Leaving the EU: Security, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice

Debate between Robert Neill and Keith Vaz

Wednesday 18th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

I thought that that issue might be raised, and I was going to say that that does not alter the importance of criminal justice co-operation and, secondly, that where this has been relevant as a criticism of the arrest warrant in the past—in the Symeou case, for example—that is essentially history. What is not often sufficiently recognised are the very important amendments made to the European arrest warrant in 2014. We heard evidence from both the criminal lawyers society and the Criminal Bar Association, who strongly concurred that the amendments of 2014 had removed the risks that had put the unfortunate Mr Symeou in his position.

[Keith Vaz]

It is a great pleasure to serve under the hon. Gentleman’s chairmanship of the Justice Committee. The point made in the intervention by the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), which is a cause of concern to me, is that sometimes countries in the EU issue their European arrest warrant for very minor offences. One example is an individual who had a warrant issued against him because he had stolen a bicycle. It is important that individual countries focus on the reasons why they take out their arrest warrants. I have always regarded it as very serious when a European arrest warrant is issued; it is not appropriate for the minor offences that some countries use it for.

[Robert Neill]

I accept that that is a significant issue, but the two amendments achieved two things. First, they removed any risk of extradition before commencement of proceedings; and, secondly, they introduced in the UK a proportionality filter. It would be better if all other countries that use the European arrest warrant had a proportionality filter, too. From the evidence we heard from Professor Wilson of the Northumbria University’s centre for evidence and criminal justice studies, it seems that even Poland, which has resisted a proportionality filter in the past, is now moving in that direction. The situation is improving there.

The fact that we have those two important safeguards is significant, and it is also important that the European arrest warrant system is a court-driven system, which is subject to judicial supervision rather than being an executive act of extradition. That is why it would be undesirable for us to lose the advantage of the European arrest warrant and have to fall back to the 1957 extradition convention, which was a purely administrative act, carried out through diplomatic channels, without the protection of court intervention or review. It was also much more cumbersome.