Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
5 MAY 2004
MR JIMMY
HOOD AND
MR DORIAN
GERHOLD
Q1 Chairman: Welcome, Jimmy and Dorian.
If I can go on first name terms. We tend to operate in the Modernisation
Committee on first name terms. I am normally sitting on the opposite
side of the table to you, being grilled by you and your colleagues,
but it is good to have you here. As you know, we have embarked
upon a programme of looking specifically at the mainstreaming
of European issues within the House and within Parliament generally.
We are very impressed with the work that your Scrutiny Committee
does and the diligence of the scrutiny that is undertaken, at
least I am, and I think it is a question of seeing how the system
is working and to what extent we can involve more backbenchers
in the wider debate because there is a poverty of debate of genuine
depth on European issues. We are interested in your ideas on that.
In welcoming you, I do not know whether you wanted to say anything
by way of a brief opening, Jimmy, but I would like to bring Joan
Ruddock in on European documents before she has to go.
Mr Hood: Just to say I am pleased
to have this opportunity to come to your Committee, Peter. It
is particularly strange, as you say, me being at the opposite
end of the table, because I am usually that side and you are usually
this side and I am usually trying to convince you how helpful
I am seeking to be. I am sure you appreciate it and I am sure
you will be helpful to me today in return. But it is so important
and I welcome the fact that there is a change of mood both in
Government and indeed in Parliament about looking to scrutiny
and how best we improve Government through scrutiny and I look
forward to answering some of your questions. If there is anything
I am unable to answer then we will get the information to you,
but I am sure we will have a fair evidence session today.
Chairman: Thank you. Perhaps I will bring
Joan in to ask specifically about debates on European documents.
Q2 Joan Ruddock: I am very grateful to
you and thank you both for coming. I have had some experience
of this because I am a member of the Environment Select Committee
and, as you will know, most of our significant legislation on
the environment comes from Europe. On the Select Committee we
get notified of the debates which you yourselves have proposed
should go to the Standing Committee. I have to say, having taken
part in one of those Standing Committees, not as a Member but
just as an attendee, having put down an amendment myself, I found
the whole process entirely unsatisfactory. First of all, I would
congratulate you on having decided that it is something which
should have gone to the Standing Committee, but when it gets to
the Standing Committee there is very little participation. Very
few people would know the issues, the very detailed issues—this
was about the marketing consent for GM maize, the BT11 maize—whereas
the Select Committee members would have been able to take that
subject on and really get to grips with it and hopefully be much
more effective in questioning the Minister. So I really want to
know why you think these matters should not go to Select Committees.
If they should not go to Select Committees then you talk about
more committees and presumably expertise. Do you think there needs
to be some cross-over between the membership of these committees
in order to bring expertise into the European deliberation?
Mr Hood: Well, I thank you for
your challenging question, and I say challenging because that
is the crux of the matter and what we are seeking to do. We would
love to encourage our colleagues in departmental committees to
get more involved. In theory it sounds fine until you examine
the practical side of it and the truth is that departmental committees
do not have the resources or the time to do the type of work that
we do in sifting and scrutinising and that is a great difficulty.
Of course, the other side to it is that for too long—in
fact I have been on this committee for 17 years, believe it or
not—Europe is not what I call a sexy subject, especially
for new Members of Parliament, and they want interesting Foreign
Affairs, Home Affairs and things like that. It is difficult. Involving
our colleagues in doing scrutiny work would be fine but we feel
that we are the best suited because we are fairly well resourced
in the European Scrutiny Committee. Departmental Committees do
not have the resources to do the type of scrutiny that we have.
But we would welcome and do welcome interest from our colleagues
in our committee and where we can we do collaborate and we do
it mainly through the clerks and exchanging information. But we
see ourselves there to assist and help and encourage departmental
committees to get involved where they feel they can.
Q3 Joan Ruddock: Do you do any monitoring
of what happens when items are referred by yourselves to the Standing
Committee and then they debate? My example again is very negative
because on the day the debate was taking place the relevant Minister
was already in Brussels casting his vote before the committee
had even met.
Mr Hood: Yes. Well, that hopefully
does not happen as often as it used to. We keep the statistics
and I will ask Dorian to give you the statistics side of it, but
I would be very surprised if we have not seen a marked improvement
from the previous years, and I am going back a good few years,
when scrutiny reserves were just treated as irrelevant by Ministers.
I can tell you now very clearly that Ministers think very, very
carefully now before they lift a scrutiny reserve because there
are consequences and our committee, especially in this Parliament,
drew the line in the sand and we said to the Cabinet Office and
all Ministers are aware that if they ignore the scrutiny reserve
then there is a fair chance, if they cannot give a good explanation
as to why it was necessary, they will appear before our committee
in a public session and be held to account for their actions.
That is part of the process where we seek to keep the Ministers
and the Government accountable.
Q4 Mr Kidney: Jimmy, on this question
involving Members, we have had a letter from Colin Challen, who
is the Member for Morley, and he says, "I wonder how many
Members ploughed through minutes of the European Scrutiny Committee?
By the time they do, it is of course too late." But he says,
"A year or two ago I asked to be put on a mailing list to
receive all their reports. I was told this was not possible, you
have to request each report when it comes out." So there
is someone saying he would be interested to know what is going
on in good time and he could not find out unless he was exceptionally
alert in going to look at that piece of paper at the Vote Office
each day. Is there a way we can improve with e-mail alerts to
people who have actually said they have got an interest?
Mr Gerhold: I am surprised to
hear that. We would send copies of our reports to any Member who
asked for them. We are particularly interested in sending material
to Members that relates to their particular interests, not just
sending them everything we produce, which is voluminous and miscellaneous.
So I am sorry the Member had that experience.
Q5 Mr Kidney: He could register then,
could he, and he will in the future receive what he would like
to receive?
Mr Gerhold: Yes.
Q6 Mr Kidney: I will go and tell him
that.
Mr Gerhold: It might be better
for him to register through the Vote Office, but we will certainly
make sure he can have that.
Mr Kidney: Very good.
Q7 Ann Coffey: Just returning to the
issue of departmental Select Committees, which obviously are the
main scrutiny committees for policies the Government is proposing,
I am just interested in the separation where in fact there is
quite an overlap in terms of how particularly European legislation
may affect what governments can and cannot do with domestic legislation.
For example, if the Transport Committee is doing a report on aviation
policy it is actually quite important in making comments on policy
if you know what European directives there are on the ability
of domestic government to impose taxes and things like that. I
was just wondering if perhaps this separation and scrutiny meant
that at the end of the day perhaps departmental Select Committees
or the members of departmental Select Committees were not as well
informed as they could be, or certainly that their scrutiny function
tended to be over-focused on what the Government could do in terms
of national policy rather than take into account wider aspects.
Mr Hood: One of the areas that
we are very, very careful with—and again this is maybe my
early years as the chairman of the committee—is the question
of turf wars. Why are we poking our noses into somebody else's
business? It did not happen very often. It was more about the
Foreign Affairs, who have the world to themselves, as you know,
and there were grey areas where we were looking at treaty issues
which may affect policy, or policy that affected treaties. But
we tend to stay clear of policy issues. One of the great successes
of our committee is that we do not make judgments on merits, so
therefore we can work and cooperate together without having too
many political rows, although that is getting more difficult these
days. In fairness, when you have discussions about whether it
is legally or politically important and that judgment is that
something is legally or politically important then it requires
a judgment on whether it requires further scrutiny. Politics,
the political judgment, the merit judgment does not come into
the scrutiny process until it is referred on to the Standing Committee
when the Minister will be there for questions, or to the Floor
of the House when the Minister will be on the Floor of the House
and that is something we are very keen to maintain. So we do not
step over into that policy area which may cause or be perceived
to cause friction.
Q8 Ann Coffey: My argument is that perhaps
that should happen in a sense. If Select Committees are the main
scrutiny committees on particular policy areas there may be an
overlap, the referring of documents to the Select Committee for
scrutiny where that fits in, particularly, for example, the Transport
Select Committee policy may help inform that and form a better
scrutiny function. Maybe there should be some overlap. I just
wonder what your comments are.
Mr Hood: My apology if I misunderstood.
Going in the reverse, I would welcome it. We would welcome departmental
committees knocking at our door and asking for information that
would help them and where we can encourage that we certainly would.
It is so important because you would expect me to talk up the
performance of our staff, etc, and I am always delighted to do
so, but we have such an expertise which really is available there
for them; not just for committees but it is available there for
backbenchers, such as the example we had earlier. Any Member who
wants information just has to get in touch with our department
and if the information is available they will get it.
Q9 Ann Coffey: But does it happen? Do
you get requests from Select Committees?
Mr Gerhold: Yes, we do. We have
even lent staff to Select Committees to go on visits with them
so that they can use that expertise that we do have.
Joan Ruddock: I would like to ask something
and I will not be back to hear the answer, but it will be minuted.
I just wanted to ask how often you, as the Scrutiny Committee,
have referred documents to a Select Committee. I know you have
got the power. Is it a problem with the timeframe? We in our Committee
are currently doing something which would be very relevant to
something which is in your Standing Committee tomorrow, for example.
Does that happen? When does it happen and is there a problem with
making it happen more?
Chairman: We will come back to that,
Jimmy. I understand from a voice on my right that there are going
to be two votes on this, so on that basis we need to come back
for twenty past four.
The Committee was suspended from 4.00 pm
to 4.20 pm for a division in the House
Q10 Chairman: I am sorry about the voting
interrupting everything, but before we all departed Joan Ruddock
put a question to you and I wondered if you wanted to respond
on that?
Mr Hood: Yes, I am delighted,
Chairman. There were four occasions: the Defence Committee, April
2000, on the presidency progress report on the Common European
Policy on Security and Defence; the Trade and Industry Committee,
December 2000, on fair trade; the Committee of Public Accounts,
March 2001, on the EC's Financial Regulation; the International
Development Committee, April 2002, on reform of European development
assistance.
Q11 Chairman: Fine. Thank you. Before
I bring Martin Linton in and other colleagues, you essentially
disagree with the Government's memorandum which says that the
Standing Committees are not really working properly then?
Mr Hood: We feel that it is too
easy to dump all the blame on the Standing Committees. I accept
that the Standing Committees have not been working as well as
they should have been working and indeed disappointingly so on
occasions, but we fall short of accepting the constructive criticism
that we should do away with the Standing Committees and we are
still of the view, and some of us have held the view for a long
time, that there should be five committees of a smaller size.
If there were five committees of a smaller size there would be
more expertise, there would not be as many meetings for Members
to attend and we think that is an area we should look at as a
way of improving it.
Q12 Martin Linton: Jimmy, you said in
your introductory remarks that departmental Select Committees
do not really have the time or the resources to devote to European
issues, yet when they were encouraged by the Modernisation Committee
to increase their size to 15 most of them said, "No, thank
you very much." I am just interested in whether you think
they actually seriously want to look at European issues. If I
could just focus on what you said in the paper about mainstreaming,
that some EU matters should be mainstreamed and others that were
more detailed and technical should not. I am just interested in
how we would interpret that kind of principle both to Select Committees
and to Question Time. In terms of Select Committees, the implication
would be that maybe the departmental committees should be forced
to devote some of their time and energies to European issues without
detracting from the work of the European Scrutiny Committee, either
through what you discussed as some system of overlapping or maybe
some Members of the departmental Select Committees should be obliged
to follow European issues, as indeed some do if they have to attend
meetings. I have attended the Justice and Home Affairs meeting
in Brussels on behalf of the Home Affairs Committee and that is
one way in which committees are obliged to take some kind of cognisance
of European issues.
Mr Hood: I wonder if this is maybe
a suggestion of how we should be looking at it. Maybe we are looking
at the problem from the wrong end. There seems to be a culture
in this place, and I was talking to colleagues today about this,
that Europe is a foreign land. We treat it in foreign policy terms.
It is overseas, over there, when really we should be treating
all European issues as domestic because most of it is in the domestic
law. This is the way I would ask people to look at it from involving
departmental Select Committees. Maybe the demand should come from
the Select Committees to get involved more in European issues
rather than others saying, "Well, what do you think?"
in Select Committees, because there is nothing worse than another
committee suggesting to a committee that this is the way they
should be doing things. I want to encourage Members and departmental
Select Committees in particular to look more at what is happening
in Europe and maybe we have to look at how Select Committees work.
For instance, I give this as an example: if there is something
causing the Trade and Industry some concern, some industry up
in the north-east of England, then if the Select Committee chooses
they can go and visit that site and have a look at it and do a
report on it and inquire into it and arm themselves with the relevant
information. I was just conversing with the Chairman of the Transport
Committee on the way down to the vote and she was telling me that
she was having some difficulties with some European directive,
or something was upsetting her. If our colleague, the Chairman
of the Transport Committee, decides to have a look at an issue
and view it, she has to get hold of her clerk to put a bid into
the Liaison Committee to pay for the finance for her committee
to go and have a look at a problem. That, it seems to me, is the
wrong way of doing it. If we treat Europe as a foreign land and
foreign policy issues then I think we are looking at it from the
wrong end and maybe we should be looking more ourselves inside
the House at how we approach European issues because everything
we do involves Europe.
Q13 Chairman: You are saying therefore
that perhaps a visit of say the Transport Committee to Brussels
should be looked at in the same way as a trip to Newcastle?
Mr Hood: Yes, very much. Could
I just say, because the Public Accounts Committee will already
be ringing the numbers up, that we have a policy in the House
of Commons now which is available to every individual backbencher
to have free visits to capitals in Europe. That is three days'
subsistence and travel. It is quite a fair amount of money. I
have not looked into the figures, Peter, but I would be surprised
if there were more than 10%, maybe less than 5% of Members who
avail themselves of that.
Q14 Chairman: It is a minority.
Mr Hood: Yes. If we have budgeted
for that sort of thing, why do we not use the budget we are not
using to do some funding for departmental Select Committees who
have a difficulty and they want to go and look at an area? Why
should they not be able to do that and look at that way of helping
with the budget?
Q15 Martin Linton: I take your point.
Could I just invite you to apply that same principle to the issue
of Question Time, because obviously there is a good number of
questions about European matters, Foreign Affairs and Home Affairs
every Question Time but it is a complete lottery about whether
these questions are actually reached and whether there are any
European questions at all. Do you think it might be a good idea
to ring-fence, if you like, a certain part of Question Time for
European questions so that, for instance, in Foreign Affairs,
Home Affairs or DTI questions at least 10 minutes would be guaranteed
for European questions?
Mr Hood: We have heard some discussions
on this and indeed discussed it in informal meetings with the
Leader of the House. I think it is a very good idea. I used the
phrase earlier on, turf wars, and there may be turf wars within
the Foreign Office, but I hope that the nettle will be grasped
here and maybe the Foreign Office can provide the House with their
Ministers, albeit that it may be 10 or 15 minutes of Question
Time, so that our Members can concentrate on European issues relevant
to their own particular expertise.
Chairman: Ann, do you want to come back
on something you previously asked before I bring Oliver in?
Q16 Ann Coffey: Yes. I was going to come
back on the Select Committee issue and just check that what you
were saying essentially is that you think part of the difficulty
is that Select Committees do not as a matter of course in their
inquiries look at the European aspect of the policy they are looking
at. Is that what you are saying?
Mr Hood: No, I am not saying that
and I am pleased to be given an opportunity to correct it if I
have given the wrong impression. I am not in any way criticising
the departmental Select Committees. What I am saying is that we
should look at the culture in the House itself and whether we
ought to look at it from the other end of the problem. If departmental
committees are encouraged to look more positively at European
issues, I am sure they would be delighted to do so. Maybe that
in itself would demand the time and the resources to do that.
Mr Gerhold: Could I come in on
the point about departmental Select Committees. Having been a
clerk of a Select Committee, Trade and Industry and Energy for
seven years, I simply cannot see myself how some of those committees
could cope with the volume of work that the European Scrutiny
Committee would send it. If you look at annex 3, all the references
in this Parliament are listed and some committees would have a
stream of documents, sometimes bunched together. They would have
to look at a specific subject, not a policy area but a specific
document, and deal with that when they might be looking at the
closure of the coal industry or something like that. I think it
is probably less of a problem in terms of staffing in that, as
clerk of the committee, I could have asked for extra staff in
that sort of situation. It is much more of a problem for Members,
however big the committee is, in that there is one committee,
one lot of Members with one lot of time.
Q17 Ann Coffey: But if you are identifying
the problem that Europe is seen as "something over there"
and European issues are not mainstreamed in this Parliament then
surely improving the way that Select Committees look at European
issues would actually be very good because they produce reports
which are actually read, the media is interested in those reports
and Members are interested in those reports, whereas perhaps reports
just entitled "Europe" they are not interested in? Is
that not a way of mainstreaming it?
Mr Hood: Departmental committees
could not do and would not want to do the job that we do, so anything
we do is complementary; in fact we are there to aid and assist
departmental committees with all the information and all the scrutiny
we do. It is the political process, the merit side of issues that
the departmentals should be picking up. We look at the document
and make a judgment on whether it is legally or politically important.
We make that judgment and then we say to the House, "Look,
here's the report. We think this should be looked at," and
it is for the House then to decide how it is dealt with. Sometimes
when some people talk about "mainstreaming" it is for
all the documents on trade and industry if it is the Trade and
Industry Committee, or on home affairs if it is the Home Affairs
Committee. You just could not do that and I do not think there
is anybody who is seriously suggesting that, but there is no reason
why the merits of particular issues and proposals and whatever
is happening in Europe should not be picked up by the departmental
committees.
Q18 Ann Coffey: It does not always happen
at the moment?
Mr Hood: It does not, no.
Mr Gerhold: The Scrutiny Committee
has identified some things that departmental Select Committees
could do because there is not so much pressure on time, looking
at Green and White Papers, the implementation of legislation and
pre- and post-Council scrutiny, rather than legislative proposals,
where it is sometimes six weeks or less.
Q19 Mr Heald: In the run-up to the last
Modernisation Committee report on this subject, Jimmy, the European
Legislation Committee (as it then was) was very critical of the
poor performance by government departments in dealing with the
scrutiny system. Are there still problems with government departments
about this and what would you see as the failures on the Government
side?
Mr Hood: One of the things we
always say is that scrutiny can never be completely satisfied,
so therefore there is always room for improvement. I have said
this to the Leader of the House before and I will have a chance
to put it on record again. There was a quote attributed to a former
Leader of the House, ie that good scrutiny makes for good government,
which is a quote which was used by yours truly long before it
was attributed to the former Leader of the House, and I genuinely
believe that. If you are asking me are there still things we can
improve on, well, only a fool would say, "No, there isn't."
What I would say is that there is a better awareness inside Government
now about the scrutiny process and I unashamedly, on behalf of
my committee, will try and claim some of the credit for that because,
as I was saying earlier, we have drawn the line in the sand about
scrutiny reserves and the Cabinet Office itself has responded
and makes sure that all the departments are aware that we are
watching what is going on and when we put a scrutiny reserve on
then we expect it to be held until we are satisfied and we remove
it. Scrutiny reserves obviously on occasions need to be overridden
by a Minister and there are circumstances where, subject to them
coming back and our being satisfied with the explanation, the
committee will accept it. But there have been occasions when we
have not accepted it and we have had Ministers in, and I am sure
they will say they do not get an easy time from us. Therefore,
it encourages Ministers to maybe lean a little bit more on their
departments instead of relying on their departments, to be a little
bit more objective and stand back and watch what is happening
inside the department. It is an aid to a Minister because we can
tell a Minister how well his or her department is doing better
than maybe some of the people who are near them, who are working
for them. So sometimes scrutiny can be of great assistance to
Government.
Mr Heald: The first hour where the questioning
is just on the Minister—
Chairman: This is a Standing Committee?
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