European Union (Amendment) Bill

Absolutely. It will not surprise my right hon. Friend to learn that I have a lot of material on that. Again, I will not be able to go into the matter in detail, but article 69B states:"““The European Parliament and the Council may, by means of directives adopted in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure””—" we shall deal with that highly objectionable new procedure later—"““establish minimum rules concerning the definition of criminal offences and sanctions in the areas of particularly serious crime with a cross-border dimension.””." We all want to be able to deal with the problems posed by international gangs and international crime but, as I said in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), the treaty provision is motherhood and apple pie. We all want co-operation to deal with international criminal gangs, but will they be operating just in the European Union? No. There are international criminal gangs that operate all over the world. It is precisely because what is wanted is a uniform legal system, at the expense of our common law system and our judicial processes, which are free from political interference, dual criminality and so on, along with a whole range of criteria, that we are insistent that there should not be the intention that lies behind the treaty. That is why we propose in my amendments to leave out the relevant words. That intention is to consolidate all the different legal systems and the legal criteria that are applicable to 27 member states, but the attempt will simply fail.