That is exactly what I have said, and that is exactly what we need to have an answer to. What we do not want is a short debate followed by a vote. We want a comprehensive debate on the Floor of the House of Commons—no ifs and no buts. I am sure that the Justice Secretary will be able to give us that assurance.
A letter written to me by the Home and Justice Secretaries dated 3 July confirmed that an agreement “in principle” had been reached with the Commission on the non-Schengen measures, but not on the overall package. According to the Home Secretary, a number of “technical reservations” remained in regard to the Schengen measures, and the General Affairs Council maintained that position the other day. We must have a further, full debate on the Floor of the House, and a vote, once full agreement has been reached.
I want to put a number of questions to the Government. I should be grateful—as, I think, would the rest of the House—if the Justice Secretary responded to them when he winds up the debate.
We need the Government to explain the reasons for the changes to the 35 measures, and to identify which changes demanded by the Commission and the other member states they were able to resist. We want them to clarify whether these are the measures that the Government themselves wish to seek to rejoin, or whether they are measures that they are compelled to rejoin in order to secure a coherent package that is acceptable to the Commission and the other member states. In a nutshell, was this a deal made behind closed doors and conducted to a great extent, if not entirely, by officials, and to what extent does it reflect coalition politics?
We note that the 35 measures present only part of the picture. We ask the Government to complete the picture by making available to Parliament a list of all the pre-Lisbon measures that were subject to the United Kingdom’s block opt-out as of 1 December 2009, but no longer are because the UK has opted into amending or “repeal and replace” measures.
We should like the Government to explain why the
“solution concerning the Prüm Decisions and the Probation Framework Decision”
which was alluded to in the Council press release issued after the General Affairs Council on 24 June, is not mentioned or explained in Command Paper 8897, in the Minister for Europe’s written ministerial statement of 30 June informing Parliament of the outcome of the Council, or in the letter of 3 July from the Home and Justice Secretaries to me, as Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee. We note that details of the “solution” have emerged through press releases and reports and not through the provision of information to Parliament, and we want to know whether the Government regard that as an appropriate way for them to engage with Parliament.
We seek further information on the content of the deal that has been made, including any processes for consulting Parliament. We want to know how much the UK has invested so far in its preparations for implementing the Prüm decisions, and we ask the Minister and the Secretary of State to set out the Government’s current assessment of the utility of the Prüm and probation framework decisions.
We want to know about the reliability of some of the assumptions underlying the Government’s impact assessments, especially in regard to measures such as the prisoner transfer framework decision, when the capacity to operate the measures may be in doubt in some member states, or when the risk of legal challenge on human rights grounds—based, for example, on article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights if prison conditions are regarded as inhuman or degrading, or on article 8 if there is interference with the right to respect for family life—could be regarded as significant.
We note that the possibility of adverse rulings by the Court of Justice does not feature among the “key assumptions/sensitivities/risks” in the impact assessments, although concerns about the extension of the Court’s jurisdiction to EU police and criminal justice measures are at the heart of the block opt-out.
We note that the Government claim to have taken into account the views expressed in our report, as well as those of other Committees. We want to know whether they accept the assessment of our Committee that the selection of measures to rejoin
“does not signify any lessening of UK involvement in the key measures governing law enforcement cooperation in the EU” ,
our assessment that many of the measures, because of their inherent significance and impact on individuals, are likely to be more susceptible to adverse judgments of the Court of Justice than the numerically larger number of measures that the Government do not propose to rejoin, and our assessment that there is
“little evidence of a genuine and significant repatriation of powers”.
So we are asking a significant number of questions, and I am putting them on the record now, because we are going to have another debate at a later time. We want to know the significance of the answers to these questions and weigh them up in the light of the general principles I put forward at the beginning, and we need to know about the timing of this debate. We want to know not only when it will take place, but what measures it will cover, as well as receive assurances about the motions that will be tabled. I ask the two Secretaries of State to listen to this very carefully—they are having
quite an interesting conversation with one of the Whips at the moment. Would they be good enough to listen carefully? We want to know that the motions will be tabled with sufficient notice to enable Members to prepare amendments, and we reiterate the position on the form of the vote set out in our Committee report: there should be separate motions for each of the measures the Government propose to rejoin.
That is an important practical question about that debate, and I believe it is incumbent on the Government to answers the questions this afternoon so we have a clear picture of the way forward and so we know that this debate will not be just a waste of time, given that we have got another debate and another vote to come when all these measures are going to be finally decided. They are critical measures of great importance not only in terms of criminal justice matters, but also in respect of the whole question of the sovereignty of the United Kingdom and its rule of law.
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