EU Action: Parliamentary Scrutiny
(asked on 21st July 2016) - View Source
Question to the Department for Exiting the European Union :
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, for each government department, from January to June 2016, on how many occasions the scrutiny reserve resolution in (1) the House of Lords, and (2) the House of Commons, was overridden, and in respect of how many documents an override occurred in (1) both Houses, or (2) either House.
Between January and June 2016, 484 Explanatory Memoranda on EU documents were submitted for scrutiny.
There were 37 occasions when the Government supported decisions in the EU Council of Ministers before the scrutiny procedures had been completed by either one or both Scrutiny Committees.
In each case the Government explained to the Scrutiny Committees why it was important for the proposal to be supported before the scrutiny process could be completed or where the Committees were unable to provide a waiver for the Government to support the proposal whilst retaining the issue under scrutiny. As with previous six-monthly periods, the largest category of instrument were fast-moving EU restrictive measures where there were 27 such instruments (73% of the total number) which were adopted before scrutiny could be completed.
The figures requested are set out below:
Department | (1). House of Lords Override | (2). House of Commons override | (1). No. of overrides in both Houses | (2). Total no. of overrides |
Foreign and Commonwealth Office* | 29 | 28 | 28 | 29 |
Business, Innovation and Skills | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
Culture, Media and Sport | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Home Office | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Justice | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Work and Pensions | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Totals | 36 | 35 | 34 | 37 |
* In addition to the formal overrides listed here, there were 27 occasions when Council Decisions were adopted prior to scrutiny by the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee due to their limite marking (ie internal EU limited distribution marking for content not intended to be in the public domain).