I thank the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, who makes a valid point that I will come on to address. There is certainly an element of truth in what he describes.
I want to pay tribute to the changes that the Government have made. I recognise that some additional checks have been introduced. However, as Fair Trials International—we should bear in mind that it has handled these cases—and, today, Liberty have made clear, those checks are wholly and woefully inadequate to stop the flow of injustices. The proportionality test is too skewed in favour of extradition; the safeguard to prevent “hit and hope” warrants is too flimsy; there is nothing to deal with mistaken identity; and, perversely, appeal rights were weakened, not strengthened. We never got a chance to scrutinise those measures on the Floor of the House, because they were slipped through in Committee. That is a shame, because I, and colleagues, would have wanted to be able to try to strengthen the safeguards. It should have been debated on the Floor of the House on Report. I twice tried to table amendments, but we were given no time.
It is crystal clear from the rising volume of EAWs that Britain receives that we will have more problems ahead. This year the number of EAWs we received reached almost 8,000—a record number. With this broad net, it is almost inevitable that more and more innocent Britons will face rough justice and be caught within it, and, as a result, be subject to Kafkaesque courts and gruesome prison conditions.
I do not think that the checks are inadequate: I know that they are, because since July, when they came into force, I have been contacted directly by another victim, Keith Hainsworth, a 64-year-old tutor of ancient Greek. In July, with his wife, he visited the Peloponnese region of Greece, where they pottered around ruins and old churches, at the time of a local forest fire. The couple’s hire car was spotted in the vicinity—by a well-known local mischief-maker, as it subsequently turned out when they got to court—and on the strength of that alone, out of the blue, he was arrested in October in France under an EAW on his way back from a weekend away in Paris. He was apprehended by British customs officials who took his passport. He was denied basic rights. He spent a month under house arrest in France. He was surrendered to the Greeks to be held in awful conditions for 30 hours. He was charged for a bottle of water. That is what you get as a Brit abroad in some of these jails. When he finally faced a Greek judge, the court was in almost comic disarray at the farce that had come before it and dropped the case immediately, but not without Keith Hainsworth and his family having been traumatised and subjected to a legal bill of £40,000. Let us ask ourselves how many of our constituents could afford to pay that. If it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone, and nothing in the new legislation will stop it.
I want to pick up on a point made by the former Justice Secretary, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who is no longer in his place. Ministers have been very candid in saying that there has been no renegotiation of the EU framework decision because there is no renegotiation to be had. It is clear that there is no possibility of revising the framework decision. I might take a different view if there were, but that is not on the cards. That tells us that we have a stark
choice: either we opt out and negotiate a bespoke extradition treaty with the EU, as one member not 27, that allows streamlined extradition—no one wants to go back to the bureaucracy of the past—but with proper safeguards, or, mark my words, we will continue to hang our constituents and British citizens out to dry. The Home Secretary made it very clear today that there is a legal basis on which to do that; the issue is political will, on our side and on the EU side.
We have heard a string of scare stories about the operational cliff edge that police would face if we opt out, but no one is suggesting that we opt out and do nothing. That is not a serious suggestion by anyone in this House, so we do not need to dwell on it for too long. If someone wants to intervene on me, I would be happy to take a question on that. We cannot have it both ways. It cannot be suggested that Britain would somehow become a safe haven for the worst criminals if we are outside the EAW, when that is precisely why all our EU partners have a strong mutual interest in agreeing a new extradition relationship, as long as we had made our position clear.
This debate is not just about extradition; it is about something far bigger. Everyone wants strong operational co-operation with our EU partners, but we are a global nation and we should be able to do that, as we do with many partners from around the world, without sacrificing democratic control. Why is it only with our EU partners that giving up democratic control, whether to the ECJ or to harmonise laws, is the strict red-line condition on co-operation, when it is not such a condition with the Australians, the Canadians or the Americans?
The long-term direction of travel is very clear, as Viviane Reding set out in a speech for the Commission last year.