European Union (UK Permanent Representative)
(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to have this debate, Mr Leigh, and to the Minister for coming to respond for the Government. I am also very grateful to my colleagues. To allow for those who wish to speak, I will try to limit my comments to less than 10 minutes.
Exactly a year ago today, at an emergency meeting of EU Finance Ministers, the then Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), committed Britain to bailing out the eurozone. The deal he struck has made UK taxpayers liable for more than £10 billion—so far. By any measure, that has been a pretty disastrous deal for Britain. Having spent the past 12 months struggling to cut public spending by £6 billion, we have ratcheted up liabilities worth far more than that.
At a time of austerity at home, the Portuguese component of the bail-out alone could have covered the basic salaries of either a quarter of a million nurses or private soldiers, 114,000 NHS doctors or 160,000 police constables. Why are Ministers about to promote Sir Jon Cunliffe, one of the senior officials behind that disastrous deal, to be the next head of the United Kingdom Permanent Representation to the European Union?
We do not actually know for certain that Sir Jon will be the next head of UKRep. Perhaps the Minister will confirm that in his comments in due course. Indeed, despite attempts through parliamentary questions and letters, and freedom of information requests, we are not even allowed to know that his predecessor, Sir Kim Darroch, is standing down next month, in June; we know or suppose that only on the basis of anonymous Whitehall press leaks.
My point is this: why should we not know? The head of UKRep is a public servant, and yet is almost entirely without accountability to the public in whose name he cuts such deals. Not only should the public have a right to know, but those whom they elect should have the right to approve—or indeed veto—candidates for the role. Through an accident of history, the Prime Minister has inherited, more or less intact, the powers that once attached to the monarch: the award of peerages, treaty-making powers and, most importantly, the power to appoint officials. I propose that those powers should pass to Parliament. The next head of UKRep should be appointed following an open confirmation hearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Now that we have changed the Standing Orders to free Select Committees from the dead hand of the Whips and placemen, the Commons Select Committees are no longer the hiding place for such people. I believe that the Committees are up to the task of holding the Executive to account. They should be given responsibility for confirming key Executive appointments, beginning with that of Sir Jon Cunliffe.
Democratising the appointments process, when it comes to senior officials, is hardly controversial. Indeed, we have been toying with the idea for more than a decade. As early as March 2000, the Commons Liaison Committee issued a report, “Shifting the Balance: Select Committees and the Executive”, which mooted the idea. Indeed, as early as July 2007, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), in his first statement to the House as Prime Minister, promised pre-appointment scrutiny hearings—even if his Ministers chose subsequently to ignore the views of some of us on the Children, Schools and Families Committee regarding the appointment of a new Children’s Commissioner.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
My hon. Friend will be glad to know that the Government are taking the issue seriously. Yesterday, the new chairman of S4C, the Welsh television channel, was announced by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The Department has agreed that the Welsh Affairs Committee will be allowed to undertake a pre-appointment hearing to see whether it approves the appointment. That is a positive way forward and shows that the appointment has to be scrutinised by Parliament.
Mr Carswell
Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes a very good point. As in many things, Wales is ahead of us. His point also shows that across the board there is an appetite for restoring to the people’s tribunes the power to say yes or no to appointments made in the name of the Crown. It is an abuse of Crown prerogative when key appointments are made without those we elect having the right to their say.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend think that this could happen with immediate effect?
Mr Carswell
Absolutely. When the chairman of the BBC Trust was appointed recently, it was made clear that he would be appointed only following a confirmation hearing. It is one of those great things—it does not actually require primary legislation, or even a change in the Standing Orders of the House, to bring into effect.
The Liberal Democrats have supported measures to strengthen the legislature over the Executive for as long as anyone can remember; I hope that they remain as committed now that they have joined the Executive. In opposition, the Prime Minister specifically championed the idea of reforming Crown prerogative. In government, he threw his weight behind the idea of confirmation hearings, insisting that Chris Patten face such a hearing before being confirmed as chairman of the BBC Trust. Why not hold a similar confirmation hearing for the man who, more than any other, will be responsible for negotiating our future in Europe? As its own website states, UKRep
“represents the UK in negotiations that take place at the EU level, ensuring that Britain’s interests are heard”.
Kim Darroch, the current head of UKRep, apparently
“represents the UK’s interests at weekly meetings of heads of mission from all 27 Member States.”
At what point do those who profess to represent our national interests answer to the nation for the deals that they strike in our name?
We fight general elections with politicians promising, to one degree or another, to change policy on Europe, yet in what sense are those who make European policy answerable to the people’s tribunes? The conventional model of accountability for European policy via Ministers no longer works. The Brussels agenda is too vast and all embracing, and the scope of deal making too wide for Ministers to track how it works two or three days a week from London. That leaves too many Ministers signing deals that they did not actually author, and nodding through agreements that they have not properly considered.
Ministers in Brussels might make key decisions about what is on the wine list, but in Brussels the real business is conducted all too often by permanent officials. As the great diarist Alan Clark—some of us may have read his books—commented about a Council of Ministers meeting run by UKRep, way back in 1983:
“A succession of meetings, but no possibility of getting anything changed…Everything is fixed by officials in advance. Ministers shaking hands are just window dressing”.
I suspect that very little has improved in the past 28 years.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
My hon. Friend speaks as if the appointment of Mr Cunliffe as our next ambassador to Brussels is a done deal. Did he not read two weeks ago in The Sunday Times a profile of the Prime Minister by Anthony Seldon, which said that the Prime Minister was taking a close, personal interest in this appointment?
Mr Carswell
I did, and I glean the pages of the newspapers for little hints and Whitehall leaks as to who may fill that vital role. Precisely because we are led to believe that the Prime Minister takes such a keen interest, I have every hope that he may do the right thing and allow the people’s legislature to have the final say on whether that man should indeed occupy that important position.
I suspect that if Ministers and ex-Ministers today were as honest and candid as Alan Clark, they would perhaps admit that much the same happened at the two ECOFIN meetings last May, with officials making key decisions that Ministers nodded through. The Economic Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening), wrote candidly in a letter dated 18 July to a Lords Select Committee about the decision to participate in a bail-out mechanism:
“While these decisions were taken by the previous Government, this Government judges them to be an appropriate response to the crisis.”
I am not sure how easily that sits with the Government’s claims that we are necessarily reluctant participants in the bail-outs. Perhaps that conveys the impression that Ministers may change, but the permanent officials and the policy that they determine remain the same.
Requiring Mr Cunliffe—or Sir Jon, I should say—to appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee to explain why he is the best man to negotiate for Britain in Brussels begins a process of changing all that. Regardless of whether Sir Jon is given the job, the process of confirmation hearings would end the appointment and promotion of senior Europe diplomats without scrutiny.
When George Shultz was US Secretary of State in the 1980s, he had a routine for appointing US ambassadors. He would ask them to come into his office and to point to their country on a large map in his office. They would duly point to Kenya, Uganda, Guinea Bissau or wherever. “Nope,” he would tell them while tapping the USA, “this is your country.”
It is perhaps no coincidence that the US, which has always had a degree of legislative control over both appointments and treaties, has a clearly defined strategic vision and a readiness to deploy proportionate force in defence of its interests. Nor can it be entirely coincidental that, when Parliament was supreme and our diplomatic service small and subordinate, we, too, were willing to project our interests. Without effective parliamentary oversight, however, our salaried officials negotiating with Brussels last May managed to make us liable to bailing out a common currency of which we are not even a part.
For too long, Westminster politicians have contracted out large chunks of international relations to the permanent functionaries in Whitehall. Regardless of whether they come from a background in the Treasury, the Cabinet Office or indeed the Foreign Office, we should no longer defer key policy making to unelected officials.
Hugo Young, not a man I quote often, was a convicted —sorry, convinced—Europhile, Guardian journalist, author of “This Blessed Plot” and perhaps the foremost federalist of his generation. He understood how contracting out policy to permanent officials had profound consequences for the development of Britain’s Europe policy. As he perceptively grasped, it meant that Britain’s Europe policy was driven by diplomats rather than by their elected, albeit nominal, masters or bosses:
“By 1963, a corpus of diplomats was present in and around the Foreign Office who saw the future for both themselves and their country inside Europe. The interests of their country and their careers coincided. It was an appealing symbiosis.”
Sir Oliver Wright, who served as ambassador to Germany and the United States, describes the phenomenon as “déformation professionelle”—the skewing of someone’s outlook by his career imperatives. It happens to Whitehall officials as much as to us politicians. The Europeanism of the Whitehall grandee is just one manifestation of his déformation professionelle.
Unchecked by the people’s tribunes, our salaried officials negotiating with Brussels have brought home a succession of dreadful deals. If Sir Jon is to get the role of chief deal maker with Brussels, he must come before this House to explain why he is the best man for the job. In doing so, he might at last start to realign the policy that officials pursue in our name with the kind of Europe policy that the rest of the country would like to see.
Mr Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
The hon. Gentlemen may speak if they have had the permission of the hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell).
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) on securing this 30-minute debate. I come at the subject from a slightly different perspective because, in my former life, I was a Member of the European Parliament and spent 10 years working with some of the officials who performed in the role of the permanent representative.
I have a relatively close friendship with the current incumbent, Sir Kim Darroch, who is a brilliant diplomat. We should not underestimate the brilliance and intellect of some of the top mandarins who have pushed themselves forward and have gone into such roles. Nor should we underestimate their independence. We can, however, take something from the European institutions. When we appoint European Commissioners, they must go through a confirmation process in the European Parliament, to which they supposedly answer. The United States, too, has confirmation processes for all the top appointments.
My hon. Friend is not going as far as he should: when we have a change of Government, we need a change in the Administration at the same time. We need to bring in people who truly believe in what that newly elected Government will do, and we need to have proper appointment and confirmation processes for all our top officials. We should not be so timid as to look only at the head of the UK Permanent Representation to the EU, important as it is. We should expand our view to include most top appointments. I have been in trialogues and all sorts of exciting meetings in European institutions; I have seen British representation at its best and at its worst, and I have seen deals done behind the scenes and in front of people.
During the current passage of the European Union Bill through the House of Lords, I noticed a funny noise—the opening of the tombs of the Cross Benchers and all those who had served in our diplomatic service before they reached that place. I then noticed the amazing energy and dislike for the number of referendums placed into the proposed legislation—a distrust of the people and, indeed, of their elected Government—and the desperate attempts to change the legislation passed in this House.
Those people were exhibiting the problem identified by my hon. Friend. They do not like the subtle change going on, with the European Union Bill providing a lot of referendum locks on transfers of competence from Britain to Europe in many policy areas. They are the Hugo Young college of Europe-type persons: they have been through the process, might rely on a European pension and enjoy going out with fellow diplomats everywhere. I worry about the influence of our current top civil servants, so I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s ideas.
Mr Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
Another hon. Member wishes to speak and I intend to give the Minister at least 10 minutes to reply, which is only fair, so perhaps the hon. Gentleman will bring his remarks to a close shortly.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I am conscious of your comment, Mr Leigh, and will leave the Minister time to make a full contribution. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) on securing this debate. It is absolutely right that the United Kingdom permanent representative to the European Union should be subject to a confirmation hearing before either the Foreign Affairs Committee, as was suggested, or some other appropriate Committee of the House. There are many arguments for holding such a hearing and for having a confirmation process, but no convincing arguments against the idea. I pray in aid none other than the Prime Minister.
My hon. Friend the Member for Clacton mentioned that the Prime Minister supported such an idea when Leader of the Opposition, in an article for The Guardian, published on 25 May 2009:
“I believe the central objective of the new politics we need should be a massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power: from the state to citizens; from the government to parliament; from Whitehall to communities; from the EU to Britain; from judges to the people; from bureaucracy to democracy. Through decentralisation, transparency and accountability we must take power from the elite and hand it to the man and woman in the street.”
Politicians and the senior civil servants and advisers who work for them instinctively hoard power, because they think that that is the way to get things done. We have to kill that instinct, and I know how hard that will be, requiring a serious culture change among Ministers and Whitehall officials, and beyond.
The then Leader of the Opposition went further in his speech on fixing broken politics two years ago, in which he specifically addressed the issue raised today:
“We should also limit the use of the Royal Prerogative, so Parliament is properly involved in all big national decisions—and expand the use of confirmation hearings for major public appointments.”
We have heard that the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs is to hold a confirmation hearing for the boss of the Welsh TV channel. If that post in Wales warrants a confirmation hearing, the post of the UK permanent representative to the EU does as well. We have the perfect opportunity to put the Prime Minister’s idea into action. I look forward to hearing the Minister agree with what the Prime Minister said two years ago.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Henry Bellingham)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell) on securing this Adjournment debate and bringing the issue before the House today. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), who has huge experience in all matters European, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) for their contributions. They have obviously spoken on the issue in the past, but my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton has great expertise, and he always brings his passion to bear.
The position of the UK permanent representative to the European Union is important. He and his team play a crucial role in advising and negotiating on behalf of the Government on a wide range of issues, promoting and protecting UK interests in the EU. In promoting and defending national interests, the permanent representative and the representation, in working groups, negotiate important draft documents ahead of councils and European Council meetings. To do so effectively, they monitor closely and interact with other permanent representations and EU institutions, principally the Commission, the Council secretariat, the European External Action Service and the European Parliament.
Let me briefly give some recent examples of where our mission, UKRep, has played an invaluable role, so that my hon. Friends get a flavour of the work done in Brussels. In the domestic sphere, UKRep has helped to defend UK interests by preventing disproportionate legislation on, for example, the pregnant workers directive and the soil directive. Under this Government, it is being extra vigilant in taking pre-emptive action against any job-destroying employment and social measures. It has also helped to secure outcomes in the UK interests on cross-border health care, as well as on a range of environmental legislation dealing with industrial emissions, hazardous substances and limiting CO2 from vans.
On foreign policy, UKRep has played an instrumental role in forging and maintaining a strong European political stance towards the recent crisis in Libya. It has taken forward with skill the names of people identified by our bilateral posts by successfully negotiating the detail of the sanctions and travel bans for Egypt, Libya and Syria, as well as for Burma and Zimbabwe—in the latter country in particular, we have specific interests.
Mark Reckless
Would the Minister include in that description of UKRep’s various diplomatic successes negotiation of the euro bail-out funds around the weekend of 10 May last year?
Mr Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
Order. This debate is about the appointment process for the UK permanent representative. It is perfectly in order for hon. Members and the Minister to introduce the subject, but we must now return to the appointment process, which is the subject of the debate.
Mr Bellingham
Thank you, Mr Leigh. I will return to the subject of the debate, but if my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) writes to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe, I am sure that he will provide a detailed response, which I do not have time to do now.
Work continues with the development of a reformed and effective neighbourhood policy on the back of the Arab spring, which will continue to require skilful and proactive negotiation from UKRep. In the area of economic policy, the permanent representative and his team played a vital role in ensuring that the Prime Minister was able to secure positive and robust language in December for the next financial perspectives. They also developed a broad level of consensus for the Prime Minister’s joint letter on growth ahead of the spring European Council. Similarly, UKRep played a vital role in preparing the ground for a good set of European Council conclusions on the euro-plus pact.
My hon. Friend the Member for Clacton made various comments and assertions about particular officials and their roles in negotiations on EU issues. The topic for debate today is the appointment process, not the policies, as you rightly pointed out, Mr Leigh, so I will not dwell on the policy issues that my hon. Friend raised, and I will not comment on individual civil servants. However, what is clear to me is the importance of the distinction between the roles of Ministers and officials. Ministers take decisions on policies, and are accountable for them to Parliament. Officials in UKRep then negotiate within the mandates and instructions that Ministers have provided. Those mandates are adjusted and updated as the negotiations progress, but it is a myth that UKRep has the freedom to operate outside the negotiating mandates that they receive from Whitehall, or to make independent judgments about compromises or deals.
The House of Commons has the opportunity, through its excellent European Scrutiny Committee, which is under the proactive and assiduous chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), to set out its views on European documents ahead of agreement. The Committee has the right to ask for a debate in Standing Committee or on the Floor of the House. This Government value the work done by Parliament on EU work, as it is fundamental to making the Government of the day more accountable to EU decision-making, as well as to making the EU process more transparent.
My right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe made a statement along those lines to the House on 20 January, and encouraged the Government and Parliament to explore ways in which Parliament’s scrutiny role could be further strengthened on EU issues, including on justice and home affairs. That is the right way for Parliament to be satisfied that, through ministerial accountability, officials throughout Whitehall and posts—including the Permanent Representation—are promoting the national interest effectively in the EU.
Mr Bellingham
I do not have long, so I shall carry on. Like other diplomatic service appointments—I am coming to key points about the process—I am clear that the permanent representative’s role is to advise Ministers on how to secure the best results for the UK in the EU, and to negotiate to achieve those results for the Government. Ministers decide and are accountable to Parliament for policies on European issues, and for the positions that the UK Government take in negotiations in the EU. The appointment process for the position—the appointment of an official, not a politician—therefore follows the general principles followed for diplomatic civil service appointments, and the code. It is critical that the appointment be made on merit. The civil service and diplomatic service are founded on the principle of impartiality. Officials must be able to serve with integrity the Government of the day, of whatever political party or parties.
Robert Peel said to this House in 1827:
“I may be a Tory—I may be an illiberal—but…Tory as I am, I have the further satisfaction of knowing, that there is not a single law connected with my name, which has not had for its object some mitigation of the severity of the criminal law; some prevention of abuse in the exercise of it; or some security for its impartial administration.”—[Official Report, 1 May 1827; Vol. 17, c. 411.]
That principle has served successive Governments well, allowing them when they come to office to make use of the continuity of expertise and professionalism of civil servants and diplomats. Indeed, I have seen for myself since I was appointed nearly a year ago that civil servants and diplomats who served the previous Government with great professionalism and integrity now work with Ministers with a different set of priorities. The seamless transition to the new team—the commitment, tireless hard work and dedication—is a huge credit to the British civil service. For those reasons, I continue to believe that to introduce a further stage in the appointment process for the permanent representative or for other senior appointments when a selection has been made would not be consistent with the principles of impartiality and appointment on merit, and could indeed be seen to politicise the appointment process.
I am sorry to disappoint my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton, but I do not intend to propose that Parliament should be offered hearings on senior appointments. That would blur the distinction that I emphasised earlier, by implying that officials in UKRep, however senior, had some sort of independent role, separate from the Whitehall process. As I have said, officials implement the policies and work within negotiating mandates decided on by Ministers, and for which Ministers are rightly always accountable to Parliament.
However, I welcome the House’s interest in the issues raised today. I therefore propose that the Foreign Affairs Committee be informed in writing of appointments to the most senior overseas positions at permanent secretary level—obviously including that of the permanent representative to the EU—when the selection has been made, providing a copy of the successful candidate’s CV and job specification. In the case of the permanent representative to the EU, I propose sending a copy of that letter to the European Scrutiny Committee. I hope that that goes some way—not the whole way, but a small way—in the direction that my hon. Friend wants.
My hon. Friend is concerned that some questions to the Foreign Office have not been properly answered. I have looked at the correspondence and some of the parliamentary questions that he tabled, and I am satisfied that the issues raised by my hon. Friend have been addressed as fully as possible. Both officials and Ministers have addressed the questions about the nature of the contract and the way in which the permanent representative is tasked and appraised.
Similarly, the permanent representative’s personal performance is assessed on a personal basis between him and his line manager. My hon. Friend would like to make the permanent representative more directly accountable to Parliament. I have said that I believe that it is right that Ministers remain accountable to Parliament for policy decisions and for the positions taken and agreed in the EU.
Around 157 years ago, the Northcote-Trevelyan report on the organisation of the permanent civil service stated its principles. It says:
“It may safely be asserted that, as matters now stand, the Government of the country could not be carried on without the aid of an efficient body of permanent officers, occupying a position duly subordinate to that of the Ministers who are directly responsible to the Crown and to Parliament, yet possessing sufficient independence, character, ability and experience to be able to advise, assist, and, to some extent, influence, those who are from time to time set over them.”
Those principles held firm 157 years ago, and still do today.
Question put and agreed to.