Andrew Dismore

You can watch the deabte here:

Debate on European Arrest Warrant post-Brexit from Andrew Dismore on Vimeo.

Tony Arbour AM:  The Mayor specifically has said, and I quote him:

“If we had no deal with the European Union, it would lead to those who visit our city, those who live in our city being less safe.”

That is a definitive statement.

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  True.

Tony Arbour AM:  What I am seeking from you is the evidence.  Why would they be less safe?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime):  If we do not have a proper and good deal in place in time for exiting Europe, which we do not have confidence about at the moment – given everything else going on – we will not have the EU passenger name records system whereby the UK Border Agency can check passenger details of those who are on watchlists of who is coming in and out of the country.  We would not have that unless there is a deal.  That makes us less safe.

Tony Arbour AM:  You are seriously saying ‑‑

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime):  Nor would we have the European Criminal Records Information System ‑‑

Tony Arbour AM:  This is akin to saying that aircraft will fall out of the sky.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime):  ‑‑ which, as the Assistant Commissioner has been talking about, enables police forces to assess risk, know what is happening and get detailed information about people.  These are incredibly important.  Yes, we want that after the exit of Europe and the Home Secretary has said that she wants it, but the real crucial thing is how and when and what they are going to be doing to make sure that that happens.  That is what the Mayor has been pressing and that is what I will continue to press as well.

Tony Arbour AM:  Some of us – well, me – would say that this is scaremongering.  It is not dissimilar to those people who say that if there is no agreement, no aircraft will fly.  It smacks very much of the millennium thing: that the world will come to a stop when the year ticks over.  There is no evidence.  All that is being said by you and all of these other groups, I suspect, is legalistic ‑‑

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime):  That is the point!

Tony Arbour AM:  ‑‑ and, actually, nobody in the real world, just as with the analogy with the aircraft, believes that these things will not continue.  Simply to say that things are going to be less safe – and I asked specifically why we would be less safe.  That is why I asked the question about a murderer.  A foreign murderer that we know about is not going to be left roaming around London, is he?

Steve O’Connell AM (Chairman):  You have answered that already.  I am now going to bring in Andrew.  Thank you, Tony.

Andrew Dismore AM:  Can I give you a specific example, Mr Hewitt?  After 14/7 [21 July 2005 terrorism attempt], we had to extradite from Italy one of the suspects.  How long did it take?

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  I do not know the exact time period, but it was lengthy.  I do not know.  That is the answer.

Andrew Dismore AM:  It was a couple of weeks, actually, under the ‑‑

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime):  That is the 2005 bombing?

Andrew Dismore AM:  Yes.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime):  Through the European Arrest Warrant, he was brought back within a couple of weeks.  He was a suspect in the bombings, yes, absolutely.

Andrew Dismore AM:  Exactly.  If we did not have the European Arrest Warrant and had to extradite him from another country – supposing he had gone to Turkey, for example, where we do not have European Arrest Warrant arrangements – how long would it have taken to bring him back, do you think?

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  It would be considerably longer than two weeks.

Andrew Dismore AM:  Yes.  The European Arrest Warrant, as the Deputy Mayor has said, is vital.

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  Yes.

Andrew Dismore AM:  The Mayor set out six things that he thinks are red lines for security and I would like to ask whether you agree with those, Mr Hewitt: Europol; the European Arrest Warrant; the Schengen Information System II; EU passenger name records, as we have heard from the Deputy Mayor; the European Criminal Records Information System; and the Prüm [Convention] arrangements, which give access to DNA profiles, fingerprint data and vehicle registrations.  Are all of those important to fighting crime in London?

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  They are all important and I revert back to the point I have made.  The whole process within UK law enforcement to respond to the current negotiations is being led jointly by the NPCC and the NCA.  We are heavily involved with that process of work and our position is very clearly that what we would ask for and what we seek is at least the same provisions that we currently have, if not anything further.  That answers that question.

Andrew Dismore AM:  Exactly.  Yes.  You were asked earlier on about arresting people in London.  A lot of that depends on intelligence and most of these things, apart from the Arrest Warrant itself, are to do with criminal intelligence, are they not?

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  Correct.

Andrew Dismore AM:  Therefore, you may not even know who you have to arrest if you do not have access to that information or data.  Is that right?

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  It is the point I made around us also being able to prevent crime as well as respond to crime.  There is clearly a significant advantage in us being able to easily and legally share intelligence and other information.

Andrew Dismore AM:  No deal means no deal on anything.  It has been suggested that no deal does not actually mean no deal on anything; it means no deal on lots of things but not on aircraft in the skies or on security issues, but no deal as far as the Government is concerned and the EU is concerned is no deal on anything.  The suggestion is that we would then have to ‘box and cox’ somehow to make all of these things happen.  Do we have these arrangements with any other countries apart from EU countries?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime):  There are a number of bilateral arrangements.  With the United States and other countries, there are bilateral arrangements.

The whole point is that what we have at the moment works.  It is very useful for individual police forces across the country, not just the MPS, to be able to get people back who are wanted and also to share that information.  The point is that we have to have that type of deal put in place for when we leave Europe.  Otherwise, they do just fall.  You can have a wish list of what you wish to do, but, if there is not the legal framework, they do fall.  The police have to abide by the law and they can only do what they have the legal framework to do.  There will have to be lots of individual bilateral arrangements legally agreed or, from our point of view, we need this in terms of having this in place.

Andrew Dismore AM:  Mr Hewitt, if we look at Norway, which was suggested earlier on, how many of these arrangements do we have with Norway?

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  I do not know that specifically.  I did not mug up on Norway specifically before coming to the meeting.

Steve O’Connell AM (Chairman):  Martin, you are supposed to —

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  Yes, I know.  I apologise.

Leonie Cooper AM:  It is disappointing!

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  I go back to the point and I ‑‑

Andrew Dismore AM:  Perhaps you will let us know in due course.

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  Yes, and I apologise for repeating it, but these are all legal capabilities that allow us to better do the job that we need to do in protecting London and for that matter nationally.  That is, therefore, why our position is clearly that that is what we would want retained.

Andrew Dismore AM:  If we take, for example, people trafficking, that is a well-known international crime where people are crossing borders.  As difficult as it is to tackle people trafficking, particularly those are trafficked into the sex industry, how much more difficult would it be if we did not have access to all of these information-sharing arrangements?

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  Clearly, that will be a more challenging investigative process.  That is the point.  There is no logic in me talking about what might be hypothetical processes or legal frameworks that may be put in place.  The fact of the matter is – and that is a good example of a type of criminality where the arrangements that we currently operate under are incredibly helpful and beneficial to us in investigating that sort of criminality.  We hold the position where we would want them retained.

Andrew Dismore AM:  Earlier this year there was a major firearms seizure involving the MPS, the NCA and others.  Was that reliant on information that came under these arrangements?

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  I do not know the ins and outs of that particular operation, but I would assume that that would be the case.

Andrew Dismore AM:  If we do not have arrangements with the EU along these lines, it means we are left in the position of having to negotiate bilateral arrangements with different countries, does it not?  That is probably for the Deputy Mayor.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime):  That is my point.

Andrew Dismore AM:  How long do you think it would take to negotiate bilateral arrangements with all of the other 27 EU countries?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime):  That is anyone’s guess, is it not, about how long that will take?

Andrew Dismore AM:  Exactly.

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime):  That is why it is so important in terms of the work that is being taken at the moment that a deal on Europe includes a deal on security and that no deal is just not an option because of the legal frameworks that will fall.  Those bilateral arrangements will take a long time to put in place.  These arrangements that we have under Europe are being used and used every day to keep not just Londoners safe but the rest of Britain safe as well.

Andrew Dismore AM:  The Mayor is right to have set out his six red-line options, which are the ones I have mentioned earlier on.  You made clear that no deal is a potential disaster for security and that when the Government talks about ‘no deal’, they do not actually mean no deal at all; they mean a deal on some things that they like and not on things that they do not.

I suppose the last question for both of you is this.  Are you preparing for the possibility of no agreement covering these six items?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime):  The Mayor and the Commissioner [of Police of the Metropolis] were asked this by the Home Affairs Select Committee and the answer that the Mayor gave yesterday was that we are pushing for this not to be an eventuality and we want security to be absolutely part of really focused prioritisation around the deals.  If we do not have confidence by the beginning of next year, we will have to think about what we need to put in place.  The Commissioner herself was asked this as well and she is going to be looking at that.  At this stage, we want that to be part of the deal.  We will have to look in the early new year as to whether that is coming to fruition.

Andrew Dismore AM:  The MPS is affected by the same uncertainty as I do not know how many other businesses across London, which have effectively said, “Unless we get some clear indication by the end of the year, then we have to start preparing, because of the uncertainty, for all of these other eventualities”?

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime):  We will have to look in the new year at how confident we are that these arrangements are going to be put in place or, if they are not, what needs to happen next.

Martin Hewitt QPM (Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police Service):  Just to emphasise, there is not a MPS-specific issue here.  The work is led by the NCA under the guise of the NPCC.  We have a very senior person working with that.  We have an individual who is expert in this area working with the Home Office team.  We are part of all of that process, which is looking at what the contingencies would be for the various possible outcomes.

Andrew Dismore AM:  With Brexit, either we need a new treaty covering all of these things or the uncertainty means we will have to think —

Sophie Linden (Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime):  Or we will have to have bilateral arrangements.