William Cash
Main Page: William Cash (Conservative - Stone)Department Debates - View all William Cash's debates with the Home Office
(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Cash
I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Her response to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) seemed to suggest that the speed with which he advocates the sorting out of the opt-ins might truncate the amount of scrutiny that is needed. I thought, as a result of the amendment tabled by me and other Select Committee Chairmen to the original motion, we had established that progress had been made on that point. Will my right hon. Friend make the situation clear?
Mrs May
I am happy to make it clear and sorry if my remarks to my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge led my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) to interpret my response in that way, because that was certainly not my intention. I will specify more clearly the process as I see it in due course.
Yvette Cooper
There is a whole series of measures in respect of which it will make no difference whether we are in them or out of them. We have no objection to opting out of a series of redundant measures. However, there must be proper assurances and guarantees about the measures that we need to opt back into. Rather than a massive transfer of powers, this is, as the Prime Minister said, more like a massive transfer of hot air. There is not the substance in this to justify the Home Secretary’s parade of historic significance and celebration of sovereignty.
Although the Home Secretary has not set out any major benefits from opting out of these measures, we know that there are risks to the serious measures where even she now admits we need to opt back in. She has no guarantees in place and no assurances from the Commission or the Council that at least on the most important measures—the arrest warrant, data sharing, joint investigations—we will be able to opt back in. She will know that the House of Lords pointed out that when Denmark exercised its opt-out,
“the Commission had frequently refused permission for the Danes to conclude agreements in certain areas”.
Nor has she any guarantee on the timetable or, for example, whether we will simultaneously be able to opt back into the European arrest warrant, whether there will be a gap in its operation, or whether complex or risky transitional arrangements will need to be negotiated.
Given how important the Home Secretary herself has said the European arrest warrant and various other measures are, surely it is important to ensure that there is no gap in operation. She can provide no assurance for the police that there will no interruption, therefore, of their use of the arrest warrant. The House of Lords report also said that
“the Government have not provided us with even a summary of the reactions of the other Member States to the Government’s intention to exercise the opt-out”
which
“may be critical in assessing the potential success or otherwise”
of the UK’s negotiation to rejoin particular measures. Surely on these most important measures she should seek assurances from the Commission and the Council before she asks this House to opt out.
Mr Cash
I am grateful to the shadow Home Secretary for giving way; I was in contest with her in the days when I was shadow Attorney-General and she was in government. She will recall the 17th report of the European Scrutiny Committee in 2001 and she will also recall that there was very severe criticism by that Committee of the manner in which this was all done with respect to the European arrest warrant. If she does not remember, no doubt she can look it up. With respect to the proposal before the House and the official Opposition amendment, how does she reconcile the words in that amendment with article 10 of protocol 36? I am sure she will remember what that says.
Yvette Cooper
As always, I bow to the detail of the hon. Gentleman’s memory. I confess that it is true—I cannot remember the details on page 37 of the 17th report of the European Scrutiny Committee from 2001, though I am sure that if I gave way to him again, he could quote precisely to me, line by line, the detail of its conclusions.
Our position is simple. We think the European arrest warrant is so important that we should be getting assurances. We should be doing as the House of Lords suggested. We should be getting the summary of reactions of the other member states to the Government’s intention. We should be getting assurances from the Commission that it will look favourably on getting us back into the European arrest warrant simultaneously and that we do not have a gap in operation.
Yvette Cooper
I hesitate to give way to the hon. Gentleman because I suspect he will quote from page 37, but I will do so briefly, then I want to make final progress.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I hope that the hon. Gentleman’s intervention will be brief.
Mr Cash
Basically, the European Scrutiny Committee, under the chairmanship of the Government at that time, said:
“The presentation of radically changed texts in the last days of a Presidency, with calls for their immediate adoption, does not appear to us to be an appropriate way of determining changes at EU level to the criminal law…The legislative process should be open and transparent and not one of secret bargaining.”
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Gentleman probably does need to recognise that things have moved on slightly since 2001, and there are some important issues for us to resolve today.
As I said, we have no objection to the opt-out in principle. We did negotiate the option in practice. Nor do we have any objection to opting out of a series of redundant or superseded measures, which the UK does not participate in anyway. But we do have serious objections to going ahead with an opt-out without the assurances about the serious measures that we need to opt into. We have serious objections, too, to being asked in the House of Commons to adopt and endorse a half-formed strategy, which may or may not change by October.
The Home Secretary is asking the House of Commons to endorse her opt-out, to endorse her opt-in, to accept that a possible future Conservative Government will opt-out again, and to recognise that Select Committees may still shake it all about anyway. This is a massive game of hokey cokey. She is asking us to vote for the hokey and for the cokey, the hocus and the pocus, the smoke and the mirrors, and it is not an honest debate with Parliament about the important issues of crime and justice. The Home Secretary is asking for a blank cheque from the House of Commons today: a blank cheque on which of the measures she will end up opting back into; a blank cheque for European negotiations with no guarantees in place for the police. To those who want bigger changes in the relationship with Europe, she says, “Vote to opt out, and don’t worry yourselves about the detail to opt back in.” To those who support crime fighting, she says, “Vote to opt out, then leave me to negotiate. It will be fine.” There is no real substance for those who want to opt out, and a lot of risk and uncertainty for those who want to opt back into the series of measures.
This is a parliamentary charade: a promise of a massive transfer of powers that is not real; a promise that European crime-fighting powers are safe with no guarantees; a call to endorse the Home Secretary’s strategy with no proper scrutiny; and a vote that could wait until October. That is why we will not support her strategy tonight.
Keith Vaz
The best course of action would have been to take note of what the Government have done without making a decision as that would have given the whole House an opportunity to come to a view that these matters need to be scrutinised.
Of course, we need to opt out of some of the measures, for the reasons given by the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), the shadow Home Secretary my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and others. Some of the measures are obsolete and, to be frank, I did not know that until I heard about it today. I have not had the chance to look through the measures and I am not sure that every other Member has, either.
I would have preferred a take-note motion and not a Division over something that I think the House as a whole supports: the need for us to look again at European legislation and to decide very carefully whether or not we want to opt into some of the measures again. The Home Secretary has missed that opportunity so, sadly, we will divide, which I think will send mixed messages to the European Union about what this House really intends.
I have a point of substance about the European arrest warrant. I have heard what my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary has said, but I am concerned about the way in which the warrant operates. I am particularly concerned about those cases mentioned by right hon. and hon. Members that highlight the disproportionate way in which other countries deal with it compared with what we do. We have more surrenders than arrests and it is better for our European partners than it is for us, according to Home Office statistics.
I accept all the cases that have been mentioned by my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary and the Home Secretary; I think the Front Benchers agree on them. On the very serious cases, we need co-operation with our European partners. It would not be practicable to negotiate with each one.
The problem, however, rests with the judiciary in some of these countries, including Poland. So many of the cases in this country relate to Poland and are very minor. I read of someone who had the European arrest warrant issued against him because he had stolen a wheelbarrow. Another person who gave false information when obtaining a loan of only £200 from a Polish bank has also been subject to the European arrest warrant. Our courts are being clogged up because of judicial decisions. I had hoped that our Committee could have gone to Poland to meet its chief justice to try to understand exactly why this is happening, but we will not have the time to do that now, because this House goes into recess in four days’ time and we will not be back until September.
Mr Cash
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the way in which he is making the very important case for our mutual amendment. Does he accept that one of the real problems is not just the question, as the Home Secretary has said, of whether our own laws would be involved and whether we would be able to make appropriate amendments in this House, but that the definition of judicial authority is absent from the European arrest warrant? I suspect that that is the reason why it is so difficult to deal with the examples the right hon. Gentleman has given. It is a question not of whether we can amend the laws in this House, but of whether the European arrest warrant itself does the job of creating proper judicial authorities.
Keith Vaz
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I want to give the Home Secretary the benefit of the doubt. The proposals she has announced today may represent the right approach to deal with the issues raised by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and others, and her amendments to domestic law may be sufficient, but we do not know whether that is the case, because we need time to consider her proposals. Unless there is engagement with the judiciary in other countries, anything we do in our domestic law will, to be frank, not make any difference.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
This has been a classic example of scrutiny going wrong, not from the point of view of the European Scrutiny Committee, the Home Affairs Committee or the Justice Committee, but from the point of view of the way in which the Government have handled it. We have been through these matters over the past week, and they are being given a great deal of consideration. I am glad to say that we have had the opportunity to meet the Home Secretary, as the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) described. She has listened, and made changes to the original motion, which would have severely prejudiced the scrutiny by this House that takes place in line with the principles that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) set out. Those principles are fundamental to the running of our affairs in this House that relate to the European Union. There was a danger that the scrutiny process set up under the requirements of our Standing Orders was going to be completely bypassed, but the Home Secretary has listened and we have made some progress.
There is another amendment, to which the right hon. Member for Leicester East referred, and I urge the Government to accept it. If they do not do so, I strongly urge Members on both sides of the House to vote for it. It would be unfortunate if the Government were obdurate and said that they were not prepared to accept it, in opposition to the views not only of three Select Committee Chairmen but of many others who form part of the Liaison Committee, who I have reason to believe would want to support the amendment.
The Government’s motion states that they would
“seek to rejoin measures where it is in the national interest to do so”.
As it happens, at this juncture nobody is in a position to form a judgment about what is or is not in the national interest because the scrutiny process has not taken place. If we are to have a scrutiny process that means anything, combining the three views of the respective Select Committees, it is simply not possible or practical for a decision to be taken until those matters have been properly considered.
Mark Reckless
I am not sure whether my hon. Friend has noticed some consternation among Liberal Democrat Members who think it is always and everywhere in the national interest to opt into anything that the European Union is doing.
Dr Huppert
The hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), who serves on the Home Affairs Committee with me, is heavily wrong in this case, but that is not what I wished to say. Does the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) believe that one cannot hold a position on something until it has been through a Select Committee? Select Committees do wonderful work but there are other ways to find things out. Not every single decision of this House goes through a Select Committee—that might be a bit slow.
Mr Cash
If that were the case for scrutiny, I would simply refer the hon. Gentleman to the Standing Orders of this House that make it crystal clear that the scrutiny process must be as good as it possibly can be. Indeed, there is an inquiry into the scrutiny process to improve it even further in line with concerns that have been expressed by the House on a number of occasions. The process is also being reviewed throughout Europe through the Conference of Community and European Affairs Committees of Parliaments of the European Union. Everybody is anxious to ensure that European scrutiny takes place properly, precisely because of the democratic basis on which such decisions must be taken.
Mr Clappison
My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) does not look completely overwhelmed at being told that he is heavily wrong by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), but never mind that. Before my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) moves away from the issue of national interest, is it not part of our national interest for our law to be determined in this House of Commons and subject to the jurisdiction of our judges rather than European judges?
Mr Cash
Indeed, and I personally take that view, which lies at the heart of the matter that I raised with the right hon. Member for Leicester East. The expression “judicial authority” leaves a great deal to be desired and has given rise to a lot of problems not only in this country but elsewhere throughout Europe. It is not just a question of whether we adjust our domestic law in certain respects, but of whether the European arrest warrant can properly fulfil the judicial role allocated to it. As I said earlier, other matters such as dual criminality must also be considered. Many questions looked at in 2001 were, as the shadow Home Secretary knows, considered by the European Scrutiny Committee, although she was not over-anxious to go into the detail. No doubt she will when she has an opportunity to come back into the Chamber, and she is very welcome to do that later on.
As the right hon. Member for Leicester East said, the original motion was withdrawn but it did not mention the role in this process of the European Scrutiny, Home Affairs and Justice Committees, despite repeated promises that those Committees would be consulted. There were also undertakings that we would be given explanatory memorandums on measures covered by the opt-out by the middle of February. In my view, and that of my Committee as a whole, the Government’s failure to provide explanatory memorandums in line with their timetable has been the major factor impeding Select Committee consideration of the block opt-out.
The history of those various exchanges and undertakings is set out in our report, “The 2014 block opt-out—engaging with Parliament”—that has been seriously lacking—which is tagged in this debate along with the Government’s response.
In my view, the way the European Scrutiny Committee and the other Committees have jointly sought information from the Government is an excellent example of the various elements of the scrutiny process working together in a consistent and co-ordinated manner. In that context, the fact that the Government’s revised motion does not provide for a scrutiny stage to be concluded by the end of October is to be welcomed. The amendment to the revised motion, which we have tabled jointly, centres on the scrutiny process and aims to ensure that the Select Committees can undertake meaningful scrutiny of the Government’s proposals. I hope that the Government will listen to that.
As Chairs of these Committees, we are concerned that the inclusion of the words
“on the set of measures in Command Paper 8671”
is likely, implicitly or explicitly, to endorse the Government’s list of 35. The amendment would simply leave out these words, so as to avoid a prejudgment of the Committee’s conclusions. That was the substance of the point made by the right hon. Member for Leicester East.
Chris Bryant
Does that mean the Government would have to come back to the House with a proper debate on the precise list of opt-in measures, rather than the impenetrable document they have provided, and make a coherent argument?
Mr Cash
The Command Paper sets out, very late in the day, various lists, proposals, explanatory memorandums and the rest of it, effectively bouncing the Committees and shunting straight past the scrutiny process, in defiance of the promises and undertakings given months ago. The Chairs are deeply concerned about this attempt to push the scrutiny process to one side. The European Scrutiny Committee, which I Chair, has a specific job to do under Standing Orders that cannot be brushed aside by the Government or anybody else. Those are the Standing Orders of the House. The other two Committees will want to look at policy questions, but we consider proposals more on a document-by-document basis, and there are 130-odd of them, so the matter has to be dealt with within the framework of Standing Orders.
I look to the Justice Secretary, who is sitting on the Front Bench, knowing in my heart that he wants to ensure that the scrutiny process works effectively, and I invite him, in consultation with the Home Secretary, to accept our amendment and put in place that proper scrutiny process. There is no great hurry. What puzzles many Members is why an attempt has been made to bounce the House, as it were; we are puzzled about why this had to be rushed, and we have had no explanation. We simply do not understand the reasons. We do not see why there has to be a vote either. Many people think there should not be one.
In January, the European Scrutiny Committee requested that the relevant Committees should have sight of the Government’s impact assessments on the various measures under consideration. Will the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary supply us with this information as soon as possible? It is all part of the scrutiny process. If the Government really want transparent and democratic systems that work in the interests of those whom we have the honour to represent, it is essential that we do this properly.
Sir Alan Beith
Did the three of us—the three Committee Chairs—not warn the Government repeatedly against allowing this situation to arise by asking them to produce the memorandums in the early part of the year?
Mr Cash
This is driven not by hostility, but by basic common sense: it helps the democratic process and the working between the Government and the Select Committee system, whose role has been enhanced recently, to work with the grain. That is the point: this has been working against the grain. I know that my right hon. Friends the Justice Secretary and the Home Secretary, not to mention the Prime Minister, are conscious of these questions. If mistakes were made in trying to rush and not give scrutiny the opportunities that are needed in the interests of those whom we serve, it is essential to get this right. I urge them strongly to accept the amendment in the name of the Chairmen of those Committees, and on which the Chairmen of other Committees have expressed an interest too.
The Opposition’s amendment is a rather curious state of affairs, something to which I referred when I intervened on the shadow Home Secretary. I simply put it on the record like this: the full sequence would be that the United Kingdom would have to notify its block opt-out decision six months before it could notify which measures it would seek to opt back into. The specific order is clearly set out—I was not trying to bounce the right hon. Lady—in article 10 of protocol 36, and has been confirmed by the Commission in response to a question from the European Parliament. We know what the sequence should be, so it would not be possible for the Government to notify the European institutions of their intention to exercise the block opt-out once, to use the wording of the amendment, those institutions
“have committed to the UK’s ongoing participation”
in the measures concerned. There is something wrong with the wording of the Opposition’s amendment, because it does not fit with article 10 of protocol 36. Anyone can make a pedantic point, but this goes to the heart of article 10 of protocol 36.
Chris Bryant
But article 10 of protocol 36 also says that the Commission will, wherever possible, seek to ensure that there is a maximum degree of participation by the United Kingdom in any measures it wants to opt into. The difficulty arises in that sometimes the precise package of measures may not be a package of measures that works as far as the Commission is concerned— the point Commissioner Reding has already made to the Justice Secretary in private conversation.
Mr Cash
I do not know about these private conversations, and I do not know whether Prism has been at work to enable the hon. Gentleman to know what they consisted of. [Interruption.] Oh, he told you. Well, be that as it may, the fact is that article 10 of protocol 36 is clear, and has been confirmed by the Commission as such in a response to a question in the European Parliament. I will leave it at that, but it would be strange for us—I am talking about the House as a whole—to end up voting for an amendment tabled by the official Opposition, with all the expertise at their disposal, that was inherently wrong.
George Eustice
My hon. Friend is making an important technical point, but is there not a more fundamental objection? The Opposition’s amendment is tantamount to saying that we must first ask the permission of the European Commission before we can exercise the treaty right that we have for this opt-out. It is basically saying that we should wait and see what the Commission thinks before we make a decision.
Mr Redwood
I am very attracted to amendment (b), standing in the name of my hon. Friend and the other two Committee Chairmen. I note that we have three senior Committee Chairmen, all of different parties, supporting it, and I think I heard those on the Labour Front Bench implying that they, too, supported it. Can my hon. Friend say whether this is now the view of the House?
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
indicated assent.
Chris Bryant
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. As I understand it, the Justice Secretary just nodded to the assertion made by the hon. Gentleman. I think he was assenting to the Government’s acceptance of the amendment tabled in the name of the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). If so, I would have thought it would be in order for the Justice Secretary to make that view known for the whole House.
Madam Deputy Speaker
For a change, but perhaps we could return to Bill Cash.
Mr Cash
I really have no more to add, because this has been a highly satisfactory, if slightly informal, way of proceeding. I am extremely glad that the Justice Secretary has said that the Government will accept amendment (b), because it demonstrates that, even in the inquisitorial system that we have, accountability and good sense can run together.
Dr Huppert
I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman is happy, although on occasion he may not be entirely accurate.
We have discussed a number of measures that the Liberal Democrats, for example, would not opt into, and I shall say more about some of them later. However, I still believe that the European arrest warrant is absolutely right, and I was pleased to hear the Home Secretary extol its virtues. I hope that she will continue to do so, and that the Select Committee will continue to support a reformed arrest warrant.
What we just heard from the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), and what we heard earlier from the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) and the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash), illustrated the tendency of some Members to do exactly what we were urged not to do by the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David): the tendency to be so obsessed with Europe that crime, justice and all the other issues that we ought to care about—and about which our constituents actually care—fall by the wayside.
Mr Cash
I agree that this is not about Europe. It is about Britain; it is about the British citizens. I invite the hon. Gentleman to consider a case in Staffordshire. A constituent of one of my neighbouring Members of Parliament was convicted in Italy of murder and was sentenced to 15 years in absentia, but was not even in Italy when the murder was committed.
Dr Huppert
The hon. Gentleman is certainly making a point, but I am not sure that it is entirely the point. Justice systems all around the world make errors. The British justice system has convicted people, only for those convictions to be overturned on appeal. I do not claim that justice is perfect, but I do claim that an obsession with European issues weakens our focus on policing and crime, which are what we should be focusing on. I do not know the circumstances of the case the hon. Gentleman mentions, and it is entirely possible errors were made, but that does not mean we should not work with Europe or continue with the justice and home affairs co-operation we currently have.
Mr Buckland
I certainly was not charging by the word; it was a graduated fee system, but that is for another debate. I do not think my hon. Friend should be criticised for repeating the point.
Mr Buckland
I will give way in a moment, but I want to deal with the point raised by, among others, my very good hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). In an interesting intervention earlier in the debate, he mentioned the legal personality of the EU, and the possibility of an extradition agreement between the United Kingdom and the EU. I think he is right about that—[Interruption.] Well, I think he is. Against that observation, however, the reality of the situation we face in which countries and organisations are making a multiplicity of arrangements with each other means that individual bilateral arrangements will take their place far down the order of priorities—too far down for the victims of crime we represent. With the greatest respect to my hon. Friend, that is not a price we can afford to pay when it comes to the swift administration of justice.
Mr Cash
I rose to say that I thought my hon. Friend was making a good job of what I think is a voluntary opt-in to this debate, and it is very instructive. He talked about repeating a point again and again and again, but I think it worth pointing out to him that there is a rule, I believe, about tedious repetition. I am sure he did not mean that he was in any way going to fall into that trap.
Mr Buckland
I was not referring to me but to the previous intervention. I certainly do not fall into that category. I hope I do not, and I do not intend to —[Interruption.] I am grateful for the Whip’s assistance on this occasion in putting that on the record. In reality, the structures within which the Government have to work are not of their creation. They are the product of a rather depressing series of negotiations—and I speak as a more pro-European Conservative than most—that ended up in the Lisbon treaty.
Collectively, the countries of the European Union took themselves down a massive constitutional cul-de-sac when they should have been thinking about the growing economic crisis that exploded on us all in 2007-08. That is history and we must deal with its consequences, but the framework within which we operate is something the Government could not control. Setting out a clear intention—as the Government are doing—indicating which proposals they wish to opt back into, and allowing this place to debate each measure piece by piece, is the right way to proceed. That sends a clear message to our colleagues in the European Union, and allows practical measures to be taken that will enhance the administration of justice, while at the same time avoiding some of the pitfalls that I and others have outlined today.
Mark Reckless
No, I would not accept that for a minute. I was prepared for a repetitious intervention later, but my hon. Friend got in early. I must make some progress, and I will deal with his point.
The situation is the complete opposite of what my hon. Friend says. Under Maastricht—that great success hailed from the rooftops by an ex-Prime Minister who called it game, set and match to Britain—we had intergovernmental procedures and pillared structures, meaning that the Commission and the European Court of Justice would not be involved in foreign and justice and home affairs matters; they would be dealt with solely on an intergovernmental basis. Unfortunately, those pillars have been chipped away at, and with the Lisbon treaty, they were knocked over, hence today’s motion. The previous Labour Government could not say that the constitution was exactly the same as the Lisbon treaty—I am informed by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) that making out the two were different was one of the few face-saving fig leaves they picked on—and now these areas are being folded into the treaty structure originally envisaged under the Maastricht treaty. Rather than an opt-out from 130-odd measures, as the idea is styled, the proposal was—until the acceptance earlier of amendment (b), which was very significant—to opt into Commission enforcement of ECJ jurisdiction in 35 measures, including almost all of the most important.
Mr Cash
I would like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend. I can well remember how some years ago at Oxford, at the time of the Maastricht treaty, he was able to participate in debates and discussions on these very issues. We were in complete agreement then, and have remained so ever since.
Mark Reckless
Yes, but that was partly because I and others benefited greatly from the instruction of my hon. Friend, and I now very much enjoy working with him on these issues.
There has been a sea change in how these issues are seen in this country. We talk about a zone of
“freedom, security and justice without internal borders”,
but many of the problems that the European arrest warrant and other provisions are meant to tackle are problems only because of the free movement within the EU that has led to many people from particular EU countries coming to these shores. I welcome enormously our apparent bilateral co-operation with the Romanian police. Apparently, there is an encampment of Romanians around Hyde Park corner and Marble Arch, and we are getting assistance from the Romanian police to deal with that, but were it not for the treaty rights and freedom of movement, we could deport these people.
The Immigration Minister said earlier that he did not want to criminalise being an illegal immigrant, because the objective was to get them back to their home countries. Similarly here, rather than give up our system of justice and have it administered at a supranational level, we ought to be able to deal with these extradition requests—my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) informs us that 95% of them are for nationals of other countries—simply by deporting them to their countries. We do not need an extradition arrangement. If a national of a third country is creating problems in this country or if we have evidence from another state that they would like them back to deal with one of these issues, we should be able to deport them. We do not need something administered and overseen by the ECJ with enforcement powers, via the Commission, to deal with these issues.
We have heard about the protections under the EAW. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) is no longer here, so I guess I will not be taking an intervention from him on this issue. We have read, however, about what these protections are. On pre-trial detention, the Home Secretary told us:
“Other hon. Members have expressed concerns about lengthy and avoidable pre-trial detention. I will amend our Extradition Act 2003 to ensure that people in the UK can be extradited under the European arrest warrant only when the requesting state has already made a decision to charge and a decision to try”.
That sounds good, but she then continued:
“unless that person’s presence is required in that jurisdiction for those decisions to be made.”—[Official Report, 9 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 178.]
Even that protection, therefore, is inoperable in some member states—and, I fear, some of the member states that might give rise to some of the greatest problems in this regard. Even if we have that protection, however, the whole thing is susceptible to the ECJ. The ECJ will decide what it means, not us.
Ever since, under the Single European Act, we have had majority voting on health and safety matters, and we saw employment law suddenly become a matter of health and safety, meaning that European institutions, rather than Parliament, can determine what happens in this country, I have been sceptical about the ECJ. My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), who is probably more knowledgeable about these issues than any other Member, rightly drew our attention to the Metock judgment and what that meant for Ireland and, by implication, other member states in terms of our powers—or now our absence of powers—over matters of immigration. Were we to opt back in and were we not to vote to leave the EU, we would be putting these 35 areas irrevocably under the control of the Commission and the ECJ. I simply cannot believe that that is right.
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said:
“we will negotiate for a return of powers in criminal justice. We must be sure that the measures included in the Lisbon Treaty will not bring creeping control over our criminal justice system by EU judges.”
The point, though, is that we cannot do that when something is susceptible to the final judgment of the ECJ. The Prime Minister also said:
“our legal system is here to protect our citizens, and that protection should be given up only if we can really trust the legal systems of other states.”—[Official Report, 25 March 2003; Vol. 402, c. 196.]
My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South said that the arrest warrants built such trust, but I think the opposite is often the case. There are several member states in whose criminal justice systems I and many colleagues do not have that trust, and without it we should not be putting the rights and liberties of British citizens in their hands.
In his first full year in the House, the Prime Minister, talking about the EAW, said that
“the Home Secretary would have to say, ‘I am sorry. You may spend time rotting in a Greek or Spanish jail. Weeks may pass before you are even charged with an offence that is not a crime in this country. But there is nothing I can do about it.’”—[Official Report, 9 December 2002; Vol. 396, c. 109.]
Thankfully, there is now something he can do about it. I was reading a comment by the noble Lord Hannay, who serves on the House of Lords EU Select Committee, which people quote with great authority. He said that the planned opt-outs were
“defunct, dross or things that have no impact”,
whereas staying in the arrest warrant was a “huge prize”. That was why I was initially so concerned about the motion: it referenced both Command Paper 8671 and those 35 measures, including the EAW, and would have given the imprimatur of this House to opting back into the EAW. I am delighted that that is no longer the case. I pay great tribute to my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary, who is in his place, and the Government as a whole for accepting the amendment tabled by the three aforementioned Select Committee Chairs. In particular, I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), because he has placed principle before party.
The sequencing is important. Tonight, we have a clean motion to exercise the block opt-out. Anything further will be for the future; there might be a second blip and consideration of what we want to opt back into. The Government have set out, in a document, a preliminary view, but it is no more than that. The House has not taken note of it, let alone approved it.
A week ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) came into the Home Affairs Select Committee beaming after the Home Secretary’s statement to the House, but earlier he referred merely to his “hope” that we might opt back into the EAW.
Mr Cash
Does my hon. Friend accept that the driving force that lay behind the necessity for the Chairmen of the three Select Committees, including the European Scrutiny Committee, to ensure that this took place, was driven by the very thing he and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) were talking about earlier? Those of us who believe in the parliamentary sovereignty of this place know that this is more about the United Kingdom than it is about Europe. We have to stick to the fourth Bloomberg principle, which is that national Parliaments are the root of our democracy.
Mark Reckless
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The constitutional principles to which he draws attention are far more important than any temporary coalition deal that may or may not have been stitched up. If it was stitched up, it has become unstitched. Instead of a motion to have a block opt-out tied to a motion on what we would opt back into, including the European arrest warrant, we now have one decision followed by another. I trust that the decision we have now on the block opt-out will be the same as the decision on an alternative vote referendum. I hope we will have learnt our lessons and that any decision on what, if anything, is in the national interest to opt back into is delayed, rather as our Liberal Democrat colleagues reconsidered what had been stated with respect to boundary changes.
I look forward to the debates in this House, the reports of the Select Committees, the legal issues, or the potential for judicial review that we discussed, and, I hope, consideration by the Prime Minister of where we have come to. Today we have an opinion poll that shows my party level with the Labour party. We have a party that is strongly united behind the Prime Minister’s agenda, as set out in his Bloomberg speech. With this block opt-out, we can keep that as long as we do not opt in to what I consider to be the most damaging to and undermining of the traditional liberties of the people of this country. I took great heart from what my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton said: he said that he was going to consider carefully the merits of an opt-in to the European arrest warrant, and that he has strict and high hurdles for what assurances would be required even to consider that that could be in the national interest. I know that his views will be persuasive to many colleagues. Instead of making the decision today, we should decide just to opt out on a block basis and leave for some time after tomorrow—perhaps many months from now—the decision on what, if anything, to opt back into. I congratulate the Government on their revised approach.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
It is good news that the Government, in their wisdom, have acceded to amendment (b), tabled by the Liaison Committee Chairman, to water down the initial proposal. It is none the less worth reviewing the process of parliamentary scrutiny that this has gone through, because what we had thrown at us last Tuesday was deeply unsatisfactory. I would like to record that dissatisfaction, even though the movements that have been made since are admirable.
It is worth bearing in mind that on 14 December 2012, the Home Secretary and the Lord High Chancellor wrote to the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee to say:
“We would hope to be in a position to provide you with the first of the Explanatory Memoranda by early January and to have provided all necessary Explanatory Memoranda by the middle of February. We hope that this will be acceptable to you.”
There were delays, time goes by, and the Whitehall machine did not work with that efficient Rolls-Royce nature that it has been noted for historically. On 11 February 2013, the Home Secretary and the Lord High Chancellor wrote once again—these were becoming regular billets-doux between the Lord High Chancellor, the Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash)—and on this occasion they said:
“Each of these Explanatory Memoranda will be made available to Parliament shortly, to help inform consideration.”
Now, I do not know what view right hon. and hon. Members would take of the word “shortly”. Time is an elastic concept, but it seems to me that “shortly” does not stretch from 11 February 2013 through to last Tuesday. At that point, the elastic had long since snapped. It was broken, and there was a feeling that the urgency that had once been promised had dissipated.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The education at Stonyhurst of my hon. Friend is exquisitely fine. His quotations are better than mine, and I pay tribute to his ability to quote such fine words.
The elastic last Tuesday was firmly broken. Instead of having proper time for parliamentary scrutiny, and instead of having time when the Select Committees could do their work thoroughly and consider this matter of the greatest importance, we were told that what was going to happen was a vote today to agree to the Government’s position, with very little opportunity for any scrutiny at all. It is therefore hugely to be welcomed that the Government decided that that was not the right way to proceed, and that the views of Parliament, representing our constituents, were important in this matter to be able to see what was happening, to deliberate, to report, to take evidence and to decide what, if anything, it might be in the national interest to opt back into. While I am grateful that the opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny has improved, it was really quite extraordinary that last Tuesday we were in such a situation as to have been denied parliamentary scrutiny almost altogether. There is some praise now, but it came from a position of dispraise before.
We have heard the most wonderful, glorious line repeated by a number of speakers that this is a most noble repatriation of powers: that never before in the history of the European Union have powers been repatriated to a nation state and that previously it has been a one-way street. The power has gone out: it has left the United Kingdom and gone to our friends in Brussels, but on this occasion there was a noble fight. Horatius was on the bridge standing there fending off the massed hoards coming from Europe to impose their will on brave little Blighty, and happily 98 powers have been restored to this great country. And the ones that are being given back? Well, they have them anyway, so why are we worrying about that at all? [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Stone is saying that I am leading up to a quotation. No, I am not; I am leading up to the detail.
This may be rather boring, and one might think speeches in this House unaccustomed to delving into such matters as detail. I hope that under, I think, Standing Order No. 42, this will be neither repetitious nor tedious—well, it may be tedious, but it will not be repetitious, because nobody else has mentioned the detail—but I should like to go through some of the items that we are opting out off, the repatriation of powers that we are getting.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am very sympathetic to the view that my hon. Friend is expressing. The view of the Government is otherwise, but when the 2011 Act was being debated it was made clear that these matters can be settled by judicial review. If there is a continuing uncertainty, that is a sensible route to go down once we know what issues will be opted into.
Mr Cash
The very thought of a judicial review in the name of Rees-Mogg invokes memories of the greatest of all the cases on the Maastricht treaty, in which my hon. Friend’s own dear late father was the plaintiff. Perhaps my hon. Friend would be good enough to take up the cudgels in his own right.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding me of the activities of my late noble kinsman, who did indeed bring an action on the Maastricht treaty, supported by the late kinsman of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), who was the backer of that great venture. It may be that we can fight on where our fathers once fought, with the continuing help of my hon. Friend, the seemingly immortal hon. Member for Stone.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I thought the hon. Gentleman was going to refer to the geese that saved Rome and divert us with a bit of cackling of geese, but it was not that in the end.
Let me return to the exciting detail of where we are restoring powers. The first example that I shall regale you with, Madam Deputy Speaker, is the Council act of 3 December 1998, laying down the staff regulations applicable to Europol employees. I think that staff regulations are very important and noble, but I hardly see that as a fine repatriation of powers. There are lots of other examples—I will not go through them all, because time is short and there are far too many.
However, there are eight decisions relating to classified information. If hon. Members are willing to return to the analysis by the Government, they will see that of those eight, all of which are being opted out of, the Government say:
“To our knowledge only small quantities of classified information are currently shared with third countries under these agreements. If the UK decided not to participate in the agreement, we would continue to be able to exchange UK classified data directly with any third country.”
Therefore, eight of the 98 powers that we are repatriating are so trivial that we have not used them and, crucially, the point has been made that we could do that by agreement with the third countries individually and get exactly the same benefits. Indeed, one of the classified information-sharing deals refers to Croatia before it was a member of the European Union, so that one falls automatically, even if it were useful. I am therefore agreeing, to my horror—and probably equally to her horror—with the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary, who made the point about the triviality of some of these matters. They are really not very important.
The Schengen measures that we are pulling out of relate to the accession of member states to Schengen, which is hardly still relevant. Those measures include—oh, this is glorious—a council decision made on 18 September 2008 on the test of the second-generation Schengen information system, to which we are no longer committed. That is a serious repatriation of power!
I was thinking of the ancient types, making a comparison to Horatius on the bridge, but it is not Horatius; it is more like Sisyphus, perhaps in both senses of the man. The rock was pushed up to the top of the hill, and he tried to get it over the top, but straight it rolled back down again. To use a cricketing metaphor—which is appropriate in the middle of an Ashes test series—the degree of spin required to say that we are seeing the repatriation of power reminds me only of that famous ball bowled by Shane Warne, when he was first visiting England, when he removed Mike Gatting. It spun so much, so far that it went down in history as one of the great balls in cricket. Even Tich Freeman at his peak, when he got 305 wickets in a season, did not bowl so much spin as this Government are bowling. Even Jim Laker in 1956 was not spinning away so much when he got 19 wickets in Manchester against the Australians, for there is no real repatriation of powers.
Unfortunately, there are two sides of most ledgers. When we look at the powers that it is intended to opt back into, we see rather the reverse. To go into more of this tedious detail, which I know hon. Members find somewhat soporific, the first area—the biggest and most important—is the arrest warrant. We have heard from the Home Secretary about how the arrest warrant will be placed under strict controls. She even mentioned that there will be some limits on the joint recognition of offences, but that will not be decided by our courts or our Parliament. Instead, it will be decided by a foreign court, by foreign judges, and it will be subject to the agreement that has already been made in Brussels.
Mr Cash
My hon. Friend, who is almost always right on matters of substance, might reflect on the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, the words “judicial authority” in this context were severely criticised by the European Scrutiny Committee, and there is no guarantee that a court or a judge would be involved.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
That is an important point, and we should all learn off by heart the 2001 report by the European Scrutiny Committee, I seem to remember it was—
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Where I part company with the Government is in believing that it would not be better to make these adjustments in the current structure, rather than under the new structure, and to negotiate to maintain the current structure with our European partners, because as it currently stands, if we change the law, that is the law of the land. Once we have opted in, it is not: the law of the land is subject to the European Court of Justice.
Then there is the issue of double criminality. The European Commission’s website, in explaining how the arrest warrant works, says quite clearly:
“If they are punishable in the issuing Member State by a custodial sentence of at least three years, the following offences”—
which are then listed—
“may give rise to surrender without verification of the double criminality of the act”.
Therefore, although we may pass a law saying that double criminality is a requirement before we extradite somebody, the rule of Brussels is not so. Now, in the situation we are currently in, our law is superior, but then their law will be superior.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
This is always a complex area. I have never thought that any Briton could ever suffer from xenophobia, because no Briton has ever been frightened of any foreigner.
I should like to continue a little on the detail and look at item No. 48, which is the Council framework decision on the European Union orders freezing property or evidence. Therefore, we are potentially going to give to the European Court and the European Commission rights to freeze the property of British subjects. Item No. 59 deals with the mutual recognition of financial penalties. “Mutual recognition” is the most dangerous part of the agreement on justice and home affairs.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I do not think that is quite it, because I think the process is subject to a Title V opt-out. Therefore, if any of those issues are recast, we then have to decide whether to opt into the recast decision, but the decision we have opted into will be a permanent part of the acquis communautaire and we will therefore be bound by it, even if it is recast.
There are a couple of other measures that are being maintained that it is important to mention, because the surrender of powers is so significant. They include the mutual recognition of confiscation orders, which is similar to the property issue. Then there are measures dealing with the enhancing of procedural rights of persons and fostering the application of the principle of mutual recognition to decisions rendered in the absence of the person concerned at the trial. Therefore, we are going to give mutual recognition to trials that are held without the person accused being present, which I have always thought a potentially highly unjust way of proceeding.
We should be deeply concerned about the proposals to opt back in, because of the lack of sovereignty we will then have over those essential measures. In these important areas—mutual recognition, the arrest warrant, trials without the person present and many others—we are handing over to the European Court the ability to decide whether our procedures are good enough or whether they have to be changed to meet European requirements.
Mr Cash
I know my hon. Friend has heard this before, but does he accept that, for all the examples that could be given to demonstrate that the European arrest warrant is sometimes convenient and suits the case of those in favour of it, there are many examples that demonstrate absolutely massive deprivations of justice for those people caught up in the EAW who are most unfairly treated by it?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
That is certainly the case, but I have sympathy with the Government wanting to have an arrest warrant that works. I think that is a rational and sensible view for the Government to take, but I think that they should go about it in a different way.
The European Union took legal personality at Lisbon. The EU makes deals as the EU with the United States, Korea and Singapore in the free trade area, but it has not yet been tested whether the EU can use its legal personality to make deals with member states of the EU—but that does not mean that it cannot be tried. It would be a sensible thing to do by treaty obligation not within the European treaties, but by separate treaty obligation.
It seems to me that the Government are taking the path of least resistance, which requires a surrender of sovereignty. That surrender of sovereignty is clearly in contradiction of the coalition agreement, which says that there will be no further surrender of powers to the EU. It seems to me, too, that the status quo is the opt-out and not the opt back in. Why? Because the status quo is that these issues are not justiciable in the European Court of Justice, and justice—and the fount of justice—is the essence of sovereignty. Why is Her Majesty sovereign? She is sovereign because she is the fount of justice in this country. When we hand justice over, so we hand sovereignty over—and so the move in sovereignty by making things justiciable in front of the European Court is a major change and different in kind from the opting out, which retains the powers in the United Kingdom.
I am hugely encouraged that the Government have listened so much and have been willing to move so much in a correct way to have proper parliamentary oversight. I am confident that at least the Conservatives in this Government have the wisdom and the ability to negotiate what is in the best interests of the United Kingdom and not to go down the path of least resistance. We need to maintain sovereignty here. We need to have agreements that represent our interests but are not subject to the power of a foreign court that is unaccountable to our electorate.
Chris Bryant
The great thing about the hon. Gentleman is that he sometimes achieves that to which he does not even aspire—and on this occasion he did precisely that.
Let me start with what we all agree about. International criminals co-operate; they commit crimes in many different countries; they travel and they can commit crimes in one country from another country; and they try to get away with it. Crime does not stop at the channel, which is why co-operation on justice and home affairs across the European Union is a vital part of ensuring national security in the modern era. It is why I think Members of all parties have long supported the position of leadership that the British Government have taken in trying to improve these standards across the whole EU.
We also agree, I hope, that it makes sense to review that co-operation. That is precisely why Labour secured an opt-out—the one we are talking about using at the moment—in the first place. It is a Labour opt-out available to a coalition Government. I therefore suggest that the question before us now is really fairly simple. Is this motion right—the original Government motion, notwithstanding the intervention that the Justice Secretary was forced to make earlier when he suggested that he might accept an amendment that has not even been moved—is it necessary, and is it necessary now? Let me start with the “necessary now” question.
I suggest to hon. Members that we have heard no argument to say why the Government want this vote today. They signalled months ago that they were provisionally minded to opt out—fair enough—but their decision to seek to opt in to any measures, let alone the measures listed in the Command Paper, was announced less than a week ago. The Select Committees have been clamouring for more information for months, as has already been said by three of the Select Committee Chairs, begging for a list of potential opt-ins so that they could look at the matters in hand. They asked for explanatory memorandums and never received them. True, there were briefings to the media, particularly to The Daily Telegraph, but not to the Committees about how the Government saw each of these measures. The Government expected the House to endorse opting out and opting in, including the precise list of measures, without a single word of evidence from any outside body being taken by any Committee of this or the other House.
Chris Bryant
Far be it for me to suggest that the hon. Gentleman is a mendicant in these matters, but he certainly sought this many times. If that is not the definition of begging, I am not sure what is.
Then, of course, we had the bizarre event last Thursday afternoon, which was the classic kick-bollock scramble school of parliamentary drafting that this coalition has made standard practice when the Home Secretary first tabled a motion, then the Chairs of the Select Committees kicked up and tabled an amendment, but then at the very last minute the Home Secretary withdrew her motion and tabled another one, whereupon the Select Committee Chairs tabled another amendment. Now the Home Secretary has backed down on the amendment, which is her third position in a week—no Thatcher she, I would suggest, as we are certainly not going to get a “This Lady is not for turning” speech at the Tory party conference.
The end result of all that is a list cobbled together in a deal within the Government; the House given three days and no more to decide; and a motion tabled just one sitting day before the debate. Yet the Justice Secretary himself—he has been opting in and opting out of this debate; more opting out than opting in, I note—said on 19 March this year to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith):
“I can give my right hon. Friend, and indeed the House, a clear assurance that this Government will go further than any Government in ensuring that the House is involved in the decisions that are taken, and that as we reach agreement within the coalition on the way forward, we will need fully to engage Parliament, his Committee and, indeed, all the Committees with a vested interest in the matter”.—[Official Report, 19 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 782.]
[Interruption.] I hear some rumblings over there, but the honest truth is that none of the Select Committees has been impressed by the way in which the Government have conducted themselves. Indeed, to be precise, the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) said that this was a classic case of “scrutiny gone wrong”.
Let us be clear: these are complex matters that need to be addressed. The Command Paper is one of the most impenetrable set of explanatory memorandums that I have ever encountered—[Interruption.] I have read it and understood it, but I am not sure that the Justice Secretary has either read it or understood it. Some of what he says in his own explanatory memorandum is self-contradictory.
Chris Bryant
Yes, but the Lords Select Committee makes exactly the same condemnation of the Government’s process as all the House of Commons Committees and it reached the same conclusion, which I will come on to. I would argue that scrutiny is important and is not quite as simple as some Members have suggested. The process of opting back in is complex in itself, but as Commissioner Reding said earlier this year, one measure sometimes impacts on another. Whether or not the Government choose eventually to seek to opt into the precise set of measures that they listed in the Command Paper, their choice will not necessarily be deliverable.
As I have said, the Command Paper is pretty impenetrable, but it makes some pretty bold assertions. On child pornography, it states:
“If the UK were to exercise the opt-out and decide not to rejoin this measure, there would be little practical impact”.
Is that true? Can we not at least test it in Committee—or, for that matter, test the Government’s assertions on the investigation and prosecution of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes? [Interruption.] I can hear what the Home Secretary is saying. She must bear in mind that what we are discussing now is not the amendment that has been accepted, but her motion. That is all that is on the table at the moment.
Should we not also be able to test the Command Paper’s assertion on the European arrest warrant? I should have thought that the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and many others would want to do that. According to the paper,
“If the UK were to decide not to participate in this measure, we believe the UK would revert to the ECE”
—that is, the European convention on extradition. It continues that
“work would need to be taken bilaterally, but there is no guarantee this would be possible where Constitutional barriers exist.”
As the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) pointed out, an important process of negotiation must be undertaken with the devolved Administrations in Northern Ireland in particular—because of the relationship with the Republic of Ireland—and in Scotland to ensure that there are no unintended consequences.
Let me now turn to whether the motion is necessary. It is absolutely clear that it is not necessary for discussions to take place with the Commission and with other member states. Indeed, the Government told the Commission in no uncertain terms that even if a motion in this House or in another place were voted down, they would reserve to themselves the right to proceed with the process of opting out. It is true that protocol 36 —which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Stone —sets out a formal process, but we all know that the process that will actually be engaged in will be complex and political, and that there will be plenty of “behind doors” conversations.
What concerns me is that without indications about the opt-ins and without knowing whether we will be able to secure them at the same time as the opt-outs, we cannot genuinely weigh the risk of opting out against what we stand to gain. That is why we tabled our amendment, on which we still intend to divide the House. The amendment does something very simple: it insists that we should have guarantees of what we can opt into before choosing formally to opt out.
The hon. Member for Stone said earlier that our idea was nonsensical, but where did we get it? It comes directly from the Command Paper, page 5 of which states that
“there is nothing preventing the Commission giving an immediate response, nor to agreement being reached informally ahead of the UK’s formal application.“
In other words, the motion is completely unnecessary, and potentially dangerous.
Chris Bryant
It always pains me to disagree with a man whom I love so much, but as the hon. Gentleman refused to return my phone calls at the end of last week, I must disagree with him on this one occasion. I think that there are genuine risks. This is what was said by the House of Lords Committee to which the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) referred:
“On the basis of the evidence we have received we do not consider that the Government have made a convincing case for exercising the opt-out…Opting out of the police and criminal justice measures would have significant adverse negative repercussions for the internal security of the United Kingdom and the administration of criminal justice in the United Kingdom.”
That is a high hurdle for us to overcome if we are to move forward.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) talks a good talk, but this evening, as usual, it was mostly nonsense. I have not changed my views in the slightest. Indeed, today’s debate is about not handing powers to the European Court of Justice in particular, and about acting in the United Kingdom’s national interest.
Let us consider the background to the debate. Five years ago, the Labour party let this country down. It let us down in the debates about the Lisbon treaty, a treaty that I personally think was thoroughly bad for this country. It promised us a referendum, and then whipped its members through the Lobbies to vote against one. It promised us that the charter of fundamental rights would have no legal force, and then voted to give it legal force. Members will recall the unedifying episode in which the former Prime Minister was so committed to the Lisbon treaty that he had signed that he would not even turn up for the official event to mark its signing, and was smuggled in a few hours later under cover of darkness to sign when no one was looking. That is the truth of the Labour party’s approach to this whole issue.
I am clear about the fact that the Lisbon treaty paves the way for the creation of a European justice system. That system is now taking shape. A raft of new measures is emerging from Brussels, and the recent addition of a new justice scorecard creates a platform that will enable more to follow soon.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) and many others were right to say that the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice was a key element. The treaty extends the Court’s jurisdiction to justice and home affairs measures. In December 2014, the Court will take over the supervision of more than 130 measures agreed before the Lisbon treaty, which affect the administration of justice and the fight against crime in this country. Labour Members knew that, which is why they kicked the can down the road. It is why they put off the decision, and why they negotiated the opt-out from those 130-odd measures at some point in the future. I suppose that we should give them some credit at least for creating circumstances in which this Government have the option to decide what to do on behalf of the country, and this Parliament has the option to decide. That decision now resides on this side of the House, and we do not lack the determination or the will to do the right thing for the British people.
I have still not worked out what Labour Members think. They seemed both to oppose and support the opt-out. [Interruption.] Members say that I was not here, but where is the shadow Justice Secretary? The Opposition have had to put up a junior shadow Minister.
Tonight, we are seeking Parliament’s backing for the exercise of the get-out clause that the last Government put in place. The Lisbon treaty allows the UK two freedoms. The first is to opt in or out of any new measures the Commission brings forward, so we now only participate in new measures that are in the national interest. The second is to opt out of the policing and criminal justice measures in existence before the Lisbon treaty. Tonight’s vote is about whether this country takes up that second opt-out—nothing more, nothing less. If we do nothing, in December 2014 the ECJ will take over the ultimate supervision of every one of those more than 130 measures which affect the administration of justice and the fight against crime in this country.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) set out some of the issues that transition would bring. I do not think that transfer should happen and that we should see all those 130-plus measures simply pass to the ECJ. Again, Labour could not decide at the time what it wanted to do, and it cannot decide again tonight. The lesson is that the Labour party was defeated at the last election because it was no longer fit for government, and it is now so indecisive and so uncertain that, frankly, it is barely fit to be in opposition.
So let me restate clearly to it what tonight’s vote is all about. This vote starts a process. The Government have reached a settled view that we do not want to participate in all the 130-plus measures. We do not want to be part of a European justice system, but we do want to be part of the fight against international crime. We do not want courts across Europe to be told by Brussels the minimum standards that should apply to the sentences they impose. We do not want matters that should be resolved by member states to be legislated for at a European level. We want to bring powers in those areas back to the UK.
We are clear that we must exercise this opt-out or face being subject to all those measures anyway. We have decided we do not want to follow a path that leads to a European justice system. Tonight’s vote, and the vote due to take place in the House of Lords next week, will, I hope, back our judgment and exercise that opt-out.
What happens then? The Government have taken a decision in principle that it will be in the interests of the UK to join a number of measures that involve international co-operation in fighting serious and organised crime. These measures set in place the mechanisms for intelligence- sharing between enforcement agencies in fighting that battle.
Mr Cash
On whether the Government will continue to seek to rejoin, would the Secretary of State take the view that it was not appropriate to do so if the evidence taken in the scrutiny process by the three Committees led to the conclusion that that was not in the interests of the United Kingdom?
Chris Grayling
What I can say to my hon. Friend is that, as he and the other Select Committee Chairmen would expect, we will look very carefully at the conclusions they draw and we will bring these matters back to the House for a further vote. He would expect nothing less than that.
There are measures, such as the prisoner transfer agreement, that are very much in the interests of this country. I personally want to see Hungarian prisoners back in Hungarian jails as quickly as possible, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) rightly said, we should have mechanisms to ensure our police forces can work together and share information when they need to.