European Union Committee on 2014–15 (EUC Report)

Baroness Scott of Needham Market Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, I shall focus my remarks on the work of the Energy and Environment Sub-Committee, which I have had the honour and pleasure of chairing for three Sessions. Working at close quarters with so many Members of this House whose expertise and experience is unparalleled across a wide range of disciplines has been a truly rewarding experience for me. It would, of course, be invidious to single anyone out, but I am going to do it anyway and reflect on the noble Lord, Lord Plumb—Henry Plumb—who has been running his family farm for 63 years. He was a vice-president of the National Farmers’ Union in 1965 and is the only Briton to have been President of the European Parliament. With that sort of expertise on a committee, it is quite difficult to go wrong.

I also offer a word of thanks to a number of other noble Lords. First, and in particular, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, whose leadership and encouragement, both personally and to the main Select Committee has been an enormous help, especially in these recent months when the UK’s very participation in the European Union is being called into question. Secondly, I thank former members of the sub-committee who, in our wonderful House of Lords phrase, have been rotated off as a result of recently introduced procedural changes. Their dedication and good humour have made chairing the sub-committee nothing short of a joy. Finally, I thank the three continuing and eight new members of the sub-committee, who already, in a few short weeks, have approached the various topics put before us, which range from the Paris climate change conference in December and the common fisheries policy’s discard ban to the use of financial instruments in rural development.

The recent changes in sub-committee membership, put into effect by what is known in your Lordships’ House as the rotation rule, became known on my last committee as the slaughter of the innocents. The introduction and strict retrospective enforcement of a three-year rule for European Select Committees was, in my view, an extremely misconceived idea, and I remain of that view. Eight out of the 12 members of my sub-committee were rotated off at the end of the last Session, and that was replicated across the other committees. This of course will be repeated every three years, and a large number of members will need to be replenished, which has huge implications for the retention of expertise on our committees. Although I can absolutely see that there is an increasing demand for Select Committee places in general, I have no evidence that that applies to the work of EU scrutiny committees, which are highly specialised. Therefore I take this opportunity to urge the Chairman of Committees and the usual channels to look at this matter once again and pay particular attention to the effect of the change on the EU Committee and its sub-committees.

I also put on record my very grateful thanks to the professional team who support me: our clerk, Patrick Milner; Alistair Dillon, our policy analyst; and Mark Gladwell, our committee assistant.

As your Lordships may know, the remit of the committee which I chair includes agriculture, fisheries, environment, energy and climate change. Unlike the House of Commons, one of our big strengths is the ability to undertake cross-cutting inquiries which cut across the normal departmental disciplines. The last report authored by the sub-committee, on regional marine co-operation, which we called The North Sea Under Pressure: Is Regional Marine Co-operation the Answer?, is a good example of that sort of cross-cutting work. The North Sea, as one of the most industrialised seas in the world, is under many pressures. Both the European Commission and member states have a suite of policies aimed at the economic development of the sea and another whole suite of policies aimed at environmental management. It is not clear to us how these competing pressures will be managed at a strategic level; indeed, we found that such management is embryonic and sporadic. No existing body or mechanism has a broad enough remit to facilitate the sort of political co-operation that we need if these tensions are to be resolved in the North Sea basin. We argued for the re-establishment of a North Sea ministerial conference.

We have called for greater progress on electricity interconnection in the North Sea and for further support to be provided to the regional fisheries advisory councils. We also highlighted a lack of data: there is a problem with gathering data and, more significantly, there is poor sharing of data between sectors and between member states. This report was published in the wake of the new maritime spatial planning directive, and we hope that our conclusions and detailed recommendations will help to influence policy-making at both a national and an EU level as that directive gathers pace. Informal soundings suggest that our report has been very well received in other North Sea states, including Germany and the Netherlands. A number of stakeholders have submitted their own response to our report. I also echo the sentiments of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, about the work of our press team, which I thought was really quite remarkable in what is actually a rather technical subject. We had a lot of coverage including, inexplicably for a report on the North Sea, from the Shropshire Star.

It is with some sadness that I say that the government response to our report was very late indeed. Despite an extended deadline, it took three attempts and a letter from the chairman before we finally received the response this morning. I can only assume that, knowing that this would come up in the debate today, they were aware that the Minister’s wrath would be swift and terrible had they not replied by this morning. However, I make the point in all seriousness that we had been as accommodating as we could be, and that really was not good enough.

As we have already heard, the sub-committee authored a report in 2014, Counting the Cost of Food Waste, calling for urgent action at a number of levels to reduce the proportion of the food we grow—currently a scandalous one-third—which is thrown away. In the course of the last Session I met a wide range of stakeholders to discuss potential solutions and measures in the light of our report. I think it is fair to say that the report has been widely acclaimed, both in the UK and across the EU, and has contributed to the well-deserved reputation of our Select Committee as a leader in policy impact and scrutiny. As we have heard, in the short term the sub-committee is seeking to influence the content of the circular economy package at European Commission level by using the green card which the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, spoke about. It is a powerful testament to the work of our committee if one of our reports on a subject such as food waste can act as a driver for real and tangible change right across the Union. I remain optimistic about this and I look forward to the result. On the principle of the green card initiative, I can do no better than echo the words of the Select Committee report, which said that,

“if the democratic legitimacy of the EU is to be renewed, national parliaments should be given a positive, constructive role in setting priorities, alongside the existing right of objection”.

I end by commenting briefly on the contribution that the committee and the House will make to the ongoing debate on the UK’s membership of the European Union. Over the coming months the voices on all sides will be very loud. That noise should not be allowed to distract our attention away from the important task of ongoing scrutiny. Others may decide to lay this task aside, but I do not believe that we should. We have been tasked with holding the Government to account and scrutinising their actions on matters both large and small, high profile and technical. I am sure that I speak for every member of my sub-committee when I say that we have no intention during this coming time of shying away from that crucial responsibility.