UK Parliament / Open data

Terrorism and Crime (EUC Report)

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wright, on his skilful chairmanship of Sub-Committee F. He was very good at dealing with people, however difficult they were and whether they were members of the committee or witnesses. I was lucky enough to be a member while it was inquiring into the Prüm convention and the EU-US Passenger Name Record agreement. I should also like to congratulate the noble Lord on his excellent introduction to this debate, which set out so clearly the nature and importance of the somewhat esoteric subjects of our two reports. I hope that his speech will be widely read in Brussels and, of course, in both the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Our reports, which owe much to the perceptive intellect of our Clerk Michael Collon, brought out several important and general points that the noble Lord, Lord Wright, highlighted. In my short contribution, I want to focus on those aspects. First, the way in which Prüm was handled demonstrates some serious shortcomings in how the EU operates, and the extent to which Parliament is able to scrutinise effectively what the Commission gets up to. I should say straight away that when we are dealing with urgent and serious challenges such as terrorism and crime, I have no objection to some countries in the EU getting together to make faster progress than might be possible if the Commission is left to initiate action on the basis of discussions with all 27 member states. However, that cannot and must not be a reason, let alone an excuse, for any agreement reached by that self-selecting group of EU member states being converted into EU law without the fullest consultation and discussion by all 27 members. That consultation takes time and may throw up problems. But rushing into legislation that has not been properly discussed will not only risk bad legislation but can irritate and even alienate individual member states and thus reduce the reputation of the EU among the populations. As the noble Lord, Lord Wright, has illustrated, the way in which Prüm was handled failed to ensure that UK concerns were fully taken into account, especially on costs to the taxpayer. More serious still is that the Home Office appeared to us to have scant regard for the importance of parliamentary scrutiny, for which your Lordships’ House not only has a special responsibility but a high reputation in Brussels. For the Government to have agreed on the incorporation by other states of aspects of Prüm at the Justice and Home Affairs Council before our concerns were met and for the Home Office then to suggest that that did not amount to scrutiny override is, frankly, as deplorable as it is unacceptable. We are all well aware that much of what is decided in Brussels is based on deals between Governments. It is usually called horse trading, or, as my noble friend Lord Jopling would say, cow trading. I recognise that it would be difficult to give training in those excellent arts to the majority of civil servants, whether in Brussels or home departments, but I was reflecting that I might suggest an alternative way of assessing their abilities—by assessing their prowess at playing the wonderful game of chess. Obviously, the FCO plays a major part in such deal-making: that is one function of diplomacy. But that is precisely why parliamentary scrutiny of the merits of actual issues is so crucial. The deal-making aspects of the EU are among the things making it so unpopular at street level. Although we will never achieve it, we should at least strive for purity, objectivity and integrity in EU decision-making. This Government, with their emasculation of the scrutiny of domestic legislation by the House of Commons through the hugely retrograde step of imposing a timetable, or guillotine, on every Bill immediately after Second Reading, have shown in that respect shown scant regard for Parliament. Frankly, the Home Office has been one of the worst culprits by rushing one law and order or justice Bill after another through Parliament, with the result that the inadequacies of ill-digested legislation instantly seem to make necessary further legislation, which is once again drafted at lightning speed. I am afraid that it is part of the cultural arrogance of the Home Office. It is an arrogance which has become more destructive as the quality, ethos and morale of civil servants in many departments has deteriorated over the 40 years that I have been a Whitehall watcher. As an aside, I would like to tell the House how delighted I was to learn in a Written Answer last week from the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, that the National Firearms Licensing Management System has at last gone live. I say ““at last”” because it has taken 10 years from the time that the Government were required by Parliament to do so by Clause 39 of the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997. It was originally my amendment, passed against Home Office wishes, with all-party support in this House. For years, the Home Office ignored it and then tried to sabotage it. I owe a debt to several successive Home Office Ministers, including our late and much-lamented colleague Gareth Williams, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, all of whom pressed the Home Office to introduce the gun register. Of course, I also owe a deep debt to my noble friend Lady Anelay, and the noble Lords, Lord McNally and Lord Corbett, for their constant support. But it was a shameful saga. I now turn to the passenger name record. Here again, I support the concept of allowing the United States to have access to personal information about passengers to prevent terrorists or serious criminals flying. However, there were, as the noble Lord, Lord Wright, and others have described, all sorts of specific problems with the scheme proposed and then adopted. The greater the threat we face, the more discriminating we must be in the methods of defence that we use. PNR was eventually forced through, virtually unamended, by the American Government and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wright, that it is lamentable that HMG did not stand up a great deal more firmly for our national interests. I feel that the FCO should have brought this issue to the notice of the American Administration at a high level, together with the other problems that we are having with the United States, to make it clear that it is wholly unacceptable for the Americans to treat the EU as some sort of third world country to be patronised and ordered about. It was only this week, that the Times, on 2 December, reported the amazing claim by Mr Alun Jones QC, representing the American Government in a case being heard by the Court of Appeal, that it was acceptable under American law to kidnap people overseas if they were wanted for offences in the United States. Sadly, in all too many ways, the United States has in recent years been using its great power, which should be for the good of the world—as it has been historically—in ways that have reduced American international influence. From that we are all losers. There are, as I have tried to show, important lessons to learn from these two reports and I hope very much that the noble Lord, Lord West, will indicate that the Government will take them to heart.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
696 c1904-6 
Session
2007-08
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
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