Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-211)
8 SEPTEMBER 2004
HON MRS
GWYNETH DUNWOODY
MP AND RT
HON MICHAEL
JACK MP
Q200 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Do you think
that the UKRep should report to Parliament?
Mrs Dunwoody: I do not want the
responsibility of appointing officials, Sir Nicholas. We have
enough trouble managing to get people to join political parties.
God help us if we had to control civil servants as well.
Mr Jack: Can I just add that there
may well be something the Government should consider, that is
the reporting via an UKRep mechanism to select committees matters
that they ought to take note of because they are the source of
a great deal of useful intelligence and that would actually be
quite helpful.
Q201 Martin Linton: Can I bring you back
to the role of select committees because there seems to be a bit
of a paradox here because you are being pressed to take a greater
role, not just inquiries but European scrutiny, both upstream
and downstream; draft bills, pre-legislative and maybe post-legislative;
even the European Scrutiny Committee wants you to actually take
evidence from ministers pre- and post-council meetings. Also you
are being pressed to take greater membership as well. You might
expect select committees to say they will build their empire,
have more members, more sub-committees, more functions; that is
the normal way that organisations operate. However, it seems to
me it is almost the opposite: you do not want more members, you
do not want more sub-committees, you do not want to have more
jobs foist on you or at least you want to retain your right to
concentrate on inquiries which I think is probably the strongest
role of select committees. However, it does not seem to me that
you are addressing yourselves to the basic question. Everybody
recognises that we need more involvement of select committees,
because of their expertise, in European scrutiny. We need more
involvement of select committees in the legislative process, in
draft bills. We have 150 MPs just on our side who are not on any
select committee and not in any government post; there are plenty
of people to do the job. You have to tell us why we should not
have some system—as they do in Finland and many other European
countries—where the select committees are involved and can
be expected to be involved in the process of European scrutiny
both upstream and downstream. Gwyneth, you say in your evidence—which
I found very interesting—that you are not given the resources
and cannot be expected to do the work without additional resources
and I accept that point entirely. Supposing select committees
were given the resources to do this job in European scrutiny,
would you do it? Would you be prepared to do it?
Mrs Dunwoody: I think you may
have to be quite clear what it is you want select committees to
do. At the present time we are charged with taking what is in
effect a monitoring role of a government department and not just
a government department but all of the agencies connected with
a government department. If I were in the seat of the Leader of
the House and I regarded having 150 back benchers as a distinct
hazard without them having enough to do, then I would be seeking
to set up a series of committees and giving them responsibilities
way beyond what they have at the present time. I think that at
the present time select committees are expanding the work that
they do. We can get into a philosophical argument about how Parliament
itself has changed the way it operates: so much of it here is
timetabled; so much of it is not properly scrutinised; so much
domestic legislation has to come back and be amended because we
have changed the way we operate. Select committees are much more
important in their role of monitoring what government departments
do than they were originally. That is one reason why they are
taking on extra powers and have extra impact. If the government
of the day then says, "Ah, but you also have to look at all
the pre-legislative scrutiny and you have to look at every bit
that flows out of Europe and you have to do it after it has gone
on the statute book", then I can tell you you would limit
the amount of time that was spent on looking at domestic legislation.
Q202 Mr Heald: Can I just come in on
that, Gwyneth, because a key part of the job of a select committee
is to scrutinise what the department is doing. One of the things
the department is doing is going to Europe negotiating all sorts
of directives and regulations so surely part of your job is to
make sure you are finding out what they are up to.
Mrs Dunwoody: And this is exactly
what we do. This is why we have just done an inquiry on aviation;
this is why we are looking at every aspect of the decisions they
are taking in relation to road safety.
Q203 Mr Heald: Does it not involve the
sort of thing Michael was talking about as well, which is getting
out there, finding out what they are doing over there in the Commission
and then putting this to ministers and asking them what they are
doing about it.
Mrs Dunwoody: I am saying to you
that we are already directly involved in those aspects of our
committee work which are being influenced by Brussels. This is
what we do already. This is why we have already done at least
three reports on various aspects. However, there is a difference
between that—which is following through the theme of the
government involvement and government interest in specific policies—and
being loaded with the responsibility of looking very carefully
at every detail. I spent four and a half years amending words.
I can use a number of words in different languages which mean
approximately the same thing but never the same thing. I can tell
you that if that is the way we are going to go then the work of
the select committees will be effectively neutered.
Mr Jack: I wonder if I may put
another perspective on that. I wrote down two things when Mr Linton
asked his question. One was: more involvement; the other was:
prioritisation. We do not cover everything that our department
does domestically; we cannot, we do not have the time. I think
your question goes to a very fundamental view of the nature of
our select committees. At the moment what happens is that by the
various mechanisms people find themselves on the committees. It
is one of many things that they do in the House. If the expanded
role as you describe were to be put onto committees then the chairs
of those committees would almost find themselves in a full-time
job.
Mrs Dunwoody: We are paid now
so of course we should do more.
Mr Jack: I am not objecting for
one moment to doing more, but the nature of what we would be doing
if we were going to cover the full canvass which has been discussed
could mean that you would do that almost to the exclusion of everything
else.
Mrs Dunwoody: It would keep us
very busy which would be very good, would it not? You would not
have any time to go to Questions and not be able to vote.
Mr Jack: Quite right, there is
a price to be paid, just like holding offices that you absent
yourself from doing something for your constituents that you might
feel is an integral part of what you came into the House to do.
Mrs Dunwoody: What an old-fashioned
idea.
Mr Jack: Maybe it is; maybe I
am a little old-fashioned but I will stick to those old-fashioned
values. We do not want to create a parallel universe where the
select committees are out there trying to be on a par with departments
because that is not what we are there for; we are there for a
scrutiny role. Let me give you an example: the European Union
has just concluded and implemented the biggest single change to
the Common Agricultural Policy since it was originally designed.
Our committee has from time to time written reports about the
nature of agriculture and commented on how the European Union's
processes could be amended. However, when this process started
the Secretary of State for DEFRA (in this case) did not come along
to the select committee and say, "I am now starting, in concert
with my fellow ministers, to discuss what will ultimately be the
biggest single reform. I think it would be a good idea if your
committee did a parallel exercise and informed what was happening."
We ended up by doing a scrutiny of what had happened to a certain
extent after the event. It is on issues like that that the Government
and ministers have to decide as well if they are prepared to engage
the select committee. We can come in and do our own things but
sometimes they are privy to what is happening and therefore it
is a question of, right, this is a proper matter for Parliament
to be involved in; the select committee should start the process
of inquiry and work in parallel with what the Council of Ministers
are doing and take its own views from within the United Kingdom
or wherever else and inform that thinking process. In that way
we would then have the potential to have real influence over the
development of ideas prior to them being set in concrete.
Q204 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Why did
that not happen?
Mr Jack: Because we are not geared
up to doing it; people do not think like that. Usually the select
committee comes in after something has appeared and is well and
truly on the radar.
Q205 Sir Nicholas Winterton: But you
are chairman of this committee.
Mr Jack: We do, from time to time,
get involved in things upstream because we pick them up but we
are not equipped to know that all of the processes that are going
on are occurring. I go back to the practical example I gave about
fridges. Most of the discussion about the United Kingdom's position
that ultimately resulted in some of the problems of fridge mountains
occurred in what is called Management Committee which is the officials
of a government department beavering away trying to fix a problem,
reporting to the minister who is desperately hoping that a fix
will emerge.
Mrs Dunwoody: No-one asked why
we have got an entire industry exporting used fridges when no-body
else had.
Mr Jack: No, but what I am saying
is that that was below the radar of the committee; we did not
know it was happening.
Mrs Dunwoody: So even though it
was upstream, it was below the radar.
Mr Jack: Yes, it was. There is
no way you can necessarily see that that problem was coming because
no-one had told us.
Q206 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Who should
have told you?
Mr Jack: We could have had some
information from the department and we could have had some information
from the permanent representation and it would have been interesting
to see whether we could have had some from the Commission.
Q207 Mr Stunell: What we have really
heard is a council of despair. The select committees are too busy;
the standing committees are ineffectual and we have also heard
that the larger the group of people that considers any issue the
less likely it is to produce a sound conclusion which rather rules
out the Chamber of the House of Commons as well it would appear.
If we try to break out of that cycle of despair then just one
of the possibilities that Mr Jack put in his evidence was about
Euro-days once a quarter, about ways which it seems to me were
setting an agenda in the House which is independent of other events.
I wonder if you would like to take us through the ideas that you
have there and perhaps put a slightly more hopeful view as to
how we might get out of the mess you have so thoroughly identified.
Mr Jack: I am sorry if I have
created an impression of a council of despair; it is dealing with
the realities. The idea of having something on a quarterly basis
that I suggested or a cross-cutting question time on Europe would
enable these people to engage—who are not involved in a
select committee process but who are interested to know what is
going on—in probing ministers about what is happening. At
the moment in terms of Europe if you have under the standard question
time procedures a question on Europe it takes its place in competition
with everything else. If you have carved out some time, for example,
the Government might say, "Okay we are going to have four
of these sessions every year and we will give them a theme. We
might have a theme on the environment; we might have a theme on
cross-border security. We might have whatever you choose, transport
through Europe." Therefore you can decide either to have
a minister who will come along and brief the House on behalf of
key developments and there can be a focussed debate on the subject
or you could have some form of question and answer session so
that people could engage and discuss. It would enable the ministers
to talk about both the things that were in the Council and were
coming along towards the Council and there could be some dialogue
in which members of the House, either by a question time format
or by a debate—I suggested Westminster Hall as one way of
doing that—could engage in those areas where they may have
a specific interest because the current mechanism of the white
paper discussions is a sort of catch-all run by the foreign secretary
which does not enable you to go into the detail where some of
the more contentious issues are being discussed on a departmental
basis.
Q208 Chairman: What about this idea of
a European Grand Committee?
Mr Jack: I suppose we are getting
back into focus, function and numbers of people because by definition
a European Grand Committee could either deal with everything or
be very focussed in what it does. The thought of having separate
forms of debate perhaps three or four times a year where we could
take a more focussed departmental view would enable people to
go into more depth about particular subject areas. As to the European
Grand Committee, I would have to give more thought about that
particularly in determining how its agenda would be focussed.
It comes away from engaging or giving an opportunity for the whole
House to become involved in that subject. One of the points that
Mr Shepherd and Sir Nicholas raised earlier was the almost impotence
of the floor of the House to engage in dialogue on European matters.
If you had something that enabled you to have a one-to-one with
a minister and a debate or a question time, then those members
of the House—as with any debate—who wanted to could
engage in that process. By having the Grand Committee process
you are almost saying that it is only the enthusiasts and there
are people who are very domestically minded but want to know how
the European issue will impact on them and their constituents.
Q209 Chairman: I think we would all sympathise
with what you are saying in principal, but just to clarify what
would you say to the proposition which I think came from Martin
Linton in an earlier session about having, say, 10 minutes reserved
to cover European issues if questions were tabled on Europe, during
main departmental questions. What do you think of that idea?
Mr Jack: It is another way of
providing the same opportunity that if you said, for example,
right we will have a question time for the main departments who
deal with European business and people could table whatever questions
they like and ministers will have to come and attend and answer
those questions. I am conscious that even within our own question
time people are frustrated that we only get through a limited
number of questions and that effectively it is only on a three-
or four-weekly cycle where you can get in on domestic issues.
I think my view would be that it is better to carve out a separate
chunk of time to focus on the European issue so that those who
were particularly interested could come along and engage in that
and that it did not take time away from the domestic side. On
the domestic side, you cannot stop members tabling now questions
which may have a European dimension to them.
Mrs Dunwoody: We have been looking
at European competencies precisely for this reason, that they
affect so much of our domestic policy, so I see no reason why
we should not have extra to the existing debates on the floor
of the House half an hour which was just for European Union matters.
I am sad that you so readily are prepared to abandon what, to
me, is a very obvious thing. The European Standing Committees
at the moment are ineffective because people do not think they
have any result. If you just simply gave them the right to amend
and debate then frankly they would come along because they would
be prepared to enjoy questioning a minister. I am glad to hear
that Michael thought I gave him a hard time, but it is one of
the few opportunities in the House of Commons to question a minister
for an hour and a half on a particular subject. It is very focussed;
ministers have to know their brief and they have to answer questions.
Members of Parliament used to use that very effectively. However,
unless you give them the chance at the end of their debate to
actually put down an amendment or to vote on what has happened,
then you really dissipate all the effort they have put in up to
that point. You cannot just abandon your existing structure without
thinking what you could do to amend it and make it effective.
Mr Jack: I think the only way
you could get to that position is if those committees were not
formed on the strictly party lines that they are at the moment.
If you gave them the ability to be like a mini, one-off select
committee who, at the end of a question and answer debate session
with the minister, could then produce a short report saying what
they think is wrong and what should be amended and that could
then be put to the House for debate, that might get you somewhere
near where you want to be.
Mrs Dunwoody: The other side of
the suggestion of a select committee is that if you move down
this way, putting more and more European examination on select
committees, then the whips would become even more active in deciding
who does what.
Mr Jack: No, I am talking about
reformulating the existing standing committees on a different
basis so that they have the flexibility to produce amendments
and commentary because at the moment with the Government tabling
a government motion then by definition the Government has a majority
on those committees, albeit they are unwhipped business, but the
chances are that the Government will always win the day and whatever
amendment the Committee might wish to put to the House will never
get there.
Joan Ruddock: Let me just respond to
some of those points with a very specific area of policy. In terms
of the DEFRA Select Committee, of course the majority of policy
is actually European-made these days so the majority of the items
which our committee—I am on Michael's committee—takes
up a European dimension. If you look at genetically modified food
and crops the vast majority of our constituents do not want these
products in this country on any terms whatsoever. There has never
been a debate in the House of Commons on this issue with a vote
in which people could express the views of their constituents.
Every couple of months either the Agriculture or the Environment
Minister is in council voting—voting, not talking—on
some aspect of introducing a new food, a new crop or making some
other regulations. The committee that does the selection of items
has spotted this as being contentious and, indeed, repeatedly
refers matters to Committees A, B and C. At those committees the
Government always tables its motion. I have gone to those committees
as a person who does not sit on any of them and I have put down
amendments and I have forced a vote. Of course the whole of my
side voted against my amendments whipped by the Government, despite
the fact that virtually every person agreed with my position.
That is the reality in the European Standing Committee and it
is the reality on the floor of the House. It matters not. The
power to amend is there, the power to force a vote is there but
it matters not at the end of the day whether it is in the committee
or on the floor of the House, if the Government has a majority
and it uses its whips effectively it always wins the day. The
mechanisms we have at the moment do not provide any way of influencing
what that minister does in council, not least because one of the
committees on which I forced a vote, the opposite minister—the
Minister for the Department of Health as opposed to the Department
of the Environment—was in council at the very time we were
having our committee actually making a speech and voting on the
matter that we were debating. As I see it, with apologies to Gwyneth,
there is not a way of amending or making more effective the present
system because it ends up with a party vote. Clearly that is a
form of scrutiny which we all understand. The proposals that Michael
makes approach the matter from another perspective which is to
try to get influence that is not based on party political votes
either in committee or in the Chamber and it seems to me that
is the only positive proposal that we have had that would enable
us to gain more influence. I just want to really try to get this
committee to some point of not exploring constantly the problems
we are all familiar with but where on earth can we find solutions?
We have two perspectives here. One does give us an opportunity.
Gwyneth is enormously experienced in these matters and enormously
respected, but I cannot see what she is proposing coming to any
kind of solution because, as I say, the mechanism—despite
what she has said—is there to amend and to have a vote.
Sir Nicholas Winterton: Joan Ruddock
is incorrect; I am afraid she is wrong. If Standing Committee
A, B or C actually does amend—and the committees have amended
motions—the Government is not obliged to table that amended
motion on the floor of the House; they will table the original
motion. To an extent these committees are not able to influence
the House as a whole as they should be. I believe this is a matter
for the Procedure Committee to look at as well as your committee,
Chairman, because I believe that if an amendment is passed in
a European standing committee that is the motion that not only
should be tabled on the floor of the House but it should also
be debated on the floor of the House.
Joan Ruddock: The issue is: if the Procedure
Committee, for example, were to get a change that meant that the
amended motion did go to the floor of the House, I am putting
the point that with a Government with a majority and an effective
whipping system it would still be defeated. Therefore we are not
influencing the process.
Q210 Chairman: I think both points of
view have been very clearly expressed and I think we need some
stronger chairing here. Could Gwyneth and Michael respond to Joan's
points, please?
Mrs Dunwoody: I know it is a fairly
revolutionary idea that a government with a majority insists on
getting its own view onto the record; that is not altogether new,
it has been known for some time. The reality is that we can do
certain things. We could amend existing procedures in the European
committees. There is no other time at which a minister can be
questioned for an hour and a half on a specific process. We could
ensure that the actual mechanisms of making sure that select committees
know that there is legislation or regulation coming up or general
debates coming up which might concern them early enough so that
they can look at it and can seek to influence it. Influence on
governments stems from the amount of public pressure that can
be put on by debates on the floor of the House and work on the
committees that influence that debate. The reality is that the
select committees are not the place in my view. They already do
a lot of work about European matters; because of the work of the
departments they already follow what is happening in Europe and
seek to influence it. I actually think there are ways of doing
it but not by putting more and more detailed work onto select
committees.
Mr Jack: I think that if we had
the more flexible mechanisms which I described you would get somewhere
near being able to respond to Joan's observations in this way:
if, for example, as a result of the scrutiny process a short report
was issued to which the Government would respond in the same way
that it responds to the full-scale select committee process saying
that the Government's position remains to vote in favour of GM—just
to pick up on your example—but we will do the following
things to respond to the Scrutiny Committee's concern about product
labelling, about the percentage of contaminants that might be
permitted in still calling something GM and the growth of the
organic movement or whatever it happened to be. I am very conscious
that at the end of the day a minister is in the process of negotiating
and it would be unusual for this House to tie the hand of a minister
absolutely and I somehow think that whatever the colour of a government,
a government would be unwilling to be tied in a negotiating position.
I think we have to think that one through carefully because I
think there is a lot we can do to influence the nuts and bolts
but if the United Kingdom Government has taken a principal decision
then maybe the Government has to say right, we want Parliament
to decide yes or no to GM—which is one thing—but then
in terms of influencing the European policy towards it then these
mechanisms which I have described may enable you to get the Government
to say, "Okay, we will tick the following boxes, we agree
with the House on points a, b and c but cannot agree on d and
e and will fight for those in the European Council". Obviously
I recognise that there are no absolutes because it is only part
of a bigger process of negotiation and which can also be influenced
by the one area that we have not discussed but which could still
have a big effect on everything we are talking about: the role
of the European Parliament. Now, with the co-decision making mechanisms
in place they too have a big influence over the end-game—the
final shape of the directive or the regulation—over which
we have no influence whatsoever.
Q211 Chairman: We had a very interesting
session—just as yours has been—with some European
parliamentarians on those kinds of areas. I am very grateful indeed
for the time you have given, the expertise and experience you
have brought. What we make of it all remains to be seen. I am
very grateful indeed. Thank you.
Mr Jack: Thank you for asking
us.
| 
