European Union Bill

I do not want to be distracted from the subject matter of the debate—clause 9 and the amendments—so the best thing is for me to tell my hon. Friend that I will either write to him or ask my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration to do so in response to the point that he raises. May I summarise the Government's case in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone? There have been many criticisms of the current criminal mutual legal assistance system; it is said that it is fragmented, confusing and subject to delays. In some cases, it takes many months to obtain vital evidence, and when the UK has been the requesting state, that has had a detrimental effect on UK investigations and trials. The EIO seeks to address those problems by simplifying the MLA system among EU member states and introducing strict deadlines for the execution of requests. It is true that had we not opted into the EIO, we would still have been able to operate MLA with other EU countries, but we would have been in a tiny minority of EU countries not using the EIO. Owing to that, and because deadlines would not apply to UK MLA requests, it is likely that those requests would be given a lower priority than those of other states, and that our prosecutors would have experienced longer delays. Given that 75% of the UK's MLA traffic is with other EU countries, the practical impact on UK cases would have been significant. If my hon. Friend wishes to pursue the matter further, I suggest that he first looks at the letter which the Home Secretary wrote to the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) on 3 August 2010, and which she has deposited in the Library. The letter details a number of specific cases in which the current arrangements were proven to be inadequate. In one case, evidence that was not returned prior to the conclusion of the trial may have led to the suspect being exonerated. Her judgment and the Government's judgment is that had we not opted in, it is likely that there would be more such cases.