I want to make a few brief points. In July, significant reforms were introduced to procedures in respect of the European arrest warrant. There is now clearly a test for proportionality, so that
UK police forces are not going to execute European arrest warrants for trivial or minor crimes that would not receive a custodial sentence here. It is also necessary to be able to demonstrate dual criminality; in other words, the European arrest warrant will not be executed if the offence is not also a crime in the United Kingdom. The judge being requested to issue the European arrest warrant also has to be satisfied as to the readiness of the case or, in other words, that the case is ready to go to trial and that the European arrest warrant is not simply being used as a means of detaining people indefinitely or going on some sort of fishing expedition. People are therefore only going to be extradited if the offences are serious, if the authorities elsewhere are ready to proceed and if the matters in question are also crimes here in the UK.
Since 2009, 221 people have been extradited by the Thames Valley police under a European arrest warrant. This year, the Thames Valley police have extradited five high-risk offenders from the United Kingdom. They are people wanted for the most serious offences, including murder, terrorism offences, armed robbery, serious assault and firearms offences. Significant extraditions in 2014 by the Thames Valley police include a Polish individual wanted for grievous bodily harm and aggravated burglary in Poland. This individual had numerous convictions for violent offences. Because he was assessed as high risk, the warrant was received, processed and executed within 24 hours, thus removing a potential offender and providing reassurance to the community. Indeed, our local community in the Thames Valley has clearly been safeguarded by this person’s removal from the UK.
An individual wanted for taking part in the murder of two youths in Milton Keynes was arrested in Holland under the provisions of a European arrest warrant. He was extradited back to the UK, where he now awaits trial. Since July, Thames Valley police have also collected one suspect under the provision of a European arrest warrant for fraud offences that had a criminal benefit of some £150,000. The European arrest warrant is being used to help to keep us safe by removing foreign criminals from our communities. That is an important point. The House has to remember that, of those extradited from the UK under the European arrest warrant, the overall majority are foreign nationals.
The Metropolitan police show that 95% of the nearly 1,500 criminal suspects, including murderers and rapists, who fled to London to avoid facing justice overseas but have been extradited over the past five years under the European arrest warrant, were foreign nationals. Some 95% of the warrants applied to foreign nationals. Of the 1,500 criminal suspects in the Met police area—including 45 alleged killers, 35 men wanted for rape, 25 accused of child sex offences, 30 suspected armed robbers, two alleged terrorists, 130 people wanted for drug trafficking and 252 people accused of fraud—only 67, or less than 5% of the total, were Britons. This is largely about ensuring that criminals cannot flee to the UK and use it is a safe haven.
As Lord Howard of Lympne, a former Home Secretary and no great supporter of the EU, observed:
“I hope that Parliament will endorse the Government’s sensible approach… Justice delayed, too often, is justice denied… I have seen the benefits of the Arrest Warrant, and expressed concerns about its shortcomings. Now that this Government has acted to address those shortcomings, it should continue to be a tool at the disposal of our law enforcement agencies.”
The arrest warrant meant that Hussain Osman, one of the failed July 2005 London bombers, who fled to Italy, could be brought back to Britain for trial in just 56 days. By contrast, the man who masterminded the Paris metro attack in 1995, which killed eight people, was able to shelter in London for 10 years before he could be extradited, because the warrant was not in force at the time. I do not think that any Member wants any part of the UK to be a safe haven for foreign criminals.
Prior to the EAW, I can remember spending hours at Horseferry Road magistrates court and elsewhere arguing the case, while defendants were able to delay extradition because we needed individual extradition treaties with individual countries. We now have a working proportionality filter: a UK judge is required to consider whether extradition would be disproportionate; and if a person is wanted for prosecution, a judge has to take into account the seriousness of the conduct, the likely penalty and the possibility of the relevant foreign authorities taking less coercive measures than extradition. Furthermore, the Government sought to curb any lengthy pre-trial detentions, so in cases where someone is wanted for trial abroad, extradition can go ahead only where the issuing state has made a decision to charge and try that person.
I think that the Government are right to push ahead with the EAW. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has rightly warned that abandoning it would undermine the fight against crime and risk turning Britain into a haven for fugitives, and I hope that the whole House will vote on the pragmatic grounds of public safety, rather than playing politics. The well-being and safety of our constituents are too important.