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Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough): I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, and hope that I can be helpful to him. I remember from my dim and distant days as a law student, and perhaps the right hon. Gentleman does as well, that under the civil jurisdiction, judges of the High Court can in civil cases issue orders called ne exeat regno, which prevent people without criminal convictions but who have something to do with a civil case from leaving the kingdom. Will the right hon. Gentleman make inquiries of the Law Officers to see whether that power is available to be used in the circumstances that we are discussing, and whether it is available to be used either civilly or in the criminal jurisdiction in the circumstances that he and the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) have just been discussing? It may be worth looking into.
Mr. Straw: I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for his recollection of his law lectures. I am afraid that I do not recall that particular aspect and, as I have been asked to offer apologies, I will offer an apology about that. However, I will certainly take up the hon. and learned Gentleman's point.
Given that passports are issued under the royal prerogative, two years ago we looked carefully at the possibility of withdrawing the facility of a passport by the royal prerogative as well--in other words, by Executive fiat. However, as the hon. and learned Gentleman will be aware, the strong advice that we received, with which it was impossible to disagree--apart from the fact that there were major issues of principle--was that as Parliament had already intervened to modify the exercise of that royal prerogative by, for example, other statutory measures to restrict the exit of people from this country, the use of the prerogative for such purposes was not possible; there was also a query as to whether it was desirable.
In the 1970s and 1980s, this country suffered terribly from criminality and hooliganism in football grounds and away from those grounds but in the United Kingdom. Over time, a combination of increasingly effective police action, better design and security in the grounds and a greater acceptance of responsibility by the clubs has led to a great diminution in trouble here at home.
It has also meant that our police service has built up unrivalled expertise in dealing with the hooligan problem in this country. That expertise, relying on the traditional British policing virtues of careful targeting and careful planning, has many times shown its value in the course of joint operations such as the one put in place in this country for the Euro 96 tournament.
Last November, I established a co-ordinating group to make preparations for Euro 2000. That group brought together officials from Government, with representatives of the football authorities, the police service and NCIS. It also co-ordinated the efforts being made with the Belgian and Dutch authorities to ensure effective co-operation in the run-up to, and during, the tournament.
I have had many meetings with my Belgian and Dutch counterparts over the past few months. I signed a memorandum of understanding with the Belgian and Dutch Ministers in February, and I have in recent days had regular contact, in person and on the telephone, with Klaus de Vries, the Dutch Minister of the Interior, and Antoine Duquesne, the Belgian Minister of the Interior.
The measures in place are the most extensive ever made prior to any similar major sporting tournament abroad. Central to this strategy has been effective police co-operation between ourselves and the police in Belgium and Holland. As a result, the Belgian and Dutch police sought and received from our police service the most detailed and extensive operational advice about arrangements that they were putting in place for Euro 2000.
As well as providing operational advice, British police officers have been deployed in Belgium and Holland, and on Eurostar, to act as spotters to help police operations here and abroad. NCIS has collated details of individuals convicted of football-related offences in the past--and those whom it has suspected of causing trouble. The list of names, as I told the House, was passed to its counterparts in France, as well as those in Holland and Belgium, well before the tournament began.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold): I am grateful to the Home Secretary, because he has been very generous in giving way. Most of the 460-odd people whom he described as having been administratively deported will presumably not have been charged with any offence, and will therefore have no record in the future. Will the Home Secretary say whether the Belgian authorities, in conjunction with the co-operation that he has described, are continuing their inquiries against any of those 460-odd people, and whether any further charges are likely to arise?
Mr. Straw: I understand that no charges have been laid at any stage against any of those 464, which is why they were subject to administrative deportation. We have only the barest details--if this needs to be added to, I shall ensure that my hon. Friend the Minister of State does so when he replies--of the site at which they were subject to arrest. We have no further details. There is no evidence of any kind that could be used in any court at all--
Mr. Straw: If the hon. Gentleman will wait for a moment, I shall answer the question asked by the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown).
The hon. Member for Cotswold may have heard this morning, as I did, the police chief from Belgium. I am trying to turn up the transcript. He may have heard Colonel Blickie answering a question from Mr. Edward Stourton on "Today". Mr. Stourton asked:
- Do you accept that some of those who were arrested were innocent?
- Yes of course, yes of course.
- Do you regret that?
- Of fact, a fact you regret it that's the problem. When we are doing our operations in the street, it's rather difficult to make the difference between those who committed some crimes in the street and those who were together with them and did nothing.
Mr. Fabricant: On that point, and further to it, will the Home Secretary be making representations to the Belgian police, to request copies of video tapes that they will have taken, to add to the files of NCIS? Were members of the British police or their agents in Belgium at that time making their own video tapes? If such video tapes will be made available, will the right hon. Gentleman eventually introduce Government legislation so that we can impose banning orders on those individuals or withdraw their passports--powers for which we have been asking?
Mr. Straw: I understand that NCIS will be seeking whatever evidence it can secure from the Belgian authorities. British police officers have certainly been acting as spotters in Belgium as well as in the Netherlands, and have been present in the bi-national police control operation.
As I have already said, the majority of those arrested in Charleroi were not deported. They were released without any further action or charge being taken. We must accept that--as I shall be making clear later--different police services operate in a different way.
I was explaining about the lists with which we were provided by NCIS. They included individuals subject to international banning orders, those subject to domestic banning orders and--to deal directly with the point relating to the civil order which we had hoped to see provided for in the Bill introduced last year by the hon. Member for West Chelmsford--the 500 people who have been convicted of football-related offences in the past but who are not subject to banning orders of any sort.
We asked the authorities overseas to refuse entry to Belgium and Holland to all those on the lists during the duration of the tournament, and that operation has largely been effective. Of the 464 individuals so far deported, having been arrested in Charleroi and Brussels last weekend, the latest information of which I am aware is that only 16 were suspected football hooligans and one was subject to a domestic banning order.
We can debate what happened to the Bill of the hon. Member for West Chelmsford until the cows come home. The reality is that the same effect as the effect of including provisions for such civil orders in that Bill, which we wanted and which many Opposition Members--although not all--wanted has been achieved by another route.
A larger question is what to do with those who have not been the subject of football-related convictions but who have other convictions of violence. That is a new issue with which we must deal.
Mr. Oliver Heald (North-East Hertfordshire): Will the Home Secretary give way?
Mr. Straw: I should like to make some progress. I shall then give way to the hon. Gentleman, who speaks from the Opposition Front Bench.
Much has been made of the efforts of the German authorities and police to prevent known hooligans from travelling to Belgium and or the Netherlands. I applaud the commitment of my counterpart in Germany--Interior Minister Otto Schilly--and his colleagues in the action that they have taken. There are, however, two points of difference for the House to note. First, each police service in the European Union operates in a wholly different judicial framework and has a different framework for the accountability of the police. The police in one jurisdiction may long have had powers of arrest and detention that may appear peremptory and unacceptable in other jurisdictions. Secondly, we are not the only nation to suffer football hooliganism, but our hooliganism is different both in its scale and in its provenance.
In an interesting report on Radio 4's "Today" programme this morning, German hooliganism was described as "highly organised". Part of our hooliganism is also highly organised and premeditated. Where that is the case, our police have been able to take effective action to prevent those involved from travelling. More than 200 people arrested in Charleroi were UK citizens, but I remind the House that 130 German citizens were arrested too. The efforts of the German police have not stopped the travel from Germany of those who have subsequently got into trouble.
The difference with our country is this: the evidence suggests that a significant part of English hooliganism abroad is much more difficult to detect and prevent in advance because it is not organised, and nor is much of it specifically premeditated. That does not excuse hooliganism one bit, but it does pose much greater difficulties in dealing with it. The dismal truth is that the vast majority of those arrested during last weekend's outrageous events did not have previous convictions for football-related offences, and nor were they suspected of having been so involved. That is perhaps the most depressing aspect of what happened in Belgium. The problems were not created by a tiny minority of well-organised, hard-core thugs.
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