EEA Nationals (Indefinite Leave to Remain) Bill [HL]

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 19th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, it is frequently the case that, when Bills or debates are introduced, speakers congratulate the Peer who has introduced the legislation or secured the debate. Naturally, I do so this afternoon. It is also frequently the case that we talk about a Bill or debate as being timely. This Bill had its First Reading over two years ago, as my noble friend Lord Oates pointed out.

As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has pointed out, the debate goes back rather further. In preparation for today’s debate, I seemed to recall that I had spoken on this issue several times in the immediate aftermath of the referendum. I went back to Hansard and found a Question for Short Debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on 14 July 2016. On that occasion, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, was responding to the debate, and I pointed out what a pleasure it was to have the fifth opportunity of questioning the fourth different Minister on the issue of the rights of EU citizens resident in the United Kingdom. That was within three weeks of the referendum. I thought that today the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, might be responding—at least she has had the opportunity of answering on the same set of issues many times before—but I am delighted to see the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. I know that she at least has not had to answer any of my questions on this issue before.

It feels as if, over the last three years, the only thing that has had settled status, a right to reside in this Chamber, the other place and the country, is the Brexit groundhog that keeps appearing and raising its ugly head in whatever debate and on whatever issue. What did we have in the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill? Amendments on Brexit. It has been the subject of debate for months and years; the rights of EU citizens have been uncertain for the three years since the referendum. That is, frankly, disgraceful.

In the immediate wake of the referendum, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, queried—perhaps to the world in general—whose fault it was that the rights of EU citizens were not unilaterally guaranteed. In those days after the referendum, there was virtual unanimity in this Chamber that the rights of EU citizens should be guaranteed immediately. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has pointed out that he made that case; the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, made the point on the Labour Benches; as did the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord Lawson; from these Benches, so did I and other Peers. The only people who disagreed at that time were any Ministers having the misfortune to be responding from the Government Front Bench. I am not even sure that those Ministers disagreed with us, but they clearly had to put forward the party line. In the three weeks following the referendum, the party line was set by the then Home Secretary: the right honourable Theresa May, MP for Maidenhead. That line persisted through her time as Prime Minister. There was a sense that, however many Members of your Lordships’ House and of the other place called passionately for the rights of EU citizens to be guaranteed immediately, Mrs May was not agreeable to it.

We said that EU citizens should not be treated as pawns, and yet what happened in the negotiations was precisely that: EU citizens and their rights, and the rights of UK nationals by extension, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, pointed out, were used as hostages in the debate. It was wrong then; it is wrong now. Three years after the referendum, EU citizens should be certain of their rights, but they still cannot be. I therefore very much welcome the opportunity to have this debate today. I realise that Private Members’ Bills very rarely make it to the statute book, but, as my noble friend made clear in introducing today’s debate, in many ways the issues we are discussing have already come on to the agenda through the Government’s settled status regime.

However, the Bill under consideration today goes a stage further. It would guarantee the rights of EU and EEA nationals. It would do it as a right, not requiring endless form-filling. It has been customary across the Chamber today to talk about the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, in her absence. She made it very clear, in the previous debate, how difficult it is for people to fill out the necessary forms about indefinite right to remain; there are 80 pages of documentation. For EU citizens wanting indefinite right to remain, there is traditionally the need to say where they have been in the five years since they started being resident here. If you are an EU citizen exercising your right to free movement, your passport will not be stamped if you go back and forth between London and Brussels, or wherever your hometown might be. If you go home to Wrocław, Tallinn or any European city, your passport will not be stamped. Nobody keeps that sort of record. The rules that were in place made it very difficult for people to fulfil the requirements. The proposed settled status scheme is an improvement, but, as noble Lords have made clear, it still requires EEA nationals currently resident here to make applications. There is no automaticity.

I feel some sympathy with the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for having to respond to this debate, because it touches on a set of issues that are outside the purview of the Home Office. The Windrush scandal has been mentioned. However, these applications have to be made through the Government’s IT procedures, and universal credit has demonstrated some of the difficulties with that. Is the Minister sure that the arrangements put in place for applications will be satisfactory, and is the government IT system fit for purpose? As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, pointed out, not everyone will be IT savvy, so what arrangements do the Government envisage to assist people who do not have access to the internet? Indeed, is the government software available on all types of mobile device? Those have been issues of concern.

In addition, the recent experience of the European Parliament elections demonstrated the problems even for fairly savvy EU citizens resident in the United Kingdom. Many EU citizens who were on the electoral register were disenfranchised at the European Parliament elections. They voted without difficulty at the local government elections in early May, and three weeks later they turned up at the same polling stations and found that they were disenfranchised. They had failed to fill in an additional form, which some local authorities had informed them about, while others had not. However, if you suddenly get an email from your local authority, you do not necessarily open it and think, “My goodness! Here is a form I need to fill in to be able to vote”. If EU citizens who were seeking to vote and who were sufficiently interested to vote were disenfranchised, the danger is that many EEA nationals will find that, on the day we leave, they have not filled in the necessary paperwork.

The proposed legislation is open and tolerant. As noble Lords have pointed out, it would give the incoming Prime Minister the opportunity to live up to the words of the Vote Leave campaign and to make the situation clear for any EU citizens resident here at the time the United Kingdom leaves the European Union—if it happens on 31 October or on some other date. Theresa May did not campaign for Vote Leave; Boris Johnson did. Can the Minister undertake to send out words to Mr Johnson, in the event that he becomes Prime Minister next week, and suggest to him that this would be the perfect opportunity to live up to some of the positive narrative that the Vote Leave campaign was so keen to put forward in 2016?

Intergenerational Fairness in Government Policy

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Thursday 26th October 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Smith of Newnham]

That this House takes note of the case for intergenerational fairness to form a core part of government policy across all departments.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, unusually, this is not a topic that I dreamed up for myself; it is rather a Liberal Democrat-led debate. The Motion is extremely complex and multifaceted and I am not expecting all the answers to come today; nor am I even going to raise all the questions. I can already see a smile coming across the face of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, who is going to respond to this debate. I had put in my notes that I was not expecting all the answers and thought that he might be relieved about this, particularly as at Questions yesterday it seemed that every Question on the Order Paper was addressed to him.

I propose today to look at some very broad issues, and I am aware that the Motion is one that taxed even your Lordships’ Library. As ever, it provided an excellent briefing, but the author was quick to point out that he was looking at particularly prominent aspects of the debate: unemployment and earnings; pensions and pensioner benefits; and housing, including supply and tenure. The Library did not in any way try to cover every conceivable aspect of intergenerational fairness. The examination question that we set ourselves was based on the idea that intergenerational fairness should form a core part of government policy across all departments, going far beyond the current debate that we have had about young versus old and millennials versus baby boomers. I intend, in the first few minutes of my speech, to talk about some of the international aspects of intergenerational fairness, because this is not only a domestic matter: the international consequences are also important.

I want to challenge Her Majesty’s Government and your Lordships as well—if your Lordships are willing—to be more ambitious and comprehensive in exploring questions of intergenerational fairness. It is all too easy to look at the immediate question of how today’s young people are faring against today’s pensioners or against the baby boomers. We perhaps saw it put most explicitly in a recent piece in the Daily Mail by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, who is not in his place. He said that giving tax increases to the old in order to woo the young would be political suicide. That is one of the problems that we face when we think about questions of intergenerational fairness. In a democracy, elected politicians—or those who seek to be elected—inevitably look toward the short-term horizon of the next election. We normally expect that horizon to be four or five years. If we are moving to an electoral horizon that is only two years, then perhaps it will be even more difficult to engage in long-term planning. I am assuming that an election in 2017—so soon after 2015—was an aberration, but nevertheless the fact remains that, if you are seeking election, you are looking to the short term rather than the longer term.

Intergenerational fairness is hugely important; it needs to be thought about and planned for. It can be measured objectively yet it is not. Clearly, this applies only up to a point, as there may be future issues that we cannot predict. In my Cambridge college, however, the finance committee looks at the balance between current expenditure on current students and the endowment along with the prospects for future students. Her Majesty’s Government might like to think about that in their long-term cross-departmental planning. Intergenerational fairness is about not just current generations—our children and grandchildren—but generations as yet unborn. It applies to global matters as much as domestic ones. I plan to talk quite a lot about the global because I am very aware that my noble friends and other Members of your Lordships’ House will talk about a range of domestic issues.

The international is hugely important—oh! I apologise. I normally never have a written speech to read but I thought that as I am moving this Motion, I had better have one; that was clearly not the best thing to do. In terms of the international, one key issue that needs to be addressed is climate change. For those climate sceptics in the Chamber or elsewhere, this is not to suggest that we need to look again at the causes of climate change. That can become a sterile debate because whether you believe that its causes are manmade or not, its implications and long-term consequences are absolutely clear. The policies that need to be undertaken are needed regardless of what the causes of climate change are. Long-term thinking and an understanding of the science is required; equally, it is crucial to understand the potential consequences in environmental issues and the possible loss of whole territories. There are countries that may be simply submerged by water. I am sure that my noble friend Lady Featherstone will talk about climate change issues in her contribution.

Mitigation may be possible and adaptation may be necessary, but if we ignore the global picture we will be ignoring the consequences that impact not just in far-flung parts of the globe but here in the United Kingdom. Issues of human security are to the fore elsewhere. They may not be at the forefront of policymakers’ minds in the United Kingdom, but perhaps they should be. “Climate refugees” may not yet be a term recognised in international law but the reality is of millions of people who may be displaced by floods and other climate factors—perhaps not in the UK but further afield. That movement of people, with its mass migration, stands to create significant problems with resources in some of the poorest parts of the world. It will potentially create conflict and certainly create challenges to resources, with the potential for resource depletion and destabilised states.

All that is surely a matter of consequence to the United Kingdom, particularly one that believes in going global in the context of Brexit. Surely DfID should think about this matter. If it is looking at some of the intergenerational consequences in the parts of the world where it has an interest, it might also look at the fact that older women tend to be those left behind when there is mass migration, as they are not economically active. Is DfID looking at that and, if not, why not? The UK prides itself on spending 0.7% of GDP on development aid yet critics will say, “It’s a waste of money. Why aren’t we spending that money at home?”. It is done partly out of self-interest. Yes, there is a degree of moral obligation but there is also a reason to say that we should invest globally to ensure that we alleviate problems before they have knock-on effects for our security, as well as the security of other parts of the world.

There is a link between climate issues, forced migration, development and, inevitably, the roles of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence. After all, the response to Hurricane Irma could be financially through DfID, but the reality on the ground was delivered by our Armed Forces. The MoD needed to play a role and our ships and planes were required. There are international issues that go beyond traditional military conflict that need to be thought about and planned for.

By now your Lordships may be thinking, “This is all about the international. Has she forgotten the intergenerational aspects of fairness at home?”. No, I am going to move swiftly from the international to the domestic via the Department for Exiting the European Union, which I think is meant to be time-limited. In that sense, perhaps it does not need to think about the long term. I believe it should end in 2019 or in 2021 after a transitional period or at some date as yet undefined. The prospect of exiting the European Union is presumably meant to have an end-point, but the consequences of the negotiations to leave, the transitional arrangements and, in particular, the arrangements for a future relationship with the European Union will fundamentally affect the life chances of our young people, and in particular their children and their grandchildren. So what work is the right honourable David Davis, the Secretary of State for the Department for Exiting the European Union, doing about the future, about long-term planning? What sort of questions is he thinking about and raising about Erasmus, Horizon 2020 and other policies that will affect the long-term future of our country? I refer to my interests as an academic at Cambridge University.

By way of an aside, I understand that one of the Government Whips was asking who teaches European politics in universities, what they teach about Brexit and whether he could see their syllabi. I pointed out to my students last week that my views about Brexit are on the record but as an academic I understand fundamentally that it is my duty to educate and inform. My views are personal, but my job is to inspire people to think and criticise, and that applies in all areas of policy. I am very happy to send Mr Heaton-Harris a copy of my book.

Educating young people, whether through higher education or schools, is clearly part of the question of intergenerational fairness. Social mobility has gone down in this country. We have lost the ability to think long term and to plan for the long term. If we look back to Beveridge, we see insight and inspiration. If we look at housing, we look back to Macmillan and see policies that affected the life chances of millions of people. Where is that vision in the 21st century? We do not get it from politicians who are simply looking to the next election, who are simply asking “How do I buy votes today?”—obviously, that is metaphorically buying—and “How do I woo voters today?” and are not thinking about the long-term future. It is profoundly short-sighted simply to listen to focus groups or to look at opinion polls and think that something will secure a majority among the old or the young. That is not leadership. It is not worthy of leaders of this country. It is also ultimately self-defeating. It is clearly important that politicians listen to what the public want, but there is surely a degree to which they also need to set an agenda, take responsibility about the long term and stand up and say, on a whole set of issues, that we need to go beyond two years or three years to 20 years or 30 years. Of course, in countries that are not democratic—Saudi Arabia or China—it is a little easier. You can have Saudi 2030. You can have multiannual plans in China knowing that you are not going to have to face the electorate. Clearly we do not want to move away from our democratic ideals, but we need to make sure that democratically elected politicians think through the consequences of their actions not just for today, not just for the next five years or the next 10 years but for future generations.

There are a whole set of areas where this country has engaged in short-termism and where we need to think about the long term. Education is one of them, and I am sure my noble friend Lord Storey will talk about young people and children. The pupil premium went some way in the direction of helping to deal with the issues of the left-behind and intragenerational issues, but we could go so much further. We need to deal with the issues not just of intergenerational fairness but of intragenerational fairness.

Education is part of that, but so is how we deal with the health service and social care. We are all part of an intergenerational community, and the issues of ageing and social care affect all of us, whether we are carers or old and expecting to be looked after. So much of the caring profession, like so much of the National Health Service, depends on immigrants, whether from the EU or beyond, so there is a role and a question for the Home Office. Has the Home Secretary thought about the implications of demographic change in terms of intergenerational fairness and the need to respond now to questions of long-term planning? Immigration will matter and it is something we do not necessarily link back to domestic policy sufficiently often.

I have touched on some of the departments that might wish to take a view of intergenerational fairness in the long term. My colleagues and other Members of your Lordships’ House will undoubtedly talk about pensions, housing, education and the myriad other issues at stake, but the time has surely come when we look beyond the short term to the far horizon and think about a vision for the United Kingdom that enables us to have fairness within generations and for future generations. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Smith of Newnham]

My Lords, I am grateful to all Members who have spoken this afternoon and brought such expertise to the debate. It has been fascinating and incredibly well-informed, and touched on a set of issues for which the national debate is normally too limited.

I was handed a note from the Table to say: “The debate must finish by 1451 and, if it does not, I will have to stand up and shut you down”, or words to that effect. The silent generation has been very vocal this afternoon and left those of us from Generation X with very little time to sum up. So I am not going to go back over the issues, other than to say that I am grateful to all three Front-Benchers for taking the time to think about these things. Across all parts of your Lordships’ House this afternoon there has been an attempt to look at ways of changing the tone; to think of ways that are innovative, and to accept that these are issues which should not bring tension between different generations.

Motion agreed.

European Union Referendum: Young Voters

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Roberts on securing this important and timely debate. I also congratulate Bite The Ballot on the important work that it is doing.

In Cambridge, the student members of Cambridge for Europe, of which I am a patron—the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, who is in his place today, is a member of the steering committee—have made fantastic attempts to encourage fellow students to register to vote. They have created posters and distributed fliers to all students across the university. They have also produced a video, which is aimed rather more at persuading people to remain but includes sixth-formers. It encourages people who are not enfranchised in the vote on 23 June, whether or not they have tried to register, at least to talk to granny and persuade parents and grandparents to vote to remain. I pay tribute to the energy and passion of the student members of Cambridge for Europe. They are already actively engaged in politics. My colleague Professor Catherine Barnard has also spent time actively encouraging students and young people to vote, doing so from the very objective perspective of the ESRC’s flagship The UK in a Changing Europe programme.

Members on all sides of your Lordships’ House spent many hours trying to ensure that the European Union Referendum Act 2015 created legislation for a referendum that was as fair as possible to both sides of the debate. As the noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, made clear, it is unfortunate that it coincided with the move to individual electoral registration. However welcome IER might be in principle, the fact that millions of people, particularly young people, are missing from the electoral registers for this crucial poll is a cause for considerable concern. None of us should be sanguine.

However, I note that some who would have us leave the European Union seem sanguine about a low turnout—presumably because they feel that it will enhance their chances of winning a vote to leave. I also note that those who would have us leave and have spent many hours in this House trying to ensure that the Government can be held to task are not in their places today. Maybe they are out ensuring that voter registration is occurring, or maybe not.

It is vital that we re-engage citizens and enhance our democracy, exactly as those who want to leave claim they wish to do. Here the Scottish independence referendum offers some positive lessons. There were also some negative lessons, but one of the key things about the Scottish independence referendum was how it engaged and mobilised young people, including 16 and 17 year-olds, who sadly are not enfranchised in this UK referendum despite the best efforts of your Lordships. Engaging new cohorts of voters is crucial for the revitalisation of democracy in the United Kingdom regardless of the outcome of the referendum. I hope that those who would have us leave can accept this premise and support all efforts to register the young, rather than merely seeking to speak to the grey vote—voters who are more likely to be registered and who will already have been able to vote in 1975. This referendum is a chance to enhance democracy in this country, but for that to happen it is essential that registration and turnout are as high as possible to ensure that the votes can be challenged by no one and that every individual has a say over their own future.

I note in passing that the Question for Short Debate as phrased refers to the actions of Her Majesty’s Government. I also note that purdah begins in less than 12 hours. Could the Minister confirm that measures are in hand by Her Majesty’s Government to ensure the maximisation of voter registration are not going to infringe on any duties under purdah? That is crucial, because if they are, it will be used against us. Correctly, the European Union Referendum Act 2015 lays certain duties not on Her Majesty’s Government but on the Electoral Commission, which presumably will be guarded against purdah issues. In particular, the Electoral Commission has a duty to promote public awareness about the referendum and how to vote in it—that is not who or what to vote for but how to engage in the practice of voting. Could the Minister tell the House what actions the Electoral Commission has taken in this regard and what he envisages the Electoral Commission will be doing between now and 7 June?

Finally, the chief counting officers are also required to take whatever steps the relevant officers think appropriate to encourage participation in the referendum. Are Her Majesty’s Government content that satisfactory progress is being made in that regard? If not, what actions would they recommend be taken in the next two weeks to ensure that everybody who could be registered is and that we maximise turnout and enhance democracy in this country?

National Parliaments (EUC Report)

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome this very constructive and instructive report from your Lordships’ EU Select Committee, and particularly the comments of my noble friend Lord Tugendhat and of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, opposite. We will probably have cross-party agreement on many of the recommendations and the additional comments that have been made.

I do not propose to make any additional recommendations but have one or two interests to declare: a formal one that ought to be noted and a slightly less formal one. My formal interest is that for three years I was the principal investigator for an ESRC-funded project on national parliaments and the European Union. My department in Cambridge received money to study very similar topics to those that your Lordships’ Select Committee looked at. The slightly more trivial interest is that, on the basis of that, I was asked to give oral evidence to the Select Committee and sent in written evidence, so I appear as a small footnote in the report. However, I am one of the very few people speaking this evening who is not a member of the Select Committee or one of its sub-committees. Not being part of the committee process here in many ways puts me very much on the back foot but also raises the issue of who becomes involved in decision-making and scrutiny. One of the recommendations is very much about mainstreaming European policy. I and my colleagues from the OPAL project told the Select Committee and the scrutiny committee in the other place that mainstreaming is important. The Dutch Parliament has done it and it has worked very effectively. The report suggests that that is important here—to get more people involved.

We see that the usual suspects are here to talk about Europe, but it is worse in the other place. The Members who are willing to talk about, or engage with, Europe are usually sceptic. They have a particular interest in Europe, but not one that is necessarily informed or engaged. They think that if they stand up and opine about Europe in a way that grabs the headlines, that will be effective with my electorate. That rather misses the point. If you simply make grandiose statements which do not relate to the detail of Europe, you do your constituents a disservice. There is a real problem with the way that some chambers of national parliaments engage with the European Union. It is a particular problem in the other place in the United Kingdom, but it reflects a wider problem among national parliamentarians.

Noble Lords have the luxury of being very unusual. By dint of not having constituents and not having to go home every weekend to talk to constituents and focus on detailed constituency casework, there is the opportunity to take more time to scrutinise legislation. There is also the opportunity to do many of the things that have been mentioned this evening and which were recommended in the Select Committee report—to engage with colleagues in other parliaments. If you are expected to be here during the week and back in your constituency at the weekend, when do you go to Brussels, Berlin or Paris to talk to your opposite numbers? That is extremely difficult. We at this end of the building have the opportunity to talk to our colleagues, but we definitely need to find ways to engage more with other parliaments. Interparliamentary co-operation is vital.

One thing that is worth bearing in mind, but which very few national parliamentarians have been willing to bear in mind, is that for decades national parliaments have lost power under the European integration process. There has been a degree of deparliamentarisation. In most elected chambers, nobody wanted to talk about it. Who is willing to say, “Actually, we are less important than we used to be. The European Parliament has gained powers and has oversight but is also a democratic body representing the citizens of Europe”? That is not a terribly popular thing to say. If you are out trying to get votes in a domestic election, reminding people of the role of the European Parliament and of your own denuded role might not be the best way. Therefore, for many reasons, national parliaments have not been willing to talk about shifts in powers or the increased role of the European Parliament. In any case, the role of the European Parliament and giving it more powers does not in itself deal with some of the questions of deparliamentarisation. It does not bring Europe closer to citizens. The Lisbon treaty was supposed to do that by re-empowering national parliaments.

Here again, we have a slight difficulty of language. Many members of national parliaments would ask, “What do you mean by saying that the Lisbon treaty has given us new powers or given us powers back”? They are very reluctant to accept that powers have shifted and, in some cases, suggest that the Lisbon treaty and the yellow card was little more than a sop. There are questions about whether national parliaments feel that they have powers and are willing and able to use them. That issue is hugely important. We do not necessarily need treaty change; we need national parliaments to use the powers that they have. That was made very clear in the appendix to the report, where other members of COSAC said that they needed not more powers but for national parliaments to step up to the plate and say, “There are things we can do. We can, and should, hold Ministers to account, but we are not very good at doing it”.

It is not just about Westminster. Indeed, your Lordships’ House is one of the Chambers that is deemed to be a paragon in many ways and which scrutinises European legislation very well, but holding Ministers to account is something which nobody but the Danish Folketing does particularly well. However, this is not about giving more powers but using the powers that we have in more imaginative ways and using them collaboratively and collectively.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, suggested, the roles of the European Parliament and of national parliaments are not part of a zero-sum game, they are about working together and ensuring that legislation at the European level is dealt with effectively. Each has different roles but we work through those roles most effectively if we co-operate, co-ordinate, exchange information, share ideas and stop the sort of turf wars that we saw at the start of the interparliamentary co-operation on common, foreign and security policy and prior to the deliberations of the Article 13 committee. It is important that parliaments co-operate vertically—national parliaments with the European Parliament—and horizontally with other national parliaments. As noble Lords have suggested, we need to do that on the basis of personal co-operation, interparty co-operation and within our parties in the other place and your Lordships’ House and our party families in the European Parliament, but also through working across parties at transnational level.

I can only say that I warmly endorse the recommendation of my noble friend Lord Tugendhat. I am not sure it is appropriate that I do so, but if the Conservative Party was part of the European People’s Party it would be able to engage more effectively in the work of the European Parliament and that would only be of benefit to the United Kingdom. Co-operation, co-ordination and exchange of information among personnel, parties and parliaments is one way in which national parliaments can become much more effective. Many of the recommendations in the Select Committee’s report would ensure that those things come about.