EU Justice and Home Affairs Measures

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That this House endorses the Government’s formal application to rejoin 35 European Union Justice and Home Affairs measures, including the European Arrest Warrant.

This is a very clear motion. In fact, it is a bit of a Ronseal motion—it does what it says on the tin. It means that today we can support 35 measures, not just 11, and it includes the three words that we were promised: “European Arrest Warrant”. It includes other measures, too: football banning orders, confiscation orders, joint investigation teams, criminal records sharing, and border information sharing so that we can secure our borders. Those are important measures, because crime does not stop at our borders—criminals do not stop when they get to the channel. I had hoped that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary would be able to sign the motion, but the Home Secretary has written to me to say that she will vote for it. I am glad that she has decided to support our motion, although it would of course have been so much easier if she had just been straightforward in the first place.

This motion is almost exactly the same as the one tabled in the House of Lords. While we got to vote on only 11 measures, the other place was offered a vote on all 35. Here is the revealing statement by the Minister in the Lords:

“the Government have amended the Motion to put beyond doubt that we see tonight’s debate and decision…as on the whole package of 35 measures that the Government will seek to rejoin in the national interest.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 17 November 2014; Vol. 757, c. 328.]

While we were denied our chance to vote in the elected Commons on the European arrest warrant, the Government decided to assuage the doubts of the House of Lords. They decided to do that last Tuesday. Just 24 hours after the mess in the House of Commons, they decided to change the motion in the Lords—so why not do it for us?

I will give way to the Home Secretary if she can give us any good reason why she did not come back to this House last week and table a new motion, as she had in the other place. She was prepared to do it there, so why not come and do it here? No reason is being given. We were happy to do it for her, however, because she promised us a vote on the European arrest warrant. She said that the vote will be

“on the whole package of 35 measures—including the Arrest Warrant”.

The Prime Minister promised us a vote on the European arrest warrant. He said that

“we are going to have a vote…before the Rochester by-election”.—[Official Report, 29 October 2014; Vol. 587, c. 301.]

We understand that the Home Secretary has a rather contemptuous view of the Prime Minister’s promises. He promised democracy in policing; she delivered 13% turnouts. He promised, “no ifs, no buts”, that he would meet his net migration target. The net migration target is going right back up, and the Home Secretary said that it was not a promise, but a “comment”. Labour Members are glad to be able to help the Prime Minister to meet his promises to the British Parliament. It looks as though we are doing a rather better job than the Home Secretary of helping him to meet his promises.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Look, some of us kind of lost the will to live on all this last week, and I think if we go through all this procedural stuff again today we will seriously lose the will to live. I think we have all had our fun. Will the shadow Home Secretary now move on to the substance of the European arrest warrant so that we can sort it once and for all, have a vote, and go home? I think we would all be grateful if we could just do that.

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The Home Secretary has deprived him of his will to live, so I feel sorry for him, but he is right that we need to get on to the huge amount of substance in this debate.

I must say that the most startling thing of all in the chaos of last week’s debate was not the betrayal of promises or even the contempt for Parliament, but seeing the Chief Whip and the Home Secretary having to sit next to each other on the Government Front Bench and having to talk to each other for a change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz]

I was just about to say that. I do not want this to sound like self-congratulation—[Hon. Members: “Oh yes you do!”] Oh, all right—I do! I concede that point. To have united the three Chairs of the Select Committees and all their members, given their different politics and personalities, is a unique achievement for any Government. I am minded to join those on the two Front Benches in the Division Lobby to support the motion, if only to see the Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary in the same Lobby at the same time—I am not sure who will get there first—but I shall not be voting tonight. I am sure that my extra vote would not count for much anyway, given that the motion will be passed, but this is the only way I have of expressing my exasperation at the insufficient time we have had to discuss these matters or to look in real detail at the European arrest warrant.

The Home Secretary is right to say that there have been changes since we started last year, but those changes do not go far enough to deal with the kinds of issues that were raised in the Select Committee by several Members, including the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), and the hon. Members for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) and for South Dorset (Richard Drax), all of whom came and talked about specific examples.

I am not against the principle of the European arrest warrant. The Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary have made a powerful case in support of that principle. The problem lies in the practicalities involved and the difficulty in exercising any control—we have none—over jurisdictions in other countries. Poland has been mentioned. We have had more European arrest warrant requests from Poland—2,400—than from any other country in Europe. The Home Secretary says that Poland is changing its legislation.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

The fact is that these are mostly for Poles going back to Poland—they want their own Poles back—and they are not for our citizens.

[Keith Vaz]

Of course if the Poles want the Poles back, they should have them back. The problem is that Poland is issuing these arrest warrants because it does not do so when it is prosecution-ready; a judge has no jurisdiction in these matters and these things are just issued, no matter what the case is. We cannot intervene in Polish legislation to try to change that position. The right hon. Gentleman talks about Poland having the Poles back. There are 1,000 Polish people in our prisons as foreign national prisoners and if Poland wanted them back I am sure the Home Secretary would be delighted to send them back to Poland. However, they are still in our prisons.

The fact is that these practicalities do stand in the way of justice. As Lady Hale said in the case of PH, HH and FK, this rests, in the end, with the other national countries of the European Union; it does not rest with us. So no matter what we do in the House today, those practical difficulties remain. I know that successive Governments have tried hard to change the situation, but we cannot intervene in the legislation of other countries. That is why we get these absurd cases where European arrest warrants are issued for people without the need to hand them out. The figures show that 28% of people arrested in our country are foreign nationals, half of whom are from the European Union. The cost of executing a European arrest warrant is £20,000—it costs that each time. The figures for arrests and surrenders show 5,184 arrests and 4,005 surrenders, so we are talking about 1,179 more arrests than surrenders.

That is why we needed an early debate on this matter. We do not need to go right up to the wire, with 12 days to go before the end of these discussions. Parliament, especially constituency MPs, who have real issues to raise, should have had the opportunity to raise this matter before. I am sorry that the Government did not listen to what my Committee said clearly a year ago, in paragraphs 85 and 87 of its report. Paragraph 87 stated:

“To date”—

this was a year ago—

“we have been disappointed with the extent and timeliness of the Government’s involvement of Parliament in scrutinising the 2014 opt-out and proposed opt-in. We hope that it will engage more constructively with Parliament for the remainder of this process.”

Now, with 12 days to go, we have our first real debate on this issue, thanks to the shadow Home Secretary tabling this motion.

We have just been told by the Home Secretary that she has not even notified the European Union that we are going to opt in. Bearing in mind the paperwork involved and the way in which the Home Office deals with its paperwork, I have a suggestion to make to the right hon. Lady: when she signs her letter, she should give it to the hon. Members for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and for Meon Valley (George Hollingbery), who are sitting behind her, and make sure that they take it straight to the European Union headquarters in Brussels. Otherwise, given the history of the Home Office, this deadline will be missed, like so many others.

I hope the Home Secretary will, in her wind-up, further reassure the House that the points made by Members of this House in their evidence to my Select Committee and the reports the three Select Committees have issued will be taken even more seriously than they have been in the past.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

I want to make a few brief points. In July, significant reforms were introduced to procedures in respect of the European arrest warrant. There is now clearly a test for proportionality, so that UK police forces are not going to execute European arrest warrants for trivial or minor crimes that would not receive a custodial sentence here. It is also necessary to be able to demonstrate dual criminality; in other words, the European arrest warrant will not be executed if the offence is not also a crime in the United Kingdom. The judge being requested to issue the European arrest warrant also has to be satisfied as to the readiness of the case or, in other words, that the case is ready to go to trial and that the European arrest warrant is not simply being used as a means of detaining people indefinitely or going on some sort of fishing expedition. People are therefore only going to be extradited if the offences are serious, if the authorities elsewhere are ready to proceed and if the matters in question are also crimes here in the UK.

Since 2009, 221 people have been extradited by Thames Valley police under a European arrest warrant. This year, Thames Valley police have extradited five high-risk offenders from the United Kingdom. They are people wanted for the most serious offences, including murder, terrorism offences, armed robbery, serious assault and firearms offences. Significant extraditions in 2014 by Thames Valley police include a Polish individual wanted for grievous bodily harm and aggravated burglary in Poland. This individual had numerous convictions for violent offences. Because he was assessed as high risk, the warrant was received, processed and executed within 24 hours, thus removing a potential offender and providing reassurance to the community. Indeed, our local community in the Thames Valley has clearly been safeguarded by this person’s removal from the UK.

An individual wanted for taking part in the murder of two youths in Milton Keynes was arrested in Holland under the provisions of a European arrest warrant. He was extradited back to the UK, where he now awaits trial. Since July, Thames Valley police have also collected one suspect under the provision of a European arrest warrant for fraud offences that had a criminal benefit of some £150,000. The European arrest warrant is being used to help to keep us safe by removing foreign criminals from our communities. That is an important point. The House has to remember that, of those extradited from the UK under the European arrest warrant, the overall majority are foreign nationals.

The Metropolitan police show that 95% of the nearly 1,500 criminal suspects, including murderers and rapists, who fled to London to avoid facing justice overseas but have been extradited over the past five years under the European arrest warrant, were foreign nationals. Some 95% of the warrants applied to foreign nationals. Of the 1,500 criminal suspects in the Met police area—including 45 alleged killers, 35 men wanted for rape, 25 accused of child sex offences, 30 suspected armed robbers, two alleged terrorists, 130 people wanted for drug trafficking and 252 people accused of fraud—only 67, or less than 5% of the total, were Britons. This is largely about ensuring that criminals cannot flee to the UK and use it is a safe haven.

As Lord Howard of Lympne, a former Home Secretary and no great supporter of the EU, observed:

“I hope that Parliament will endorse the Government’s sensible approach… Justice delayed, too often, is justice denied… I have seen the benefits of the Arrest Warrant, and expressed concerns about its shortcomings. Now that this Government has acted to address those shortcomings, it should continue to be a tool at the disposal of our law enforcement agencies.”

The arrest warrant meant that Hussain Osman, one of the failed July 2005 London bombers, who fled to Italy, could be brought back to Britain for trial in just 56 days. By contrast, the man who masterminded the Paris metro attack in 1995, which killed eight people, was able to shelter in London for 10 years before he could be extradited, because the warrant was not in force at the time. I do not think that any Member wants any part of the UK to be a safe haven for foreign criminals.

Prior to the EAW, I can remember spending hours at Horseferry Road magistrates court and elsewhere arguing the case, while defendants were able to delay extradition because we needed individual extradition treaties with individual countries. We now have a working proportionality filter: a UK judge is required to consider whether extradition would be disproportionate; and if a person is wanted for prosecution, a judge has to take into account the seriousness of the conduct, the likely penalty and the possibility of the relevant foreign authorities taking less coercive measures than extradition. Furthermore, the Government sought to curb any lengthy pre-trial detentions, so in cases where someone is wanted for trial abroad, extradition can go ahead only where the issuing state has made a decision to charge and try that person.

I think that the Government are right to push ahead with the EAW. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has rightly warned that abandoning it would undermine the fight against crime and risk turning Britain into a haven for fugitives, and I hope that the whole House will vote on the pragmatic grounds of public safety, rather than playing politics. The well-being and safety of our constituents are too important.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—