My Lords, I, too, will ask a question of the Minister, which arises from the remarkable filibuster of the noble Lord, Lord Lamont of Lerwick. The noble Lord, Lord Lawson, inquired whether it would be possible for a member state of the European Union to conclude a treaty with the European Union. I will ask a different question. If it did, would the European Union involvement mean that the involvement of the European Court of Justice
was automatic, and hence that the solution proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, to his problem—which is the involvement of the European Court of Justice—would in itself bring in the European Court of Justice very much quicker?
I do not wish to heap coals of fire on the Minister’s head—we come to bury Protocol 36, not to praise it, and the Minister is not only a learned but an honourable man. Therefore I do not want to say how much I share the criticisms made by the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, on grounds of procedure, and I do not want to say how, if he chose to press his amendment, I would willingly vote for it. It is very unfair on the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, that having himself repeated Mrs May’s commitment to a full debate and a vote in this House he is put in the position of having to dishonour his commitment. He is an honourable man—Brutus is an honourable man—and certainly I do not wish to bury him.
The only corner of this House so far, apart from the noble Lord, Lord Lamont of Lerwick, that is not backing the Government in what they propose to do, asks a question about the extradition—civis romanus sum—of the British citizen exported abroad to vile conditions in a foreign dungeon. Can the Minister tell us how many of the 105 people extradited from this country on murder charges under the European arrest warrant since 2009 were British citizens? I believe that the number is extremely small. Do we want to keep these people on our streets? Do we want to keep them in our jails? Why do we not send them back to face trial in their own countries? The civis romanus sum point is a good one—and I understand what is being said by the noble Lords, Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Willoughby de Broke—but it is a very small point against the fact that bringing back murderers and rapists from abroad for trial in this country and sending abroad for trial foreign citizens in this country wanted in their countries for these crimes is clearly the right thing to do.
I believe that if we did not opt back into the European arrest warrant, we would be faced with negotiating a tangle of bilateral agreements. Of course it could be done, but it takes time. I know a little bit about these things. We should remember how long the UK-US agreement took and how controversial its terms were in the end. We should remember how, in some quarters, it is still controversial. It is not easy to do these things, and we would have to do them extraordinarily fast. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, that we have two weeks to go. If we do not opt back in again, the whole structure falls. We would then either be stuck with his course of trying to negotiate in a hurry an agreement with the EU as a block, or the EU as such—and the Minister will tell us whether that would be effective in achieving the purpose of the noble Lord, Lord Lamont—or we would have to negotiate a very large number of bilateral treaties with people who would be pretty discontented with us because we would be causing them quite unnecessary confusion and wasting time.
Therefore, I strongly support the Government on the substance and, because I am being brief and I do not want to cause any embarrassment at all to the Minister, I will not say how appalling I think the procedure has been.