Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
23 JUNE 2004
RT HON
DAVID HEATHCOAT-AMORY
MP AND MS
GISELA STUART
MP
Q80 Chairman: I think we are anxious
to grapple with the central dilemma. The issue of making Parliament's
view clear, can this be done by a back bench committee? How does
that compare with doing it by a parliamentary motion?
Ms Stuart: It has its practical
problems. If you take a closer look at the Grand Committee system
in Finland, which is cross-party, it is a regular slot, so people
keep engaging on a very regular basis and it is the ministers
who give evidence depending on the business that comes up, that
is really the best way forward.
Q81 Chairman: But there are no votes
there.
Ms Stuart: No, there are no votes
there.
Q82 Chairman: A private consensus emerges.
Ms Stuart: Yes.
Q83 Martin Linton: You mentioned about
the value of the Standing Committee on the Convention and how
helpful it has been to you in fulfilling your role as representatives.
Could you say whether you think all of that experience can be
transferred or retained in a Grand Committee which is largely
based on the experience of that committee?
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: I thought
it was very useful for us as a Committee to report back to the
House so that interested Members could get a feel for what was
happening. It was not party political in the sense that there
were no whips there, although sometimes we wish there had been
and then we might have got a better quorum. There was a feeling
that Parliament was asking us what was being done on their behalf.
As a long-term structural change I would have certain doubts.
It could eventually become rather ceremonial, perhaps not very
well attended and fall victim to the problem I have mentioned
of not having any real power. It would not even have the existing
Scrutiny Committee's ability to question ministers closely with
supplementaries and perhaps pass critical motions. In the case
of the European Scrutiny Committee we have this very important
right to hold up measures before the scrutiny reserve is lifted.
That is not always observed but it is at least a weapon we have.
I think it is very important to retain all those features in any
replacement. The overriding need here is to turn pious expressions
of concern into reality. Governments of all sorts, Parliament
and occasionally the Commission say they must do less but do it
better, but it never happens, instead this engine of regulation
is practically out of control. That is why there is this feeling
of despair and alienation by the public. It has got to get back
to the idea that there are important measures which can only be
done on a cross-border international basis. That ought to be reflected
in the work programme, but I am afraid there is no sign of that
message having been learned. I would like to be able to go to
these negotiations as a British minister with the House of Commons
as an institution backing me up. So I will not agree to things
because I will say, "I can't convince Parliament and through
them I cannot convince the public."
Q84 Ann Coffey: There is a lot of domestic
legislation which goes through this House, but bits and pieces
of it people do not know about and the public are not aware about
it, some issues are of more interest than others. Could you not
argue that that is actually the same with European legislation?
The EC Directive on vitamins aroused a great amount of interest
and lobbying and MPs suddenly became concerned about what on earth
this EC Directive was about and started writing letters and stuff
like that. Maybe if we had a Grand Committee that was open ended
so that Members could come and go and have equal status in speaking
and things like that, the lobbying groups outside, which at the
end of the day perform a very important function in bringing things
to MPs that they are interested in because they follow legislation
quite closely, would see it as something that was of value to
do, to write to MPs about particular Directives they did not like
or things that were coming out of Europe and MPs would then be
engaged in the process because they would have to justify to their
constituents what they were doing about it. They could not say
it was nothing to do with them because there would be a committee
they could attend if they wanted to. Would that not raise the
whole awareness issue about what was happening? By not engaging
MPs but by engaging a wider audience. That EC Directive lobby
was very effective. I did not know anything about this EC Directive
at all.
Ms Stuart: That brings me back
to my point about the two things we should not lose sight of.
The first one was that it was the Commons and the Lords. My experience
of giving evidence to both Houses is that the Lords have far greater
long-term memory and technical expertise which was very helpful
on European matters. The second thing is again the ability to
take evidence from non-ministers and to look at the Lords and
the Commons and to look at, for example, bringing rapporteurs
from the European Parliament on certain Directives here to give
evidence because these are immensely influential people, that
would be a very helpful way forward.
Q85 Mr Shepherd: What difference does
it make? The fact that you have got these committees and they
sit and deliberate, whatever their deliberations, what difference
does that make to the outcome?
Ms Stuart: The real difference
at the end of the day is that as MPs we can no longer go back
and say, "We've never heard of it, we've never been asked
about it, no one told me", and what is more to the point,
we can no longer say, "It's nothing to do with me, guv, it's
them out there," because it is not. It is like with any other
legislation, ultimately the will of the Government with the majority
in the House of Commons prevails, that is the bottom line of our
system and I am extremely attached to that one. There is contentious
domestic legislation where an opposition MP can say I do not agree
with the Government and you still may say so, but at the European
level for the last 30 years we have been able to deny all responsibility
because we closed our eyes to it and we have blamed others for
it.
Q86 Mr Shepherd: I understand what you
are saying. The fact is that in half of life we do not know what
is happening and we try to get up to speed. I am talking about
outturn. What difference does it make? Before your time, Gisela,
but certainly within David's time we had a Merchant Shipping Act
and there the Government of the day thought it was working along
the lines suggested and agreed by the European Commission; it
enacted a Bill. It was acting within what it thought was its own
competence and authority in this matter, our High Courts and on
appeal it ultimately overturned the effect of the law, ie it was
the European Court that enacted it but still recognised parliamentary
sovereignty so that we could indeed assert the law, because all
this is only directly in British law through an Act of Parliament
and yet we have somehow got this omerta", which is the very
point that David started off and you reinforced, which is that
it does not seem to make any difference and there is no outcome.
Ms Stuart: I will tell you where
it would make a difference. If you are a domestic minister—and
I have been to the Health Council as a minister in the Department
of Health—what happens in health, for example, is it is
very much on the periphery of your radar, it is health questions,
waiting lists and intensive care beds which drive you. As a minister
you only really take notice of what you have to do the day before
you are told you are going to Brussels and you get the briefing
by the civil servant. If months before that I have to go to a
committee which starts raising the vitamins Directive and those
kind of debates, if we engaged much earlier then I am sure that
would influence the position the minister would ultimately take
on occasions.
Q87 Chairman: Can I probe a little more
on that? On the question of the European Grand Committee proposal
from the Foreign Secretary, you have in a sense discussed it in
general. Do you both think it is a good thing?
Ms Stuart: Yes, I think so.
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: I think it
would have a role to play in ventilating the system and giving
us an opportunity to question not just ministers but maybe Commission
officials and perhaps put on an emergency brake system. If we
were seriously concerned about the system we could insist on getting
somebody over to explain it here. The Commission's idea of Government
is that you have to go there; they like lobby groups to go and
explain their concerns over there. This does not work for small
businesses and for people—to take the earlier example—running
food supplement shops. They do not have the time or the knowledge,
the contacts or the money to do that, they like us to do that,
that is what they elect us for. Therefore the decisions have got
to come back to us, not all of them but certainly the filter has
got to operate here, we must have a real influence on the programme
and on an exceptional basis we ought to be able to pull an emergency
brake and stop something and unless we have that power there will
be a general disillusionment with the entire system. No one really
believes that this is our government at the moment—I am
talking about the European Union. That is going to reach epidemic
proportions unless we can be seen to act on behalf of people who
have got well-founded concerns and at the minute that is not operating.
As well as a Grand Committee to find out what is happening we
also need to strengthen the smaller scrutiny Standing Committees'
system, you will have your own idea about that, so that we can
pin down specifics and get something done about it at that level.
Q88 Mr Kidney: I would like to ask David
about our involving commissioners in our work and Gisela about
our involving MPs in our work. David, first of all, how realistic
is it for the Member States' parliaments to demand the commissioners
come to be scrutinised in person when there are 25 disparate national
parliaments? If it is realistic, where is the right place in our
system for it to be? If there were this European Grand Committee,
is this the right place or are you talking about your Scrutiny
Committee sitting in public or the Select Committees individually
making bids for a commissioner to attend? How would you see it
working?
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: There are
25 Member States but there are also 25 commissioners and I do
not know what they are all going to be doing. Perhaps some of
them could spend at least part of their time travelling round
Member States' parliaments listening and taking instructions from
us for a change before they draw up their annual programme. We
do find it difficult to get actual commissioners to come here.
In fact, in my own Committee I do not think we have ever done
that, we get their more junior officials. I think that is not
good enough, particularly when I do not detect any real sympathy
for this concept of subsidiarity. The dynamic to over-govern is
something in modern societies we suffer from down here, but at
least at national level there is a countervailing force, which
is you have got to raise the money to do it, you have an electorate
watching you and your constituents and your lobby groups are active
and have good access to you here. That is rather absent
at the European level. I repeat, the decision-making must be redistributed,
must be devolved back down, unless of course it is a genuine emergency
in foreign affairs where everyone has to act quickly. At the minute,
the agenda and timetable is set wholly artificially by people
who want to get these things through either in the European Parliament
or the Commission and we are often seen as irritants. I do not
think we are irritants, I think we ought to be an absolutely indispensable
element in this because we hold the popular consent.
Q89 Mr Kidney: The Leader of the House
had this idea that the European Grand Committee would have joint
attendances by the appropriate Minister of the Crown and the appropriate
Commissioner. Does that not therefore suggest to you that is the
right place in the system for Commissioners to appear before us?
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: Yes, provided
one can get the close follow-up, the supplementary questioning,
and even an adversarial relationship developing with a Commissioner
wanting to do something and perhaps a general feeling that this
was peripheral to British interests. If you could recreate that
in a Grand Committee, I think that would be suitable.
Q90 Mr Kidney: Gisela, you mentioned
the rapporteurs, who did you have in mind back here who would
be asking the rapporteurs to join them? Is that Select Committees,
the Grand Committee proposal, or Scrutiny Committees, Standing
Committees? How generally should we involve MEPs in the work we
do as a national parliament?
Ms Stuart: The European Parliament
as co-legislator has extensive powers. An impact assessment for
any of their amendments does not really happen at the moment,
which is why I think our Select Committees ought to have MEPs
here but also rapporteurs, who would either report to that Grand
Committee or the particular Select Committee. That would bring
that rapporteur in. Also there are government departments—we
always try this but somehow it never works out in practice—when
you have ministerial meetings you could bring in some of your
MEPs. The key thing is to have a link when the European Parliament
makes amendments which ought to have proper impact assessments
at domestic level, we need to make them aware of what the impact
is domestically of what they are suggesting.
Q91 Chairman: What if they were not British
MEPs?
Ms Stuart: I think if it is not
British MEPs we should still be able to ask them to come, because
the rapporteur's function on that occasion is not a national one.
That would pull together what the European Parliament does.
Q92 Mr Pike: I wanted to push a little
more on the UK MEPs if we did have this Grand Committee and joint
attendances. Is it a good idea and how should we develop it? I
know when I came into the House in 1983, one of the first debates
we had when I came here was should we allow MEPs into the building
or should we treat them as totally members of the public, and
it was decided to give them some limited access. If we are supposed
to be working together in this country's interests, is it not
important we do have them on the Grand Committee and that we do
look positively to ensure we are both working on the same wave
band?
Ms Stuart: I remember the debate
about whether MEPs should be given dining rights in the House
because we were afraid of them flooding our dining rooms. I do
think they ought to be given the same access to the House, just
as we have access to the European Parliament as MPs. We ought
to much more, as a matter of course, as we debate something, think
of the relevant MEPs even if it is no more than an exchange of
information. I think it is extraordinary that the European
Voice, which is the gossip sheet of Brussels, is not available
in the House of Commons, in the Library, together with the Times
and the FT, we ought to be able to pull it out and see
what happens there.
Q93 Mr Pike: What do you think, David?
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: I am afraid
I do not agree with this. By all means let them into the dining
rooms and let's talk to them and meet them and allow them to come
to our party meetings, but this is a separate institution, it
is a self-regulating parliament, and one of their tasks is to
stand up for their own institution. Certainly on the Convention
on the Future of Europe the 16 MEPs did unmistakeably fight for
their own institutional interests and they succeeded in getting
a lot more powers for the European Parliament. I think to have
them as members of a very grand committee, including the other
place and them, would just dissipate the focus or intention, which
is that the House of Commons or Parliament should exercise the
scrutiny function. I think it would complicate that to include
members of another Parliament. Even if one interviewed them, I
think it might be resented that we were getting another Parliament
to come before us to explain itself. So I think there is a division
of powers here, we all have separate duties and I think we ought
to concentrate on our own.
Ms Stuart: May I just mention
one practical experience I had with the Working Time Directive.
It was negotiated in the early 1990s, it then came to a point
where we would have a problem in the Health Service if that Working
Time Directive was applied to doctors without a phase-in period.
The Commission was not very sympathetic to that phase-in which
we were negotiating and we only succeeded in getting that phase-in
by getting the support of all MEPs, irrespective of their party,
because it was an issue which they realised had tremendous significance
to the United Kingdom which went beyond narrow party politics.
That was a practical example of where we actually benefited from
working with our MEPs.
Q94 Mr Pike: If there is a British interest,
sometimes that British interest should be equally shared by MPs
and MEPs?
Ms Stuart: Indeed. David and I
managed to work on the Convention on the Future of Europe on some
points when we did know what the British interest was!
Q95 Mr Shepherd: To revert to something
David said at an earlier stage about meeting in public with his
own committee. He put in a submission to this Committee in which
he says, we meet ". . . in private unless taking evidence
from witnesses. It cannot be right to exclude the public from
the scrutiny process in this way." More important, "The
Committee last year requested that standing orders be changed
to permit the Committee to meet in public but nothing has been
done." Why is that?
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: I cannot say.
It requires a change of standing orders, which is not up to our
committee. We requested this be done and I imagine the issue has
been subsumed into this inquiry. There is a slightly bizarre contrast
between our own work and what we have been urging in Europe, and
indeed we succeeded in getting into the European Constitution
in Article 49 a requirement that Union institutions shall conduct
their work as openly as possible.
Q96 Chairman: You mean there is something
in the Constitution you approve of, David!
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: We worked
together on that one, Chairman, on a rather exceptional basis
in the British interests! We at least partly succeeded on that
one but we have not amended our own procedures. We sit in public
when we take evidence, as we did from the Commission, but when
we are deliberating about what to do about things, about whether
the Treaty bases are valid or whether the Commission has exceeded
legal powers, whether it is important to recommend for debate,
all of that is still in secret. The only reason we are given is
that it would all be misunderstood by the public and official
advice would not be as candid. Frankly, these are the sorts of
arguments we used to keep reporters out of the House of Commons
in the 18th century, so I think we do need to move forward here
and start to trust the public. Maybe not many of them would turn
up, but at least they would have the right to do so.
Ms Stuart: I think that, combined
with the Council of Ministers meeting in public when they legislate,
opens it up, because we need to know what positions people take
to hold them to account.
Mr Shepherd: I think it would educate
too the wider public in the processes which take place, and maybe
on the sheer volume, which exercises David very much, of the burdens
being placed on Parliament. David also mentioned the quantum of
legislation, the clerk to your own committee was unable to say,
because it is an outcome rather than a preliminary stage, what
is the volume of legislation, and we have a paper from the Cabinet
Office website no less which says it is only 40%. Whichever it
is, it is a huge and important part of our domestic legislation
which does not receive scrutiny. I go back to the point, what
is the outcome? Even if the Government, the Committee, the entire
backbenchers of all parties, are united in opposition to a matter,
it breaks that link—
Chairman: I think we have the point,
Richard.
Mr Shepherd: You always say that, Chairman,
but it is a point which is often obscured.
Q97 Chairman: I think our witnesses take
the point.
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: It worries
me actually that not all legislation from Brussels does come through.
There are statutory instruments, complicated implementing regulations
which do not even come through, so I am not sure we are getting
the full count. Certainly the volume is enormous and growing.
We are talking here not always of important things but quite a
lot of them are about the coercive force of law whereby the state
will in time require compliance of our constituents, and that
is what Parliament is for, to at least check this is desirable
and if it is not get something done about it. We are not doing
that. The main thing is that not only can we not influence it
very much but in many cases we do not even know it is happening
and we are often taken by surprise afterwards. People say, "You
are on the Scrutiny Committee, did this go through quickly?",
and I look back and that was one of the matters that went through,
I am afraid, rather on the nod because its full implications were
not apparent at the time, and that rather shocks me.
Q98 Chairman: Can I follow up Richard's
point about the technicalities of this. What do you think this
would do? Do you think it would make the Committee more partisan
if it was in public? Do you think there would be more grand-standing?
Given the fact there is an enormous volume of work here, and that
the clerks are involved in providing expert advice on the documents
and their roles are very, very critical to the whole process—as
I understand it, I have never sat on a committee—how would
those two factors play into making it public?
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: I am aware
of that danger and one of the problems with the Standing Committees
is that at that stage there is a whip on and the Committee lines
up traditionally across the floor and only very exceptionally
do people work together on behalf of the House of Commons. The
European Scrutiny Committee is rather impressive in that people
on occasions at least do put party politics aside and take a House
of Commons' view. So there is a sufficient grit and abrasion there
which comes from party political considerations, but nevertheless
we do on many occasions pull together particularly on aspects
of subsidiarity and so on. So I would not wish to lose that but
I do not think allowing the public in would seriously jeopardise
that. What would attract me is to try and make Standing Committees
in some way adjuncts of the scrutiny committees so one retains
this feeling it is the House of Commons doing a scrutiny job on
behalf of the public, without it becoming excessively party political.
I think the other place does something along these lines. That
is the balancing act we must all achieve. We cannot ignore the
party divisions, but if one can somehow also feel we are collectively
doing a job on behalf of everyone, I am sure at least greater
openness would not seriously jeopardise that.
Q99 Mr Heald: How accessible is the programme
of work which the Commission produces on an annual basis? Is it
possible to use it as an early warning system or is it utterly
impenetrable?
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: The programme
we had was very long. It was rather general but it did contain
in our view some breaches of subsidiarity, of which I have mentioned
one. I should say in the Constitution now there is another one,
where there is a declaration we must all tackle domestic violence.
I am sure it is highly desirable to end domestic violence but
it is there in the text now so we start off with the problem and
we must do something to correct that. To answer your question,
the annual work programme—and the Council also has one—
could be used but they should be required to make it more detailed
and to stick to it, and in my view it should be cleared formally
by all the European Committees of all Member States at least in
principle before they launch the initiatives and turn them into
legislative proposals when in many cases it is already too late.
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