European Union Committee: 2012-13 (EUC Report)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am conscious that I now stand between noble Lords and what the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, called their buckets and spades, although in my case it is my punnet and hoe. I failed to pick rather too many of our raspberries and a large quantity of our blackcurrants last weekend, so I look forward to getting back as soon as possible to provide my wife with them to process.
I declare an interest as a former member of the House of Lords EU Committee and a former chair of one of one of its sub-committees. I had thought that perhaps when I step down from government, it would be very pleasant to sit on the committee again. However, what I have heard today suggests that it is all extremely hard work, which is the last thing my wife would want me to do when I have finished working absurdly hard in government. We appreciate how much extremely valuable work the Lords EU Committee and its sub-committees do. The Government certainly have no intention to reduce the number of sub-committees. I remind Members that the number of sub-committees and the allocation of committee resources in this House is a matter for this House and its authorities, not for the Government.
The committee will have seen the Government’s written response to this report and the Minister for Europe welcomed it.
Lord Davies of Stamford
On the very important point of the allocation of resources to permit the committees to do their work, we have, of course, recently been subject to reductions in our travel budget. That is bizarre, because the work requires us to keep in close touch with our continental partners and in particular with the institutions in Brussels. Do the Government have a view on the matter of the resources that should be allocated or the reduction in resources that is being imposed on the committees here?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am simply not briefed on that. However, I can assure the noble Lord that as a Minister I travel with Ryanair and easyJet to various places around the outer fringes of the European Union. We also do our best to economise where we can. I remind the noble Lord that this is the leanest Government that Britain has had for many years because we have cut the government car pool very substantially—we have to walk everywhere.
This is a very timely debate. I recall our previous debate on the annual report, which took place rather later than this one, and in the Moses Room, although we are now here in the Chamber. I also recall it because the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, criticised me very sharply on that occasion for not having read every single report that the committee had produced in the previous year. I can assure her that I have read at least the summary of every report that the committee has produced this year.
There are, of course, many examples of the way in which the committee has fed into the Brussels process and the work of other Governments, as well into the debate within Britain. We are concerned at the criticisms that the committee has made of the untimely provision of Explanatory Memoranda, and in particular of the role of the Treasury. We very much take on board what the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said about the importance of timeliness in terms of subsidiarity. I will take all the points back, and we will discuss them in the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Office and various parliamentary branches of the relevant departments, to make sure that they are fully taken on board. I am an enthusiast for the development of the use of the yellow card mechanism. We have to make sure that we are given all the resources we can manage so that we will be able to use that to its best ability.
I have been heavily involved in the balance of competences review for six months, about which various comments have been made. Perhaps I may stress that those reports were not intended to have policy recommendations at the end. They were intended very much to feed into a better informed debate in the United Kingdom. I hope that the first six reports have done so. I look forward—although perhaps not entirely—to three more rounds of very careful assimilation of a large amount of evidence presented into another collection of reports.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that the balance of competences exercise is very much in parallel to other aspects of what is going on in government. We have welcomed his committee’s report on the justice and home affairs opt-out. The balance of competences exercise is proceeding in parallel with a whole range of other negotiations and the order of reports was drawn up some time ago, with other dimensions in mind.
We are attempting, both within the balance of competences exercise and in the work of this and other committees, to provide space for a reasoned debate within the European Union about our interaction with the European Union. We all recognise that over the next nine to 12 months that debate may be constricted in some ways as we move towards the next European elections. We are also conscious, particularly so over the past week, that the press is not always favourable to a reasoned debate. The Leveson report remarked that in press coverage of the European Union—as with press comment on women, minorities and Muslims—its attitude is that it is quite acceptable to invent stories without any source whatever.
I was very struck to see this story in the Mail the other day:
“Revealed: The shadowy lobbyists waging war to keep Britain in Europe”,
I read it with great interest, only to discover that it was actually talking about British Influence, which is an entirely public body. I think that the Mail had lifted this story from a Eurosceptic blog, which said that British Influence was a deeply dangerous organisation funded by the secretive Bilderberg Group. Oddly enough, the Mail did not include that bit.
I was also quite worried by the article by Peter Oborne in the Telegraph last week, saying that:
“The 1975 referendum was a fair poll in the same sense that the elections due to be held in Zimbabwe next Wednesday will be fair … The sense has lingered that we were hustled, against our will, by an anti-democratic elite, into an organisation whose true aims and nature were hidden from us until too late”.
The BBC, of course, was playing a role in the deceitful agenda.
On Saturday, the Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent, Bruno Waterfield, told us that,
“the European Union is planning to ‘own and operate’ spy drones, surveillance satellites and aircraft”,
under the control of the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, in,
“a major move towards creating an independent EU military body with its own equipment and operations”.
I was therefore very pleased to receive this morning an invitation from King’s College London to a debate in October on how to ensure that we have impartial reporting on the European Union, at which Bruno Waterfield will be one of the speakers.
I say this partly to demonstrate that getting reasoned debate based on evidence about Britain’s involvement in the European Union is not easy and that this committee plays an immensely valuable role in helping to widen that debate. I hope that noble Lords have read the balance of competences review papers so far and I hope that they feel that they have drawn in evidence-based policy with which perhaps to counter the emotion-based policy, the prejudice-based policy and the conspiracy-oriented allegations which so often cloud out rational debate in Britain. All parties must contribute to this effort.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that I very much look forward to hearing a speech from the Labour leadership comparable to the speech made by the Prime Minister in January. The leader of my party, the Deputy Prime Minister, will make a major speech on the European Union in October. I very much hope that we will hear a constructive Labour contribution to an EU reform agenda that keeps Britain in the European Union. This is what the Prime Minister was talking about, and I confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, that that is what the coalition Government are pursuing, rather than unilateral repatriation intended to lead to an exit, which is what the Telegraph, the Mail and a number of others on the fringes of conventional politics very much want us to pursue.
I turn to various issues that were raised in the debate. The sub-committee on foreign affairs produced a very valuable report on common security and defence policy. I have noted that on scrutiny we have shifted very often from major reports to follow-on reports and continued scrutiny. As we approach the December European Council, which will have European defence very much on its agenda, I trust that the sub-committee will continue to monitor the way in which the British Government and others approach this. As everyone knows, there is a tension between those who are interested in institution building and others who are interested in practical conflict prevention and conflict resolution under that dossier.
Similarly, on banking union, it would be immensely valuable if the sub-committee responsible for that continues to monitor the ongoing debate. Having read its report and various other—mainly German—documents, I think that I understand the various different definitions of banking union that are floating around. However, because there are so many different definitions of banking union—with maximum, minimum et cetera—clearly we need to contribute to the debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, and others rightly said, we need to think also about where in the debate the interests of Britain and of Britain’s financial centres are at stake.
On the workload of the European Court of Justice, I take on board what has been said. We have now moved on the question of—
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Advocates-General. The question of more judges is now about to come up.
On the question of students and migration, I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. However, I will say now that the government line is that students who stay here for three to four years are not necessarily temporary visitors. That is one reason why the question of what role they play in the statistics is important. As the father of a student who went to the United States seven years ago and who I hope will come back to the United Kingdom one day, I am very conscious of the tensions.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
I would like to save the Minister from sending an unnecessary letter in the Recess. This is not about statistics. I have said it an awful lot of times. Others, including the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, in the debate that he initiated, also said it. It is about government policy and the impact of that policy on immigration and on our higher education sector. That was what the senior member of his party who is a member of the Cabinet referred to. I ask him to send me a letter not about statistics but about how the Government will give effect to the international education strategy that was put out by David Willetts yesterday and which, I am afraid, is not totally consistent with the Government’s immigration policy.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I guarantee that I will look at the strategy of the Minister for higher education and will consult further.
The noble Lord, Lord Bowness, asked about a Eurojust opt-in. The Government are now consulting on the new Eurojust proposal, which was published on 17 July as part of a package, alongside a proposal for a European public prosecutor’s office. We have been clear that the UK will not participate in the establishment of a European public prosecutor’s office, so we are now considering how to respond to that.
One thing that I hope the committee will focus on in the coming year is the area of European data protection. This applies to domestic legislation in Britain—we may have a data-sharing Bill in the next Session—and applies also at European level. When it comes to negotiation with the United States, data protection and data-sharing are becoming—as we all know and see from the German elections—a highly sensitive area in which the expertise and expert contribution of the Lords European Union Committee could be extremely valuable. A number of noble Lords have talked about democratic accountability—
Lord Hannay of Chiswick
My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt again, but I have to tell the noble Lord that the Select Committee did, in fact, recommend that the Government opt in to the data protection directive currently under negotiation in Brussels. Mirabile dictum, the Government did opt in.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the final shape of the data protection directive is by no means clear. We are a very long way from a final text. I merely wish to insist that it needs to be kept very well under review.
I move on to democratic accountability. The role of national parliaments and closer co-operation among national parliaments, of the sort that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and others talked about, is very much a direction in which we should be moving. The yellow card mechanism is developing. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that it is not a workable mechanism. Closer co-operation between national parliaments; better use of the Brussels office, which we have and share with others; rapid provision of Explanatory Memorandums; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, also said, closer co-operation with British Members of the European Parliament should help us demonstrate to our publics that we are actively engaged in scrutinising the necessary involvement of the United Kingdom in a whole range of regulations at the European level, but also to make sure that we are feeding into the Brussels bubble the active concerns about subsidiarity that we and many other publics have.
This has been a very wide debate, and I simply want to end by pointing out that Her Majesty’s Government are committed to staying within a reformed European Union. We are working with others to promote that agenda. I was very pleased yesterday to read from the Foreign Office a number of telegrams about the positive reaction of other member Governments to the first balance of competences papers. We are already talking to a number of other Governments about how we might share an agenda for reform. That, I hope, has the support of all members of party and non-party groups in this House. I very much look forward to the further valuable contributions that the European Union Committee of this House will continue to make. I will do my utmost within government to ensure that members of the Government—even the Treasury—co-operate as fully and as promptly as possible with the continuing of the committee.