European Union Committee Report

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Haskel]

My Lords, I add my congratulations and thanks to the committee and its staff for the report.

I agree that the EU Committee is one of the jewels in our crown. It does an enormous amount of work and, indeed, is one of our core activities, but the point I wish to make is that this is a jewel that could perhaps shine brighter. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, hinted at this in his review of working practices and in his words today. He spoke of involving the broadest range of people in our work—I agree. The reason we do not do that is because our work is directed towards the House, the Government and EU institutions. But what about the British public? Surely we have a duty towards them, as the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, suggested just now.

Now that we are likely to remain an appointed House for the foreseeable future, surely more than ever it is incumbent on us to explain to the public who we are, what we do and why we do it. Members of this committee are in a unique position to do this. The work we do scrutinising Commission documents, studying Explanatory Memorandums and holding the Government to account draws information to our attention which puts us in a position to help the British public and British organisations participate more fully in Europe and, indeed, explain the benefits that my noble friend Lady Crawley spoke about so powerfully. May I give an example? I no longer work in business but I work with several business organisations. I am the honorary president of the Materials Knowledge Transfer Network, which is perhaps the largest network set up by the Technology Strategy Board to speed up the flow of knowledge between science, industry and the consumer. In my capacity as a co-opted member of sub-committee B, almost weekly there is an item on the agenda of interest to this network and I become aware of it because I am on Sub-Committee B. Otherwise, these matters are often very difficult to find and rarely apparent, even though they are publicly available. So, without breaching confidentiality, I raise these matters with the network. Frequently, this leads to a discussion about the role and duties of the House of Lords as well as the benefits of EU membership. In effect, it is a kind of outreach. This is why I would like to see outreach added to the duties of this committee.

My noble friend Lord Foulkes was disappointed at the media coverage that we get. Our press people do an excellent job, but should we not be reaching out ourselves? Could this not be part of the strategy that my noble friend Lord Giddens seeks? Other parts of your Lordships’ House do this. Is the Grand Committee aware that recently we had the 1,000th visit to a school by the Lord Speaker’s school outreach scheme? Last week was Parliament Week, and 42 noble Lords participated in visits and other events to tell the public about the House of Lords.

The noble Lord, Lord Jay, asked how we could stimulate and play a part in a debate on our future in Europe. I suggest that we could start with our own outreach. We could make our website a bit more friendly and responsive. It certainly explains what we do, and perhaps why we do it, but the only way to respond is through the social websites that figure at the bottom of the home page. For instance, as other noble Lords said, at the moment we are discussing EU enlargement. Could we not somehow invite views from the public on our website, and offer to discuss our report with those who are interested in it? In this way we could share our useful information to everybody’s benefit, and at the same time stimulate debate.

I will give another example. The European Investment Bank has many millions of euros available to match loans to SMEs. Among the larger member states, the lowest take-up is here in Britain. Because of our work we are aware of the scheme. Surely it would be helpful if we made others more aware by outreach or by public lecture, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Roper. We could also work more closely with other parts of your Lordships’ House. The Peers in Schools programme and the information department have far more requests for speakers and visits than they can find Peers willing to go. Could we not go and speak about the work of our committee, as well as about the work of the House as a whole? In my experience, sixth-formers are very quick to raise European matters with us. We could work with the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, which has post-docs beavering away on matters of science and technology that are of interest and concern to parliamentarians. Frequently, their work has a bearing on matters being considered by our committees. Surely we could benefit by having their expert views, and by them having our views. So my response to the report on the 2010-12 work of the committee is: fine, but could we not do better by being a bit more outward-looking?