Duff tackles Commission on crime escalation

12.00.00am GMT Tue 23rd Nov 1999

Eastern England's Liberal Democrat Euro MP Andrew Duff will today meet the European Commission responsible for crime and police.

The meeting is being held to review the Commission's plans to increase police and judicial cooperation between the European Union's 15 Member States in response to the growing evidence of organised international crime.

Andrew Duff has a special responsibility in the European Parliament for citizenship matters. He says:

"It is right that Europe should be becoming more involved in helping our national authorities to combat major crime.

"But there must be strong safeguards to ensure that traditional civil liberties are protected from excessive surveillance and unnecessarily oppressive measures.

"The purpose of the meeting with Mr Vitorino is to tell him of the lively concern of many of my constituents about inadequate policing in Britain, and to help him develop a European-level strategy that makes sense for those of us in Eastern England.

"I shall also be discussing with him how to improve the co-ordination of asylum policies between the Member States.

"At present, the way we treat asylum seekers is satisfactory neither for those people nor for the local communities who fear an excessive burden of incomers.

"The answer is a proper system of burden-sharing and transparent and liberal approach to those who, quite legitimately, may want to live in this country."