Hansard

As the Justice Committee’s EU rapporteur, I am pleased to speak in the debate. I am also a member of the European and External Relations Committee and I acknowledge the considerable work that that committee’s clerks and convener have done in putting the committee’s report together.

Before I look ahead to future work, I will touch on an aspect of the Justice Committee’s EU scrutiny that started in 2012 and concluded at the end of last year: the UK Government’s opt-out decision, which came into effect on 1 December 2014. In the run-up to that date, serious concerns were raised about how that decision would impact on Scottish interests, whether the European arrest warrant would be affected and what the implications might be if there was a gap between the block opt-out coming into effect and the opting back into individual measures.

During that time, we received updates on the various Westminster committees’ inquiries on the issue and we requested written submissions from the Lord Advocate, Police Scotland, the Faculty of Advocates and the Law Society of Scotland. We held regular evidence sessions with the Scottish Government, although we did not quite persuade a member of the United Kingdom Government to meet us. I thank all those bodies for keeping the committee updated on such a significant issue and I am pleased that there seems to have been a smooth transition from the opt-out to individual opt-ins on 1 December.

It is important for Scotland to remain a member of the European Union, and I am pleased that others in these islands support the First Minister’s call for a double majority if there is a referendum on EU membership. That call has also received support from the First Minister of Wales, at least as a concept worth looking at.

Our engagement with Europe should be about co-operation and the exchange of best practice. For example, Scotland has become part of the vanguard initiative for new growth by smart specialisation, which aims to influence the direction of innovation and entrepreneurship in Europe’s member states and regions.

The Justice Committee’s priorities for this year focus on five areas: the Scottish Government’s updated action plan on European engagement; the European Union’s e-justice strategy, the Scottish Government’s justice digital strategy and how they interact; criminal procedure dossiers and the European public prosecutor’s office proposal; the European agenda on migration; and the EU’s justice and home affairs agenda for 2015 to 2020. I will look at those in turn.

The Justice Committee will look carefully at the Scottish Government’s updated action plan on European engagement and will seek to identify any key justice issues for scrutiny. We will also keep a close eye on the justice and home affairs agenda as and when new proposals are published, to ensure that Scottish interests are protected.

On e-justice, in recent months, the committee has heard much about the Scottish Government’s justice digital strategy and we are keen to see how that fits in with the EU’s e-justice programme. The Scottish Government has confirmed that there are common objectives between the two, and it is identifying which of the e-justice actions might help it to progress the four main justice digital strategy projects, which are the digital platform, justice portal, justice communications and legal projects. We expect a further update from the Scottish Government on that work in the months ahead.

The committee has an on-going interest in the European public prosecutor’s office regulation proposal, having reported subsidiarity concerns about it in 2013. Although the UK Government does not wish to opt into the proposal at this stage, there might still be implications for working arrangements between Scottish prosecutors and the EPPO, so we are keen to keep an eye on how the proposal develops. We understand, however, that negotiations on the proposal might take some time, so that is likely to be a long-standing piece of work.

Finally, on the European agenda on migration, the committee is considering the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Bill at stage 1. We are keen to hear more about the European agenda on migration, which was listed in the Commission’s work programme, to see whether there is any interaction. Of course, in the light of the recent unfortunate events to which the minister referred, it seems that that aspect of the European agenda will merit much greater attention at a European level in the months ahead. I believe that this Parliament would be wise to keep a close eye on the European agenda on migration.