It is a pleasure to follow the pro-European views of the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry). I agree with everything he said and wish to reiterate one of the points he made: of the 4,000 criminals arrested in this country under the EAW, 95% were foreign nationals. We need to make that point. The EAW is a mechanism to get bad people out of our country to be put on trial and then, I hope, convicted for crimes carried out usually in other countries. By contrast, under the “reckless” position put forward yesterday, good people—Polish plumbers and their families—would be deported to other European countries, while, presumably, the criminals, after we have left the EU, would not be, because we would not be part of the EAW. That is the position of the party that claims to be speaking in the national interest; in fact, it is doing the exact opposite.
We benefit from immigration. EU migrants have made a great contribution to our country over many years. Our prosperity has been increased by the higher economic growth that resulted from nationals of the A8 accession countries coming here to work on our bus
and transport systems, our health service, our shops and retail establishments, as architects and teachers and in all kinds of other occupations—even as priests. I have an excellent Catholic priest in my constituency who now runs morning services for the English-speaking community and afternoon services for the Poles and Lithuanians. We are benefiting from the migration of Europeans to our country, but at the same time we have to work with other Europeans in the interests of our country.
In my remaining time, let me say a few brief words about Operation Golf, which I mentioned in an intervention on the Home Secretary. The Europol website has a section called “Operational Successes”. Operation Golf is the first of a list of many dealing with different countries. Operation Golf was a joint investigation team operation by the Metropolitan police and the Romanian national police. It targeted Romanian organised crime; it led to the arrest of 126 individuals and the searching of 16 addresses in Ilford, most of them in my constituency; and it led to the freeing of a large number of children who were being used in organised begging gangs.
This operation went on between 2007 and 2010. In 2011, the Romanian authorities used the European arrest warrants to get the extradition of a man described as a “real life Fagin”. This man, Nelu Stoian, was extradited to Romania along with others to be prosecuted for their crimes. That would not have been possible without the external arrangements we have and the European arrest warrant. We should be proud of the fact that we are part of that, and we should recognise that it benefits our country.
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