Eurojust and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office

Debate between Diana Johnson and Mark Reckless

Tuesday 29th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

I shall come later in my remarks to what I think the Government should have been doing leading up to this point—making sure that the aspects that they were concerned about were discussed. I shall put a series of questions to the Minister about how many conversations and dialogues took place with the EU to try to get the regulation in a form that was more acceptable to the Government.

As Eurojust is based on co-operation, it places obligations on members to co-operate with joint investigations, and these obligations are set to increase. I shall come back to that. If the Government are serious about tackling human trafficking, terrorism or financial crime, for example, they need to be serious about working with European partners, but I am concerned that the Government seem to be sitting on the sidelines. Their current position appears to be that they would like the UK to stay in Eurojust as it is now, but they are content to let everyone else get on with a new Eurojust, which they are not part of, but which they hope they might get back into in the future. What we should do is work with our European partners to get a Eurojust system that works for us.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

I find it difficult to take the hon. Lady’s point in respect of what the Government are doing. Is she implying that we should opt in now, without knowing what will be in the regulation, in order to seek to influence it?

[Diana Johnson]

I shall come on to some of the issues that the Government should have been considering in the lead-up to the motion today, but we will not oppose the motion. However, we have questions about how we got to this point and whether there could have been a proper negotiation with Eurojust that we might have supported. We have never supported the EPPO. That was very clear in the debate that we had last week.

Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Diana Johnson and Mark Reckless

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

I will continue, because I have a feeling that this debate could go on all night with the Liberal Democrats.

I want to ask the Minister and the hon. Lady whether they feel that the threshold might be too high. I accept—the Liberal Democrats will like this bit—that there is a significant cost to the individual on whom an order is placed, reputationally, and particularly if that becomes public. We know that, because of public disgust associated with sex crimes, the effect of a sex offence order being imposed on an individual, whatever it is called, will be devastating to that individual.

It has not helped that the risk of sexual harm orders that were previously in place have been called, I think wrongly, sex offence ASBOs, because the higher standard of proof makes that comparison unhelpful. At the same time, we must accept that there will be many occasions when the police have a well founded, reasonable belief that someone poses a risk to children but are not able to secure a conviction, because, for example, they cannot present in open court the evidence required. In particular, the situation could arise if a vulnerable witness is not in a position to give evidence in court. In such cases, we may want a civil protection order, precisely because we cannot get a conviction at the higher criminal standard. Will the Minister comment on whether the new orders will allow for far more cases to be subject to the orders?

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

We have learnt that many of the problems in this area have been a failure of enforcement—a failure of the various agencies to work together or to understand what was going on. However, I want to press the hon. Lady on the previous question. If someone has a civil order and then breaches it, could they go to prison for up to five years without at any point the criminal standard having been satisfied?

[Diana Johnson]

The new clauses and amendments have been tabled by the Government and the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon and they are best able to comment on that. My understanding of them is that a term of imprisonment of up to five years is applicable if an order is breached. I am asking a genuine question about whether what we want to achieve through the orders will be achieved by having a criminal standard for a civil order. The hon. Gentleman might want to take that up with the Minister when he responds.

I am conscious of time and of the fact that many other hon. Members want to speak so I will raise only a couple of other issues. Will the Minister explain the situation on appeals and rights of review that might be open to people who are put on the orders? With the scrapping of indeterminate sentences, might we have people on the street subject to the orders who in the past might well have remained in prison, and is the Minister satisfied with that situation?

The hon. Member for Mole Valley raises an important issue in new clause 7. It is topical given that at the weekend W. H. Smith had to withdraw information and e-books from its website. It has taken too long to obtain acceptance of the fact that viewing child abuse images is an integral part of the abuse process. Only the abusers deny that now. We know that viewing abuse often triggers behaviours in individuals. We know that Stuart Hazel and Mark Bridger had both been viewing legal pornography simulating violent sex and abuse prior to committing appalling crimes. The new clause, which deals with the written form of that abuse, is worth looking at. I hope that the Minister will comment further on that. We need to be careful, because we do not want genuine literature that describes abuse in a totally acceptable way to be captured.