European Union Committee: 2012-13 (EUC Report)

Lord Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tugendhat]

My Lords, I speak as another new member of the Select Committee and as the new chairman of Sub-Committee C on External Affairs. I cannot believe my good fortune. I find both roles absolutely fascinating and it gives me great pleasure to join other noble Lords in paying tribute to the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, and to my predecessor as chairman of the sub-committee, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. I share, too, the good opinion expressed by a number of noble Lords of the clerks who served the committee. They are few in number and do an outstanding job.

I shall not go into the subjects dealt with by my two noble friends Lord Maclennan and Lord Howell but shall stick much more, as others have done, to reporting on the work of the sub-committee, most of which was done during the period when the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, was chairman. I am not sure that my voice will hold out to the end, so I shall be brief.

The committee followed up on its earlier inquiry into Operation Atalanta, the CSDP anti-piracy mission in May and June of 2012. The committee has noted the successes of the mission and welcomed the EU’s comprehensive approach to the region. The committee recommended that the EU’s anti-piracy mission should be accompanied by an equal focus on the political process and on supporting security sector reform in Somalia. As part of its interest in Atalanta, the committee visited the operational headquarters in Northwood and noted that the new system for tracking ships in the sea was now in place. The report was debated in Grand Committee in 2013. Since then, the committee has kept a watching brief on the issue.

The noble Lord, Lord Boswell, has already referred to the report on the European External Action Service, so I need say little about that. It was designed to feed into the two-year review undertaken by the high representative and has received a comprehensive response from the Government.

The main conclusions of the report were that the post of the high representative is overloaded, and the committee laid out some of the recommendations that we heard from witnesses to ease this situation. We believe that the EEAS delegations can play a more important and engaged role in forming and delivering EU foreign policy. The committee noted that many smaller member states wanted the delegations to take on consular activities and it recommended that this be an area that the review should consider. However, the Government have put forward some quite substantial objections to that proposition.

The committee noted, too, that while the EU special representatives play an important role in EU foreign policy, their remuneration rate looks at first glance—and maybe there is more to come—rather high. The report was debated in Grand Committee in June 2013.

Since I have been chairman, we have had a short inquiry into the EU’s development assistance for drinking-water supply and basic sanitation in sub-Saharan Africa, which goes under the acronym of WASH. This work is based on a critical report from the European Court of Auditors on which the sub-committee had corresponded with the Government and which it wished to pursue further. Our report has been published in the form of a letter to the Commission with a covering note to the Government. It was based on extensive evidence taken from a number of NGOs over a short period. We also spoke to the Commission and the Court of Auditors, and I must say that what we learnt was extremely disappointing. The whole WASH programme casts doubt on the much larger aid programmes, and I hope that the Commission will provide a satisfactory response to the report that we have sent it. We are also sending the report to the relevant committees in the European Parliament, because it is important that it, too, should be seized of this issue.

Our next big inquiry will be into the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The call for evidence on that has gone out and the formal evidence sessions will begin in the autumn. I hope, too, that we will have a seminar and take the views of a wide range of interested parties.

Our scrutiny work has also continued at a high level in relation to the Middle East and in particular to Syria, where we have expressed concerns about the security of arms and been worried by the recent decision taken at the Foreign Affairs Council. The sub-committee has received an informal briefing on the extension of the mandates of the EU’s regional and thematic special representatives, which came under scrutiny on 27 June. We have expressed our concern that the process of renewing the budgets and mandates of the EUSRs is too rushed to allow proper parliamentary scrutiny. On the role itself, the committee has expressed concern that the mandates of the EUSRs are not always clearly defined and that EUSRs can sometimes duplicate the work of other international actors on the ground. In particular, we put the mandate of the EUSR for Sudan and South Sudan under scrutiny, as it was not clear to us that the political situation and the conditions on the ground justified ending an enhanced EU role to the region.

We have raised an exhaustive list of scrutiny issues with the Government, covering such subjects as child labour; the EU Voluntary Humanitarian Aid Corps; the EU Border Assistance Mission for the Rafah Crossing Point; the EU integrated rule of law mission for Iraq; women in the Afghan national police force; the role of the EU at the Food and Agriculture Organization; EU sanctions in Syria, Somalia and Myanmar and EU’s defence instruments; and a protocol amending the agreement on government procurement.

The committee has also undertaken enhanced scrutiny on EULEX Kosovo, the EU’s rule of law mission in Kosovo and there, too, on the basis of a critical European Court of Auditors report. The committee heard evidence from the Minister for Europe, David Lidington, as well as from the Court of Auditors. In addition to all this, there have been a great number of informal briefings from ambassadors in the countries to which they were accredited, and the committee will continue with that aspect of its work in September.

It has therefore been a very busy programme. I cannot claim credit for very much of it. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and to the previous members of the committee. I very much look forward to carrying the committee’s work forward during the next 12 months.