So I'm joined by Professor John Spencer, who's an emeritus professor

here at the law faculty, a specialist in criminal law.

Do you want to start by introducing yourself in more detail?

Yes, Amy.

For many years I taught criminal law and criminal procedure and I'm still

involved in them to some extent. So I still edit this journal, Archboldt Review, which is

for practitioners relating to criminal law. And I edit various books relating to it.

I, for many years, used to lecture to judges in what used to be the Judicial Studies Board,

and it's now called the Judicial College.

I also know about and have taught and written about continental criminal procedure.

I was a professor-invite in France a number of times, the equivalent in Belgium and the equivalent in Italy.

And I've written in English books about continental criminal procedure, and I had actually written in French a book about English criminal procedure.

And I've also been involved at various levels in EU criminal law over the years.

In particular, as a result of being part of the team involved in producing this study,

the Corpus URI study, which was published in 1997,

putting forward the idea of a European public prosecutor

to bring proceedings in the member states for frauds on the EU budget.

The difficulty being that national prosecutors often give them rather a low priority compared with national crimes.

And that leads on to the first thing I'd like to say about European criminal law, which is something that it isn't.

It isn't a Brussels plot to abolish the common law and force us and all the other member states

to have something horrendous called the Napoleonic system or the inquisitorial system,

which is something you often read as one of the reasons why we must have Brexit in the referendum.

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