Brexit: UK-EU Security (EUC Report)

Lord Wasserman Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wasserman (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to be the first speaker after the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, as it gives me the opportunity to be the first to congratulate her and her committee on this important report. Having had both the honour and the pleasure of serving on the Home Affairs Sub-Committee of the European Union Select Committee for two years under her chairmanship, I can attest to her skills in this capacity. She manages to pull together a diverse group of Members drawn from all parts of this House, each with firmly held views of their own, and to persuade them all to affix their signatures to a single document tackling a complex and sometimes highly politically charged topic with limited—although excellent—staff support and in a relatively short time. This in itself is quite an achievement. Even more impressively, she manages to do this gently, patiently and with good humour.

This report is a good example of a Prashar production. It is clear, concise and comprehensive. It provides your Lordships and the world beyond these walls with an extraordinarily useful supply of material on one of the most important subjects facing our country at this time. Speaking of time, however, if there is one word I would not use in describing this report, it is “timely”. For me, as a declared remainer, the report is about 12 months late. I am not saying that I believe the result of the referendum would have been different had this report appeared in December 2015, rather than December 2016. I do not think the electorate were in any mood to take notice of what the House of Lords had to say on this or any other subject, particularly on one which might call into question the benefits of “taking back our country”. But they should at least have had an opportunity to consider the matters discussed in this document and to think in a slightly more informed way about some of the possible consequences for the safety of their communities of voting to leave the European Union.

The sad truth is that most of the points made in this report about the value of EU institutions in the policing and justice field received little or no attention during the referendum campaign. How often did any of the leading figures on the remain side mention Europol or Eurojust, the EU information systems such as ECRIS, the second generation Schengen information system, Prüm and the passenger names records, or valuable EU criminal justice tools such as the European arrest warrant, the European investigation order and the European supervision order? As I said, I doubt that discussing these institutions and systems would have made a jot of difference to the outcome of the referendum. But should not the electorate have at least been aware of the role these institutions and systems play in keeping them safe, and the risks our leading policing experts believe we run in losing them?

Take Europol, for example. Should not the electorate have known that the country’s leading law enforcement professionals believe unequivocally that this organisation, headed by one of our own nationals, is a “critical priority” in keeping us safe? Or that the DPP believes that Eurojust is “essential” to the effectiveness of the Crown Prosecution Service? Or that access to the information and intelligence currently sourced through the EU’s data-sharing mechanisms is seen as,

“mission critical in protecting … the citizens of the UK”?

Or that access to the second generation Schengen information system is described, as the noble Baroness said, as “an absolute game-changer” by our National Crime Agency, which said that access to it by UK police forces,

“is essential for mainstream policing … to safeguard the welfare of people across the country”?

Or that the European Criminal Records Information System—ECRIS—which most people have never heard of, is “critical to volume policing” and that not having access to it would present,

“an ongoing risk to the UK”?

Or that the passenger name record is,

“incredibly important for the security of our border”,

that the European arrest warrant is “absolutely vital”, and that any period without it or a delay in replacing it would pose an “unacceptable risk”?

I very much regret that it took this report, available only in December 2016, long after the referendum votes were counted, to set out clearly in one place all these expert evaluations of the EU’s law enforcement and public safety arrangements and how they affect us day to day. However, there is no point looking back. What about the future? How worried should we be about the consequences for community safety of leaving the EU?

The first point is that the EU’s role in community safety, while important, is limited. As this report states in its very helpful summary, many of the EU measures the UK is now due to leave were deemed vital by the then Home Secretary in order to,

“stop foreign criminals from coming to Britain, deal with European fighters coming back from Syria, stop British criminals evading justice abroad, prevent foreign criminals evading justice by hiding here, and get foreign criminals out of our prisons”.

These are indeed major threats to the safety of our communities. But let us not forget that they are only a small part of the threats we face in our day-to-day lives, and tackling them represents only a small part of the work of our police.

It is worth remembering that 1,732 individuals—men, women and children—died on our roads in 2015 and a similar number are likely to die in traffic accidents this year and next. Let us not forget the many victims of serious domestic violence or the victims of the intolerable anti-social behaviour that blights so many of our cities, towns and villages. All these threats affect our communities each day and will continue to do so whether or not we are in the EU. Our police will still be expected to deal with them, and although Europol and Eurojust are not irrelevant to these threats, their contribution is marginal. I wanted to put that on the record. It is important not to overestimate the dangers to our community safety from leaving the EU with regard to the various institutions we shall be discussing.

However, having said that, let us get back to the EU and its contribution. On this I am generally optimistic about the future, because I share the Government’s view that we will be able to negotiate new arrangements with the 27 EU members that will be at least as good as those we have now. I believe that we will continue to participate in Europol and Eurojust and to use the various information systems which we played such a critical role in creating. I say this not because I am, on the whole, an optimist but because I accept the Government’s view, restated in their latest White Paper, Cm 9417, that:

“The safety of the UK public is the top priority for the Government”.


I note with much pleasure that the report we are debating today appears to take the same line. In paragraph 8 of its summary and conclusions, it quotes the Government’s statement in 2014 that they would,

“never put politics before the protection of the British public”.

The report states that in the committee’s view, this calculation has not changed. I very much agree.

I also believe strongly that the Governments of our 27 EU neighbours share this view. For these countries, and especially for France, Germany and Belgium after their recent experience, the safety of their citizens from international serious and organised crime and terrorism will remain such an overwhelming priority that I am sure they will ensure that Brexit does not put them at risk. Here again, I am delighted to be able to quote the support of this report:

“The UK and the EU-27 share a strong mutual interest in ensuring that there is no diminution in the level of safety and security afforded to their citizens after the UK leaves the EU”.


More importantly, I believe that our Government and the Governments of our EU neighbours understand also that serious and organised crime and terrorism cannot be tackled by national states on their own. Those who indulge in such activity do not recognise national borders, so dealing with them effectively must be approached internationally. That is why we and our EU partners developed Europol, Eurojust, the European arrest warrant and the various EU information systems. It is not in anyone’s interest, other than that of serious and organised criminals and terrorists, to damage or weaken these institutions and systems. I am sure that our policing professionals and their European colleagues will not let that happen. As the report concludes,

“there is considerable consensus among … law enforcement agencies on the … tools and capabilities they would like to see retained or adequately replaced”.

For me, this is the real reason for optimism.

Having spent most of my career working with police professionals, I have complete confidence that they will do everything they can to keep us safe. That is why I was so pleased when they spoke out so strongly when giving evidence to the committee. I believe that this is only the beginning of their engagement in this matter. Why did they not speak up earlier? I think because, like many of us, they did not believe that the British people would vote to leave. Why would they? From where the police sit, leaving the EU meant losing important weapons in the fight against crime. But now our police professionals are fully aware that the time has come to fight to preserve the institutions and systems they worked so hard to build. They are not going to walk away from this fight, police professionals never do—they run towards danger, not away from it.

Some will no doubt say, and this report gives them some justification for doing so, that this is wishful thinking. In the real world of hard political bargaining, such cross-border co-operation and new agreements are difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Even where they are achievable, past experience has shown that forging such agreements takes a very long time, thus exposing us to dangers in the meantime. There is no doubt that experience in these matters is not encouraging; or to put it the way the report does, there are no precedents for believing that forging agreements will be easy or quick. Having served in the Home Office as an official for 27 years, I am very familiar with the arguments made based on precedents or lack of them. But I feel that anyone living today in the world of Brexit and President Trump knows that when it comes to judging the future on the basis of the past, all bets are off.

My faith is that our policing professionals and their European colleagues will come to our rescue. The police pride themselves on “getting things done”. As I said earlier, they will rise to the challenge—I am prepared to bet on it. That is why I welcomed this inquiry and welcome this report. It gave our police professionals a legitimate opportunity to speak out on issues which have hitherto been addressed mainly by politicians. I knew they would rise to this challenge and they have justified my faith in them. I am confident they will do so again.