Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-25)
FIONA MACTAGGART
MP, MR MARK
DE PULFORD
AND MR
KEVAN NORRIS
26 OCTOBER 2005
Q20 Mr Hamilton: Chairman, before
I ask the question, just to clarify that point. When we talk about
UK legislation we are talking about English legislation. We are
not talking about Scots legislation, which does not have that
right, because you do not have the right to have somebody with
you, you do not have the right for the first six hours, you indicated
that right at the beginning. It is not the UK, it is England and
Wales, and Scotland does not have that right at the present time
so we want to expand it and that is going to improve things in
Scotland also. The question I have is in relation to the Commission's
role and the proposal which envisaged a role for the Commission
in preparing and translating the Letter of Rights. You stated
that this may impinge on the principle of subsidiarity. Would
you like to expand on that, please?
Fiona Mactaggart: It does not
seem to me to be the business of the Commission to tell us what
we should hand people in police stations, actually. While it might
be perfectly proper to ensure that people know what the case against
them is, and so on, the way in which that is done, the kind of
language that is used, seems to me to be a perfectly proper thing
for a Member State to decide. The Commission may say that people
need to have access to it in their own language, or whatever,
and that is perfectly proper, but I think that the precise wording
of such a document ought not to be decided on a kind of standard
basis across Europe, I think it is not appropriate.
Q21 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: Can I ask
you, Minister, about the role of the Commission in all of this,
in particular the Letter of Rights which has to be given to the
accused in all the Community languages, of which I think there
are 21 now. I understood the Framework Decisions to be intergovernmental.
Indeed, Article 34, the Treaty of the European Union, which I
have here, does not mention the role of the Commission at all,
so it is surprising to me to find, in this draft Framework Decision,
considerable involvement for the Commission, in particular over
the Letter of Rights, and in Article 15, an evaluation and monitoring
exercise has to be carried out under the supervision of the European
Commission. Are you again at all worried about the sort of creeping
involvement of a Community institution which defies the Treaties
to which we all signed up all those years ago?
Fiona Mactaggart: We are in negotiations
and we do not intend to sign up to something which does defy the
Treaty. I have made it pretty clear, I think, in my response to
the earlier question, that the present proposals on the Letter
of Rights are not ones which command any enthusiasm from the United
Kingdom. This Article and the ones which follow it have not yet
been discussed in detail in the Working Group. We have very serious
reservations about the proposal for this separate Letter of EU
Rights; we do not think it is necessary, we do not think it adds
value, it could cause confusion, it could cause cost and I share
the Honourable Gentleman's view that it is not appropriate. I
said earlier that the devil in this thing is in the detail. Just
as the Article that we did feel enthusiastic about, in relation
to recording of interviews, has been deleted, it seems to me that
this kind of provision might be something which should quite properly
be deleted because it is not genuinely required to enhance judicial
co-operation, it is properly something which is in the competence
of a Member State. The Treaty of the European Union requires that
any measure introduced in this area of criminal law, and so on,
must be light touch, so a Framework Decision is possible but there
is no authority for a Directive or directly-enforceable European
law. It also requires that we have unanimity, we must proceed
intergovernmentally and this kind of Letter of Rights is not something
which would secure support from the UK Government.
Q22 Michael Connarty: It does seem
that what is being attempted here is to force together a number
of systems. The systems which definitely have independence in
Scotland, for example, will have to be taken into account. The
big difference seems to be between the inquisitorial system, as
in France, and the adversarial system in the UK. That seems to
be almost a barrier to ever having a common set of procedures.
Apart from in the general sense, how do we reach specific agreement,
if one system does not fit into another? It does seem to me, when
you said that no-one was very keen on the idea of having recorded
interviews, that in the inquisitorial system, where the prosecutor
is deeply involved in the investigation, it might be that it would
reveal certain errors in their procedures, in turn caused by an
inquisitorial system, and that is why they are resistant to it.
That is just one element which makes me think that is why they
would be resistant to it. In general, it seems just too difficult
to put these systems together. The bottom line would be, what
do we lose out of this, because it always seems to be that when
the Commission get involved in something the process of dilution
seems to offend against some of the basic tenets of what I think
is the best in the British judicial system. I just worry that
it will be a case of trying to diminish the quality of our justice
and make it more like a bland European model, suiting the French
and others.
Fiona Mactaggart: We will not
sign up to something which does that.
Q23 Michael Connarty: It would mean
giving up an advance made 20 years ago?
Fiona Mactaggart: Both the inquisitorial,
mainland European systems and our system, which is on a very different
basis, operate under the European Human Rights Convention, actually,
and that does not create impossible clashes. It was one of the
first questions I asked when I was asking for briefing about this
Framework, because I have held this long list of responsibilities
that Mr Hood referred to only since June and so getting my head
around it has been an important thing to try to do. It does not
seem that the fundamental problems have arisen from the different
ways of going about things and we do manage to get effective judicial
co-operation and it is in the interests of our citizens to do
that, as long as it does not challenge the fundamental qualities
of our system. You may be right, that one of the reasons why some
of the other EU countries may have chosen to oppose the proposal
about recording of interviews was because of the way that they
conduct their system, you might be right about that. The fact
that people do not wish to include a particular procedure does
not mean that the fundamental aim, which is all we are trying
to do, it is quite a narrow aim, of getting mutual recognition,
mutual confidence between the judicial systems of the European
Union in order to get citizens having better access to justice,
in order to make sure that our citizens when they are in another
EU country can get justice, is made a problem. What we are not
trying to do is create a kind of Euro court, which is one of the
reasons why the UK is not at all interested in this kind of standard
letter. While we think it is quite proper for someone who is accused
of a crime to be informed about what crime they are accused of,
in a language that they understand, and so on, we do not think
that somehow we should have a kind of European charge sheet, and
that would not be proper. We are not trying to get standardisation,
that is not what this is about. It is about trying to create mutual
confidence that basic standards, of understanding what is going
on, of access to interpretation, of access to representation,
are in place. They are quite minimal, they are quite narrow, but
if we have them in place we will get better judicial co-operation
and it will mean that our citizens are safer. That is all we are
trying to do.
Q24 Chairman: Minister, you have
referred to some of the frustrations and slow pace maybe of this
instrument. According to The Hague Programme, it has to be agreed
by December. Do you think that is optimistic?
Fiona Mactaggart: Yes.
Q25 Chairman: Do you think it is
realistic, if it is optimistic?
Fiona Mactaggart: I think it is
optimistic, but I will hand over to Mr de Pulford to tell you
precisely why.
Mr de Pulford: I am not sure that
it would be appropriate to comment in great detail on the negotiations,
given that they are ongoing and we have the Presidency. If I may
say, the Working Group has one more meeting, as I understand it,
before December, and it was in The Hague Programme that the dossier
should be finalised in December. Also I think it is clear that
we are far from agreement on it, so I think I would agree it is
most unlikely the dossier can be finalised according to that target.
In the event that it is not, it would fall to Austria to pick
up the baton, were there to be a baton to pick up.
Chairman: Maybe that is something we
can discuss when we meet our Austrian colleagues when we visit
there in December. Minister, thank you and your colleagues for
coming along this afternoon. It has been very interesting and
we really appreciate your candour and your forthrightness in answering
our questions. It is a very controversial area, as we all know,
but this evidence session, hopefully, will have added to the good
sense of the debate that lies ahead of us. Thank you very much,
Minister.
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