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European Union Bill

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s contribution. I said that it was how some people felt. That was the formula I used; I did not myself endorse the conspiracy theory. The implication was that the conduct of the Government was such as to make it possible for constituents to develop that conspiracy theory. In relation to his most recent remarks to me, I accept that piracy is a matter for international law. Piracy has always been against international law. There should not be a problem there. His implication was that we needed to co-ordinate with the Indians and the Chinese, which we do to some extent. We might need to co-ordinate with them more. That is true and I acknowledged it explicitly in my recent remarks. I said that in this context, as in others—I suspect the noble Lord used to teach this to his students—it is much more effective, if we want international agreement and consensus on a matter, to act as the European Union rather than as one country or as 27 different countries. That is the point I was making. However, there is a third point that I must make in relation to the noble Lord’s comments to me, which is that I was specifically addressing the need for powers to make it an offence to make ransom payments. I think that he, and anyone with any knowledge of the world, will agree that the chances of getting 150 or 193 countries to legislate identically for anything are virtually zero; that is not going to happen. If you wish to make it a criminal offence to transfer such payments, to collect money for the purpose of paying ransoms, to provide money for the purpose of paying ransoms, to make ransom payments, and to enforce those criminal offences, you need to obtain agreement throughout the European Union as an essential starting point. That is not a matter of international law; it is very much a matter of European law. If we do not have the powers to do that at present, it is very desirable that we should develop them. However, if we needed to develop them, we would run into the issue that, if the Government succeeded in passing this Bill, Article 48 would no longer be usable in that context if Great Britain were to be included.