Resetting the UK-EU Relationship (European Affairs Committee Report)

Baroness Ashton of Upholland Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ashton of Upholland (Lab)]

My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, for his measured, calm chairmanship of the European Affairs Committee, and I welcome his successor, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, whose military experience will, I am sure, be up to dealing with the lot of us.

I served in Brussels for six years, the only woman Britain ever sent as a commissioner. After being the first woman to take on the trade portfolio, I became the first High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, responsible, among many other things, for leading the Iran nuclear talks, Europe’s response to the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and up to 10 military and civilian missions. I also set up the European External Action Service.

In my short contribution to this debate, I want to focus on collaboration on law enforcement and intelligence gathering. The committee was fortunate to hear from witnesses from the Crown Prosecution Service, the National Crime Agency and the National Police Chiefs’ Council. We asked them about Part 3 of the TCA covering law enforcement and judicial co-operation in criminal matters. This gives the UK unprecedented access compared with any other third country, but of course falls short of the access we would gain as a member state. Our interest in the committee was in how effective this has been and where more could be done to increase that effectiveness.

Our witnesses told us that aspects of their work were more challenging and cumbersome than before, within a system that is process-heavy. There was limited opportunity to automate, meaning that a lot of manual processes had to be deployed. I want to be clear: they were not suggesting that the system was broken, nor that they were unable to achieve what they needed to do, but it took longer, required more bureaucracy, relied on 27 bilateral relationships rather than one overarching one and was just a little bit harder. Their analysis was summed up by them in one word, “clunky”—a very diplomatic way of saying that it is harder now than it used to be.

One of the greatest practical losses was access to SIS II, the information-sharing system among not only EU member states but Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. This gives real-time information sharing from police databases. Until Brexit, it was used an estimated 600 million times a year by the UK. We can of course use Interpol red notices and information systems, but they are less efficient. We need to find ways to streamline and access information more easily and to share knowledge across the continent. Crime does not stop at borders, and criminals rely to an extent on the clunkiness and the gaps to pursue their activities. We were told that the real prize would be the signing of a multilateral agreement with EU member states that would enable alert sharing through the I-LEAP platform. While it would not restore information sharing in full, it would be much better.

We all know that the European arrest warrant was used after the attempted bombings after 7/7 claimed the lives of 52 people and injured more than 700. The suspect was taken in Rome and extradited to the UK using the European arrest warrant. The Minister at the time, Andy Burnham, told your Lordships’ committee in 2006 that this case

“very well illustrated the potential benefits … of the smooth functioning of this system”.

It is not and was not perfect, and other cases have not been as swiftly dealt with, but to quote the Lords report, it

“has a key role to play in the fight against terrorism and in bringing those accused of serious crime to justice”.

Our law enforcement witnesses have asked us to find ways to recognise the European arrest warrant as a valid request. As one of our witnesses said, give us

“the agility that organised crime exercises”.

We owe it to their professionalism and dedication to get this done, and soon.