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WEDNESDAY 20 NOVEMBER 2002 __________ Members present: Mr Jimmy Hood, in the Chair __________ RT HON PETER HAIN, a Member of the House, Government Representative on the Convention on the Future of Europe, MR NICK BAIRD, Head of European Union Department (Internal), MS SARAH LYONS, Private Secretary to the Government Representative on the Convention on the Future of Europe, examined. Chairman
(Peter Hain) Thank you very much, Chairman. I am sure the promotion is entirely due to your co-operation! (Peter Hain) I think it will make a major difference and I think this Committee's proposals in that area - though not fully achieved in the Convention yet - were an important contribution to framing the debate which helped us to press for the principle of subsidiarity to be vested with national parliaments, and for us to win that argument. It is true that we have not established a permanent watchdog, but there was a very allergic reaction in the Convention to creating another institution. In practice the way it will work is that any new Commission proposal will be immediately e-mailed to national parliaments and, I guess, to your Committee, Chairman (should that be the procedure determined by our Parliament) for a determination as to whether the principle of subsidiarity (in other words, whether the matter should be decided at the national state level or a European level) is infringed by that proposal, or - as important, I believe, though it has not received as much attention - the principle of proportionality, in other words, whether the Commission proposal is too intrusive, or too heavy-handed a way of going about a desirable objective. I mention proportionality because I think the antagonism to some proposals and policies emanating from Brussels is not because - as often - people feel subsidiarity has been infringed but because they feel a worthwhile objective is being achieved in too heavy-handed a fashion. So national parliaments will have a period of, perhaps, four to six weeks to react to whether they think the principle of subsidiarity is being infringed or not. That is a major constitutional advance for us (Britain) and for Europe as a whole, because up until now the institutions of the European Union, subject to national vetos and so forth, have been able to proceed as they wish. I cannot over-emphasise how important an achievement this has been and, indeed, how much, as it were, traditional resistance we had to overcome to secure it. So an early warning mechanism, I do think, is a very, very important principle to have established. (Peter Hain) We put forward the idea of a watchdog mechanism. What we have is a virtual watchdog, not a new body meeting in Brussels regularly, as it would presumably have to have done, but every national parliament in the loop. Of course, in future this may evolve and we would be very comfortable with that. There would be nothing to stop national parliaments freely deciding to get together, should a particular issue be so critical. My impression and my prediction of how this would work is that the existence of this early warning mechanism will act as a severe deterrent on the Commission, the Council and the European Parliament. It is not just the Commission that gets into the area of infringing subsidiarity, it is often actually in the Council or the Parliament in the process of subsequent decision making that this might arise. I think it will be such a significant deterrent that it will effectively build into European decision-making a weather eye on not infringing either subsidiarity or proportionality principles. I do not know if, at the end of the day, the absence of a formal mechanism - which, as you know, would have been quite difficult to implement, to get national parliamentarians all in the same place on the same day - is going to make a lot of difference. (Peter Hain) At the moment, of course, it is a final court of appeal, and there is recourse to the ECJ. What we did not want to do, and what we have so far avoided (though there are, in the Convention, conclusions still in issue to be decided) is the idea that judges could be brought in at any time to make rulings on this issue. It was quite significant that in the working party in which I represented the Government on subsidiarity, the court's Advocate came to give evidence and the court did not want that either, because they knew they were the final court of appeal and they did not want to be brought in on what, for us, was a basic principle: elected politicians should be the arbiters on this matter, not judges. Angus Robertson (Peter Hain) This is an important issue and I anticipated you might raise it. Can I just make one general European point and then a specific point about the United Kingdom? The European Union consists of regions within nation states as well as nation states themselves, and included in regions are nations like Scotland and Wales. However, the picture of regions across the European Union is very haphazard and very far from uniform; some countries do not have regions, others have different patterns of regional legislatures within them, as we do, and others have regional assemblies in some parts of their countries and none in others. So the idea that you could get a uniform, regional channel into the European Union's decision-making structure is, therefore, simply not a runner - whether that was desirable or not. The principle, of course, of the European Union being a union of sovereign Member States is the bedrock of the European Union. So I just make that general point. As far as Britain is concerned, this is really a matter for your Committee, for our Parliament, but I would personally favour - speaking as the Government's representative and a Member of the Cabinet - a situation in which any incoming e-mail from Brussels to Westminster was automatically copied to the Scottish Parliament, to the National Assembly for Wales and to the Northern Ireland Assembly (assuming that was up and running) for their views; so that there was a way of taking into account their views and, in your case, the Scottish Parliament's views. I think that would be a sensible way of handling it. However, you could not have a situation where, as it were, the subsidiarity principle was being decided on an ad hoc basis according to regions across Europe that have been differently constituted and, in some countries, do not exist at all. (Peter Hain) Of course, because that is the bedrock of the European Union and, of course, these matters are reserved matters, as you understand. I take your point that some issues may affect the Scottish level, or the Welsh or Northern Ireland level, for that matter. I am sure that this is a matter that can be sensibly organised in order to reflect those concerns. Chairman (Peter Hain) Exactly. Chairman: The best practice that we gain through experience from now until we have more regional assemblies will help our process. Miss McIntosh (Peter Hain) This was a point made by some members of the Commission who did not find this a particularly attractive idea. They said one of their remits was precisely to keep an eye open for subsidiarity principles. I am not sure that the Commission has been a particular culprit in infringing subsidiarity. It is much more complex than that. If I may make a confession, we, as the British Government (indeed, this Government) when we had the Presidency in 1998, came up with the Zoo Directive. Fine, but in retrospect were regulations for zoos a matter for the European Union or a matter for Member States? I think, in retrospect, we might have taken a different view, and you could repeat this right across the board; Presidencies tend to have their own fads, and it is the Council which is as much of a culprit in this area as anybody else. I do not know that the Commission has a particularly bad record on this, but from now on it will not be able to have a bad record. (Peter Hain) All the wiser for the experience. (Peter Hain) I do not think so, because, first of all, the principle of national parliaments being the arbiters on subsidiarity has been established, and most people did not expect that argument to be won but it has been, and received wide support not just from us but right across the Convention. So that is important on subsidiarity. The working group on the role of national parliaments - which my honourable friend the Member for Egbaston chaired very ably - came out with a number of other proposals which, to some extent, reflected the work of your own group, Chairman: the importance of scrutiny, minimum guidelines needed to improve national scrutiny procedures right across the board, because they are very uneven, and (an especially important point) greater links between Members of Parliament and Members of the European Parliament. I think you are quite right to say that they are different roles and it is not the job of Members of Parliament, such as us here, to continuously be in Brussels peering over European Union Parliamentarians' shoulders. On the other hand, I am struck - and I made this point in the Convention - by the huge gap there is between national parliamentarians and what is going on in the institutions of the European Parliament. Indeed, there is probably only a very select group of our own Parliament - including you, of course, and your Committee, Chairman - which has an up-to-date working knowledge of what is going on in Europe. So I think the fact that the working group proposed closer links and closer liaison is very much to be welcomed. Mr Cash (Peter Hain) Yes, I am very happy to. Of course we believe in the sovereignty of parliament. That is the bedrock of parliamentary democracy and, indeed, the bedrock of our membership of the European Union. It was this Parliament that voted to join the European Union; it is this Parliament that has endorsed treaties and changes during the evolution of the European Union, and we could not have agreed to those changes without the sovereignty of our own national Parliament being respected and, indeed, giving us the mandate to agree those things. In many respects we have agreed to share sovereignty - willingly, voluntary, by vote in this Parliament, agreed to share sovereignty - with the European Parliament. Indeed, your own government did this more than anybody else over the single market - a huge sharing of trading sovereignty and commercial sovereignty to our advantage because our companies benefited from it. (Peter Hain) Similarly, we have agreed to share sovereignty over establishing a much better policy on dealing with the problem of human trafficking, in saying that this is a matter better decided by co-operation on a decision at European level so that we can get common standards to protect our own borders and our own society from gangs trafficking in human beings. I can give many other examples. (Peter Hain) A very good article. (Peter Hain) I do not think so. (Peter Hain) I really do not think so. (Peter Hain) I am always interested in hearing your questions. (Peter Hain) No, I do not agree with that because the principle that the Foreign Secretary was enunciating in that article, which is what I have spent some minutes explaining to you already this morning, was the new opportunity for national parliaments to determine subsidiarity and proportionality matters on issues which our own parliament has already decided should be a matter for European decision making. In other words, by sovereign decisions our parliament has decided on single market matters, on common asylum policy matters, on fighting terrorism matters and so on, and decided that our own national interests, including this sovereign parliament, is better protected by co-operation at the European level and then imposing a check on the nature of those policies, in respect of whether they infringe subsidiarity or proportionality, by perhaps majority vote. It is not the principle of the sovereign decision, it is a matter of whether the nature of that policy infringes the principles of subsidiarity or proportionality. I think, if I may briefly add to that, it is actually in our interest to have a majority rather than unanimity because we could have a group of Member States that were not that bothered about subsidiarity and proportionality being infringed, and therefore we would lose the ability to give ourselves the protection which majority voting would provide. (Peter Hain) On the contrary, I think your position is the contradiction here. If our Parliament, as it has done - as your government did more often than we have done ---- (Peter Hain) You are a lone ranger on these matters - and a very attractive one, if I may say so. However, if our Parliament votes to say that our national interest is best protected against this phenomenon of human trafficking organised by criminal gangs by voluntarily sharing sovereignty on these matters to strengthen border posts to common standards, to share intelligence and to establish common legal procedures to combat this issue, surely the average person in the street is going to say "Good on you". It is a very good thing. We cannot isolate ourselves from this problem any more than we can isolate ourselves from, say, the threat to our environment. Pollution, as far as I know, even under the Conservative Party, did not stop at Calais. Therefore, sharing of sovereignty on environmental standards protects our national interest. I think that is the answer to your proposition. Tony Cunningham (Peter Hain) I think you make the case perfectly for why we share sovereignty to fight international crime, and why it is in our national interest to do so. I am sure your constituents would thank you for having achieved that, just as my constituents will. I guess the honourable Member for Stone's constituents would thank him too, even if he may not thank himself. Mr Tynan (Peter Hain) The idea was first put forward by the President of the Convention, Giscard d'Estaing, and it is not an idea we had encountered before. His proposal, and there is some support for it in the Convention (though considerable opposition as well), is for national parliamentarians and European parliamentarians to come together in a Congress, meeting perhaps once every five years or once a year - the detail is distinctly unclear. As to what we feel about this, until we know really what this animal is it is difficult to form a view upon it. If it is a way of involving national parliamentarians in determining and discussing a kind of policy agenda for Europe on a periodic basis then there may be considerable merit in it, which even your Committee, Chairman, might want to look at, and I would be interested in your views. If it is an entirely new institution (and, by definition, I guess it would be a new institution) to change the nature of decision-making in the European Union and to, in a sense, bypass Member States' vital strategic role in that decision-making, then I would be very concerned about it. (Peter Hain) We are adopting an attitude, as I have on the Convention, of always open to a good idea, if it is a good idea. What does it mean? What role could it perform? I have been asking these questions and the answers have still to be given. We are not ruling out support; it may be it could play a role in annual consideration of the European Union's work programme. That may be valuable. It may be a way of tying national parliamentarians more into it. It is quite interesting that, again, an additional role is being considered for national parliamentarians - another sign of Europe changing more towards the kind of future where we want it to be. (Peter Hain) I think there is a real issue here, which is one of the purposes of the Convention. Indeed, one of the remits given to it by the Lakken Council in December of last year was to simplify and clarify the tangled web of decision-making and treaties that make it very difficult for the average citizen really clearly to understand what is going on. On the creation, or setting up, of another body, I think the jury is out on whether it will do that or not. That test has to be applied very rigorously before we take a view on it. Angus Robertson (Peter Hain) Yes, it is. We are advocates of full transparency of the decision-making. Not of negotiation because if you put the cameras in when the Council of Ministers is in formation negotiating it would not happen; it would happen, as it does in the Security Council, in a side room or it would happen in the corridors or various smoke-filled rooms (I do not think you can have smoke-filled rooms in the European Union). At any rate, if you leave that negotiating role of the Council aside, then I think the cameras should be in all the time, when speeches are being made, when positions are being argued and when votes - where they happen - take place. For me that is a crucial part of the chain of accountability being established so that the public know what their elected minister is doing on their behalf, and so that parliaments know. The advantage, too, is that very often governments become parties to a decision willingly in the context of the Council but then deny it afterwards and say "Oh, no, it was the rest of the mob that forced this on us." We have got some advance on that, as you know, from the changes in Seville, the European Council there, which brought the cameras in to some extent, but I think we need to go much further. Mr David (Peter Hain) It is a very interesting point, because when you get into conciliation and co-decision all of that becomes a bit of a fog. I know that several former MEPs on your Committee would confirm that, Chairman. We have not really had the opportunity to go into this matter in the Convention, but if the Committee has any ideas I would gladly have a look at them and take them on. We have still to discuss institutional matters, of which this might be one area. The role of the European Parliament, I think, is due to come up in the January period of the Convention's deliberations. If you have any thoughts before then, formal or informal, I would be glad to receive them. Tony Cunningham Chairman (Peter Hain) You know, our views on the Charter have not changed; we have all along said that it contains a set of admirable principles but we said, at least, that it was unsuitable for legal incorporation - indeed, the Nice European Council agreed with us - because it risked creating a legal uncertainty for the citizens and for Member States. We could not have agreed and still could not agree to giving the Charter full legal status and incorporation into the Treaties unless that problem of legal uncertainty and the role of the Member States was resolved. So in the working group, where Baroness Scotland represented the Government, we fought very hard and began, I think, to win the battle for ensuring that the Charter could not be legally enforceable through our domestic courts. So the working group unanimously came up with a proposition which was, essentially, British ideas to strengthen the horizontal articles in the Charter that, effectively, in simple terms, stopped it reaching down into our domestic courts and changing our domestic law. That position was endorsed almost unanimously in the plenary. So I do not think that can be unpicked. We still have to see exactly how that might, as it were, come out on the night in terms of its full incorporation into the new constitution, which would have to be the case. We would need to be absolutely clear that, for example, you could not change our strike laws, you could not change our employment laws and you could not enable an individual citizen who felt they were not getting the housing opportunity they wanted from their local authority to take that local council to court and, ultimately, to the European Court of Justice under the Charter because that is not a role for Europe, that is a matter for national decision-making and, ultimately, for local authorities. We could have had a situation, if the Charter had simply been incorporated wholesale and unamended into the treaties, which would have been a matter of national veto for us. We are still very far from being certain that our concerns in that respect have been fully accommodated, but we have got a major part of the way and a significant change of stance by other European countries and their parliamentarians. So we are in a much more encouraging position than we were. (Peter Hain) I think you raise an issue that if it were to be incorporated and if all that necessary protection were built in and, in effect, a fire-break created through these horizontal articles, stopping the impact of the Charter coming down and changing our domestic law - because, remember, the Charter was about citizens of Europe's rights against the institutions, to stop the institutions behaving in a way contrary to those principles of civil rights and so on, not to change domestic laws - then the issue arises should it just be incorporated wholesale into the Treaty with those necessary horizontal clauses, or should there be an article in the new Treaty that cross-references to a protocol, which is what you refer to? We favour the latter, with, also, a full explanatory text associated. That has been the decision of the Convention so far. So it would not be possible to unpick this or to change it in a way that threatened the interests of British citizens - indeed European citizens - as a whole. What was very notable as we made these arguments was that we got more and more Member States and national parliamentarians from other countries supporting us. However the jury is still out for us on whether we can support this or not. We will have to see exactly what the final wording looks like, and there will probably still be some negotiation. Mr Cash (Peter Hain) Can I first of all say that I am a much more grey and boring minister than anyone who could have produced a quote like that. (Peter Hain) No, I am just more grey and boring. You said "the courts will use". This is precisely the area which we have been very concerned about, which is why we opposed full-scale incorporation at Nice. Until and if (and we are not there) that changed so that effectively the courts would not be able to pray the Charter in-aid for decision-making then we could not even consider going down this road. We are not there yet, but you will understand that to have achieved a situation where there was virtually unanimous support elsewhere in the European Union for full incorporation of the Charter, with Britain standing with a few others outside, to have emerged from that position to one where we have changed thinking fundamentally so that now there is unanimous support for strengthening the horizontal articles, is a major step forward, which I am sure you would concede. It is not a big enough step forward for us yet to consider incorporation because we want to be absolutely one hundred per cent certain that we have built in the necessary protective layer. There is an issue, and this was another factor, as to whether the European Court of Human Rights came into the picture. This was one of the issues to be resolved, but the idea is to try and accede to the European Union, accede to the European Court of Human rights and to do so in a way (which I think is a good thing) that does not contain a contradictory set of routes, for example, to which court do you go, Strasbourg or Luxembourg, in order to assert a right. So there are issues here still to be resolved. (Peter Hain) Which is why we are treating them with very great caution and great prudence, to borrow a word. Angus Robertson (Peter Hain) First of all, I hope the Committee would agree that we want Europe to play a stronger role in the world stage. I think the world is evolving into a multi-polar world. Yes, we will still have one dominant super power for the foreseeable future and it is very important that Europe, as Britain does, works as a whole in partnership with the United States of America. I think the world will evolve beyond the present situation, with China becoming much more significant on the diplomatic stage, not just economically; with Russia wanting a partnership with the European Union and being a significant player, and other countries as well - India, I think, cannot be written out of the picture in terms of it influencing in future decades this century. Where does Europe stand? We are the biggest, richest part of the world and have the biggest single market in the modern world, after enlargement. After enlargement of the European Union the European economy will be bigger than the two biggest economies in the world, Japan and America, combined, and we are the biggest provider of overseas aid and development assistance in the world, providing more than half as the European Union. The question is do we take our global responsibility seriously on the diplomatic stage? I think we should. I think we should have a stronger Common Foreign and Security Policy and it is in Britain's interests for that to be the case, so that, for example, we can intervene as the European Union more effectively in resolving matters in our own back yards, such as the Balkans. Mr Cash (Peter Hain) I will come back to Iraq if you wish to press me on that point. Your question was - and I am sorry to set the stage but I think context is quite important - how could this be done? First of all, we need a much more effective European Council instead of the leadership changing every six months and instead of the agenda being a matter of an individual Presidency's fads on a rotating six-monthly basis - there being a strategic agenda. So I think that is one part of the picture. That links straight back into the nation states, as the Council is run by Member States such as ourselves, and the veto would have to exist as far as all the big questions on foreign policy and security policy are concerned. As far as implementation is concerned, that is done by qualified majority voting at the present time. So reform of the Council is part of that. Linked to that is the position of the High Representative, Javier Solana, currently doing an excellent job, giving the European Union a voice in the Middle East negotiations, in the Balkans and so on, and being seen as a credible figure in Washington, which the European Union has never had before. So we want to see that position strengthened, given more resources and so on. There is then a question as to how you link it into the Chris Patten figure, the External Relations Commissioner of the Commission, who has all the money and has the important responsibilities for aid and development and association agreements with other countries, and so on. So it is a question of how you co-ordinate those two roles. We are not in favour of a straight merging or a Commission takeover because that would effectively communitise foreign policy. So getting a much more effective CFSP for the European Union will involve strengthening that figure, strengthening the European Council, but it remaining essentially an intergovernmental matter but doing it in a way so that - because foreign policy is a continuum between the hard end, being the military dimension, and the soft end, being the aid and development dimension, as we have seen in Afghanistan, for example, only recently - there is a continuum and a continuous linkage between the different roles, but it being a matter ultimately for Member States to decide. Angus Robertson (Peter Hain) The role of Scotland? (Peter Hain) I understand that and you have got a reasonable point to make here. I am sorry that you have not got an answer on the question as to why documents relating to an ESDP operation could not be provided to the Committee. It is actually proving to be a much more complicated subject than we thought at first sight when we were considering this in the Foreign Office. What we are trying to do is marry together the way we consult Parliament during NATO operations and the way in which we provide European Union documents to parliaments, which is proving all the more complicated by the fact that some European Union documents to an ESDP operation may originate elsewhere. I think the Minister of State for the Armed Forces has been in touch with the Committee and this is now not a matter for me but a matter for the Minister for Europe and for the Foreign Security, but there are discussions going on with the MoD to try and clarify these issues in order for your own wishes to be satisfied. Angus Robertson: Thank you. Mr Hendrick (Peter Hain) Dealing with that point first, the constitution of the United Nations does not provide for regional groups in the world to be represented on the Security Council. So that is not really an issue. It perhaps is in a theoretical sense. Even that minority of voices in the Convention that want foreign policy communitised, basically because they are small players on the world stage, to be perfectly brutal about it, have not argued a case for France's seat or Britain's seat to be given up, and we would not agree to that. That is just out of the picture, full-stop, end of the story, as far as we are concerned, and that goes for France. It is not a serious proposition. On your more interesting point - or even more interesting point - about the soft end and the hard end, if you look at what we have done - and this is a very practical issue - we have agreed, for example, to share sovereignty on trade negotiations, which comes into foreign policy. So a European Commissioner, Pascal Lame, very brilliantly represented us, Britain, our national parliament, through the European Union at the Dohare talks and was able, because we are a strong block, to strike a deal with his opposite number the American negotiator to get a much more progressive position on opening up world trade and trying to create the basis for world trade and open up trade to poorer countries in the world, for instance. Now it is all part of foreign policy, you could argue, so that is a communitised soft end of external relations which we are happy to have agreed to. I do not think anybody would challenge that seriously. The same goes for development aid and assistance, it is an advantage that Europe has got a big programme but that does not stop us having our own programme or any other Member States. These things can run in together. The red line for us is we could not agree to a decision in Brussels committing British soldiers into a conflict zone where their lives may be at risk, that is a matter for this Parliament and our Government which is accountable to this Parliament. That deals with the Iraq issue, for example. What we are trying to establish is a Common Foreign and Security Policy which is a serious policy because you have this schizophrenia in the Convention, if I can be frank about it, that the most strident voices for a completely overwhelming foreign policy for the European Union are the ones who do not really want a serious foreign policy, they want to just issue resolutions and make statements and think that the world changes by that. We all want the conflict in the Middle East to end and for an independent Palestinian state to be established and the security of Israel to be guaranteed. The way some other Europeans operate, ministers included, which I have seen first hand is they just think you can rush out and issue a statement to the nearest television camera and then everything changes, of course it does not as we have seen with the expert work done by the Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister on Iraq. This is painstaking negotiation diplomacy and to get the European Union into that position requires big changes and a complete change of attitude as well on the part of a lot of Member States, and particularly the part of European parliamentarians. Mr Cash (Peter Hain) Well, there are a lot of them. (Peter Hain) That would be very pleasant. First of all, can I say, Chairman, good friend though he is, I think anything that any British Government does, including those of Mrs Thatcher and John Major, in the Hon. Member's eyes would be selling Britain down the river in the European Union. It is just an article of faith for him as far as the European Union is concerned, even if it is in the British national interest. Let me just make that point, in a sense. To deal with his specific matters. First of all, the European Commission has large rights of initiative at the present time, excluding Common Foreign and Security Policy and some aspects of justice and home affairs. I do not think anybody is envisaging that changes, it is either reduced or increased. It leads to the point about a single legal personality as well. At the moment you have the European Community and you have the European Union which is pretty confusing for most citizens and also confusing for third countries. If you are negotiating an association agreement say with a North African country in the Mediterranean area, effectively you have a whole series of agreements, some of which are with the European Union, some of which are with the European Community, some of which have to be negotiated by the Commission, others of which have to be negotiated with the Council and this is a very confusing way to go about life. Provided that a single legal personality - which meant effectively that in legal international terms there was no distinction between the European Union, it was one body effectively in international legal terms - for example, Common Foreign and Security Policy was communitised, provided that did not mean that aspects of justice and home affairs were communitised, provided that did not mean that the EU became some federal super state then I think we should approach this in a very practical way, let us see what it means not just react in a kind of knee jerk fashion to it. The same goes for the principle of the constitution. To all intents and purposes the treaties of the European Union, running as they do to hundreds of thousands of words and hundreds of pages, amount to a kind of constitution for the European Union. The issue is do you bring these together in a simple straight forward clear test which the Foreign Secretary has called the European constitution or not? Now I think your constituents and mine would think there is quite a lot of merit in doing that provided - and this is the important proviso which relates to your question as well - that it is a constitution on the foundations of Member States, not some Brussels super state. I do not think there is any prospect of the Convention agreeing a federal super state model for the European Union. The support does not exist, not only Britain would oppose that, France would oppose it, Spain would oppose it, Italy would oppose it, Sweden would oppose it, Denmark would oppose it, most of the candidate countries would oppose it because they have only in the last decade or so emerged from under the shadow of being run from Moscow and they are not about to be run from Brussels so I do not think that is a serious runner. I am sure you would all want to look constructively at what is in a constitution rather than simply rejecting it wholesale. Miss McIntosh (Peter Hain) First of all, I omitted to answer one of the Hon. Member for Stone's questions, if you would forgive me and allow me just to do so briefly. There are aspects of the Giscard draft that we do not agree with, for example renaming the European Union. He suggested it could be called the United States of Europe, that was one option, well forget that frankly. Another idea was United Europe or Europe United which sounds like a football team to me to be frank. I think most Members of the Convention attacked the renaming the European Union and said "Look, we have got a name, let us stick to it". Then there was a rather odd proposal for dual citizenship and it was not clear what that meant. On the contribution from Professor Dashwood, what is known as the Cambridge test - because he is a professor at Cambridge University - it is not Government policy. We commissioned Professor Dashwood and his team at Cambridge to produce a test and we gave him Jack Straw's speeches and said we would like to see what his best shot at a European constitution could look like on the principle of a Union of Nation States rather than a federal super state. He came out with his own version. He retained complete editorial control. It contains some very good ideas such as clear dividing lines between the European Union and Member State roles, which is not defined often as clearly as it is in his test in the existing treaties but it differs from government policy in a number of areas too. I am sure you do not want me to give a running commentary on Dashwood but we thought it was a valuable contribution to the debate, not least because there was a Florence text produced by the European University Institute at Florence which was a text we did not like and which was in a sense going the super state way. We wanted to put another contribution into the debate. In practice what will happen is we will negotiate from January onwards and, indeed, the presidium of the Convention secretariat is hard at work already trying to do some drafting around fleshing out the Giscard skeleton. We will negotiate around that and bring into play some of Professor Dashwood's ideas where these things seem appropriate. (Peter Hain) No, a speech is a speech and an article in The Economist is exactly that and has to conform to the editorial requirements which are appropriate whereas a draft constitution is something that lawyers have to do and is an altogether different kettle of fish. Mr David (Peter Hain) The three pillars of the European Union are pretty unfathomable for most people, frankly, with all humility I would say, including most Members of Parliament, indeed probably to me until I became the Minister for Europe. We are not saying that should be set in concrete. What must be set in concrete is the principle that there are certain matters which are matters for Community action, which are communitised and the Community is in the lead and the European Parliament is in the lead and the other matters for Member States and the governments through the European Council, foreign policy and security policy being a candidate firmly in the camp of governments and the European Council. We have agreed already in the third pillar, affecting justice and home affairs, to areas like asylum policy and anti-terrorism policy and fighting crime moving out of the third pillar, ceasing in other words to be an inter-governmental matter and becoming a Community matter. It leaves still areas which are quite important like criminal law, the way our judicial system works as being matters for nation states. If we get rid of the pillar concept - and I am not saying yes or no to that until I see what it means - we can only agree to do so if we can keep certain justice and home affairs areas boxed off as inter-governmental matters along with Common Foreign and Security Policy so that is the way we are approaching it. Chairman (Peter Hain) What we have at the moment is a principle which we endorsed from the working group, the actual practical implementation of it is still a matter for discussion and for agreement. Your guidance on that will be welcome as soon as you are able to give it. (Peter Hain) We saw it for the first time as we did other ideas in the skeleton draft constitution which he put forward and we are having a look at it. It may be a good idea that Members States which are so fed up with the European Union are able to remove themselves from it. We need to look at the detail, we need to know exactly what it means. (Peter Hain) President Giscard is a very creative fellow and he comes up with lots of interesting ideas and this is one of them. (Peter Hain) No. Mr Steen (Peter Hain) No, it has not, to be absolutely frank with you. It was an idea we saw first when the draft was published. Nobody has mentioned it in the Convention, either before or since. Chairman: I want to move on to third pillar and legal personality for the EU. Mr David. Mr David (Peter Hain) This is an important matter and it has not been easy to arrive at a settled position. The Secretary of State for Scotland with my agreement as Minister for Europe has established a working group with the devolved administrations to see whether there is a consensus in this area and in due course we will see whether there is. I think there are a number of principles that we can set out. One principle being advanced by some regions of Europe is an automatic right of access by regional institutions to the European Court of Justice and we are not keen on that and nor for that matter are the Scottish Executive or the Welsh Cabinet. They are not interested in that idea. I think everybody recognises that European regions - which as I say includes nations - are playing a more and more important part in the new Europe and we need to try and look ahead to see what future role might be played. Companies increasingly decide not to just to say invest in Britain but to invest in a particular region of Britain compared with a particular region of Germany or France according to the competitiveness and the opportunities there. Likewise as the world has got more global there is a growing assertion of local and regional identity and Europe needs to reflect that. Now whether that is achieved through giving a greater role to the Committee of the Regions is certainly one matter under consideration but if your Committee, Chairman, has any thoughts on that I would be interested. The Committee of the Regions has not been very influential. There is an oddity about it, also, that it contains both local authorities and European regions. I think it is important local government retains its influence into the European Union in its own right but whether that should always be the case that they sit together in the same body with the regions assuming much greater importance is an issue to be discussed. Mr Robertson (Peter Hain) I am not a Member of Parliament for Scotland. (Peter Hain) I do not know whether your very diligent researchers - I must say I am sure it is good for you reading my speeches - might have missed the fact that I was one of the few voices calling for a working group on the role of regions, in fact I think that was a month or two ago. I did not win that argument but certainly the representatives of the Committee of the Regions and others - parliamentarians and so on - were very supportive of my position so really I do not think that is fair. To be frank, the regions of Europe have not formed a common view either in a UK context yet, though I guess they will do soon, or across the board, that we have been able to engage with. My position has been it is not for me to determine what their role should be, I would like to hear from them first. We have not heard from them very clearly in a common position. If and when we do, clearly I will want to debate that and engage with them very seriously. I really do not think you are making a serious point there. (Peter Hain) It is not all regions of the European Union, first of all, and it has not been submitted formally to the Convention as an agenda item. When it does then along with issues like legal personality and the role of national parliaments and Common Foreign and Security Policy and competencies of the European Union it is a very important issue and obviously we will tackle that when we get to it. I guess we will get to it sooner rather than later because in January we will be discussing the different institutions of the European Union and it may well be that will be an important dimension. Chairman (Peter Hain) Actually the working group chaired by the former Danish Commissioner, Henning Christophersen, specifically recommended that this come out and that the words "ever closer Union" were omitted from any new constitutional dispensation. That is something which had very wide support in that working group, we supported it. It has not been endorsed yet by the Convention. We will keep pressing for that to be part of the final picture. Miss McIntosh (Peter Hain) Yes, for example, giving national parliamentarians a greater role, their first ever role in practical terms in subsidiarity. That is a very practical example. I think that will be reassuring to our constituents. I think, too, the feeling that there should be a simplified constitutional framework built around Member States, that view would be reassuring. If our ideas on reforming the European Council carried the day, and they have considerable support, in the way I described earlier, I think that will make an easier chain of accountability and add a clarity to the link between the citizens and the institution. I agree with you that the gap has got far too large and it is one of the problems which we are grappling with. Mr Cunningham (Peter Hain) Without repeating what I said earlier, I would like to see what our own devolved administrations, in discussion with me wearing my Secretary of State for Wales' hat, and the Secretary of State for Scotland and Northern Ireland, come up with, as well as the regions of Europe coming together, as the Honourable Member said, chaired by the Scottish First Minister who himself has put forward some interesting ideas for which I have a lot of sympathy, including, by the way, barring an automatic channel into the European Court of Justice, which he does not favour, and I agree with him on that. Mr Cash (Peter Hain) No, I do not agree with that. I do not agree that the European Union is an undemocratic institution. I think it needs further democratisation, it needs reform, it needs improvement and that is what our proposals are designed to achieve. You point to low turnouts and I do not think we should be too complacent about low turnouts. In our own democratic structures at local government level, at devolved administration level, or indeed national parliamentary level, yes, low turnout was very worrying in 1999 but we have had lower turnouts than that across the picture in our domestic elections so let's no crow about this. Can I just make a point and it is said in a comradely fashion, if I could, if that is a New Labour enough phrase - (Peter Hain) Can I say this: I think we should have more self-confidence about our ideas. The Honourable Member adopts a position of a cowering lack of self-confidence. (Peter Hain) This is said in a comradely fashion. I am not seeking to impugn the Honourable Member's role, I am just saying his stance on Europe suffers from a tremendous inferiority complex. (Peter Hain) On the contrary, why I think the stance he adopts suffers from an inferiority complex is there is always a supposition that fiendish foreigners across the Channel are about to do us over or pull one on us. Actually if you look at what we have achieved so far in the Convention and if you look at our record in the European Union over the last five, and we are now in our sixth year of government, it is a British agenda which is hugely influential in Europe. It is a British agenda that pushed forward enlargement of the European Union, it is a British agenda that pushed forward the creation of a European security and defence capability, it is a British agenda which the promoted economic reform of Europe through the Lisbon process to make it more competitive, and it is a British agenda which is creating a European Union, which is really the dominant view of this Convention, that is a partnership of sovereign states. (Peter Hain) When you say the European Commission is undemocratic, I have given you two examples on the Charter and on subsidiarity where, in fact, we have made major advances. The jury is still out as to where we will get in the end. Let us approach this in a spirit of confidence. You mention that the European Commission is undemocratic. The European Commission is the body that enforced the lifting of the beef ban. (Peter Hain) It required France to comply with the lifting of the beef ban. (Peter Hain) Is he seriously suggesting that France would have voluntarily complied with the European Union decision? No, of course not, it was the European Commission which pursued it and brought it to a successful conclusion. It is the European Commission which is defending the rights of British companies to operate in the Single Market which his Government helped to create. We should go into this debate with confidence and if our ideas are right - and really German citizens in their attitude to Europe are no different from British citizens - (Peter Hain) --- And nor are French citizens and nor will Estonian citizens or Cypriot citizens. They want a European Union that delivers more jobs, protection from crime, greater security, higher environmental standards, and all these practical, daily life issues which is what we joined the European Union to help create and what to a very large measure it is bringing about. Chairman (Peter Hain) This sound ominous, Chairman. (Peter Hain) That was a very loose phrase, was it not? The point I was making is that they adopt prior scrutiny and it means that they meet on a Friday. I think their scrutiny system is better for that. It is more difficult for governments to cope with and I dare say more difficult for our parliamentarians to cope with because it would run across constituency responsibilities but that is what they do. Perhaps it is better in that respect. Having said that, I could perhaps contradict myself when I heard from my European ministerial counterpart in Sweden that during the Nice Treaty negotiations, which went on through the night, he had had seven hours of a permanent conference call with his scrutiny committee back in Stockholm. That seemed to me to be a pretty tall order and whether that resulted in better scrutiny or not no doubt is a matter that your Committee will advise me on and whether you would be interested in partaking of that kind of thing. (Peter Hain) I have obviously been currying too much favour with my European friends in the Convention and I will have to guard against doing this for fear that you will inspect my words. You will appreciate, Chairman, that was respecting your role and indeed praising it but commenting on the fact that even now as Europe Minister and still the Government's representative I find myself using a language, which we all use and you have to use as members of the Committee, that is quite foreign to most of our voters out there because one of the problems of the European Union is that "Eurospeak" tends to be an affliction we all catch and the more we can seek to distance ourselves from it and to talk straightforwardly, the better for us and for everybody. Chairman: Secretary of State, it has been a very interesting session. I do not know whether it has been exciting or inciting but thank you very much! |