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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 565 - i House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE The Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons
Scrutiny of European Matters in the House of Commons
Wednesday 5 May 2004 MR JIMMY HOOD MP and MR DORIAN GERHOLD Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 56
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Select Committee on Modernisation of the House of Commons on Wednesday 5 May 2004 Members present Mr Peter Hain, in the Chair Ann Coffey Barbara Follett Mr Oliver Heald Mr David Kidney Martin Linton Mr Patrick McLoughlin Mr Peter Pike Joan Ruddock Mr Richard Shepherd Mr Paul Tyler Sir Nicholas Winterton ________________
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Jimmy Hood, a Member of the House, and Mr Dorian Gerhold, Clerk, European Scrutiny Committee, examined. 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 just 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 debating of genuine depth on European issues. We are interested on 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 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. Other departmentals 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 committees 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 with irrelevance 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 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 - was 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 judgment 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 legal or politically important and that judgment 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 not to do. So we do not step over that policy area which may cause or be perceived to cause friction because we do not have much evidence of it. 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 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 Commons' European policy on scrutiny of defence; the Trade and Industry Committee, December 2000, on fair trade; the Committee of Public Accounts, March 2001, on the EC's financial regulations; the International Development Committee, April 2000, on reform of the European development assistance. Q11 Chairman: Fine. Thank you. Before I bring Mark 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 to 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 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 Regional 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 on 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 a 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 better 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 ten 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 avail the House with their Ministers, albeit that it may be ten or fifteen 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. As departmental committees we are encouraged to look more positively at European issues, as I am sure they would be delighted to do. 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 one of those committees could cope with the volume of work that the European Scrutiny Committee would send it. If you look at annexe 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 complimentary; in fact we are there to aid and assist departmentals 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 scrutiny 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 directors on Trade and Industry if it is the Trade and Industry Committee, or the 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, 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 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, i.e. that good scrutiny makes 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 standing back and watching what is happening inside the department because this is what our scrutiny does not do. It is an aid to a Minister because we can tell a Minister how well his or her department is going 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? Q20 Mr Heald: Yes. Is that a useful part of scrutiny, do you think? Mr Hood: Yes, I do. One of the things we have been talking about as well is that maybe we should have more of a supplementary part of that process. The Chairman's Panel made a ruling on it some time ago that supplementary questions can be asked in the Standing Committees, but maybe we have got used to not asking the supplementary questions. So we think we should be encouraging people to use supplementary questions because the Chairman's Panel has already decided that they can do that. Q21 Mr Heald: Finally, if I may, the Opposition Spokesman of course can attend the Standing Committee and pursue a line of questioning of the Minister. Do you think that that is something which is important - certainly we do - that the Opposition has that opportunity and that of course other outsiders who are not members of the committee can also come in and question on important issues? Mr Hood: I most certainly agree with that and I agree that both as a chairman of a Select Committee and as a chairman of a Standing Committee. Through the Chairman's Panel I sit on Bills and statutory instruments as well and it is always helpful, in fact should we not say necessary for the Opposition Spokesman to be there? It seems to me it would be sensible that that happens. Q22 Mr Pike: A couple of things on the Standing Committees. Firstly, I have to say that while supplementary questions can be asked, when I have chaired them people do not try to ask them and I found it very odd that you go around and come back but they do not. You have indicated that you would still like five, but smaller committees. Of course, you will remember that when they were originally set up they suggested five and we originally had two and then we have compromised and gone to three, A, B and C. Would you accept that there is a very serious problem with Members on both sides of the House, particularly the Opposition, but even the on Government's side and would you accept that on some of the committees in the House because of people having moved on to other things there are on a number of committees of the House what I would call "dead wood", people who actually want to get off but there is nobody available to replace them? Is that not a real problem in going for the five, even if they were smaller? Mr Hood: I do not, because I give the mathematics of it: if you had nine on the Standing Committee, and indeed five Standing Committees instead of three, then there would be less of a burden on the people who were on it because they would have to meet less often and they would be able to specialise better. Of course, there is another thing, that we have to make it (pardon the politically incorrect comment) more politically sexy, more interesting, and make sure that MPs understand that it could be assisting their career prospects to be more involved in Standing Committees and issues concerning Europe, especially those who come in and on their first day they want to be Prime Minister, they want to go up to Foreign Affairs, Trade and Industry and things like that straight away. Some of us know it takes a bit longer than one term of Parliament to be Prime Minister and really we should be encouraging them to start a little bit lower down. Q23 Mr Pike: Could I move on, Jimmy, to the point of making it more sexy to attract people to go. Your paragraph 32, at the bottom of p.10 of your submission, really touches on a key issue. I served for a couple of years on Euro A and on a number of occasions we did amend the Government motion, but then of course to the House it reported not the amended motion but the original motion and there is no opportunity to debate it or vote on it. If one wants to attract people to serve on a committee and it is not just a talking shop, is not the point that you are making in paragraph 32 an absolutely crucial one, because people will not attend or do not want to attend meetings if nobody is going to take any notice of what they say? I chair Regulatory Reform now and you refer to the procedure there. I have two different options, of course, in a debate under different situations in the House. Is that not something which should be very seriously considered if we are to upgrade the importance of these Standing Committees? Mr Hood: Well, we have argued that for some time now and we have pressed the present Leader and previous Leaders of the House to look at that because in Parliament the Government always has its way; in Standing Committees the Government has its majority. I would imagine it is very, very, very rarely that the Opposition could overturn a resolution put down by the Government but when that does that is fairly restructured(?) for the report that goes to Parliament and it is something we support. Q24 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Could I ask Mr Hood whether he would reconsider the answer he gave earlier, I think it might have been to Ann Coffey or Martin Linton, that part of Foreign Affairs questions should be devoted to Europe? Does he really think that we should in fact further surrender our interest in what goes on throughout the World for concentrating on Europe, which does get an opportunity of questions during Foreign Affairs questions in any event? Does he not actually agree with, as it were, the memorandum of the Leader of the House that it might be a very good idea to use Westminster Hall for cross-cutting questions on Europe, because I chair Westminster Hall and I believe it is a splendid forum for specialising in some of these matters relating to Europe? To get together a group of Ministers who have considerable responsibility and expertise on Europe so that people could go to Westminster Hall and have an hour of cross-cutting questions seems to me to be a very positive use of Parliamentary time in Westminster Hall. I hope, of course, that that would in no way detract from the two major debates on the Floor of the House each year, which I think are very important, but Westminster Hall could be used much more for this. Does the Chairman of the Scrutiny Committee not accept that that might be a better way, rather than cutting down further on people's ability to question the Foreign and Commonwealth Office about matters relating to every country in the World? Mr Hood: Sir Nicholas, thank you for affording me the opportunity to come back to that issue. In fact it has been talked about - whether it was a quarter of an hour would not matter to me, in fact I would probably prefer it to be a quarter of an hour on to Question Time, not a quarter of an hour off the Foreign Affairs Question Time, so I was not suggesting for a moment that we should take it off that. If I did, I am pleased to be given an opportunity to retract it. As to cross-cutting questions in Westminster Hall, I am in a position where I would not disagree with anything. I very much support that, by the way, because Westminster Hall has been one of the better things we have able to do. It has been very successful and the demand is fantastic, obviously influenced by the excellent chairmanship of Sir Nicholas and his colleagues, who do an excellent job in there. The fact that there is a great demand for Westminster Hall tells us that it is working. Again, I am sure that if we can look at how best we can improve it then we should look at how best we do that and I support the point about cross-cutting questions in Westminster Hall. Q25 Mr Tyler: I want to get back to your very important point about cultural change. We are all busy Members and committees are very busy. Raising the priority of European matters seems to me to be very, very important and I love the way you are approaching that. Just a couple of thoughts. Firstly, to back up what Peter Pike was saying about the smaller but more specialised Standing Committees, surely it would be very helpful if we could adopt your suggestion of giving them proper names so that the specialisation was clear, so that a Member who went on the Standing Committee that was concerned with transport could say to his constituents and to transport interests, "This is my specialisation"? Could you say a bit more about that. The other issue is, which I think comes to the same thing because we are always trying to get more Members more interested and more involved in these, would you like to say a bit more about your response to the suggestion of the Leader of the House of a European Grand Committee (although I think you have got a better name for it) and how that might attract support because, frankly, if we fail to get people to go to such a committee each failure is a step back; it is not just a stand still. Mr Hood: On specialisation, we went a bit further than that, as you know, in the report. We even talked about that specialised Standing Committee having its own chair, which we think would enhance it as well. Therefore, we are very supportive of that. Your last question was? Q26 Mr Tyler: About the Grand Committee or re-named Joint Committee, I think you prefer. Mr Hood: Well, again the Grand Committee is something that we have been quite excited about. As I say, I come from an experience over the years of feeling like I am talking to myself and talking to walls at times but I have seen - and this has happened over the last maybe two or three years - a light at the end of the tunnel. If I can give you an example. I am sure that the Chairman, the Leader of the House, will not mind me talking about my own party. MPs at Westminster and MEPs in Brussels have always tended to be distanced from one another and looked at each other not as a threat to one another but they are just doing that job and we are doing our job and never the both shall meet. When one wants to look at what the other is doing they would resist that. There has been a complete change now, not just in my own party terms but in the House. Over the last perhaps eighteen months or so we have set up meetings, all-party meetings, including the House of Lords, with MEPs. We have had two meetings here and one in Brussels and the whole atmosphere has completely changed and we are speaking as parliamentarians who are complimentary and see our jobs as complimentary to what each other is seeking to do. We concentrate on the role of national parliaments. They do their bit in the European Parliament and scrutinise the Commission and we do our bit in looking at what our Ministers are doing in the Council of Europe and there has been a complete sea change. On top of all that has come along devolved government and here comes enlargement, and enlargement will bring in some more devolved government, and we see a need to broaden the welcome into this political forum. That is why we even suggest that maybe some of our colleagues from the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly be involved in the Grand Committee as well to give us all a forum to sit around and talk about how our respective democracies and responsibilities are working. We welcome it and I would hopefully look forward to us going down that road. Q27 Mr Tyler: That is very positive. The problem is, is it not, that the more people you welcome, the bigger the tent you have the less likely it is that anybody feels absolutely obliged to be there. How do we make sure that Members of this House still retain the core responsibility in such a committee? Mr Hood: Well, I am encouraged. We had ten MEPs here to a meeting mid-week. When we went we took six or seven MPs, and that is out and back in one day. I am very encouraged, and the quality of debate was impressive as well. We were not just talking and it was not just, as we tend to get, one saying the same thing. There was a very good debate and because it is cross-party without any of the jostling that goes on in their own party, I think it was very worthwhile and it is very welcome. Q28 Mr Shepherd: There are just three of your paragraphs I want to ask you about, E6/49 and 51. In 6 you draw our attention to the sheer quantity of EU legislation which passes through the House and you give the figures: in 2003, 1.080 documents were deposited, 535 were deemed of political and/or legal significance and were reported on and 48 were recommended for debate, giving rise to 26 debates in European Standing Committees and one on the Floor. In your paragraph on 49, which I am conflating perhaps here, you also make reference to a proposed secondary legislation Scrutiny Committee on a experimental basis to sift statutory instruments in the same way that we scrutinise EU documents. I am trying to get my mind around the huge volume of legislation now which is driven from Europe. Dolores said, famously, 70% of our legislation will come from Brussels. Would you think that 70% coming from Brussels is an under-estimate or an over-estimate on the basis of the information you provide and are aware of? Mr Hood: The clerk is the best one to answer that. Mr Gerhold: I have no idea what the figure is and I have no idea how you would calculate such a figure, whether you do it on the basis of the number of pieces of legislation or their importance. I am afraid I cannot answer that. Q29 Mr Shepherd: So the Committee or the clerks have no idea, therefore, what is the quantity of British domestic law that now is driven from Europe? Mr Gerhold: In percentage terms, no. Q30 Mr Shepherd: Because some of the measures that come before your committee find their way into domestic legislation to satisfy the principle of the sovereignty of Parliament and reinforce Section 2 and Section 3 of the original Communities Act, presumably? Mr Gerhold: Yes. Q31 Mr Shepherd: How many statutory instruments then originate from Europe? We used to list by them the little letter "e", did we not? Mr Gerhold: The Scrutiny Committee does not look at implementation, that is the point of the paragraph, so we have no reason to count these. We look at legislation before it is agreed in the Council and we count that. Q32 Mr Shepherd: So we are actually not scrutinising then that which becomes the law of this land? Mr Gerhold: We are scrutinising European legislation, some of which has direct effect. At the later stages it is not for the European Scrutiny Committee looking mainly at what happens, what UK Ministers do in the Council. Q33 Mr Shepherd: No, but we are here because of the Leader's scrutiny of European matters in the House of Commons, and I would hope therefore your committee, which would be aware of what it is generating through its 1,080 documents in one year, where you are sitting maybe 30 times in the course of a year. We are looking at you disposing of a huge number of documents, simply disposing of them, so there must be a technical difficulty in that. There is the sifting, which is presumably done by the clerks, is that right? Mr Gerhold: The clerks provide briefing to the Members, who go through it at the weekly meetings, without necessarily agreeing it. Q34 Mr Shepherd: I am just trying to get clear in my mind the pattern of how that which has the force of law in Britain is scrutinised. We are very familiar with the domestic side in the sense of that which originates from pledges of Government, etc., but I am trying to see that which creates criminal law, and you have very kindly provided us with an annexe which indicates some of the measures you have recommended for committees, and indeed have come into substantive English law, such as, to take the Home Office, the European arrest warrant? Mr Gerhold: Yes. Q35 Mr Shepherd: That started as a European document, presumably? Mr Gerhold: It did, yes. Q36 Mr Shepherd: And it was recommended for a debate, which was held in a Standing Committee? Mr Gerhold: Yes. Part of the problem is the sheer volume. It would be difficult for the committee, with its existing resources and one committee to look both at the European documents and at the domestic implementation. Q37 Mr Shepherd: I accept that. Mr Gerhold: But it is also not within the committee's terms of reference. Q38 Mr Shepherd: No. So we get back to 1,080 pieces of documentation which are disposed of in 30 sessions? Mr Gerhold: Yes. Q39 Mr Shepherd: Is much of this done just by rote, "Do you agree? Do you disagree?" or is there a real consideration? Mr Hood: I may be able to help you. I will tell you what staff we have and how we deal with it. Obviously we are the largest staffed Select Committee in the House by far. I have a senior lawyer and a junior solicitor, we have a senior clerk and a junior clerk and we have four specialist advisers and the four specialist advisers I respectfully refer to as my poachers turned gamekeepers; they are usually people who have worked in the Civil Service and they have that expertise which they are advising on. Then we have a secretary to back it up, so it is about six or seven. When we come to our weekly meeting on a Wednesday, you are right, we can have a pile about this high, thirty or forty documents to look at. What we have with that directive is an A4 paper from our adviser telling us the treaty base, whether it is legally or politically important or not, what it seeks to do, maybe some brief history on it and then there is a recommendation on whether it has been looked at and can be cleared or whether it is politically or legally important and it has to be further scrutinised, whether to hold it back and get fuller information (that is sending it to departments for further information, the Cabinet Office, etc.) and with the other information it will then come to us and the recommendation will either be to go to debate because it is legally or politically important - even then we get some recommendations that we are not satisfied with, the information - whether or not to despatch a memorandum which needs a bit more information on and then we will make a decision to hold it back again to get the information, and then we made the recommendation. It goes to debate and when it goes to debate that is it cleared from our scrutiny process. It is then in the hands of Parliament, for the Standing Committees or on the Floor of the House. That is why the clerk was unable to tell you what happens to the scrutiny of legislation afterwards. Q40 Mr Shepherd: That presumably is why then you argue for another committee in fact to do the second stage of this scrutiny? Mr Hood: Yes. Mr Gerhold: Yes, that is so. Q41 Mr Shepherd: That is an acknowledgement that the scrutiny is not complete? Mr Hood: As I was saying earlier, we need to look at how best we improve what we do and it seems to me that is an area where we can improve. Mr Gerhold: Just to add on the earlier scrutiny, the committee will sometimes look at documents six, seven or more times, particularly if there are new drafts or if it is going back to the Minister several times with questions, if it does not think its questions have been adequately answered, and so on. Q42 Mr Shepherd: Oh, I do not doubt from your memorandum that you are inundated, if not besieged by all these documents, but at the end of the process of this discussion I can see what you do but the wider interest we have is scrutiny of European matters in the House of Commons, Government memoranda from the Leader of the House of Commons, who is also Chairman of this Committee. Whatever I may think, I am just trying to elicit, does this House adequately scrutinise European matters in the House of Commons when it was asserted and is now accepted widely in Europe that the greater volume of legislation now coming through the House of Commons originates through the European Union? Mr Gerhold: The committee is not looking at the merits of these documents, but it is scrutinising to make sure it knows from the Government what the effects are and what the Government's policy is. Q43 Mr Shepherd: This is not a question about the merits, as you will have understood, so there was no need to refer to the merits of the legislation. Mr Hood: No, I think the hesitancy was putting the percentage on because we do not know what percentage it would be. Mr Shepherd: But when we are looking at proper scrutiny and the use of the time on the Floor of the House and the use of Members through their committees it must be important to know whether we are directing our energies in the right direction. I am very mindful of this because the new accession countries had to sign the ACI and it was said in many papers and reported as such that these now constitute 80,000 pages, and clearly if you are looking at as many as 1,080 documents in the last year this is a vast volume that is very difficult for Members of Parliament in detail to scrutinise and even for Government with all its resources, I imagine. I am just trying to see what is the way around this and where this leads to. Should, as I say, the time of the House be more given over to it because clearly fifteen minutes questioning on the range of issues that you have recommended for discussion and Foreign Office questions seems to me wholly inappropriate in this and should it not be the Secretary of State for Industry responding to matters which relate to industrial matters or industry areas? Q44 Chairman: To help you out, I think Richard has made his point, but is there anything else you want, on reflection, to add by way of detail to what you might want to briefly say now, because I am going to move on to other issues? Mr Hood: Not in the way of detail, but on Richard's last point, of course the Secretary for Trade and Industry will deal with Trade and Industry issues and the consequences of European legislation that is reflecting on her department and Parliament but, as we say, once it has left her decision or whether it is recommended for further scrutiny then that is passed on to us and that is the business of this House, and that is what our standing orders from the House mandates us to do. Q45 Ann Coffey: I have a question about the domestic implementation of directives. There has been a view that has been around for a long time and I am sure you have heard of it on many occasions, which is that UK Parliament tends to implement directives with all the "t"s crossed and the "i"s dotted and other European parliaments do not necessarily do that, which means that basically it puts us at a slight disadvantage. I wonder what your view on that is from your experience of how directives are implemented in other parliaments and if there is another parliament which does either scrutiny or implementation, or discussion of merits in a different way which in your view may make it much more mainstream in that parliament, and if so what suggestions you had on that. Mr Hood: The question of whether we implement them better or more rigorously and other EU Member States do not has been going around for a long time. I feel that we are probably as good as any and not as bad as most. I have always considered us to be about average. I have no way of telling you how I work that out, it is just a feeling when you talk to other colleagues in other parliaments. On your end point you make there about differences between the parliaments and how we scrutinise, if I go back to when I first came onto the European Legislation Select Committee and the system of scrutiny that was held, that was the Folketing Committee in Denmark. Here was a committee which met four times a year with the Prime Minister. They met the Ministers the week before they went to the Council meetings and indeed if there was any change in negotiations during Council meetings then the Minister would leave the room and go and phone the Chairman of the Folketing Committee to explain the new change in circumstances and they would discuss it and come to a common position. We thought that was great, and I thought it for some time in fact. Someone was supported in some proposals as to how we scrutinise in our own Parliament when we were in Opposition. I have to tell you my experience tells me that is not the case. The Folketing Committee has an excellent way of scrutinising and I do not in any way criticise it, but it is a system for a coalition government; it is not a system for the majority government. They meet and their committee meets to mandate their Minister and when they meet it is under the Prime Minister. It reflects the coalition of the government in the parliament. Therefore, it is very rarely, if at all, the committee will be at difference with the Minister of the government or the line the government is taking. We are completely different. We are a majority parliament and we need to scrutinise our Executive a lot more vigorously than the Folketing Committee does, and we do not. As I say, we might not do what we would like to do because we will never be satisfied, but I happen to think that our system of scrutiny is probably one of the best. I do not know of any better in Europe than ours, even though we accept we have got room to improve it. The thing is now that a lot of the new Member States want to come and talk to us on how we do our scrutiny, and indeed through the good offices of the clerk and his staff I refer many of the Member States and we meet regularly and advise. One of the things that maybe we as a scrutiny committee could look at to improve it is to get involved more in the bilateral experiences that we seem to get. The only possibility we have to meet our colleagues from other Member States is that there is a COSAC meeting every six months in the Member State of the presidency where we meet and I am like the father of the COSAC; I must be, I do not think there has been anybody who has been a chairman there longer than I have. So I am the Tam Dalyell(?) of the COSAC probably. That is not a bad description. We meet but it is only twice a year and we tend to meet and discuss agendas and we sit in a conference hall. We tend to maybe have a couple of hours with each other and maybe have tea, coffee, dinner or something and exchange views. I honestly do not think that is good enough. I think we should have more bilateral exchanges and a lot of the new members now are coming to the UK to meet with the Government. It is very rare that somebody will come on European issues without wanting to meet our committee. Chairman: If you feel you have anything more to say to us on the bilateral points, if there is anything you would like us to take up in terms of more exchanges please let us know. Q46 Martin Linton: I think it is very important that we should draw you out a bit further about how significant you feel European issues should be in the mainstream, if you like, and particularly at Question Time, because we had Sir Nicholas suggesting that he did not want any Foreign Office questions being taken on European matters and Richard made the perfectly apposite comment that if it is true that 50 or 70% of legislation actually originates in Brussels then the argument should be for maybe more than half. I agree with Dorian that it is probably pointless to try and put a precise percentage on this, it is certainly very difficult to, but just in terms of Question Time what do you think would be a reasonable proportion? I am thinking not just about the FCO, which is the least of the concerns, but departments like DEFRA, Transport, the Treasury, Health, which all have considerable European interests. What proportion of Question Time would you say in an ideal world ought to be ring-fenced for European related issues? Is that a useful exercise? Mr Hood: Well, you take your choice. I would think it would not be unreasonable to have the European Minister for say half an hour on the Floor of the House. Q47 Chairman: Could I just interrupt here, the European Minister rather than the Transport Minister negotiating the transport constitution? Mr Hood: No, I think it would be interesting to have the European Minister available for questions. Q48 Mr Tyler: Surely that flies in the face of what you were saying earlier. Europe is not a foreign country. We must not ghettoise it. I think it is extremely important that this is part of the mainstream of the department, is it not? I understand where Martin is coming from but I think it actually could be misleading. Mr Hood: In fairness, if you departmentalise it - and I am not suggesting that for a minute because then you say that what is happening now is satisfactory because that is the status quo, surely. Anybody could put a question that is relevant to you on transport issues, on Trade and Industry and on Foreign Affairs. We are arguing how we are going to involve people more in addressing the issues and lifting Europe further up the political agenda for people to be more aware of that and we have a Minister whose responsibility is to Europe. It is not for me to tell the Prime Minister how he should be running his Government, but even though it is not a Cabinet position I think it is important enough a position to have a Question Time. Mr Tyler: I understand that point, but I thought Martin was suggesting some ring-fencing. One man's ring-fence is another man's ghetto. I think there is a real danger, if we are not careful, that we do push it to one side, with dangers, I think, from the point you were making much earlier, which I think is absolutely right. The cultural need is to see these European issues as being domestic issues and I think there is a danger there. Q49 Martin Linton: About the need for Question Time for the Minister of Europe, he is an FCO Minister, but what about DEFRA, what about Transport? Many of the day to day issues are actually about Europe. What I am probing is whether it would not be helpful as a discipline within those Question Times, which are 50 minutes or 60 minutes, to have a part of that ring-fenced so that during that period only questions about Europe can be asked. That guarantees that at least some part of that Question Time will be devoted to these issues. Mr Hood: So what you are suggesting is that 5 or 10 minutes of that time be allocated for European issues? Martin Linton: Yes. Q50 Mr Pike: Surely we did used to have a Foreign Office Question Time for Europe? We did have a specific time. When I came into the House there was a question period for European questions? Mr Hood: Yes. Mr Pike: I am not agreeing with Martin's view on the departmental ones, but we did used to have Foreign Office European questions. Q51 Mr Shepherd: My concern about this is that, for instance, in the list of papers that you referred to, and you talked about a conversation with your colleague, the Chairman of the Transport Committee, the European sky policy has a direct bearing on the work and responsibilities of the Secretary of State for Transport? Mr Hood: Yes. Mr Shepherd: It is indivisible in fact. Once one has acceded that this is the responsibility of elsewhere, I cannot see why the Europe Minister would necessarily be competent to discuss or answer this in the context of how it is translated into domestic policy or legislation, whether by statutory instrument or not, and this is why you cannot really comment, as you say, on downstream, what happens beyond your committee, and I accept that. So all of this is really a debate within this Committee that you are listening to, unfortunately, whilst we try and grapple with it. Q52 Chairman: I think there should be some tougher chairing then in that case! Mr Hood: I was tempted to do the politician's bit and bat it back over the net by saying that is a challenging consideration for the committees! Chairman: Jimmy, we have covered a lot of ground. Are there any issues we have not specifically covered which my colleagues briefly want to press you on? I do not know whether there are. Q53 Mr Heald: Could I just raise one matter. In paragraph 17 you say that the Government's memorandum is a bit tough on the Standing Committees and you mention two very good debates on important issues, the Working Time Directive and the fisheries, and then at the bottom of that paragraph you say: "We hope the Modernisation Committee will seek views from the core members of European Standing Committees." Is that something that in the light of your evidence you still think we should do? Mr Hood: Yes, I do, and I will tell you why. We have got a core Member on our committee who has got some really strong views, quite radical views, that I would recommend you seek out on this question of Standing Committees. That is Michael Connarty. It was because of Michael's input into our discussions, I suspect, that comment. You are welcome to have a word with Michael and seek his views. He has experiences of being on the Standing Committee, which are some good experiences, some bad experiences and some frustrating experiences, but he is keen to seek to improve it. Chairman: Jimmy, we have tried your patience and you have been very good. Martin Linton has got a brief question. Q54 Martin Linton: Just one brief question. In paragraph 48 you talk about pre and post-Council scrutiny and you say that that could be done by departmental Select Committees. Have there in your time on the Scrutiny Committee been any examples of departmental committees engaging in pre-Council scrutiny, in other words seeing a Minister before he or she goes to the Council meeting and have you yourselves as a committee ever done it? Mr Hood: Yes, we have. Q55 Chairman: The Foreign Affairs Committee has. Mr Hood: Yes. One of the other phrases I coined that any Leader of the House has not stolen as yet is that when we got these new powers from the change in standing orders in 1998 I said to the committee, because they were really enthusiastic and they had Ministers in all the time, we have to be selective to be effective. If we have Ministers in all the time then that power of right of calling them before you will just be seen as a run of the mill thing. I can tell you that Ministers will say they always enjoy their experiences and the present Chairman might even tell you he enjoyed the experience. Q56 Chairman: Yes, indeed. Mr Hood: We are a very friendly bunch, but we are a friendly bunch of people with considerable expertise on our given subjects. I have been studying European issues for some years and we are always pleased to have Ministers there but we always have to make sure we ask searching questions, as indeed you have done today. Chairman: Well, that is a note to conclude on. Could I just emphasise that from my own experience you have to do a lot of homework before you appear in front of your committee as a Minister and it is a useful discipline. I am very grateful indeed. If any other issues occur to you for further clarification - if I may say for my part on behalf of the Committee, we see this as a collaborative exercise with you and your own memorandum is very helpful. So as we develop our thinking we will keep in touch on our own suggestions. Thank you. |