.
As a consequence of those issues, I have been satisfied that the European arrest warrant in its current manifestation provides safeguards. They are never going to be perfect. Sadly, we do not have a perfect system. No such system exists where it is operated by human beings because we are not perfect. There will occasionally be miscarriages of justice, but to wipe out the whole process of expedition that now exists, because of the arrangements that have been made, seems illogical, unnecessary and not to be in the wider interests of justice. Therefore, I support the Government and their measures on this matter.
Martin Vickers
That is an intervention that could be made only by my hon. Friend.
I value the sovereignty of Parliament and the supremacy of the courts, so it may surprise Members that I have come to this conclusion, but in recent weeks I have heard and read many fine words, including contributions to the debates today and last week. I have listened with great interest to learned contributions from lawyers and Select Committee Chairmen and to good constitutional arguments and instinctively I tend to support them, but on this occasion, as with everything, it is a question of balance. One of the roles we perform here in this Chamber is to articulate the concerns of those we represent, and on this matter, although I represent an area that is by a large margin Eurosceptic, I am quite certain I am speaking for my constituents, because—[Interruption.] I am speaking for them because this is an arrangement that allows for speedy extradition, and in the modern world the aim must be to protect my constituents from the threats of terrorism and a whole range of serious criminals.
As has already been said in the debate, this is a law and order issue. My reservations are laid to rest when I note the comments of my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary, who said in this House on 7 April:
“We have a sensible package. We have sought to operate in the national interest and to reflect the views of the law enforcement community about what it needs to fight organised crime. I am clear that I do not want, and will not tolerate, the idea of us becoming part of a Europeanised justice system.”—[Official Report, 7 April 2014; Vol. 579, c. 93.]
I share those views, but—[Interruption.] I share those views, but I ask whether it is beneficial to make it easier to tackle cross-border crime, and of course the answer is yes, and whether it is beneficial for our law enforcement agencies to make it easier to bring serious international criminals to justice, and of course the answer is yes.
It is unacceptable that attempts at extradition should go on year after year after year. Justice delayed is justice denied.
Martin Vickers
No, I must continue.
Action has been taken to ensure that an arrest warrant cannot be used for minor offences. An arrest warrant will also be refused if all or part of the alleged crime took place in the UK and it is not a criminal offence in the UK.
The shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), said that many issues could have been debated today, and I am staggered that an Opposition should use their Opposition time to debate a motion in support of the Government. They have a whole range of issues that they could mention. It is somewhat bizarre that with this motion, when 500 or so of us are going to troop through the Lobby in favour, they choose their time to highlight their own weaknesses. Their weakness is of course that they have no coherent alternative to the current Government’s economic policies.
I reaffirm my opposition to membership of the EU, but I have always taken the view that—[Interruption.] I have always taken the view that while we are a member of that organisation, we should use its structures and powers to benefit this country. [Interruption.] We may as well say we are not going to accept its money if it wants to give us a grant from the social fund or wherever. [Interruption.] My original opposition to the then Common Market and to what has evolved from that has always been one of sovereignty, but I recognise that sovereignty given away by this House can be reclaimed by this House; otherwise there would be no point in discussing a referendum or debating such issues. So on this occasion I support the Government’s decision. [Interruption.] It is a wise one, it is in the best interests of those I represent, it is on a law and order issue, and it is one I fully support.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
It is a great privilege to follow a true Eurosceptic.
In my brief contribution I do not intend to expand on my concerns about the individual measures. In fact, I would welcome a number of the individual measures in this package if we were able to have the final say on them in this House and in our judicial system. But I worry about it happening in one sweep with little debate about the principle of why we are taking away parliamentary and judicial sovereignty in the area of justice and home affairs and allowing the European Court of Justice to have the final say. I am a bit surprised that that did not rate a mention in the shadow Home Secretary’s opening speech, given that it is such a big issue.
To help me to prove my point about the direction of travel that justice and home affairs matters are taking in the European Commission, I should like to quote the former European Commission vice-president, Viviane Reding. She has said:
“In the space of just a few years,”—
since the three pillars were collapsed—
“justice policy has come into the limelight of European Union activity—comparable to the boost given to the single market in the 1990s. We have come a long way, but there is more to do to develop a true European area of Justice”.
We do not talk much about that in the House. The closest we came to having a proper discussion on it was when we were talking about the European public prosecutor’s office in our debates on the European Union Act 2011, in which we discussed referendum locks. I think that all the parties agreed that that was an area of concern and a red line that we would not cross—all the parties bar the Lib Dems, of course. Now, however, the establishment of the policy is part of the EU area of justice. We must not mistake the direction in which we are heading.
Why am I concerned about giving Europe the ability to enact and police legislation in this area? Most of the EU operates under a different system of law from ours, and I do not believe that the European Commission is the body that should be making the UK’s and England’s criminal law. The European Court of Justice should not have the ability to override the primacy of this Parliament or of the English judiciary in these areas. The ECJ has become so prominent because almost everything the European Union does tends to become legally binding and eventually subject to review by EU judges or national courts acting on their behalf. That reflects a European tendency to move difficult political conflicts, such as the eurozone crisis and the EU’s 2013 fiscal compact, away from ministerial gatherings and towards apolitical groups of national experts, the legal realm and the courts.
Member states are discussing plans for a European public prosecutor, which may be created among a core group of countries under the Lisbon treaty. The European Parliament is helping to design jail sentences for rogue traders and people who do wrong in financial institutions, and the European Commission will start taking EU Governments to court over criminal justice standards from December 2014 onwards.
Chris Heaton-Harris
Quite possibly.
The EU now has well over 150 mainly framework decisions in the area of justice and home affairs, many of which involve intergovernmental accords. The Commission cannot yet enforce those accords and EU nationals cannot yet claim rights based on them. However, the Lisbon treaty allows framework decisions to be enforced before the courts in the same manner as single market legislation, but only after December 2014—the same time as our proposed block opt-in. We are not even opting back in to the justice and home affairs system as it operates today; we are opting in to something quite new. None the less, the ECJ has already produced around 50 judgments to do with police and justice co-operation. That is because 19 member states have already voluntarily accepted the Court’s jurisdiction, to enable their own courts be clear as to the exact scope and meaning of each individual EU crime and policing agreement. December 2014, which is just a couple of weeks away, will still represent a watershed. The ECJ will start to create a jurisprudence in an area that really should be a matter for the British courts, the British Parliament and British justice. I am afraid that I shall have to vote against the motion this evening.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
May I begin by thanking the shadow Home Secretary for bringing forward this debate? In a wonderful spirit of bipartisanship, she has spared the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary their honour. Thanks to the right hon. Lady, the Prime Minister’s promise to have a debate on the European arrest warrant has been met. That shows an admirable, broad-minded, good-spiritedness although we are still some time from Christmas. I will not dwell unduly on the procedures, as those were covered quite thoroughly last week, other than to remind the House of what was said in the other place on Monday. The dissatisfaction is not limited to this Chamber. My noble Friend Lord Boswell, who is not a hard-nosed, hatchet-faced Eurosceptic, said:
“The problem now is a handling issue. The Government—particularly the Home Office—seem to be crippled by fear. Instead of encouraging a frank debate and a clear vote on their decision, they have resorted to undignified and ultimately self-defeating procedural dodges.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 November 2014; Vol. 757, c. 333.]
That is an extraordinary statement to be made in their lordships’ House, which is a much less aggressive, more kindly place than this Chamber sometimes.
I want to move on to the substance of the issue. With seven seconds for each of the 35 articles into which we are opting, I will not try to cover every one of them; I feel obliged to stick to the arrest warrant and answer the point that the arrest warrant is not essential to extradition. It is perfectly possible to have extradition arrangements either with the European Union or with individual nation states, as we do with the United States of America. That is then outside the ambit of the European Court of Justice. It is the Court of Justice of the European Union that is at the heart of the matter. Constitutionally, it is the real problem, because all our safeguards are speculative—the Home Secretary admits that herself. It has not yet been judged by the Court of Justice as to whether those safeguards will be upheld, and there is no appetite within Europe for reforming the basis of the arrest warrant. I am glad to see the Home Secretary returning to her place.
In evidence given to the European Scrutiny Committee, it was made clear that efforts to rewrite the details of the arrest warrant to put in some of the protections did not meet with any support. When a representative of the Commission gave evidence to the Lords’ Extradition Law Committee, she said that there was no willingness to transform the arrest warrant to bring in those safeguards. The European Court of Justice, an ambitious court that has historically extended its powers to cover an increasing number of areas, will be in charge of how extradition from this country takes place from 1 December. That is very dangerous, because it risks some of those things that we in this country hold most dear; it risks people being extradited to countries that do not have habeas corpus.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The hon. Gentleman will speak briefly so that we can get to the wind-ups. I am afraid that his hon. Friend has shaved a minute off his time; he has 47 seconds.