UK cannot be trusted with sensitive data after Brexit, says Brussels
BRITAIN’S hopes of building a deep security partnership with the EU have been cast into fresh doubt after Brussels warned that the Government cannot be trusted to handle sensitive crime data.
The potentially provocative move by the European Commission’s Brexit negotiating team has raised questions among British officials about whether Europe is “really serious” about having an enduring and stable relationship with the UK after Brexit.
Ministers threatened last week to quit the EU’s new €10billion (£8billion) Galileo satellite network after the EU threatened to block Britain from us- ing its military applications because of concerns over the UK’s data security standards.
In the latest twist, The Sunday Telegraph understands that Michel Barnier’s Brexit negotiating team deliberately flagged up an EU report that criticised the UK for its performance in the Schengen Information System II (SIS II), the EU’s crime-fighting database.
The EU evaluation report, which was approved on April 12, found “serious deficiencies” in the way the UK participated in SIS II, including handing sensitive crime data over to private contractors and failing to respond adequately to requests from other states.
The report, which found basic errors such as the UK using sub-standard IT systems, is another embarrassment for the Home Office in a week where its failings have been highlighted over rising knife crime and the Windrush immigration scandal.
The presentation to EU Brexit diplomats earlier this month highlighted that the UK had failed a previous evaluation in June 2015 and in the latest evaluation – in Nov 2017 – had been discovered to be performing even worse.
An EU diplomatic source said the aim of the presentation to the Article 50 Working Group had been to highlight the UK’s “lax approach” to datahandling and its “disregard” for EU rules in regulating access to sensitive information. “This was a case study – a warning – saying ‘if you give the UK access to sensitive data, expect the UK to misuse that’,” the source added.
The briefing was given even though the UK “accepted and acknowledged” its failings on SIS II and committed an additional £15million to resolving outstanding issues by 2019.
The EU’s tough approach raises serious questions over whether the UK can maintain the “close collaboration” with the EU on security matters that Theresa May has said is vital to any future EU-UK relationship.
In a Future Partnership paper last September, the British government lionised the SIS II, noting that in the two years after the UK joined in April 2015, it had produced over 4,000 “hits” on criminals being sought by the UK.
The paper also gave the example of how an SIS II alert led to the arrest of a UK sex offender in Cahors, France who had absconded on bail but was arrested after a traffic accident – even though he was travelling under a false name.
“Had the UK not put the alert on SIS II, he may have remained at large and a risk to children,” the paper concluded – emphasising the mutual interest the EU and the UK had in continuing the system after Brexit. The difficulty, say EU sources, is that with Britain outside the reach of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) after Brexit there are seri- ous legal obstacles to allowing a nonmember state to have access.
The UK argues that the dispute resolution mechanism and EU-UK ministerial forum that will govern the new UK-EU relationship should be able to accommodate security cooperation.
However, a senior EU negotiator said the decision to highlight the UK’s failed SIS II evaluation presaged a “difficult discussion” ahead.
Referring to the SIS II evaluation, one senior UK source said that the Commission was being deliberately selective. “They are using this administrative stuff – on which we are no better or worse than other member states – as a stick to beat us with.”