The UK risks losing its real-time access to a watchlist of suspected terrorists if it does not strike a comprehensive Brexit deal on justice and security, peers have been told. The concerns of the policing consequences of a collapse in Brexit talks were raised by members of the Lords EU security and justice sub-committee during questioning of the Home Office minister James Brokenshire. Fears were also raised over the future of the European arrest warrant (EAW) system and the prospect of the UK becoming a haven for foreign criminals trying to evade justice from EU member states. The Labour peer Lord Rowlands described the situation prior to the EAW system as “hopeless” as it allowed fugitives to roam freely in countries without extradition treaties. “I hope we will agree that we want to avoid going back to the old system, because it did allow criminal havens; [with] those characters who lived on the Spanish Costa del Sol immune from any formal proceedings. I’m hoping you are not suggesting that we might have to go back to that, are you?” said Rowlands. His concerns came as an ally of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the MEP Nathalie Loiseau, warned that a crash out from the EU without a deal would mean weaker ties on security.
Brokenshire said he was optimistic the intensified programme of negotiations scheduled for July and August would deliver a result for both sides. He was confident sense would prevail as there would be “a mutual loss of capability” in tackling crime and security if negotiations collapsed. Deal or no deal, the UK “will continue to be a global leader of security and one of the safest countries in the world” with access to Interpol and bilateral intelligence channels, he said. Peers shared his hopes about security but questioned how the UK would fare if it lost its access to real-time information from EU databases. Lord Anderson pointed out police in Dover could currently use handheld devices to get real-time information on passengers from the Schengen Information System (SIS II) database allowing suspects to be “questioned before they could simply melt away”. “It rather sounds as though the legalistic approach that’s being taken to SIS II [in Brexit talks] means that we’re not going to have real-time access to data,” said Anderson, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation in the UK between 2011 and 2017. Brokenshire rejected those concerns, pointing out that the UK had only joined SIS II in 2015 and Ireland was not a member of SIS II, suggesting it was possible to run counter-terror operations without access to the Schengen databases. “I remain optimistic as to what the negotiations in the coming weeks may bring because of, I think, that sense of shared endeavour,” Brokenshire said, adding that the published approach of the UK supported the “national interest and equally supports those broader interests for the EU security too”. British police and border guards were the third heaviest users of the database, accessing it 603m time a year, the committee heard. Lord Ricketts, a former diplomat and the chair of the committee, questioned the “coherence” of the UK’s Brexit approach. It was looking for a Canada-style agreement in trade but a specially close arrangement in security and justice, “an equivalent position to that which perhaps Schengen countries have, or EEA countries have like Norway, Iceland but no other country”, he said.