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European Union (Amendment) Bill

The noble Baroness has answered the question. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, will accept that a number of states in the European Union did not have an offence of terrorism. Although I struggle to remember the exact number, certainly many did not. It was important in the light of what happened, not only in London but, before that, in Madrid and further afield, to decide that member states needed to make sure that they had that offence covered properly. That was one example, but there are others. When I talk about mutual recognition, when working within the European Union I am looking to make sure that there is recognition of the system operating within a member state—particularly as we are a common law country, while many countries with whom we are working are not—so that we do not get a different legal system imported instead. Looking at cross-border questions, then, one is looking for mutual recognition linked to a system by which one can ensure that jurisdictions operate across the two. I shall give an example. The idea of the small claims procedure was that it operated in each member state and that procedure could be used across borders. Yet that did not affect the functioning of the individual member state; rather, the system was built on recognising that systems might be different but the outcome should be that a claim could be made to get money back that was owed across the border. That is what mutual recognition is about. In the context of the lists that were described in the procedure, safe havens may not be a phrase liked by the noble Lord, but is precisely to ensure that in areas where we understand what we mean by criminality—for example, in terrorism—that there is absolute clarity on what will happen within each member state, and that we work together both to bring criminals to justice and to ensure that that justice matches across member states. I do not believe that is contradictory to making sure that individual judicial systems work effectively, not least because of what I have said about mutual recognition. However, it is important to ensure—and we had this example—that if something as grave as terrorism is not recognised within member states then it should be, as part of the great co-operation that should exist between member states in the European Union.