Today over
at the TaxPayers’ Alliance we have a
new paper out
looking at Justice and Home Affairs. The United Kingdom enjoys an opt out, or
an opt in depending on your vantage point.
The
difference is subtle, but crucial. As the response to our Freedom of Information
request has shown, it’s as a bridge rather than as a wall that the provision
has been used.
Subtly,
quietly, without fanfare, the UK has been signing up to a surprising range of
proposals – no fewer than 53 asylum and immigration measures and 15 civil
judicial measures. No doubt the standard response is that these are areas
individually of small consequence, each decided on its own merit, and a tiny
pooling of sovereignty. That defence does not stand scrutiny. As a
Parliamentary Question laid down in Copenhagen shows, the Danish Government (which
too has an opt out) has by comparison signed up to just four measures.
Is it
because the British Government, endorsed by its ministers, has lost all
confidence in its own ability to control the country’s borders and run its own
judicial and criminal system? Is it because the Danes, having secured their opt
out thanks to the Maastricht referendum, have a much greater appreciation of
the freedom that they won?
I suspect the answer lies in a
combination of them both. Parts of Whitehall have adopted the old
Italian way of doing business in Brussels, content with handing powers and
budgets over to the EU as a false solution to an acute awareness of their own
shortcomings and failures.
Labour
ministers have quietly presided over this transfer. Liberal Democrats call for
much more. The Conservatives are currently silent. An opportunity to change all
this takes place on Sky TV this evening. Tonight, the electorate deserves a
debate. The voter deserves to be told.
