EU Justice and Home Affairs Measures

It is of course a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), on whose Committee I serve but whose views I do not share. He is a great champion of sovereignty and a sceptic of Europe, but we need to balance the issue of where decisions are made against the protection of our citizens. Let us think about the numbers: under the European arrest warrant over the past five years, 5,000 criminals who would otherwise be cluttering up our own justice system and prisons have been removed from the UK to face justice. At worst, in a world of disconnection from Europe, we would not have the information we needed to know that our citizens were at risk from foreign criminals, who might be rapists, terrorists or murderers. In the balance, despite what he says about individual cases, it is clearly right for Britain to protect itself from such criminals and not to allow his obsession to endanger British citizens.