EU Criminal Policy

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke]

The European Union is doing this anyway. The central issue is whether we opt in. This is really a shadow debate for the whole issue about opting in. The letter sent by the Home Secretary to some colleagues on 21 December 2011 talks about the whole issue of the opt-ins. There are 133 directives, regulations and so on where opting in could take place.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend refers to the central issue. Is not the central issue that raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox)? If we are going to criminalise people in this country, or indeed in any other member state in the EU, by law, then those who have passed those laws need to be accountable to the citizens to whom they apply, and that is not the case in relation to the European Commission or the other EU institutions, which are not accountable, in any real sense at all, to the people of this country.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I completely agree with my hon. and learned Friend, and that is my central point too. It is not for the European Union to start defining crimes; it is for individual nation states to do so.

There are areas where we should consider opting in. For example, I intervened on the Minister and talked about the issue of drugs. Let us look at the measures in the list provided by the Home Secretary. On one side, it talks about co-operation between customs authorities and business organisations on combating drug trafficking. Good. That is what we should have—cross-border co-operation. As the representative of Dover, I know that that is really important and makes a difference. Another 1996 justice and home affairs measure that was proposed, concerns

“the exchange of information on the chemical profiling of drugs to facilitate improved cooperation between Member States in combating illicit drug trafficking.”

Good. Yes, we should do that.

However, the dividing line for me is the 1996 JHA measure No. 750, which concerns

“the approximation of the laws and practices of the Member States of the European Union to combat drug addiction and to prevent and combat illegal drug trafficking.”

When one considers the approximation of laws and the issue of codification and requiring member states to treat everything the same way, one is rapidly moving into the area of a common criminal law—Eurojust, the European arrest warrant, the Euro-investigator, Europol and Euro-crimes. If we are to take that route, my point is simply that we should engage the country as a whole and have a proper, open discussion about what is going on, not try to spin it.

There are some cases where a common criminal law may be appropriate, particularly in the cross-border context; in others, we might conclude that it is not the right way to proceed. But to draw up a cynical list of everything that everyone would agree are the most heinous crimes known to mankind, in order to get the principle and then to extend it later, is something that we have seen with the European Union time and again. It is the fundamentally wrong thing to do, and it would be the wrong thing for us to do in terms of the opt-in or opt-out debate. I believe that when we have that opt-in/opt-out debate over the next two years, we should ensure that we include the country as a whole and have a proper, national discussion.