My Lords, perhaps I might carry on after the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, because I too served on your Lordships’ Home Affairs Sub-Committee. I chaired it some years ago, when we were going through what could be described as a dry run for our debate tonight. That dry run was on protocol 36, the opting out and then opting back in;
the current Prime Minister played a notably positive role in that, particularly so far as the European arrest warrant was concerned.
The first point, which cannot be made too often and which I hope the Minister will recognise, is that in this area of EU policy there is no safety net. It is not like trade where the WTO rules are, I would argue, inadequate but nevertheless are there as a safety net if all else fails. There is no safety net for justice and home affairs. If we do not make watertight arrangements by 29 March next year, we will be walking on thin air. On this, I would like to ask a specific question: are the Government confident that the arrangements for a standstill transition or implementation—whatever they like to call the period that immediately follows 29 March 2019—will be applicable to these justice and home affairs matters when we are a third country? It would be good to have that answered.
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Secondly, while I welcome very much what the Prime Minister said in Munich, which was remarkably positive on this matter, can the Minister just confirm that we are all talking about the same things: the European arrest warrant; the European Criminal Records Information System; the Schengen Information System; the passenger name recognition directive; the Prüm convention; Europol, Eurojust and the European investigation order? I apologise if I have left anything out but the list is rather long anyway. Is that what the Prime Minister was talking about when she said that she wanted effectively to remain in replicas of these matters? The question then is: how on earth is that to be done and structured?
The Prime Minister also said some slightly delphic but nevertheless helpful things about the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice in this field, which I welcome because that could be a major obstacle if it is treated as a no-go area. But it is particularly important in this field because the European arrest warrant is not about the dealings between one Government—that of the United Kingdom—and the European Union of 27. It is about the rights of individuals to due process and is therefore a crucial issue.
Lastly, there is an Irish dimension to this debate and we really must not forget it. The introduction of justice and home affairs legislation was one of the things which enabled issues such as extradition and other matters on the island of Ireland to be depoliticised. For many years, as everyone in this House knows, those matters were highly politicised and it was almost unthinkable that we could have extradited somebody from Ireland to face justice in Northern Ireland for crimes committed there. That has changed but this puts all that at risk, so there is a really serious Irish dimension here. It is quite different from the trade matters we have discussed—although those are crucial, too—because if we found ourselves walking on thin air, then I am afraid the re-politicisation of those issues on the island of Ireland would follow quite quickly. We should just remember that when the Irish ratified the European arrest warrant, they removed their link with the extradition provisions of the Council of Europe, so there is nothing there.
I hope the Minister will be able to say something at the end of this debate about these points. Above all, the call is for greater specificity regarding the Government’s plans. The Prime Minister seemed to set out down the right road towards that in Munich, but they remain shrouded in a good deal of mystery.