I beg to move,
That this House has considered the UK’s Justice and Home Affairs opt-outs.
I have just noticed the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) sitting in solitary splendour on the Opposition Front Bench.
On 24 March this year, Francis Paul Cullen was sentenced to 15 years in prison for a series of sexual assaults on children. He committed those offences over a period of more than three decades while serving as a priest in Nottingham and Derbyshire. His victims were both boys and girls, and were aged between six and 16. The judge said that their
“whole lives have been blighted”
by this
“cunning, devious, arrogant”
man. Indeed, one of them tried to take their own life.
When his crimes came to light in 1991, Cullen fled to Tenerife to evade justice. Last year, after 22 years on the run and two decades of further suffering for his victims, he was extradited from Spain on a European arrest warrant. This spring, he pleaded guilty to 15 counts of indecent assault, five counts of indecency with a child and one count of attempted buggery. After a lifetime of waiting, his victims who were watching in that courtroom in Derby finally saw justice done.
That harrowing case and too many others like it form the backdrop to today’s debate. Francis Cullen is just one of the despicable and cowardly criminals who have fled our shores to try to escape British justice. In an earlier age, he might have succeeded. Under the system of extradition that existed before the European arrest warrant—the 1957 European convention on extradition—his 22 years on the run would have rendered him immune from prosecution by the Spanish authorities, helping to
bar his extradition back to the UK. It is thanks to the European arrest warrant that Cullen is behind bars at last.
I know that many right hon. and hon. Members have concerns about the way in which that measure has operated since the Labour party signed us up to it, and I have shared many of those concerns. That is why I have legislated to reform the operation of the arrest warrant and increase the protections that we can offer to those who are wanted for extradition, particularly if they are British subjects.
First, Members were concerned that British citizens were being extradited for disproportionately minor offences. We changed the law to allow an arrest warrant to be refused in respect of minor offences. A British judge will now consider whether the alleged offence and likely sentence are sufficient to make the person’s extradition proportionate. Secondly, Members were concerned that people could be extradited for actions that are not against the law of this land. We have clarified the rules on dual criminality to ensure that an arrest warrant must be refused if all or part of the conduct for which the person is wanted took place in the United Kingdom and it is not a criminal offence in the UK.