William Cash
Main Page: William Cash (Conservative - Stone)Department Debates - View all William Cash's debates with the Home Office
(10 years ago)
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Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. We do not want people to be stuck in British prisons when they should be facing trial and justice abroad. It would not be fair on victims of crime if we denied them justice because we did not have the procedures in place to ensure that people faced the courts. We do not want British families to be left without justice. We do not want the UK to be a safe haven for dangerous criminals.
It was right that the arrest warrant should have been reformed. We have supported the reforms that have been passed by this Government and have backed further reforms in Europe. The European Commission has concluded that
“it is essential that all Member States apply a proportionality test, including those jurisdictions where prosecution is mandatory.”
The Polish Parliament has taken through legislation that follows those principles.
Crime does not stop at the channel. That is why it is right that we should have the chance to show our support, right across the House, for the measures today.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Will the right hon. Lady concede that the European Union is not a sufficient basis on which to make such judgments? What about countries such as Turkey, Canada, Australia and the United States? What is so special about the European Union that the arrest warrant should apply specifically to it, rather than to the rest of the world?
Yvette Cooper
The point is that the European Union provides us with opportunities to be able better to fight crime and get justice for British citizens and citizens right across Europe. It is good that we can ensure that our police forces can co-operate more effectively with other police forces across Europe, whether they are dealing with trafficking, drug smuggling or child protection. There are so many crimes that cross borders and so many criminals who cross borders that we think it is a good thing to be part of Europe and to have the opportunity to work more closely with other European countries to deliver that.
Mrs May
I will give way to my hon. Friend in a moment. We were very clear that the only measures that needed legislative motions in this House were those in the regulations. We would be bound by the vote on those regulations as a vote on all the other measures in the package of 35. As I have said, this is the sixth debate we have had on this matter.
Sir William Cash
As my right hon. Friend knows, I accused her and the Government last week of chicanery, which, put another way, means relying on legal quibbles to try to achieve an objective. The fact is—I am sure she will accept it—that these issues involve the application of the European charter of fundamental rights. In that context, is she now going to tell us that the charter of fundamental rights does apply to the United Kingdom?
Mrs May
I am tempted to say to my hon. Friend that I suspect he knows more about legal quibbles, and has more experience of them, than I do. I have to say to him that the view the Government take on the charter of fundamental rights is the same view. We are consistent in that view: we consider it to be declaratory only and we do not consider that it applies to the United Kingdom. I know he has a different view on this, but that is the consistent view the Government have taken on this matter.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I thank the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), for giving the House this opportunity to discuss the European arrest warrant. I know that others claim we discussed it last week, but frankly the proceedings then were totally shambolic. Bearing in mind the fact that the Home Affairs Committee published its report on this matter on 29 October last year, in which it called on the Government to ensure that Parliament had as much say in this process as possible, it is a huge disappointment that it is only now—12 days before 1 December, the date on which we have to opt in—that Parliament has a real opportunity to discuss these matters.
I am an admirer of the Home Secretary and of her work on the landscape of policing. When she leaves her office when Parliament ends on 30 March, she will be able to point to the real changes she has made in that area. I have to say to her, however, that this has not been the Home Office’s finest hour. We had a real opportunity last week to give Members the chance to discuss the European arrest warrant, but that was not possible because of the shenanigans surrounding the motion and the vote.
Sir William Cash
The Home Affairs Select Committee has done a splendid job, but will the right hon. Gentleman also acknowledge the fact that the Justice Committee—not to mention the European Scrutiny Committee—has played a pivotal role in ensuring that we have at least examined these matters?
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.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) and, I must say, rather refreshing, because I agreed with every word he said—it was common sense from start to finish.
Earlier this month I visited my constituent Colin Dines, a retired recorder and a man of impeccable character. He was issued a European arrest warrant in 2010 after being accused of a tendentious, tenuous involvement in a telecoms fraud in Italy. He has never been interviewed by the Italian authorities, which would at least have given him a chance to clear his name, and he has never been given the opportunity to present evidence showing his innocence. The key Italian suspects were all acquitted a long time ago.
Despite the incompetence of the Italians and the manifest innocence of my constituent, he has languished under the threat of prison for four and a half years. The case limps on with no resolution in sight, with Colin stuck in legal limbo. It has cost his family an enormous sum of money. Colin suffered a stroke just days before he was due to be surrendered to face either an Italian jail or possibly house arrest, and that was the only reason why the warrant was temporarily suspended.
That case brings shame on British justice, but it is not an isolated case—they are all too frequent. Do not take the word of a politician on that; listen to this country’s most senior criminal judge, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas. He has stated publicly that the problems are systemic because fast-track European arrest warrant extradition assumes common standards of justice across Europe. We all know that is a sham, whether it is the Greek or Italian systems, let alone the post-Soviet systems in place in central and eastern Europe.
We all agree in this House that EU extradition is vital to fight crime, so a rather false choice is being put up—the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton summed that up rather well. The truth is that what we object to is the scattergun approach under the European arrest warrant, which devastates the lives of too many innocent people. Let us remember what this House was set up to do: defend innocent people from bullying by arbitrary rulers. If we believe in British justice, we cannot allow that to continue—not for the price of returning a few criminals, or even many criminals. I would like to hear from all those who have been making that very utilitarian argument how many innocent people should be sacrificed for the return of 10 or 20 criminals, because that is the false choice that they are putting up.
Sir William Cash
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that, basically, the reason the Government are giving in to these proposals is that they have an inclination towards, if not an obsession with, making sure that we stay within the framework of European law as it is prescribed rather than looking at the fundamental changes that are needed?
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Of course we want law and order and security—that goes without saying. The question that we are faced with at last, despite the shambles of last week, is whether we are effectively bending the knee to European dogma, the charter of fundamental rights and the European Court of Justice.
The reason I shall vote against the motion is simple: I put the issue of miscarriages of justice ahead of the other issues that have been addressed. I ask the Government the following questions. What about fair trials? What about political and judicial corruption in some European countries? What about habeas corpus? What would hon. Members think if they or their families were subjected to the miscarriages of justice that we have heard about today? I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) for his tenacity and to my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) and the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) for what they have said.
As I said earlier, what is so special about the EU in respect of these questions, when Turkey may well become a hotbed of terrorism? What about the rest of the world?
This issue smacks to me of the case of Liversidge v. Anderson in the 1940s, which related to emergency regulation 18B. It became clear that what was really at stake was the question of the state versus the individual. Eventually, after four years of agonising, the courts accepted that there had been a massive miscarriage of justice. I believe that such cases will become increasingly common when we accept the irreversible—other than through the repeal or amendment of the European Communities Act 1972—commitment to these procedures.
If we were confronted with a Bill containing these measures, it would go through all the stages of consideration and could be amended. We are denied that because the measures are contained in European regulations. We are conceding sovereignty over a significant area of criminal law to European institutions. The key role of interpretation will pass from the UK Supreme Court to the European Court of Justice. The Spanish discovered recently in the Melloni case that the European arrest warrant can undermine the human rights protections in their own constitution.
I raised the question of the EU charter of fundamental rights with the Home Secretary. I remind her that the matter has already been adjudicated on by the courts. It is implemented under section 3 of the 1972 Act. That section must be amended to adjust that imposition on the UK, its Parliament and its courts.
There is the question of this being a pan-European system. Law and order and public safety have been the common themes put forward by the Government, as though they should override all other considerations, such as the sovereignty of Parliament and the protection of the rights and civil liberties of the individual. Under the enactments that we have made on behalf of the voters who send us here, we do not send our Members of Parliament to Brussels.
The EAW is a mutual recognition measure. It relies on a parity of standards of justice that does not exist universally. The lack of that parity of standards would become even more pronounced if the EU expanded to include countries such as Albania. The EU itself reported on the unacceptable levels of corruption in the Albanian justice system as part of its pre-candidature due diligence.
The changes that were made to the European arrest warrant in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 have yet to be proven. We do not know what would happen in cases such as those of Turner, Symeou, Dark and Mann, and the case of Ashya King came after the reforms. That was the case I referred to the other day, in which a poor child suffering from a brain tumour was separated from its parents, who were put in handcuffs under this outrageous miscarriage of justice.
Mike Thornton (Eastleigh) (LD)
I have a great deal of respect for the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee, but surely the point about the Ashya King arrest warrant is that it was issued by the British authorities. If my hon. Friend is going to complain about the issuing of an arrest warrant by a British authority, he has to look at the whole British justice system. That mistake surely had little to do with the European arrest warrant and was due to the British authorities.
Sir William Cash
I also respect my hon. Friend, who sits on the European Scrutiny Committee, but my point is simple: the British authorities, in line with a continuing stream of human rights consciousness such as the Human Rights Act, the charter and the rest of it, were insufficiently vigilant. The case should have been rejected. That is the problem—the pervasive atmosphere of compliance with those things, and the European arrest warrant is part of that attitude.
I will go further and say that in their handling of this process, the Government have completely failed to honour their repeated undertakings that they would enable Parliament to vote on the entire package of measures that they propose to rejoin. So much has been said so well by so many Members, but I wish finally to say this. Rejoining the measures in question without proper and explicit parliamentary consent would be lawful, just as it would be possible to go to war, for instance, without explicit parliamentary consent. However, the Government should reflect on the fact that we are standing up for the individual who is affected and victimised by this miscarriage of justice. The vote is going to go against us today, we know that, but in taking this course of action the Government will have exercised their prerogative Executive powers by merely sending a letter. As I said to the Home Secretary last week, that undermines the democratic legitimacy of their decision.
Sir William Cash
The hon. Gentleman may know that I was in a debate the other day on, I think, Radio 5 Live. One of the people representing the police on these matters said that the European arrest warrant would “save us the bother” of having to go through an extended extradition procedure. Those were the words he used—it would “save us the bother”. That is what worries me.
Geraint Davies
My understanding is that the statistics show that extradition now takes an average of 49 days, but it took a year before we were in the European arrest warrant system. The hon. Gentleman has to bear in mind the fact that each criminal would spend an extra 45 weeks in Britain without that system. There would be no transfer of information, so we would be a safe haven for criminals and have more and more foreign criminals. We are already at risk, and that in turn would put British people at greater risk. These enormous risks to life and limb should not be tolerated because of people’s particular political angst over Europe, and particularly those who—I do not include the hon. Gentleman in this—are driven by fear, prejudice and concern about UKIP breathing down their political necks. We should put the safety of people in Britain first.
My right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary has already gone through the farcical pantomime that we experienced last Monday when the Home Secretary—who has now endorsed today’s motion, which is similar to that in the Lords—would not allow a wider debate. I know that the hon. Member for Stone would ideally like to have gone through all 35 measures, but we should at least have had a debate in the round. Only the generosity of Mr Speaker, who pointed out that we were considering specifically 11 measures and not 35, although he would allow discussion of the European arrest warrant, would have enabled us to talk about it had the debate gone ahead.
It is extremely important to talk about the European arrest warrant and all the other measures. Somebody might own a house in the UK and be charged in Spain, and we might want their assets to be confiscated here; or we might want a list of convictions to be passed on so that sentences can be carried out properly in other countries in the light of previous convictions. We might want a supervision order so that UK citizens can be bailed in the UK rather than having to stay abroad, or a prisoner transfer so that people can serve custody at home. All those things are good for Britain. People from UKIP might not think that such measures are good for Britain, but they protect British people by enabling them to serve their custody in Britain, and ensuring that our jails are not clogged up with foreign criminals.
I am concerned about some of the politics of this, and that the fear and cowardice of the Home Secretary in not confronting the House of Commons with the 35 measures directly was born out of fear of UKIP. We basically have a party born of the austerity created by the Conservatives, which then blames immigration for the economic poverty inflicted on people by the Tories. The Government give UKIP credibility by saying that we will have a referendum, making out that Britain could survive outside Europe, and then they say, “Oh, we’ll reform it first”, which implies that Europe as it stands is not worth being part of. The Government are feeding the monster of UKIP and it will be the tiger that devours them.
Mr Hanson
I have only a few moments to speak so, if I may, I would like to make some progress.
Getting to this point has involved a long and tortuous procedure, as the Home Secretary recognised. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who is no longer in the Chamber, said that his Committee published a report on the matter on 29 October 2013, and we are now only 12 days away from 1 December 2014. The matter has been debated by the Justice Committee and the European Scrutiny Committee, under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash).
The process by which we have got where we are today has been a shambles. I was pleased that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) reminded us of his contribution to last week’s debate of claiming to move “That the Question, That be Question be not now put, be now put,” which is second in parliamentary history only to when I wore a top hat on the Opposition Back Benches to make a point of order during a Division some 20 years ago.
Hon. Members have set out several reasons why we should not sign up to the European arrest warrant and the other measures. They have said that doing so represents a transfer of power and that that subjugates UK law. They have said that UK standards of justice will not be met, that the warrant has the word “European” in its name, and that extradition should be dealt with in individual treaties. We also heard the serious point that innocent people may face an unfair procedure in a foreign court, which was cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) and the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), who has a great deal of experience of these matters, as well as the hon. Members for Stone, for Aldridge-Brownhills (Sir Richard Shepherd) and for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris). The hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell), who is also no longer in the Chamber, pledged UKIP’s 100% support for opposing the motion—it was extremely satisfactory that he agreed with himself.
Such strong points demonstrate that there are genuine issues, which I do not decry. It is important that we consider them, but I disagree with the points made. I take the view of my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), as hon. Members would expect, but I also respect the views of my hon. Friends the Members for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) and for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) and the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), who all pointed out that the measure is about bringing criminals to justice.
I confess that I do not often agree with the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis), but he made the valuable point that changes have been made. I can let him into a secret: we supported those changes during their passage through Parliament and we did so because we know, like the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) and others, that the measure means that foreign national criminals will be deported back to their home countries to face justice, that criminals will face trial here, and that there will be justice for victims against whom heinous crimes have been committed. I welcomed the contribution of the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), who put his latent Euroscepticism to one side for a moment to recognise that the issue is about crime, not Europe, and about bringing criminals to justice to ensure that they spend time in prison, not on sun loungers in Spain.