As I rise to speak at 10.45 pm, I am reminded of my former constituent who, as I left the gym one morning, pointed out that, as a member of the House of Lords, I must be semi-retired. Little did he know. The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, ended on a very important point. We started this debate at 8.56 pm, after a very long Second Reading debate. It was not rocket science for the Government to understand that a number of noble Lords, who have great expertise and knowledge on these issues, wish to contribute. Your Lordships have been remarkably self-disciplined in keeping the debate so short and precise. We have had numerous debates of this kind in which many—but not all—noble Lords here this evening have taken part. Given the importance of tonight, and the mess the Government made of it last week in the House of Commons, they should have got it right. I am sorry and disappointed at the way the Government have behaved.
The Motion before us tonight is, as we have heard, different from what the Government originally intended. It is right that the Government have changed their proposal after the chaos and criticism of their approach in the other place last week. Parliament should have the right to debate and vote on the opt-in of the 35 measures that the Government have decided are the most important and crucial to national security and public safety, including—but not only—the European arrest warrant. The confusion we saw last week in the House of Commons was caused by the Government undertaking a rather curious and disingenuous procedural sleight of hand by referring to just 11 of the measures and not the full 35, including the European arrest warrant and then, against the Speaker’s ruling, claiming that it did include them. I hope this does not sound pompous—I have never been accused of being pompous and it is not meant to sound like that—but that does not do anything to enhance the reputation and integrity of the Government where Europe is concerned or to give any confidence that the Government can be relied on to put national interest and public security before party political interest.
The Government have amended the Motion they originally intended to be debated this evening. The new Motion clarifies the fact that your Lordships’ House can support, or indeed oppose, all 35 of the measures, including the EAW. That is very simple and is largely what the Home Secretary and Prime Minister promised. However, I was surprised that the Minister did not mention, earlier in the debate, a point referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. When this House discussed the negotiations regarding the opt-in, we endorsed the 35 measures at that time. This was not the Motion before the House of Commons. I listened with great care to the excellent speech by the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, which I think he made more in sorrow and disappointment than in anger. I have
known the noble Lord for a long time. In the first committee I ever served on in Parliament, the noble Lord was leading from his party as the shadow Minister and I was on the government side. We were bringing in the national minimum wage and he was leading a team of very able opposition Back-Benchers against it. Recognising the noble Lord’s experience, I hope that the Minister accepts the amendment, which is very precise and fair in its criticisms.
The noble Lord, Lord Boswell, referred to a letter that he received from the Leader of the House on tonight’s debate. I am sorry that the official Opposition did not receive a copy of that letter. It would have been helpful.
As we have heard, the handling of this issue has been quite appalling. Noble Lords who have taken part and followed these debates closely will recall and no doubt share some of our exasperation as we have tried to extract details from Ministers on the issues being debated. The noble Lords, Lord Faulks and Lord Bates, are the fourth and fifth Ministers whom I have debated this issue with, which started originally with a Statement from the noble Lord, Lord McNally.
I have asked a number of questions since the beginning of this exercise and, ever the optimist, I will raise those again in the hope that I will get some answers. I appreciate that the Government have supplied huge volumes of information but that has not been matched by clarity—a point made by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Through this whole process, the most helpful documents and information that I have seen—this point was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar—were from our own EU Committee. I am grateful to that committee for its briefings in which they were able to talk to lawyers and others with direct experience of these issues. Their experience and advice were equally valuable. This issue requires a great detail and accuracy, yet it has every appearance of a political charade designed to placate anti-European sentiment without full and proper examination of the detail of all its implications. Let us set tonight’s debate in context and be clear about our position in the Labour Party and our commitment to the necessity of fighting crime across boundaries.
The key parts of the EU-wide co-operation that we support and now recognise in the 35 measures are mutual exchange of information in criminal investigations, locating and confiscating the proceeds of crime, criminal record checks, joint cross-border investigations and the European arrest warrant. They are essential crime-fighting tools. This is not some theoretical argument about whether we are pro- or anti-EU co-operation. This debate should only ever have been about hard-nosed, practical measures in the interests of the safety and security of UK citizens. Those of us who made the case for the European arrest warrant welcome the Government’s conversion to its value and importance and the eventual acceptance of the European supervision order which I am sorry was delayed by the Government. It would have been very helpful in making the case for the European arrest warrant had that been brought in earlier.
We have heard examples of problems with the European arrest warrant. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, spoke about the important changes that
have been made. But equally there are numerous other examples. When Jeremy Forrest left the country with a young schoolgirl, he was brought back within days. That would not have happened prior to the European arrest warrant. There are other cases where terrorists have been brought back to the UK much more quickly than they would have been without the European arrest warrant.
Some of us in your Lordships’ House are old enough to remember the costa del crime, when criminals fled to Spain and were not brought back for months or even years. There is a huge value in the European arrest warrant and I am shocked that so many noble Lords are prepared to take on board a few cases. They do not want to change the European arrest warrant but instead throw the baby out with the bathwater, denying its value to British citizens.
We welcome the Government’s conversion on this issue. We welcome the Government’s acceptance of the value of joint EU investigation teams, the acceptance that crime does not stop at the Channel and that such co-operation is essential. We are now clear about what the Government are proposing we opt back into. I am grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for its 13th report enhancing that clarity. I share its criticisms of the lack of clarity in the Explanatory Memorandum.
The noble Lord, Lord Boswell, made an important point about the 35 measures. Measures proposed previously by the EU Committee beyond those 35 have not been given consideration in full and by Parliament. I can think of one in particular that I would have been interested in considering further—recognition around driving offences. If you talk to people in the streets they will tell you time and again that they do not believe the issues of co-operation on driving offences and disqualification are taken seriously enough.
We understand what we are opting back into, but I seek clarification from the Minister on those issues that the Government are seeking not to opt back into and that we would be permanently excluded from. In terms of numbers there were originally 133 crime, law and order, and policing measures, and the Government wanted to opt back in to 35. An additional seven were replaced and the Government opted in. There was a lot of debate in the press at the time, with the two government parties arguing about the precise number of measures that would be opted out of and opted back into.
For there to be any real value in this process it had to be far more than a tidying-up exercise of jettisoned measures that were defunct, irrelevant or useless. There had to be some meaning to it. It could not just be some kind of academic exercise in clearing up those that could have withered on the vine, a point that my noble friend Lord Davies made. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, was the first Minister to raise these issues in your Lordships’ House. He referred to measures that were obsolete, defunct or simply unused. He wrote that the Government were keeping the wheat and losing the chaff. I asked the noble Lord, Lord McNally, in 2012, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, in 2013 and in 2014, and the noble Lord, Lord Bates, last week for some clarity on what that meant and the value of the
measures that the Government want permanently to opt out of. There are three noble Lords here who have experience of this issue. To date, I have received no meaningful answers.
The questions are straightforward. I shall have one last shot at this: can I try again? First, how many and which of the measures of around 100 that the Government plan to opt out of permanently are of any value or even apply to the UK? Secondly, how many were being used and in operation prior to the opt-out decision and how many of those that have been permanently opted out of were harmful to the interests of the UK? Some clear answers to those questions would be extremely useful. Can the Minister answer those? Is he about to intervene?