I have been in this House for seven Parliaments. Each has seemed to have a different character, but there has been one consistent thread across all that time: the integration within European processes. That has had support on high days, on holidays and in opposition. I see it as a fundamental task of the House of Commons to challenge perceived wisdoms and reflect the responsibilities and interests of those we are elected to represent.
I have also seen the continuing theme of membership of the European Union over all that time. It has never quite been a settled issue. For all the trumpets and bands, all the songs and the universal praise, there is a deep underlying tug. It is really about a sense of country. Who are we? It has always been about that. That, after all, is the first duty of a sovereign state, I would argue: to protect the interests, freedoms and liberties that we have enjoyed under our form of constitutional arrangements. What we are really seeing is a struggle over the British constitution. Oh, but does it not evolve over time? Yet, looking back, there has been one constant theme, which is that people profoundly believed in many of the central precepts of what constitutes a sovereign state. I am driven in my memory by certain
observations, too. The German constitutional court made the observation that democracy lies not in the institutions of the community, the European Union, but in the national state, and yet everything that this House seems to do in recent years is to surrender and denigrate that nation state—the very concept by which we have authority in this House.
What is the criticism of the European arrest warrant? It is that it is promoted on the basis of a benefit, but to many people it is actually a degradation of the security of the British people. The fact that they can be taken away from within this jurisdiction by almost a mandate, which will, in time, be governed by the European Court of Justice is a loss of the authority of our own legal and justice system.
The House is well aware that, in recent months, a series of High Court and Supreme Court judges have been writing essays, making a plea about the way in which the discretion and the interpretation of human rights is conducted. The most central purpose of a Government is law and order and the effectiveness with which they protect the citizen, and no one can dispute that our Home Secretary is fierce in her determination to protect the British citizen. But, actually, the greatest protection of a citizen and a coherent society, which is what we call the sovereign state, lies within the commitment of the people to their institutions and their way of self-government, and that is what this measure undermines.