Ukraine
Debate between William Cash and Jonathan Djanogly
Mr Djanogly
My right hon. Friend makes a great intervention. I absolutely agree that we should be doing everything we can to assist the Poles to get those planes to our friends in Ukraine.
If Russia is not prepared to live by our western rules and actually uses them against us, then we must remove it from our economic system. It has become clear that the west acting collectively has the ability to send Russia back to the economic dark ages and a barter society, if we have the political will to do that. Recent sanctions rounds and implicit western unity in this regard, not least the banning of Russian banks from the SWIFT system, have been heartening and often indeed led by our Government.
The further list of sanctions today, taking numbers, as the Minister said, to over 1,000 individuals, is welcome and impressive. Having said that, I do feel that if we had cracked down on Russian intransigence after its invasion of Georgia—which, by the way, Russia still partly occupies—we would have stopped much later pain in the west.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
As my hon. Friend knows, I had the honour of meeting the chairman of the Committee on European Integration of the Parliament of Georgia in Paris at the conference a few days ago. Does he recall me saying that she said that Georgia has been warning about this for nearly 20 years now?
Mr Djanogly
It has indeed, as I can say from a lot of first-hand evidence.
Sanctions against individuals will play an important role here. I saw how the Government were really getting it when they extended the Aeroflot sanctions to private jets. My next suggestion, as I have told the Minister before, would be to ban Russian yachts and planes from getting insurance. Sanctioning leads to asset freezes, so the Government will be left holding millions of pounds-worth of houses, boats and other assets, but what happens next? Will these assets be sequestrated and used for the benefit of Ukraine’s rebuilding, or will they be held to be returned to oligarchs after the war? The latter option may not be so popular, but it might be legally correct if we do not legislate further on this matter.
Access to a Lawyer
Debate between William Cash and Jonathan Djanogly(13 years, 2 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Jonathan Djanogly)
I beg to move,
That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 11497/11 and Addenda 1 and 2 relating to the Draft Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the right of access to a lawyer in criminal proceedings and on the right to communicate upon arrest; and supports the Government’s recommendation not to opt into the Directive in accordance with Protocol (No. 21) on the position of the United Kingdom and Ireland in respect of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice to the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
I commend the European Scrutiny Committee for calling this debate. As set out in the coalition agreement, the Government approach criminal justice legislation case by case, with a view to maximising our country’s security, protecting Britain’s civil liberties and preserving the integrity of our criminal justice system. The Government recommend that the UK should not opt into this proposed measure at the start of negotiations, not because we do not think that minimum standards of defence rights, including access to a lawyer, and the right to communicate on arrest, including with consular authorities, are important—of course, we do—and not because we disagree in principle with the setting of common, minimum standards across the EU in respect of certain aspects of criminal proceedings. On the contrary, we see the benefit of appropriate minimum standards. For that reason, the UK opted into the first two measures on the procedural rights road map on interpretation and translation and the right to information in criminal proceedings. We are not making this recommendation because we fear that our law does not meet the minimum standards required by the European convention on human rights—it does.
The reason we do not propose to opt into this measure at the outset of negotiations is that we think that the directive as published by the Commission would have an adverse effect on our ability to investigate and prosecute offences effectively. It is important that action is taken to ensure that the standards of procedural rights across the EU are adequate. That is necessary for two reasons: first, to ensure that, as people travel through the EU, they can be confident that in the event that they are unfortunate enough to become subject to the criminal justice system of another member state, they will be dealt with fairly and in accordance with robust minimum standards; and, secondly, the EU has chosen to develop a series of mutual recognition measures designed to promote security by helping to combat crime and ensuring that suspected offenders cannot use European borders as a way to escape justice.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
The Minister has twice used the words, “at the outset of proceedings”. Being something of an old hand at this sort of thing, I wonder whether that means that he proposes to opt in later. Perhaps he will bear in mind the problem that some other member states have judicial systems that are, quite frankly, below par.
Mr Djanogly
Indeed they do have systems that are below par, which is why we are keen for the measure to proceed across the EU. We will decide at a later date whether Britain opts in, subject to the negotiations that will take place. If my hon. Friend listens to what I have to say a bit further, he will hear how we propose to look at that process.
This is a good, practical idea that has delivered some notable results, provided that it does not put suspects at risk of less-than-adequate criminal proceedings. Such instruments of mutual recognition were never intended to operate on their own. It was intended that they should be supported by a series of criminal procedural rights, enforceable at EU level, that would build on the rights already guaranteed by the ECHR and provide additional reassurance that the rights were being given practical effect in all member states. These standards will not only protect British nationals when they are arrested elsewhere in the EU but will provide greater trust and confidence among the courts of all EU states that judgments handed down, which they may be expected to recognise, have been made on the basis of sound procedural standards.
Standards of procedural rights are high in the UK. The right of access to a lawyer, both before and during police interview, has been provided in England and Wales and Northern Ireland since the mid 1980s. A similar right was provided for in Scotland last year. However, despite the fact that we see value in the Commission tabling such a measure, we have considerable concerns about the detail of the directive and the impact its drafting would have on the UK’s criminal justice systems.
The procedural rights directives are intended to draw on the jurisprudence of the ECHR and to flesh out what those rights mean in practice. Certain provisions of the Commission’s proposal, however, go far beyond the minimum standards that stem from the convention. While there is no problem in principle with going beyond the standards of the convention if there are good practical and policy reasons to do so, we do not see such reasons in this case. On the contrary, we think that there would be some quite adverse and costly impacts on the ability effectively to investigate and prosecute offenders were the Commission proposal to be adopted.
Examples of that include the fact that the directive as drafted by the Commission may require access to a lawyer to be provided in some stages in the investigatory process where currently a lawyer is not provided, such as at a police search of a property or where a person’s fingerprints are taken when they are booked into a custody suite. We do not consider it necessary or proportionate to provide a lawyer in those situations.
In addition, the directive requires that a person should always be able to meet his lawyer face to face, whereas we provide, in some minor cases, for telephone access, which detained persons often prefer as it can mean that they are held for a shorter period as it is not necessary to wait for a lawyer.