A no-deal Brexit could make the UK a ‘safe haven’ for international criminals due to relaxed safeguards, solicitors have warned.
The UK currently co-operates with the other 27 EU countries to catch and prosecute criminals and terrorists, sharing data and investigations. Once the UK leaves, however, unless a deal governing criminal justice terrorism is in place, the many agreements facilitating this co-operation will cease to apply.
Law Society president Christina Blacklaws said this week that no deal would make it ‘harder to investigate cross-border crime, harder to arrest suspects and remove them to face justice, harder to get compensation for victims.
‘At the moment of departure, when it comes to criminal justice, all manner of issues will be left unresolved and solicitors will have to pick their way through 27 different justice systems instead of just one – the EU’s’.
The UK will no longer, for example, be able to use the European Arrest Warrant (EAW), which speeds up requests by one member state to another for the surrender of accused or convicted people; the European Investigation Order (EIO), which facilitates the gathering of evidence in another member state of the EU; Europol, which supports member states’ responses to cross-border crime; and EU judicial co-operation unit (Eurojust), which co-ordinates investigation and prosecution of cross border crime.
Blacklaws said: ‘If we leave the EU without a deal, the era of unprecedented international security and criminal justice co-operation which we’ve enjoyed as a member state will immediately cease.
‘Under the EAW criminals can easily be repatriated to their home state, but if the UK exits without a deal we may end up relying on a treaty from the 1950s. The British people may not be forgiving if the UK becomes a safe haven for criminals from across the EU27.’
The 1957 European Extradition Convention process, which Switzerland still sometimes uses, is ‘lengthy, costly and taxpayers will end up footing the bill’, she said.
The Law Society published a guidance paper for solicitors this week, ‘No-deal Brexit criminal justice co-operation’.
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