In my view, it would be judiciable in our own courts and, like any other international agreement, we would be free to withdraw from it. It
would not come under the European Communities Act 1972. I do not wish to cede power to the European Court of Justice, because that would be the means by which we would give up our independence as a nation state. If it is not our judges—who are subject to our democratic control—who make decisions, we will not be able to run our own affairs.
I want to continue with the point I was making about the United Kingdom’s understanding of justice. I think we get too tied up with the convenience of the law enforcement bodies. Of course, the views of the police should be taken very seriously, but they ought not to be writing the law of the land—they should be enforcing it as it is determined by this House and their lordships. One of the measures that the Government wish to opt back into is that of mutual recognition of judgments given in absentia. Page 57 of the European Scrutiny Committee’s report notes the Government’s view that the
“Framework Decision ensures that fewer criminals will be able to evade justice by arguing that their conviction was unfair”,
but what if their conviction was unfair? Surely we should not be depriving our fellow citizens of the right to argue that a conviction in absentia was unfair when it could have been. That must be an essential protection for the state to provide its nationals, and to take it away would be a fundamental error.
What we have and have not opted into is a relatively random collection of parts. I agreed with the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), in her mocking of some of the measures we are not opting back into. On the opt-ins, including that of taking account of convictions in EU member states in the course of new criminal proceedings, page 53 of the ESC’s report notes:
“The principle of taking into account overseas convictions in the same way as domestic ones exists in UK domestic law”
already, and:
“The mutual recognition principle it sets out is already recognised in statute and common law in the UK. Opting back in to this EU measure would introduce full Court of Justice jurisdiction into this area of UK criminal law, with unpredictable results.”
What is happening here? We are opting into something that already happens and that can continue to happen. All we are changing is that other European countries do not have to take into account our decisions, but they may if they want to—they are not prevented from doing so. Crucially, however, we are bringing the European Court of Justice into it. Therefore, if a judge were to pass sentence on somebody who had committed a crime abroad and the European Court of Justice deemed that it had not properly taken into account the previous conviction, sentencing in the United Kingdom could end up being a matter for the European Court of Justice. Does Her Majesty’s Government realise that, although some of these things appear superficially to be unnecessary and broadly irrelevant, they are agreeing to major transfers of sovereignty to the European Union?
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said in her introductory speech that several hundred questions have been tabled. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Minister for Security and Immigration has just come into the Chamber, because he, poor man, had to reply to the many dozens of questions that I tabled. I thank him for the diligence with which he replied to my questions about the measures that the Government
decided not to opt back into. Of those 95 measures, 43 were irrelevant, so there was no point asking any questions about them. I asked about the remaining 52, of which 24 turned out to be implemented already without any change; 11 had been de facto implemented with no change; two had been implemented and never used; and two had not been implemented. As the shadow Home Secretary rightly said, most of what we are not opting back into is, effectively, unimportant and irrelevant and cannot honestly be described as a reclaim of British sovereignty, because, as I said in my opening remarks, that sovereignty was never ceded in the first place, because the matters remained entirely under the jurisdiction of the British courts, the British House of Commons and their lordships.
I will quote the details of one of those matters in order to give a flavour of what is going on. Council decision 2005/387/JHA on the information exchange, risk-assessment and control of new psychoactive substances has been implemented to the required standard by the UK and, according to the response I received from my hon. Friend the Minister for Security and Immigration:
“Co-operation and information exchange with other member states and EU bodies will not change as a result of opting out of this measure.”—[Official Report, 17 October 2013; Vol. 568, c. 823W.]
That has been broadly true of the overwhelming majority of the measures we have opted out of.
We therefore have this opt-out—the previous Labour Government, in a desire to get away from a referendum, negotiated it—which fortunately came to the benefit or aid of this coalition Government, who have used it. They looked at it, but they undoubtedly had a political problem. One part of the coalition is made up of Europhiles red in tooth and claw—although my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) does not necessarily look red in tooth and claw, he adopts that position on the European Union—who want an enlarged European organisation. They may quibble with me about whether it is a single state, but they want to see powers with Europe, because they believe that that is an advantage to the nation. They met the Conservative view—it has now been the Conservative view for a long time—that we do not want more powers to be ceded to the European Union. It was negotiated in the coalition agreement that no further powers would be passed to the European Union.
The time came to exercise the opt-out—it had to be exercised before the end of this year, 1 December 2014—and last year it was duly exercised. We are therefore in the happy position, the paradise, of no longer subscribing to any of the measures. That would be a happy place to stay, but the Government, throwing away the coalition agreement and abandoning what unites the Tory party, have decided to give away the things that most certainly create, build up and advance the federal European state that so many of us wish not to see. That contradicts the Prime Minister’s effort of renegotiation, as well as past statements by Conservative Ministers and politicians throughout the Front and Back Benches. It would be a grave error to opt into all 35 measures. It is against the national interest, and to do it for administrative convenience—because we cannot get officials to do the work—is a shameful way to treat our hard-working
and admirable officials, who would all be delighted to do the work to preserve the independence of our country.
6.21 pm