6. What discussions has the Counsel General had with counterparts in the UK Government regarding tracking cross-border crime following Brexit? OAQ54637

I myself last discussed matters relating to the future security partnership at the February meeting of the ministerial forum. Nowhere else in the world has the level of close multilateral co-operation in relation to law enforcement and judicial matters that exists between EU member states, and that co-operation must continue even if the UK leaves the European Union.   

Thank you, Counsel General, for that answer. Following the horrendous deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants in Essex last month, a number of senior MPs and experts have cautioned that the UK faces a real risk of being excluded from Europol and its agencies, including the anti-trafficking unit and the European Migrant Smuggling Centre, post Brexit. They went on to say that, even with a deal, the UK would have downgraded access to those organisations.

The UK's right to access and share information on a whole host of security issues like human trafficking and international crime could be severely hampered at a time when international co-operation is needed the most. Being excluded from an organisation that has an unrivalled ability to track crimes across Europe and beyond is of grave concern. So, Minister, what discussions have you had with the Westminster Government—or will you have when it returns—about how they intend to maintain access to all those agencies that I've just mentioned, especially now, when we're in such turbulent times internationally?   

Well, I'll reassure the Member that it's exactly that kind of close engagement and involvement into the future with the various Europe-wide law enforcement bodies and agencies—. It's exactly that kind of relationship that I was advocating in that ministerial forum and I and other Ministers have continued to press for in the interim period. As she says, whether it is Europol or Schengen, the SIS II system, whether it is about sharing passenger name records or criminal records, there is a multiplicity of EU-wide law enforcement and security arrangements from which we benefit at the moment, and from which exclusion will have a real impact on us and on our security.

Now, of course, the ambition that the UK Government has is to negotiate the best available relationships with those organisations after Brexit. But the reality is that there are several obstacles in the path of those negotiations delivering the same level of engagement and involvement that we currently have, not least amongst them the question of the UK's data adequacy. All of this is shared data, and, as we know in this Chamber, if we become a third country, we'll have to restart a process of qualifying to access data of any sort. It's a major stumbling block. As a non-Schengen third country our access to a number of these arrangements will, even at best, be depleted.

And there's a third dimension here as well, which is that many of them require a level playing field in terms of human rights protection, and losing the benefit and the shelter of the EU charter and fundamental rights may itself pose an obstacle to getting the kind of arrangements we would want to see in place in those negotiations.