I thank my hon. Friend. I have already quoted him and cited the important probing that he did back in those days.
Labour Members have a choice: either they misled and exaggerated the nature of the opt-out they negotiated or the Commission and the EU are demonstrating bad faith now. This Government, this House and the British public will reward neither of those basic binary options.
The Opposition’s other line of attack is to say that the Government’s intention of junking at least 100 measures is trivial because they are meaningless or obsolete. That prompts the question of why the shadow Home Secretary’s her party signed up to them in such an unblinking and unthinking manner in the first place. It demonstrates that Labour Members are the dogmatists, whereas we mean to scrutinise this stuff far more carefully and substantively, measure by measure.
The motion gives the House's endorsement to the block opt-out, but it defers any opt-ins pending consultation, parliamentary debate and approval. As we have heard, a major downside of opting back into any measure is
the creeping authority of the Commission and the Luxembourg Court. I think it is acknowledged across the board, certainly by Conservative Members, that whatever we do about the opt-ins, that is a serious defect in our current relationship. I believe that the British Supreme Court should have the last word on British criminal justice matters, for example, on the extradition of a UK citizen or on policing operations. I do not understand why, having created the Supreme Court amid huge fanfare, Labour Members now want to give away jurisdiction and, in effect, emasculate the word “Supreme” in its name.
One need only look at the recent ruling by the European Court on Human Rights in Strasbourg on life prison terms, the ruling on Abu Qatada, or the ongoing saga of prisoner voting, to see what happens when we submit to European judicial jurisdiction, albeit one in Strasbourg rather than Luxembourg. If anyone thinks that the Strasbourg Court is activist, they should look at the record of the Luxembourg Court, particularly in the emerging area of justice and home affairs in cases such as the Metock and Pupino judgments. I recognise that opting back into measures without accepting the jurisdiction of the Commission and Luxembourg Court is technically not within the terms of this decision process. However, have Ministers raised this now as part of the Prime Minister’s wider commitment to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the EU? Has this marker been laid down for the future? That is a vital issue.
There are plenty of other precedents and models for a more flexible relationship on justice and home affairs. Britain is not formally a party to Frontex, the EU’s external border agency, because we want to keep our national border controls, but we co-operate on risk analysis and joint operations. Does this hurt our influence or operations? No, not a bit of it. Frontex executive director Ilkka Laitinen says:
“we do not see any difference between our UK colleagues and the others”.
Outside Europe, the Strategic Alliance Cyber Crime Working Group comprising Britain, the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia—some of our closest partners—collaborates on cyber-crime and intelligence under a non-binding framework. It is regarded as the gold standard of operational co-operation. In terms of law enforcement co-operation at the operational level, Brussels is the odd one out in insisting that we sacrifice democratic control, bit by bit, as the price of operational co-operation. To what extent have Ministers explored these wider options for renegotiating our justice and home affairs relations with Brussels? I say that partly because it is a vital policy issue at stake but also because, at home and abroad, the crime and policing opt-out will be seen as a litmus test for Britain’s wider strategy of renegotiation. It is important for the credibility of that strategy that what we achieve on the crime and policing opt-out is understood as a point of departure, not the point of arrival.
Let me be clear about the positive alternative for our engagement with our EU partners on justice and home affairs. This is not all about knocking the European Union for ideological or dogmatic reasons. I see huge value in robust law enforcement co-operation at the operational level within Europe. The more flexible the EU can be on the structure of the legal form, the better operational friend they will find us in practice. Of course we want to exchange criminal records information,
but we do not want the personal data of innocent British citizens washing around Europe, particularly with Governments—let us be honest about this—whom we would not trust to safeguard it. I have to say that I am not sure about trusting our own Government and Whitehall with lots of our personal data. If we do not trust Whitehall, what hope is there when it gets shipped off to Warsaw, Sofia and places like that?
Yes, we should engage in joint police operations, but there is no reason—none at all—for us to allow the initiation or oversight of such co-operation to be determined by EU authorities. There are also wider efforts to harmonise criminal law, which are wholly unnecessary and, to be frank, set a pretty bad precedent. Whether the question is which drugs to ban or how to define the delicate balance between hate crime and free speech, this House is the right place to pass British criminal law.
I want to touch on three specific measures. First, on Europol, I have no hesitation in saying that British police should share information and co-operate at an operational level. I worked directly with Europol and Eurojust when I was posted to The Hague during my time at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. I see real value in the college structure that allows smoother day-to-day co-operation between national offices. Europol is not perfect as currently configured. It has all the features of bureaucracy and waste that we expect from the EU, including—believe it or not—the €35,000 contract it signed in 2010 to send flowers to itself.
For all its flaws, Europol serves an important function. However, it is not in the UK national interest to see Europol acquire supranational powers that trump national authority over our police. I am already nervous about the existing power of Europol to initiate investigations in the UK and the increasingly limited right to refuse.
The new regulation on Europol, which we will debate later, would also require UK police forces to give foreign police open access to their files. All this would be interpreted by the European Court of Justice. Step by step, the EU is heading towards a supranational model. What is our long-term vision? Should we not be saying, clearly and unambiguously, that we will not hold back willing EU states that want to go down this route, but that it is not a model we will subscribe to over the long term? I ask again whether Ministers have laid down a future marker on that point.
Secondly, on Eurojust, a college of collaborating national prosecutors is hugely beneficial. I would rather it did not splash out €300,000 on Mercedes-Benz, as it did in 2010, or €33,000 on its end-of-year bash, as it did in 2011. Still, co-operation is important.
The Commission, however, is poised to announce a new regulation to beef up Eurojust’s supranational powers and create the European public prosecutor. The announcement is expected shortly. In fact, it appears to have been delayed and one might wonder whether the reason for that was so that it would not take place before this debate, but perhaps we would flatter ourselves too much if we believed that. In any event, I ask again whether Ministers have laid down a marker whereby, if Eurojust evolves in this way, Britain must carve out a separate, bespoke relationship.
Finally, on the European arrest warrant, few Members would deny that fast-track extradition benefits the police, although I think that some of the representations from
law enforcement agencies have been rather one-sided. Even Commander Gibson of the Metropolitan police has said that
“resources are stretched dealing with the amount of EAWs we receive”,
because the regime is lop-sided. For every EAW Britain issued in 2011, we got 33 back. We receive about a third of all European arrest warrants.
A lot of non-British nationals are involved and we do not have quite the same stake or interest in the safeguards to which they are subject, but the fact of the matter is that the increasingly broad net of the EAW sweeps up far too many innocent Britons who are, to be frank, hung out to dry by the British justice system.