European Union Committee: 2012-13 (EUC Report)

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My Lords, I join others in warmly congratulating my noble friend Lord Boswell, and indeed his fellow chairs of the committees and all the committee members on their work. I pay tribute to it because it is immensely detailed and clear. I am not myself a member of the EU Committee system, so I hope that that is acceptable. A decade ago I was chairman of Sub-Committee C so I hope that makes me accepted as part of the old alumni of the EU Committee system.

I will concentrate on a section of the committee’s report on its forward look, on the way in which it is affected by and looks at future policy and scrutiny work—matters already referred to by my noble friend Lord Bowness. I do so against a background of widespread debate and shifting perceptions throughout the European Union itself concerning its procedures and aims. That, of course, is over and above the equally significant changes in the whole pattern and character of international relations, generally in a world that is now almost totally connected, with governmental and non-governmental networks increasingly melding together in a completely novel way. It is important, is it not, that your Lordships should remain well ahead of the game, as indeed we are in so many other fields? One has to realistically say that, whatever else is going to happen in the coming year, the forward-look things will not be as usual; things will be very different all the time.

I draw evidence for this view of change from the clear and increasing resistance to integration and ever-closer union as guiding EU principles which we have seen from the Netherlands Government, from Italy, and from the obvious German resistance; from the all round and outright resistance to more centralisation of power in attempts to repair the euro; and from a clear call for a return to what has been called deliberative intergovernmentalism. I also refer to a remarkable paper issued by the organisation Policy Network, which is a body of impeccable pro-EU credentials chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, who is sitting there on the Opposition Front Bench. This paper, Coordination in place of integration? Economic governance in a non-federal EU, is by Professor Renaud Thillaye, a senior researcher of Policy Network. Its message is simple: we have reached the end of member-state tolerance for one-size-fits-all measures and demands for more central power. Instead, the professor advocates the kind of sensible dialogue which leads much more to practical open-method co-ordination, and therefore to a substantial alteration in the size and nature of the flow of Commission-inspired EU proposals, directives and all the rest with which the committee has to struggle so nobly. However, it is undoubtedly, in its own words, “somewhat burdensome”.

Professor Thillaye points to the deep deficiencies in the present EU model and its outcomes, such as stagnation in research spending, the waste of skills, increased poverty in southern European countries and the appalling levels of unemployment. He refers to,

“the sense of a ‘diminished democracy’”,

and cites the EU scholars who claim that,

“the EU Single Market and the EMU restrict greatly ‘the capacity of member states to realise self-defined socio-political goals’”.

Instead, he wants to see an “enriched dialogue” between member states—and, of course, Parliaments—and concludes that:

“The EU should avoid imposing specific measures from above”.

My own conclusion from all this for the work of our own committee is that, in addition to being concerned with two specific principles, as the report we are debating today outlines, it should add a third principle, governing both its scrutiny work and its policy work in the future.

The two principles mentioned in the report, which are familiar to us, of course, are subsidiarity—whether something is to be done at the right level; and proportionality—whether it can be done less onerously. I would like to see a third principle added to the committee’s future work; namely, flexibility—whether something is better done through co-ordination than through centrally conceived law-making regulations and proposals.

Is it not perfectly clear that in this digital age of instant hyperconnectivity on every issue, the advantages of well focused co-ordination on specific issues, rather than centrally imposed instruments handled by cumbersome hierarchies, are greatly increased and can speed up decision-making instead of delaying it? It is obvious that the committee’s valiantly performed task in holding the Government to account is not at all helped by the endless, enormous stream of Commission proposals, all requiring Explanatory Memoranda from the Government, the quality of which—as we have heard in this debate and as the report confirms—is getting weaker and not stronger, I am afraid.

Of course, if we are looking at ways of halting or checking some of the less desirable elements of instruments and proposals, there is the yellow-card procedure. However, I think that most people—on all sides, without bias—have agreed that this is an utterly feeble instrument. The requirement of nine member states to make it work is ridiculously high. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs is right to urge that we move to a tougher reformed red card procedure, although that would have to be on the basis of far fewer national Parliaments objecting to make it realistic. Of course, that is precisely what some of us argued for in this very House at the time of the Lisbon treaty but it was rejected outright by the Labour Party and indeed—dare I say it?—by the Liberal Democrats.

Generally, if more ad hoc and e-enabled co-ordination is now to replace EU imposition and integrationist zealotry, a much better dialogue about competences, how things should be done, by whom and in what way is also required between member-state Parliaments and the Commission itself. Sadly, there, too, the Select Committee report speaks of “short and unspecific” responses from the Commission, often coming months late. This just will not do. This is not a state of affairs that those concerned with the welfare of this country or of Europe should accept. The whole balance is wrong and it is leading to increasingly bad results for the peoples of Europe.

I hope that in this House we will be able to debate in the autumn, as soon as we come back, some reports from the Cabinet Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the balance of competences, to which my noble friend Lord Bowness has referred. I am not sure how much we will learn from them about the burning need for change—although the need is there. Frankly, to judge by the first batch, which has already appeared, we are not going to learn much. They seem disappointingly shallow.

It is clear that the people drafting these documents—at least, the foreign policy paper that I have read carefully—have not understood that in the age of global connectivity, tasks and powers have changed, patterns and methods of trade and exchange have changed and the ways in which states relate to each other and negotiate have changed. Except for one brief mention, to which I direct your Lordships’ attention, on page 92 of the foreign policy review, there is no sign of awareness that digital networks change everything and that new alliances and networks must urgently be built if we are to prosper and protect our interests in this country, both as good members of the European Union and in relation to our growing interests in the outside world.

Above all, in the EU context, the old categories of so-called competences have now all been called into question and need unbundling and re-sorting. They were put together in another age. When it comes to actually getting things done, co-ordination between member states looks increasingly preferable to packaged- up EU competences and the capricious judgments of the politicised European Court of Justice. The balance of competences review sees an increasing blur between domestic and foreign policy but does not recognise an equally increasing blur between governmental and non-governmental agencies.

For example, if I may take an excellent report that came from EU Sub-Committee C of this House, there is the structure and role of the European External Action Service. I say excellent; I am not sure that I quite agree with the report’s conclusions on this venture because diplomacy through collective structures was never a great success and the issue now in the digital age is whether it is even necessary. Collective European aims in overseas theatres can now increasingly be achieved by swift co-ordination and alliance for specific tasks rather than by permanent and expensive new bureaucratic structures. The authors of this balance of competences review miss the point about the genius of the digital age: that instant and ad hoc co-ordination can be far more flexible, quicker, more efficient and better tailored to the particular mission in hand than heavy and complicated new treaty-empowered hierarchies of the kind set out in numbing and labyrinthine detail—if anyone wants to follow them—on pages 19 and 23 of the foreign policy review.

The age of vast, cumbersome, all-embracing and permanent treaties cascading measures from the central bureaucracies, with which our noble committees have had to struggle, is well and truly over—rather like the age of the vast, vulnerable battleships of the past. The age of more agile and practical co-ordination between states, focused on well defined common purposes, far more democratically accountable and closer to the people, is now upon us. Nowadays, Governments can come together and co-ordinate actions at the click of a button and then return to the pursuit of their national and local priorities and needs. This is the true path to democracy in Europe and to bringing Europe closer to its peoples. Communities no longer need to be built on massive central power. That was the doctrine of the previous century.

I hope that our committee, with all its excellent work and so well led by my noble friend Lord Boswell, will be able to recognise these changes and follow some of these guidelines in its future work. As I said, your Lordships must be ahead of the game in a totally transformed set of international conditions. If we are not, who will be?