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Select Committee Reports
20. Mr. Dennis Canavan (Falkirk, West): If he will make a statement about the information which he has received about Select Committee reports before their publication. [74927]
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Robin Cook): I have already provided such information in my statement to the House, and in written parliamentary answers. The special report on Sierra Leone by the Foreign Affairs Committee is now before the Committee on Standards and Privileges, which I shall provide with any further information that it requires.
Mr. Canavan: May we have an assurance that if there is any further attempt by a Select Committee member to hand over a draft report to the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State will hand that report back to the Chairman or Clerk of the appropriate Select Committee?
Mr. Cook: I can happily give my hon. Friend and the House an assurance that we will destroy any such report without taking further action.
European Commission
3.30 pm
The Prime Minister (Mr. Tony Blair): I should like to make a statement today on the report of the Committee of Independent Experts, and the resignation last night of Jacques Santer and his 19 colleagues in the European Commission.
The Committee of Independent Experts, set up last January on a motion from the Labour Group of the European Parliament to investigate allegations of fraud and mismanagement, reported yesterday. It is a damning report. It catalogues in key areas a culture of complacency and lack of accountability, and in some cases nepotism, that is unacceptable. The report could not be more clear-cut. It has revealed systemic failings in the Commission which have been tolerated for far too long.
It was absolutely right that the Commission resigned en masse. The President of the Commission should leave as soon as reasonably and practically possible, and a new President should take his place. The Commission should stay only in a caretaker role until a new Commission is appointed.
There is no criticism of the two British Commissioners. Indeed, they played a key role in bringing this issue to a head, and I believe that they should carry on.
Above all, the appointment of a new President and Commission should be the opportunity to push through root-and-branch reform of the Commission, its mandate and its method of operation. I will, of course, discuss these issues fully with Chancellor Schroder, the present European Union President, when I see him later today.
The new President of the Commission must be a political heavyweight, capable of providing the Commission with leadership and authority.
Jacques Santer is by no means solely responsible for this situation. Indeed, to be fair to him, he has instituted many changes of a worthwhile nature. Many of the issues revealed by the report predate his appointment. But I will be blunt: we cannot have the next President decided in the same way as the last, debating the narrow interests of one country or another. The top jobs, not just in the Commission, but throughout the European institutions, should go to the top people. Merit, and merit alone, should decide. We need the best person for the job of President, and we Heads of Government should make it clear that the Commission President operates under a mandate for reform and is a thorough-going reformer.
I would like Heads of Government, in the manner that we proposed last year at the conclusion of our presidency, to give the new Commission--with due involvement on the part of the European Parliament--a specific statement of what we believe the aims and mission of the new Commission should be: a new contract between the Commission and the Council. It should set a clear new course for a Europe of reform and change.
The changes suggested by the committee of inquiry yesterday are just the first step. In the short term, reform must include at least the following: a complete overhaul of the approval and auditing procedures for financial control; a new system for financial management and spending programmes; an entirely new procedure for the awarding of contracts for the provision of services with a new management system to oversee it; reworking of the
whole disciplinary procedure so that staff in the Commission know exactly what is expected of them and what will happen if they fall short of those expectations; and a new system of accountability in the bureaucracy of the Commission so that each individual holding a position of responsibility is fully accountable for the budget and the measures that he or she manages.
In addition, we also need an entirely new framework for fighting fraud and financial irregularities. We have long been advocates of the appointment of an independent fraud investigation office which has full access to documents and officials, and the powers that it needs. That appointment should now be made.
The Committee of Independent Experts will report again soon with further recommendations on reform. We should implement them. In the longer term, we should put in place, as we argued at Amsterdam during our presidency and ever since, a new structure for the Commission, a better process of decision making, and a system of accountability that recognises the importance of connecting the people of Europe more closely to the decisions that affect them.
The inquiry's report has revealed a sad catalogue of negligence and mismanagement. There will, no doubt, be those who see this as just another chance to bash Europe. Intelligently seen, this is, in fact, an opportunity to make changes that many of us believe and have argued are long overdue. It is our responsibility now to use this crisis to ensure that the standards of management and public administration in the European institutions are as high as we expect them to be in national and regional governments in Europe. Let us seize that opportunity, therefore, and use it well.
Mr. William Hague (Richmond, Yorks):
Yesterday's report from the inquiry on fraud could not have been more devastating. It refers to the European Commission having
Will the Prime Minister ensure that the national Governments now take an immediate grip of this situation, if necessary at an emergency summit within days, to restore public confidence in European institutions and to implement radical change? Will he consider adding to the list of proposals that he made a few moments ago: a binding code of conduct for the appointment ofsenior officials to prevent personal appointments by Commissioners and to stamp out nepotism in the Commission; an agreement that the European Parliament should be able to sack individual Commissioners who are guilty of misconduct; strengthened and publicly available
declarations of financial interest by Commissioners and by their senior staff; and the immediate introduction of a systematic career management system for senior Commission staff, so that they rotate between responsibilities, as would be normal in any other Administration?
Does the Prime Minister agree that Jacques Santer should be relieved of all responsibilities with immediate effect, leave his office today and not return to it? While supporting the idea of those Commissioners not directly implicated by the report serving out their terms as an interim measure, can I specifically ask the Prime Minister to agree that there should be a total clear-out of the existing Commission and an entirely new set of Commissioners appointed?
Is there not an even bigger issue and more important challenge now, which is that it is time to change the whole culture that leads the European Commission and the European Union to try to do too much and to interfere too often? The report makes it clear that the attempts of the Commission to implement a humanitarian aid budget, a policy on tourism and a highly expensive programme of aid to the Mediterranean led to massive fraud and irregularities that the Commission were unable or unwilling to deal with. Is that not what comes of trying to do too much? Is not the wrong answer to recruit more staff and the right answer to reduce the Commission's range of activities?
This is surely the heart of the matter. Does the Prime Minister recognise that a strong case already exists, further strengthened by this report, for cutting back on what the Commission does and letting national Governments do it instead? Will he accept that there is now considerable evidence that, in almost every case, bilateral aid provides better value for money than EU aid programmes? Is there not a strong case for the EU not to have an aid programme, but for those resources to be spent instead by member states?
Would it not be better, instead of the Commission trying to run a fisheries policy for every country, for local or national fishing industries to have control over the stock of their fisheries, while recognising the traditional rights of other countries?
Should not the Commission be doing less in those and in other ways, so that it might deal more effectively with the real priorities of enlargement of the European Union and completion of the single market? Is it not time not only for a new contract, but a new direction?
Will the Prime Minister now come clean and give straight answers to some specific questions on events of the past few months? Will he confirm that, only yesterday, at the Economic and Finance Council, the Chancellor signed up to creation of a fraud investigation office that, far from being independent of the Commission, would come under the control of the Commission, in directorate F?
Will the Prime Minister confirm that yesterday--on the very day the report was produced--the Chancellor thought it right, at ECOFIN, to sign off the 1997 European Union accounts, whereas the European Parliament itself has refused to do so?
Will the Prime Minister now give the House an answer about what instructions and advice he gave to Pauline Green, the Labour leader of the Socialists in the European
Parliament, before Labour Members of the European Parliament let the Commission off the hook two months ago, after the revelations?
Why was the leader of the Socialist group, Pauline Green, to be seen celebrating that event with Jacques Santer, with champagne, as recorded on German television, rather doing her job of holding the Commission to account?
"lost control of the administration."
It says that
"it is difficult to find anyone who has even the slightest sense of responsibility",
and that
"no supervision was exercised and a state within a state was allowed to develop."
It is welcome to hear the Prime Minister speak of root-and-branch reform--although we are learning, week by week, to judge him by his actions and not by his words--but does he accept that a more drastic overhaul of the Commission is now required than has ever before been envisaged; more important still, that the European Commission needs to do less rather than more; and that what it does it must do better?
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