Justice should be higher up Brexit agenda, MPs told

Criminal law practitioners today highlighted the challenge that leaving the EU will pose to international criminal justice cooperation – and suggested that justice is not currently high on the government’s Brexit agenda.

Giving evidence to the House of Commons justice select committee this morning, members of the Criminal Law Solicitors’ Association and Criminal Bar Association spoke at length about the importance of the European arrest warrant. However, both representative bodies told MPs that the government had not consulted them on the mechanisms for the EAW to continue post-Brexit.

CLSA member and solicitor Michael Gray, founding partner of Gray & Co Solicitors, told MPs it was disappointing that the justice debate had not happened sooner, ‘because it would have been useful for the public generally to see what an intricate, complicated web of cross-border cooperation we have in place, and that people have worked hard to put in place’.

Gray was responding to committee member Keith Vaz MP, who noted that the justice agenda had not been the centre stage. ‘Do you think there is a big, strong case to make sure that the justice portfolio is actually there and that the secretary of state should be at the forefront of discussions, rather than it just being about trade, immigration and the economy?’ Vaz asked.

Earlier in the session Gray told the committee that the European arrest warrant was a ‘very powerful tool’ being used on a daily basis, adding that it was not just an important tool in the fight against crime but in bringing justice for all those concerned.

However, he predicted ‘huge problems’ in future negotiations, noting Norway and Iceland’s lengthy efforts to establish their own bilateral extradition agreements that mirror the EAW.

Meanwhile CBA chair Francis FitzGibbon QC acknowledged there was no reason why access to the European Criminal Records Information System should not be negotiable. At present, no non-EU member states can access the system, which was set up in 2012.

However, FitzGibbon warned that to get access to that kind of information, the UK would have to be compliant with EU data protection standards.

He said: ‘We are at the moment just about compliant. The EU is willing to forgive any potential lapses in our data protection regime. But I think if we drift away from compliance when outside the EU they will not share data, and that would be a very serious blow to cooperation across the piece in law and order, and justice – not just criminal records but the whole picture would be radically altered.’

FitzGibbon predicted that the implications of the judgment on surveillance handed down in Secretary of State for the Home Department v Watson and Others in the Court of Justice of the European Union, and forthcoming data protection reforms, could potentially cause ‘significant’ problems post-Brexit.

He warned that EU agencies risk breaching EU law ‘if they disclose information to an institution that does not have the standards that apply to them’.

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Justice should be higher up Brexit agenda, MPs told

UK not ‘re-entering EU through back door’, MPs told

Upholding EU directives and accepting guidance from the Court of Justice of the European Union will not be a way of the UK ‘remaining in the EU by the back door’, City lawyers told parliament today. 

Taking questions from the House of Commons justice committee, lawyers and professionals claimed that upholding conventions that ‘recognise the enforceability of judgments’ should be a priority for the government in its Brexit negotiations.

In particular, the UK should uphold the Brussels I framework – which regulates which courts have jurisdiction in civil and commercial disputes and the enforceability of judgments across the EU.

Patrick Robinson, partner at magic circle firm Linklaters, Eva Lein, senior research fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law and Gary Campkin, director, policy and strategy at lobby group TheCityUK, said retaining the convention would be beneficial for the UK’s legal services.

Under the convention, EU defendants should be sued in the courts of their domicile. Parties seeking to enforce a judgment obtained in one EU member state through the courts of another will no longer have to obtain a declaration of enforceability but will only have to present a copy of the judgment and a standard form certificate.

Last month, the Gazette reported that the government’s decision to ratify the Unified Patent Court and unitary patent, which would also accept CJEU supremacy, could prompt a backlash.

Philip Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley in West Yorkshire, said giving authority to the CJEU could be viewed by some as a way of ’not really leaving the EU at all’.

‘People may view this as a bunch of lawyers who want to stay in the EU making sure that happens by some back-door way,’ Davies said, adding: ‘What would you say to my constituents who voted to leave?’

Robinson said it was not a way of ‘staying in the EU’ but that it would be within the UK’s interest to sign up to the agreement and that the CJEU would only explain how the directive works and is interpreted, and would not give it any broader power.

‘I would say [to your constituents] that the UK courts would be implementing a legal system that is right for the country. Just because it shares characteristics with the EU doesn’t mean that UK sovereignty is impaired.’

Lein said the CJEU would not be interfering but would only ‘explain what the concepts [of the convention] mean’.

‘You can tell your constituents that Brussels I protects businesses and individuals and helps them gain access to justice,’ she added.

Campkin said the UK’s legal market was a ‘jewel in the crown’ and reiterated his organisation’s call for the English contractual law to remain the choice for commercial disputes.

In a paper published today TheCityUK said the government should provide ‘urgent and clear articulation’ on areas including enforceability of judgments from UK courts and the importance of English contractual law.

The paper also stresses that English courts should be kept as a hub for businesses that want to resolve international disputes.

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UK not ‘re-entering EU through back door’, MPs told