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1 Apr 2003 : Column 831—continued
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should realise that the usual procedure in the House is that quotations should be brief. I cannot allow him to quote huge amounts from speeches made in the other place. It is a clear rule that quotations must be brief.
Mr. Cash: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for reminding me of that pearl of wisdom. I shall certainly follow your ruling. However, that is not to say that it is not within my remit to paraphrase whatever has been said. It is important to be accurate about what Lord Filkin said—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must not test the patience of the Chair. If Lord Filkin has made a speech in the other place, it is on the record for the benefit of all Members of this House, and the hon. Gentleman would be out of order if he proceeded to quote it at great length.
Mr. Cash: As this hon. Gentleman has not the slightest intention of being out of order, he will take the advice of the Chair in good part.
It is, however, important that we acknowledge that important questions of principle lie at the heart of these proposals. Part 2 deals with terrorism, and we must recognise that terrorists do not respect national boundaries. However, we are not talking about national boundaries only in the EU; the principle applies to terrorists wherever they come from. We know perfectly well that there is a greater likelihood that terrorists will come from countries in the middle east, for example, than from the EU.
I raise these matters in connection with our national security. This Bill is described as the Crime (International Co-operation) Bill, and it is a matter of concern that too much emphasis is placed on the question of whether we can contain terrorism that emanates from the EU, which has the underlying problem of Schengen attached to it, or whether we should look more broadly at international co-operation. We must be satisfied that proper safeguards in the judicial and criminal system are made available for the benefit of our own people and, indeed, to other persons suspected of terrorist offences who are subjected to our judicial process, where they know that they will be properly and fairly treated.
For heaven's sake, we have enough examples of cases that have gone as far as the House of Lords, costing millions of pounds in the process. I suspect that the people concerned would have got short shrift in many other countries, but they have, properly, benefited from the manner in which our judicial process protects their rights even though some people, including the Home Secretary and other Members of this House, believe that article 3 will need to be revised by the House.
Mr. Greg Knight: Is not one of the problems with the Bill the fact that it does not allow the English judiciary
sufficient flexibility to examine, and perhaps to substitute, what we would deem a fairer sentence? I think in particular of the example that I gave my hon. Friend earlier—that of disqualification from driving. It appears from clauses 57 and 58 that English courts will not have the discretion to substitute a shorter period of disqualification. Is not that a weakness of the Bill?
Mr. Cash: I entirely agree. Part 3, which deals with driving disqualifications, is based on the proposition that people who commit a driving offence for which they are disqualified while abroad should not be able to escape disqualification when they return home to their usual state of residence. However, any such proposition is dependent on what the penalties are, on the manner in which they are enforced and on who enforces them.
The EU convention on driving disqualifications is intended to promote the principle that drivers should abide by the rules of the road no matter where they are driving, thereby promoting greater safety throughout the EU. However, I make the same point about countries that are not in the EU. I am not entirely convinced, for example, that if a tourist from America, India or Tibet comes here, hires a car and drives badly, he should be treated differently from that breed of drivers who come within the remit of the EU convention. We have to recognise that people are people, whatever part of the world they come from; there is not a special breed of people who come from the European Union.
Mr. Knight: As I understand it, in some jurisdictions one can lose one's driving licence for committing a criminal offence that has nothing whatsoever to do with motoring.
Mr. Cash: I sincerely hope that that fate does not befall me because nothing would be worse than being barred from driving for committing an offence in France, for example. That would be intolerable.
The question of the Henry VIII clauses, which arises in relation to clause 92 in particular, concerns me a great deal. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), as I can see from the expression on his face, anticipates what I am about to say. Such clauses crop up in far too many Bills. I described the European Representation Bill, which was introduced in the name of the Lord Chancellor, as having more of a Cardinal Wolsey clause than a Henry VIII clause. No doubt such measures are intended to try to reduce the range and extent of primary legislation, but we are already subjected to a considerable number of what are being described as knives, guillotines and programme motions. On top of that, we find that the draconian arrangements in clause 92 make this important Bill much more complicated, and much less democratic, because it can be amended by resolutions of the House, by regulation and by order.
I believe that I am right in saying that some adjustments were made to the Bill in the other place, and that the affirmative resolution was applied to some of the provisions, although the annulment procedure was retained for others. That is not to say that taking measures by order is not an increasingly unsatisfactory way of legislating, particularly where one is dealing with
questions of this kind. Because of judicial co-operation, the extent and range of criminal law in the EU is gaining ground exponentially.Last week, or the week before, in cross-examining a Minister, I asked about the introduction of qualified majority voting in that context, because our criminal law system is being seriously invaded, and the Bill is an example of that. The mechanisms that it provides for dealing with criminal matters, including drug trafficking and all the other things that we abhor, are being driven forward in the Convention on the Future of Europe to the point at which there will be a significant, if not complete, reduction in the ability of national Parliaments—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. In his well-known enthusiasm for this subject matter, the hon. Gentleman is departing too far into the general rather than dealing with the particular. We are on Second Reading of the Bill.
Mr. Cash: I accept that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It was a temptation that I could not avoid, but I shall ensure that it does not recur.
Mr. Knight: I assume that my hon. Friend is about to address clause 29, which allows witnesses to give evidence abroad through television links. Does he share my unease about that provision, and is he satisfied that it will not be open to abuse? I am concerned that if, for example, a witness is allowed to give evidence on a video link from a country ruled by a regime like the one in Iraq, that person may be subject to coercion and duress while giving evidence.
Mr. Cash: That is a serious danger—my right hon. Friend's point does not differ significantly from the one that I was making. As with the data protection point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh, if we legislate on television links in the House as representatives of the people, we can be sure that we will do the best that we can to make sure that the provisions are right, fair and proper. However, problems arise in connection with exterior jurisdictions, which sometimes compare unfavourably with ours.
There is a general welcome for part 2, especially the provisions on terrorist offences. We are deeply concerned about events both before and since 11 September, and must show that the fight against terrorism is indeed taken seriously by authorising closer co-operation between police forces, surveillance agencies and so on. I am also concerned about the protocol on mutual assistance on criminal matters, which affects powers in the Bill. We have come up against these protocols on a number of occasions, and it is important to remember that, as with the charter of fundamental rights, we cannot debate them in the House—at any rate, we cannot amend them—which puts us at a considerable disadvantage. I urge the Minister to consider why that method is being used, as it is effectively a prerogative.
Have the Government effectively taken to themselves certain powers if Parliament is determined to reject the Bill? By using the protocol, the Government are
introducing provisions that we cannot amend, so we are at a considerable disadvantage. In Committee, will the Minister put on record what our EU partners will do to introduce legislation to impose exactly the same obligations and penalties on their citizens? What timetable has been adopted to comply with the various protocols?We have already discussed judicial and police systems in other countries, which is another matter that we need to consider carefully. Lord Goodhart of the Liberal Democrats made it clear that Italian arrangements on delay fell far short of what we would expect in this country. In his opinion, the system of criminal administration in Belgium is so bad that it is a national scandal. Those matters are not just trotted out by people giving vent to unfounded fears and anxieties. I referred earlier to the fact that there is evidence of xenophobia among judges in other countries, and similarly there are serious problems with criminal administration and delay.
When people co-operate, they have to be on an equal footing. There is no point in co-operation if it is simply a jumble that we put into a crucible and boil up in the hope that it will all turn out all right. Co-operation must be based on commonly understood principles, and if they are not sufficiently adhered to by other nation states we will have difficulties. I therefore urge the Minister to pay careful attention to the problem of lack of symmetry. We hear much about asymmetric warfare in the context of the Iraq war. I cannot think of anything worse than asymmetric legal systems, which would strike at the heart of what we are trying to achieve on Second Reading. If the Bill is to achieve international co-operation against crime, but does not solve the problems of asymmetry between various judicial systems, we will encounter serious difficulties.
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