Baroness Ludford (LD)

My Lords, Amendment 71 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord German. I had expected that it would be grouped with my mine and others’ amendments about Europol. Those are in later groups, but this one got bounced up, I guess for understandable reasons because it is about a duty on the border commander, so it makes sense to group it either way, as it were. That means there is going to be a slightly disjointed discussion on Europol, but I am delighted to raise the issue sooner rather than later. I am hoping for a positive response from the Minister, because when the UK-EU summit on 19 May produced the so-called common understanding—it is a slightly awkward term, but it is the reset result, and a good result it was—there was, in particular, a point on internal security and judicial co-operation, and that referred back to doing better work on Part Three of the trade and co-operation agreement. In case noble Lords do not have the document under their eyes, Article 567 of the TCA is about the scope of co-operation with Europol. It talks about “the exchange of information”, including “specialist knowledge … general situation reports … results of strategic analysis … information on criminal investigation procedures … information on crime prevention methods … participation in training activities” and “the provision of advice and support in individual criminal investigations as well as operational cooperation”.