European Union (Future Relationship) Bill — House of Lords, 2020-12-30
Topic: Mixed Topics
Bernard Hogan-Howe (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I shall speak in favour of the Bill and I congratulate the Government on producing a very good agreement. I decided quite late to vote for Brexit, and at every opportunity in this House have voted to support the Government in delivering on the outcome of the 2016 referendum. That referendum was voted for by both Houses of Parliament, and so leaving the EU had a double mandate: the mandate of the people and the mandate of Parliament which confirmed the outcome of the referendum At times, the debates here have left me—and, I believe, the country—very frustrated. If one were to be reminded of various moments of conflict, it highlights that ascending levels of disagreement are marked by signal behavioural changes. One verbal symptom is that one side says of the other, "You would say that, wouldn’t you?" The participants doubt not only what is said but also the motives for saying it. I have often needed to check myself when listening to the contributions of others, and the country did notice this disingenuous behaviour at times, on both sides of the argument. I genuinely believe that it is time to look forward and to try our best to put that behind us and be confident in the future I shall concentrate mainly on our future security as described in the agreement. I believe the Government have achieved a good outcome for working together on criminal investigation and general safety. People have criticised our lack of future access to the SIS or Schengen database, used more than 600 million times a year. This is an automatic check running in the background of any UK police national database search, which accounts for the high numbers. There are three types of check, broadly: one on arrest; one while somebody is detained after arrest; and during long-term investigations. The gap is mainly for street checks, where time is tight before the suspect walks away. However, we should not exaggerate the frequency of this event or the seriousness of the outcome, and there are mitigations. I suggest that the Government and the EU, working together, could fill that gap and do far more in the future However, I want to highlight the achievements of this agreement. There will still be an extradition process similar to the European arrest warrant—in fact, the Government have strengthened the power to arrest. The UK will still be allowed access to Europol and Eurojust, and we will have as many people there post 1 January as we did before—interestingly, second in number only to the USA. We will continue to have access to Prüm, sharing DNA and fingerprint databases. Ironically, various Governments delayed our access to it until 2016, yet now people are saying that we always needed it for our safety. We will still have access to the convictions of criminals; we will still be able to make mutual assistance agreements on cross-border investigations; and we will have access to passenger name records for travellers Finally, on counterterrorism, we will continue to share national security on a bilateral basis, as we always have. There is no European database where the French tell the Germans all the information that each of their security services hold. In short, our mutual security interests in the UK and Europe mean that we have to co-operate on one another’s terms, and we will. There is no benefit to France in allowing UK murderers to wander their country, or to the UK in allowing Dutch rapists to remain at large here. So I support this agreement and commend the work that the Government have put into achieving it. I will support it in the vote tonight.