European Union Committee: 2012-13 (EUC Report)

Baroness O'Cathain Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, I am grateful that the occasion of this debate on the European Union Committee’s 2012-13 report gives me two opportunities. The first opportunity is to pay tribute to the work of the European Union Committee chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, for the important work of scrutiny of EU legislation. The fact that so much of our legislation is directed from the European Union—from Brussels—or amended in response to the deliberations of the European Parliament makes it essential that we keep a watching eye on all that goes on.

The European Union Committee does a great job, mainly behind the scenes, in ensuring that all EU proposals, directives, regulations, information—usually called “superinformation documents”—and the rest are scrutinised. The noble Lord, Lord Boswell, has a very tough responsibility, but he is ably supported by the clerk, Jake Vaughan, by legal advisers and by staff, who prevent anything slipping through the net—or the “sift”, as it is commonly called. The House owes them all a great debt of gratitude.

As the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, described, the scrutiny process is carried out by six sub-committees. Today’s debate therefore also gives me the opportunity to enlighten Members of the House about what goes on behind the scenes in one of those six sub-committees. I act as chairman of EU Sub-Committee B, whose remit is the internal market, infrastructure and employment. I am pleased to have the opportunity of sharing with the House the highlights of the 2012-13 Session.

Before doing so, I must thank all current and past members of the sub-committee who have worked so hard, week after week—and we do meet weekly—and all of whom have contributed greatly to our work in this Session. Due to them we have accomplished much, enjoyed our Monday afternoons, and developed a great atmosphere of mutual respect. That may seem too good to be true but believe me that it is so. Attendance is excellent and even yesterday there were minor regrets—I have to say minor—that we were not meeting again for many weeks. I think we all feel that we need this break and are looking forward to buckets, spades, sandcastles and paddling as well as a well earned break from the wave after wave of directives, regulations, and other documents which pile up each week awaiting scrutiny.

We were sad to say au revoir to the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, who is now chairman of Sub-Committee D. I thank them all. We gladly welcomed the noble Lords, Lord Cotter and Lord Freeman. The noble Lord, Lord Freeman, previously chaired Sub-Committee B but has never said, “In my time we did x, y, and z”, although I am sure that he has been tempted to do so. We also gladly welcomed the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, who came to us from Sub-Committee A. As an aside, the newcomers—bringing specific, most valuable experience and expertise—seem to have moved seamlessly into our work patterns and schedule.

Of course, without our clerk, policy analyst and committee assistant we could not have coped. All three were new to us but, yet again, the powers that be managed to appoint exactly the right persons for each of these critical roles. I can safely say that without each of them our work output would be well below that which we have achieved and they are universally brilliant in guiding us, working indefatigably, anticipating our needs, filling in the gaps of our knowledge on the workings of the EU, and ever ready to go that extra mile. They do all that plus they are so nice and, at times, funny. Yes, we are a happy, productive, determined team and I feel deeply honoured to be their chairman.

During the year we completed two new inquiries and published the subsequent reports. The first inquiry was on women on boards, and we published our report on 9 November last year. This subject has been debated several times in this House and, indeed, it seldom seems to be off the business and other pages in the press. We regard it as unfinished business as we are now told that the final decision will not be taken until November this year. This is quite strange because there was a delay in coming clean about what the directive was going to be in November of last year, so it indicates that there is quite a lot of disagreement both in the Commission and in the Parliament. Behind the limelight, however, we continue to encourage other member states to take our line—namely, no quotas—while suggesting that the Commission bring forward an EU-wide system for monitoring progress.

What did we learn from this inquiry? We certainly developed better engagement with other parliaments, greater use of video conferencing, establishing links with the Commission, all of which were most satisfactory. Time spent in deepening understanding and making and keeping alive contacts is time well spent and—with the greater use of modern technological developments—does not necessarily entail expensive time-wasting travel. Similarly we have initiated and maintained mutually respected links with officials in Whitehall in the various departments who are responsible for the sectors of our very wide remit. Our dealings with departmental heads and the coal face have led to much greater understanding and are a terrific help in adding to the ultimate value of our scrutiny role. The subject of Explanatory Memoranda has come up already in this debate and this has been a deeply discussed issue. Certainly one or two departments are already beginning to produce documents that we can understand, so they are Explanatory Memoranda.

The second inquiry was on the effectiveness of EU research and innovation proposals, and we published our report on 30 April. We highlighted the fact that the EU’s competitiveness has been, and is, increasingly threatened by the emphasis placed, and work undertaken, in emerging economies. We focused on the ability of the EU to compete and retain its reputation and leadership in this sector. It was a short inquiry but we received a great deal of interesting evidence from a very wide range of witnesses including those from the SME sector—the sector on which are pinned the hopes of so many of us for growth and job creation. This is ongoing. The Government response has been received and we hope to receive the response from the Commission before we debate the report in the autumn.

What did we learn from this inquiry? It was very challenging for the committee. It dealt with an important and broad subject in a relatively short time—three and a half months between the call for evidence and publication of the report. I have to say that it was a steep learning curve for those of us who feel scientifically challenged. However, we had strong help from certain members of our committee who are leading lights in this area. This is a great example of the very wide breadth of expertise which is available in this House.

I now turn to other work. The committee believes that it is most important to revisit our previous work. For example, we had a meeting with the incumbent Minister of Transport to address the lack of government engagement in our previous report on the Channel Tunnel—another item that is back in the news. We also had informal, information-gathering talks with Deutsche Bahn and Eurotunnel. Revisiting work is scheduled for the Women on Boards report as it continues through the EU legislative process. We are still inclined to participate in the debate, following the developments since the publication of our report.

During the Session the committee made history, publishing two subsidiarity reports under the reasoned opinion mechanism introduced in 2009 by the Lisbon treaty. Incidentally, in the four years since 2009 only four such reports have been published by the UK. We had two of them in the space of about three months— on aid for the most deprived and gender balance on boards. The issue of subsidiarity has provoked much discussion and debate in the committee, and in the House, about the meaning of this difficult concept. One example is the Oral Question on subsidiarity asked by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, on 5 March 2013.

What about current and future work? We plan enhanced scrutiny on EU migrants. The Minister, Mark Harper MP, gave us valuable evidence a week ago. Our next big inquiry will be on youth unemployment. We shall launch a call for evidence in September, and we had a scoping meeting yesterday to discuss the shape of the inquiry and the potential witnesses.

To conclude, I am sure that we are no exception to the other sub-committees in that we take our work very seriously. We are committed to ensuring that the quality of our work is beyond reproach. We are dedicated to providing the best scrutiny to assist our Government to play a leading, constructive role in the EU and to work for the best outcomes, not only for the over 500 million inhabitants of the 28 member states but, particularly, for the citizens of the UK within the EU. Last but by no means least, we will continue to maintain the high reputation of the House of Lords EU Committee in EU circles and elsewhere.