That is exactly the point I was making. It bodes ill for any proposal for renegotiation if that is the starting point. The moment the European Union says “We don’t like that very much, chaps” and we say “Oh, we’re frightfully sorry, m’lord”, we are not even going to try. We shall perform the kowtow, that wonderful act performed in front of Chinese emperors, whereby people would abase themselves three times before approaching the throne. That may be appropriate to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, enthroned in splendour as you are, but it is not, I think, the way in which Her Majesty’s Government should behave when dealing with international bodies.
Then there is the European arrest warrant, and the so-called guarantees that we have. As has already been established during the debate, European law trumps Acts of Parliament. So we can say that the European arrest warrant must not apply unless there is dual criminality, but unless the European Union accepts it, that is not the case, and dual criminality does not have to be shown in relation to 32 specified crimes where the arrest warrant applies. What the Prime Minister said to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North during Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday was, I am sorry to say, not factually accurate.
As for the numbers, I have banged on about them because of the hysteria that we hear from the proponents of the arrest warrant, who claim that our whole nation’s security is dependent on it. On average, 125 people are brought back to this country each year to face trial. In that context, the arrest warrant is to our benefit and in our interest. The people whom we expel we ought to be able to expel under our own law, and would be able to if only we had the gumption to pass our own laws. As was said earlier, we are now willing to sacrifice the fundamental principle of Magna Carta: that no one will be imprisoned, fined or held against their will without the judgment of a court. We are now willing to allow that principle to be abrogated by a Polish magistrate. Surely, wise and good though Polish magistrates may be, it is not worth the theft of a wheelbarrow to undermine something that has been our protector for 799 years.
I want to deal with the politics of this as well, for where does it leave not only the Government but the Conservative party, which had, until a few weeks ago, a really sensible, logical, well-thought-through position on the European Union. It had a strong and sound and firm position, which was to go for renegotiation and repatriate powers. Repatriate powers? When we have just surrendered them? Wave the white flag, and then, two hours later, put up the Union Jack at half mast? Will anyone believe that we have a hope of repatriating powers if we surrender them now? Will anyone think that opting into 35 measures, 49 measures, and a few more secretly, is the beginning of a renegotiation? Will anyone believe the promises made by politicians or the policies on which we stood at the last election—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North revealed to us—or the soaring oratory of our Prime Minister, who in 2002, in opposing the European arrest warrant, said:
“If someone came before him who had committed an offence that was not a crime in this country, according to the district judge, the Home Secretary would have to say, ‘I am sorry. You may spend time rotting in a Greek or Spanish jail…But there is nothing I can do about it.’”—[Official Report, 9 December 2002; Vol. 396, c. 109.]
So, in 2002, the Prime Minister was worried that this would lead to people rotting in Spanish or Greek jails. Now he thinks that rotting in Spanish or Greek jails seems to be a good thing. I do not see the logic in that, but I equally do not see how anyone can rely on what politicians say if in opposition they have backbone and in government they are jellyfish. It is an entirely hopeless way of attempting to run the country.
Let me end with a reminder of Sir Robert Peel, a great Prime Minister and a distinguished man, one of the most intellectual figures ever to hold the office that he held—and he was Home Secretary as well. When he did his final papers—they were vivas, not papers—so
clever was he, so intelligent was he, that the public went to listen to him answering the questions, and he got a first-class degree in classics and mathematics. In 1846, he split the Conservative party. He got through a measure that the Conservatives loathed on the back of Opposition votes—something that may happen with the European arrest warrant—but he stood boldly at the Dispatch Box and said, yes, he had changed his mind, yes, what he now thought was different from what he thought before, but it was essential for the good of the nation.
Do we have that from this Front Bench? Do we have an avowal of the importance of this surrender to Europe, or do we have mealy-mouthed words about the difficulties of negotiation and the problems with coalition? There is not a bold, forthright, intellectual case for change, but merely the convenience of office, and it not only risks damaging the Government and splitting the Tory party, but it surrenders our sovereignty to a body from which we want to get it back. So I say to Her Majesty’s Government,
“Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood . . . then imitate the action of the tiger.”
4.5 pm