Examination of Witnesses (Questions 212-219)
15 SEPTEMBER 2004
MR ROGER
SANDS AND
MR LIAM
LAURENCE SMYTH
Q212 Sir Nicholas Winterton: We now of
course move on to matters relating to Scrutiny of European Business
and you will need the support of your colleague on your right,
who is well-known to us, Liam Laurence Smyth, who is the Clerk
of Delegated Legislation, and has sat there extremely patiently
and now joins in the discussion. The first area we want to look
at is the scrutiny system, and if I again may be allowed to take
over the question which I know the Leader of the House wanted
to ask himself, can we take it, Mr Sands, from paragraph 3 of
your paper, that you are—I hesitate to use the word in relation
to Europe—sceptical about the House having a "key role
to play in bringing the European Union closer to our citizens",
and I use those words because they are your precise words from
your paper and I quote. Could any procedural changes make any
difference, and obviously both Mr Smyth and yourself should answer.
Mr Sands: I am slightly sceptical
as to whether procedural changes can do that. I think that the
way this House and the Members in it address themselves to Europe
and issues surrounding the European Union must, over time, have
a very significant influence on the way the public perceives the
European Union; but whether one can change the way that Members
address themselves to Europe and issues surrounding the EU simply
by procedural change I rather doubt. As you know, and I have said
it often to your other Committee, I think there is a tendency
to over-estimate the influence that procedure has on these matters.
The procedure is just a framework and it is the way that Members
fill it that is really significant.
Mr Laurence Smyth: Sir Nicholas,
I am here in a spirit of what the constitutional treaty calls
"loyal co-operation" so I do not think you could expect
me to contradict the Clerk of the House. I am the Principal Clerk
who supervises the work of the staff of several committees: the
European Scrutiny Committee, Regulatory Reform, Human Rights,
Statutory Instruments and also our National Parliament Office
in Brussels. I am tremendously proud of the work that they all
do and I am convinced that there are enormous opportunities for
Members, if they want to use them. It is very interesting to see
what your Committee can do creatively to provide more opportunity
for Members, but I am not sure that the opportunities themselves
change Members' behaviour. I think we do a wonderful job enabling
Members to do things and they could do a lot more themselves.
Q213 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Before I
hand over to Peter Pike, can I just ask one question? When we
took evidence from Members of Parliament, comment was made about
the use that we make of UKRep because it is necessary for this
House to get involved earlier, further upstream as it were, on
the decision-making process in Europe, but of course UKRep report
to ambassadors of government and do not report to Parliament.
Who is available in the European Parliament and the Commission
to brief Parliament on what is happening so that we can become
available at an earlier stage? At the moment, really, we get involved
far too late and too late really to influence legislation?
Mr Laurence Smyth: UKRep, I think,
do an outstanding job in helping select committees. Whenever I
have taken select committees to Brussels I have started with UKRep
and they have been tremendously frank in explaining what they
are doing and giving us an insight into issues we should be raising
with the Commission. As a former departmental Select Committee
Clerk I have found them unfailingly helpful. The Foreign Office
are enormously positive in their dealings with the European Scrutiny
Committee. The Foreign Secretary was appearing before the European
Scrutiny Committee earlier today and offering even more co-operation
to try and make things work better. It is up to select committees
really to ask the questions, if that is what they want to ask.
A word of caution is that some wise words that I have seen used
by UKRep are that the moment when you are most likely to be able
to influence the outcome comes before ministers have made up their
mind what they want to do.
Q214 Sir Nicholas Winterton: That is
precisely the point that we are getting at. Ministers can be influenced
by this House, but if this House is not getting the information
about what is going on in the corridors of power in Brussels—and
UKRep I think are in a position to do that—should they not
be more pro-active in liaising with the House and with select
committees, rather than merely expecting select committees when
they go to Brussels to meet them?
Mr Laurence Smyth: I cannot think
that there would be very much attention paid to unsolicited notes
of that kind, but it is possible.
Q215 Sir Nicholas Winterton: But they
know what is going to happen and if we were aware of what was
likely to happen—and I do not just describe tittle-tattle
and gossip or whatever, UKRep we understand are very well briefed.
You have indicated that they are very well briefed, do you not
think they should brief not just the minister, the Secretary of
State and our Ambassador but actually Members of the House?
Mr Laurence Smyth: I feel that
they do. Part of the February statement from the Foreign Secretary
was to say that he would recast his six-monthly White Papers.
The autumn update that we just had last week, Prospects for the
EU, in a very sketchy format says these are the issues which we
think are bubbling up over the next period in Brussels. It is
very hard to see what more we can do. If Members pick this document
up from the Vote Office and see that there is something there
that they are very interested in, everything is open to them,
nothing is really hidden, I do not think.
Q216 Mr Pike: I want to move on to how
we really assess what our European scrutiny system achieves, what
it is reasonable to expect it to achieve and how we judge it.
Having listened to what you said a few moments ago about influence
on Government policy, is that the main criteria or is it holding
them to account or is it something of a mixture? I know you just
said there has been some influence, but are we all convinced that
that is really the case, that we are influencing things as much
as possible before decisions are taken?
Mr Sands: I will have a go at
that. I was very interested in the evidence given to this Committee
by Michael Jack last week because he drew a distinction between
influencing before something becomes a legislative proposal and
then the process that takes place after you have a proposal from
the Commission. Obviously, if you want to influence in a big sense
you have to be in at the first stage; but I would ask the Committee
to note that Mr Jack also did emphasise the value of the second
stage process as well, even if it is only a process of accountability.
A lot of what this House does is setting up and maintaining mechanisms
which ministers and civil servants know are there, and because
they know they are there they possibly avoid doing things that
otherwise they might be tempted to do. It is a safety net and
I know it is hard and often boring work for Members to have to
police these accountability processes, but it is a valuable function
nonetheless.
Q217 Sir Nicholas Winterton: Liam, do
you want to add to that?
Mr Laurence Smyth: It is a very
hard question, Chairman, but there is nobody really better than
this Committee to answer it because there are so many different
jobs that a Member of Parliament does and on the Committee you
have a number of Members with very different experiences and different
ways of being a Member of Parliament. There is not a typical MP.
I would not like to rank Members of Parliament nor the institution
because there are so many different things that Parliament is
trying to do.
Q218 Mr Pike: You will recall that a
few years ago as well as Scrutiny Committees we did have a session
of questions specifically on European questions. At the moment
European questions take pot luck in the general Foreign Office
questions and it may be that not a single European question is
lucky in the draw. Would you think that Europe is now so important
that perhaps we should go back to having a session of questions
specifically on European matters?
Mr Sands: I certainly think it
is worth considering. I do not think it is for me to make a firm
recommendation as to how question time is parcelled up, but I
can certainly recognise that that is an option. The danger is
the one that I mention at the bottom of the first page of the
memorandum, the phenomenon that most large scale debates—and
it is not just debates it is other proceedings—in relation
to Europe tend to become generalised and end up sounding much
the same. There is, I think, a danger that a European questions
slot would just be monopolised by a handful of enthusiasts in
this area, if I can put it that way.
Q219 Martin Linton: Can we just pursue
this point a little further because our inquiry is about suggesting
improvements to the European scrutiny system, and we will not
get very far unless we can all be frank about both the advantages
and the disadvantages of the existing system. In your paper you
describe the existing system as among the most thorough and effective
in the European Union; some of the evidence we have had from other
sources, notably last week, points out that the European Scrutiny
Committee is predominantly backwards-looking and has a lower profile
than the European Committee in the House of Lords, which is not
necessarily a criticism of the European Scrutiny Committee as
such but it implies that it is not very effective in performing
the tasks that are needed. We have heard a lot of evidence along
these lines; would you not agree that while the European Scrutiny
Committee may perform the backwards-looking task of accountability
very well, when it comes to dealing with the question of what
the European Union is about to do, it does not intervene at an
early enough stage to have any effect?
Mr Sands: The European Scrutiny
Committee does the job which is prescribed for it in Standing
Orders, and that job is based on the examination of documents,
and the categories of documents are set out.
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