The motion proposes “That this House endorses” the Government’s application to opt back into the European arrest warrant. We should not do so. Mine is the only party to state unequivocally that we should not do so: there is 100% agreement on this Bench. [Laughter.] For all their huffing and puffing, those on the two Front Benches are at one on this issue. They are willing to opt to hand more powers over to Europe, and to hand over United Kingdom citizens to be extradited without evidence.
We need extradition. It is right and proper that those who are accused of crimes in one jurisdiction can be transferred from another to face justice, and I recognise the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). We do indeed need cross-border co-operation; I just happen to think that the European arrest warrant is a bad way of arranging it. As the Baker review put it in 2011, the basis of the European arrest warrant is an
“acceptance of a foreign warrant by national judicial authorities without an inquiry into the facts”.
That makes a system of “tick box” extradition inevitable. Provided that the forms are filled in correctly, and irrespective of the strength of the evidence against the defendant, judicial authorities must permit extradition.
Defenders of the European arrest warrant like to cite the new “proportionality test”, as if that would suddenly put right all that has already been found to be wrong with the system. It will not. What is needed is not a proportionality test, but a testing of the evidence in a British court. What is so objectionable about this measure is the lack of an evidential test. The “E word” is not “Europe”, but “evidence”.
The European arrest warrant is built on the fallacy that the different justice systems in the European Union are the same—on the idea of “mutual recognition”. The justice systems in individual member states are not the same. In some member states, public prosecutors are able to exercise a wide degree of latitude, of discretion, before bringing charges; others, such as Poland, have far less discretion. In some legal systems, such as our own, there is a very strong presumption of innocence; in others, the presumption is less strong.
Back in December 2002, before he led the opposition to the European arrest warrant, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) told the House that if we signed up to it
“we will be taking other…judicial systems on trust.”
Indeed. The right hon. Member for Witney also said that he found
“the European arrest warrant highly objectionable”. —[Official Report, 9 December 2002; Vol. 396, c. 107-8.]
Writing in The Daily Telegraph the other day, a former leader of my former party, Lord Howard, helpfully reminded everyone that, in opposition, he and his party
had opposed the introduction of the European arrest warrant. Indeed they did. Parties do one thing in opposition, and another thing in office.
This is not merely a question of whether to opt back into the European arrest warrant. It is also a question of credibility: the credibility of the Government Front Bench. The Government say that they oppose a federal Europe, yet today they are lining up to vote to federalise the system of extradition. They claim to want to return powers to Britain, yet today they will cheerfully vote to hand them away.
The British left once understood what was wrong with this. It was thrilling to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) speak so eloquently and so powerfully. The British left would once have sided with individual liberty and against the power of the Euro-elites. My former colleagues should have the backbone to stand up to a Home Office Minister who is in the pockets of Home Office mandarins, and I hope that they will do so.
6.3 pm