European Union Bill

The hon. Lady has updated my information, which only goes as far as 30 November, by which point there had been six opt-ins. There have therefore been another two since, and they are coming along all the time. We heard evidence in the European Scrutiny Committee that 30 or 40 such opt-ins were due to take place. The EU has an ambitious programme in that regard—that is not an expression of opinion; it has admitted it. I shall deal with that later. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that some of the opt-ins are on important points, and I shall come to one or two of them that I experienced under the previous procedure. I should like to ask the Minister how many of the provisions that we have opted in to since the present Government came to power would have been covered by the procedures in clause 9. I fully accept that those procedures are an improvement on the current situation, but I should like to know how well they cover the ground. As the hon. Lady said, some of the opt-ins have been significant. I wish to mention two in particular—they were debated a little yesterday, so I will not take the Committee over the same ground. They are the European investigation order, which received practically no scrutiny in the House and on which we had no opportunity for a vote, and the draft directive on the right to information, which was also very important. We had a little more scrutiny of it, but no real opportunity for a vote unless one was prepared to trigger a deferred Division. Under successive Governments, the UK has been very careful and vigilant about permitting the EU to deal with the so-called area of freedom, security and justice, which is dealt with in clause 9. That goes back to pre-Maastricht days, when such matters were dealt with on the basis first of informal co-operation, and then of slightly more formal co-operation, between Home Affairs Ministers. They were not dealt with as part of the treaties or Community institutions—Home Affairs Ministers simply met to co-operate as such. The Maastricht treaty put that on a more formal basis with what was described as the justice and home affairs pillar, which was the third pillar of the treaty. The first pillar was the old matters within the treaty—the single market, fisheries and agricultural policy, and all the rest of it—and the second was common foreign security policy. One or two hon. Members who are in the Chamber now were in the House at the time of that treaty, and there was much debate on the justice and home affairs pillar. We were assured—I remember being given a solemn assurance by an authoritative figure in the Government of the time—that the treaty settled the problem as far as justice and home affairs were concerned, that we need not worry about home affairs coming within the purview of the Community method and Community institutions, and that they were being kept separate. The same applied to the common foreign security policy. The implication was that the pillars in the treaty would stand for ever, and that they were all the protection and assurance we needed. I am reluctant to say this but I have heard similar claims in respect of many other so-called safeguards since then, including in the course of this debate.