Brexit and the EU Budget (EUC Report)

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Thursday 6th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not a lawyer, any more than the Lord Chancellor is a lawyer, although I hope that I am not less of a lawyer than she is either—that would be rather a bad position to be in. But all citizens are deemed to know the law, and anybody who sits in a legislature has to have a clear sense of the foundations of the law. Until a few months ago, I was a member of the committee. I enjoyed the role very much; it was a great privilege to serve under the extremely able chairmanship of the noble Baroness. I regard all those who served with me on that committee as personal friends, and I hope they will not be unduly upset if I feel today that I must take issue with their conclusion. We all feel, as a matter of principle, that, if we have pressing views on an important subject that have not otherwise been expressed, it falls on us to stand up and make sure they are not ignored.

We are here in the very imprecise and uncertain realm of international law. So imprecise and uncertain is it that there has been a respectable view for a long time, which I might describe as an extreme positivist view, that there is no such thing as international law, for the simple reason that there is not in existence the essential prerequisite of a system of law: a sovereign body that legislates and is able to enforce its decisions in the area of its claimed jurisdiction. I think there would be general agreement that a form of positive law exists in the world which cannot be contested, in the form of individual contracts or treaties between states—conventional law. That applies only to the parties to those conventions, of course; in other words, only to those who have ratified the conventions. The concept of convention is well established, and I can see that the committee takes it very seriously. It concludes that the Vienna convention applies in this particular case, and I believe it when it says that 26 out of 28 members of the EU have ratified that convention. I suppose you could argue that the matter is anyway now one of customary international law, so it is a reasonable basis on which to proceed, and my argument will be on that basis.

Customary international law is of course a very vague area. The concept has been with us for a very long time, since at least Grotius in the 17th century. It is often quite unclear what customary international law is or, indeed, how it relates to conventional law. I take as an example the law of the sea convention, which fundamentally departed from traditional customary law when it was negotiated in the 1970s. Does it now represent customary law as well as conventional law, or are there two regimes in the world—one for the great majority states that have ratified the law of the sea convention and one for those that still have not done so? I do not know the answer to that question.

Finally, moving away from the positivists as far as you can to the idealist view of international law, there is natural law, which, as the House knows, has been in existence for even longer as a concept. I think that it goes back at least to the view of St Thomas Aquinas that there is an element of divine rationality in all of us by which we are guided, and through which we know the difference between right and wrong. One can substitute for God, if one wants to secularise the process, by introducing some kind of formulaic mechanism such as the utilitarian calculus or perhaps the Kantian categorical imperative. However, we should not neglect in that natural law, because it was the basis of the indictments at Nuremberg after the war, which would not have been pursued on any basis of positive law because there was no basis to claim that those appalling crimes had been infractions of any positive law that existed at the relevant time and place. Therefore, we are in a very difficult area here.

As I said, the committee decided that the Vienna convention is the appropriate basis for looking at the international legal aspects of this matter. I agree with that. The committee report quotes the relevant article of the convention—Article 70:

“Unless the treaty otherwise provides or the parties otherwise agree, the termination of a treaty under its provisions or in accordance with the present Convention:


(a) Releases the parties from any obligation further to perform the treaty;


(b) Does not affect any right, obligation or legal situation of the parties created through the execution of the treaty prior to its termination”.


The important phrase here is:

“Unless the treaty otherwise provides”.


This is where I part company, I am afraid, with the committee, because it argues—as did the noble Baroness a moment ago—that because of Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, which does indeed deal with the issue of member states leaving, under the Vienna convention paragraph (a) should apply, not paragraph (b):

“Releases the parties from any obligation further to perform the treaty”,


should apply, rather than,

“Does not affect any right, obligation or legal situation of the parties created through the execution of the treaty prior to its termination”.


I do not need to quote Article 50: we all know it practically by heart after the events of the last few weeks. However, it is clear to me, on my reading of the treaty, that Article 50 provides no guidance at all on whether or not outstanding obligations and liabilities should be dealt with in any kind of agreement. It provides no rules whatever—there may be substantive rules—for the withdrawal of a member. All it deals with is the timing. It says that the negotiation must take place within two years. Still less does the article provide an actual formula for calculating and distributing assets and liabilities or anything of that kind. Therefore, given that Article 50 in my view does not provide any substantive guidance on this matter at all, it seems to me, contrary to the committee’s conclusion, that paragraph (b) and not paragraph (a) applies here. Therefore, it is necessary for us to behave in what we imagine would be a common-sense way anyway once one leaves any kind of venture—namely, that obligations, liabilities and assets on both sides are looked at, evaluated and distributed on a fair basis, which, presumably, means on the basis of the proportionate contribution beforehand of resources to the organisation. That could easily be worked out.

I am afraid that I disagree also with another aspect of the committee’s report. Paragraph 133 states:

“The jurisdiction of the CJEU over the UK would also come to an end when the EU Treaties ceased to have effect. Outstanding payments could not, therefore, be enforced against the UK in the CJEU”.


There seems to be confusion here. It is quite obvious that it is correct that once we have left the Union, the CJEU no longer has any jurisdiction over us, and the CJEU can say nothing about any subsequent arguments we might have with other former fellow members of the EU. But until the day we leave, clearly the CJEU has such jurisdiction. I have never heard of a court anywhere in the world which, once it had accepted jurisdiction over a case because the acts and the decisions involved were taken at a time when the individuals concerned were under its jurisdiction, subsequently allowed one of those parties to the case retrospectively to remove themselves from its jurisdiction by simply subsequently leaving the organisation. It seems to me that the CJEU, once it has accepted jurisdiction for determining the liabilities attaching to us or any other member state up till the time of our departure, would continue to be able to declare that judgment. Only liabilities accumulated after our departure could not be subject to the jurisdiction of the CJEU, but no one is suggesting that we could accumulate any liabilities after our departure, so that question does not really arise.

The final confusion—or at least the point on which, frankly, I disagree with the committee—relates to the whole issue of enforcement. The committee says at paragraph 136 that,

“international law is slow to litigate and hard to enforce”.

I do not know what it means by “hard to enforce”. As I have already argued, it seems to me that international law is impossible to enforce—that is one of the salient points about international law. Somebody might say, “Well, you can enforce it through a Chapter 7 resolution of the Security Council”, but, apart from the difficulty of getting that, you obviously cannot use that mechanism against a permanent member state with a veto or a group of countries of which one is a permanent member state. Therefore, that does not really arise. Perhaps if the noble Lord, Lord Howard, were in his place, he would suggest that you could always enforce it by sending a gunboat to Brussels or something of that sort.

However, in all seriousness, international law cannot be enforced. I do not know whether the committee accepts that, perhaps taking the positivist view that that means there is no such thing as international law. I do not think so, because the whole argument in the report is based on the assumption that there is such a thing as international law. Whatever the committee might feel about that, I hope that the other explanation does not apply and that what it has in mind—I do not think it does—is that we could always say, “All right, we’ve lost the case, but come and get us. You’ll never get a penny out of us and we won’t acknowledge the judgment of the court”. I agree very much with the noble Baroness: it would be horrific if this country took that line, and I am sure that we would not. Therefore, I am very confused about what the committee means by saying that it is hard to enforce, and about the relevance of that comment in this case.

I very much agree with the committee’s pragmatic recommendation—if not its legal analysis—that we as a country should not say that we owe absolutely nothing as a result of our membership of the European Union. That would be completely non-credible. We are clearly liable for that portion of the Union’s liabilities accumulated with our taking part, by consent, in the relevant judgments until the day we leave. We are also, certainly morally, obliged in relation to the costs that will be incurred purely and solely because of our unilateral decision to leave—such as the need to pay redundancy payments to British subjects employed by the Union’s institutions.

However, whatever happens, we certainly should not do what has been suggested in certain quarters, although very much not by the noble Baroness today, which is simply to walk away from our obligations. I thought that one of her analogies was particularly poignant when she talked about walking away from the table. We can all imagine someone going out to dinner with a group of friends—perhaps 27 friends in this case—then getting up from the table and leaving without paying the bill. No honourable person would like to think of himself or herself behaving in that fashion, and I do not think that anyone in this country would like to think that we would do so. I am very glad that there is unanimity in this Chamber—certainly based on the speeches I have heard so far—that that should not be the way forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

I accept that but the point is, as the noble Lord has said, that the budgets for the periods after we leave have not yet been set so we are not committed to them. The annual budget for 2019 and 2020 has not been set, so I regard any claim on the UK in respect of those years as weak. As paragraph 46 of the report points out, this view seems to be shared by the German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, who has said that it will be necessary to negotiate a new MFF on the assumption that the UK contribution ceases in 2019—when we depart from the EU. Continuation of the UK’s payment under a multilateral financial framework that continues after we have left is not in fairness a strong claim on the UK.

The second element of a possible EU claim is the commitments made in budgets to which the UK has been a party, which will remain to be paid after March 2019—the so-called reste à liquider, or remainder to be liquidated. Like others, I regard this claim as stronger. There is probably no legal obligation to make these payments after the UK has left the EU, but it may be argued that there is a moral obligation since the commitments were entered upon and budgeted for while the UK was a member.

The EU estimate of the commitments that will be outstanding at the end of 2020 is £254 billion. We do not have an estimate for the outstanding commitments at the end of March 2019, but since commitments contracted for but not paid tend to diminish as the MFF wears on, the figure at the end of March 2019 for outstanding commitments may be higher. However, as has been pointed out, some of these may never materialise. Moreover, some commitments are to the UK itself. These should be netted off, after which the UK share of commitments to other partners is unlikely to amount to more than £10 billion. If the UK were to agree to meet these it would be sensible to do so not in a lump sum but over the next few years as the commitments materialise.

It is right to add that the respected Brussels think tank the Bruegel Institute produces a much larger figure for commitment outstanding, including a large element under the heading, “significant legal commitments”. These are commitments pledged in legal terms but not yet budgeted for. Since they are expected to be budgeted only over a long period, they are not included in the EU’s balance sheet nor in the reste à liquider. In this case it seems difficult to argue that the UK has any liability for these unbudgeted items after leaving the EU.

Thirdly, there is the possibility of a claim based on pension liabilities for past or present employees of the EU or its institutions. Here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, that this is a weak basis for a claim. UK nationals constitute some 4% of EU staff at present and have never been more than 8%. The Commission currently estimates its actuarial liability for future pensions at €63.8 billion. However, pensions are paid out of each year’s budget. Employees make a one-third contribution to them. Like the noble Lord’s, my view is that, on leaving the EU, the UK has no greater liability to contribute to the annual pension bill that someone leaving a club would have to contribute to the pensions of past and present employees. The nationality of these employees is immaterial. Even if the UK were to make an exit contribution based on the proportion of UK nationals employed, and if the EU’s calculation of a total actuarial ability of €63.8 billion is right—the Bruegel Institute puts it much lower than that—it would not amount to more than a handful of billion euros.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

Does the noble Lord agree that there are two quite separate issues here? One is potential liability for pensions to be paid—there, I rather agree with the noble Lord’s assessment. The second issue, which is quite specific to this instance of a country leaving the European Union, is the effect on British national employees of the European institutions, who will lose their jobs because it is a condition of their employment that they are a citizen of an EU member state. They will cease to be on the day on which we leave the European Union. They will therefore be fired and have to be given redundancy payments. Do we not have the moral responsibility of making sure that those payments are made? We cannot expect our partners to pay those sums of money, and we certainly cannot expect those employees who are fired for no better reason than their nationality not to receive proper compensation.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

With respect, I do not take that view. These are employees of the EU and its institutions. If they are fired for whatever reason, their redundancy payment and severance terms will be determined by their contract and negotiation with the EU and the EU institutions. That does not seem to me a matter for which the UK has a liability.

I again agree with the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, about the other side of the balance sheet—namely, the EU’s assets. I shall not discuss those in any detail, because I doubt whether the EU would agree to distribution of these to a country departing from the EU any more than it would require a contribution as an entry fee from a country acceding. One exception to that is the UK’s stake in the European Investment Bank which, if it has to be surrendered, could be worth anything from €3.5 billion to €10 billion to the UK.

Unless there are other elements of a claim for an exit payment which neither the EU Committee nor others have thought of, it seems clear to me that any reasonable claim that can be made will not amount to anything like the €60 billion figure attributed to M. Barnier and his team. It follows that, leaving aside the legal aspects, UK negotiators do not have a great deal to fear from a negotiation on this subject. In a reasonable world, it should be possible to make sufficient progress to open the way to negotiations on a future trade relationship.

There is one final piece of advice that I would give—again, this point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas. By all means, let us seek to reach agreement on the principles of an exit payment and a future financial relationship, but it would be unwise to agree the details, the actual figure, until the principles of a trade relationship are also agreed. This is an area where, whatever the sequence of the negotiations, nothing should be agreed until everything is agreed.

EU Referendum: Voter Registration

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My noble friend makes a good point. Clearly, there are going to be many lessons to learn from this upset.

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

When the system was contracted for, whether software, hardware or a computer service company, was the volume specified more or less than the quarter of a million per hour at which it broke down? In other words, was the system adequately specified but it broke down, or was it inadequately specified?

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

The noble Lord makes a very good point. We need to look at the specifications and at the surges that took place. I am absolutely not complacent about this. We need to look at exactly that kind of question.

European Union Subsidiarity Assessment: Electoral Law of the EU (EUC Report)

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, I am a member of the European Union Select Committee. Unfortunately, I was not present at the Select Committee’s discussion of this proposal; if I had been, I would have said some of the things I am going to say now.

I, of course, do not in any way apologise for, accept, or try to defend what appear to have been administrative mistakes in not sending documents in time to this Parliament or to the Tweede Kamer in the Netherlands; I know nothing about that. Clearly, if people have been remiss in not meeting deadlines, they should be held to account. I totally agree with my noble friend’s comments on that point. However, I am much more concerned with the substantive point she makes, and particularly with the second resolution, which I oppose in principle. I hope that I will have a chance to vote against it but I do not suppose that I will. However, I certainly do not want it said that it went through this House without any voice of dissent at all.

In the Motion before your Lordships, the second resolution says that this proposal of the European Parliament should be set aside on the ground of subsidiarity. It seems to me that any democratic parliament worthy of its name is accountable to its own electorate. Any democratic parliament worthy of its name is responsible, and should be responsible, for its own rules and procedures. It should not be beholden to any organisation outside. It should not be under the command of any outside authority or it is not a democratic parliament. In this case, of course, the European Parliament was set up by the member states through the treaty—we all know that. All parliaments, by definition, have to be set up by somebody other than themselves. This Parliament, which we have the honour to serve, was set up by kings of England—Edward I and subsequent monarchs—who summoned it. That does not mean to say that we expect the monarch or, indeed, the politically elected Executive branch—the Prime Minister or the Cabinet—to fix our rules of procedure or our methods of operation. It would be scandalous for anybody to suggest that and everybody would quite rightly think that that was a threat to the democratic independence of this House. No one has, of course, ever suggested that.

On that basis, it is perfectly reasonable that the European Parliament should make its own proposals for its own future procedures, including for its own electoral system. That is totally right, and it is right that it should do it. Above all, the application of the subsidiarity principle against its doing so seems to me entirely absurd. Of course, only the European Parliament is in a position to judge the functionality of any set of rules or procedures in relation to itself. To ask 28 different national parliaments to make their judgment is crazy. It would probably take 1,000 years for them all to agree on the rules to be adopted and they would not be in a position to assess the functionality and merits of any proposals of that kind in the way that people sitting in the European Parliament would be able to do. Therefore, on both pragmatic grounds and grounds of principle, I oppose this resolution. The principle of subsidiarity—indeed, my noble friend has just cited that principle—deems that matters should be decided at the European Union level only when they cannot be better decided at the level of the member states. I think I have said enough to indicate that this matter certainly could not be effectively decided at the level of the member states—that would be an absurdity. It must be decided at the centre by the European Parliament itself. On that basis, I oppose the second resolution.

[Lord Boswell of Aynho (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for the report which her sub-committee prepared for my EU Select Committee. I echo her words of thanks to members of that committee and to the excellent staff in drawing this together. It will already be clear from the exchanges that this is an interesting and, to some extent, unprecedented, coincidence in matters connected with process and substance. What we have heard so far has clearly shown deficiencies in a procedure in which, in fairness to the European Parliament—to which I will return in a moment—it has relatively new experience as a co-legislator. Therefore, we can perhaps condone the explanation relating to fault for this matter, although we should not allow it to go unchallenged.

I was not minded to speak in this debate—and will do so only briefly—had it not been for the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford. He and I have known each other for quite a long time. I have huge respect for him and very much enjoy and value his contributions to our Select Committee. As he rightly said, he was not available on the relevant occasion. However, it would have been more helpful had he shared his concerns and dissent with the chairman of the sub-committee and/or myself. With pre-notification, I am sure that we would have done our best not to warn him off but at least to have seen whether we could accommodate those concerns or reflect them in our report. As noble Lords present who have had experience of negotiation will know, we are in the position where in effect a late card has been played and it is a little difficult to handle it at this stage.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I apologise for any discourtesy but, as soon as I saw this resolution on the Order Paper, I mentioned to my noble friend my opposition to it and invited her to make any comments that she wished to make. She made no comments to me on that occasion and I therefore assumed that she did not wish to have a discussion with me on the subject, but I would have been delighted to do so.

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, we are now, as it were, in the Chamber and we need to take the argument as it goes. However, for the avoidance of doubt—I hope this reassures the chair of the sub-committee—if any noble Lord is minded to take the temperature of the House, I am very much inclined to defend the sub-committee’s recommendation. I put that on the record.

However, let us take that as past. I add two other points. We have a Motion for a reasoned opinion. We have good reasons for asking for that. Indeed, we made it clear in the report we prepared some years ago for your Lordships’ House on the role of national parliaments—that has already been touched on in relation to the current European negotiations—that a reasoned opinion deserves a reasoned response. In entering a reasoned opinion we seek to enter a dialogue with, and gain an explanation from, the European Parliament, not with the purpose of subverting this move but of getting it into the right order with the right conclusion—no more and no less than that.

That leads me to my final point. When we debated this matter in the Select Committee, I was concerned to make it clear to its members that I would not like it to be seen as an oblique or indirect attack on the European Parliament itself. Some people in these Chambers seek to downplay the role of the European Parliament and even, occasionally, to question its legitimacy. I do not share that view. My view of parliamentary sovereignty is that it is better to have two levels of application and scrutiny than only one. I think that we have a joint and complementary role. I would not claim any great virtue in it but I have laboured long and hard to try to dispel any illusion that we are in any sense at war with Members of the European Parliament and its leadership. This is, I hope, a friendly discussion about procedure and a slightly more substantive one about the levels at which we take this argument forward. It is not a declaration of war or an attempt to create difficulty. I very much commend our report to the House.

Israel and Palestine

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Luce, in introducing this debate, said a number of very wise things, but I thought that he was less than balanced and less than fair in ignoring entirely the many attempts over the years by Israel to establish a dialogue leading to peace. Just to take the most recent examples—because the problem has existed since the beginning of the Jewish-Palestinian relationship in that area—there was the rejection of Ehud Barak’s proposals at Camp David and the consequences of the Israelis withdrawing from Gaza, which, far from leading to peace and stability, actually created a nest of terrorism and constant missile attacks on Israel. Naturally, that has left Israeli public opinion with the idea that, far from there being a necessarily positive relationship between sacrificing land for peace, there is probably an inverse relationship between the two, which is a major factor in the present situation. There was also the period when Israel declared a unilateral suspension of all activities related to building settlements. For nine months, the Palestinians did not respond at all; they let the opportunity go completely.

Nevertheless, I share some of the concerns that have been expressed about the policies of the present Government and of Mr Netanyahu. It was a profound mistake, last year, to suspend peace talks because of the formation of the Palestinian unity Government. If there is going to be peace, it obviously has to include Gaza as well as the West Bank and it has to include Hamas as well as Fatah. The Israelis themselves would set no value whatever on a deal with Fatah if Hamas could go on exercising violence and threatening the existence of Israel.

What is more, clearly there can be no settlement unless there is unity in the Palestinian camp, or at least a consensus between the major parties in it, for the simple reason that, otherwise, anything that was agreed by Fatah or by Mahmoud Abbas would be denounced by Hamas as treason to the Palestinian cause, and there would be no possibility of a settlement. Therefore, it seems to me a positive, not a negative, feature that the two Palestinian groups have come together. That should have been welcomed rather than treated as a reason for suspending all contact with the other side.

Palestine: Recognition

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, I think that it would be a profound mistake to recognise Palestine in the present state of affairs, for a very simple reason. I am certain that all of us want peace in the Middle East, and most of us believe that the only realistic means to achieve that is through a two-state solution, but that will require the most difficult and intricate negotiations. The Palestinians will have to give up a large amount of land on the other side of the security fence. The Israelis will have to withdraw settlements from the rest of the West Bank, including some extremely expensive agricultural investments in the Jordan Valley. The Israelis are going to have to accept that, contrary to their principle that Jerusalem should never be divided again, east Jerusalem will become the capital of the Palestinian state and that there is reasonable access to it. Not only issues of land will arise: there will be the need to make generous compensation to the 1948 refugees and, on lesser scales, to their children and grandchildren. No doubt we will all be invited to contribute to that, if and when the time comes.

One of the prizes will undoubtedly be recognition of the Palestinian state and to take that element out of the deal in advance and give it away free, with no countervailing concessions being required from the Palestinian side, seems an elementary mistake—in fact, an incompetent way of conducting any negotiation. There is another reason why it would be extremely dangerous: it would inevitably reinforce the absolutely fatal besetting illusion of the Palestinian leadership over the generations—for nearly 100 years now—that it somehow does not need to confront the reality in which it lives. The illusion is that it does not need to deal with Israel itself and can always hope that some deus ex machina will come from outside and solve its problems for it, giving it the concessions that it requires.

Way back before the Second World War the Jewish Agency, then led by David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett, made several attempts to enter into a negotiation with the Palestinian leadership of the time— the Arab leadership, as it was then called. No doubt an interesting deal might have been done, certainly one on far better terms than were available subsequently to the Palestinians. But these initiatives were completely rejected and the Grand Mufti, the leader of the Palestinians or the Arabs as they were then called, proceeded to believe that either the British or the surrounding Arab states—or, in his case, Hitler—would come to their rescue and solve their problems for them.

Then in 1947 we had the partition resolution of the United Nations, which the Palestinian leadership rejected, preferring a war. It got a war and lost it, then found itself in a far worse position than it had started off with. In the 1950s and 1960s, under the terrible leadership of Ahmad Shukeiri, the Palestinians again rejected any recognition of Israel’s existence and believed that terrorism and war would solve their problems. They had another war in 1967, and once again found themselves in a far worse position than they had previously. Then we had the Camp David meeting, when Yasser Arafat refused even to consider an offer which would have resulted in 97% of the West Bank being handed over to a Palestinian state, to the amazement and consternation of President Clinton and everyone else who was present. Arafat thought that a second intifada would solve his problems. Needless to say, he eventually found that that did not work either.

It has been a terrible history. We will only reinforce that history and that absolutely fatal obsession of the Palestinian leadership, with its belief that it can delude itself and not accept reality, if we were now to offer it that concession in advance. I hope that we do not do that. I am not suggesting that there is much chance of a settlement in any circumstances at present. Quite clearly, Benjamin Netanyahu is a prisoner of his coalition and Mahmoud Abbas, unlike the Grand Mufti or Yasser Arafat in their day, does not have the position and prestige in the Palestinian community to be able to carry off a settlement. We will have to wait a while but, while we wait, we should not destroy the future basis of what might be the only framework for peace. We would do that if we were to adopt the course of recognising the Palestinian state prematurely.

Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Finkelstein]

It would be up to the noble Lord to propose amendments on those, but we are discussing this amendment on the third trigger. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, made an important point when he asked what is special about these kinds of offences that would not apply to other offences. The answer is that they are offences against the parliamentary process. They are ones that go to the heart of people’s confidence in the system here and therefore they are distinct and different. They ought to carry with them a greater threat to Members of Parliament. None of the proposals in this Bill would create a by-election; they merely introduce for the public an extra power which they do not have at the moment. I cannot see that that would be a threat to democracy. When someone proposes something where the proposal itself is the threat to democracy rather than hypothetically a threat to democracy, or a threat to democracy because someone else had proposed something earlier, I will be against that. When someone proposes the thick end of the wedge, I will be against it. For the moment, however, I cannot see the objection to giving the public the ability to use this trigger if they feel that the issue is something that is important to them, and I can see many circumstances in which they would use it. This is therefore a valuable addition to the Bill and I support the amendment.

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a Bill which in my view we cannot change. The House of Commons must be sovereign in determining its own rules. However, the fact that we cannot change it is not a reason why we should not, and indeed I think that we are under an obligation to express any reservations we have. That is what we are here for. We should express sincerely and frankly what we feel about the legislation that comes before us.

I agree entirely with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and with some but obviously not all of the comments of my noble friend Lord Foulkes. What I am most concerned about in the Bill is something which may strike noble Lords as a rather theoretical danger; that is, that people might be sent to prison for reasons of conscience and principle—for acting in a way which, from their point of view, is part of their politics and, as a result, part of their responsibility towards their constituents. Although that may seem rather theoretical, it has actually happened several times over the past 150 years.

I am thinking of Charles Stewart Parnell and John Redmond. There were never finer parliamentarians in either House than those two men. They were both sent to prison under the Irish Coercion Acts that we had for governing Ireland at the time for matters of purely political action on their part. Pacifists in the First World War were sent to prison under provisions in the Defence of the Realm Acts which made it a criminal offence to make comments that were inimical to the interests of recruitment. I think that I am quoting the law accurately. Arthur Jenkins and others whose names I am afraid I cannot remember—I remember Arthur Jenkins because of course he was the father of a very distinguished statesman who many of us knew personally —were sent to jail in the 1920s for organising an illegal strike. I cannot think of any recent examples, but someone may well be about to challenge me by asking when it last happened. It is certainly the case that it has not happened recently.

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton]

I think that my noble friend will find that a Labour MP from Liverpool was actually sentenced for non-payment of the poll tax as a political protest.

[Lord Finkelstein]

Is it the noble Lord’s judgment in those cases that recall would have been successful?

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I do not think that recall would have been successful in the case of the Irish patriots I have referred to, but I suspect that it would have been successful in the emotional circumstances of the First World War, and possibly in the 1920s. However, I do not think that that is relevant at all. The important question is whether we are going to have a Parliament consisting of individuals who, when it comes to the crunch, are brave and willing enough, when it is necessary to do so, to stand up for what they really believe in. In those circumstances is it right to deprive them of their seat in Parliament as if they were common criminals? If they are common criminals then, as has been said, there are provisions for a majority of MPs to exclude them, and the House of Commons is perfectly willing to do that.

[Lord Finkelstein]

In one sense they are common criminals, and that would be the point of sending them to jail. The noble Lord is suggesting that their electorates are not allowed to exercise a judgment over whether, when a person has broken the law, their crime ought simply to be overlooked. All this Bill will do is give the electorate the opportunity to make that judgment.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am saying two things, and I hope that the noble Lord will listen carefully. First, I do not believe that it can be in the interests of this country that people are thrown out of Parliament when they maintain what may be a very consistent position of principle which puts them at odds with the law at that particular moment. There have been occasions when we have passed laws in this country which have nothing to do with the ordinary notion of criminality, but have been passed under emotional circumstances, such as the ones I have already described. We do not want a Parliament of ciphers; we want a Parliament of individualists. We want a Parliament of people who are responsible directly to their electorate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack]

On this issue I entirely agree with the noble Lord. As one who was instrumental in persuading the late Reg Prentice, later Lord Prentice, to cross the Floor, I believe that what he says is entirely justifiable.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

All of us are tempted to welcome converts and are delighted when people join the party that we happen, for the time being, to be a member of. We then dismiss as traitors, renegades or worse the people whose judgment goes in the other direction and leave the party we currently happen to be a member of and join another party. I think it is probably human nature to use different vocabulary to describe what is essentially an entirely analogous process.

I was quite shocked because I did not know that my noble friend Lord Foulkes was a secret believer in proportional representation.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I will give way to him in one second, of course. I think he ought to come out and declare his true allegiance because the only logical consequence of the position he has been taking this afternoon is that we ought to have proportional representation in this country.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I cannot think of anything worse than to be called a secret believer in proportional representation. I disavow any support for that. I am a long-term supporter of first past the post. I think that my noble friend has actually made a very good argument. If we were discussing the Bill and the provision that I said might be considered as one of the options, we could decide whether or not it should be in. But I do not want any of these provisions. I have not made it clear enough. I do not want a Recall of MPs Bill. All I was saying is that, if we are including these provisions, there are others that might have been considered for inclusion, but were not. That is totally illogical. My noble friend has made a very good argument for not including that in a Bill, if it had been suggested.

National Parliaments (EUC Report)

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has already made the important point that bringing national parliaments closer to the institutions of the EU, and particularly to the Commission, so as to improve familiarity of national parliaments with the issues and to enhance the influence of national parliaments on decisions being taken in Brussels is a cause that unites all three major parties in our democracy. It unites Eurosceptics and Europhiles. All those categories are well represented here this evening. Not surprisingly, UKIP is not represented here. Their representatives do not turn up much when they get elected to the European Parliament: they have the worst record for attendance there, a quite disgraceful one. They have not turned up tonight and they have demonstrated once again that they belong to a party that is very interested in demagogy, but not in doing an honest day’s work or even an honest evening’s work on European policy.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, on this report, which he has produced with his colleagues. I also commend him on the great energy and engagement that he has brought to his considerable responsibilities and the robustness with which he is prepared to talk—we had an example of that earlier this evening—both to our own Government here and to the European Commission, or to anybody else who might be relevant when that is required, in order to make clear the strong, serious position of this House and its committees on European-related subjects.

I agree with an enormous amount of what has been said this evening. I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, on the latter part of his remarks, about the desirability of involving the departmental Select Committees in the scrutiny work much more systematically than happens now. I take this opportunity to add to the proposals made in this very interesting document with tuppenny-ha’penny-worth of my own suggestions, and I will make three proposals.

We are really confronting three broad issues this evening. One is how to bring national parliaments closer to the Commission and to have more influence with the Commission. There I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, to whom I always listen not just with great respect but with great interest. He suggested that it would be a good idea to appoint a Commissioner responsible for relations with national parliaments and with the European Parliament. That would have unfortunate and counterproductive consequences: such a Commissioner would act as an insulating barrier between the two. It would be rather like dealing with the director of public affairs of a company instead of the chief executive. If you want to influence anything that a company does, that is not a sensible way forward. It is important to have much greater direct contact. I also disagree with the committee’s report in one respect—desirable as it would be—which is the proposal in paragraph 54:

“The Commission which will be appointed in 2014 should make a commitment that its Commissioners and senior officials will be willing to meet committees of national parliaments as a core part of their duties”.

That is very desirable, but idealistic and unrealistic as well. If a Commissioner spent half a day of his time with each of 28 different national parliaments or their representatives or their scrutiny committees, then he would be spending 14 working days—something like two and half weeks of his time—on that subject. That is not likely to happen. We have situations when we are able, in Select Committees of the House of Commons and in European sub-committees here, to meet Commissioners or senior officials of the Commission; I have been a beneficiary of that myself in various roles over time. However, sadly, I do not think it is realistic to expect that there should be some kind of statutory—or if not statutory, at least formal—commitment of the kind suggested in this document.

A much more promising proposal is that it should be a general rule that—and this can be agreed with the courts without any kind of constitutional change; it could be a rule decided by the Commission itself—once or possibly twice a year, every Commissioner would invite to a seminar in Brussels the departmental or specialised committees covering his particular responsibilities. They are called Select Committees in the House of Commons, but a lot of continental parliaments call them commissions. That would be an opportunity for the Commissioner to make a direct presentation to them of his agenda, and have perhaps some working groups getting into the detail of these proposals or other proposals that the national parliaments might want to advance, and to have some serious discussions from both sides, bringing the two bodies directly together without any kind of intermediary organisation or individual. I would be grateful if that proposal could be considered by our own committee. I myself sit on the Economic and Financial Affairs Sub-Committee of the European Union Committee.

The second thing that needs to be done is to bring national parliaments more closely together in the context of European scrutiny. Quite clearly, no national parliament is going to have much effect if it is isolated. If we want a yellow card—or not necessarily a yellow card, but some influence—it is necessary to combine with others, as is a normal rule in any sensible and functioning democracy. There is not much opportunity for that. The COSAC works well, but it brings together just the chairmen of scrutiny committees: that is a very narrow group of people. There should be an occasion once a year for, let us say, a two-day conference, bringing together those responsible for scrutiny in the national parliaments from all 28 member states. At the conference, it should be possible to have some detailed working sessions on particularly important or controversial issues, or on matters where there is a question of a yellow-card procedure being initiated—or having been initiated—by one or more parliaments. That would be an opportunity for anybody wanting a yellow card to make a case for that, and attempt to get other national parliaments to second that initiative. Human contact is absolutely indispensible; I have never believed in any context—in ordinary commercial marketing, advocacy or anything else—that electronics or digital communications can replace human contact. It is very important to be able to look at people in the face, hear the emphasis they put in their communications with you and make an assessment as to how reliable or serious they are and how much they have gone into the question that they are talking about. It is therefore central that there should be more human contact between the parliamentarians involved. That is the spirit in which I make these two proposals.

My third proposal relates to an area that has already been mentioned several times in this debate, and we are very conscious of it. We are not very good at scrutiny. As the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, the fundamental role of national parliaments as far as the EU is concerned is to make sure that we properly control our Ministers when they go to the Council of Ministers, because they go there as our delegates. In actual fact, with the exception of Denmark, no member state has really succeeded in making a reality of this theory, that democratic legitimacy stems directly from the national parliaments, because the Council of Ministers—one of the two legislative bodies in the European Union—is directly responsible to national parliaments. If we are going to make a reality of that, we need to change immediately the way we do business here. In my view, we need to make sure that we talk to Ministers before they go to the Council of Ministers. We should not take a decision to lift the scrutiny reserve merely on the basis of an Explanatory Memorandum and then, perhaps a month or two later, have an opportunity to talk to the Minister in retrospect about why he or she did or did not do whatever it was that is of concern to us. It is essential that Ministers appear before the relevant scrutiny committee or better still—here I agree totally with the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat—the relevant departmental Select Committee before they go to the Council of Ministers meeting, so that they are forced to disclose their brief and agenda, hear the comments of parliamentarians, take them into account, and, if they wish to disagree with them, to do so openly and to try to persuade them or not, as the case may be. It is up to Parliament to decide whether or not to lift the scrutiny reserve when it has heard what the Minister has to say.

Those are three suggestions. They are not modest suggestions because they are quite far reaching, but I hope that they will make a modest contribution to the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, it is customary in these debates to applaud their timeliness. I am afraid, unfortunately, that this debate is not timely. It is behind time by quite a long way. It should not have taken the Government three months, as opposed to the regulation two months, to reply to the report, although clearly the imminence of a parliamentary recess has acted as a magnetic pull. It should not have taken this House nine months to organise a debate on a report that can legitimately be described as one of the most significant and potentially consequential to be issued in recent years. It owed much to the skill and persuasiveness of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, whose admirable introduction to the debate we have just heard and whose leadership I particularly appreciated when I served on the committee as this report was being prepared.

The noble Lord, Lord Boswell, set out some of the main recommendations of our report, which represent a wide-ranging menu of reforms to the role of national parliaments in holding their Governments to account and in shaping EU legislation. Those are the two broad thrusts of the role of national parliaments and there is no need to repeat what he said. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, suggested that asking the new Commission to take it as part of its duty to deal with national parliaments was nugatory and impossible to fulfil. In fact, with video conferencing and other such techniques, it is possible to do that with reasonable economy of time.

In the previous Commission, there were still commissioners who would openly say, in a quite aggressive way, that they had no responsibility at all to national parliaments: their sole responsibility was towards the European Parliament. That is not a correct interpretation of the Lisbon treaty, which gives them a distinct role. People who held those views would say: “National parliaments, you look after your own Governments; you do not have any control or influence over the Commission”. We have to break down those barriers. The recommendation, which was contained in the report and which I suspect the new Commission, with Vice-President Timmermans, is going to honour very considerably, was worth making.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I am sure that he will recall that I said that if you can get this particular proposal, which was made in the report, so much the better. I personally thought that it was slightly unrealistic. However, my proposal of a rule that each commissioner should meet on a regular basis, at least once a year, with the members of the departmental select committees or commissions in the national parliaments on his subject of responsibility, would directly address the point just made by the noble Lord. It is important that commissioners should formally recognise a role for national parliaments and make sure that they take them seriously.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

If I may say so, that is an addition to but not a substitute for the recommendation we made. It is important, when one of the sub-committees of your Lordships’ House is preparing a report on a particular issue, that it takes evidence from the commissioner responsible at that time, not just once a year. It is normally possible to do this and co-operation is pretty good, on the whole. However, there have been occasions when it has not been and we suggested that it should never be that way again.

Suffice it to say that we did not need to go back to first principles when we started to write this report, because the Lisbon treaty settled once and for all that national parliaments have a role to play in shaping European legislation. They have a collective role to play through such procedures as the yellow card. We did not really have to argue that case: we just took it from there.

However, the evidence we took established that that role—which has existed since the Lisbon treaty came into force in 2009—was not being exercised very effectively, so far, and that reforms were needed if it was to be so exercised. That is not some British Eurosceptic fad; it is the view of many other national parliaments which we consulted when we were compiling our report. In the years to come, strengthening the role of national Parliaments needs to be one part of any positive reform agenda worthy of the name. I notice that both the Government, in their response to our report, and the European Council itself, in the strategic agenda for the next five years, refer to the need for that role to be developed.

I do not intend to dwell long on the Government's response to our report, which was broadly very satisfactory and supportive. However, one point requires comment. The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, referred to it and I shall do likewise, but in slightly less polite terms. In their response to paragraph 15 of our report, the Government stated flatly that national parliaments were,

“the main source of democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU”.

That is a pretty odd remark to make, 35 years after the European Parliament became directly elected and when it has wide-ranging powers of co-decision with the Council on EU legislation. Tactically, it was aberrant to say this, since nothing is more likely to frustrate any effort to reform the role of national parliaments than it becoming a food fight between them and the European Parliament. Yes, “a main source”—national parliaments are that—but not “the main source”, which is surely getting it a bit wrong. There is no good argument that cannot be spoiled by exaggeration.

The Commission’s response to our report is a good deal less satisfactory than that of the Government and falls far short of what is needed. Fortunately, that response was made by the outgoing Barroso Commission and not the Commission that is now in office. We can therefore hope that the first Vice-President of the new Commission—Frans Timmermans, whose name has been mentioned several times in the debate and who is responsible for relationships with national parliaments—will take a more enlightened and flexible view as matters move forward.

It simply is not good enough to say, flatly, as the Commission did, that it would require treaty change to allow national parliaments more than eight weeks to submit reasoned opinions under the yellow card procedure. It is not good enough to say that to allow those reasoned opinions to contain consideration of the proportionality of the Commission's proposals is not possible without treaty change. The Commission could perfectly well take political decisions to accommodate both those reforms. Let us hope that it can be persuaded to do so.

Nor is it good enough for the Commission to duck—as it did in its response—our recommendation that it should commit itself to withdrawing or substantially amending any proposal that actually triggered a yellow card. The outgoing Commission’s response to the yellow card triggered by its proposal for a European public prosecutor’s office has been referred to already in this debate. It was, frankly, scandalously inept, amounting simply to saying that 14 national parliaments had got it wrong and the Commission, as usual, had got it right. That sort of approach simply will not do.

When the Minister replies to this debate, I hope that he will concentrate not so much on the Government’s response to our report—after all, if we have taken the trouble to read Command 8913, we know what that is—but rather on what the Government are going to do about the many ideas in the report with which they say they are in agreement. What contacts have the Government had so far with other member states about the need for these reforms? What progress have they made towards building coalitions to carry them forward? What dealings have they had with the incoming Commission to persuade it to take a more flexible approach than that of its predecessors?

Anyone reading the recent speeches by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary could be forgiven for thinking that this part of the reform—the issue of powers for national parliaments—was as evanescent as the smile on the Cheshire Cat. If so, that would be a major error. If we are to make progress, we surely need a broad-based, positive reform agenda that takes account of the views of all member states—not one that is tailor-made to the pressures from the UK Independence Party, which, in any case, is not the slightest bit interested in anything that leaves the UK as a member of a reformed European Union—and a reformed EU is, after all, the Government’s proclaimed objective. I hope that the Minister can give us a feel for the answers to those questions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Morgan of Ely (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the committee and the noble Lord, Lord Boswell in particular, for the excellent work that they have done in this report. It has been an urgent and necessary task to look at, and to try to do something about bridging, the gap between the legislatures and the public. That is certainly true in terms of EU legislation and the citizens of the European Union. The distance between elected representatives and the public is certainly a problem. It is a problem for the European Parliament. It is probably fair to say that, in general, people relate more readily to national parliaments, so how national parliaments relate to EU law is absolutely critical. It is worth taking note of the wise words of my noble friend Lord Judd in terms of how we engage people beyond the usual suspects and try to go beyond the elite when we are taking evidence. That may go some way to bridging that gap.

I served 15 years as a Member of the European Parliament. I can tell noble Lords that during that time, the Lords European Union Committee was the best example that we had of how national parliaments interacted with the process of EU legislation. Yes, there were some good examples in Holland and Denmark as well, but the fact that this House took that responsibility seriously was noted. It therefore makes sense that your Lordships’ committee is the group that comes up with practical reasons for why national parliaments perhaps find difficulty in influencing EU debates and provides some constructive suggestions about how some of those problems can be overcome.

The report recognises that national parliaments have a dual responsibility in relation to EU law, not just in scrutinising their own Government’s positions on EU policy, but in influencing more directly EU institutions and proposed laws. The authors have correctly identified that a national parliament holding its own Government to account for its EU policy positions can be done now. It is a matter of the will of parliamentarians and of their Governments to effect that will. As the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, said, the UK has to put its own house in order when it comes to this.

It is worth noting that the House of Commons Library reported that the number of laws influenced or based on EU law varies between 15% and 50%, depending on the definition. Knowing that, does Parliament have the balance correct in terms of the time and resources set aside to scrutinise these laws, given the number and quantity of laws emanating or being influenced by Brussels? Let us be clear. These laws are not decided by Brussels: they are proposed by Brussels. No EU law is passed without the UK Government having been involved in detailed discussions in terms of the outcomes. But the Government need to be held to account by Parliament on their position in relation to EU law.

A point not picked up in the report is the fact that it would be extremely difficult for some Parliaments, including the UK Parliament, to keep up with legislative scrutiny of EU laws, as we sit for only 30 weeks a year, compared with the 45 weeks a year that the European Parliament sits. That point was made by my noble friend Lord Judd. We need therefore to take seriously this point of prioritising the laws on which to focus.

Some of the major decisions that are made in the EU, which set the political direction and tone for various debates and forthcoming EU laws, are made, as has been pointed out, in the European Council meetings. The suggestion by the committee of holding pre-Council scrutiny meetings to feed into government preparations, rather than holding them afterwards, makes eminent sense. However, due to the fact that the Government are by definition entering into a negotiation, we understand the need to be sensitive to the view that requiring the Government to disclose their negotiating plan in public would not necessarily be in the interests of the UK. But that does not mean that they cannot listen, as the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, suggested.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

Is not the simple solution to this problem that these pre-decision scrutiny sessions should, where necessary or when the Government so desire, be held in private? I understand that that works in Denmark. There is no problem with leaks and the system works perfectly well as a result.

[Baroness Morgan of Ely]

That makes a lot of sense. As long as there is an understanding that sessions are held in camera, I see no problem. But accountability pre-scrutiny and pre-Council makes sense. It is something that we should perhaps take up.

In terms of influencing EU institutions more directly during the process of elaborating legislation, the process becomes more complicated. For me, one of the problems when reading the House of Lords European Committee reports as an MEP was that, despite their brilliance, they would almost invariably be published after the law had been passed. Although there were some gems in there, in terms of critiques of EU directives, they were too late to influence the debate—which is why that pre-legislative scrutiny by national parliaments would be invaluable.

Analysing the Commission’s work programme would be an obvious way of ensuring a degree of pre-scrutiny, and it should become a core task—as has been suggested—of the whole Parliament and all the relevant Select Committees, rather than the preserve of EU committees. Furthermore, will the Minister comment on how we get a degree of consistency, as referred to by my noble friend Lady Quin? How do we ensure that there is a systematic approach to thorough, ongoing analysis by subject committees?

It is also essential that policymakers have a thorough understanding of the legislative processes of the EU institutions. In my experience, that was not obvious, even—dare I say it?—when dealing with some of the UK Ministers involved. So, mainstreaming, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, mentioned, is critical.

The committee’s suggestions for tightening up the reasoned opinion procedure make sense, and the fact that only two yellow cards have been given since the introduction of that system suggests that the hurdles may be too high. I note, however, that the expectation that the Commission should respond within a set timeframe is possible only if resources are provided. Imagine the resources involved in giving a comprehensive response to the 2,000 written contributions made since the Barroso initiative was introduced. There were 33,000 members of staff in the Commission last year. Let us compare that with the number of staff employed in the Department for Work and Pensions: 90,000. Just imagine the extra burden on the administration in answering 28 member state parliaments within a tight timeframe. Something would have to give; something would have to be prioritised. We need to be sensitive to that when we are asking for these things.

National parliaments, however, need to learn how, and when best, to influence the EU legislative process. It is worth considering the suggestion by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, of an annual get-together, but more relevant is a real understanding of how influential individual MEPs can be, particularly those who lead and formally shadow debates and who navigate the directives through the legislative process—that is, the rapporteurs. They are extremely influential, so identifying who they are and communicating with them at the appropriate time would be as impactful as trying to convince 28 different EU member states to take up an alternative position. There is no inconsistency in saying that national parliaments, as well as the European Parliament, should be involved in developing EU laws. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, I must say that I am disappointed to read that the real source of democratic legitimacy in the EU lies with national parliaments, according to the Government’s response to the report.

As the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, suggested, it is worth thinking about some of the ideas put forward. I fully endorse the point that the Conservatives have cut off their own influence in the EU by ceasing to be a member of the largest political group. It is worth considering the idea of a commissioner for national parliaments and European parliaments, but I warn that there is a danger that the job might be seen to have been done, and therefore the departmental commissioners might not take their responsibilities seriously in relating to national parliaments.

With such turmoil in the eurozone, the reality is that the public across the whole of Europe have learnt that financial and economic policy emanating from the EU is impacting on us all both directly and indirectly, whether through the massive austerity measures that have caused such savage cuts in our public services, or through reduced demand for our export goods. Therefore, national parliaments should take a more systematic approach to the surveillance of this policy area in particular.

On behalf of the Opposition, I thank the European Union Committee for its work on this report. It is essential that it is disseminated not just in our Parliament, but in parliaments throughout the European Union.

Strategic Defence and Security Review

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I cannot of course commit the next Government in terms of managing the business, but there is time for this House to have a debate on one or two of these issues before then. Since the 2010 SDSR was published, we published in 2011 a cybersecurity strategy, in 2012 a climate change risk assessment and in 2013 the Ministry of Defence’s report on global strategic trends. We are keeping pace as far as we can with all the expected and unexpected developments that the noble Lord mentions.

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

Has it occurred to the Government that the cuts by many NATO countries in defence expenditure, in which this Government—our Government—unfortunately led the way, might just have had something to do with the much more aggressive policies pursued by Mr Putin over the past couple of years?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is a slightly unfair question in many ways. Britain remains the second largest member of NATO in terms of the amount spent on defence. We are currently deterring Russia through the use of sanctions at least as much as through defence. So when we talk about national security we do not only mean defence in strict terms.

Afghanistan

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I will have to write to the noble and gallant Lord about that. I am not entirely up to date on where all the Tornados are.

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, when we give educational aid to Afghanistan, is it the Government’s policy to insist that a fair portion of it—half of it—is spent on the education of girls? Will the noble Lord tell us about the progress of extending education to girls in Afghanistan?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, there are now 2 million girls in education in Afghanistan, and 4 million boys. That is remarkable progress from where we were 10 years ago. We are very much committed to improving the status of women and girls throughout Afghanistan, and that is part of what our priorities represent.

European Union: Reform

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are their specific objectives for the reform of the European Union.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the UK’s chief objective is to reform the European Union so that it is more competitive, flexible and democratically accountable, and works fairly for those both within and without the eurozone. As Her Majesty said at the State Opening of Parliament, the Government are working to promote these reforms together with other Governments, including strengthening the roles of the national parliaments of member states in the functioning of the EU.

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, that is a very nebulous and unspecific response. Will the Government be guided in these negotiations by an honest and evidence-based assessment of the national interest? If so, is it not the case that such an assessment might well throw up opportunities for repatriating powers but equally well throw up areas where it would be better in the national interest for more powers to be concentrated or given to the Union at the Union level? Will the Government remain entirely pragmatic and open-minded about that or will they reject out of hand, or shy away from, conclusions of that kind?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for his complimentary response, as usual. I merely emphasise that reform is a process. We are negotiating with other like-minded Governments. I am sure that the noble Lord has seen the reports from the Dutch and Danish Governments on EU reform. As you know, the Prime Minister is in Sweden talking with his Dutch, Swedish and German counterparts today about a reform agenda. We are therefore working with others to change the EU so that it faces in the sort of direction that we need. Of course we are not spelling out exactly what we would want and what we will say no to unless we are given everything we want, because that would lock us into the sort of negotiation that would be one against 27 rather than a collective multilateral negotiation, which is what we need.