Wednesday, September 30, 2020
No deal Brexit would be a gift to terrorism
Some of us warned about this during the referendum of course, but this revelation in the Guardian is still a sharp reminder of the disaster that Boris Johnson's government is steering us towards.
The paper reports on warnings by a former EU security commissioner that British intelligence about terrorists and other serious criminals would have to be deleted from EU systems if the Brexit trade negotiations were to collapse.
Sir Julian King, who was the UK’s last commissioner in Brussels until last year, said that in security terms “the difference between a deal and no deal is significant” and the negative impact would be felt immediately:
“UK [intelligence] data that was held in EU systems could – indeed would – be deleted, if there was no data adequacy arrangement covering how you share data,” said the former British diplomat in a briefing organised by the Royal United Services Institute.
The UK would instantly become disconnected from a range of databases and systems such as the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS), which shares data about prior convictions across all EU countries, he added.
Warnings about the UK losing direct access to EU security databases in the event of no deal have been made previously, but King’s remarks about deletion represent a little discussed risk. It would have an “immediate impact” fighting terrorism and serious crime across Europe, he said.
As Sir John Scarlett, a former boss of MI6, says, data sharing between the UK and the EU and its member states has grown significantly in recent years. He believes that it is critical in tackling terrorism and drug trafficking:
The former spy chief said that “after the attacks in the Bataclan in Paris in 2015” intelligence sharing about the attackers and their ringleader were critical to investigators scrambling to piece together information about the planning of the attack.
Investigators in both the UK and across Europe needed to track “personal movements, crossing frontiers, knowing where people are at any one time,” and “financial movements at the same time,” Scarlett added.
“The jihadist extremist threat is absolutely definitely still there,” Scarlett said. “Last year in the EU there were 21 terrorist related attacks of which three succeeded”. One was the knife attack at Fishmonger’s Hall in London Bridge, where two people who had been attending a conference on prison rehabilitation were killed.
Britain would also have failed to have negotiated a replacement for the European arrest warrant in the event of a no deal, Scarlett warned. “Operationally, it really matters … the ability to arrest serious criminal suspects in the UK, or elsewhere across the EU,” the MI6 boss said.
Ironically, the party of law and order, the so-called Conservative Party, is putting us all in more danger as a result of their reckless pursuit of a no deal Brexit.
The paper reports on warnings by a former EU security commissioner that British intelligence about terrorists and other serious criminals would have to be deleted from EU systems if the Brexit trade negotiations were to collapse.
Sir Julian King, who was the UK’s last commissioner in Brussels until last year, said that in security terms “the difference between a deal and no deal is significant” and the negative impact would be felt immediately:
“UK [intelligence] data that was held in EU systems could – indeed would – be deleted, if there was no data adequacy arrangement covering how you share data,” said the former British diplomat in a briefing organised by the Royal United Services Institute.
The UK would instantly become disconnected from a range of databases and systems such as the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS), which shares data about prior convictions across all EU countries, he added.
Warnings about the UK losing direct access to EU security databases in the event of no deal have been made previously, but King’s remarks about deletion represent a little discussed risk. It would have an “immediate impact” fighting terrorism and serious crime across Europe, he said.
As Sir John Scarlett, a former boss of MI6, says, data sharing between the UK and the EU and its member states has grown significantly in recent years. He believes that it is critical in tackling terrorism and drug trafficking:
The former spy chief said that “after the attacks in the Bataclan in Paris in 2015” intelligence sharing about the attackers and their ringleader were critical to investigators scrambling to piece together information about the planning of the attack.
Investigators in both the UK and across Europe needed to track “personal movements, crossing frontiers, knowing where people are at any one time,” and “financial movements at the same time,” Scarlett added.
“The jihadist extremist threat is absolutely definitely still there,” Scarlett said. “Last year in the EU there were 21 terrorist related attacks of which three succeeded”. One was the knife attack at Fishmonger’s Hall in London Bridge, where two people who had been attending a conference on prison rehabilitation were killed.
Britain would also have failed to have negotiated a replacement for the European arrest warrant in the event of a no deal, Scarlett warned. “Operationally, it really matters … the ability to arrest serious criminal suspects in the UK, or elsewhere across the EU,” the MI6 boss said.
Ironically, the party of law and order, the so-called Conservative Party, is putting us all in more danger as a result of their reckless pursuit of a no deal Brexit.
