European Union Bill

I am glad that we are now marrying off one of our royals to someone who has the attributes of a very normal, pretty Englishwoman. We wish William and ““Caterina”” every success. To return to the Bill and the clause, I campaigned for many years in this House, on an all-party basis, for laws and measures to combat human trafficking. That cannot be done on the basis of a single decision of this House alone. In the last Parliament, it took a great deal of work by hon. Members on both sides of the House to persuade the then Prime Minister to first sign and then ratify the Council of Europe's convention on trafficking. The Home Office's view was that it did not want to be told by anyone—and this was the Council of Europe, not the European Union—what to do or to accept any obligations. Ministers and officials came up with argument after argument about why the Council of Europe convention should not be signed. I am glad to say that parliamentary pressure from both sides wore them down and the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, signed and ratified it. It was an important step forward. As ever, it was not the final solution to that dark and wretched side of globalisation, but it was a step forward. Similarly, the European public prosecutor's office might at some stage in the future be of importance to our country, to the Government, whatever their colour, and to the House. At the beginning of the previous decade, we heard exactly the same arguments against the European arrest warrant. People said that it was an intolerable interference in British sovereignty, with Brussels marching in to arrest anyone it wanted. By the time of 7/7, however, when one of the wanted suspects had fled to Rome, where the civil liberties lawyers, the judges, the left and the supporters of Islamism were wrapping their arms around him to protect him, the EAW had—thank goodness—become part of our law, having been adopted by the European Union, and so that gentleman was back on a plane to London before he could say ““strong cappuccino””.