With the leave of the House, I thank right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions. This has been a useful debate, and from what we have heard it is clear that the House supports the motion before us, and identifies that there is an issue of subsidiarity with the Commission’s proposal for a European public prosecutor’s office. As I said at the outset, this is a matter for Parliament and not the Government. Therefore, in the light of the mood of the House this evening, I hope that the European Scrutiny Committee will take this issue and work with other interested parties in Parliament, the House and the other place, and make best use of their contacts with other national Parliaments in that regard, given the interest and focus that I know are being directed to this proposal by Parliaments around the EU.
The coalition agreement makes it clear that the UK Government will not participate in any European public prosecutors office. As we have heard from hon. Members, that is because a centralised European prosecutor with harmonised powers to initiate investigations and order investigative measures is incompatible with the division of responsibilities in the UK between law enforcement and prosecutors, and the role of the independent judiciary. In many ways, that reflects a number of the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith)—the Chair of the Justice Committee—the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), and my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris). May I say that the last of those is filling in for my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) admirably this evening in ensuring that the will and views of the European Scrutiny Committee are properly represented in the debate? I look forward to him standing in on future occasions.
I want to underline and respond to some of the points made by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson). I welcome the fact that
she agrees with the Government’s analysis of subsidiarity as it applies to the European public prosecutors office measure. However, it will not surprise her that I take issue strongly with her suggestion that the Government do not take transnational and serious organised crime, and working with law enforcement agencies across the EU, very seriously in ensuring that public are properly protected against organised criminality that crosses borders. I will not detain the House because this is a matter for another day, but it is interesting that the Labour Government negotiated the right to exercise the 2014 block opt-out—she described the 2014 decision as an untested approach. From her comments, I can only assume that the previous Government had no intention of exercising that right and therefore of seeking to provide those protections—it was a sham.
The hon. Lady highlighted protections in respect of the European prosecutors office—unanimity and the right to opt in—but it is important that the public have a say and a right to form a view in respect of such an important issue. That is why I welcome the fact that the Government have legislated to make any decision by a future Government to commit the UK to participating in the creation of the European public prosecutors office a matter that would require an Act of Parliament and—yes—a referendum under the European Union Act 2011.
This has been a helpful debate and I welcome the views that have been expressed. We will monitor with close interest whether the threshold is triggered to issue the formal yellow card to the Commission. We will return to matters more broadly in relation to the European public prosecutors office and the relationship with Eurojust when we debate the formal opt-in decision motion, when we can examine those matters in further detail.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House considers that the Draft Regulation on the establishment of a European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) (European Union Document No. 12558/13 and Addenda 1 and 2) does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity, for the reasons set out in the annex to Chapter One of the Fifteenth Report of the European Scrutiny Committee (HC 83-xv); and, in accordance with Article 6 of Protocol (No. 2) annexed to the EU Treaties on the application of the principle of subsidiarity and proportionality, instructs the Clerk of the House to forward this reasoned opinion to the Presidents of the European Institutions.