National Parliaments (EUC Report)

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[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.

Sri Lanka

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the British Government and others are talking about the best way in which to make sure that there is effective monitoring of the elections. We will of course be raising such issues with the Sri Lankan Government.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister say what progress is being made with the United Nations Human Rights Council inquiry into the behaviour of all parties, including the Tamil Tigers, and if the Government of Sri Lanka are giving any signs of co-operation with that at all?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

As the noble Lord is aware, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has just reported that he is not receiving the co-operation which he needs from the Sri Lankan Government.

European Union Committee: Report on 2013-14 (EUC Report)

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, annual reports such as the one we are debating today are all too easily dismissed as routine matters going over familiar ground. In this case at least, that would be a considerable error because the report we are considering reveals that your Lordships’ EU Select Committee has been breaking some interesting new ground, and has produced a report on the role of national parliaments in the shaping of EU policies and legislation which addresses an issue of major topical concern right across Europe and provides elements for reform that could be of real value in months and years ahead.

I begin by paying tribute to our chair, the noble Lord, Lord Boswell of Aynho, whose patient and perceptive leadership contributed so much to the work of the committee in the period we are discussing, and to my former colleagues on the committee, from which I stood down in May.

I shall say a short word about the new ground. We have all become aware through our work on EU issues that too often the valuable scrutiny work of national parliaments comes too late to have much influence on the final outcome. Too frequently, the proposals on which we comment are pretty well set in concrete by the time our views are known. To be fair to the Commission—not an entirely fashionable thing to be on this side of the channel—it has been saying for some time that it wishes that national parliaments would intervene more upstream of it making formal proposals. Vice-President Šefcovic said that to COSAC last autumn. We agree and we have begun to do that, for example, in a report that my sub-committee produced on the strategic objectives for justice and home affairs, which we debated on 22 July to reasonably good effect, since the decisions reached by the European Council on 27 June bore a striking resemblance to the recommendations that we made. Another example of new ground being broken is instances where we question whether the European Union is taking seriously a really important Europe-wide challenge. In this case, I refer to the report on food waste, which the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, produced and to which she referred. Let us hope that all EU institutions will study that report with care and will draw some conclusions on how best to reduce that shameful waste.

I want to concentrate most of my remarks today on our report on the role of national parliaments, an issue that I am glad to say figured on the strategic agenda for the European Union’s next five years, which was adopted by the European Council on 27 June. It said that the credibility of the Union will benefit from greater involvement of national parliaments. That is precisely what we said in our report. Now they need to get down to it and do it. Our report contains a large menu of possible reforms to that effect, which would not require the complexities and pitfalls of treaty change. I will discuss a few examples.

First, there is the yellow card system, under which national parliaments can submit reasoned opinions that argue that a Commission proposal has not met the subsidiarity criteria in the treaty. That is clearly not working as well as it should. It is not hard to see why. The eight weeks provided for the submission of reasoned opinions is grossly inadequate—neither the Commission, the Parliament, nor the Council operates within such a short timeframe. Why on earth, then, do they think that national parliaments can and should? One of our suggestions is that the Commission should change the time limit to 12 or 16 weeks. That would enable national parliaments to consult each other and concert their views, which is virtually impossible under the present eight-week cut-off.

Secondly, there is clear evidence that the outgoing Commission has not been treating the yellow card procedure with respect and seriousness. The first time the yellow card was triggered over the Monti II proposal, the Commission withdrew its proposal but explicitly went out of its way to say that it was not doing so because the yellow card had been invoked. The second time it was triggered, over the proposed European Public Prosecutor’s Office, it resubmitted its proposal within three weeks, unchanged, and did not explain why it was doing so to the national parliaments, which had introduced reasoned opinions, until several months later. Presumably it took that time to work out why it had done what it had done within three weeks—not, frankly, a good way to handle things. It simply will not do. The new Commission, when it takes office in November, should make it clear that when a yellow card is triggered it will either withdraw the proposal or amend it substantially.

Thirdly, the Commission should make clear that it will, in future, accept that reasoned opinions can address the issue of the treaty-based principle of proportionality as well as the arguments about subsidiarity. The current distinction between the treatment of these two criteria is neither logical nor defensible.

There are plenty of other ideas in the menu we set out in our report on national parliaments: the possibility for national parliaments to initiate proposals—the so-called green card; ways in which COSAC could help national parliaments strengthen their scrutiny of draft EU legislation while respecting every parliament’s different procedures based on constitutional differences in each member state; the strengthening of links between national parliaments and the committees of the European Parliament, which often simultaneously consider the same Commission proposals; and the need for the new Commission to engage closely with national parliaments and be ready to give evidence to them.

The Government have certainly not hastened to respond to this report. They overran the two-month limit several times and were in fact two additional months behind earlier this week when they finally produced their response. Clearly, they did not find it easy to make up their mind. However, this issue of the role of national parliaments is a crucial part of the positive reform agenda which the EU as a whole needs to grasp and press forward. Perhaps the Minister when he replies to this debate will be able to throw some light on the Government’s thinking and how they intend to carry the matter forward. In any case, we will in due course be able to debate the matter fully on the basis of the EU Select Committee’s report on national parliaments and the Government’s somewhat belated response.

This evening, I will make only one remark about the Government’s response, which can perhaps be regarded as a taster for the full debate to come. In their introductory response, the Government stated flatly that,

“the real source of democratic legitimacy in the EU lies with national parliaments and national governments”.

Throwing down the gauntlet to the European Parliament in this way is tactically crass and strategically wrong. How on earth can one say that a parliament elected by universal suffrage is not a—I do not suggest it is “the”—real source of democratic legitimacy? Your Lordships’ Select Committee made no such claim. Indeed, we made it clear that in our view national parliaments and the European Parliament shared the task of shaping EU legislation. If the Government wish to ensure that any proposals they make for strengthening the role of national parliaments are dead on arrival, I can think of no better way of doing that than organising a food fight between national parliaments and the European Parliament. There is, after all, no good argument than cannot be spoiled by exaggeration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We all understand that that is part of the problem and the pressure, and we are doing our utmost to look at that as well. I also take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that effective scrutiny necessitates the earliest possible engagement with developing areas of policy, looking at work programmes and strategic views.

I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, feels that the Government’s scrutiny performance has improved somewhat in the last year. It is one of those things on which we all have to maintain the pressure. Civil servants are always very busy and Ministers always have too many things in their in-tray, but we have to keep up the pressure on all that.

The noble Lord, Lord Bach, asked whether the Government’s evidence on the abuse of free movement rights could be shared with the House. Much of that is in the free movement of persons paper that was published on Tuesday. Having been very closely involved in negotiations over that paper, I might say that the evidence is not always entirely clear; that is part of the problem in discussing questions of free movement of persons and labour and the abuse of free movement rights. That is partly because we do not have exit controls in this country and partly because we do not collect all the central evidence. For example, I questioned at one stage an academic study that suggested that there were 40,000 British citizens receiving benefits in other states in the EU. That is an academic estimate, but nobody is entirely sure whether that is an exact figure. So there are many problems in addressing that very complicated issue.

The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, asked whether the UK had been diffident in its approach to the financial transaction tax. The Government have been very closely engaged with this issue since publication and, indeed, took a case to the European Court of Justice on that issue to raise the question of how far it would be appropriate for the European Union to move on that subject. We remain actively engaged.

The noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, talked about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. That will be a central but extremely difficult issue for the coming year; we know that there will be lobbies not just in France and elsewhere but in this country that will want to raise negative issues about TTIP. That is something that we will clearly have to follow.

May I say, as spokesperson for the Cabinet Office and therefore dealing with a lot of data sharing issues, that I would welcome the European Union Committee looking further at aspects of the digital single market as well as data sharing and data protection? Some months ago, I asked for a briefing within Whitehall on the digital single market and officials from five different departments came to brief me, demonstrating just how complicated an issue it is. After all, this is all one issue in a complex, multi-levelled set of issues for government that is driven by the speed of technological change. I am constantly struck by how much faster technology is taking us down the road to online, cross-border transactions than we previously understood. The digital single market is a major priority in the Government’s drive for EU reform and it is part of the extension of the single market to services, as services and manufacturing intertwine and overlap. It will be a difficult issue also in TTIP, as data regulation, the cloud and the role of the US service providers hit the issue of data protection.

I am conscious of the time. I hope that I have answered most of the issues, but I see that there are one or two questions still to come.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

Before the Minister sits down, I understand why he is in some difficulty in addressing the point that I raised about the claim that national parliaments are “the basis” for real legitimacy in the European Council, not in the European Union, not “a basis” for it. Of course he cannot take back the words that, alas, have been written in the response to the national parliament role report, but we are going to debate it again and I hope that he will report back to his colleagues the dangers they are taking if they turn the question of strengthening the role of national parliaments into a contest with the European Parliament. They will not get anywhere if they do that. It has to be pursued as a matter in which both national parliaments and the European Parliament have a role in assuring the democratic legitimacy.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I very much take that point. The new European Parliament is a rather more difficult body with which to co-operate than its predecessor, but I think it is extremely important nevertheless that we do co-operate. I am in the middle of making arrangements to go out myself with one or two others in September to talk to new Members of the European Parliament, British and others, with whom, of course, we must co-operate.

Ethnic Minorities: Ministers’ Statements

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, they are dealt with by the Cabinet Secretary. The only other case I am aware of during the last year was where a Minister was thought to have referred to electoral fraud within the south Asian community in an unfortunate fashion. The Minister responsible apologised immediately.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, would the Minister not agree that his very welcome words about Ministers being careful about using any words that might encourage racism or xenophobia would be rather more believable if the Government were not opting out of the European Union’s decision on racism and xenophobia?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes an extremely strong point. I offer no further comment than that.

Iran

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Baroness for her compliments to the Foreign Secretary and others. We hope that this will prove to have been a remarkable moment in history, but we do not yet know; the test will be in the negotiations that take place over the next year. There is no doubt that sanctions and the extent to which they were biting in Iran have played a major part in shifting opinions in the Iranian regime in all its complexity, and certainly among the Iranian public.

In response to the noble Baroness’s questions, of course we would like to see a tougher, enhanced IAEA regime that spreads to others. I suspect that the noble Baroness knows a great deal more about this than I do, since I know that she has been involved in a lot of international discussions on this matter. That is one of the things that could grow out of these negotiations. The joint commission will, of course, be concerned with implementing the agreement. The first visit of the chargé already appointed is likely to take place in the next few weeks, and we may hope that, from that, other relationships may grow—but that will be something that we all have to work for as we work through these still complex and delicate negotiations.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

I add my congratulations to the Government on the conclusion of this interim agreement and to the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton. I hope that the Minister will find some way of conveying to her the views that have been warmly expressed in this House this afternoon. She has put in a huge effort.

This is the first step, as the Minister says, away from this conflict and others in the Middle East. Does he agree that, while it is clearly right that Israel’s concerns over Iran’s nuclear program should be treated seriously, attempts by the Prime Minister of Israel to prevent or perhaps now to wreck this agreement would be counterproductive and, in fact, against Israel’s long-term interests? Does he also agree that Saudi Arabia and our other friends in the Gulf ought to be brought to understand that a non-nuclear weapon state Iran could and should be a genuine regional player in the Gulf region? Finally, does he agree that the British Government should urge those points and use their influence in Washington with those who are most critical of the agreement to explain why the British Government believe that this is the right way forward?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are all conscious of nervousness in a number of other states in the Middle East about this agreement. We are persuaded that this enhances the security of Israel. The alternative, which might have led to a military attack on Iran, would have jeopardised a whole range of issues about the long-term security of the Middle East. We have said that to our Israeli friends. The Prime Minister spoke to Mr Netanyahu in the middle of the previous round of negotiations on 9 November and will no doubt be talking to him again. We have been saying the same to our friends in Saudi Arabia and the various Gulf states. We have many active diplomats and friends in Washington who will be saying the same to the American Congress; but the noble Lord knows that American politics are even more complex than those of most other states.

Nuclear War: International Conference

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister be able to say what attitude the US Government are taking to attending the Mexico conference? Could it possibly be that we are just waiting to see which way they jump? If so, is that the best way to approach this matter?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the United States has also not yet taken a decision. My understanding is that the other members of the P5 are unlikely to attend. I suspect that the considerations of the US Administration may not be totally dissimilar from those that are concerning the British Government.

Syria: Peace Initiative

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this has been a joint US-Russian peace initiative, it is not purely a Russian-led one. We welcome the constructive response that the Russian Government are now making on Syria and we hope and expect that the Russians will ensure that President Assad and his regime are represented at the Geneva II peace conference when it meets at the end of November. We hope and expect, but we do not yet know.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

Will the Minister correct the noble Lord who spoke before and remind him that the idea of getting Syria to surrender its chemical weapons was raised in this House rather before President Putin raised it? More seriously, will he state that in the event of Syria transgressing the Security Council resolution, the Government would not necessarily be bound by the vote that took place in the other place at the end of August?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have to recognise—and I say this as a Liberal who believes in international order and is very reluctant to condone the use of force—that without the threat of force we might not have reached the position we have so far reached in Syria. Just as with the opening to Iran, without the very extensive sanctions against it we might not be having the discussions that we are now having with the Iranian Government. One has to use diplomacy as far as one can, but the big stick behind it sometimes helps.

Israel and Palestine

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, ever since President Obama’s new Secretary of State, John Kerry, began, as his top priority, to reassemble the well-worn components of that oxymoron known as the Middle East peace process, he has been subjected to a deluge of denigration, disparagement and weary cynicism from the serried ranks of pundits, many of whom have broken their teeth on that problem over the years. Now, with the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons and the convening of a Geneva 2 conference aimed at ending the Syrian civil war taking centre stage, that chorus is, if anything, louder. Is that disparagement justified as simple, common-sense realism, or is it a short-sighted unwillingness to recognise an opportunity where one really exists? I unhesitatingly argue the latter, which is why I welcome the noble and gallant Lord’s initiative in initiating this debate.

One reason for thinking that there is an opportunity, oddly, is because the Arab-Israeli dispute is not, for once, the focus of diplomatic preoccupations in the Middle East. That could be an advantage. In the past, excessive public focus on the issue has often led to the rhetorical radicalisation of the respective negotiating positions of the parties. Perhaps all concerned should reflect on whether they can be quite so sure that the outsiders on whom they rely will be ready to pull their chestnuts out of the fire in some future conflagration.

That thought could concentrate the minds of the Israelis, whose US backers seem increasingly dubious about any direct military involvement in the Middle East. It could also concentrate the minds of the Palestinians, whose Arab backers are focusing their efforts on other problems—domestic in the case of Egypt, and international in the case of Saudi Arabia. It could also influence Hamas, which is increasingly bereft of external support. If those trends get the direct parties to the dispute to focus on their own negotiating positions, and on compromises that they will need to strike if a peace deal is to be achieved, the prospects for progress could be improved.

Then there are more classical arguments for giving this renewed effort to reach a negotiated solution a real chance. We should not delude ourselves; the fact that the Arab-Israeli dispute is not currently centre stage does not mean that it has lost any of its explosive potential. Indeed, the fact that we almost certainly face several decades of instability in the Middle East, as the aftershocks of the Arab awakening work themselves out, only increases that potential. Meanwhile the continued Israeli settlement building on the West Bank inevitably pushes the situation towards insolubility and drives Israel towards something that it is no hyperbole to call an apartheid regime. These outcomes must surely be avoided if they possibly can be.

Are there any new elements that could usefully be injected into the process without destabilising it? One such idea might be to give more serious consideration to the guarantees that could be entrenched, both for Jewish minorities in a future Palestinian state, and for Arab minorities in Israel. This aspect has been neglected for far too long. Does it really make sense to think that every single Jewish settler will need to be removed—by force if necessary—from the territory of the Palestinian state, and that the substantial Arab population of Israel should be treated for ever as second-class citizens? I doubt it. That said, the logic of the situation is that outsiders—influential as they inevitably are and will be, and necessary as effective supporters and perhaps guarantors of any negotiated solution—should be less prominent than they have been in the negotiating process. Rather than negotiating, they should be talking with all those who will need to be party to any settlement. I urge—as I have done an awful lot of times—that we should be ready to talk to anyone who is prepared to operate within the scope of the Arab peace initiative. That should include Hamas.

It will be interesting to hear the Government’s views on this, and I hope that we will not remain, as we were in the past, too chained to the axle of American policy. The US is in a different position from us and I hope that we will be able, with our European partners, to play an active role in the months ahead.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we are very tight on time. If noble Lords could be very strict in sitting down as soon as they see the four minutes come up, I should be grateful.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, when this House last had a debate on Syria, on 1 July, I urged the Government to try to prevent any further use of chemical weapons by tabling a UN Security Council resolution requiring President Assad to admit UN chemical weapons inspectors and to give them unfettered access to any sites where past or future allegations of use were made. Unfortunately, the Government did not do that; indeed, the Minister, when she replied to the debate, did not even respond to the proposal. I say “unfortunately” not in an attempt to say, “I told you so”, but because if we had pursued that course we might be in a better place than we are now. Such a resolution, if passed, might have deterred all concerned from the use of these appalling weapons, and if Russia and China yet again vetoed any action against Syria we and our allies should at least have been able to make clear at the UN that the further use of these weapons would not pass without there being serious consequences.

Now, however, we are where we are, faced with pretty incontrovertible evidence of the use of chemical weapons on 21 August in the suburbs of Damascus that has resulted in the deaths of large numbers of innocent civilians. I hope, incidentally, that we do not have to spend too much time raking over the ashes of the intelligence failures in 2003 about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction. Analogies can be useful, but they are never conclusive. What was at issue at that time was possession, not use. Now it is all about use.

What should be done? We should face the fact that to do nothing would be a truly terrible option, however unattractive and risky the alternatives may appear to be. Those who have spoken of the use of chemical weapons as crossing a red line and as being a game-changer would be revealed as paper tigers. Inertia by the main western allies would be a massive encouragement to all those around the world who seek to harm our values and our interests and a massive discouragement to all those who rely on our determination and firmness of purpose to deter such actions. Moreover, inaction would make a complete mockery of the international norm of the responsibility to protect to which all Governments have signed up, a norm to which we and all the members of the United Nations agreed in September 2005. That norm has already suffered much damage in Syria, but at least there is now a chance to honour it in the face of a massive breach of international humanitarian law.

Should we be stopped by the lack of any Security Council authority for taking tough action? That lack of authority is due purely and simply to Russian and Chinese vetoes that are frustrating the will of the other members, an overwhelming majority of the council. It was a serious abuse by those two countries of their role as permanent members of the council when they earlier vetoed giving UN authority to Kofi Annan’s peace plan even though it contained no authorisation of the use of force. In addition, Russia and Iran have continued to supply the regime with lethal weapons and they seem simply to have overlooked that they, too, signed up to the responsibility to protect in 2005.

As someone who has worked hard over the past 20 or so years to strengthen the UN and make it more affective, it is with a heavy heart that I conclude that the Government’s intention to take forceful action in the present circumstances in response to Assad’s use of chemical weapons and, if necessary, without UN Security Council authority, is the least bad option available. If the Government decide to go ahead on that basis and the House of Commons approves it, it could be worth while, before using force, to give the Assad regime an ultimatum to hand over all their chemical weapons to the United Nations and to allow UN inspectors unrestricted access throughout the country. That would make it even clearer where the responsibility would lie for what might follow and would make clear the limited objectives of any action taken. In any event, what is surely essential—and many other noble Lords have said this—is that any military action against the Assad regime should be accompanied by a renewed effort to convene a conference designed to find a political solution to the conflict in Syria. This may seem a long shot in the present situation, but we surely must not get drawn into a situation in which a sequence of actions involving military solutions becomes the only one available.

European Union Committee: 2012-13 (EUC Report)

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, this is a very good and very necessary time for the House to debate the work of its EU Select Committee during the previous Session. Whatever view one takes of the future role of the EU, and of the UK’s role within it, it is surely a debate worth having ahead of what is likely to become an exceptionally intense period of debate about the UK’s continued membership of that Union.

Moreover, it is a time when the role of national parliaments in shaping and influencing EU legislation is coming into sharper focus than ever before. As the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, mentioned in his contribution to this debate, the Select Committee is on the verge of undertaking an inquiry into the role of national parliaments. I suggest that we need to subject our own performance to the very closest scrutiny. I welcome particularly the contribution of our distinguished and effective chair during the period in question, the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, who moved this debate. He has made a major contribution over the period since he took up the chairmanship and I am convinced that he will continue to do so.

This debate also marks the end of the first Session after the reduction in the number of EU sub-committees, to which several previous speakers have referred. The number of sub-committees, which conduct the majority of the Select Committee’s business, was reduced from seven to six. This allowed the House to create new committee activities in other policy areas. While I, like many others, was rather unhappy with that decision, we have nevertheless done our best to make it work. The abolition of Sub-Committee G resulted in the reallocation of its remit among the remaining sub-committees, my own included, expanding their respective workloads accordingly. Despite that, the six sub-committees have taken on and discharged their new roles effectively, as is being highlighted in the contributions to this debate. However, I join the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in saying that I think that it would be a gross error if any attempt were made to reduce further the number of sub-committees. The elastic is being stretched pretty tight and the burden on our extremely able staff has become greater in the past year. It would be frankly irresponsible to increase it further.

I will focus first on the work of the Sub-Committee on Home Affairs, Health and Education, which I have the honour to chair, and to pay tribute to its members both past and present, some of whom are here today, for their hard work and effective contributions. During the period in question, the sub-committee produced two major thematic reports, one on the EU’s global approach to migration and mobility, normally known as the GAMM, of which more later, and one on the UK’s 2014 justice and home affairs block opt-out decision, which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, indicated, I will say a bit about.

This report was produced jointly with the Sub-Committee on Justice, Institutions and Consumer Protection, first under the able chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, and now under the chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston. Incidentally, joint work by two sub-committees of the sort that we did—every single one of our meetings and all our evidence sessions were held jointly—is an extremely unusual occurrence and is not without its logistical difficulties. I believe that its success in this instance is a testament to the flexibility and adaptability of the system and, above all, to the willingness of the members of the two sub-committees to work together as a single team. I must mention that the report that we adopted, which I think was quite influential and will continue to be so, was adopted by unanimity—by people from all three main parties and from none. This was certainly something of an achievement. That joint report appeared in April of this year. We recently reopened the inquiry following the Home Secretary’s Statement of 9 July. A supplementary report to the House will be produced by the end of October, as the Government have proposed.

A third thematic report, on the EU’s next five-year justice and home affairs programme—likely to be known as the Rome programme as it is likely to be adopted under the Italian presidency in the second half of 2014—was announced by the committee yesterday. However, as this deals with matters falling within the present Session, I will make no further reference to it in this debate.

With respect to the report The EU’s Global Approach to Migration and Mobility—the GAMM—when the sub-committee conducted its inquiry into this matter, it was conscious that debates about migration, like migration itself, are not new. However, recently the tone has sharpened and there is a risk that a rational and measured discussion of complex issues will be drowned out by cries of populist outrage, riding on the back of stress caused by the recession.

Our report sought to avoid falling into that trap. The committee’s view was that, given the current and prospective demographic challenges facing Europe, member states, in particular those with skills shortages, will need to be flexible in the operation of legal migration from third countries in order to secure the economic growth and competitiveness that they desperately need. At the same time, we also recognise, rightly in my view, that member states retain the primary decision-making responsibilities in this area, including determining the number of third-country migrants they choose to admit to their territory. We did not suggest that there should be any change to that, and nor did any of our interlocutors, including the Commission and the European Parliament.

The report also focused on a specifically UK policy choice: the Government’s inclusion of international students in their current policy objective of reducing net migration to the UK by 2015 to the tens of thousands per year. My committee was one of five Select Committees of the Lords and Commons, the chairs of which wrote to the Prime Minister last January to argue that it made no sense at all to include genuine international students within the public policy scope of the Government’s immigration policy, and that by so doing the Government were risking serious damage to what is, after all, one of the UK’s most valuable, successful and vibrant invisible exports. I have not yet heard a single convincing argument in support of that policy, and I ask the Minister to address this matter when he winds up the debate.

I agree that yesterday’s announcement of an international education strategy by the Minister for Science and the Business Secretary was a step in the right direction. However, a good deal more than warm words will be needed if the higher education sector’s contribution to our involvement in the global race is not to be undermined by the Government’s immigration policy. I noted that the Secretary of State for Business, in an interview at the weekend, said what I believe: namely, that regarding students as immigrants is absurd.

I return to the important matter of the block opt-out. I will not revisit the complex arguments for and against it, nor delve into the byzantine complexity of the issue’s component parts, which the House had ample opportunity to debate as recently as 23 July, and will no doubt return to again before the end of the Session. Instead, I will focus on the process. On parliamentary engagement and handling, the Government’s approach to the opt-out decision has thus far been notable in a number of respects—but, alas, for all wrong reasons. Since the Home Secretary made her initial statement to Parliament about the matter last October, the committee has been persistently denied official information to aid its scrutiny of this important matter. Deadlines have continually slipped, and attempts to elucidate a coherent government position and rationale have proved elusive.

As noble Lords will be aware, the situation finally improved only on 9 July, when the Home Secretary made a further Statement about the Government’s intentions in this area. However, any feeling of welcome was again undermined by the extraordinarily short period allowed to this House before we were asked to debate and vote on exercising the opt-out. I admit that we were allowed a bit longer than the House of Commons, but not much. That was compounded by the Government’s decision to respond to the committee’s April report more than a month late, and only hours before the debate that took place on 23 July. I hope that the Minister will give an assurance of more punctilious behaviour in the future handling of this matter. I ask him to undertake in particular to keep the House regularly informed of the progress of negotiations with the Commission and the other member states once they formally begin in early November.

In addition to these two major inquiries, my sub-committee also conducted enhanced scrutiny of the Commission’s proposal for a revised tobacco products directive. This involved taking oral evidence from pro and anti-smoking organisations and from Public Health Minister Anna Soubry MP, as well as receiving a large volume of written evidence. While public debate in the UK has focused on the contentious matter of plain packaging, I remind the House that provision for this does not feature in the proposed directive. It will be left as a matter for individual member states to decide.

The output of the process of enhanced scrutiny was a detailed and well received letter to the Minister, outlining the sub-committee’s position on the proposal, which was broadly supportive. This work has been followed up in the current Session with another round of enhanced scrutiny of the Commission’s related proposal for an EU cigarette-smuggling strategy, on which oral evidence has been heard from officials at the EU’s anti-fraud agency, OLAF, and at Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs. I will say, in advance of our taking that further, that what the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, said about her sub-committee’s inquiry into OLAF showed again how difficult it is to co-ordinate all parts of the British Government that have an input into this area. I am sure that we will address that when we write to Ministers after the recess.

In conclusion, I turn briefly to a matter that falls outside the purview of my sub-committee, and which relates to the Government’s balance of competences review—a matter dear to the heart of the Minister who will reply to this debate. While the EU Committee as a whole, and its sub-committees, have not engaged directly with this review, my sub-committee has made recommendations relevant to the review in both its recent reports: the one on the GAMM and the one on the block opt-out. It expects these to be taken into account by the review’s current second semester, which will include a report on free movement, which was covered in our GAMM report, and in the forthcoming third semester, which will include a report on policing and criminal justice. I hope that those will both be taken on board, and I hope that the Minister will give an assurance that that will be done.

On free movement, the committee’s GAMM report, which I discussed earlier, concluded that the free movement of persons is fundamental to the structure of the EU and is an integral part of the single market, with revision of its terms in the treaty being neither desirable nor feasible. The logic of producing the review’s report on police and criminal justice matters after the Government had made their decision to opt out of a number of existing pre-Lisbon policing and criminal justice measures totally eludes me. After all, both the block opt-out decision and the decision to seek to rejoin 35 measures are precisely designed to determine the balance of competences in this area—so why on earth did we not conduct the review before attempting to take the decision?

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Advocates-General. The question of more judges is now about to come up.

On the question of students and migration, I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. However, I will say now that the government line is that students who stay here for three to four years are not necessarily temporary visitors. That is one reason why the question of what role they play in the statistics is important. As the father of a student who went to the United States seven years ago and who I hope will come back to the United Kingdom one day, I am very conscious of the tensions.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I would like to save the Minister from sending an unnecessary letter in the Recess. This is not about statistics. I have said it an awful lot of times. Others, including the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, in the debate that he initiated, also said it. It is about government policy and the impact of that policy on immigration and on our higher education sector. That was what the senior member of his party who is a member of the Cabinet referred to. I ask him to send me a letter not about statistics but about how the Government will give effect to the international education strategy that was put out by David Willetts yesterday and which, I am afraid, is not totally consistent with the Government’s immigration policy.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I guarantee that I will look at the strategy of the Minister for higher education and will consult further.

The noble Lord, Lord Bowness, asked about a Eurojust opt-in. The Government are now consulting on the new Eurojust proposal, which was published on 17 July as part of a package, alongside a proposal for a European public prosecutor’s office. We have been clear that the UK will not participate in the establishment of a European public prosecutor’s office, so we are now considering how to respond to that.

One thing that I hope the committee will focus on in the coming year is the area of European data protection. This applies to domestic legislation in Britain—we may have a data-sharing Bill in the next Session—and applies also at European level. When it comes to negotiation with the United States, data protection and data-sharing are becoming—as we all know and see from the German elections—a highly sensitive area in which the expertise and expert contribution of the Lords European Union Committee could be extremely valuable. A number of noble Lords have talked about democratic accountability—

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[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt again, but I have to tell the noble Lord that the Select Committee did, in fact, recommend that the Government opt in to the data protection directive currently under negotiation in Brussels. Mirabile dictum, the Government did opt in.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the final shape of the data protection directive is by no means clear. We are a very long way from a final text. I merely wish to insist that it needs to be kept very well under review.

I move on to democratic accountability. The role of national parliaments and closer co-operation among national parliaments, of the sort that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and others talked about, is very much a direction in which we should be moving. The yellow card mechanism is developing. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howell, that it is not a workable mechanism. Closer co-operation between national parliaments; better use of the Brussels office, which we have and share with others; rapid provision of Explanatory Memorandums; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, also said, closer co-operation with British Members of the European Parliament should help us demonstrate to our publics that we are actively engaged in scrutinising the necessary involvement of the United Kingdom in a whole range of regulations at the European level, but also to make sure that we are feeding into the Brussels bubble the active concerns about subsidiarity that we and many other publics have.

This has been a very wide debate, and I simply want to end by pointing out that Her Majesty’s Government are committed to staying within a reformed European Union. We are working with others to promote that agenda. I was very pleased yesterday to read from the Foreign Office a number of telegrams about the positive reaction of other member Governments to the first balance of competences papers. We are already talking to a number of other Governments about how we might share an agenda for reform. That, I hope, has the support of all members of party and non-party groups in this House. I very much look forward to the further valuable contributions that the European Union Committee of this House will continue to make. I will do my utmost within government to ensure that members of the Government—even the Treasury—co-operate as fully and as promptly as possible with the continuing of the committee.