European Union Committee: 2012-13 (EUC Report)

Lord Boswell of Aynho Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

That this House takes note of the Report of the European Union Committee on its work in 2012–13 (1st Report, HL Paper 15).

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, this Motion invites the House to take note of the report of your Lordships’ European Union Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing, on that committee’s work in the 2012-13 Session. I am pleased that this round-up of our committee’s important work has been given valuable time on the Floor of the House as its work has been recognised, not least by Sir Jon Cunliffe, the present UK permanent representative to the EU, as,

“enormously influential in Brussels and on Government thinking”.

I recognise that many in the Chamber today are very familiar with our work, but we are anxious to encourage a wider understanding of it among all Members of the House. For the benefit of those who are perhaps less au fait with it, I shall summarise the Committee’s role. It scrutinises EU policies and proposed EU laws, seeking to influence their development; holds Her Majesty’s Government to account for their actions in, and connected to, the EU; and represents the House in its dealings with the EU institutions, and other member states and their national parliaments. Much of this work is carried out by the six EU sub-committees, and we will be hearing from a representative of each sub-committee during the course of this afternoon’s debate.

I will mention a few highlights from this past Session, but before doing so I wish to pay tribute to the sub-committees’ hard work and meticulous efforts. A rigorous approach to detail is what this House is well known for and we apply that principle to the scrutiny of EU affairs. We seek at all times, and I hope that normally we succeed, to act in a non-party-political way to advise the House neutrally on EU matters. Given the current rather fetid political climate, it is essential that we continue in that vein, and I have no doubt that we will continue to rise to that challenge. I am deeply and genuinely grateful to each of the chairmen, the members of all the committees and, by no means least, the expert staff team that supports them so ably.

My committee and its sub-committees have undertaken an extraordinary level of work this year. We have scrutinised over 270 EU documents and proposals, sent 653 letters to Ministers examining the Government’s position and putting forward the committee’s own views, heard from over 210 witnesses in person, considered around 270 pieces of written evidence and published 16 reports—all this at a time when, in accordance with the House’s wishes, we have reconfigured our sub-committee system.

I shall now mention a few of the most significant pieces of work we have done during the Session. The Select Committee itself regularly conducts one-off hearings with the Minister for Europe regarding the outcomes of European Council meetings. During the 2012-13 Session there were three such hearings, covering topics as diverse as the G20 growth and jobs action programme, the situation in Mali and the EU’s neighbourhood policy. In addition, we followed up our inquiry into the multiannual financial framework and conducted and completed a new inquiry into the future of European Union enlargement. That report emphasised the importance of enlargement to securing stability and economic prosperity for the European Union itself and its neighbourhood. It analysed the way in which the enlargement process was conducted by the Commission and the Council, and made recommendations about how to make the process more transparent and better understood by European citizens.

I turn to the sub-committees. The Economic and Financial Affairs Sub-Committee has carried out a range of important work but I want to highlight two aspects. First, it has conducted regular evidence sessions following up on the euro area crisis report of 2012, which highlighted concerns about the future of the euro area, raised further questions about the desirability and efficacy of eurobonds and set out how the democratic legitimacy of solutions to the crisis could be ensured. Secondly, the sub-committee undertook a significant piece of work considering the consequences for the United Kingdom of proposals for a European banking union, as well as, of course, other work.

The Sub-Committee on Internal Market, Infrastructure and Employment undertook a timely inquiry into a proposal to set Europe-wide gender quotas for company boards. The committee urged the Commission to bring forward a system for monitoring the numbers of women in senior positions, but warned against quotas as they failed to address the root causes of inequality. It further questioned the Commission’s assertion that national measures to improve gender balance on boards were not working and, following a debate in the House, a reasoned opinion was issued raising concerns about subsidiarity.

The External Affairs Sub-Committee continued to operate at considerable pace, dealing with a wide range of proposals on foreign affairs, development, defence and international trade. During the Session it conducted an inquiry into the EU’s External Action Service, the EEAS, which concluded that the service had been successful in a number of areas, such as developing a comprehensive approach to countries and regions like the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, and in calming the relations between Serbia and Kosovo. However, the committee also highlighted challenges for the EEAS.

The Sub-Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries, Environment and Energy undertook a noteworthy inquiry considering whether the EU’s energy policy met, and would continue to meet, Europe’s basic requirements for energy. The committee expressed some alarm at the uncertainty, complacency and inertia surrounding the need to secure an affordable supply of low-carbon energy, and highlighted concerns about where the necessary investment in energy infrastructure could be found. This report, like several others that I have mentioned, received considerable press interest, but the unreported, perhaps seemingly unexciting yet essential and detailed work of our committees is also vital to ensure that the Government are properly held to account and that Parliament is well informed about EU matters.

The Justice, Institutions and Consumer Protection Sub-Committee completed a high-profile inquiry into fraud against the EU budget. The inquiry report highlighted that the European Union’s antifraud system had a number of weaknesses and that the Commission’s estimates of the cost of fraud to the EU budget in its annual reports were significant underestimates. That sub-committee also undertook an important piece of work in an innovative partnership with the Home Affairs, Health and Education Sub-Committee regarding the block opt-out decision under Protocol 36, which has been the subject of great debate recently in the House. The report of this inquiry has been recognised as a dispassionate, sound analytical tool to aid the Government and Parliament in forming views on the desirability of the opt-out.

Separately, the Home Affairs, Health and Education Sub-Committee examined the operation of the Commission’s global approach to migration and mobility, GAMM, and the implications of the UK’s partial participation in the European Union’s asylum and immigration policies. The committee concluded that the control of immigration from third countries was rightly the responsibility of individual member states, but that a co-ordinated approach by the European Union and its member states was imperative. The committee called for the GAMM to take a more focused approach in future and for the Commission to have a more prominent role internationally, particularly in forums such as the Global Forum on Migration and Development.

Noble Lords will no doubt wish to focus on the work of each sub-committee in greater detail but I want to record again my thanks to the sub-committee chairmen and members, and in particular to thank the noble Lords, Lord Teverson, Lord Carter of Coles and Lord Bowness, the outgoing chairmen of sub-committees C, D and E respectively, and welcome the new chairmen of those committees—the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott of Needham Market and Lady Corston.

The work of our committee and its sub-committees depends on the necessary information being provided in a timely manner by the Government, in accordance with its obligations. Although several departments produce excellent Explanatory Memoranda well within agreed deadlines, I regret that Her Majesty’s Treasury has repeatedly fallen short of the expected level of openness and helpfulness to Parliament—a matter which I am, once again, pursuing with Ministers. In addition, we are disappointed to have observed a gradual decline in the quality of the Explanatory Memorandums being produced by a range of departments. To quote one of my own straplines, an Explanatory Memorandum is not much use if it does not explain itself. We do all we can to support departments, and so we should, and yet we can only carry out our role effectively if given the right tools. I have no wish to be pompous but I do need to be firm about it. Despite the current pressures on civil service departments, the necessary resources must be given to these tasks as European Union matters affect the people, business and other organisations of this country in many different ways. In any case, as a matter of principle, government departments should meet the obligations into which they have entered.

Our committees continue to make significant contributions to interparliamentary conferences and work. I am most grateful for the work of COSAC—the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union. It is not the easiest acronym and not always the easiest organisation but it is one which I think is beginning to feel its feet. COSAC meets twice a year in plenary form and is a crucial, if little known, formal mechanism for interparliamentary co-operation.

Furthermore, we continue to benefit enormously from good links with the chairs of the EU scrutiny committees in the other place and the devolved Administrations, not least through our twice-yearly EC-UK meetings. There are also regular tripartite meetings bringing together members of our committee, the European Scrutiny Committee in the other place, and United Kingdom Members of the European Parliament. We met twice during the 2012-13 Session. These meetings raise important issues and allow for an exchange of views and understanding of each other’s work that might otherwise be lacking. Finally, our excellent EU liaison officer and the National Parliament Office provide a valuable link to Brussels and help to build effective relationships with other national parliaments and parliamentarians.

To conclude, what does the current Session hold? As usual, we will be engaging with a wide range of issues in inquiries—including, at Select Committee level, the role of national Parliaments in the European Union, and, among the sub-committees, youth unemployment, genuine economic and monetary union, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and the continuing discussion about the block opt-out—while maintaining our routine scrutiny function.

At a time of ongoing discussions about the European Union and the United Kingdom’s future relationship with it, it is even more important than ever that the House retains its ability to understand, impartially examine, challenge and influence the European policies of Her Majesty’s Government, and the development of European Union policy and law across the whole union. The family of EU committees, which I have the honour to head, is an important mechanism for that, and I commend this report of its work in the Session 2012-13 to the House. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, given my position as the concluding speaker in the debate, I very much hope that it will not be a matter of the theme, “Apres moi le deluge”. We are all about to go on our holidays and I do not intend to prolong the agony. However, I would like to say first how much I appreciate the contribution of all those who have participated in the debate and the Minister’s response. I am particularly grateful to those who have expressed very generous—even if unmerited—remarks to me personally. Before the cynics get at it, perhaps I should say, by no prior arrangement, that I would like in turn to express my gratitude to all the sub-committee chairs and former members of our committee—including the Minister, as he reminded us—who have participated in this debate. It has shown the depth of expertise that the House can deploy and, in what I hope will be a golden summer of England cricket, that we can bat all the way down the order with great success.

If I were to select a single word to encapsulate the nature of our discussion, and probably the way in which our committees work, it would be workmanlike—but not, I hope, pedestrian. We do a proper job of work. We do it seriously but we try to have regard to the wider context as we do it. In a way, that has been brought out by the debate, because we have shown a constant tension between concern about procedural issues and substantive issues. Perhaps I may select in particular the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who felt strongly about both. I think we all understand that there is a European people out there, not all of whom are very happy with the course of events and who feel tensions about how the system is not necessarily expressing their views as it should.

There is also concern as to whether we are having the right dialogue with Her Majesty’s Government and the right degree of compliance with the scrutiny reserves and the other obligations that they have undertaken. I remind the House that it is entirely for the Government to meet their obligations. We will do our best to help and we do not wish to be unreasonable. It really is not sufficiently good enough, on their behalf, to say, “Well, we did our best”, when clearly in certain cases that has not happened. We will not go away from that issue, nor should we do so.

However, I would reflect that there is a danger—we see this even in some of the material that we get, for example, from the European Parliament commenting on our involvement in European affairs—that because we have a documents-heavy and scrutiny-intense activity, there is a feeling that somehow that is all that we do. Of course it is not the case that everything is done formally by the process of scrutiny, holding things under scrutiny or even grumbling about the conduct of Her Majesty’s Government. There is a much more numinous process of policy formulation and discussion.

Perhaps I may come to points of substance. First, there is a certain regret in my heart that no explicitly Eurosceptic contribution has been made today. As I have said on previous occasions, any discussion of European policy matters is not a binary one where everyone immediately agrees or disagrees to the suggestion you have made after your detailed inquiry. It is very much more a process of evolving. One of our important roles, which I think has been touched on, involves our ability to go further back in the decision-making process and to respond as the Commission has a bright idea or wishes to develop themes, and not simply to wait until the last minute when we can say, “We are not happy with this as it’s turned out”, “It raises a subsidiarity issue”, or whatever.

Another point raised—for which we are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, as we are for others—is that it is now a very complex process. As for his comments on the contribution of the electronic dialogue, although I can e-mail my colleagues in COSAC, for example, which is the sort of thing we should be doing more than we do, that might not be the answer to every situation. We do not simply have a central authoritarian system to which we have to respond rather late in the day, we also need to be involved in a much more networked policy formulation and discussion.

In that context, yes, of course we want our dialogue, and yes, we are not complacent about having got it perfectly right—I say in response to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard—just because Jacques Delors, the European Commission or the current Commissioners have our reports on their shelves. We can always do better. I am sensitive also to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, about migration issues. Indeed, I hope that the House will not land everything with even the remotest relevance to Europe on our shores. However, we do have a dialogue. Two of our sub-committees have looked at some of the issues and we have corresponded about them. We are open to doing more in this respect just as we are open to doing more on procedural issues.

I hope that I can assure your Lordships’ House that we do our best to do an objective job. We do not have closed minds about how it should work. We do some things that do not always appear even in the tomes of annual reports. In the context of our national parliamentary inquiry, I have written well over 100 letters to various people, including national parliaments and ambassadors in London and otherwise, to alert them to what we are doing and to invite them actively to participate. We will take any part in the dialogue that they are prepared to have with us.

In conclusion, I should like to express my gratitude for the way in which our report has been received and to emphasise that, whatever we do in the future, we will be guarded by the lodestars of quality and objectivity. We will make no compromises about that.

Motion agreed.