European Political Community Debate
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Lord Grocott
Main Page: Lord Grocott (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Grocott's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
The noble Viscount makes an important point. That is true across all issues in all sectors. One of the most valuable organisations that I have been involved in is called GLOBE. It is about bringing legislators together from around the world to compare, and sometimes helpfully compete with one another in relation to, environmental legislation. That worked beautifully, and no doubt it works in every important sector.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
My Lords, is not the overwhelming evidence of anyone involved in public life that if something starts out with a small secretariat, it nearly always ends up being a big secretariat?
Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)
My Lords, the participants, including the host country, are very clear that no new structures or institutions are to be created. That is absolutely not the purpose. There is a healthy scepticism towards the creation of such structures, precisely on the basis that they could end up duplicating the work of other such structures or even undermining it.