European Union
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Sewel)
I beg to move the final Motion, standing in my name on the Order Paper, to appoint the European Union Committee.
Amendment to the Motion
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
As an amendment to the above Motion, after paragraph (3), insert:
“(4) To make an annual report to the House for debate on the effect of its work on the European Union’s legislative proposals and legislation.”
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
My Lords, several times over recent years I have intervened at this juncture in our appointments procedure to complain about the composition and effectiveness of your Lordships’ Select Committee on the European Union. I have also suggested that the number of its sub-committees should be reduced and their energies redistributed to other committees of your Lordships’ House and future ad hoc committees. I remind noble Lords that the appointment of our Select Committees is a matter for the whole House and not just for the usual channels, whatever they may be. We have just approved a heavyweight committee to consider economic affairs and we have been generous enough to give it one sub-committee. Do we have the balance right?
Would it not be more sensible to disband EU Sub-Committees A and B on economic and financial affairs, international trade, the EU’s internal market, energy and transport and pass their activities to our Economic Affairs Committee, perhaps giving it another sub-committee in the process? Are we right to have a Sub-Committee C on foreign affairs, defence and development policy when we do not have a committee on our own defence and foreign affairs? Should we not set one up and include the work of Sub-Committee C in its remit?
Furthermore, do we really need two EU sub-committees: on justice and institutions, Sub-Committee E; and on home affairs, Sub-Committee F? Could they not be rolled into one? These suggestions would leave us with an EU Select Committee and just two sub-committees: Sub-Committee D, on agriculture, fisheries and our environment—all areas firmly under the control of Brussels; and a new combined E and F Sub-Committee? That would largely free up the energies of four sub-committees for distribution elsewhere.
In this respect, I am not sure whether our Science and Technology Committee feels that it is now adequately equipped with its new second sub-committee. Clearly it is a vital area of our national life. If so, I merely point out that it had to struggle to get what it needs with the powers that be.
I make these suggestions because I believe that the committee work of your Lordships’ House, with the single exception of our EU committees, is of huge value to the nation. The expertise and wisdom that resides in your Lordships’ House is unrivalled anywhere else in the country. The standard of debate is dauntingly high. I see our committees as one of the irrefutable justifications for your Lordships’ House in its present composition and at or somewhere near its present size. How could we field anything like the number of Select Committees that serve this House with a House of some 300 Members?
Lord Boswell of Aynho
My Lords, the House will have noted the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, on the importance of effective scrutiny, and his interesting and detailed suggestion on the configuration of committees. First, I briefly thank the House for entrusting me with responsibility for the European Union Select Committee; and, secondly, I acknowledge the fine example set by my predecessors, including my immediate predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Roper. I have no conceptual problem with the need for efficiency and scrutiny, and I remind noble Lords that they will shortly receive the sessional report of the Select Committee and will have ample opportunity thereafter to consider it further.
Lord Willoughby de Broke
My Lords, I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Pearson. It seems eminently sensible. I spent four years on the EU Select Committee. Any Members on the committee now will know exactly how much time is taken up by membership of that committee and of its various sub-committees—the amount of reading, work and supporting of the committee reports when they are debated in the House. However, like my noble friend, I remind the House that precisely one item only has ever been amended by the Commission following the issuing of a Select Committee report. I really wonder whether this is right and whether the committee should be required—it seems a harmless amendment, I must say—to report back to this House and to the nation on the effectiveness of its work and on the effect of its reports on the legislation coming out of Brussels. At the moment, the latest fact is that just one piece of legislation in the past 10 or 15 years has actually been affected by the vast number of reports issued by the EU Select Committee.
I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, supported my noble friend’s amendment or not, but it seems to be very sensible. I hope that the House will support it.
Lord Grenfell
My Lords, I take this opportunity to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, on his appointment to the chairmanship of the committee, a chairmanship which I enormously enjoyed when I had the honour to hold it.
What the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, is saying today is so familiar to me it is almost like listening to “Auld Lang Syne” every New Year’s Eve. It is utterly predictable but probably less tuneful. Every year, he shows that he misunderstands the purpose of the European Union Committee. It is not to tell Brussels what to do; it is to hold the Government to account for what they do. The function of a committee of the House of Lords is to hold the Government to account, and that is precisely what it does. If it takes that number of sub-committees to examine the more than 1,000 documents that come through, so be it. You need the people and the Peers to do that.
However, the real point is this: in order to be able to advise the Government on how they should react to what comes from what the noble Lord described as the juggernaut in Brussels, you need to explore the minds of those working in Brussels and spend a lot of time examining the Green Papers and the White Papers, attending the meetings and so forth so that you can fulfil your function, which is to advise the Government on how they should react. That is what the committee is all about. It is not about telling Brussels what to do.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon
My Lords, I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, will now hear the second verse of “Auld Lang Syne”. Before I remark on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, on his appointment as Chairman of Committees and the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, on his as Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees. However, I support the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, in the amendment that he has put before the House. He has been very persistent in doing so. It is right that the House should hear some alternative views about the European Union. It often does not and should do so more often.
The Select Committee has six sub-committees; it used to have seven but now it has six. However, their very existence shows the power of the European Union over matters relating to this country and how it has encroached on our national life and into the very nooks and crannies of our country.
The Select Committee on the European Union costs £2 million a year, which is not a mean sum. It is absolutely true that the benefits from its discussions, although they are erudite and make easy reading, are nevertheless not influential, so far as this House and Parliament can see, in altering the views and policies of the European Union itself. Decisions are taken in secret so that we do not even know what views are being put forward by the Government, so again we cannot see what influence our own Select Committee has on our own Government.
We spend £2 million on this committee. There is another Select Committee in the House of Commons. It does not do quite the same thing, but I wonder whether it might be worth considering a joint Select Committee of both Houses to scrutinise EU legislation and regulations. That is a matter that might be taken up by the House and the other place at some point in the future. I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
My Lords, I would like to say a few words on this, having been a member of your Lordships’ European Union Committee on two occasions and still currently so. There are many errors of fact in what has been said by the noble Lords, Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Stoddart of Swindon, and others. Our job is to make recommendations to the British Government, and the point about the British Government not telling us what account they have taken of our recommendations is untrue. They are required to do so within two months and they always do so. They state their reaction to every single one of the recommendations. It is also untrue that the Commission does not say what it has done in reply to the recommendations. Every one of the reports is now replied to by the vice-president of the Commission responsible for relations with the national parliaments, and they are all on the website. I wish the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, good reading because there are probably several thousand replies from the Commission that he could usefully read. He might then understand a little better what is done.
My penultimate point is that we have not yet reduced the number of sub-committees to six. We are waiting for the Chairman of Committees to be allowed to put his proposal to us in order to reduce them from seven to six, but we have not yet done so. The last point that I want to make about this is that it does not always seem to be very well understood that the job done by the EU Committee and its sub-committees is that of scrutiny of EU legislation, a job that is done by the whole House on UK legislation. If it is not done properly through the EU Select Committee and its sub-committees, it will not be done at all, and that would be a real loss of influence for this country.
Lord Tebbit
My Lords, it verges upon the unbelievable to think, from the description just given to us by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that the bureaucrats of Brussels are waiting in fear of what the sub-committees in this place might say about proposed European legislation and are then devoting thousands of hours to reasoned arguments against it. I suspect that that does not actually happen.
To come back to the clear point, we have before us a proposal that these distinguished and hardworking Members of the House should consider these matters time and time again, even though there is no evidence that anything changes as a result of their consideration and recommendations. That is a fact that has been shown to be so from the answers to PNQs. Either we change what we are doing and do something to draw attention to this so that the Government might get excited about it and act in some way, or we simply say to these distinguished Members of the House, “You are wasting your time. Why not go home and dig the garden? Do something constructive”, or something like that.
These Members are simply wasting their time. If they are wasting their time, as I believe they have been in recent years, it should be brought to the notice of this House by means of a debate so that we can consider what to do about it, one way or the other: either close down the operation or require Her Majesty’s Government to do something effective. The amendment proposed today is one way of getting something moving on that front.
Baroness O'Cathain
My Lords, I hesitate to disagree with my noble friend Lord Tebbit, but there are occasions when the workings of the sub-committees and the Select Committee have actually borne fruit. We have done a number of reports where we put the consumer first, as well as the management of money.
Only recently we had huge success in dealing with the issue of the roaming of data when abroad. That might not sound important to a lot of people but with the growth in the use of iPads, I can assure noble Lords that it is. I spent a night in a hotel in Ireland recently with my iPad—I mean, reading my two newspapers on my iPad in the morning; sorry about that—and it cost me £30. I just could not believe it. We then made our report in a very short exercise—and I see members of my sub-committee agreeing with me—and we got huge acres in the techie press of agreement that this was the way to go, and I am sure that something will happen. It is only a small thing but it is something to convince my noble friend that in fact we are achieving something.
The Chairman of Committees
My Lords, I had anticipated an amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, although not the one that actually emerged. He has put me in something of a difficulty. I do not know whether to respond to his amendment or to his speech because the two seem to be somewhat disconnected.
As the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Grenfell, have pointed out, the noble Lord fundamentally misunderstands the function of the committee. The committee’s job is to scrutinise Her Majesty’s Government’s response to European initiatives. It also takes on the role of inquiry into particular policy areas. This is where the argument about effectiveness is cited.
The noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, has already pointed out with regard to roaming how the committee is able to influence the development of policy. I have previously pointed out with regard to fisheries policy that if you look at the proposals coming forward from the Commission on the reform of the common fisheries policy, they are heavily drawn from the report of our own EU Committee. That is the sort of influence that can be brought to bear in a positive way.
Finally, on the issue of preparing an annual report, the committee already has the power to issue an annual report if it so wishes. Again, listening to the words of the Deputy Chairman of Committees, it seems that he—and the committee—would be quite happy to look at whether something like an annual report could be produced. On that extremely helpful note, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Tebbit
Back in May 2008, I asked the then Government whether they could find more than one example of a European Union legislative institution having been altered as a result of proceedings in either House of Parliament. It was a fairly straightforward question. No such examples were given. I wonder whether my noble friend has some examples that might have occurred in the past two years under this Government.
The Chairman of Committees
My Lords, I am much more concerned about being able positively to influence policy development rather than seeking the post-hoc position of trying to change policy and legislation once it has been enacted. Surely it is much better that we are in there, bringing to bear the expertise of this House on issues of major European policy.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch
I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken: to the noble Lords, Lord Grenfell and Lord Hannay, and partially to the Chairman of Committees. They all said the same thing: that I had got it all wrong, that I had not understood that the EU Select Committee is there not to tell Brussels what to do but to hold the Government to account and to advise them how to act. Well, as a matter of fact, I am aware of that; my point is that the result is ineffectual, as witnessed by the 580 scrutiny overrides and so on. I accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, who said that the Government indeed reply, copiously, to all our Select Committee reports and that the Commission replies to the Government’s views. However, the result remains the same. On the example relating to fish that has been given by the Chairman of Committees, let us wait and see.
The amendment and the debate have been worth while. I have to disagree with my noble friend—if I may refer to him as such—Lord Tebbit in one regard. I agree that members of the European Union Select Committee are largely wasting their time, but I do not propose that they should go and dig their garden. Their energies should be redistributed around the other committees of your Lordships' House, particularly the ad hoc committees of the future, which will be increasingly important.
I am grateful to the Chairman of Committees for giving me some support and to the chairman of the Select Committee for not ruling out of order what I had to say. I am grateful, too, to both noble Lords for giving us the hope that future annual reports of your Lordships’ Select Committee may indeed include what I have requested. I am most grateful to the noble Lord for his generous reply. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.