European Union

Lord Willoughby de Broke Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, the House will have noted the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, on the importance of effective scrutiny, and his interesting and detailed suggestion on the configuration of committees. First, I briefly thank the House for entrusting me with responsibility for the European Union Select Committee; and, secondly, I acknowledge the fine example set by my predecessors, including my immediate predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Roper. I have no conceptual problem with the need for efficiency and scrutiny, and I remind noble Lords that they will shortly receive the sessional report of the Select Committee and will have ample opportunity thereafter to consider it further.

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

My Lords, I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Pearson. It seems eminently sensible. I spent four years on the EU Select Committee. Any Members on the committee now will know exactly how much time is taken up by membership of that committee and of its various sub-committees—the amount of reading, work and supporting of the committee reports when they are debated in the House. However, like my noble friend, I remind the House that precisely one item only has ever been amended by the Commission following the issuing of a Select Committee report. I really wonder whether this is right and whether the committee should be required—it seems a harmless amendment, I must say—to report back to this House and to the nation on the effectiveness of its work and on the effect of its reports on the legislation coming out of Brussels. At the moment, the latest fact is that just one piece of legislation in the past 10 or 15 years has actually been affected by the vast number of reports issued by the EU Select Committee.

I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, supported my noble friend’s amendment or not, but it seems to be very sensible. I hope that the House will support it.

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, on his appointment to the chairmanship of the committee, a chairmanship which I enormously enjoyed when I had the honour to hold it.

What the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, is saying today is so familiar to me it is almost like listening to “Auld Lang Syne” every New Year’s Eve. It is utterly predictable but probably less tuneful. Every year, he shows that he misunderstands the purpose of the European Union Committee. It is not to tell Brussels what to do; it is to hold the Government to account for what they do. The function of a committee of the House of Lords is to hold the Government to account, and that is precisely what it does. If it takes that number of sub-committees to examine the more than 1,000 documents that come through, so be it. You need the people and the Peers to do that.

However, the real point is this: in order to be able to advise the Government on how they should react to what comes from what the noble Lord described as the juggernaut in Brussels, you need to explore the minds of those working in Brussels and spend a lot of time examining the Green Papers and the White Papers, attending the meetings and so forth so that you can fulfil your function, which is to advise the Government on how they should react. That is what the committee is all about. It is not about telling Brussels what to do.