Email
The case of Ashya King has aroused varied and passionate views but it would take a special kind of monomania to put Britain's membership of the European Union at the heart of the story. But there is a Eurosceptic angle, which has, naturally, drawn the attention of those Conservatives who make it their business to agitate against anything that looks like a national subordination to Brussels.
In this case, the villain is the European arrest warrant (EAW), a device that facilitates the swift collaring and extradition by police in one EU member state of suspected criminals in another member state. This is how Ashya's parents found themselves in custody in Spain, although the advertised function of the EAW has been disrupting terrorist networks and organised crime. Parents of very ill children travelling abroad were no one's idea of a suitable target.
And that is why Tory MPs who hate the warrant are agitated by the case and keen to flag up the EU dimension, as Jacob Rees-Mogg did in prime minister's questions on Wednesday.
The Somerset MP asked David Cameron: "If even the respected Hampshire police can use the European arrest warrant to create an injustice, could my right hon friend have any confidence that other member states with less well developed legal systems will not use the arrest warrant for worse purposes in future?"
It was a civil exchange towards the end of the session that passed without much notice. But Rees-Mogg's question was also a warning shot. Britain's participation in the EAW is not a done deal – or rather it is a deal that could in theory still be undone – and parliament will have to vote on it later this year.
Most Conservative backbenchers hate the thing and say they have the tacit support of senior ministers in wanting rid of it. If mishandled, this issue, currently blipping unobtrusively at the periphery of most Westminster radars, could turn nasty for Cameron.
The origin of the row is old, and the way it plays out can get bogged down in legal argument and arcane parliamentary procedure. That is one reason No 10 presumably thinks it might get away with bundling the whole thing through without attracting too much attention.
And here's where it gets complicated. The EAW is one of a number of European justice and home affairs cooperation measures to which Britain has signed up under the Lisbon treaty. But (and this is the quick version) the last government negotiated a mass opt-out from the whole "pillar" of those measures on the understanding that it could then opt back in to a selected number that it deemed vital.
The right to exercise the opt-out expires on 1 December and, to avoid a period of legal limbo, that also becomes the deadline for activating the opt-back-in.
Quite how this situation should be navigated became an early point of coalition disagreement. The Lib Dems never really wanted to opt out of the Lisbon justice pillar at all. But Cameron came under immense pressure from his party, which despises everything about the Lisbon treaty, to ditch as much of it as he could. So a compromise was cobbled together.
The government declared that it would indeed be exercising the opt-out and has been quietly – or as quietly as it can – negotiating over bits it might then immediately rejoin. They number around 35 at the last count of which the most controversial is the EAW.
To a fierce Eurosceptic this is all thoroughly out of order. It means, in effect, that Cameron proposes breaking a hated shackle to Brussels, only to then re-shackle the UK seconds later.
At midnight on 1 December, the UK would be free from meddling continental prosecutors and at one second passed midnight it would be instantly unfree again. This, say potential rebels, casts the prime minister's stated ambition to renegotiate EU membership in a ridiculous light.
It is also, they are keen to point out, a public relations gift to Ukip – if the public notices. What greater reinforcement could there be to the suspicion that Cameron isn't serious about his scepticism than this taking back of sovereignty with one hand and giving it away again with the other?
The defence of the EAW, deployed by the prime minister in response to Rees-Mogg and by Theresa May and Nick Clegg on various occasions in the past, is that it is a vital weapon for facilitating the capture of terrorists, gangsters, paedophiles and other villains when they abscond. The sceptics say the same benefits would be available with a bilateral treaty between Britain and the EU, but that is a model predicated on the kind of renegotiated terms that amount to Brexit – Britain's exit from the EU.
MPs have already voted for the opt-out and, in a thinly attended end-of-term session in July, debated the generalities of the opt-back-in. For obvious reasons the government is now keen to get the last crucial bit of the deal done with a minimum of fuss, but Tory MPs have successfully extracted a commitment that the whole matter will be debated again and subjected to a vote.
Many insist that each individual item among the 35 (or however many it ends up being) should have its own vote, which would create colossal opportunities for rebellion and wrecking amendments.
The suspicion among hardline sceptics is that the government will look for some mechanism to package the whole thing up in a way that makes it impossible to unravel or amend. This, warn Tory opponents of the EAW, would be a serious mistake. One tells me that any attempt to use "parliamentary jiggery-pokery to get it through" would provoke a bigger backlash than a straightforward debate and vote.
Cameron can almost certainly get the EAW and other parts of the Lisbon opt-back-in through the Commons, because the Lib Dems are on his side and Labour probably would be too. But the issue is still dangerous.
With the Clacton byelection due on 9 October, Tory collywobbles over Ukip and Europe are sure to continue deep into the autumn. If enough Conservative MPs decide to fashion from this legislative process an instrument to torture their leader, every precedent says they can do it.
;