Oral Answers to Questions

Marion Fellows Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

As I mentioned earlier, we spend £100 million on legal help and we are improving the tribunals service to enable people to access and liaise with judges to improve their process through the court system.

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

5. What recent assessment he has made of the effect on the justice system of the UK leaving the EU.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

12. What recent assessment he has made of the effect on the justice system of the UK leaving the EU.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)]

We laid out our ambition in the policy paper that we produced in August 2017 and again in the most recent White Paper, setting out that we want the closest possible co-operation in civil and family justice matters. We continue to negotiate with the EU on these matters; in the meantime, as a responsible Government, we continue to prepare for no deal.

[Marion Fellows]

The UK currently extradites more than 1,000 people a year to the rest of the European Union using the European arrest warrant. Does the Minister accept that withdrawing from the European arrest warrant would make extraditing dangerous criminals from the UK slower and much more bureaucratic?

[Lucy Frazer]

We are very keen to ensure that we have a good relationship with the EU in relation to security matters going forward. I recently spoke to my Home Office counterpart, who is leading the negotiations on the European arrest warrant. I was pleased to see in the European Council’s negotiating guidelines that:

“The EU stands ready to establish partnerships in areas unrelated to trade, in particular the fight against terrorism and international crime, as well as security, defence and foreign policy.”