Criminal Procedural Rights (Opt-in Decision)

As the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) said, the handling of this set of proposals has not been ideal, to put it mildly. The criticisms made by the European Scrutiny Committee have considerable weight. They also suggest that because of time constraints the Committee did not come to the Justice Committee for an opinion on proposals that fall pretty squarely within its remit. That would have been a much more desirable process to follow, and lessons ought to be learned from this.