Criminal Law

Steve Baker Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

Today we have had a completely shambolic debate. The Home Secretary has given an excellent account of why we should support policies that are not on the Order Paper. She has given an excellent defence of the European arrest warrant, which is not on the Order Paper. I agree with her that the European arrest warrant is immensely important. It helps us to fight crime. It helps the police, in Britain and across Europe, to stop murderers, traffickers and sex offenders. It helps us to deport more than 1,000 suspected foreign criminals primarily to their own countries to face justice. Given that there is a majority in this House in favour of the European arrest warrant, why on earth are we not voting for it? Why the sophistry? Why the games? Why the dancing around? It is just baffling that the Home Secretary is playing games with something so important to criminal justice and to the fight against international crime and terrorism.

The draft regulations cover a series of measures—the 11 measures that are on the Order Paper—and we support them. The confiscation orders, freezing orders on criminal records, the European supervision order, the joint investigation teams—we support them all. We support the measures on confiscation and freezing orders because no country in the EU should become a safe haven for criminal assets. We should be able to confiscate them wherever they are held. We support the two measures on criminal records and conviction. Exchanged data on the conviction of EU nationals should be harnessed for us to identify, locate and stop EU criminals entering our country and committing crimes. We support the European supervision order as a vital reform to interact with the arrest warrant, because suspects awaiting trial should, if appropriate, be in their home state. We support the joint investigation teams because we saw with Operation Golf that co-operation in complex investigations means we can arrest 126 traffickers from across Europe and safeguard vulnerable children not just in Britain but across the continent too. We support the prisoner transfer framework, because it makes it harder for other member states to refuse to take back their nationals from our prisons. We should have that co-operation in place.

We support the rest of the 35 measures that are not on the Order Paper—the measures we do not have a chance to demonstrate our support for and to vote for tonight. We saw, with the problem of foreign criminals entering in the UK, that the Schengen information system is also vital and necessary. We need Europol to support and co-ordinate cross-border investigations. We support closer co-operation on combating child abuse imagery, because with this crime there are no borders and the police need to work with police across Europe and across the world too. We support action to tackle football hooliganism across borders, and as we have made clear many times in the House, we particularly support the EAW. The Association of Chief Police Officers has described it as an essential weapon, and distinguished legal figures, including the former President of the Supreme Court, have argued that

“Britain also risks becoming a safe haven for fugitives from justice, a handful of them British citizens, but the vast majority foreign nationals wanted for crimes elsewhere in Europe.”

And they are right.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Lady believe that our country was a safe haven for foreign criminals before the EAW, and does she believe it is a safe haven now for foreign criminals from countries outside the EU?

[Yvette Cooper]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, there were cases before the introduction of the EAW when it took years to extradite suspects—for example, suspected terrorists back to France. We should not be in that situation. If we have people in our country wanted in France for serious crimes, particularly terrorists allegations, we should be able to deport them to face justice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

May I ask the shadow Home Secretary to reconsider the rather extraordinary step she has taken of presenting this archaic motion and, indeed, ask the House to consider quite where we are getting to on this issue? Nobody enjoys a good procedural row in the House of Commons as much as I do, and this is one of the best we have had for many years. It is perfectly straightforward—people are entitled to do this if they wish—but the House ought to reflect on what impression this is going to give to the outside world if we are not careful. We are discussing serious matters, yet we are all frolicking about in a rather schoolboy manner while the Whips try to get people to come back for an unexpected debate early in the evening. Let us be candid about what is happening.

Some 20 or 30 years ago, this sort of thing was quite excusable, and people just thought it was one of the things this House did, usually at bizarre hours of the night. Nowadays, that is not the mood out there and we have to be careful that we do not feed the thoughts of those who do not have a very high regard for parliamentary debate and for party politics, and who believed they were told to expect, as every Member of Parliament expected, that we were going to spend an evening having a serious discussion on how we organise our policing and criminal justice system to deal with the extremely important and growing problem of international and cross-border crime. If the whole thing collapses in time for everybody to go and have a good dinner in the early evening, that will not rise to the expectations of serious members of the public who expect us to have a proper debate.

[Steve Baker]

I disagree with my right hon. and learned Friend profoundly. I came into politics only because I was sick of the state of it, yet tonight I see the House of Commons alive. We have the opportunity to find out whether the Government are even asking the right questions. Surely he can see that this is about Parliament seizing back the initiative and reconnecting representatives with the public, who are so upset, largely because of the incompetence of the Labour party.

[Mr Clarke]

I have every respect for the strongly held views of quite a lot of Members, including a lot on my side, who do not agree with me on this evening’s measures, but I think we would win back the respect of the public if we had a serious debate on them. We will not if we bog ourselves down in arcane procedural arguments, most of which are a novelty to people sitting in the Chamber at the moment; we are going into hitherto unknown areas. I have never previously heard a Front-Bench spokesman move this motion at any stage in any serious debate, and I do not expect I will for many years to come.

I sympathise with the shadow Home Secretary’s position; indeed, I agree with her on quite a lot of things. Her problem is that she is leading for the Opposition when in policy terms she agrees with absolutely everything the Home Secretary is proposing, and so do I. I congratulate the shadow Home Secretary on her responsible approach to the subject. Everybody in this country responsible for the fight against crime and for the criminal justice system, and wanting to protect the public, is in favour of this opt-in. I am even more closely aligned with her than with some of my colleagues. I voted with her on the Maastricht treaty. I also voted with her on the Lisbon treaty, which paved the way for these international agreements being reached. That has enabled us to be so much more effective than we used to be in dealing with international criminal fugitives, who not only thrived on the Costa del Sol but were very present in London when they fled to this country before we steadily began to develop today’s arrangements.

The shadow Home Secretary has, however, got absolutely no arguments against the Government’s proposals on the merits. She is therefore making a mountain out of a molehill of a parliamentary procedural thing, which she thinks serves her purpose. Of course she is also enjoying herself, which I quite understand in ordinary party political terms. She is allying herself with my right hon. and hon. Friends who profoundly disagree with her and with the Home Secretary, and who are totally opposed to me in my support for these criminal justice measures. The alliance between the shadow Home Secretary and some of the most dyed in the wool Eurosceptics in this House is a very unlikely one, but I go back to where I started.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I support the previous Question. To listen to some of the right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken, one would think that it destroyed our democracy, that it threatened our democracy or that it was bad for this debate. Not a bit of it. Of course the substantive question is a matter of the first importance to justice, security, our international relations, our constitution and the democratic control of power.

In a moment we will have a chance to answer the question, “Are the Government asking the House the right questions?” I urge everybody to vote Aye and send the Government back to reformulate the question, come back to the House and ask us the right questions about matters of the most grave importance. The motion—the previous Question—is not a motion to destroy our democracy; it is a motion to save it, and I commend it to the House.

[Mr Speaker]

As the previous Question is an unusual procedure, I think I ought to repeat to the House the effect of this motion, because several Members have come up to me, quite understandably in this unusual situation, somewhat uncertain about what is at stake and what the implications of a particular course of action are. Let me try to help.

If the previous Question—that is, the motion put by the shadow Home Secretary at, if memory serves me correctly, 7.1 pm is agreed to—the draft regulations introduced by the Home Secretary will not be further considered at this sitting. That is to say, they will not be further considered tonight. If the previous Question is negatived—that is, the right hon. Lady’s motion is defeated—the Chair would be required to put the Question on the draft regulations straight away, without any further debate.

Lastly, before I put the Question, I can say to the House, with reference to an inquiry at a very senior level that has just been put to me, that yes, of course, if the House wishes to debate a motion or a set of motions of a similar or a different character, or a combination of similar and different characters, tomorrow, it is perfectly at liberty to do so. I am not saying it should do so; I am not saying any such thing. That is not for the Chair, but the House would be at liberty to do so with an emergency business statement to explain the change of business.

I hope it is clear what the implication of agreeing to the previous Question is—no further consideration of the draft regulations tonight. If the motion is rejected, the draft regulations would have to be put to the vote without any further debate. And yes, the matters can be treated of by the House tomorrow if colleagues wish to do so. My role is simply to facilitate the will of the House. Is that clear?