It is a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash). I thank the Government for allowing us the opportunity to have this debate today, and I thank the Home Secretary for the way in which she began the process of constructing a dialogue with Parliament. The Chairs of the three Select Committees—myself, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee—met the Home Secretary when the process began, and we agreed what I thought was a timetable to enable Parliament to express its views on these important matters.
Both Parliament and the Government stuck to that timetable. The Home Secretary wanted parliamentary scrutiny through the Select Committees by the end of October. We did our best to ensure that our reports were agreed by then, and we presented our reports to the Government with the expectation—although I accept that there was no promise—that Parliament would be able to vote on the measures before the Government began their negotiations. The Home Secretary has strongly expressed her feeling that Parliament needs to vote on something. In other words, let her get on with the negotiations, let us see where we go, let us look at the direction of travel and, once the package is ready, Members may determine whether they support it.
The personalities of the three Select Committees, not just their members but their Chairs, are quite different. They are not people we can get together and expect agreement from on every word of every report, but all three Committees, and all three Chairs, agreed unanimously that Parliament should not only debate the matter but vote on it.
Only the usual suspects are here today, with the exception of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), who has taken time off from preparing for the London marathon next week to attend this marathon session. I suspect that if there was a vote at the end of these proceedings, we would have had a much better attendance and Members on both sides of the House would have come forward to express their views.
The Government have said that the three Select Committees have deliberated and produced reports. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) tabled 125 questions, so he ranks alongside the Select Committees as far as scrutiny is concerned. That is probably enough to enable the Government to know the direction of travel and to complete the negotiations, but I do not think it is enough, and neither does the Home Affairs Committee. We feel that a vote today would have been the best way to give the Home Secretary the mandate that she needs to go to the Council of Ministers and to other European Justice and Home Affairs meetings to discuss the measures that she does or does not want to opt into. I am sure she is a very strong negotiator. She is before the Home Affairs Committee tomorrow, and I am sure she will put up a robust performance, as she always does, but she would have made an even better performance before the Council of Ministers and her various European colleagues if she had had the backing of the whole House.
I was concerned to read the note that was recently issued by the current presidency of the Council of Ministers, to which I referred in my intervention on the Home Secretary. Statewatch has published what it says is a note from Greece, which currently holds the presidency:
“Due to national procedures with the UK Parliament, the Presidency is of the understanding that the UK Government would need to finalise its position on the re-opting list by June 2014, so that these national internal procedures can take place before the UK parliament’s summer recess. Therefore, it would be appropriate that the list of acts which will be subject to re-opting in be “politically” agreed by June.”
Of course, that is not a note from the Cabinet or a leak from the Home Office. It comes, apparently, from the presidency. Perhaps there is a misunderstanding about the way in which we work. The Home Secretary has said today that she will get her list ready by December and that Parliament will then have an opportunity to vote. Given that Parliament is not usually given a great deal of time to deliberate such matters, I imagine that once the measures have been agreed, there will not be a huge amount of notice before Members come to the House and vote on these issues.
The Minister for Europe, in a written ministerial statement on 20 January, said:
“I hope that today I have conveyed to the House not only the Government’s full commitment to holding a vote on the 2014 decision in this House and the other place,”—
that has been re-emphasised by the Home Secretary today—
“but the importance that we will accord to Parliament in the process leading up to that vote.”
If there was a need to know the view of Parliament, it is contained in the joint report. The three Committees decided that the best course of action would be to have a good debate on the Floor and for individual Members to decide, in their own way, what they wished to vote on. I am quite certain that when this matter comes before the House, I will vote in a different way from some members of the Home Affairs Committee, because we have not taken a view on every single measure. One point that we have put before the House is that we think it vital, even if the Government decide to put the whole package before the House, that we have a vote on the European arrest warrant.
I do not believe that we have got it right with the changes to the European arrest warrant that the Home Secretary has announced. I support the European arrest warrant. I think, for the reasons given by both Front Benchers, that it is a vital tool when dealing with people who have committed terrible crimes. The Home Secretary mentioned one case in which somebody had stabbed someone 86 times. Of course it is right that we have a quick power that enables us to ask a colleague in the European Union to hand over someone who is suspected of committing a crime of that seriousness, and that that person should arrive as soon as possible. The shadow Home Secretary is absolutely right to support the European arrest warrant.
However, time and again, Members of this House have raised worries, including in evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, that the European arrest warrant has not been used very well in a number of cases. The hon. Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) has spoken about the Andrew Symeou case. The Select Committee heard evidence from the constituent of the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax), Michael Turner, who was extradited to Hungary and incarcerated for month after month, but never faced any charges. We were therefore very concerned about the practicalities of what was proposed.
The Home Secretary said in her evidence to the Home Affairs Committee that she felt that she had made the changes that were necessary to deal with the concerns of Members of this House through the proportionality test. However, the evidence given by a number of individuals, some of whom were from Germany, indicated that that was not enough to protect a citizen who was the subject of a European arrest warrant that was issued for frivolous reasons.