My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was going to come on to the other areas of creeping supranationalism.
The same is true of Eurojust. Although Britain will not opt in to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office—I very much welcome the fact that Ministers have made that clear—if one looks at the fine print, which the Deputy Prime Minister always encourages us to do, the new Eurojust regulation encourages close co-operation with the EPPO through the back door. If we opt back in to the Eurojust regulation, we will therefore have a close relationship of support for the EPPO. That is something else that needs to be looked at.
Even here at home, outside the political arena, we have had a timely warning from the High Court, and from Mr Justice Mostyn in particular, about the risks of creeping supranationalism. The last Government, to great fanfare, negotiated the British opt-out from the charter of fundamental rights. However, we found out from a case in the High Court in November 2013 that that counts for nothing. Again, so that I cannot be accused of spinning the language, I will refer directly to what Mr Justice Mostyn said. In respect of the opt-out he said:
“it is absolutely clear that the contracting parties agreed that the Charter did not create one single further justiciable right in our domestic courts. The assertion in the…protocol that no new rights are created seems to me to be a misleading product of political compromise because on any view the Charter enunciates a host of new rights which are not expressly found in the European Convention on Human Rights signed in Rome in 1950.”
He continued:
“However, my view that the effect of the seventh protocol is to prevent any new justiciable rights from being created is not one shared by the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg.”
He went on to say:
“The constitutional significance of this decision can hardly be overstated.”
That is a timely warning from another senior British judge about what is actually happening.
If we listen to our colleagues, partners and friends in the European Union, they are telling us the same thing loud and clear. Viviane Reding, the vice-president of
the European Commission and the Justice Commissioner, made it very clear in a speech in Brussels on 4 September 2013 that the EU wishes to acquire the powers of a nation state in the rule of law area. She said explicitly that the EU needs a formal justice Minister and stronger powers to police national criminal justice systems, including
“detailed monitoring and sanctioning powers”.
We must not only look at the snapshot of measures that are before us now, but ask whether in five or 10 years’ time we will find ourselves enmeshed in a common pan-European justice system over which we have lost substantial democratic control. On the evidence, the answer is almost certainly yes.
I want to talk about the European arrest warrant in particular because, between the two poles of UKIP, which suggests that we should just opt out en masse, and our Labour and Liberal Democrat colleagues in this House, who suggest that there is nothing wrong with it, there is a common-sense—dare I say it—third way or at least a middle course. That is to have binding treaty relations on extradition, but to ensure that we have safeguards in place to protect British citizens. We must not make the Faustian bargain that was debated by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset of sacrificing a few innocent people to snag a few guilty fugitives.
If one looks at the data, the number of European arrest warrants that are received by the UK has trebled since 2004. The latest figures on warrants issued from the first quarter of 2013 showed that the UK receives 33 warrants for every one that it serves. A number of colleagues on the Liberal Democrat and Labour Benches have talked about the lop-sided nature of UK-US extradition, but that is nothing compared with the European arrest warrant, empirically and factually. One cannot take issue with the lack of reciprocity in our extradition relations with the US and not see the same problem in the European arrest warrant. One Briton is surrendered each week. That is up from five per year in 2004.
I accept that we needed a more streamlined process than existed before. I accept that we need a treaty basis for that. We ought to get to a stage where we can talk about reform of the European arrest warrant. I do not think that we will achieve that if we opt back in at this stage.