The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and that might be one of the arguments used to drag us into the process. The European Union is a thin-end-of-the-wedge organisation; once it has started, it will move on to further integration.
The right hon. Member for Ashford made a powerful case, as have many Members, for dealing with international crime and keeping terrorism out of the country, which we all want—there is nobody in the House who does not want to deal with international terrorism—but what we have with the European arrest warrant is Hobson’s choice: we must either take what is put before us or have a poorer system, in pragmatic terms, in the short term. If the Government are serious about renegotiating our position in Europe, they should not be giving up negotiating positions like this. We should be asking for a better position, rather than saying, “Yes, we’ll go along with that because there is nothing else available.”
The right hon. Member for Ashford also made the point that many of our crime-fighting agencies, such as the police and the security services, like the European arrest warrant. They do not always follow the rules themselves, but our security services have for some time preferred to have terrorists in London, rather than elsewhere, so that they can watch them. I think that is a bad policy, but I mention it because I do not think that we should always take at face value what is said by police forces and the security services.
I will finish with a powerful point made by the shadow Home Secretary in the previous debate that I think is worthy of an answer. She said that the fact that
there have been miscarriages of justice under the European arrest warrant does not mean that we should get rid of it. We do not remove the police’s power of arrest just because they sometimes abuse it. That is absolutely right, but it does not mean that, when opting into something, we should not look for something better than what we are getting from the European arrest warrant.
5.12 pm