Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-117)
23 JUNE 2004
RT HON
DAVID HEATHCOAT-AMORY
MP AND MS
GISELA STUART
MP
Q100 Mr Heald: When do they come out?
Is it a particular time of year?
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: I cannot answer
that. We interviewed the two Commission officials at the end of
last year about this year's working programme, we then wrote to
complain about the matter in January, we got a letter back in
March, we have written again and we are still waiting for a reply,
so it is almost half way through the year. It is basically too
late now but the initial scrutiny did take place in time to do
work last November.
Q101 Chairman: You mentioned, to go back
to the issue of the European Scrutiny Committee, legislation going
through on the nod and through the Scrutiny Committee on the nod,
and the implications only being made clear later. What practical
examples can you give of that?
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: I do not think
I am betraying the confidence of the Committee, which does meet
in private, if I say we start off our weekly meeting with a dozen
or 15 legislative proposals on bits of yellow paper with a brief,
and the Chairman goes through them and you have to put your hand
up if you have an objection, if there is something you wish to
add, if the subject matter is one someone knows a little bit about,
if it is an example of something which is more important than
it seems or the legal base you believe is wrong, but it is done
on an exceptional basis. Otherwise the Committee simply rattles
through them.
Q102 Chairman: There is no actual example
you can give?
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: You have unsighted
me, except I did bring one along, which is on crime prevention,
which came to our Committee very recently on 14 May. It is to
tackle anti-social behaviour and street robbery. I and others
said these were very important issues which the Government was
legislating about already, we could not see the case for the EU
proposals, but there is nothing we can do. In fact I am looking
now at the recommendations because the Minister broadly agrees
with the proposals and we have decided to clear the document.
So I am afraid in a few months' time, or maybe a year's time,
when one of our constituents says, "There is a new complicated
Directive to do with street crime passed by majority voting, have
they got it right?" I am afraid I will have to look back
and say, "Yes, I did complain but there was nothing we could
do about it."
Q103 Chairman: I would be rather surprised
if we got a Directive on that but that is another matter. We have
two more areas we need to cover. First of all, on the Constitutional
Treaty's subsidiarity early warning mechanism, and perhaps I can
ask you, Gisela, since you were very instrumental in helping to
achieve this. How do you think it will actually make a difference
to the compliance with the principle of subsidiarity and how should
the Commons implement it? Should it be through the Scrutiny Committee
or some other mechanism?
Ms Stuart: Either the Scrutiny
Committee or, if you have it, the new Grand Committee where the
House forms an opinion. The problem with that mechanism is actually
not within this House, I think the problem is what is the body
where that one-third of national parliaments reaches a view, and
the only body which is in existence at the moment is COSAC.
Q104 Chairman: Meaning?
Ms Stuart: The Committee on—some
French term. The clerks will know this.[1]
A committee which is largely only known of by those who attend
its meetings. The committee itself has no history of actually
being able to reach any conclusions and, much more significantly,
it has as its membership also MEPs who, whenever national parliaments
are in danger of reaching a conclusion, are very effective in
preventing a unanimous decision being reached. So I think this
House, how it reaches a decision, whether it breaches subsidiarity,
is not a problem, it is what is the body by which national parliaments
form a view, and the current vehicle is I think an unsuitable
one. Just as an observation, when during the Working Group I asked
the Commission for evidence of a single example on which they
abandoned a proposal because of breach subsidiarity, they could
not come up with a single example of where compliance with subsidiarity
made them think twice.
Q105 Chairman: Just to probe a bit because
it is quite important and we may well be confronted with this
question when the Constitutional Treaty goes through, exactly
what is the mechanism we might want to adopt. The problem with
the European Grand Committee is that it may well not meet as frequently
as the Scrutiny Committee.
Ms Stuart: This is where we come
back to the point I was making at the beginning of the session,
the difficulty we have as the House of Commons is that we have
a delete process for proposals, and that is the Queen's Speech
or a General Election, so either something goes through and is
agreed within a year, or, if it is modernisation, we might extend
it for two years, but certainly every five years we say, "Stop,
you have to put it back on the table." There is no similar
delete button on Commission proposals and that is the problem
for us in terms of the collective memory of this House. At what
point do we key in? I would suggest we make some fairly strong
proposals to the Commission to actually ask them, and in any negotiations
with the European Parliament, that they put on a time frame by
which agreement has to be reached, and it comes to an end. That
will then allow us with whatever committee structure we end up
with to have a time frame where our views have an effect. Without
that we will always be operating in a kind of fog.
Q106 Chairman: Leaving aside what happens
once our Parliament decides, along with others presumably, and
maybe reaches the third threshold to object to some new Commission
legislative proposals, do you have anything to add to how we handle
it at this end?
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: You need to
combine an expertise about the subsidiarity principle, in other
words some committee needs to examine the Commission's proposals
and—
Q107 Chairman: With official advice presumably
from the clerks?
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: It can be,
or official advice from the clerks and compare it with other proposals.
A committee, in other words, which has some knowledge of the subject
and can take an informed view. But also it is important that the
House as a whole or at least some particular committee is able
to engage on it and given in public an opportunity to express
an opinion. So you need a double system. But it has to be done
very quickly because we need to assemble other national parliaments
in parallel because the timescale is very compressed—I think
quite needlessly compressed. I do not see the need for hurry,
we are not talking about fast-moving international negotiations,
we are talking usually about a process of domestic legislation
where deliberation on a very long timescale is often much more
desirable to give outside interests, lobby groups and our constituents,
an ability to respond. So I do not think we ought to dance to
an artificially imposed timetable from the Union, but I also feel
it must be a collective decision of the House of Commons as a
whole to formally complain when the subsidiarity principle is
breached.
Ms Stuart: One observation. I
think the end to the six month rotating presidencies and much
greater stability on a two and a half yearly basis will aid us
on that, because part of the urgency is quite often at the end
of a particular presidency (which keep changing every six months)
people want to push things through, and that on occasion gives
an added unnecessary urgency, so the new structure might help
us.
Q108 Mr Kidney: I am concerned. David
talks about the rush to legislation and Gisela was telling us
earlier about when she was a minister and inheriting a ten year
old legislative process on one measure, so there seems to be some
rush and some delay. How do you put those two together? There
must be an optimum, I would have thought. David, do you agree
with Gisela's proposal that if there was an end date for all Commission
legislative initiatives that would sharpen their act up, but do
you not agree that also means there would be a rush which you
have just said is a bad thing?
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: I think there
is a problem because the Commission has to pick up old proposals
and try them again. They did this with the Directive of the marking
of precious metals where they came back and back and back until
they found a friendly presidency to help them get it through.
I think that is a form of abuse, so there ought to be a procedure
whereby proposals can be buried as well as resurrected. When one
has got a proposal, particularly an important one where there
is general agreement, it has to be done at Union level, and I
think we have to accept we must act more slowly and allow our
constituents to engage on this. It may mean less legislation but
it would be better. I remember the Santer Commission saying in
terms, "The Union must do less but do it better", and
it has never been taken seriously. Unless we do, all these institutional
changes are not going to work.
Q109 Martin Linton: There is one other
small item on our agenda which is the members' European travel
scheme. I am one of those few who actually uses the new entitlement
of three, in fact I was at the French Parliament only yesterday,
which was very interesting. Does it worry you that certain people
make use of this? Do you think it is important for Parliament's
effective scrutiny that individual members should actually make
use of the travel scheme to visit both institutions and the Parliament
on a more regular basis? Maybe you have some views about the proposals
to extend the list of places beyond the EU or indeed to include
language training?
Ms Stuart: I think one problem
is that the way the business of the House is organised, we know
about two weeks in advance, it is actually quite often difficult
to know when it is safe for you to be away. The second thing is
we all know that in terms of our constituents they regard us going
away as a junket so you try and keep quiet about it. The third
thing is there is very important work to be done. I think the
scheme at the moment is too restrictive. It only allows you to
go to the capitals and sometimes there are organisations you want
to see to discuss issues which may not be in the capital.
Q110 Chairman: EU agencies?
Ms Stuart: Yes. I think language,
again, is absolutely important. My suspicion is, certainly from
my practical experience, that what has stopped me from using it
is simply the time to do the language training and the travel
but the key thing I think ought to be extended to not just the
capitals, particularly regional centres ought to be within the
scheme as well.
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: I was in Brussels
yesterday under the scheme so I am grateful my travel costs are
reimbursed. I think euro tourism/euro travel is important but
it is not a substitute for bringing the decisions back here.
Q111 Chairman: Tourism.
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: There is a
tendency for them to always say: "Come and visit us. Come
and lobby us. We are just here". Then one arrives and one
has one's input. That route may be important but it is not a substitute
for doing what the Laeken Declaration told us to do which is to
create a democratic Europe closer to its citizens. To me that
means bringing powers and decisions back nearer to the people
and to their parliament.
Q112 Chairman: You were not, I assume,
describing euro tourism as what MPs do when they meet their counterparts
in Brussels, as presumably you were doing yesterday?
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: As I was in
Brussels myself yesterday I would not characterise myself as a
tourist there.
Q113 Chairman: Everybody else.
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: Our constituents
can easily caricature our visit as a kind of euro tourism if we
engage in that as a substitute for addressing their concerns here.
I think what they want to do is elect people who represent their
interests, including their European interest, here. I think if
we do that then of course an adjunct to that is we must obviously
find out what is happening in Brussels.
Q114 Chairman: Any other issues, colleagues?
We are very grateful indeed to both of you. That was a very interesting
session. Your expertise was very evident and welcome. If there
are any other practical things, and we are interested in the practical
procedural issues here, that on reflection you want to drop us
a line about you are very welcome to do so. Thank you very much.
Ms Stuart: Chairman, may I just
make one observation. One of the most extraordinarily helpful
things I found was the legal expertise of the House of Commons.
The reason why it is so helpful is because they are not bound
by the veil of the previous government. If you are a minister
you only get the expertise and advice that is given to the current
government, you are never told what advice was given to the previous
government. The House of Commons is not bound by that and I think
we ought to make much more use of that legal expertise which goes
beyond the narrow window than we have done so far.
Q115 Chairman: That is a very interesting
point. Can you just elaborate on that? In terms of your own role
I think you were supported by the Speaker's Counsel, were you
not, representing Parliament on the Convention specifically in
the praesidium?
Ms Stuart: Legal advice from the
House of Commons could on occasion tell me "that is what
happened under the Major Government; that is advice which was
given to the Thatcher Government", a Foreign Office lawyer
could not tell me that.
Q116 Chairman: You found that helpful?
Ms Stuart: Extremely helpful,
yes, because there is an element to the European debates which
is like a time warp, things keep coming back, and it is very helpful
when the same thing is being brought back to you again and you
as the individual thinks this is all new and they can say "Careful".
Q117 Chairman: This is House officers'
collective memories over the Members' collective memories?
Ms Stuart: Yes. It was one of
the greatest discoveries of that process, a resource I was unaware
of. I had never used and I was very glad to find.
Mr Heathcoat-Amory: Could I just
add to that? I did not receive that level of advice because Gisela
was on the praesidium and I was not. The advice both legal and
from the clerks that we get on my committee is of an incredibly
high standard. I just wish it was more generally available. One
of the reasons I am in favour of openness and the public coming
in is that it ought to radiate out, that quality of advice ought
to be generally available. I hope they would not feel compromised
if they knew that advice was to be generally available. If we
can tread that ground I think it will be doing a service to everybody,
if it is not, as now, rather restricted to a narrow band of specialist
members who get it but cannot make more general use of it.
Chairman: That is a very interesting
point, David, thank you for that as well. We will perhaps take
some advice ourselves in our subsequent deliberations, many of
them in private, as to where we go with this whole inquiry. Your
appearance today has been very helpful. Thank you again.
1 Conference of Community and European Affairs Committees
of Parliaments of the European Union (Conférence des
organes spe«cialise«s dans les affaires communautaires
et europe«ennes des parlements de l'Union europe«enne).
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