European Union Committee: 2012-13 (EUC Report)

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 30th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle]

My Lords, I join the chorus of thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, and to the formidable array of committee chairs and retired chairs who have spoken. I thank them for their hard work, and for the rigour and objectivity of that work, which makes a tremendous contribution to the European debate in Britain.

I want to make three points in a brief speech. First, this work is essential and therefore I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, that there should be no further cutbacks to it in this House. Secondly, it can work properly only if all parts of the Government take it seriously. I have a lot of sympathy with the strictures on the Treasury that I have heard from various quarters in this debate. When I worked in 10 Downing Street the Treasury would not even tell No. 10 what was going on. That was not so much because of the personalities at the top but rather because of an institutional arrogance: they believe they are guardians of the state unaccountable to anyone else. This attitude has to change.

If I may make an aside, I am somewhat alarmed by the fact that at present the two key posts in the management of European business—in the European Secretariat and at UKRep in Brussels—are held by people from the Treasury. I congratulate Sir Jon Cunliffe, who is a very able man, on his appointment as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England but I hope this Treasury grip will not be maintained.

The third point is about the future work of the committee. Here I rather agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howell—and not just because of the very nice compliment that he paid my think tank—that the committee could take a more ambitious view of its role beyond scrutiny. We have to recognise that a big debate has been started about Britain’s future in the European Union and the committee can make a very valuable contribution to it, particularly in two areas where it is extremely well, if not uniquely well, qualified. One is the question of competences and the whole debate about subsidiarity and proportionality. The second is the debate about the need for an enhanced role for national parliaments.

A good starting point would be the Government’s balance of competences review. My fears about this have been somewhat allayed by the tone of the first reports, as they show an objectivity of approach. There has certainly been a bit of Lib Dem influence there, which is possibly more effective in this area than on many coalition policies. I also think there is a sense in parts of the Conservative Party that it is simply not going to follow the kind of bar-room prejudices of Nigel Farage in setting its future European agenda—at least, I hope so. I detect—I would like to know what the Minister says about this—that the Government are shifting from what started off as a Conservative manifesto commitment to the repatriation of powers to a sensible debate about the need for multilateral reform of the way the European Union exercises its competences. If that is the case, it would be quite an important shift, which on this side of the House we would very strongly support. The committee could help that debate along, particularly if it carried out a detailed examination of how there can be better enforcement of subsidiarity and proportionality and what role national Parliaments can play.

I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, is right to say that the work of the committee could be even better. Certainly, the role of national parliaments in the system could be strengthened without treaty change. We have to look, at a much earlier stage in the policy-making process than at present, at how national parliaments hold Ministers to account. We should seek to beef up the role of COSAC—the body that brings together the parliaments in Brussels—so that the yellow card procedure is used more effectively. Of course, there are all sorts of other ways in which the role of national parliaments could be strengthened through future treaty change, but I suspect that that is some way away.

Therefore, the Select Committee does excellent work, but it could do even more if it made a contribution to this crucial debate about reform of the European Union, and in that way helped us to remain effective members.