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1 Apr 2003 : Column 796—continued
Mr. Speaker: I noted the number of written statements listed today. They are submitted in accordance with the rules of the House, which hon. Members have made, so I have nothing more to say on the matter.
Harry Cohen (Leyton and Wanstead): On a point of order Mr. Speaker. Last Thursday, the acting Leader of the House said:
- "I am sure that the Prime Minister will want to report back to the House at the earliest opportunity on his important discussions with President Bush and the Secretary-General of the United Nations."—[Official Report, 27 March 2003; Vol. 402, c. 454.]
The matter was raised with you yesterday, Mr. Speaker, and you said:
- "I did note what was said last Thursday."—[Official Report, 31 March 2003; Vol. 402, c. 668.]
Mr. Speaker: Yes, I did note what the acting Leader of the House said, and if the hon. Gentleman wishes me to elaborate on that, I say that I have no responsibility for what the acting Leader of the House has to say on a Thursday. I shall say no more on the matter.
Emergency Broadcasting System
12.37 pm
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington): I beg to move,
- That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to co-ordinate the provision of a multi-media broadcasting system to provide information to the public about emergencies and potential emergencies.
There is not sufficient time today to consider whether all those prerequisites for an organised reaction to a threat have been satisfied. I should like to highlight one point that gives me genuine cause for concern—the abandonment of the emergency planning exercise that was due to take place on Sunday 23 March. The reason given for postponing the exercise was the international situation. Surely that is exactly why a test is needed.
My Bill focuses on the provision of information to the public through an emergency broadcasting system, or EBS. In times of crisis the public need the right quantity and quality of information, and they need to know where to access that information. It must be clear and consistent and it must come from a reliable official source. We can no longer rely on the air raid sirens of world war two, which are long gone. We need an emergency warning system or broadcasting system suited to the 21st century. We have entirely new ways of communicating with people via the internet, e-mail, mobile phones, television, radio and so on. The system must therefore be a multi-channel one using existing technology, and would link land-line and mobile phone operators, TV, radio and internet service providers.
I confess that I have not made a detailed assessment of the cost of such a system, but the emergency broadcasting system would rely on existing technology. If Members have a mobile phone, an e-mail address or a fax machine, they already receive many unsolicited messages, probably tens daily, offering anything from an unsecured loan to Viagra—one to pay for the other, perhaps. The facility to broadcast system-wide messages already exists. Indeed, the BBC has the technology, and I shall give a couple of examples. "Connecting in a crisis", a very good BBC initiative, helps to ensure that the public have the information that they need and demand in a civil emergency. The initiative sets out to encourage emergency planners to work more closely with broadcasters in the preparation of strategies for communicating essential information. A similar initiative, "U R @ Risk", is a joint Environment Agency and Met Office scheme to provide the UK's first integrated multi-media system for severe weather and flood alerts, and ensure that people in flood areas receive warnings by text message, e-mail and even their
television. There is also the national steering committee on warning and informing the public, which is working on pulling all of that together.The technology is there, and the research has been done. It is simply a case of pulling together the technologies and integrating them, not creating anything new. Integration could be achieved manually—key individuals would be identified with responsibility to broadcast officially sanctioned messages—or electronically using tried and tested technology and interfaces. The use of an EBS would not necessarily be limited to emergency planning. There is no reason why, for instance, it could not be used in child abduction cases, as happens in the US. The first hour in which a child is missing is the critical period.
Having the ability to broadcast messages widely across different media could indeed save lives. The risk of doing without an emergency broadcasting system is that information will either not be provided at all or, perhaps even more dangerously, will be inconsistent and delivered at different times and in different ways to various places in the country. That is clearly a recipe for uncertainty and confusion—what is needed is clarity and confidence.
I am grateful for the support that the Bill has received from Members on both sides of the House, and if I obtain leave to introduce it today, I will seek even wider support for its aims. I contend that we cannot do without an emergency broadcasting system, which is a key component of any emergency planning response and would safeguard our homeland at a time of crisis. My Bill is designed to provide that safeguard, and I commend it to the House.
Bill ordered to be brought in by
Tom Brake, Simon Hughes, Mr. Don Foster, Mr. Paul Keetch, Vera Baird, Michael Fabricant, Mr. Richard Allan, Mr. Hugo Swire, Mr. David Heath and Mr. Edward Davey.
Emergency Broadcasting System
Tom Brake accordingly presented a Bill to require the Secretary of State to co-ordinate the provision of a multi-media broadcasting system to provide information to the public about emergencies and potential emergencies: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 4 July, and to be printed [Bill 85].
Orders of the Day
Crime (International Co-operation) Bill [Lords]
[Relevant documents: The First, Third and Seventh Reports from the Joint Committee on Human Rights of Session 2002–03, on its scrutiny of Bills, HC 191, HC 375 and HC 547.]
Order for Second Reading read.
12.44 pm
The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration (Beverley Hughes): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Bill implements measures in seven separate European Union agreements. The first is the Schengen implementing convention of 1990. As the House knows, the UK applied to participate in 1999 and was accepted by the Justice and Home Affairs Council in 2000. The other agreements are the mutual legal assistance convention, which updates the provisions of the 1959 convention; the protocol to that convention, finally adopted in 2001; the framework decision on the execution in the EU of freezing assets and evidence; the framework decision on combating terrorism; the convention on driving disqualification; and the framework decision on non-cash means of payment agreed in May 2001.
UK Ministers were involved in negotiating all those measures apart from Schengen, and our application to join the police and judicial provisions of Schengen, together with all the other measures drawn into the Bill from the six other agreements, have been considered through our own domestic scrutiny process. Parliament has previously decided that justice and home affairs agreements should be implemented through primary legislation—hence, the Bill before us today, which has already been examined by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and in another place.
Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey): As the Minister knows, she has support from the Liberal Democrat Benches for the process in relation to the Bill. Are the Government taking up in the EU the processes in relation to other legislation—a matter raised sometimes with her colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Ainsworth) and elsewhere—whereby we are often asked for views on legislation in draft that has already been decided by the Council because of the time delay, and where the final decision does not require consent from this or any other national Parliament, or from the European Parliament?
Beverley Hughes: I know that views have been expressed about that. The hon. Gentleman will agree that we must get the timetabling of those matters right and more appropriate, so that Members' views can be expressed before those agreements are finalised, rather than afterwards, as he said, because of delays. I take his point and I understand that the issue is being addressed.
The Bill marks a significant advance in co-operation against serious crime and terrorism in the European Union. It will enable us to work more closely and
effectively with our EU partners, and more widely outside the EU. It will make it easier to investigate and prosecute cross-border criminal activity. By implementing key EU measures directed at terrorism and serious crime, it demonstrates firmly our commitment to greater co-operation on these matters with our EU partners. The measures on driving disqualification will promote greater road safety across the EU.The Bill comes to this place after careful and helpful scrutiny in another place, where the Government responded to some of the concerns expressed and acted on them to provide greater clarity and reassurance. Thus some key order-making powers are now subject to affirmative rather than negative procedure, and conditions attached to cross-border surveillance by foreign officers are now written into the Bill.
We are already working effectively with our EU partners through Europol and bilateral joint operations, but we need to do more. There are often too many obstacles to international investigations that serve only to protect the criminal. As Members know, bringing multinational gangs to justice may involve several trials in different countries, each with its own criminal procedures. Ensuring success for such complex procedures means cutting down on the obstacles that block effective cross-border co-operation. That is what the Bill sets out to achieve.
The Bill will make the changes needed to enable the UK to participate in the non-border aspects of the Schengen convention. The Schengen arrangements provide a very clear framework for effective co-operation, especially for cross-border police operations.
I should like to explain in more detail what the Bill contains and will achieve. Part 1 will modernise our arrangements for providing mutual legal assistance and bring them into line with new proceedings introduced by Schengen and by the mutual legal assistance convention agreed in May 2000. MLAC, as it was called, was part of the European Union's so-called anti-terrorism road map, which was agreed after 11 September. Mutual legal assistance is the formal process by which countries request and provide assistance in obtaining evidence located in one country to assist in criminal proceedings in another. Effective and swift mutual legal assistance arrangements are essential if we and our EU partners are to run successful cross-border investigations and prosecutions.
MLA is not new—we have done it for many years—but the new provisions will speed up the process and reduce the scope for delay in respect of international co-operation. They will do so, for instance, by allowing UK prosecutors to send requests for evidence directly to courts in other EU countries, rather than going through a central authority system because of an obligation always to do so. Some of the key modernising provisions will also apply to countries outside the EU. For instance, we expect that the ability to provide other countries with evidence by TV link in mutual legal assistance cases will be of most use in cases involving countries outside the EU, because greater distances obviously make travel less feasible.
The Bill also introduces mutual recognition of orders to freeze evidence, as provided for by the EU draft framework decision on the execution of orders freezing evidence. We see that as a considerable step forward. It will significantly speed up the process of securing valuable evidence. Mutual recognition takes mutual legal assistance one step further by recognising directly, as between EU member states, a request made by a court, thus enabling a direct response to be made with the minimum of formality. The UK has been and is a keen supporter of the principle of mutual recognition, which both speeds up co-operation and respects the standards as well as the diversity of legal systems.
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