European Union

Lord Tebbit Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I would like to say a few words on this, having been a member of your Lordships’ European Union Committee on two occasions and still currently so. There are many errors of fact in what has been said by the noble Lords, Lord Pearson of Rannoch and Lord Stoddart of Swindon, and others. Our job is to make recommendations to the British Government, and the point about the British Government not telling us what account they have taken of our recommendations is untrue. They are required to do so within two months and they always do so. They state their reaction to every single one of the recommendations. It is also untrue that the Commission does not say what it has done in reply to the recommendations. Every one of the reports is now replied to by the vice-president of the Commission responsible for relations with the national parliaments, and they are all on the website. I wish the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, good reading because there are probably several thousand replies from the Commission that he could usefully read. He might then understand a little better what is done.

My penultimate point is that we have not yet reduced the number of sub-committees to six. We are waiting for the Chairman of Committees to be allowed to put his proposal to us in order to reduce them from seven to six, but we have not yet done so. The last point that I want to make about this is that it does not always seem to be very well understood that the job done by the EU Committee and its sub-committees is that of scrutiny of EU legislation, a job that is done by the whole House on UK legislation. If it is not done properly through the EU Select Committee and its sub-committees, it will not be done at all, and that would be a real loss of influence for this country.

[Lord Tebbit]

My Lords, it verges upon the unbelievable to think, from the description just given to us by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, that the bureaucrats of Brussels are waiting in fear of what the sub-committees in this place might say about proposed European legislation and are then devoting thousands of hours to reasoned arguments against it. I suspect that that does not actually happen.

To come back to the clear point, we have before us a proposal that these distinguished and hardworking Members of the House should consider these matters time and time again, even though there is no evidence that anything changes as a result of their consideration and recommendations. That is a fact that has been shown to be so from the answers to PNQs. Either we change what we are doing and do something to draw attention to this so that the Government might get excited about it and act in some way, or we simply say to these distinguished Members of the House, “You are wasting your time. Why not go home and dig the garden? Do something constructive”, or something like that.

These Members are simply wasting their time. If they are wasting their time, as I believe they have been in recent years, it should be brought to the notice of this House by means of a debate so that we can consider what to do about it, one way or the other: either close down the operation or require Her Majesty’s Government to do something effective. The amendment proposed today is one way of getting something moving on that front.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, I had anticipated an amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, although not the one that actually emerged. He has put me in something of a difficulty. I do not know whether to respond to his amendment or to his speech because the two seem to be somewhat disconnected.

As the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Grenfell, have pointed out, the noble Lord fundamentally misunderstands the function of the committee. The committee’s job is to scrutinise Her Majesty’s Government’s response to European initiatives. It also takes on the role of inquiry into particular policy areas. This is where the argument about effectiveness is cited.

The noble Baroness, Lady O’Cathain, has already pointed out with regard to roaming how the committee is able to influence the development of policy. I have previously pointed out with regard to fisheries policy that if you look at the proposals coming forward from the Commission on the reform of the common fisheries policy, they are heavily drawn from the report of our own EU Committee. That is the sort of influence that can be brought to bear in a positive way.

Finally, on the issue of preparing an annual report, the committee already has the power to issue an annual report if it so wishes. Again, listening to the words of the Deputy Chairman of Committees, it seems that he—and the committee—would be quite happy to look at whether something like an annual report could be produced. On that extremely helpful note, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Tebbit]

Back in May 2008, I asked the then Government whether they could find more than one example of a European Union legislative institution having been altered as a result of proceedings in either House of Parliament. It was a fairly straightforward question. No such examples were given. I wonder whether my noble friend has some examples that might have occurred in the past two years under this Government.