EU: Repatriation of Powers

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I entirely agree with the article, which I thought was excellent, and I am very happy that the chair of the relevant European Parliament committee on this is a British Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament, Sharon Bowles.

[Lord Dykes]

Would my noble friend agree that the only important repatriation of powers for the Government—because they need to be careful on this matter—would be to repatriate Bill Cash away from the chairmanship of the European Scrutiny Committee of the House of Commons? Would he further agree that with so many exclusions, derogations and exceptions already, not least on the single currency, we have gone far enough down that road and that we need to be a good European partner again?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Lisbon treaty envisaged that national parliaments should play a much more active part in scrutiny and indeed in insisting on the importance of subsidiarity and resisting overcentralisation. This House currently does it better than the other House. We very much hope that the House of Commons will also improve and extend its scrutiny of EU measures.