European Union Committee Report

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, as the chairman of EU Sub-Committee B, which scrutinises proposals from the Commission in the fields of the internal market, infrastructure and employment, I am delighted to have the unusual opportunity of sharing with the Grand Committee the highlights of our work within the 2010-12 Session. Before doing so, I thank the current and past members of the committee and the clerks, policy analysts and our committee assistant, who is about to retire. Everyone has contributed unstintingly to our work in the 2010-12 Session. Of course, we are all very grateful that we operate under the guidance of the Select Committee itself. We say a big thank you to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, who took over from the very effective noble Lord, Lord Roper. It seemed to be seamless but I am sure that it was not. At the risk of repetition, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Roper.

During the 2010-12 Session, Sub-Committee B produced two reports and undertook enhanced scrutiny on other issues of interest. The two reports were on the single market and on the Channel Tunnel. The single market report was particularly significant because it dealt with the Single Market Act I in the light of the Commission’s recent proposal for the Single Market Act II. It is gratifying to realise that our recommendation that e-procurement be introduced at EU level will be included in the Single Market Act II. We also realise that the tax harmonisation that we suggested is likely to be included likewise.

The committee’s second report was about the Channel Tunnel, and scrutinising proposed legislation and reporting on issues of significance within the EU is what we are about. However, we have also adopted in our sub-committee a consumer focus—not consumer issues per se but saying whether the consumer will either benefit or not benefit from the results in our recommendations. The second report was completed in conjunction with consideration of the interoperability of the rail network throughout Europe. Closer to home, we looked at the Channel Tunnel and found to our amazement that it is operating at about 50% of its capacity for passenger traffic and at only 10% of its capacity for freight traffic. Frankly, the idea that we as a nation cannot benefit from the huge rail markets in the rest of the single market of which we are part because of the limitations placed by the Channel Tunnel is inexcusable when you consider the huge amount of investment and all the financial problems that have been sorted out—we hope.

We took an amazing amount of evidence from a wide range of sources, including representatives from Eurostar and Eurotunnel, from government officials, as well as, of course, from Deutsche Bahn, which has been trying—without success so far, but it is almost there—to use the Channel Tunnel. As I said, the report concluded that the total potential of the tunnel is a long way off being realised.

We recommended that the Government and the Commission work harder to deliver this interoperable, effective European rail network within reasonable timescales. We were not happy with the response that we got from the Government to our report and when we had a debate on the Floor of the House, so we decided to follow up with an evidence session with the newly appointed Minister for Transport, Simon Burns MP, in which we made no secret of the lack of government engagement. This was addressed. The session revealed that some headway had been made in the direction of the committee’s conclusions. The talks with Deutsche Bahn, the potential passenger carrier, for example, have progressed greatly. This means that there is only one more safety-related issue to be agreed. It is clear, however, that much work is still to be done and the pressure still has to be kept on the Government, Eurostar and the other operators. However, I can assure noble Lords that, as we warned during the evidence session, we are keeping a close watch on progress, or the lack of it.

We also covered several items of enhanced security. It was a very interesting part of our work; indeed, all of our work has been interesting. We looked at enhanced security on matters directly relating to consumers because, as I have said, we had a focus on consumers. We undertook an in-depth look at enhanced security on roaming charges for data—not the roaming charges for mobile phones. In May this year, the European Parliament voted for further cuts to roaming charges for data. We were quite pleased about that.

We were also instrumental in holding the Government to account during the volcanic ash crisis caused by the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull—we call it “E15”, because there are 16 letters and it begins with “E”—the Icelandic volcano that caused such disruption to air travel; I apologise for my non-Icelandic pronunciation. We took evidence from Jonathan Moor, the then director of aviation at the Department for Transport, and senior government officials, clarifying, among other issues, whether there was scope for the European Aviation Safety Agency to play a role in regulating flights within such levels of ash concentration and whether the six-day ban on air travel in Europe had been excessive.

This is very much a snapshot of the diligent, concentrated work by Sub-Committee B by an enthusiastic membership. On the rare occasions when we cancelled a meeting because the scrutiny work was not urgent, and it was thought better to have a full and interesting meeting in a fortnight’s time, I have been upbraided by some members for denying them the opportunity of their Monday afternoon fix of fascinating topics.

Since it has already been mentioned, I ought to mention the report that we did on women on boards. It has been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Boswell. Of course, we made history about “within two working days”. We had a debate, and were there one day before the decision came out of the Commission. One of the points that I want to make, and at this stage this is the only opportunity that I am likely to have, is that we had a time-limited debate on the Floor of the House and there were 15 speakers—in fact, there were more men than women. Other than me and the winders-up, the speakers were limited to two minutes. It was a remarkable debate because each of the Members who was limited to two minutes made a specific relevant point, not repeated by any of the others, and the whole debate was actually fizzing. We ought to think about that when it comes to the long, exhausting debates that we have on the Floor of the House and try to get our act together. That way we might engender more respect for European issues in the House as a whole.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for his six-minute speech. I am conscious that we are past 7.30 pm and I will attempt to be shorter than is usual in a wind-up speech and I will promise to write to noble Lords if I do not cover everything. I should start with a number of regrets. I share the Committee’s regret that the House took a decision to reduce the resources available to the committee. I recognise that this is an issue for the whole House in terms of how many committees the Lords should have and what resources are available. That is part of the wider debate about the future of this Chamber which we tackled and failed to come to a conclusion on earlier this year.

The Government value the work of this committee enormously. I value the work of this committee enormously. I feel that I almost came in at the beginning of it. Michael Wheeler-Booth, the first Clerk of the committee, used to enjoy telling the story of how a young woman who was one of the few experts on the EU outside the Government at the time came to give evidence to one of the first sessions and he gave her a double gin and tonic to stiffen her nerves. That young woman, my wife, was also educating me about the European Union at the time.

When I was chair of one of the sub-committees I was conscious of the very high reputation that our reports have in Brussels. I met last Thursday with a Polish Minister who, in almost his first remark, said how glad he was to be in the House of Lords and how much the Polish Government valued the reports of this committee, so we are maintaining the standard and the reputation.

We are all conscious that the weight of work and the number of Commission proposals and communications —and therefore of Explanatory Memorandums— continues to grow. This committee struggles very well to strike the balance, to which the noble Lord, Lord Boswell referred, of detailed scrutiny and capturing wider issues at an early enough stage to influence the debate. A number of excellent examples of that have been mentioned today

Let me say a little about the Government’s current approach to the European Union and therefore to the role of this committee. Her Majesty’s Government are strongly committed to continued membership of the EU, as my noble friend Lady Warsi repeated in the Chamber today, and to active engagement in the development of European Union policies. This is not from any commitment to a European ideal, let alone, as some Eurosceptic conspiracists claim, to the creation of a European superstate: it is, clearly, that the coalition Government believe that continued membership remains in the UK’s national interest. That is our belief and that is how we have to defend the European Union. As the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, remarked, it matters not whether we are pro or against: we have to look at the hard evidence and see where Britain’s interests lie.

The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, attacked the European project—the belief in an ever closer union through which power would progressively be transferred from national Governments to Brussels. That is now over, although there are still some within the Commission who cling to that ideal. Generational change has swept away some of the old disillusion with the European state and enthusiasm for Europe instead, but our interests remain engaged with our neighbours across a range of shared concerns.

Of course, the current crisis in the eurozone is forcing changes in the EU’s priorities and structures, as the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, remarked. The Foreign Secretary, in his speech in Berlin, and the Deputy Prime Minister, in his speech at Chatham House, in the past few weeks have both addressed this broader issue. As the Foreign Secretary said during his recent speech in Berlin, the EU will be stronger if it made more sense to people by acting only where there was clear justification for action at the European level, which is one of the themes that we all need to discuss. The catholic principle of subsidiarity, which to me is similar to the liberal principle, is that decisions should be taken as close to those they affect as possible; that the most democratic politics is local politics. I say in mild criticism that I am not ever sure that grass-roots sport is an appropriate area in which the European Union should interfere.

One should always ask the hard question of whether or not such matters are dealt with by the federal Governments in Australia, Canada and the United States, and if they are not, we should look carefully before we transfer competence, authority, cost and benefit to the far weaker and less democratically accepted institutions of the EU. That is what we are trying to do in the balance of competences exercise. I encourage this committee, as the whole Government wish to encourage it, to get as actively engaged in the balance of competences exercise as possible over the next two years. I speak with some passion on this because I have now been nominated as one of the three Ministers who will play a role in scrutinising this review within government and we are looking for engaged and expert partners on the outside. We will be briefing the committee throughout as fully as possible and I hope that it will respond to calls for evidence. This will help to inform an evidence-based debate within the UK, which is what we now need.

I hope that, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has said, we are opening up again a wider, rational debate about whether Britain should stay in the EU. I stress “rational” debate, because when I saw the 10-page spread in the Daily Mail last week about common purpose and the conspiracy in the Leveson inquiry, I rapidly went on to Google to see what was behind it and found myself discovering the wider shores of Euroscepticism. One of the articles even told me that Francis Maude is not really a Conservative but is part of the socialist conspiracy to establish a European superstate. This is the world of alternative reality and irrational belief. Mainstream arguments are the ones that we have to address, with, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said, the rational Eurosceptics—and there are many. That is what the balance of competences exercise in Britain, but engaging others, wishes to do. We already have some interest from Berlin in contributing to that exercise. Chancellor Merkel has said that less in some areas is a good thing for the European Union, and the leader of my party, the Deputy Prime Minister, when he was an MEP used to talk about the European Union doing less better, which is an entirely sensible approach.

The balance of competences review is very important to us in promoting a debate and therefore, I hope, to your Lordships as a committee. Similarly, the whole question of the JHA opt-in, the Protocol 36 debate, is one in which we hope that the committee will remain actively engaged. The Government have not reached a settled view on the final decision to opt in or opt out. Noble Lords will remember the exact words used in the Statement given to Parliament, which were that the Government’s “current thinking” was to opt out, which meant that a final decision had not yet been taken. It very much depends on active debate in detail on the various proposals made, consultation with other Governments, consideration of national interests and so on. In terms therefore of engagement with Parliament, we are committed to a vote in Parliament when the Division comes up and we wish therefore to maintain active discussion on all these matters—I hope perhaps on the Floor of the Chamber as well as in Grand Committee.

A number of noble Lords, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Roper, talked about co-operation with other national Parliaments. Again, Her Majesty's Government would encourage your Lordships to develop those links as far as we can. I am a member of a European affairs sub-committee of the Cabinet which is about to go to Berlin in early January for its second meeting there and its third meeting overall with our German counterparts. Germany is clearly one of the most important partners that we have to deal with in the world and the most important partner in the European Union. We hope that your committee will perhaps develop a similar bilateral relationship with your German counterpart but also pursue further the ways in which COSAC, COFADS and the various other conferences of your EU Committee chairs can help you to plug into other national debates.

A better awareness of the complexities of national history was what the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, talked about, which of course fits in with another issue that we were discussing last week: the 100th anniversary of World War I. I remind your Lordships of the 300th anniversary of the Hanoverian succession. I trust that the House will plug into all those matters. If I may rapidly put in a plug: I am interested in discovering what your fathers, grandfathers and great uncles did in the First World War. I have so far discovered in this House one whose grandfather fought for the Germans at Tannenberg, another whose father fought for the Austrians at Caporetto and a third whose father was rescued from a torpedoed troop ship by a Japanese destroyer. There must be a lot that will demonstrate to us the complexity of our relations with our European partners in our modern world.

I strongly sympathise with those who have said that the third task of this committee, which is outreach and engagement with wider public needs, as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, said, needs to be thought about further. That perhaps means asking for more time in the Chamber and paying more attention to making sure that reports are fully covered in the media and get on to the “Today” programme, as I know you have succeeded in doing, rather more often.

The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, asked about the mysterious process by which Peers are selected and invited to join committees. That sounds like a subject worthy of in-depth sociological analysis, but perhaps if he were to ask his good Whips they would tell him a little better.

The noble Lord, Lord Jay, asked about representation at the EU peace prize. That has not yet been decided although some interesting and rather imaginative ideas are currently floating around Whitehall.

We need a wider debate in the United Kingdom and across the EU, as the EU now struggles to adapt to the current crisis in the eurozone, to deal with the challenge of further enlargement. We all recognise that enlargement is getting more and more difficult and, with each extra applicant country, there is a lot to contribute. Perhaps the committee would like to invite evidence from Norway and Switzerland. The chairman of the recent massive Norwegian study on the advantages or disadvantages of Norway’s current relationship with the EU—

[Baroness O’Cathain]

I am rather astonished to hear the Minister say that we should go and get evidence from Norway. We have; we do it all the time. There is a disconnect between people in government who are in ministries in positions of power and those who work on the sub-committees. There is a lot of discomfort, too, about the response, both in the Chamber and from the Government, to the very difficult reports on which we have spent hours and weeks collecting evidence. The Government’s response to reports is pathetic and the Minister ought to look at that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I stand corrected. I am not sure whether the justice and home affairs inquiry has yet taken evidence from the Irish Government, who have a clear stake in the question of the opt-out or the opt-in. It may be that the Irish Government—