European Union (Amendment) Bill

We could all be in court if the treaty goes through; my hon. Friend has made a shrewd and accurate point. I have the Government on my side again. We know that the Government wanted to remove completely from the treaty any reference to the European public prosecutor, even though the office could be brought in only by unanimity. The right hon. Member for Neath, who represented the Government in the negotiations, said:"““Unanimity does not mean that this article can be accepted””." He rightly saw that once it was in a treaty, we would be implicitly committed to it; although we might have a veto, it would become a question not of whether but when. The right hon. Gentleman wanted all references out. My modest amendment would simply do what the Government tried to do in the Convention on the Future of Europe. I shall give one other example of an article to which the Government also objected. Article 69F states:"““The Union shall establish police cooperation involving all the Member States' competent authorities, including police, customs and other specialised law enforcement services””." That is not a permissive power, but an instruction—the word ““shall”” is used. In the phrase ““specialised law enforcement services”” I recognise a reference to MI5; our Security Service is to be brought into the requirement to co-operate with other member states. There is a special relationship between our security and secret services and the United States, and it dates back to shortly after the second world war. In place of that, we are being mandated to co-operate with all 26 other member states. More than that, the power—and it will all be done by qualified majority voting—includes"““the collection, storage, processing, analysis and exchange of relevant information””." Given that even this Government cannot be trusted with the data under their control—after all, Revenue and Customs lost 25 million files, affecting everybody in the country—we can imagine what may happen when even more sensitive information has to be exchanged with 26 other countries all over the European Union, with varying standards of control over it. We are trying to put right what has gone wrong in this country; it would be highly irresponsible to create a further leakage of information as far as Bulgaria, Romania, Malta and right up into the Baltic. Is that really a sensible way to proceed?