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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 565-iii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE modernisation of the house of commons committee
Scrutiny of European Matters in the House of Commons
Wednesday 14 July 2004 MR RICHARD CORBETT MEP, MR TIMOTHY KIRKHOPE MEP, MR CHRIS HUHNE MEP and DR JOHN WHITTAKER MEP Evidence heard in Public Questions 118 - 172
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Modernisation of the House of Commons Committee on Wednesday 14 July 2004 Members present Mr Peter Hain, in the Chair Ann Coffey Mr Oliver Heald Mr David Kidney Martin Linton Mr Patrick McLoughlin Mr Peter Pike Joan Ruddock Mr Martin Salter Mr Richard Shepherd Mr Paul Tyler Sir Nicholas Winterton ________________ Witnesses: Mr Richard Corbett, Member of the European Parliament, Mr Timothy Kirkhope, Member of the European Parliament, Mr Chris Huhne, Member of the European Parliament, and Dr John Whittaker, Member of the European Parliament, examined. Q118 Chairman: Good morning and welcome to the Committee; I think it is a novel occasion. We know you have had to rearrange your diaries at some considerable awkwardness and we are very grateful that you have come. As you are aware we are looking at the issue of the scrutiny and handling of European business in the House. There is a lot of concern that it is on the one hand not properly scrutinised and there is no proper liaison between the progress of legislation through the European Parliament and the Commission with what is happening here. We are very interested in your own views from your perspective and I wondered if I may start by saying first of all that we tend to have these sessions, although they are on the record, as fairly informal so this is not a kind of interrogation; we are interested in your own ideas. Could I start by asking what your impression and your knowledge of Westminster are from your vantage point as MEPs and how much you know about how we operate to give us a view on how we can elicit from you how things could be improved? Mr Kirkhope: First of all, thank you very much for this opportunity for all of us. From my point of view, of course, I was a member of this House. Indeed, whilst I was a member of this House I had some very interesting jobs including a period of incarceration in the Whip's office, as Mr McLoughlin knows. I was, in fact, the Scottish Whip responsible for the operations of the Scottish Grand Committee. What you are doing at the moment is quite interesting to me in that regard as I was always excluded from the processes, not being a Scottish MP. I see that in your own memorandum, Leader, you are actually referring very clearly to what may happen in future. No doubt we will get onto this later. I was, of course, not only a whip here but a Home Office minister too so I know from a ministerial point of view what the problems are and also having been an MEP now - coming into my second term - I know that the relationship between MEPs and MPs is, to say the least, imperfect. Whatever one's views on Europe might be, it is very unsatisfactory that there is such an apparent lack of interest in the matters in Europe in terms of the detail and in terms of the legislative processes and so on by members of Parliament; there is so little take-up on the opportunities available to members of Parliament to visit us in Brussels apart from when they come on committees - which they do - but otherwise not at all. I think that relationship is very dangerous because it does not allow this House to have advance warning of what is happening in Europe and the criticisms which occur often in the tabloid press - but certainly pass around among all of us as representatives of the people of Britain - get completely misunderstood because there is not a basic intervention by our national Parliament at an early enough stage in the formulation of policies. I conclude by saying this, that I am very much in support of some initiative being taken here. I put down amendments as you may know, Chairman, while I was a member of the Convention, asking for joint committees of MPs and MEPs to be put in place. Indeed, it is Conservative Party policy - it was in our manifesto at the European elections - that that should be something we would press for so that we could deal with this matter. I believe that in your memorandum you are not going nearly far enough when you talk about merely attendance of MEPs. I think attendance at anything is something which is often declined by those who are being offered the opportunity if they are not having a useful role. I hope it is going to go much further than that and I would like it to be very much along the lines of what we suggested. I am very happy to assist you with any further questions after my colleagues have spoken. Q119 Chairman: That is actually very helpful, Tim. I think we would like to come back later on to this idea of liaison between MPs and MEPs and your proposal for a joint committee which I guess you are making formally as a good proposal and we would like to explore that with you. Richard, do you want to add to that? Mr Corbett: I would like to say that the link between us is important. I think the roles of the national and the European Parliaments should be complementary. Your role is particular important because when all is said and done nothing of great significance is decided in Brussels without it going through the Council and the Council is composed of national ministers who are members of national governments accountable to their national parliaments. That accountability is vital in terms of making sure the European Union is doing what it should do and doing it correctly. The link between the national ministers and their own national parliaments is something that should be vital to the whole process. We come in in a complementary way as the European Parliament dealing with the Council as an institution and with the Commission and there should be two sides of the coin rather than any conflict. I do not think it is my role to comment on how you go about that in terms of a grand committee, improving the role of select committees, re-organising the Scrutiny Committee or whatever; that is up to you. However, I would put forward five very brief ideas to think about. One is, should you look at the practice - notably in the Nordic countries - of having ministers appear before whatever seems to be the appropriate committee before they go off to Council meetings in Brussels. Q120 Chairman: In other words, pre-scrutiny; giving them a mandate. Mr Corbett: Whether you want to go that far and how precise any such mandate should be is a matter for debate. Some people think that the Danish system used to go a bit too far; it was very strong when they had a series of minority governments of course but it is somewhat changed in practice now. At least that pre-scrutiny would highlight the key issues on the Council's agenda before they came up. The second thing is whether, as a national parliament, you should enhance your scrutiny of implementing measures after the EU legislation is adopted. Where this is not done by legislation but where this is done by statutory instrument because we, as MEPs, often - and I am sure you do to - get complaints from constituents on what is commonly called "gold plating" where Whitehall, as it were, adds bits to European legislation, we get the blame for it, everyone else is quite happy to leave us taking the blame for it, and I think that is something that needs attention. The third thing you may want to consider in this era of openness and transparency is whether the Scrutiny Committee should meet in public. The fourth thing you might want to consider is what Tim has touched on already, the relationship with MEPs. Whether or not you want a special committee for it I do not know. You have made a start; the Scrutiny Committee has made a start with regular meetings and asking us when you think it is useful for our expertise and sometimes detailed knowledge of things. It is up to you to make the evaluation of that but sometimes we have knowledge that we should share with you on a more regular basis. Q121 Chairman: Could you give an example of that because it is a very interesting point? Mr Corbett: It is a general point that quite often we are examining issues that come up in Brussels before you have had a chance to do so because it hits us first, as it were, in pre-discussions with the Commission or when the Commission makes a proposal initially very often we are discussing it the very next day in one of our committees. So across a whole range of areas we are looking at things and because we are only dealing with European legislation - you are dealing with a whole range of other things - we have often gone into things in more detail at an earlier stage than you have and we ought to make our experience there available to you. The fifth and final point is a very general one: please treat EU legislation not as foreign policy but as domestic policy. It is about domestic legislation, the common rules for our common market, the areas where we benefit from having common European legislation; a limited number of areas, but significant ones from the environment to consumer protection to some aspects of legal cooperation and so on. They are limited areas but important ones; they are matters of domestic legislation, not foreign policy. Chairman: The Committee always welcome really practical suggestions and those were really very valuable and I think will probably come back to some of them. Does anybody want to ask Richard any probing questions at this point? Q122 Mr Heald: This idea of the European Scrutiny Committee sitting in public of course is something that they have asked to do and it would mean that the vast pile of documents that are sifted every month, the whole process would be in the public domain. Do you think that that is the most important practical measure that one could take immediately to open up this whole question of how we deal with European legislation? Mr Corbett: I do not think it is the single most important measure; it is one of five that I mentioned. I think it is more a question of principle and allaying fears. The public is increasingly suspicious of procedures that go on behind closed doors when they are dealing with legislation after all. Legislation in most democracies is a process which, at the parliamentary level, is in the public. Q123 Mr Heald: One other idea that has been suggested to us is that when the work programme for the Commission and the Council comes out in April that we ought to have a major debate in this place about the work programme for the coming year so that our view point can be expressed at a really early stage and we would perhaps have more influence on the process. Is that something you would be interested in? Mr Corbett: That is up to you, but I think that would be something you should look at as a good idea because it gives you early warning about what issues are going to come up for the next year. Q124 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Could I just slip a question in here both to Tim Kirkhope and to Richard Corbett? Do you not think too much material, legislation, directive, regulation comes out of Europe because certainly when the Scrutiny Committees meet here they have piles of papers that have been gone through by the clerks but which members of Parliament do not have a cat in hell's chance of scrutinising? Do you not think that the European machine should slow down and only actually pass directives, instruments - or whatever you like to call them - in much fewer numbers? Mr Kirkhope: I think the answer to that is of course, but the answer also lies in the powers of our own Government in the representations it makes through the Council and so on. We have an awful lot of stuff being churned out and as Richard indicated this country is pre-eminent in gold plating; it is pre-eminent at taking things that come from Europe and turning often very innocuous things - regulations and so on - into something which becomes a burden on the public of Britain more than it is a burden on the public in other countries. We have quite a lot of evidence of that and I think we have to be very, very careful that this legislative machine does not actually grab what comes from Brussels and I know there is a shortage of legislative time here and I know the use of statutory instruments, statutory legislative is something which we are quite keen on, but it is inevitable that we - this is what our colleagues in Europe think too - seem to enhance a lot of things in a way which they do not. Mr Corbett: Can I just add that notwithstanding the general perception that too much comes out of the European Union system you need to bear in mind a number of things. A lot of what we deal with as, quote, legislation, unquote, in Europe - ie going through Parliament and Council - are subjects which, if they were dealt with at a national level, would be statutory instruments. A lot of them are technical and regulatory in nature. Secondly, a lot of increasingly European legislation is not about the Union legislating in new areas for the first time as it was in the 1980s and 1990s; increasingly European legislation is about amending existing legislation to update it, to improve it, to learn lessons from it when it is not working. It is about changing the existing body of law rather than extending it. There are some extensions still but the shift is now in that direction. The third thing is to remember that when we have this image of Brussels spewing out laws all the time, who is Brussels? It is the national governments together meeting in the Council, double shacked by the MEPs elected in every member state; it is not the Commission dictating, the Commission proposes. Q125 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Are you sure? Mr Corbett: Yes. Q126 Mr Tyler: Could I just ask Mr Corbett because it arose out of something that he said. For instance, a regulation, and I think you must have been talking about the regulations they decided in the Commission and you may know about it the following day. Did I misunderstand you? Mr Corbett: When they propose legislation, be it a regulation or a directive, we know about it because it comes straight to us. Q127 Mr Tyler: This is a terrific rate because we digest in Whitehall, it comes through here and it is a much slower process. Regulation has a direct effect here so should we be sweeping away our own domestic consideration of these regulations? What is the point of us doing it? How do we interact with you? Mr Huhne: I will not go into the business of how much I know about the House of Commons scrutiny because I do not have the experience that Tim Kirkhope has, but I have been dealing as the pan-European liberal group coordinator with the whole financial services action plan programme and directives designed to create a single market and I am certainly very much concerned with the points that have been made about the level of overall legislation. I would point out that one of the first things I did when I was elected was to ask about the stock as opposed to the flow of directives and legislation on the statute book at the end of each year. I was rather reassured to find that actually the number of directives and regulations is actually lower than it was ten years ago. There was a decline and there has been some rise again. I think the point that Richard makes about a vision is terribly important and I think the role of the House of Commons in doing that is absolutely crucial. Q128 Mr Tyler: As revision? Mr Huhne: Revision of existing EU law. It is very important to look not only at new proposals in new areas but also to look at these proposals. In the financial services area, for example, the uses directive (which was about unit trusts) was basically a repeal of a former directive and a replacement by a revised directive which was designed to meet some of the faults of the previous directive and actually open up the market. It is still very important, of course, to have scrutiny. I want to make some practical suggestions whereby the House of Commons could have much greater impact on this. I very much agree with almost everything that Richard said on this. It seems to me that this is particularly important in a Euro-sceptic country like the UK. It is actually not an accident that given our relative lack of scrutiny - compared particularly with the Nordic countries, and I entirely agree with what Richard said on that and I entirely agree with what Gisela Stuart said in her evidence to you previously on that - we do actually need to open up the whole process and particularly hold ministers to account. I have come to that conclusion partly because I have seen as a rapporteur on a lot of EU legislation that actually ministers do not devote the amount of time which I believe they should devote - particularly on directives and legislation - precisely because there is no political downside for them in ignoring it. Effectively they leave matters to Sir Humphrey; they are bureaucratised not merely at the Brussels end but they are bureaucratised at the British end and we need to see our ministers being held to account openly in open scrutiny and, of course, in an open Council of Ministers meeting. I am sure one of the parts of the constitution that Mr Shepherd in particular will welcome is the decision to open up the Council of Ministers whenever it deals with legislation because that will make it much easier for the national parliaments to scrutinise what is going on. I think that is terribly important. There is a lot of information on the Nordic system and I think that in addition to the points that Richard has made I would merely like to say that the UK system currently largely looks backwards rather than forwards. It is an ex post system rather than an ex ante system and I think it is absolutely crucial that if our voters are to see ministers being held to account for the decisions that they take, they actually come before you openly and describe what is going to be on the agenda and say what they are going to do. It does not have to be a firm mandate like Denmark but it can be, for example, the rather softer system that operates in either Sweden or in Finland. I think that is an absolutely crucial part of connecting up British voters to EU decisions. Secondly, so far as I can see, there is no on-going system whereby the Government informs the House of Commons of subjects under discussion which would separate the wheat from the chaff. That is partly obviously ministers coming before a grand committee before a Council of Ministers meeting, but also during the process of discussion on a directive or a regulation the process of amendment in the Council of Ministers is for the presidency to come up with new drafts on a repeated basis. Those are usually available to the rapporteur in the European Parliament; they are always available to the lobbyists because civil servants and ministers actually need to get lobbying input, but I think as a matter of course they ought to be tabled with you for your consideration on an on-going basis. One other point which is very crucial, if you look at the debate within the Nordic countries not only is there this point about appearing before committees ahead of the Council of Ministers, but also there has been an improvement in both Finland and Sweden relative to Denmark because in both Finland and Sweden they involve the detail, the select committees own particular departments, in those areas where the departmental minister is actually appearing before the Council. I think that is crucial because the core expertise which is necessary in considering domestic legislation - and this is effectively what it is - is a knowledge of the area which actually only exists in departments rather than in the Foreign Office. In other words, the core expertise is not the way the European Union runs; the core expertise is, in the case of abattoirs, the way abattoirs are run, the way the veterinary system for inspection of abattoirs actually operates and therefore it seems to me that there has to be an involvement of particular select committees in the House and the specialist select committees - Environment, Treasury, Finance and Services or whatever - should be brought into the process. Q129 Ann Coffey: When I was reading the background information on what other parliaments do there seemed to be a distinction between what they called document based examination scrutiny and the ones that were more mandating. It occurred to me that it is very difficult in terms of time because obviously there is a process, the process changes, to try to connect that inextricably into the process of this Parliament is very difficult in terms of time and, indeed, ministers' time. The idea that you just proposed about the select committees having a more major input in this is very, very interesting, but how do you think that would actually work because the select committees are not legislative bodies. How would that work in terms of making that process accountable to Parliament? Mr Huhne: The way they do it in the Finnish Eduskunta - which is the best model of this - is that the Grand Committee asks for the opinions of specialist committees by a particular deadline and the whole process has a much higher political profile and the people involved in it tend to be former ministers and other committee chairs, so on the Grand Committee in Finland you actually have other select committee chairs involved in the process and it means that there is much more political commitment to actually dealing with legislative proposals when ministers are dealing with that. I think that is absolutely crucial. Q130 Chairman: Do you think it is better to see ministers before Council meetings rather than to examine documents as the European Scrutiny Committee does which should actually be at a much earlier stage? Mr Huhne: My own experience, partly as a journalist - having been a journalist in Brussels for three years - is that the EU has developed a particular form of censorship by mass; the sheer volume of paperwork is such that separating the wheat from the chaff is extremely difficult. Therefore you need - if you are going to focus your activities in terms of things that are seriously important - a way of getting to the nub of the issue. I think the best way you can do that is latching onto what the civil service has already done by holding ministers to account for what they think is important. Mr Kirkhope: I agree entirely about this. I think it is essential. There is so much paper that it has to be filtered. You can get yourself into a real twist over something which actually probably has no consequence whatsoever - or very little consequence - whereas something which is actually rather critical is slipping through almost unnoticed. I think it is important, as early as possible, that the most senior people who can be involved should be involved in order to discriminate for this and also to take account of it. Q131 Chairman: John, do you want to add anything at this stage? Dr Whittaker: Really I wanted to come back to the question you started with. You were asking about the interaction between this Parliament and the European Parliament and would it not be better if they came here or we came to you or you went there. I have to ask myself, what is the point of this exercise? There could be two, really. One point would be for European parliamentarians to come here and explain what is going on; the other thing would be for your members to go there and find out what is going on. But what is the objective of this? Is the objective so that we can see more quickly what is going on there so that we can actually change things? The whole conversation going on round this table so far has been about the inability of this Parliament to actually have any meaningful effect on the flood of European legislation so people here are naturally reluctant to take an interest in what is going on in Europe so there would be - there has been already - reluctance for people from this House to go over there. Similarly, if European parliamentary members are coming here, what is the point of this? Is it to give us early warning or is some idea of trying to Europeanise what is going on here, to try to make people here more aware of what is going on in Europe? If that is the case then I am afraid to say that I have doubts about that agenda because it seems to me that members of this Parliament when they are confronted by their constituents as to the problems associated with this or that piece of legislation, they do not want to declare the impotence of this House to look after European legislation. They do not want to broadcast in their constituencies the fact that this Parliament has so little influence on European legislation. So that agenda, too, I would say is unlikely to bring any fruitful result. Mr Kirkhope: Can I just add something on this because it does seem to me - again we are going back almost to where we started and the purpose of the work you are doing - that is absolutely vital that the work that is done by the United Kingdom MEPs is linked directly to where our priority is given in this country to legislation, ie this place. It is important to get that quite clear in both the minds of the MEPs themselves but also, I think, in the eyes of the public. At the moment we have different democratic bodies - it is just as well we have democracy applying as it does in Brussels as well - who are trailing along in different directions, not liaising properly. You have various things happening but not enough and unless you actually bring these democratically elected representatives together - whether it is under the umbrella of an Indian style grand committee - I do not know how you get round the legal points but you must have a certain equality here. The MPs, the Lords (if you can arrange it) or whatever title it can be because of the grand committee difficulties and ourselves as MEPs must come together at an early enough point in the legislative process so that everybody is quite clear and indeed the political parties can then take their views on how they treat each of these items at a very early stage in order to be able to make this process work much more efficiently for the UK. At the moment I think it is a bit of a mess and I think the Council of Ministers - the ministers themselves - would be greatly served if such an arrangement or such a committee could exist because I think they would then get a much better feel for what they were doing in their negotiations following that. Q132 Ann Coffey: I think there is another aspect to it which is particularly to do with the public perception of MEPs. I had a constituent who came to see me and they came as a result of an Oxfam lobby which was basically about an issue of food subsidy in the EU. I suggested to them that the best thing they could do was approach their MEP who would know far better than me the problems in the European Parliament. They pulled out the Oxfam lobby thing and they said, "But why have Oxfam asked me to come and see you to actually write to Margaret Beckett about this?" What you have as an MP is that people do come and see you as a point of call about issues whether it is lobby groups or constituents, but clearly they do not have a view of where that fits in with issues that are perhaps better taken up with their European MPs because there are actually issues about what goes on in the European Parliament. Do you think that the suggestion of having a joint committee that would involve MEPs and MPs would draw much more the focus of those lobby groups into a kind of more relevant lobbying of European MPs and also focus the attention of the public on that because it appears to me that there are a lot of issues around but one of them is an issue of the way in which you are seen to be accountable as members of the European Parliament for things that you clearly can influence. Mr Huhne: There is one reason why your constituent may well have come to you on that and be asked by Oxfam to come to you and that is because MEPs do not have control over the agricultural policy in the same way they do over other matters. On this area of food subsidy actually the only way of getting a grip on it is through the Council of Ministers and therefore going to MPs to try to hold ministers to account. Q133 Ann Coffey: I understand that and you could say that about every single thing. Mr Huhne: About 80 per cent of the new legislation is now by co-decision. Parliament does have a real influence but it so happens in that particular agricultural area unfortunately we do not. If the constitution is adopted, of course, we will actually be able to start hacking away at the agricultural budget which we cannot do now. Q134 Ann Coffey: I am using that as an example. Mr Corbett: That is absolutely right, but nonetheless organised lobby groups - Oxfam, Greenpeace, NFU, all sorts of groups - want to do both routes. They come to see MEPs and get their members to come to see MEPs because they know that we have at least some influence - it varies on the subject matter at European level - but they also know at European level the Council matters as well so they want to get at the national government and they come via MPs to pursue that route. Rightly, from their perspective, they pursue both ways. We have two hurdles, but two safeguards, two scrutiny opportunities but also two lobbying groups for anyone who wants to make a point on a subject. Mr Kirkhope: When people come and lobby you about something almost inevitably MPs will write to the minister. In a difficult case you always pass it on in order to please. Q135 Chairman: Could I seek some clarity - I think this is the point that Ann might have been probing - about your own take on the difference between what Tim was proposing, a joint committee, and what has come from the Foreign Secretary via me to this Committee - but it is a proposal for discussion - of a European Grand Committee on which MEPs would be invited to take part. Mr Kirkhope: Can you clarify first, Chairman, what you mean by that? You said in your memorandum that MEPs might be able to attend. I was never allowed to speak or vote in the Scottish Grand Committee even though I was a government whip because it was only Scottish members of Parliament and they were very strict about it. I want to know really, could this be extended? You mentioned attending; could it be speaking, could it be voting? Q136 Mr Pike: Participating. Mr Kirkhope: That is the word. Q137 Chairman: It could be any of these things and we are not specific in the recommendation because it would require changes to the rules of the House if you went down that road. Mr Kirkhope: I do not think attendance is a very attractive idea. Q138 Chairman: What I am interested in is your view, your take, compared to the proposition you put on this particular issue. Mr Corbett: I am very sympathetic to the idea of a focal point. It is up to you to organise your Parliament how you wish, but if it is a grand committee it is a focal point where MEPs could participate, not in votes, of course, because that would be mixing the two roles. There are some national parliaments that do this. The Belgian Parliament I believe has a committee of ten members of the House of Representatives, ten from the Senate and ten Belgian MEPs who are full members of that committee. I think the right balance is to have MEPs able to be invited or perhaps to attend with a right to speak but not to vote. You should not mix the role of the two different parliaments. To get the information cross-fertilising and the ideas going across, yes, that would be welcome. However, bearing in mind our respective parliamentary timetables you are not going to be inundated with MEPs at every meeting. We have seen this vice versa, about you coming across to Brussels. It is not always easy to fit it into busy timetables. Q139 Chairman: In addition the proposal has been put for us to consider and change is that it may only meet a couple of times a year; that needs to be born in mind. Mr Huhne: I think there are some practical issues here which are worth airing. One is, I know from the other side in the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee in the European Parliament we have made a big effort to invite our counterparts from the Treasury Select Committee or equivalent right the way across the EU. We are very lucky to get anybody turning up, even the clerk. There is not a great track record in people getting on the Eurostar and shuffling backwards and forwards because they do not see it as a core part of their job. Secondly, the timetables are different. Yes, the Commission proposal lands with both Parliament and the Council at the same time, but in my experience in fact the consideration of particular legislation is not at the same time and therefore, because if the MEPs are busy with legislation they are going to be focussing on the thing that is actually in front of them, for the House to come and say, "We would now like you to think about something that you thought about six months ago" is potentially problematic. I think a lot of it is something that I suspect you have to do yourself. I think that the House itself needs to build its own scrutiny rather than rely on MEPs to help them do it. I think it is a very good idea to improve relations between MEPs and MPs in the House, but I do not think that is a magic ingredient. One of the reasons why it is not is because if you look at the way my colleagues work, given the development of regional flights and regional airports, most British MEPs do not come through London. It is actually quite a detour getting them to come. If you are from the north-west or Yorkshire or Humberside or Scotland you fly directly to Brussels or you fly via Strasbourg. London is not a natural port of call and therefore it is a special trip and I think you will necessarily get the attendance you would expect. Mr Kirkhope: I disagree totally with that. Dr Whittaker: I listen with some incredulity to the arguments going on round here. We are talking about changing the format of committees - larger committees, smaller ones, different ones - and the objective seems to be to get a better spread of information but then that is only of value of something can be done about it. I have to make the observation that if there were to be meaningful scrutiny of European legislation either ex ante or ex post by this Parliament, by the parliaments of the 24 other member of the European Union, the whole jolly thing would ground to a halt. In the opinion of my party that would probably be a very good thing because it would mean that this House could actually get back to the duty for which it was elected, which was to make the laws of this land. On the other hand, that is also the very reason why there never will be the opportunity for thorough scrutiny of European legislation because if that were the case, as I say, the whole thing would not work. What are we trying to do here? Moving the deckchairs, as in the old proverb? I do not believe that we can honestly make any meaningful improvement of what goes on. Yes, more information, but that is only going to be of value if we can actually make some meaningful difference and I have severe doubts about that being possible. Q140 Mr Tyler: I want to come back to the "what" rather than the "who" and it actually follows on very well from what John was saying. Surely the perception of impotence, the perception of overload, the perceptions that have been referred to by all four of our witnesses actually apply just as much to the relationship of Parliament with the UK Government as they do to anything that comes out of the EU. My concern is not who is going to come into this committee, but what it is going to do. That should determine who comes, how often it meets, whether it is a voting body, whether it follows the Finnish model that Chris has referred to which sounds to me to be very practical. The critical issue is not going to be to spread the load over a huge number of people so nobody feels responsible; the critical issue is to give it some political imperative. What I get from all four is that the Government's role in this is the critical question. (And I notice the former minister nodding.) It is the relationship of the Government to this place coming at the right moment, telling us what is coming through the governmental system, giving it the priority that it requires, identifying where there is a suspicion of gold plating. A former minister - from a different committee - has told us previously that he wanted to know in the then Ministry of Agriculture what exactly was being added in his department to what had to be done as a result of the legislation coming in. He had columns and this minister - I am prepared to give his name in due course because we are in open session - said that the day he left the Ministry the civil servants shut that system down. I think this is very important. I think that what all our guests are really saying is that we have to make sure that the ministerial interface with Parliament is right then we have a chance of influencing the whole process through the Council of Ministers and co-determination. Mr Huhne: I think it is very important to separate the two parts of the procedure though. One is holding ministers to account when they are negotiating a directive or a regulation and then there is the process of implementation which takes place maybe in the following 18 months following the agreement of the directive or regulation. You need to have scrutiny of both of those, the second one to stop the gold plating but the first one to make sure that actually ministers are taking these directives and regulations seriously and there is a real political downside if they get things wrong. Mr Kirkhope: In all of this I do not think we should lose sight of one basic principle, and that is coming out of Larkin - and I am afraid this is one of my gripes with the Constitution - where it was clearly laid down that we really have to do more to try to explain to the citizens what is actually going on in Europe. The Constitution failed to do it in my view as a member of the Convention and the new draft that you are looking at now equally fails to do it. What might help, I still believe - and this is why I am arguing in the way I am - that what might help is if there is, if you like a closer relationship between what we do as MEPs and what is done in this place. I believe in the primacy of the national Parliament here but I think working together in a suitable vehicle - committee, whatever - would not just be a waste of time. I think people would come to London to be on that as long as they have at least the right of speaking. No-one is going to go just by an invitation that you can come if you want; they will not come. They have to have some reason to be here. I am not necessarily pressing voting, but I do think we need to have something and it needs to be done quickly because the faith of people not only in Europe but also in politicians generally is something we have to tackle. Mr Corbett: In response to what my new colleague from UKIP said about it being just more information but what is the point, information is the basic raw material that you need in order to hold governments et cetera to account. It is vital. I do not think that members of the Finnish Parliament who have this rather good system think that, having got that information, are not doing anything with it. I think they are having real influence over their minister who goes to Council meetings. I think we, in the European Parliament - you will soon discover this - have real influence over the content of legislation. It is not all the Commission, far from it. The Commission just proposes and that is the central thing we need to get across. I think the Constitution can help with that. I disagree with Tim on that. Dr Whittaker: May I just say that I do accept that I am the new boy here. I have not spent time yet in the European Parliament; I am looking forward to doing so. I would just add though, as I said before, if we are to have meaningful influence on ministers and get things changed by the ministers, how the hell are the ministers going to cope with the huge flood of stuff that is continually coming forward? I understand that they get briefed by their civil servants the day before or something, go over there with a few points that they are allowed to bring up in the Council and that is just about all that they can do. They cannot cope with all the detail. How on earth are we going to do it? Q141 Joan Ruddock: In response to what John Whittaker has said can I just say that ministers are making intensely political decisions. They are not actually going with a back of the envelope brief and going over there and saying the few words they are allowed to say. They are actually making very, very significant political decisions. Some of us disagree with some of those decisions and actually want to be able to influence them. From the evidence we are getting today, we need to have some clarity which I am not sure we have quite got yet. Perhaps it is the Finnish model, perhaps we just need to know in detail and not, obviously, now at this session. I foresee that we could have a joint European committee but I think the people coming from Europe and the people from the UK Parliament have to be fixed persons; I do not think it could be on the basis of anybody could come because I think you have to get some real working practices, real dialogue going, a real commitment from people and that is the way you would do it. I think there is a need to bring ministers to account. I am sick of being confronted with things in my field which I work on so much, the environment, where we get the opportunity to have a debate after everything has been decided, where ministers have not taken the expertise of those who of us who are on the Environment Select Committees, they have not taken account of the views of the public which we could bring to them via that process and I think it is time that we ended this farce which I see it as being. Dr Whittaker nods. It is not the farce in the sense that he observes; it is the farce that we have something that is meaningful, we have a European Commission, a European Parliament and we are not making the best use and we are not having the best linkage. I think we have to get to the bottom of this and how can we do it. I just wonder how often it would be feasible for such a joint committee to meet given that it had fixed members and also whether we, here, could suggest that commissioners should come to that joint committee as well and how you would feel about that because many of us would like that opportunity - and we sometimes get it by going there - but in a much more formalised structure. I think this Parliament has a right to ask for commissioners to appear in the UK. Dr Whittaker: If we have meetings twice a year of this grand committee, that is never going to fit in with any timetable that goes on, surely. By the time that thing meets it is going to be too late. Q142 Joan Ruddock: It should be possible surely. That is the question. We know when the Commission is going to publish work programmes. This is an event which is clearly signalled, can be planned for and if we did have fixed membership and maybe if the the term of membership is limited so that people are not overburdened, maybe it is for one year or two years. Mr Huhne: I very much agree with what Joan Ruddock has said and the implications. There is actually a very good pamphlet which I hope you already have on democracy in the Nordic region produced by the three main parliaments there. It does seem to me that the key thing is that you are going to have to meet much more often if you are going to hold ministers to account on a regular basis; you cannot just do it twice or three times a year. I think realistically, given the clash of timetables, it has to be reliant primarily on MPs rather than on bringing in MEPs. I think that is absolutely crucial. Q143 Sir Nicholas Winterton: How many times a year? Mr Huhne: In Finland they meet every week on a Friday, which of course is another outrage to the House of Commons. It would be bringing in ministers before they go, every Council meeting. Q144 Chairman: That is a scrutiny committee rather than a small strategic body. Mr Huhne: I think that is actually the Grand Committee. Mr Corbett: One of their functions is as a scrutiny committee. Mr Kirkhope: There are certain points in the course of the year where it is pretty clear that the work of such a committee would be much more valuable and I think that is what one should look at. Q145 Mr Kidney: Could I just try to get over this question about how many times we can meet together to talk about the flow of information between parliamentarians. Richard Corbett, one of your five suggestions right at the beginning was that you give us the benefit of your knowledge and expertise about what is the right issue and when is the right time that we should be interested. I wonder how we can make some use of that flow of information from our UK MEPs to our UK MPs so that we can make use of your expertise. Must it be the happenstance of a good MEP or within one political party, or can there be some institutional way so that it is a flow of information rather than another set of meetings? It seems quite simple to me if we could set it up. Mr Corbett: You touched on party relations and it is true a lot happens within parties as well, but the central point I was trying to make was simply this, that we have, by the nature of things, some advance warning, some expertise, some in-depth knowledge sometimes in areas where you might not yet have it. Can we not find a way to communicate that? A right for us to attend and speak at committees would be helpful, but I think what is more important is for you to invite the right person at the right time, typically a rapporteur or a person who has been a rapporteur if there is a time lag. Mr Huhne: I do not agree with that. It is completely unrealistic. Having taken a lot of legislation through Parliament in the last session, on one particular occasion when I needed German MEPs on board in the coalition to get particular amendments through I made a big effort to go to Germany but you cannot conceivably go to 25 member states. If you start with one member state then you have to do it for everybody and we have had exactly this problem with holding the ECB to account. The Treasury Select Committee wants to interview the President of the European Central Bank. If that principle is established the poor guy is going to be spending his whole time out of Frankfurt visiting national parliaments in 25 countries. I really do think in practical terms once a commissioner has established the principle that they appear before one national parliament, how can they conceivably turn round and say, "I'm sorry, we're only going to London because the UK is a big country; we're not going to go to Estonia, Lithuania et cetera". Mr Corbett: That is taking an idea and stretching it to the absurd degree. I suggested that the committees may wish to invite MEPs where they think it would be useful and among the people they might typically choose from could be a rapporteur - sometimes that will be possible, I have done it myself on occasion - it could be the lead spokesman for the main British political parties on that committee; it could be the political group's coordinator; it could be the chairman of that parliamentary committee. Usually at least one of those people might be available and willing in those cases that you choose to prioritise. Obviously inviting every rapporteur from every member state on every subject would not work; it needs to be targeted. Mr Kirkhope: The way in which we actually deploy our MEPs from the British political parties does cover the work of all the committees and I do think that we should try to walk before we run on this. We should not be put off because an enhancing here is difficult to implement practically. I think we ought to look at getting this started; I think that is very important. I do not think that these extra items that Richard is going on about are necessarily our priority. Q146 Mr Kidney: Can I ask about the flow of information from you to us so that we know the right issue at the right time to have an input. I do not agree with Paul. Why should we wait for a minister to tell us which is the right issue? We should suss for ourselves; quiz the minister. Mr Kirkhope: If the relationship develops because of a joint committee in which we are involved, I think it would follow then that there has to be some kind of clear liaison from a secretariat point of view as well. I think that would be perfectly achievable so that in fact officials, whether they are here or with us, can actually work to some extent together because we are not talking about Commission officials, we are talking about parliamentary officials. Q147 Chairman: That is a very interesting point. Parliamentary secretariats could almost engage with our secretariat here on whatever subject. Mr Kirkhope: You are looking very sceptical, Chris, but I do not see why it could not happen. I do not think it would be too much. The truth of the matter is that a committee of this kind - we are not talking about mammoth numbers of personnel - to have some kind of liaison is going to work. Who is going to be that joint contribution, then of course it follows, I think, that that would have to be acceptable in terms of the secretariat as well. Mr Huhne: I know Tim and Richard have been very heavily involved in the constitutional side and I do not have that perspective; I have a perspective of having to deal with the legislation and trying to amend it. We are very, very short in terms of the support within our own secretariat; we have a very poor research system by comparison with yours; the library, for example, is actually based in Luxembourg rather than in Brussels or Strasbourg where it would actually be useful. When I first became a member of the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee it was far easier for me to get hold of relevant reports as to the performance of EU economists through my old firm in the City than it was through the secretariat of the European Parliament. The idea that we can provide an early warning system to you, we are not set up to do that and I think that the key way to get that is being open to trade organisations which are actually concerned about pieces of legislation and making sure that you are monitoring the civil service. The only British body that actually have the resources to do this job properly is the civil service and the question is really lifting issues up out of the civil service to a political level. That is what is not happening at the moment. Mr Corbett: Peter, when you were Minister for Europe you were involved on the Labour Party side - other parties may well do the same for all I know - of setting up a scheme whereby on each European parliamentary committee there is a labour MEP responsible for links back home to the party and to the relevant minister. Why not build on something practical like that? Those people from each of the parties could, when you feel it is appropriate, be brought in when you think it is helpful to help on particular items. It is not rocket science, it is practical day to day contacts that we are talking about. Dr Whittaker: Can I get back to the means of influence here; we actually have two, do we not? One is through the ministers, through the Council and the other is through the European Parliament. Those are the means we have of influencing European legislation. The Council of Ministers does have time only to look at the major over-arching concepts of the legislation that is coming up. It does not have time to look at the detail; it never will do. The way that detail is actually influenced is via the Commission, by lobbying it. There are loads of anecdotes around about how this or that statutory instrument is about to put some unfortunate businessman out of work. The way the thing has sometimes been solved is by a representative going direct and finding at great pain the appropriate person on the appropriate commission and getting some amendment made at that point, not through any parliamentary system. Is there some way that we could actually latch onto this to get round the whole parliamentary system so that when something comes up which is irksome and is going to put people out of work - totally unnecessarily, like so many directives do - we actually go back to the root because that is the way I believe I have seen this actually working, not through the parliamentary system. Q148 Mr Heald: They do have this annual work programme for the Commission and the Council has an annual work programme to so it would not be beyond the wit of man for our European Scrutiny Committee to liaise with MEPs, produce a report to the House on the work programme that is coming up for the year and then we could have a major debate in the Commons on the work programme for the year. Then we would be getting in right at the beginning with our views. Dr Whittaker: Then what happens? What do we do with that information? Mr Heald: That informs our ministers when they are going to Council meetings, it informs the Commission of what our views are at a very early stage and we can, of course, use our political contacts in the parliament to bang the drum, form alliances and see if we can really make things move. Q149 Mr Pike: I can well understand that it would be nonsense for us to talk of rapporteurs coming here because I can see the demand from the 25 other countries, but you are saying quite clearly that within the British MEP representation across the parties there is somebody on every subject area that should be able to come here and speak with an air of authority, recognising that that type of liaison, if we are trying to represent you in Europe and us here in London, is in the best interests of this country. Mr Kirkhope: Absolutely. Because of the way in which things work in the European Parliament we do tend to find that spokesmen - certainly in my party and the other main parties - do tend to stay in the position of spokesman for quite a long time as opposed to here where people are switching around all over the place. They do stay put and the do concentrate on those areas and they do build up a very high level of expertise. I think that what Peter said really would be very useful. Q150 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Tim, could you comment on what Dr John Whittaker has said. He says he believes that by going into the Commission and the particular secretariat you are more likely to get changes which are unhelpful - ie the legislation is unhelpful - rather than going through Parliament. How much say, in fact, does the European Parliament has when they are debating a matter that has come from the Commission? Mr Kirkhope: I think far more than I anticipated when I went to the European Parliament in 1999. Obviously there have been changes as you know in terms of co-decisions and so on. In reality the commissioners are now much more aware of their own vulnerability. Q151 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Can you give any examples to this Committee? Mr Kirkhope: Not without thinking about it, no, but my colleagues probably can. Mr Huhne: I can give you some very clear examples from the financial services area where, over the last five years we have dramatically changed Commission proposals and taken things on from where they were left in the Council of Ministers. Most recently on the Investment Services Directive - which is effectively a constitution for financial markets and determines how stock brokers treat their clients in a way of trying to get a big single market - if it had not been for the changes in a liberal direction introduced by the Parliament I think this country would have had a very serious problem. The common position actually agreed by ministers last December would have introduced very onerous requirements on stockbrokers which would have substantially changed British practice. That is one example. Another example was on the Prospectus Directive where now we only need on prospectus to issue shares or bonds throughout the 25 member states, one regulatory approval from the FSA or whatever and you can now go to investors throughout the member states. That would not have been a practical proposition unless the Parliament had actually introduced important elements of choice for bond issuers and share issuers in doing that. You can go on and on. The Parliament has actually made very practical changes. Mr Corbett: Sometimes we throw out proposals entirely, like the Port Services Directive. Mr Huhne: That was an unfortunate one. Mr Corbett: There are different views of it! Dr Whittaker: Was it not the case that when those amendments were approved by the Commission that one of the main causes was that those who would suffer under the legislation as proposed were themselves lobbying? Are you claiming that the whole of the reason for the change was in fact through Parliament, that the Parliament was responsible for bringing about these changes? Mr Huhne: The Parliament lives in a pond where people can come and lobby it and obviously that is what happened. The Commission makes the proposal and the Commission does not have the power to legislate without the approval of both the Council of Ministers and the Parliament in 80 per cent of legislation. We look forward to having UKIP members of the committees of the new parliament which they were not in the last parliament because they did not actually get involved in any of their work. Q152 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Can I ask whether you think it is more effective to lobby the Directorate of the Commission or whether it is more effective to lobby the Parliament? Mr Huhne: I think it would be a dereliction of duty as a lobbyist if you were not to operate on all parts of the process. You begin very clearly by trying to influence the Commission. Mr Corbett: Just as with domestic issues you begin with Whitehall and if necessary go on to Westminster. Mr Huhne: When the Commission has made its proposal you then shift your lobbying activities to the Council of Ministers and the Parliament. You attempt to get the Parliament and the Council of Ministers to make amendments to the original proposal. You operate at all levels and throughout this you are trying to get a piece of legislation at the end which is as near as possible to what you wanted at the beginning. Mr Kirkhope: Anti-lobbying mechanisms deployed by the Commission - partly of course because they are not democratically elected - are much more effective than the anti-lobbying provision that we might think of. We are more vulnerable to lobbying; we are more likely because we are democratically elected as opposed to the Commission which is definitely not and does not need to listen to lobbying in the same way. Mr Huhne: And we have less independent research support. Q153 Ann Coffey: This idea of bringing MEPs and MPs together here to discuss and make some connection with each other as a way forward - or at least beginning a sort of basis of information - that is not voting it would be in an informal setting, there have been informal meetings already. Have any of you participated in those informal meetings? If you have, do you think they have been successful? How do you think that compares with the MEPs who have gone on to do a similar thing? Mr Huhne: I think it is a really good idea the MEPs and MPs should talk to each other as much as possible. I would really caution you against thinking that this is a magic ingredient for solving our problem; it is not. It is a very small added extra. The real issue to my mind is to move your scrutiny of ministers towards a Nordic model which actually holds ministers to account much more directly, it allows you to separate the wheat from the chaff and actually allows you to get involved in the process rather than as at the moment when you are constantly surprised by the results of a legislative process and not actually involved with it beforehand. Q154 Ann Coffey: The point I raised with you previously about people having a very clear idea about what MPs are and what they do but not having such a clear idea of what members of the European Parliament do, in terms of helping people in the country to understand what you do, those sorts of informal discussions which might attract attention and discussion and publicity, do you think that would help? Mr Kirkhope: It would help but we are stuck with a system in terms of our election, in terms of the areas that we represent. I represent five million people compared with MPs representing, say, 60,000. Q155 Ann Coffey: Not personally. Mr Kirkhope: I am one of the people; I do have a little bit of help occasionally! I have to say that it is a mammoth thing to try to get a concept that I am a representative of people from North Allerton-on-Tees down to Derbyshire. The Government has changed all this and it is much more difficult now. MEPs are up against it also in the media. We do not obviously get as much attention except when there is some very strong story. Q156 Sir Nicholas Winterton: You need to have a word with Chris Davies. How he gets it and why he gets it I just cannot think. Mr Kirkhope: I know there are exceptions in both MPs and MEPs. Mr Corbett: The ratio of MEPs to population of course is different but we are dealing with a smaller range of subjects so our postbags are probably about the same. In terms of public perception of our role which I think is what you were getting at, I think we are now moving to a situation where at least on one fundamental idea that most people would think is the job of having a parliament is having the final say on saying "yes" or "no" to legislation being adopted and having the chance to amend it. We are, with co-decision recently extended, now finally getting into that position where people know that if it is European legislation then the MEPs will approve of it or not as the case may be. That basic understanding is gradually getting through. Q157 Mr Tyler: I do not think our witnesses have seen the note from the British Parliament representative in Brussels which I think is very interesting on the whole question of mandating versus a document based system. I wonder if I could ask if that document could be sent to our witnesses and we might have a written note about it because I think it is very interesting. I have a couple of practical questions now. At the moment how much of the work done in this building by the scrutiny process actually filters through to you? Do you have any impact on it? Does it have any impact on you? Secondly, at what stage do you tend to see where the UK Government has got to on a particular legislative process? Mr Corbett: On the first thing I think we get more from the House of Lords, much more. They also have more regular hearings with MEPs, by the way. We get their documents very quickly. On your second question, the Government, as soon as it has thoughts and a position, communicates it to all MEPs. It does that quite well. Mr Huhne: I entirely agree with what has just been said about the House of Lords. I have come across the House of Lords in terms of scrutiny; I have never come across the House of Commons in terms of scrutiny despite the fact that over the last five years I have dealt with at least 12 pieces of EU legislation. I find that rather worrying. On the government issue, I think it is quite interesting that the British Government is actually relatively advanced compared with other member state governments in realising that if it loses a battle or it only wins half a battle in the Council of Ministers who are establishing a common position on a particular piece of legislation, it can then open up a new front in the European Parliament. Therefore we often get members of UKR - the UK Representation - coming round to rapporteurs or to British members if there is not a British rapporteur and, indeed, ministers. In one particular case the Investment Services Directive the Treasury messed up big time and did not negotiate well at all with the result that the common position last December was very bad. We had a cabinet minister, Mr Boeteng, actually sitting at the back of my committee listening to the debate because he was worried about us pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for him. We did that and the amendments which we got through were absolutely crucial so the British Government is, I think aware, of the importance of using all means of influencing the outcome on legislation and that is a good thing. Q158 Sir Nicholas Winterton: How often do you read the Hansards of our European Scrutiny Committee or the committees that consider European legislation, European Committees A, B and C in this House? How many of the people who were in the European Parliament on the last occasion on a regular basis read the Hansards of the UK Parliament? Mr Kirkhope: I do. Mr Corbett: The Lords. Q159 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Not the Commons? Mr Corbett: Only occasionally; I have only received them occasionally. Q160 Sir Nicholas Winterton: You can obtain them any time because they are available. Mr Huhne: I would be delighted - I think it would be very useful to establish a list of British MEPs dealing with particular dossiers - to be sent material from the House and from the Lords relevant to that dossier in a timely manner. Nothing would make my life easier. That would be absolutely splendid. It has not happened yet. Q161 Mr Kidney: It has come out very clearly that we should study, if we want to improve our procedures, Denmark, Sweden, Finland - everybody says especially Finland - but no others. Mr Kirkhope: It would be interesting to see what the new member states are putting in place. Mr Corbett: I must confess I do not know the answer to that. Q162 Mr Kidney: I have only the slightest acquaintance with the procedures by which you conciliate and reach agreements. Mr Corbett: I can recommend a very good book on the European Parliament! Mr Kirkhope: You might even get an author's discount! Q163 Mr Kidney: In terms of your procedures, is that because you are secretive in the way that you reach those agreements so that we cannot scrutinise what you are up to or is simply that we are not taking an interest in something that is perfectly open? Mr Corbett: All our sessions and committee meetings of all committees are in public. The only parts of the legislative procedure that the European Parliament is involved in which is not in public is when we meet the Council in the Conciliation Committee. As you know, if we have not agreed the same text after two readings it goes to a Conciliation Committee to negotiate a compromise. That compromise then has to be approved by both in public in our case, in a public vote in Parliament. The Conciliation Committee, the negotiation of a compromise, is not in public. Q164 Mr Kidney: So we have plenty of opportunity to take an interest before you get to that stage anyway. Mr Corbett: Yes, and most legislation is agreed within one or two readings and does not need conciliation on a third reading. Q165 Sir Nicholas Winterton: What do you perceive to be the current effective links between the European Parliament and the Houses of Parliament here, ie the Commons and the Lords, the UK Parliament? Mr Corbett: My most frequent contact with MPs is through party channels, frankly. We also have a good link system with ministers because ministers are dealing in the Council with the same matters that we are dealing with in the Parliament and we have obviously reached the conclusion that we need to talk and communicate and coordinate positions. Mr Kirkhope: I think mine is probably through the party as well in many ways. Mr Huhne: Mine is definitely through the party and I think it depends very much on the MEPs. I make this point particularly about travelling via London because being a south-east MEP it is relatively easy to be here but that is not the case necessarily for someone from Scotland or whatever. I make an effort to participate in my party's treasury team meetings every so often to update them on what is going on in EU legislation and vice versa on the financial services area. I find that very useful; I hope they find it useful. I think it does depend on personal relationships. Q166 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Dr John Whittaker obviously does not have any of his party members in this House although he may well have a lot of sympathisers. How do you perceive the contacts between MEPs and the European Parliament? How will you seek to work with this Parliament in seeking to implement or to progress your agenda? Dr Whittaker: Our agenda - if I may state it - is to take Britain out of the European Union altogether in which case we would not be having this debate at all. Q167 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Bearing in mind we have the current situation, how would you seek to advance your agenda on behalf of your party which is the United Kingdom Party? Dr Whittaker: United Kingdom Independence Party. I have told you what our ultimate objective is. Of course, we would be seeking to get members elected to this House as well and when we were able to exert sufficient influence we would be pressing the cause I have already mentioned to you. I do not quite get the thrust of your question. Q168 Sir Nicholas Winterton: How do you perceive, as a member of the European Parliament at this time, to improve the contact between the European Parliament so that members here are aware of what you and you your party are seeking to do. We know your long term objective but there is quite a lot of time between what is going on now and what you might seek to do in the future. How would you seek to work now within the European Parliament to represent the interests of the people of this country and cooperate with the United Kingdom Parliament? Dr Whittaker: Our position in the European Parliament, in my opinion, gives us the position to fulfil the mandate for which we have all be elected, the 12 of us in the European Parliament now. I do not quite understand why you should see any relevance in our agenda of this Parliament here except to the extent that we would wish to have members in it in good time. Q169 Chairman: There is one other issue which I would be interested in your views on because there has been an issue about MEPs wanting greater access to facilities in Westminster. If so, which facilities and given the time constraints which you yourselves have raised - Chris has particularly identified - would anyone make any use of them? Mr Kirkhope: Obviously I am a former member as well so it is slightly different here, but in itself it is not a major issue but I think socialising. I know you have problems yourselves actually with your present MPs not socialising any longer due to your change in hours et cetera. I am just making a provocative statement there! I think there is nothing that you can do to help us and I think quite a lot of us actually do come through London and keep in touch with this place but we would be very pleased to see anything that could be done to improve the opportunities for socialising with MPs and colleagues here and therefore, for instance - it is a minor matter perhaps - but your dining and catering facilities and things like that are certainly an area where perhaps one might explore a little bit further and even possibly some other facilities, not necessarily your library but something which goes on here which might be useful from the point of MEPs clarifying the position of the British Parliament and what they are doing. I think that is a small matter but it all has a sort of atmosphere about it, assuming that MPs would be willing to agree to it. Q170 Chairman: I think you are allowed to use the members' dining room at lunchtimes but not at any other time. Do any of your colleagues have any views on this facility? Mr Huhne: I had not thought particularly about eating, I have to say, since MEPs do pretty well on that front in both Brussels and Strasbourg, but I do think if one is looking at the effectiveness of UK parliamentarians in dealing with legislation which affects us, then as I say - you will excuse me for being rather repetitive - the research facilities in the European Parliament are dire and if MEPs were actually able to use the Commons library on some matters I think that would be very helpful. Sir Nicholas Winterton: It occasionally takes members of Parliament many days to get papers from the library because they are so overstretched here. Q171 Chairman: That is another matter to discuss, I think. Mr Huhne: I think in practical terms if you want British MEPs to be well briefed on legislation that they are going to have to consider then I think improving their access to research into British interests is actually very useful. Q172 Chairman: Specifically the British interest? Mr Huhne: The Commons library does a very good job. Chairman: If there are any other issues that you, on reflection, think you would like to drop us a line about please feel free to do so. I just wanted to add that I think from all our points of view this has been a very educative and constructive session. I am very grateful indeed that you found the time to be here, each one of you. You have certainly given us a lot of food for thought in unscrambling this relationship. Thank you very much indeed for coming. |