Ms Tanya Ward:

We voiced that recommendation to the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and it would be of great assistance if others were to support it. I agree with the Senator on the European arrest warrant. The UK has nothing to gain by not being part of the European arrest warrant agreement because these warrants make it easier to move suspects to another EU country than was the case under our pre-existing extradition law because the former eliminated one of the principles of extradition law, namely, that one could not remove someone from a jurisdiction where the offence that is the subject of the extradition request from another country is not a crime. For example, it was not possible to remove a person from the UK to Ireland to be charged with a crime if that offence was not a crime in the UK. The European arrest warrant removed this provision. There has been some media criticism of the European arrest warrant on the grounds that it makes it easier to remove a person to another country.

This is one area where there is an exposure because we do not want people who are suspected of crimes committed against children to be able to hide behind the fact that there is no law to hold them accountable for what they have done. This is one of many areas where the United Kingdom is extremely exposed because it will not have a system to remove suspects from its jurisdiction to jurisdictions in the European Union and member states will not have a mechanism to have suspects transferred from the UK to be tried.