[Unallotted Half-Day] — EU Justice and Home Affairs Measures

Part of Opposition Day – in the House of Commons at 6:13 pm on 19 November 2014.

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Photo of Chris Heaton-Harris Chris Heaton-Harris Conservative, Daventry 6:13, 19 November 2014

It is a great privilege to follow a true Eurosceptic.

In my brief contribution I do not intend to expand on my concerns about the individual measures. In fact, I would welcome a number of the individual measures in this package if we were able to have the final say on them in this House and in our judicial system. But I worry about it happening in one sweep with little debate about the principle of why we are taking away parliamentary and judicial sovereignty in the area of justice and home affairs and allowing the European Court of Justice to have the final say. I am a bit surprised that that did not rate a mention in the shadow Home Secretary’s opening speech, given that it is such a big issue.

To help me to prove my point about the direction of travel that justice and home affairs matters are taking in the European Commission, I should like to quote the former European Commission vice-president, Viviane Reding. She has said:

“In the space of just a few years,”— since the three pillars were collapsed—

“justice policy has come into the limelight of European Union activity—comparable to the boost given to the single market in the 1990s. We have come a long way, but there is more to do to develop a true European area of Justice”.

We do not talk much about that in the House. The closest we came to having a proper discussion on it was when we were talking about the European public prosecutor’s office in our debates on the European Union Act 2011, in which we discussed referendum locks. I think that all the parties agreed that that was an area of concern and a red line that we would not cross—all the parties bar the Lib Dems, of course. Now, however, the establishment of the policy is part of the EU area of justice. We must not mistake the direction in which we are heading.

Why am I concerned about giving Europe the ability to enact and police legislation in this area? Most of the EU operates under a different system of law from ours, and I do not believe that the European Commission is the body that should be making the UK’s and England’s criminal law. The European Court of Justice should not have the ability to override the primacy of this Parliament or of the English judiciary in these areas. The ECJ has become so prominent because almost everything the European Union does tends to become legally binding and eventually subject to review by EU judges or national courts acting on their behalf. That reflects a European tendency to move difficult political conflicts, such as the eurozone crisis and the EU’s 2013 fiscal compact, away from ministerial gatherings and towards apolitical groups of national experts, the legal realm and the courts.

Member states are discussing plans for a European public prosecutor, which may be created among a core group of countries under the Lisbon treaty. The European Parliament is helping to design jail sentences for rogue traders and people who do wrong in financial institutions, and the European Commission will start taking EU Governments to court over criminal justice standards from December 2014 onwards.