The Future of the Civil Service
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
My Lords, I am uneasy about extended ministerial offices. There is a risk that we get the worst of all possible worlds. In America, we see the dangers of hiatuses on a change of Government. In France, the danger is that the cabinet system means that policy-making is separated from the expertise of the department as a whole. I am uneasy about surrounding the Minister with more people whose tenure is dependent on the king’s smile. We do not need more courtiers. If the Minister wants sycophants, he gets special advisers: we have plenty of them already. As has been said, in his policy-making meetings he should want honesty. He should want people who know what they are talking about. The turnover numbers in the Civil Service are very scary now. The expertise may not be as great as it should be. I am struck by the fact that the Treasury wastage rate was 28% in 2010 and 22% in 2011: 50% over the two years of a great financial crisis. That cannot be right. It suggests that something is wrong.
On the issue of the apolitical Civil Service, I am struck by the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. It is astonishing if the head of the Civil Service is not taking up with his counterpart in Edinburgh a clear misuse of government money and time in producing a political manifesto. I am uneasy about the exclusion of civil servants from policy-making if one goes down the EMO route. The Minister who does not want his policy subjected to the most rigorous internal dialectic should not be in office. The artificial distinction that is drawn between policy-making and delivery is a false dichotomy. There is no such thing as a good policy that cannot be well delivered. That is a bad policy. You need to have, in the room, as you decide, the people who will be responsible for delivery. Even if you have, in your head, already decided what the policy will be, it is crucial that you pretend to take account of the arguments being advanced. You listen to their talk of pitfalls and precedents and things that could go wrong, and you make them feel that they were present at the creation. It is really important to loyalty that people feel they were present at the creation.
There is something wrong. We have not yet lost the apolitical, independent, expert public service but it is in danger. I do not know what the correct form of inquiry is. I rather go with the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, on speed, but something should be done. Some kind of inquiry is needed to make sure we do not lose what is the envy of the French and Americans by going down their route.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Lord Norton of Louth
My Lords, I have amendments in the grouping as well. My amendments have similar aims to those of the noble Lords, Lord Hardie and Lord Rooker, and of the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Hayter. I was very attracted by the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, because of the breadth of what it covers. However, I also noticed an omission; it does not encompass senior members of the Civil Service but confines itself to Permanent Secretaries. I think that there is a problem there.
When this Bill was considered in the other place, the point was well made that it appears to have been written by people who do not understand lobbying—clearly people who have not read the book by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. If it helps, I have a copy of his book on my shelf.
There are a number of problems but, as has been identified, Clause 2(3) is particularly problematic as it is so narrow. If you are going to lobby, the target is normally the Minister, and you therefore have to focus on the channels for reaching the Minister. The Permanent Secretary is not a significant channel for this purpose. Other officials will deal with that particular policy area—or a special adviser or the parliamentary private secretary. In saying that, I have nothing against special advisers; they play an extraordinarily valuable role from which Ministers and civil servants benefit. Parliamentary private secretaries also play a valuable role, so both should be included in the measure.
I know the objection as regards PPSs will be that they are private members, but increasingly they have been drawn within government. They are now mentioned in the Ministerial Code and are subject to certain requirements under it. Therefore, they are particularly good channels for reaching Ministers. We should encompass within the Bill’s remit all those who are being lobbied for the purposes of affecting public policy. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, does a valuable job in that regard, but one could add to it. I suspect that between now and Report we could come up with an amendment that brings together the various points that have been made and ensures that if we are to go down this route—and I am not persuaded that we should—those who are lobbied with a view to affecting public policy will be included in the Bill.
As it stands, Clause 2 is too narrow and, as I say, Permanent Secretaries should not feature significantly in it. I commend the various amendments that seek to widen the provision, so that if the Government go down this route at least they will do so effectively.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, provided that “government” is defined not as it is in the Bill but as it is in the amendments standing in the names of the baronial opposition Front Bench, by which I mean Amendments 33 and 43.
I approach all this with a certain bemused detachment. I have to intervene because the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, appeared to imply that Permanent Secretaries are not important, although I am sure that he did not mean to do so. I say “bemused detachment” because none of this would ever have applied to me—not the Bill as it stands or with any of the amendments, even the wide-reaching, admirable amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I was never a civil servant. I was a Permanent Under-Secretary but I was never a civil servant. The Diplomatic Service is a separate service. I apologise for making a rather pedantic—indeed, possibly, pompous—point, but there is something wrong in the drafting. I was a public servant but not a civil servant.
When I was a Permanent Secretary I never met a consultant lobbyist, thus proving the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Norton. They do not come to see Permanent Secretaries. If you are Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, the people who come to see you are CEOs or chairmen of companies that are in trouble and want the help of an embassy or high commission somewhere around the world. They do not send government affairs people, so widening the definition would not bring in Permanent Secretaries—they come themselves. They certainly do not send a professional consultant lobbyist to see the Permanent Secretary or, I think, the Minister. I think they do to see special advisers, so I think that is a very important addition which has to be brought in. They tend to see the relevant desk or the Under-Secretary. They do not come near the Permanent Secretary.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I will first answer some of the specific questions raised. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, that Part 4 will be taken in Committee after Part 2, as is logical in the Bill.
The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, suggested that the Diplomatic Service is not part of the Civil Service. When I was a young academic people talked about the Home Civil Service as opposed to the Diplomatic Civil Service, which I understood was the overseas Civil Service.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Both of those services were as opposed to the military service—and I am not sure that I would think of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, as particularly military.
The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, asked who needed to know. It is not Ministers who need to know primarily. Transparency is about the public being better informed, and campaigning groups and civil society organisations making the information easy to obtain.
The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said that perhaps if the information was easier to obtain we would not have newspapers any longer claiming that they had discovered such and such. As I listened to him, I recollected that yesterday in the Daily Mail, I think that I read the same “We have discovered” story for about the third time in about four years. Newspapers have a tendency to claim that they have discovered something that was all there already. Indeed, many years ago when I criticised the financial services industry in the Channel Islands, the local press announced that it had discovered that I was a French spy. Its evidence for this—that my wife and I had both been decorated by the French Government—came from that deeply obscure publication, Who’s Who. I am sure the press will go on “discovering” things that could already have been found out easily. Again, that is the way the press behave.
As I have listened to this debate, I have been thinking about the debate we had in the Cabinet Office about the mistake previous Governments made in going for really grandiose IT projects, trying to put absolutely everything into what they were doing and eventually coming unstuck. The Cabinet Office has now decided that incremental change in IT is easier to control. If we are moving towards transparency we have to be careful that we do not say we want absolutely everyone to be included. The best can be the enemy of the good here. The first target is lobbyists rather than every single representative of government that they meet in all circumstances. The definition of who they meet in government was adopted as “those within government who now have to publish their diaries: their lists of whom they meet”.
Amendment 3 from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, in many ways stands on its own. We need to think about it in a different context from the others here. Other amendments extend the register to parliamentarians, Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, other civil servants, special advisers, all Members and staff of Parliament, all non-ministerial departments, parliamentary private secretaries and so on. We are talking about, I suspect, between 15,000 and 20,000 people. There are 5,000 members of the senior Civil Service—Permanent Secretaries, directors general, directors and deputy directors. The figure in my head for the number who work in Parliament is more than 6,000, and then we have to include non-ministerial departments. How fast and how far we go certainly needs to be considered.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Let me take that back and be absolutely sure. We are all conscious that, as has been said, Brussels is the seat of lobbying on the largest scale, after Washington. We need to make sure that the interaction between those huge American law firms based in Brussels, which have large lobbying activities, and others is not excluded from the Bill. I will certainly take that back.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
I am grateful for what the Minister says. The other point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, was about level. When you are looking at UKRep and thinking about Brussels, it would be best to think not just about the Permanent Representative and the Deputy Permanent Representative, because in many ways those are figureheads. The real work is done in working groups by quite junior public servants. Some are diplomats and some civil servants but they are often in their early 30s and, in those working groups, they are doing serious legislation. They certainly are beset by lobbyists from outside all the time, so if you are going wide then you need to look down in seniority a bit, well below the top brass.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, in answering these amendments I set out to avoid reading out any of the note prepared beforehand, in order to satisfy the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. However, let me read out the paragraph I have on that. I can assure noble Lords that any lobbying of the UK Government in relation to European legislation is indeed captured by the Government’s provision at Clause 2(3)(a), which captures communications in relation to government policy. Communications in relation to the development, adoption or modification of the Government’s policy on any element of European legislation would therefore be captured by the definition of lobbying as drafted.
The overlap between what happens in Brussels and London is, I appreciate, a slightly more subtle issue than that. The question of what happens when everyone is abroad is a constant of globalisation, and one which the British Parliament may find it a little difficult to cover entirely by legislation.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
The question is of how policy develops in response to a development in the negotiation. Policy is not an artefact made in London, whole and entire, which stays like that all the way through a negotiation. Policy has to take account of what others do or what amendments emerge from the European Parliament. The process of legislation in Brussels is very much ongoing and the key figure is often the young man or woman who is sitting in the relevant working group. Yes, they will be contacting London but they will also be contacting their opposite numbers. The chances are that most of the decisions on how we react in a war of movement will be taken on the ground, without reference up to Ministers. Of course the Ministers will see every night how we are getting on but, over there in Brussels, the lobbyists are very close to this. If you are to take an interest in contact between lobbyists and UKRep, do not cut it off at the Permanent Representative and Deputy Permanent Representative.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the political process flows through a whole series of meetings. Capturing every single dimension of the political process may be beyond the wit of man or woman to achieve. We are looking here at making lobbying more transparent and capturing the main actors involved. The Bill specifically includes the lobbying of Ministers wherever they are: in London, Brussels or Washington. How far down the chain of officials we go, outside the United Kingdom as well as inside it, is a matter that we need to consider under the issue of proportionality and how far we think we need to cover absolutely everything.
Perhaps I may turn to Amendment 30, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, which is on note-taking. Perhaps recording rather than note-taking is what we might now be considering. As the noble Lord said, the question of how far one can legislate for good practice under all circumstances is very difficult but, again, I will take that back and discuss the matter further with him.
The noble Lord’s Amendment 51 takes us back to the definition of directly employed lobbyists versus consultant lobbyists. As I said on a previous grouping, Part 1 is intended to deal fundamentally with consultant lobbyists—lobbyists for hire—rather than those directly employed in the public affairs departments of multinational companies. From my own experience, perhaps I may say that companies and banks based in London often operate directly with government and we know who they are. Consultant lobbyists are often representing companies based abroad, foreign Governments or others who are not used to knowing how the British political system works. That is one reason why they come to consultant lobbyists, who are specialists. They advise them and then often lobby for them. That is part of what we want to catch in a globalised political system where non-British actors, so to speak, are taking an active part in our political process.
Having, I hope, answered some of the points raised and repeated that I am open to further conversations off the Floor with those who have tabled these amendments, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, I support what my noble friend just said. It seems rather silly to have done what is required in order to be transparent without taking the necessary steps to make it easy for other people to access that transparency. For example, ministerial diaries will be done on a daily basis, I assume, or possibly on a weekly basis, in advance, I hope, so the basic structure is there almost immediately. I cannot see why the diary cannot immediately be put out. Obviously, the diary sometimes has to be corrected, because even ministerial diaries sometimes do not actually transpire as intended, but an immediate correction could be made to make sure that it is accurate. I cannot see why it could not be done immediately, on a daily basis. Certainly, weekly would seem perfectly possible. If not, having made what one might regard as an important step towards transparency, the Government are losing the full benefit of that transparency by the difficulty that people have in accessing it.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. Ministerial diaries need to be secure about the future. There are security considerations about ministerial movements. The future is quite different from the past. I do not see any reason why ministerial diaries should not be available the following day. I agree that they need to reflect not what the Minister planned to do, but what he actually did, and therefore the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, is quite right, but that can easily be done within a few hours. I see no reason why they should not be out the following day. I think the Foreign Secretary’s diary used to be, until a slightly embarrassing moment in the time of Ernest Bevin. When he was planning to go to the cinema, the diary said, “Night of love with Mrs Bevin”.
Lord Campbell-Savours
It seems to me that there is a bridge between the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, at Second Reading and the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, today. That is the way forward, but what it really needs is courage. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, will recall that in the previous Parliament I had to lead a rebellion against my own Government on political funding. We won. We defeated the Labour Government. I, a Labour Peer, was behind that rebellion.
It may well be that because what is being advocated here is so very different from the approach being proposed by the Government, it needs a bit of bottle and a bit of courage for the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, or the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, to take on their Government on the Floor of the House of Lords and in the Division Lobbies in the hope that they will have the support of the Official Opposition for the amendment. That is the only way we are going to be able to reshape the legislation whereby there is a far greater element of accountability in the way the noble Lords suggested in their contributions during this debate and at Second Reading.
Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
My Lords, the concerns of the House are already clear. My concerns are the rationale for action, the legality of action and the effects of action.
On the rationale, of course I accept that chemical warfare is a horrific form of warfare, which was rightly banned. Nuclear weapons are horrific; biological weapons are horrific; shrapnel is horrific; and high explosives and landmines are horrific. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, that if we singularise this form of weaponry, we appear a contrario to be legitimising other forms of slaughter and massacre. It seems to me that murder is murder, irrespective of the choice of murder weapon. For us to take on ourselves the job of punishing murder if it is committed with a particular weapon and ignoring the 100,000 casualties that have already taken place in Syria is paradoxical and perhaps driven more by emotion in the case of President Obama, whose red lines have been repeatedly flouted. I cannot see the logic or the legality.
I do not understand the argument about the responsibility to protect. It is the son of Kosovo. It was first articulated in Mr Blair’s Chicago speech, which was specifically designed to take on the Americans, who were arguing that bombing alone would defeat Milosevic. It was Mr Blair’s achievement to persuade the Americans and the Germans, who in the end persuaded the Russians, that if it took boots on the ground, we would send land forces into Kosovo. That is why Milosevic gave up.
Humanitarian intervention is specifically about boots on the ground. It is about the responsibility to protect, not about the responsibility to punish. It is about imposing ceasefires, separating warring parties and bringing in aid. It is about a process of enforced pacification. It is nothing to do with punishment. I do not believe that we are in that situation now. I do not believe that we should send massive land forces into Syria. However, nor do I think that it is right to borrow Mr Blair’s rationale for exactly the opposite policy, with the Government asserting that we are not going to change our stance on Syria and are not going to get involved but will simply administer condign punishment for the use of a particular weapon.
What should we do? If we want to reassert the primal importance that the world attaches to the ban on chemical weapons, we need to call for a session of the conference on chemical weapons that drew up the convention. There are 189 states parties and seven states that are not parties. With respect to the Leader of the House, Syria is not party to the convention. It would be for the 189 to bring pressure on the seven to come into line. I do not see the Russians opposing that. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams. I do not see the Iranians opposing that. I am sure that we need to talk to Mr Rouhani. I am sure that we need to talk to our closest ally who is affected by the situation in a way that we are not: the Turks. The Turks have an extremely strong interest in the survival of an integral Syria, because of the Kurdish problem.
We need to put our pride in our pocket and talk to the Russians. They suspect our motives and think that we want to get rid of their naval base in Syria. I hope that we do not care whether they have a naval base in Syria. I hope that we could convince them that we shared their worries about some elements in the opposition to President Assad. We will make much more progress if we can talk the Russians out of their present position of diehard hostility. That is a task that should be attempted. I want to know when the Foreign Secretary will go to Ankara and Tehran, and I want to know who will go to Damascus. We have to put our pride in our pocket and accept that the peace conference that we want must involve all parties, including the regime in office in Damascus. We cannot pretend that a peace process can be made to work without the present regime, so I hope that the House and the Government will reflect on the concerns raised in this debate, and in particular on the wisdom of the noble Lords, Lord Hurd of Westwell and Lord Robertson.
European Union Committee: 2012-13 (EUC Report)
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
My Lords, I started to take the reports of the Select Committee seriously 22 years ago. I discovered that I had to. I then lived in Brussels, and it was the habit of the then President of the Commission, Jacques Delors, to read House of Lords reports on Sunday afternoons. When he discovered something that he did not understand or did not like, it was his habit to telephone the permanent representative. I discovered that these conversations went slightly better if I had read the reports beforehand.
I was therefore delighted when I came here to have a spell on the Select Committee and on three sub-committees, and I now sit on Sub-Committee A under the polymathic chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, whose habit it is to greet witnesses from far and wide in their native tongue, to the consternation of his colleagues and, sometimes, the witnesses. He is an admirable chairman, as he has again displayed today in his speech.
The standard of the big reports from the Select Committee, which attracted a lot of admiration in Brussels 20 years ago, is undiminished. It is still very high. I think particularly of Bowness-Hannay on the Protocol 36 opt-out. Sub-Committee A’s MiFID II report was good, and I think that its report on the financial transaction tax hit on a point which, at that time, the Government had failed to or did not wish to recognise: that the obnoxious tax would cost us because we would have to collect it even if we did not ourselves go along with it.
The big reports are very good indeed. However, compared to 20 years ago, I think that the standard of everyday scrutiny of the legislative workload has diminished. It is not as good as it used to be. I think that the principal reason for that—the Minister may disagree with me but he will have heard the feeling of the House from the noble Lords, Lord Boswell, Lord Hannay, Lord Bowness, and Lord Judd—is that the Government do not take the process as seriously as they used to. That is my impression too.
The noble Lord, Lord Boswell, spoke of the perpetual lateness and inadequacy of Explanatory Memoranda. Aficionados will have followed with interest the increasingly irate correspondence in the previous Session between him and the Financial Secretary to the Treasury over the 2012, 2013 and 2014 Budgets, various measures of financial services and banking legislation and the infamous financial transaction tax. The common theme to all those letters was delays, missed deadlines, superficial analysis and unanswered questions. I know that the Treasury suffers from staff cuts and a high turnover—I read the figure of 20% a year turnover in the press the other day. I cannot believe that, but perhaps the Minister will enlighten us. If it is true, it is extremely alarming. The Permanent Secretary to the Treasury came to answer a friendly call from Sub-Committee A and assured us that performance will improve. I hope it will; we wait to see.
There is a particular reason why delayed Explanatory Memoranda are not just discourteous and in breach of the rules but actually dangerous. I attach some importance to the subsidiarity mechanism. There is a deadline of eight weeks for the use of the yellow card. This morning, in Sub-Committee A, we looked at a proposal which, to my amateur eye, seemed to raise a question of subsidiarity. Whether or not I was right is completely academic, because the proposal was dated very early in June, but it came to the committee this morning, so there is no way in which, if I were right and the committee and the chairman agreed with me, we could use the yellow card, purely because of delays that occurred in London. The Government need to take seriously the rules which are clearly set out in Cabinet Office guidance to the whole of Whitehall, and which used to be enforced quite fiercely by Permanent Secretaries—I can give a personal assurance that that used to be the case.
Of course, there are also objective reasons why the scrutiny process has got more difficult, why we have to run harder to stay still. We have to catch up with co-decision. The Council is now only the co-equal legislator with the European Parliament. I am not convinced that we in this Parliament or the Government are yet doing enough to try to influence the European Parliament in the European Union interest and the UK interest. The problem is exacerbated by the Conservative Party having left the EPP. It is quite difficult even for distinguished senior Conservative Members of the European Parliament to have as much influence as their predecessors. I pay tribute to Malcolm Harbour, who is a sterling exception to what I just said: he proves that what I am saying is not true in all cases. I pay tribute to Sharon Bowles, but I think that the West Lothian question—let us call it the Westphalian question—will impose itself on the next European Parliament in relation to the chairmanship of committees. Sharon Bowles has put in a sterling performance as chairman of one of the key committees of the European Parliament. She has done extraordinarily well but she has hung on to her job by the skin of her teeth because, for a large number of members of her own grouping in Strasbourg, it is difficult to see why, when the United Kingdom has stood aside from fiscal union, banking union and bailouts—from the core business of the Parliament on economic matters—a UK MEP can be the chairman of its key economic committee. I hope that she survives, as she does a great deal of good in the European interest and the UK interest, but I am not sure that she can.
The European Parliament has also drifted away from national Parliaments a bit. On the multiannual financial framework, I did not see much recognition in the European Parliament, with its insistence that the totals were too low, of the need for painful belt-tightening being felt in member state Parliaments. On the financial transactions tax, I was shocked by some of the arguments advanced in the European Parliament, where the greatest enthusiasm came from those who thought that the financial sector needed to be punished for its crimes in the financial crisis and that throwing grit in the wheels of the capital markets was a good idea, per se. I did not see many arguing that having a great international financial centre inside the EU is a huge EU asset and that the City of London needs to be listened to, and that the FTT therefore needs to be rejected. Those who want to make such arguments in the Parliament could be assisted in making them by people like us, so I have three very modest proposals.
First, is there perhaps a case for inviting key United Kingdom Members of the European Parliament to participate in certain subject-specific Select Committee meetings, not as witnesses but as country members sitting on our side of the table and talking with us about how best to affect the EU outcome? Secondly, should our chairmen regularly meet the chairs of the European Parliament committees and, thirdly, could we even consider—a daring suggestion—a joint committee of members of the Select Committee of this House with UK Members of the European Parliament? It could perhaps have fluctuating membership, depending on the issue of the day. I am not saying that these meetings should be the kind which happens for form’s sake, with very long agendas, or on a regular basis. I see them as ad hoc, and called to deal with a particular big issue, such as the seven-year financial framework this spring, or the financial transactions tax. If, as I hear, the Select Committee is to consider the role of national Parliaments, I hope that it might consider looking into these suggestions.
I have one other suggestion, which I also put to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, with a certain degree of trepidation. We have to acknowledge that the performance of our own committee could be improved. We do very well but I think we could do better. The Commission sends to this House, electronically and instantly, every legislative proposal that it puts forward at the moment when it is sent to the Council. They are here before they are read by Sir Jon Cunliffe in Brussels. What do we do with them? We actually do very little because since we joined the European Union, it has been our practice to wait. In those days, we would have waited for the carrier pigeon to arrive with the paper from Brussels. We wait until the Government send us along a copy, telling us what they think of it. Why do we wait for the Government? We could be self-starters and form our own view by considering the most contentious proposals—the ones where, say, subsidiarity confers real importance on deadlines and efficiency.
There would be resource consequences from such a change. It would have costs for this House. But if we cannot get the Government to perform as they used to, it seems to me that we will have no choice but to kick the process off ourselves if we are to retain the standards of scrutiny that we used to have and, I hope, improve them—and we should be improving them.
The Prime Minister was quite right when he said on 23 January:
“It is national parliaments, which are, and will remain, the true source of real democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU”.
I agree and I think that most Brussels insiders—even some Members of the European Parliament—would agree, although some are clearly a bit puzzled that six months on, he still has not produced any specifics as to what he means and what his improved national parliamentary accountability would look like or how it would work. The Prime Minister talked about it as if it were a matter for treaty change. I really cannot see that at all. We could look again at Articles 10 and 12 of the treaty, which could be expanded, but they are deliberately unspecific—correctly, I think. It would be wrong in principle that an EU treaty should purport to lay down how member state Parliaments should control the business of the European Union. This is entirely a matter for us.
Our system, which used to be almost as good as the Danish system but now is definitely not, being some way behind, is still better than the system in some other countries. However, before we preach too loudly, “Physician, heal thyself”, the answer to the problem which the Prime Minister rightly describes is at least partly in our own hands. If we were to improve it, by catching up with co-decision and technology, we would improve democratic accountability in this country and be better placed to encourage others to follow our example.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am simply not briefed on that. However, I can assure the noble Lord that as a Minister I travel with Ryanair and easyJet to various places around the outer fringes of the European Union. We also do our best to economise where we can. I remind the noble Lord that this is the leanest Government that Britain has had for many years because we have cut the government car pool very substantially—we have to walk everywhere.
This is a very timely debate. I recall our previous debate on the annual report, which took place rather later than this one, and in the Moses Room, although we are now here in the Chamber. I also recall it because the noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, criticised me very sharply on that occasion for not having read every single report that the committee had produced in the previous year. I can assure her that I have read at least the summary of every report that the committee has produced this year.
There are, of course, many examples of the way in which the committee has fed into the Brussels process and the work of other Governments, as well into the debate within Britain. We are concerned at the criticisms that the committee has made of the untimely provision of Explanatory Memoranda, and in particular of the role of the Treasury. We very much take on board what the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said about the importance of timeliness in terms of subsidiarity. I will take all the points back, and we will discuss them in the Cabinet Office, the Foreign Office and various parliamentary branches of the relevant departments, to make sure that they are fully taken on board. I am an enthusiast for the development of the use of the yellow card mechanism. We have to make sure that we are given all the resources we can manage so that we will be able to use that to its best ability.
I have been heavily involved in the balance of competences review for six months, about which various comments have been made. Perhaps I may stress that those reports were not intended to have policy recommendations at the end. They were intended very much to feed into a better informed debate in the United Kingdom. I hope that the first six reports have done so. I look forward—although perhaps not entirely—to three more rounds of very careful assimilation of a large amount of evidence presented into another collection of reports.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that the balance of competences exercise is very much in parallel to other aspects of what is going on in government. We have welcomed his committee’s report on the justice and home affairs opt-out. The balance of competences exercise is proceeding in parallel with a whole range of other negotiations and the order of reports was drawn up some time ago, with other dimensions in mind.
We are attempting, both within the balance of competences exercise and in the work of this and other committees, to provide space for a reasoned debate within the European Union about our interaction with the European Union. We all recognise that over the next nine to 12 months that debate may be constricted in some ways as we move towards the next European elections. We are also conscious, particularly so over the past week, that the press is not always favourable to a reasoned debate. The Leveson report remarked that in press coverage of the European Union—as with press comment on women, minorities and Muslims—its attitude is that it is quite acceptable to invent stories without any source whatever.
I was very struck to see this story in the Mail the other day:
“Revealed: The shadowy lobbyists waging war to keep Britain in Europe”,
I read it with great interest, only to discover that it was actually talking about British Influence, which is an entirely public body. I think that the Mail had lifted this story from a Eurosceptic blog, which said that British Influence was a deeply dangerous organisation funded by the secretive Bilderberg Group. Oddly enough, the Mail did not include that bit.
I was also quite worried by the article by Peter Oborne in the Telegraph last week, saying that:
“The 1975 referendum was a fair poll in the same sense that the elections due to be held in Zimbabwe next Wednesday will be fair … The sense has lingered that we were hustled, against our will, by an anti-democratic elite, into an organisation whose true aims and nature were hidden from us until too late”.
The BBC, of course, was playing a role in the deceitful agenda.
On Saturday, the Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent, Bruno Waterfield, told us that,
“the European Union is planning to ‘own and operate’ spy drones, surveillance satellites and aircraft”,
under the control of the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, in,
“a major move towards creating an independent EU military body with its own equipment and operations”.
I was therefore very pleased to receive this morning an invitation from King’s College London to a debate in October on how to ensure that we have impartial reporting on the European Union, at which Bruno Waterfield will be one of the speakers.
I say this partly to demonstrate that getting reasoned debate based on evidence about Britain’s involvement in the European Union is not easy and that this committee plays an immensely valuable role in helping to widen that debate. I hope that noble Lords have read the balance of competences review papers so far and I hope that they feel that they have drawn in evidence-based policy with which perhaps to counter the emotion-based policy, the prejudice-based policy and the conspiracy-oriented allegations which so often cloud out rational debate in Britain. All parties must contribute to this effort.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that I very much look forward to hearing a speech from the Labour leadership comparable to the speech made by the Prime Minister in January. The leader of my party, the Deputy Prime Minister, will make a major speech on the European Union in October. I very much hope that we will hear a constructive Labour contribution to an EU reform agenda that keeps Britain in the European Union. This is what the Prime Minister was talking about, and I confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, that that is what the coalition Government are pursuing, rather than unilateral repatriation intended to lead to an exit, which is what the Telegraph, the Mail and a number of others on the fringes of conventional politics very much want us to pursue.
I turn to various issues that were raised in the debate. The sub-committee on foreign affairs produced a very valuable report on common security and defence policy. I have noted that on scrutiny we have shifted very often from major reports to follow-on reports and continued scrutiny. As we approach the December European Council, which will have European defence very much on its agenda, I trust that the sub-committee will continue to monitor the way in which the British Government and others approach this. As everyone knows, there is a tension between those who are interested in institution building and others who are interested in practical conflict prevention and conflict resolution under that dossier.
Similarly, on banking union, it would be immensely valuable if the sub-committee responsible for that continues to monitor the ongoing debate. Having read its report and various other—mainly German—documents, I think that I understand the various different definitions of banking union that are floating around. However, because there are so many different definitions of banking union—with maximum, minimum et cetera—clearly we need to contribute to the debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, and others rightly said, we need to think also about where in the debate the interests of Britain and of Britain’s financial centres are at stake.
On the workload of the European Court of Justice, I take on board what has been said. We have now moved on the question of—
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.
EUC Report: EU External Action Service
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
My Lords, speaking as a non-member of the committee that produced this report, I join those who have paid tribute to its chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. He has been famous for some time for his skill in chairmanship. I had not quite grasped how skilful he is until I heard the terms in which the noble Lord, Lord Lamont of Lerwick, supported his report. I detected a slight element of dissent here and there, yet, looking at the report, I discover it is unanimous. I congratulate the chairman on his skill.
I also congratulate him on and join with him in what he said about the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton of Upholland. That tribute is very well deserved. What she has done on reconciliation between Kosovo and Serbia is quite remarkable and puts her up in the pantheon of those Members of this House who have made a real contribution to reconciliation and peacemaking in the Balkans. One could mention the noble Lords, Lord Carrington, Lord Owen and, particularly, perhaps, Lord Ashdown. We should note that what looked like a hospital pass has resulted in scoring a rather brilliant try. The game is not over, it is not even half-time, but she is doing extremely well.
So one has to ask oneself: is the European Parliament correct in its criticism? Are those who carp about the External Action Service and about the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, right? I think that they need to ask themselves: in what situations is the Union prepared to allow the high representative to take the lead? First, there has to be a degree of common policy among the member states. For example, in Libya or Mali, she could not take the lead. The Germans even abstained in the General Assembly on the resolution. The Union was not united. The same, I fear, applies now in Syria.
The report is slightly Panglossian when it suggests that the External Action Service should focus particularly on the places that are of most importance to us in economic and security terms. Suppose that the noble Baroness tried to take the lead on China. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, is right that the member states would not be prepared to allow her to do so. On the other hand, I think that the noble Lord is wrong when he says that there is no role for EU diplomacy, as distinct from member state diplomacy, on human rights. Sometimes, people find that there is safety in numbers. When one is dealing with, say, China or Russia, as we see, receiving the Dalai Lama can have consequences and criticising the murder of Litvinenko in London can have consequences. Sometimes, member states feel braver about speaking up for human rights if they are speaking up collectively. There may well be a role for the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, there. Basically, the tasks that the Council tends to entrust to her are the ones that it thinks are too difficult. It is no accident that she plays a leading and very successful role on the P3+3 process with Iran. That was seen to be too difficult for any one of us to tackle on our own. We were very happy to put her in charge, and we were not all rushing forward saying, “We will handle Serbia and Kosovo”. When one accuses the service and its head of not yet having done a great deal, one should remember the constraints that we impose and the subjects that we pick for her.
I agree with a lot of things in this report. Unfortunately, on a couple of things with which I wish to disagree, my fox has just been shot by the noble Lord, Lord Jopling. He is entirely correct about consular work.
Lord Jopling
I hope that the noble Lord understands that I would never dream of shooting a fox.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
A dull, grey metaphorical fox, not a beautiful red one.
The treaty is quite clear. Any citizen of the Union may seek consular assistance from the embassy of any Union member state. Of course, a financial transaction will properly follow. Suppose that an independent Scotland required consular services provided from the Foreign Office in its posts abroad, the bill might be quite substantial. The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, is right, and I think that the report is wrong. The Government agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jopling; perhaps they always do, perhaps it is the noble Lord who moves the Government on these matters.
On the central problem of overload addressed in the report, I think that the committee got it completely right. It is not the case that there was no thinking about how it would work. There was a lot of thinking and worry in the original Convention in which the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, served with such distinction. There was a text on the External Action Service produced by the Convention which was deliberately not put into the treaty so that it would not be subjected to the delays of ratification but people could start planning and building the External Action Service so that it was ready to go on day one. Unfortunately, they did not. However, that text did some of the thinking about what the External Action Service should do and what it is for.
As for the job of high representative, all of us in the Convention assumed that there would be two political deputies. The noble Lord, Lord Jopling, is right that they are needed. We assumed that there would be a political deputy whose job would be to chair the Council when the high representative was on a mission, to undertake some missions for the high representative and, particularly, to maintain contact with national Parliaments. The report is slightly pusillanimous on the relationship with national Parliaments. At paragraph 85 we are told that:
“The scrutiny role of the European Parliament should not go beyond its current level, as foreign policy is primarily inter-governmental and scrutiny should therefore be performed at the national parliamentary level”.
Yes, by national Parliaments. Physician, heal thyself. We need to devise a way of doing it. There also has to be a docking point. There has to be someone at the other end who is ready to talk to us. That is the political deputy high representative.
The problem is even greater inside the Commission. We all assumed that there would be another commissioner who would co-ordinate external relations dossiers, working to the vice-president external relations, which is the other title of the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton. That has not happened. We could not put it into the treaty because the definition as well as the allocation of commissioner portfolios is the prerogative of the incoming President of the Commission. However, we all assumed that it would happen, and I am very puzzled that it has not. I hope that in the next Commission it will happen. If people remember that the high representative is also the vice-president of the Commission, and if she is helped to do what used to be done by the Relex group of external relations commissioners—this is where the overload has shown most—the situation will improve considerably. I hope that will happen.
I should like to pick up on the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, about the purpose of the External Action Service. I was a convert to it before I worked for the Convention. When the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, was commissioner in charge of external relations, he made a good appointment to head the Commission’s office in Washington. He appointed an Irish ex-Prime Minister, John Bruton, and John handled the job in a way that no one had done previously. It had been seen as a great job for a trade policy expert, trade policy being seen as an Eleusinian mystery, with high priests working with incense in darkened rooms.
Trade policy is hugely political. The point about trade policy, particularly in a place such as Washington, is to be known on the Hill and to be up there all the time, to be good on television and to be on television often, all the things that John Bruton was extremely good at. I am very sorry that his successor was not another political appointee. However, the External Action Service is supposed to be about producing secondees or breeding its own talent, people who do not only know about the subject but have the communication, diplomatic and lobbying skills which made Bruton so successful.
When Javier Solana, a distinguished Foreign Minister and Secretary-General of NATO, moved from NATO to do the job of high representative, he told me that he discovered that he was entitled when abroad to the assistance of a small council office in New York, a council office in Geneva and nothing more. The Commission sent out an instruction to all its delegations around the world that no assistance was to be provided to the high representative as he worked for the member states and was nothing to do with it. When he went to Washington, Javier Solana would go to call on member states’ ambassadors, but he had to book his own hotel. That is why dual-hatting—and it may seem eccentric—makes sense. Bringing together the two jobs of the high representative and the vice president in charge of the external dossiers of the Commission is, in principle, a good idea if it is put into practice. All these budgetary problems disappear. The noble Lord, Lord Williamson of Horton, is right, and I agree with him. There is no need to have this nonsense because the person responsible for these posts abroad is a vice president in the Commission as well as being a high representative.
I do not think there is such a thing as a purely technical mission. I think this report flirts with error when it suggests that the EAS should have no role in purely technical missions and should back off from where they are all trade, aid or humanitarian aid. I do not think so at all. What matters for effective trade or development policy is adequate access to heads of state and Governments and the ability to project what we are trying to do in the country in ways that are understandable—languages matter very much, as the noble Baroness said—and acceptable to the country. We need a more professional External Action Service, but we should not regard any of the jobs of any of the delegations around the world as unsuitable to be done by, or at least to be done under the guidance of, that service.
It is a pity that our Government still take such a defensive approach to the build up of this service. I hope that that will improve. I share the doubts of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, about whether it is always wise to be so ferocious, usually on our own, while 26 others take a different view, on every last detail on the frontiers of competence.
I hope that the dual-hatted job will be built up still more and the External Action Service will bed down. The record so far, though patchy, is one on which the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, deserves all our congratulations.
Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Bates
I am toying with supporting my noble friend’s amendment but I just wish to seek clarification on a couple of things. The areas that I find totally persuasive are those raised by my noble friend in moving the amendment and those referred to by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, particularly when he talked about soft power. That soft power extends in a network world increasingly to include economic power. These people are overseas on business—they are economically active. There is a global network of 4.4 million or more people who can speak up for and promote Britain, as well as provide information on and connections to the commercial arms of the respective embassies and consulates overseas.
My only difficulty is this. My noble friend Lord Lexden pointed out that currently 4.4 million people are of voting age but only 23,500 or thereabouts are registered to vote, although I do not know what proportion actually voted at the last election. First, does my noble friend agree that it would be useful for the Electoral Commission to undertake extensive research into the reasons why people do not register overseas for this right to vote, which is extremely important to them? Secondly—perhaps this is better addressed to my noble friend on the Front Bench—does he agree that the time has come for the Government to appoint someone to champion the voice of overseas residents who have the vote here? In that regard, I cannot think of a better person to head that up than my noble friend Lord Lexden.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard
I support the amendment. I got a very dusty answer in Committee, and I do not really agree with most of the arguments against the amendment. If you start from first principles and the idea of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, in my view this does no harm. Moreover, it is only an enabling measure; it does not change anything. It creates a power to change things, which, to me, makes it seem rather modest. Having a single constituency or two constituencies for expatriates is an extremely good idea in my view, but I suspect that it might be found to be not relevant to this Bill, which would be shocking.
I feel that I have not yet heard a compelling argument against this power. I am encouraged that it is supported not only by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, but by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, who is a great expert in these matters.
On the question of electoral fraud, where it would be prosecuted and how the miscreant would be brought to justice, I agree that that might be quite difficult to do if we were rash enough to opt out from justice and home affairs and the European arrest warrant.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
I hope that the noble Lord did not hear what I just said to my noble friend, which was, “He’s wicked”.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for bringing the amendment to the House. His commitment to this is clear. Having worked abroad, I can say that it is always very nice to have someone speaking for us, as it were.
As we made clear in Committee, the Opposition do not support the amendment. We remain unconvinced that those who left these shores 20, 30 or more years ago should continue to vote for a Government under whom the rest of us pay our taxes and live with the consequences of our vote. Those people will not live with the consequence of theirs.
However, I want to stress another consideration which I raised in Committee. Should this extension go forward, such non-residents would then also be able to continue to make unlimited donations to UK political parties. By being on the electoral register, they are also categorised as permissible donors to a political party. The previous Government, in the light of ongoing concerns about overseas funding of our politics, passed the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009. Section 10 of the Act prohibits a registered party from accepting a donation of more than £7,500 in any year from a UK national living abroad and on the electoral register, unless they become resident in the UK and pay UK income tax. Sadly, however—and I think wrongly—this section of the Act has not yet come into force and the coalition Government have indicated that they have no intention of bringing it into force. Perhaps the Government would like to take a moment to announce a change in their view on this, in which case we would be up and ready to welcome it immediately.
However, as that provision has not been brought in, it means that all those UK nationals permanently living abroad would be allowed to give donations to our political parties, because the test of whether an individual is a permissible donor is whether they are on the electoral register. Therefore, if overseas electors were able to stay on the register for longer than 15 years, they would remain permissible donors for as long as their wealth held out. For this reason—if for no other—we could not support the amendment.