European Union Committee: Report on 2013-14 (EUC Report)

Baroness Hooper Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hooper (Con)]

My Lords, as another new member of the European Union Committee, I have listened with interest to the contributions to this debate, in particular to that of the other new boy, my noble friend Lord Caithness. After all, it is necessary not only to hold the Government and European Union institutions to account, but to account for our own work. This annual report—and the debate—do that very well.

Although I may be new to the main EU Committee, I previously served as a member of Sub-Committee A and now enjoy all the work on Sub-Committee B. I well remember, too, as a Member of the first directly elected European Parliament way back in the early 1980s, that House of Lords reports were—even then—referred to and quoted. That was done not just by British Members but by German, Italian and French Members, too, in spite of the fact that the reports are not—as far as I am aware—translated into any other language.

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

We do consider in the Select Committee—there will be occasions when we are producing another report—whether to make translations available. If it is appropriate, we do not close our mind to doing so.

[Baroness Hooper]

I was not aware of that. The fact that the House of Lords European Union Committee reports are so widely respected and referred to is due to their being well researched and clearly written. Although I struggled at times with the technicalities and detail of financial and banking regulation when I served on EU Sub-Committee A under the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, the reports, when published, made it all comprehensible. We are fortunate in having excellent and high-calibre staff, and their work contributes to that as well.

I recently attended a meeting of COSAC, to which the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, referred at the outset. That, together with the committee’s report on the role of national parliaments, has confirmed my view that to understand the thinking behind a number of the proposals that come out of Brussels and the procedures that they advocate, it is necessary for us all to understand each other’s systems and procedures. It is not only the fact that a common-law approach to legislation is different from the civil law approach, which applies in most other EU countries; it is that here in the UK, in our parliamentary democracy, we are used to the Prime Minister and all Ministers being Members of Parliament and therefore immediately and regularly accountable to Parliament. That is different from a presidential system where the President and his appointed Ministers may rarely attend their parliament, assemblée or congress.

The European Parliament is based more on the presidential system, with the Council of Ministers taking the role of President, than on ours. I fear that many commentators and press reports do not understand that or take it into account. It is therefore necessary to have regular contact and communication between members of national parliaments so that we are aware of those differences and can find a way to make progress in spite of them. Parliaments are, after all, ever-changing bodies and so those contacts must be kept up to renew and update the message regularly.

Having said that, it is of the utmost importance to understand and maintain contact with the European Parliament itself, particularly with British MEPs, again so that we realise why they go about things in a different way. That is especially important at this moment in the aftermath of the European elections and the appointment of a new Commission. We need to work with them to achieve the best possible results not only for our own population but for the whole of Europe.

That is my message for today. I am delighted to add my thanks and congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, as chairman of the Select Committee, and support his Motion.