Yvette Cooper MP, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary has tonight written to Theresa May to ask her to explain why there will be no vote on the European Arrest Warrant in the House of Commons on Monday, and ask her to amend the motion to ensure all 35 measures being opted back into are voted on in the House on Monday.

The full text of the letter is below:

Rt Hon Theresa May MP

Home Secretary

Home Office

2 Marsham Street

London

SW1P 4DF

Dear Theresa,

Last week the Prime Minister said there would be a vote on the European Arrest Warrant before the Rochester by-election. The Government then told the media this would be scheduled for Monday. For clarity I include the excerpt from Prime Minister’s Questions:

Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab): A vital tool that has helped to bring murderers, rapists and paedophiles to justice is the European arrest warrant. Why is the Prime Minister delaying having a vote on it?

The Prime Minister: I am not delaying having a vote on it. There will be a vote on it. We need, in order to have a vote on it, the small matter of a negotiation to take place within Europe, which up to now the Spanish have been blocking. I think the Spanish will shortly remove their block, and at that moment we will be able to have a vote.

Edward Miliband: We all know the reason why the Prime Minister is not having a vote: it is the by-election in Rochester and Strood. He is paralysed by fear of another Back-Bench rebellion on Europe. So I want to make an offer to him. We have a Labour Opposition day next week. We will give him the time for a vote on the European arrest warrant, and we will help him to get it through.

The Prime Minister: There is only one problem with the right hon. Gentleman’s second question: we are going to have a vote, we going to have it before the Rochester by-election—his questions have just collapsed.

You have also promised in the House of Commons that the package of 35 opt-ins, including the European Arrest Warrant, would be put to a vote:

Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con): These are serious matters. Nobody wants to protect criminals. However, there is a lot of concern about these matters in the House of Commons, not least because it is difficult to argue to our people that we want to take powers back from the European Union if we are giving it powers. Will my right hon. Friend give the House an assurance that although this is effectively an Adjournment debate on a one-line Whip, there will be a substantive vote after a proper debate so that the House of Commons is able to vote on these matters?

Mrs May: My hon. Friend causes me to progress to another part of my speech. I want to make the situation absolutely clear. As he knows, we have had a number of debates on this matter in the House, and the Justice Secretary and I have made a number of appearances before various Select Committees, including the European Scrutiny Committee. We had hoped and intended that by this stage we would have reached agreement on the full package that we are negotiating with the European Commission and other member states. That has not happened. The package was discussed at the General Affairs Council towards the end of June, but some reservations have still been placed on it, so we do not yet have the final agreement. However, we believed that we had sufficient knowledge to make it right and proper to have this debate in the House today.

The House will have the opportunity to vote on this matter in due course, but having said that we would bring the matter back to the House before the summer recess, I thought it right and proper to give the House the opportunity to have this debate.

However, the motion to be voted on in Monday’s business – published today – makes no mention of the European Arrest Warrant, instead referring only to a document that includes 11 of the 35 measures requiring further transposition into domestic law in order to meet the UK’s obligations – again not including the European Arrest Warrant, or indeed the 23 other measures being opted into by the Government.

The motion reads: “That the draft Criminal Justice and Data Protection (Protocol No. 36) Regulations 2014, which were laid before this House on 3 November, be approved.”

As you will know, I fully support your decision to opt back into the European Arrest Warrant. It means 1,000 suspected foreign criminals are removed from our country each year. We were looking forward to supporting the UK’s continued involvement in the EAW.

However, it appears you and the Government are too ashamed of your position to include it in the motion being put before the House – which is far from a ‘vote on the European Arrest Warrant’. You are running away from your backbenchers instead.

The Home Affairs, European Scrutiny and Justice Committees are also rightly outraged. They have said: “The form of debate and vote proposed by the Government on Monday falls far short of the Committees’ expectations and, once again, demonstrates the Government’s cavalier approach to Parliamentary scrutiny of this important matter. The motion to be considered by the House of Commons concerns a Statutory Instrument…  It has no direct relevance to the European Arrest Warrant, the most contentious of the 35 measures, or to UK participation in EU Agencies such as Europol and Eurojust.”

I am seriously concerned that your decision to vote on a motion which doesn’t mention the European Arrest Warrant, simply to try and avoid a Tory party rebellion, may endanger the UK’s continued use of this vital tool. You have committed to a vote on this before the opt-in in process is finalised. The deadline for that is December 1st 2014 – when the ‘opt-out’ you enacted will come into effect. If you have not opted back into the Arrest Warrant by then, it will cease to function in the UK. Surely we must be voting on Monday to authorise its continued use, as you pledged to do?

You must urgently amend the motion to ensure all 35 measures being opted back into are voted on Monday – these vital crime fighting tools, as you have said yourself, are too important to lose.

Yours sincerely,

Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP

Shadow Home Secretary