5TH REPORT: AFTER HEILIGENDAMM: DOORS
AJAR AT STRATFORD-UPON-AVON
Letter from Meg Hillier MP, Parliamentary
Under Secretary of State, Home Office to the Chairman
I am writing in response to your report After
Heiligendamm: doors ajar at Stratford-upon-Avon and your letter
dated 7 June 2007 on the Ministerial meeting of the G6 held in
Venice on 11-12 May. I apologise for the delay in responding to
the issues raised.
The attached paper offers the Government's response
to the conclusions and recommendations in the Committee's report.
I understand that the Committee also remains concerned about the
fact that the previous Home Secretary did not give evidence to
the Committee following the meeting in Stratford, as he had previously
undertaken to do.
I believe the previous Home Secretary set out
his reasons for being unable to attend the Committee in person
in some detail. As he underlined in his letter of 20 December
2006, it was thought that Ministerial attendance before the Committee
(by Joan Ryan on 28 June 2006), coupled with the further information
provided in his letter, would be sufficient in answering any further
queries you may have had.
You wrote to us more recently on 7 June 2007
setting out some further concerns regarding the G6 meeting held
in Venice and the way in which that meeting was reported. In light
of this, I agree that we will in future report each Ministerial
meeting of the G6 with a Ministerial statement to Parliament,
starting with a report of the meeting planned for 17-18 October
in Poland.
As you may be aware, Poland has now taken over
the Presidency of the G6 and at its meeting next week has invited
G6 members to discuss the following topics:
— Migration: where the Government
has welcomed the chance to discuss the challenges that the growth
in migration presents for the G6 countries and the need to cooperate
on migration with third countries.
— Future of the Area of Freedom,
Justice and Security including communication with Parliaments:
where the Government has stressed to the Presidency the need to
focus on practical cooperation between the G6 countries and to
avoid discussions of institutional issues which are best left
to EU Member States in the JHA Council.
— Combating terrorism and Cooperation
within the framework of the EU civil mission in Afghanistan:
The Government has welcomed the chance to continue discussions
with G6 partners on the use of deportation in relation to terrorists/terrorist
suspects as a means of protecting people from foreign nationals
believed to pose a threat to national security, while adhering
to international human rights obligations. On the EU police mission,
the Government has made clear that supporting police reform is
a crucial plank of our strategy in Afghanistan; the EU policing
mission is a key element of that reform.
— External dimension of JHA area:
The Government has suggested a focus on the building of bilateral
relationships and encouraging partners to increase capacity in
the judiciary and law enforcement agencies to help tackle drug
production/trafficking, financial, immigration and other organised
crime, whilst again stressing the need to avoid duplication of
effort by other international partners.
16 October 2007
GOVERNMENT RESPONSE
29. We believe that there has been some
improvement in the readiness of the Home Office to publicise the
conclusions of G6 meetings, and we hope that they will do better
in future. We look forward to seeing the conclusions of the next
meeting to be held under Italian chairmanship. But we do not regard
the publication of the conclusions of the meeting on a website,
even if complete, as an adequate substitute for a written ministerial
statement.
The Government accepts the Committee's
recommendation and undertakes to provide a written Ministerial
statement reporting the outcome of each Ministerial meeting of
the G6 to Parliament. The Government will also continue with its
practice of publishing the conclusions of each meeting, as it
did following the most recent G6 meeting in Venice.
30. Where G6 ministers have agreed policies
which they would like to see adopted, they should adhere to the
rule which, according to the Conclusions, they already follow:
they should inform other Member States and the Commission of their
discussions fully and in good time for them to be carefully considered,
before making formal proposals for negotiation by all Member Slates
in the appropriate EU fora. We expect United Kingdom ministers
to urge this on their G6 colleagues at future meetings.
The main purpose of the G6 is to allow
the six countries involved to discuss, in an informal environment,
how they can work together to tackle at a practical level issues
of common concern. However, there are occasions when these discussions
inevitably involve issues of wider concern to EU Member States
or touch on matters also under consideration in the JHA Council.
We therefore ensure that other EU Member States and the Commission
are fully informed of the discussions that take place in this
forum. Indeed, Franco Frattini, Commission Vice-President, attended
part of the meeting in Venice in May and the conclusions were
made available to other Member States as they have been before.
The Government will continue to apply these approach and ask other
G6 members to do the same.
As the Committee will be aware, the G6
cannot agree anything binding on other Member States and any initiative
to emerge from the G6 in which we would want other Member States
to be involved would in all likelihood require a formal proposal
with all that would subsequently entail in terms of negotiations
in the Council and scrutiny by the European and national parliaments.
31. We have expressed the hope that negotiations
on the Data Protection Framework Decision will achieve an overarching
third pillar instrument providing strong safeguards for the protection
of personal data used for law enforcement purposes. We are concerned
that recent negotiations have lessened that protection. We look
forward to hearing from ministers what the Government propose
to do to reverse this.
The Committee will wish to note the progress
made at the JHA Council in September on the draft Data Protection
Framework Decision. The Portuguese Presidency is making strenuous
efforts to secure a final agreement on the text before the end
of the year. The Portuguese Presidency is working in close liaison
with officials from the Ministry of Justice. At the September
JHA Council Ministers agreed Presidency proposals on two key elements
of the Data Protection Framework Decision, limiting its application
to cross-border transfers and setting the conditions for data
transfer to third countries. The Ministry of Justice will be writing
to you shortly to update you on the progress of negotiations.
Letter from the Chairman to Meg Hillier
MP
Thank you for your letter of 16 October 2007
with which you enclosed the Government's response to this report.
It was considered by Sub-Committee F (Home Affairs) of the Select
Committee on the European Union at a meeting on 14 November 2007.
The first point we note is that the response
was received almost eight months after the report was published.
Cabinet Office guidelines require responses to reports to be provided
within two months of publication. This was a brief report, and
we cannot understand the reason for the delay. A response which
should have reached us before the G6 meeting in Venice in May
was sent the day before the meeting in Sopot in October, and reached
us after that meeting.
As you know, in reports and correspondence over
the last 18 months we have been recommending greater transparency
for meetings of the interior ministers of the G6. We were therefore
very glad to receive your undertaking that future such meetings
would, as we had asked, be the subject of written ministerial
statements. We were pleased to see on 30 October a statement about
the meeting held in Sopot on 17-18 October, and likewise pleased
that the Conclusions of that meeting were deposited in the Library
of the House. We are grateful for your assurances that this will
also be done for future G6 meetings.
This report, and the earlier report on the Heiligendamm
meeting in March 2006, were both critical of the conclusions reached
on the draft Data Protection Framework Decision, and the apparent
lessening of data protection in third pillar matters. You state
that the Portuguese Presidency is making strenuous efforts to
agree a final text before the end of the year. You will be aware
that a general approach to a Framework Decision was in fact adopted
by the Council on 12 November before a final text could be deposited
for the Sub-Committee to consider. We are in touch with the Ministry
of Justice about this scrutiny override.
There remains the issue of the failure by the
former Home Secretary to give oral evidence to the Sub-Committee
about the Stratford-upon-Avon meeting, as he had undertaken to
do, an undertaking which Joan Ryan MP repeated both orally and
in writing.
We do not agree with you when you say: "I
believe that the previous Home Secretary set out the reasons for
his being unable to attend the Committee in some detail."
The only reason he gave in his letter of 20 December 2006 (printed
in appendix 4 of the report) is that his diary commitments were
already onerous. This of course we had anticipated; we offered
him a number of dates over a space of six weeks.
You then say: "it was thought that Ministerial
attendance before the Committee (by Joan Ryan on 28 June 2006),
coupled with the further information provided in his letter, would
be sufficient in answering any further queries you may have had."
We have already explained in paragraph 12 of the report that neither
Joan Ryan nor anyone else could give oral evidence to us in June
2006 about a meeting which only took place four months later.
Such information as the then Home Secretary gave in his subsequent
letter was no substitute for oral evidence.
We do not wish to labour the point. It is now
over a year since the Stratford-upon-Avon meeting, and neither
Dr Reid nor Joan Ryan now holds ministerial office at the Home
Office. We simply remain perplexed at the reasons you continue
to give for this failure.
16 November 2007
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