Subsidiarity Assessment: Food Distribution (EUC Report)

Lord Roper Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Tabled By

[Lord Roper]

That this House takes note of the Report of the European Union Committee on the amended Commission Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Council Regulation (EC) No.1290/2005 and Council Regulation (EC) No.1234/2007 as regards distribution of food products to the most deprived persons in the Union (COM(2011)634, Council Document 15054/11) (23rd Report, HL Paper 217).

[Lord Carter of Coles]

My Lords, in the absence of the noble Lord, Lord Roper, I beg leave to move the first Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper. It fell to the EU Sub-Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Environment, which I chair, to carry out detailed scrutiny of the latest proposal in relation to food for the deprived. In doing so, we were conscious of the consideration which we gave a year or so ago to the previous version of the proposal. Both the sub-committee and the EU Committee itself, which the noble Lord, Lord Roper, chairs, took the view that the changes made to the latest proposal did nothing to remedy the failure to comply with the principle of subsidiarity.

It is tempting to use this occasion to talk about the common agricultural policy as the evolving backdrop to the scheme to distribute food to deprived persons but, since time is limited, I will make only two remarks in this respect. First, when the scheme was initiated in 1987, a largely unreformed CAP generated excesses of butter, milk powder, beef, sugar, rice and cereals—the so-called food mountains—which allowed food to be released to charitable organisations in participating member states. Those days are long gone. Surplus stocks are now very low and in recent years the scheme has in fact relied on open-market purchases of food, so the link between the scheme and the CAP, clear enough in the past, has become more and more tenuous in the present.

I hope that your Lordships will take the view, as the committee has done, that the task of tackling deprivation faced by our fellow citizens rightly falls on the member states, not on the EU itself. No one should downplay the scale of the challenge on social protection across Europe. Data on expenditure in that regard in October this year—I am relying on data from Eurostat, the European Commission's own source—showed that, in 2009, the 27 member states spent over €3 million million on this support. That is, greater than the figure 3 followed by 12 zeroes of euros: a colossal amount of money. Compare the scheme for deprived persons that is being proposed here of €500 million or so. Doubtless that can buy a great deal of food, but in respect of the total spend by member states it is not of great significance.

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[Lord Roper]

My Lords, I support the arguments that have been put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, who chairs the European Sub-Committee of the European Union Committee dealing with agriculture, fisheries and the environment and who prepared the report that we are considering today. This is an important issue and one of the occasions on which this House has the opportunity to argue why subsidiarity matters and why some things ought to be done at a national level, not at a European level.

As the noble Lord said, the food distribution programme made sense when there were significant European surpluses. However, in the 24 years since the programme was introduced, probably at the time when the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, was responsible for these matters, things have changed. There are no longer surpluses that it is perfectly legitimate for the European Union to distribute to member states where there are needy people. The argument has therefore changed. That is why, despite the fact that the European Commission, in preparing its proposals for this document, modified them from the document on which this House gave an opinion about a year ago and suggested that there was a reasoned opinion against subsidiarity over the old proposal, in our view there is no longer a satisfactory situation.

We do not believe that any European value-added is produced by producing €500 million on buying things from the open market to give to needy people. Member states should do that—there are lots of reasons why they should—but that is a decision for the 27 member states of the European Union. That is why this report has been produced and why, although the earlier proposal has been withdrawn as a result of a judgment by the Court of Justice of the European Union, we still believe that this is a serious error.

As we say in our report, neither the proposal nor the Commission’s Explanatory Memorandum produces an explicit subsidiarity justification as required by Article 5 of the protocol on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. However, it seems clear from the summary of the impact assessment that accompanied the original proposal of three years ago that the Commission sees three reasons for this. These include the view that the programme addresses problems of hunger, deprivation, poverty and social exclusion in the spirit of the treaty and that it supports the objective of strengthening the Union’s social cohesion.

Our report sets out our consideration of those justifications. I will not repeat them at length. The nub of our assessment, this year as last, is that the spirit of the treaties can be respected without the European Union acting in this respect. Moreover, we consider that member states are capable of acting individually to fulfil those objectives if they so wish, and in any case the failure of European member states to act is not in itself a reason why the EU should act. In conclusion, we again take the view that there is no compelling argument to suggest that the Union is better placed than its member states to ensure a food supply to its most deprived citizens.

We know that the Government share our view on this proposal—indeed, I believe that it is also the view of the opposition Front Bench—and in their Explanatory Memorandum they have stated their belief that,

“measures of this type are better and more effectively delivered by individual Member States through their own social programmes”.

The Scottish Parliament has taken a similar view and the Swedish Parliament, the Riksdag, has also issued a reasoned opinion sharing our view. Other member states such as Denmark and the Netherlands share our concerns, though we are not yet sure whether they have issued reasoned opinions.

The Government have told us that, unfortunately, agreement in principle on this measure has been reached following a decision by Germany to accept a time-limited extension of the scheme to the end of 2013. There appears to have been movement at the political level but certainly not, in our eyes, at the level of the underlying policy.

While the European Commission has made changes to the proposal that we considered a year ago, we think that those changes make no difference to our assessment of whether the proposal is in compliance with the principle of subsidiarity. We consider that it is not compliant with that principle and therefore recommend that the House should issue a reasoned opinion on the latest proposal.

[Lord Williamson of Horton]

My Lords, it was of course only in November last year that the House took the view that a proposal from the European Commission on the distribution of food products to the most deprived persons in the Union did not comply with the principle of subsidiarity, and we sent a reasoned opinion to that effect to the Presidents of the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission in accordance with the treaty. As the noble Lord, Lord Roper, stated, on 13 April 2011 the European Court of Justice annulled the provisions of the food distribution plan providing for purchases from the market. In consequence, the Commission has now submitted a new proposal, which we have before us, from 2011, document number 634 final, adding a new treaty base, Article 175(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which relates to social cohesion. As has been stated, the reason for this is that the Commission wants to make market purchases a permanent source of supply for the scheme when there are no longer the intervention stocks that used to exist in the Union. They have gone and the Commission wants to turn to the market.

The European Union Committee of the House has recommended that the objection on the grounds of subsidiarity that applied to the earlier proposal applies equally to the new one, and that we should issue the revised opinion in paragraphs 5 to 11 of the committee’s report. I agree that we should be consistent and follow the advice of our European Committee. Of course there may be good reasons for supplying food to the most deprived citizens, but today we are concerned only to judge whether this might be done at EU level and on the EU budget. The principle of subsidiarity that is in the treaty on the European Union in Article 5(3) states inter alia that,

“the Union shall act only if and insofar as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level”.

We do not agree that this proposal corresponds to that part of the treaty.

Although the principle of subsidiarity may not have much impact, it is none the less an important provision. It is in line with much of British opinion and we should play our role in seeking to ensure that it is respected. As we seldom see the text of a Commission proposal for legislation in this Chamber, I would add three short comments. First, the Commission proposal, which as usual is clearly drafted and easy to understand, is not a law. Bureaucrats in Brussels cannot and do not make laws on a subject such as this. Substantive laws are made jointly by the Ministers of the member states in the Council and the European Parliament. This may seem self-evident, but in view of the widespread public misunderstanding, I emphasise it in this case.

Secondly, it is interesting to note that the European Court of Justice annulled provisions of the earlier proposal because the legal base was not sufficient, showing the value of the oversight by the court. Thirdly, and lastly, as has already been stated, this case shows clearly the transformation of the agricultural policy of the Union—the old CAP—as market intervention has been removed or drastically reduced and intervention stocks are no longer generally available for this scheme. I support the proposal of the European Union Committee of this House.