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Hague Programme

My hon. Friend will be aware that we have freedom of movement within the European Union. If I understand him correctly, he is not disagreeing with me, in that we need to work together as member states and co-operate in tackling illegal immigration at the point at which illegal immigrants enter the EU. Working together and working with third countries is thus important. I was about to speak of the kind of co-operation that we would like to continue with and to give an example of the success of such co-operation. The case I describe to the House involves trafficking in human beings. Lithuanian women and girls were trafficked to the UK and sold to Albanian organised crime groups for prostitution. Eurojust facilitated mutual legal assistance requests, the initiation and co-ordination of investigations and prosecutions, and the execution of an urgent European arrest warrant. The cases resulted in the start of an investigation in Lithuania against the organisers, a number of convictions in the UK, including sentences of 18 and 21 years, and the transfer of prosecution to Lithuania of a Lithuanian arrested in the UK. The sorts of practical action that we would want the EU to focus on under the Hague programme include further development of Eurojust and the European judicial network as facilitators of judicial co-operation between member states. Practical co-operation through them is a fast, effective and easily arranged means of dealing with issues which may otherwise require time-consuming and resource intensive negotiations. We are also pressing for improved co-operation on immigration and border control, both bilaterally and through Frontex. Concrete operations in which expertise and support are exchanged are extremely effective ways of bringing about rapid improvements. A bilateral study visit exchange between the UK national document forgery unit and Bulgarian border police led to a project to set up an equivalent unit in Bulgaria to strengthen its border control, to increase the capacity to detect forged documents.