Number 10: No final decision on European Arrest Warrant

Is Number 10 really preparing for a U-turn on the European Arrest Warrant? After Coffee House reported some odd manoeuvres by chief whip Michael Gove involving him suggesting to Tory MPs that it might be better for the government not to opt back into the EAW, the topic came up at this afternoon’s lobby briefing.

The Number 10 spokesperson told journalists that:

‘The government has set out the areas where it is, in principle, seeking to opt back in. We want to secure European agreement on that and then we will take a final view on which ones we opt back into.’

That sounds rather like there is room for a shift. But a Number 10 source is insisting to me that ‘there is no change’. This, though, is quite different to the sentence ‘there will be no change’ in policy on the EAW, although when I suggested this to the source, he said again that ‘there is no change’.