Business of the House (Today)

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

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

What a shambles! What complete chaos! The Justice Secretary is scuttling away and will not even stay for the debate this evening. My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) suggested we suspend the sitting to allow the House to come back with a more sensible business motion. We will happily suspend the House. It would allow the Justice Secretary to go for his dinner and come back again, and we could then vote later on a more sensible measure.

The Justice Secretary stood there and I heard him say that this was a vote on the whole package of 35 measures. That is in direct contradiction to your ruling and your advice to this House, Mr Speaker. We were told that the business motion today would give us a proper debate. The Whips are scuttling away to try to do some quick dealing to sort out the mess and chaos that the Home Secretary has left the House in today. This was supposed to be a proper debate on the European arrest warrant—the motion will allow no such thing.

The Home Secretary told me, in a letter I received this weekend, that

“Monday’s vote is a vote on the entire package of 35 measures …and in this case a whole day is being made available for the debate rather than the usual 90 minutes.”

The whole reason for this business motion, and the whole reason we have the suspension of Standing Orders and the extra time for the debate, is because the Home Secretary told us that this would be a debate on 35 measures, including the European arrest warrant. That is what this business motion is supposed to achieve, but it is a joke. Instead, we have a vote on 11 regulations—regulations we support and will vote for—that do not include the European arrest warrant. This is what the motion states:

“That the draft Criminal Justice and Data Protection (Protocol No. 36) Regulations 2014…be approved.”

What do the draft regulations say? Not the 35 measures the Government want to opt back into; just 11 good sensible measures, none of which is the European arrest warrant. We have today a business motion on a false premise. This is what the Committee Chairs have said:

“The motion to be considered by the House of Commons concerns a Statutory Instrument…which is only intended to complete the implementation, in UK law, of 10 of the 35 measures the Government proposes to rejoin. It has no direct relevance to the European Arrest Warrant, the most contentious of the 35 measures, or to UK participation in EU Agencies such as Europol or Eurojust.”

That is what they said at the end of last week. That is why I wrote to the Home Secretary at the end of last week to ask her to clarify the matter for the House. That is why she then wrote to me and said that this included the whole package of 35 measures.

The Prime Minister promised us a vote, and that is what the business motion should achieve. The Leader of the Opposition asked him:

“A vital tool…is the European arrest warrant. Why is the Prime Minister delaying having a vote on it?”

The Prime Minister said:

“I am not delaying having a vote on it. There will be a vote on it.”

The Leader of the Opposition offered our help. He said:

“We will give him the time for a vote on the European arrest warrant, and we will help him to get it through.”

The Prime Minister said again,

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

So where is it? Instead, the Home Secretary forgot to put it in the motion.

Why does the Home Secretary want to play into the hands of those who might challenge the European arrest warrant in the courts by not having a straightforward vote? Why not just put the three words “European arrest warrant” on the Order Paper and allow us a vote? Yes, some Back Benchers would vote against it, but Labour would vote for it and support the Home Secretary because we think it is the right thing to do. Why not let Parliament have the vote it was promised?

We have just had three quarters of an hour of the Chancellor trying his smoke and mirrors trick, but the Home Secretary has gone one step further with a disappearing magic trick! One minute the European arrest warrant is there, the next minute it is gone. One minute you see it, the next it disappears. It’s her Paul Daniels act! Unfortunately, she has sent the Justice Secretary to be her glamorous assistant Debbie McGee and to come and present it to the House! She thinks they’ll like it—not a lot, but she thinks they’ll like it! [Laughter.] The business motion is a complete joke. She should withdraw it and come back with more sensible proposals.

We will vote for the regulations, but we will vote against this business motion, because it is a joke, a complete nonsense. It does not provide Parliament with the vote we need on the European arrest warrant, but is simply because the Government are scared of a rebellion. They want to say one thing to one group of people and another thing to another group. They are not being straight with the House. The Home Secretary knows she is playing fast and loose with very serious measures on tackling crime and national security. It is irresponsible, and it is playing fast and loose with Parliament as well. I urge her and the Justice Secretary to rethink, ditch this business motion, come back with something more sensible and let us vote on the measures this country needs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir William Cash]

rose—

[Yvette Cooper]

rose—

[Mrs May]

No, I say to my hon. Friend and to the right hon. Lady that I have been asked to explain the Government’s position, and that is what I intend to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

I have made it clear that there was no requirement under the Lisbon treaty or any legislative requirement to bring the package of 35 measures to this House.

[Yvette Cooper]

The Home Secretary seems to think that the House should be grateful for what we have got, but she and the Prime Minister promised that there would be a vote on the European arrest warrant. Will she now admit that, with the motion she has put before the House today, she has broken that promise?

[Mrs May]

If the right hon. Lady will just let me continue, I will explain further to the House. As I have said, there is no requirement to bring any vote to the House. There is a requirement to transpose into UK legislation certain of the 35 measures that we will opt back into. That would normally have been done through the negative statutory instrument procedure in an hour-and-a-half debate upstairs in a Committee, not on the Floor of the House. That would normally have been done after 1 December, so after the date on which the Government had chosen to opt back in, and indeed after we had exercised our opt-in. We did not think that that was right either, which is why we have brought before the House an affirmative measure on a statutory instrument that shows the House the legislative requirements that will need to be made.

However, I have been very clear, the Government have been very clear, and indeed you, Mr Speaker, have been very clear—I am grateful for the clarification in your statement—that the debate we will be having on the motion on the regulations will be wide-ranging and, indeed, will include a debate on the European arrest warrant. I say to Members of the House that it is my intention to speak about the European arrest warrant when that debate takes place. I also say to right hon. and hon. Members that if they vote against this—[Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. In fact, I was attempting to be as clear as you have been that the vote on the next motion will be a vote on the regulations, which includes those measures in the package of 35 that we wish to opt back into which require to be transposed into UK legislation. But the Government are clear that we will be bound by that vote, and if this House chooses not to transpose those measures and votes against the regulations, it will be voting against the Government opting into all the measures, including the European arrest warrant.

My final point is this: we have the option now of a vote on the business motion. The decision for Members of the House is whether to vote against that business motion and have one and a half hours for debate on all these matters, or to vote in favour of the business motion and have four and a half hours for debate. I trust they will take the latter option.

[Yvette Cooper]

Mr Speaker, you pointed out how unusual it was for the Government also to reply to debates on a business motion, but is it not normal in a reply to respond to the points that have been made in the debate? In the debate it was clear that the Home Secretary promised a debate on the European arrest warrant and promised a vote on it, and she has not given it. Do you agree that that is not a reply to a business motion debate?

[Mr Speaker]

I think I have set out the position clearly and there is nothing at this stage for me to add, but Members will form their own view. That is the fairest thing I can say—Members will form their own view.

I think I am right in saying that the Home Secretary has concluded her speech.