Justice and Home Affairs: United Kingdom Opt-Outs

Lord Boswell of Aynho Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boswell of Aynho (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am pleased to speak today in my capacity as the chairman of the European Union Select Committee of your Lordships’ House, and to follow the Minister, who has brought some good news to us and who, characteristically, has done his best to explain this extremely complex topic.

I am preceding my colleagues, who will speak on behalf of their sub-committees today, and other noble Lords who I am always very pleased to see participating in these European debates. They will be able to go more into the detail of these complex opt-out decisions, because, frankly, they and their sub-committees have conducted the scrutiny leg work. That has resulted in two excellent reports, published—as is the convention, in the name of the Select Committee itself—some time ago, in April and October of last year. The House has debated them and the issue of the opt-out on numerous occasions before. I think therefore that the House will appreciate it if I keep my own remarks brief.

In broad terms, we are pleased that most of the recommendations of our reports have been followed—I know that others will make their contributions where there are specific points of difficulty or disagreement. I acknowledge readily that Ministers in this House have been helpful in the handling of the decision process. Nevertheless, I must record with some sadness rather than anger that the process has been made more difficult than might have been needed. Our committee has relied on the timely provision of information with which to consider the decisions being taken under the very complex Protocol 36. Occasionally—or perhaps one should say sporadically—we have met with a recalcitrant approach to this on the part of departments. However, in a sense that is in the past, and on the whole, as the Minister indicated, on the substance we are on the same page and in broad agreement with what the Government propose.

Within and beyond that, I will raise two specific points. First, a highly illogical and rather disturbing approach seems to have been taken by government in relation to the impact assessments laid before Parliament recently. I can assure the Minister that this is not just a long-running saga, because it is of immediate and contemporary interest also. That document as published ran into the hundreds of pages, but it was unindexed, lacked a contents page, and contained only the impact assessments for the 35 measures opted into, presented in what appeared to be a somewhat shaky batting order. It certainly was not an easy or user-friendly document to read.

Alongside the presentation of the impact assessments, it could appear that the evidence had been selected to support the decision, rather than the decision in each case being based on the evidence. No impact assessments were made—or as far as we are aware even conducted—on the 100-odd measures not being opted into under Protocol 36. I point out for new readers that it will be clear from the Minister’s remarks today that this is a shifting number—they jump in and out of that particular figure for adoption or not.

We have had the benefit of an assessment of the impact of the 35 measures that the Government now propose to opt in to, but it is not a particularly illuminating story in relation to the overall picture. I therefore ask the Minister: are assessments being conducted on the impact of not opting in to certain measures? Will the Government be sharing their rationale for not opting in to each of these measures? Was their decision in each case based on the evidence of the impact assessment?

I appreciate that some measures have been, in the terrible jargon, “Lisbonised”—that is to say, wrapped up under the treaty of Lisbon—and it would be redundant to opt back in to them, so there is no need for us to do so. For all the others, we are genuinely not clear about what assessment has been made of the impact of not opting in to them, and I request that this should be considered and completed. At the very least, I would have expected the Government to provide impact statements for the quite small minority of recommendations that we put forward in our reports and that they have decided not to opt back in to—in other words, as far as this House is concerned, the particular measures under current contention.

My second point is perhaps a less technical one, but it is no less important. It concerns transitional arrangements and measures. The Minister did say something about those, and I think we can take some relief from the fact that we appear to be moving towards an agreement with the Commission on the readoption, or reinsertion, of these measures. I still have a simple request for him: can he please give the House his assurance that, when the opt-out comes into force on 1 December—in the absence of measures being readopted—where measures have not yet been accepted by that date, transitional measures will be in place, that those transitional measures will have been well considered, and that they will cause the minimum disruption, or in certain cases even potential danger, to the public from their not having been adopted as substantive measures because of the process that we are engaged in?