Defence Review

Debate between Lord Spicer and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we will hit 2% this year. My understanding is that, on current trends, we will hit 2% next year. What happens after that is a question for the SDSR and for the next comprehensive spending review, which the new Government will take through. I am sure that the question of the need for more frigates will be high on the agenda for any SDSR.

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

My Lords—

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[Lord Spicer]

My Lords, why are we so hooked on 2%? Surely we may want to spend more.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am sure that some will want to spend more but, as all noble Lords are aware, the number of calls on public expenditure is large and the amount of revenue available is relatively limited.

Regulatory Agencies: Monitoring

Debate between Lord Spicer and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, these reviews do take place. The Environment Agency and Natural England were jointly subject to a triennial review, precisely to look at the degree of overlap. The noble Lord may recall that the Public Bodies Act examined the need for a number of statutorily established bodies that were set up a very long time ago and that the Deregulation Bill also touches on issues like this—125 triennial reviews of non-departmental public bodies have already taken place. I was interviewed for the triennial review into the Civil Service Commission, for example, which I think will recommend an expansion of the responsibilities of that body. A good deal of toing and froing is under way. Parliamentary committees and the National Audit Office also monitor the management of these bodies.

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

My Lords, is there not a danger of a parallel government arising of unelected regulators working with enormous powers over the heights of the economy and working in concert?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the idea that these are massively powerful bodies operating outside parliamentary control is an immense exaggeration. If you look at recent appearances by the heads of some of these commissions and authorities before parliamentary Select Committees, you will recognise that Parliament certainly monitors what goes on very actively.

National Parliaments (EUC Report)

Debate between Lord Spicer and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Monday 15th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Spicer]

The Minister is making an extremely interesting point about the gap between the demos and the economics, as he put it. Is not the reason for that gap, which will always exist, that the Parliament will permanently be constrained by two things? The first is the European Court and the second is the treaty, which was the subject of a little discussion between me and the noble Lord, Lord Boswell.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, I was making a slightly different point, which is about the global market and global manufacturing. The fact that, for example, when the French sell an Airbus a third of the value added to that Airbus comes from British manufacturers, and that every time the Germans sell a Mercedes, it contains a large number of British components, means that markets have gone beyond the nation state but legitimacy has not. That is a fundamental, structural problem of the world in which we now live. I will not touch on the migration dimensions of that, but the security dimensions are also extremely difficult. That leaves us with a set of dilemmas which are not solvable and which we have to cope with.

A number of noble Lords made the point about the resources and time required. Resources are needed for scrutiny, as the report suggests. If we are setting up for national parliaments to be more closely in touch with each other, that requires a good deal of travel and time. One noble Lord remarked—it may have been the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood—that, in some ways, a European Parliament that was drawn directly from national parliaments was more appropriate. However, it did not work before 1979, partly because national parliamentarians are elected to serve constituents in their national parliament and the more time we expect them to spend elsewhere, the less time they will have to do their primary job. So there is a set of real problems there.

I noticed, as a member of the Government talking to newly elected MPs—there was a very large turnover in the British Parliament last time—that a great many newly elected MPs coming from outside politics had very little idea of the complexities of international negotiations in which we are engaged with other European parliaments, or of the contacts one needs to have with members of other national parliaments or, indeed, members of the same political family as yours in other Governments. They have learnt, but it takes time. After all, more and more of our parliamentary candidates, I saw in one newspaper at the weekend, are now being drawn from people who have established roots within their local constituency. They are not elected to Parliament because of their international experience and they are unlikely to get re-elected if they spend too much time travelling around Europe and beyond. That is one of the obstacles with which we have to deal.

The new Commission has signalled that it is open to a much more positive dialogue with national Governments. New President Juncker has stated this on a number of occasions; Vice-President Timmermans, as has been remarked, has made it very clear that this is one of his priorities. As a Minister in the Dutch Government beforehand, he was already heavily committed. Closer co-operation among national parliaments was mentioned by many noble Lords. The offices which we now have in Brussels are to be strengthened. It is a very good way of using Brussels as a means of communication that enables you to find out earlier what is going on, examine proposals at an earlier stage and talk among national parliaments about how one might use yellow cards—lowering the threshold. The green card question is a very interesting one which the Government will wish to consider. We are not yet committed. We note the proposal that the coverage of these mechanisms should be extended to cover proportionality as well.

The noble Lord, Lord Bowness, talked about first reading deals. One of the problems that the Government have in responding to that is the sheer complexity of a multilateral negotiating process, with co-decision with the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council of Ministers coming in. The points at which national parliaments insert themselves into that process and how national parliaments keep up with that process is, again, part of the problem with which we all have to deal. Over the past year, as I have struggled with the EU balance of competencies exercise—a fascinating exercise—I have changed my mind on whether it would be useful for this Chamber also to examine other international organisations through which the British Government work. Time and time again in the EU balance of competencies exercise we have had evidence which has said, “We work through the EU on this, and we also work with OECD or the World Health Organization”. Indeed, the EU operates in some respects as a regional member of the World Health Organization in specific areas. Explaining that to the national public, as far as we can, and examining how effective those other international organisations are—most of them are a great deal less effective than the European Union—is perhaps also something which this Government might be able to achieve.

The noble Lord, Lord Judd, remarked that perhaps it would be easier if we explicitly had a confederal Europe rather than a federal Europe. I thought the chapter in this report on economic governance was particularly interesting and difficult because the contradictions of where we have got to with international markets come in because you need some power to decide as soon as you have an integrated single market, let alone a common currency, and when you face a global economic crisis, the legitimacy to decide above the level of the nation state is not there. So we are again stuck with the problem that it is not possible to reconcile the principles of democratic accountability and legitimacy and the need to take these decisions among a range of different actors.

Critical National Infrastructure: Ownership

Debate between Lord Spicer and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Monday 22nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

There are several points there. To say that the BT network is controlled by the Chinese is, to say the least, a considerable exaggeration. The issue of the dependence on the supply of equipment from China is a rather different one, and that, as noble Lords will know, is the subject of a recent ISC report. British sovereignty has traditionally and in recent years been debated much more in terms of threat to English common law, and the existential threat which Brussels and the European courts are thought to provide to Britain, than in terms of the threat from foreign investment. I should welcome the noble Lord banging on about one rather than the other—it would make a nice change.

[Lord Spicer]

My Lords, surely one of the good things about foreigners owning bits of our infrastructure is that they cannot take these bits away with them—

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[Lord Spicer]

My Lords, surely it is a win-win situation. We get their money and, because of the infrastructure, they cannot take it away.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is a very good comment. I remember, many years ago, when Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister and an architect of free-market economics nevertheless phoning the Japanese Government to insist that they pressure Japanese banks to make their partial investment into funding Eurostar and the Eurotunnel project.

EU: Subsidiarity Scrutiny

Debate between Lord Spicer and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Tuesday 5th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I can confirm all of those matters. On the Monti II proposals, some of the reasoned opinions submitted by national Parliaments were much more about the principle of the proposal rather than the subsidiarity issue. Her Majesty's Government did not suggest that we should submit a reasoned opinion on subsidiarity issues because they objected to the principle of the proposal.

[Lord Spicer]

My Lords, is not one of the ironies of subsidiarity that it requires greater centralisation to determine with whom the subsidiarity should remain?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am not entirely sure that I follow the logic of that. We are in an increasingly globalised economy. That economy requires increasing international regulation of one sort or another. We are in a constant situation of tension between international regulators—not just the European Union but many other international bodies as well—wishing to extend the process of regulation and national Governments, national Parliaments, local groups and other lobbies wishing to resist it.