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EU: The Hague Programme—Justice and Home Affairs (EUC Report)

My Lords, I have been happy to be a member of Standing Committee F under the chairmanship of two noble Lords who have the same geographical name, although the respective locations are, I think, something like 300 miles apart.   It is also a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick. I listened carefully to him. What he said about the EU’s role at the UN was new to me, and I was pleased to hear it. Much has happened to encourage and enable EU member states to work more efficiently together on security since the Madrid train bombings on 11 March last year. It is worth noting that that outrage killed more people than died in the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbour in World War II or during the whole of the Basque terrorist campaign. In passing and to underline the immensity of the threat, I point out that it is estimated that the Madrid attack cost no more than €8,000 or just over £6,000—credit card cash, rather than gold bullion. Next month, the G8 will discuss the pooling of terrorism research and national databases, as well as sharing DNA and fingerprint samples. They will also discuss ways in which research into the reasons why new generations of young people are radicalised can be better co-ordinated to help us all understand why so many are willing and anxious to blow themselves to pieces to inflict maximum death and injury on unprotected civilians. With earlier terrorist groups, we got to know what they wanted when the murders stopped. That is far from clear with regard to the group that killed 191 innocent people in Madrid and those responsible for other terrorist outrages around the world. As we said in our After Madrid report, we need to understand and analyse on a long-term basis the political, religious and social roots of terrorism and the   radicalisation of so many young people. I welcome the Government’s acceptance of that, and their stress on the need to involve local communities, including faith-based ones, their leaders and young people. In their response to the report, the Government say that they are committed to producing a strategy by the end of our EU presidency to plan the way forward on these important matters. The committee’s report, although it is welcome, comes with a warning: Statewatch told us that 27 of the 57 proposals made by the European Council following the Madrid bombings had little to do with combating terrorism but had been lifted from much of the justice   and home affairs agenda on policing and judicial co-operation and simply relabelled as anti-terrorism. The point is well made. Although the committee did not entirely share the view of Statewatch, it thought that measures would be justified as counter-terrorism only if terrorism was clearly their target. I want to make two other comments on that aspect. First, EU member states and the Commission should ensure that security measures already agreed on should be effectively operated in all 25 countries before extra new proposals were made. Secondly, we must try to ensure that legitimate resistance and liberation oppositions in countries with no proper democracy or human rights are not labelled ““terrorist”” as a cover for the use of terror at home by a government or the sponsorship of such actions abroad. In that context, I hope that there will be careful and regular review of the organisations listed as ““terrorist”” in our legislation. It does the UK no favours to be seen to turn a blind eye—or to be suspected of doing so—to terror and torture in places such as theocratic Iran in the name of anti-terrorism. Our visit to Interpol was interesting and surprising. Its energetic secretary-general, Mr Ron Noble, told us that, in every serious terrorist incident, a fraudulent passport had been used. Interpol holds a database of 5.6 million fake passports, but the EU’s Schengen information system contains details of about 10 million and that information is not shared with Interpol. In turn, the Interpol database is not regularly consulted by all EU   member states. In the report, we urge better and more co-operative efforts to make the Interpol database fully comprehensive and question the need for a separate EU database. Mr Noble gave as an example of the importance of sharing information on lost and stolen passports the case of a man arrested for the assassination of the former Prime Minister of Serbia, Mr Djindjic, on 12   March 2003. He had been travelling on a stolen Croatian passport on which he had entered six European countries and Singapore. It had been stamped 26 times by immigration authorities. That rather makes the point that, whatever the merits of the EU database of lost and stolen passports, it does not have global coverage; the terrorists do. I turn briefly to our report on the five-year justice and home affairs agenda for the EU. Many witnesses echoed earlier points about the programme placing undue emphasis on security at the expense of respect for fundamental rights. Our report says that there is a striking lack of ambition in the freedom provisions, such as EU citizenship rights, anti-discrimination measures, anti-racism and rights for third-country nationals legally resident in the EU. Of course, security is a prime responsibility of government, but so are aspects of justice and freedom throughout the EU and more widely. Our report endorses the concept of having a common European asylum system to ensure consistent standards to a high level. Asylum applicants are entitled under the UN convention, to which we subscribe, to have their claim for protection taken seriously and considered fairly and as swiftly as possible. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Rawlings, will be able to assure your Lordships that the rash and irresponsible pledge made by Mr   Michael Howard during the previous general election to pull the UK out of the convention is no longer part of her party’s policy. I hope too that the newspapers and others who fail to draw a proper and clear distinction between asylum seekers and migrants will now understand the importance of doing so. It matters that the debate on such issues should be on the basis of fact, not fantasy.   I urge those in leadership roles in the media, local communities, business, trade unions and faith   organisations, as well as politicians—local and national—to keep separate those who come here seeking the protection that, we hope, we will never need from the non-EU nationals who want to work and live here legally, to better their lives and ours. As our report says, decisions on migration belong to   individual governments, working separately or bilaterally where that makes best sense. Economic migration is the subject of our current report.