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Session 2004 - 05 Publications on the internet Standing Committee Debates European Standing Committee B Debates |
European Standing Committee B |
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Column Number: 1 European Standing Committee BThe Committee consisted of the following Members: Chairman: Mr. Mike Hancock Barrett, John (Edinburgh, West) (LD)Byrne, Mr. Liam (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab) †Cairns, David (Greenock and Inverclyde) (Lab) †Farrelly, Paul (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab) Francis, Dr. Hywel (Aberavon) (Lab) Griffiths, Jane (Reading, East) (Lab) †Hopkins, Mr. Kelvin (Luton, North) (Lab) Johnson, Mr. Boris (Henley) (Con) Picking, Anne (East Lothian) (Lab) Tami, Mark (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab) Walter, Mr. Robert (North Dorset) (Con) Wilkinson, Mr. John (Ruislip-Northwood) (Con) Wishart, Pete (North Tayside) (SNP) Geoffrey Farrar, Committee Clerk † attended the Committee Lammy, Mr. David (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs) Murphy, Mr. Jim (Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury) Column Number: 3 Monday 14 March 2005[Mr. Mike Hancock in the Chair]Fundamental Rights Agency4.4 pmThe Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs (Mr. David Lammy): I am grateful for this opportunity to appear before you this afternoon, Mr. Hancock. The Government welcome the European Commission proposal for a new European Union human rights agency to promote respect for equality and human rights among EU institutions. At present, there is no independent body to advise the EU on how to ensure that its legislative proposals meet the need to respect human rights, and that gap clearly needs filling. We want to work towards the creation of an effective independent agency, with a well-defined set of work objectives. It should clearly not duplicate the work of existing bodies or compromise subsidiarity. It should give priority to thematic areas, such as anti-discrimination, building on the work done by the European monitoring centre for racism and xenophobia. It should not be involved in the internal affairs of member states. The Government support the proposed agency because it will be able to assist the EU and its institutions to ensure respect for human rights when considering new policies and legislation, and to assist member states when implementing European Union law. The agency’s main task will be the gathering of information and guidance on best practice. We want it to maintain the monitoring centre’s focus on racism and xenophobia, and to build on it in order to cover fundamental rights within the scope of Community law. We want the agency’s activities to be geographically confined within the borders of the EU, and for it to have no operational or policy role with third countries. However, it could provide information on request to candidate countries or near neighbours about EU best practice. We believe that a remit such as that outlined will establish the agency as an effective body, and that it will avoid duplication with other institutions at international and national level. We understand that the Commission intends to issue a proposal for a regulation to establish the fundamental rights agency later this year. The Government will of course work constructively on the proposal during the UK presidency. I look forward to this afternoon’s discussion. The Chairman: We now have until 5 o’clock to question the Minister. Column Number: 4 Mr. Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con): I apologise, Mr. Hancock, for my lack of awareness of our proceedings. Should I ask all my questions now, or ask them one at a time? The Chairman: You can ask them in any way you like. You can ask them one at a time, or you can ask a series of questions. How many questions do you have? Mr. Djanogly: I have a few. The Chairman: Give the Minister a chance to answer them one at a time. Mr. Djanogly: Okay. We shall see how we go. My first question concerns finance. Will the Minister advise the Committee how the agency is likely to be financed? We know that the monitoring centre, the precursor to the agency, has been criticised for lacking value for money. I shall speak about that later. Has the Minister any idea how much the agency will cost once it has taken on board all its extra responsibilities? The Chairman: Before the Minister replies, it might help if the hon. Member were to ask all his questions in one go. We stand a good chance of losing our quorum rather quickly. It might be appropriate for the hon. Gentleman to ask his all questions and for the Minister to answer them. That may help hon. Members coming from another Committee in order to allow us to continue. Mr. Djanogly: I am not entirely sure that it will make it any swifter, Mr. Hancock, but I am happy to proceed in that way if you wish. The Chairman: It might be helpful. Mr. Djanogly: Secondly, how will the Government ensure that British views are reflected by the agency? If the final position is not what that the Government propose, do they intend to lie down and take it, or do they intend fighting their corner? In particular, how will they ensure that the agency does not have a wide remit? Do they intend to use the veto? Thirdly, what would the agency do with the opinions that it arrives at? The Commission seems to be suggesting that additional bodies should be set up. Do the Government intend to put in place further human rights bodies to support the agency’s work? My fourth question relates to data collection. The Government say that the agency should have a passive role in the collection of data, relying on the submission to it of reports by member states. Indeed, the Minister referred to that in his opening remarks. If that is the case, surely a member state can choose what, if any, human rights information the agency can see, and the agency will simply be a holding area for any reports that a member state sends to it. If so, what is the point of the agency? My fifth question is about the extent to which there is room for manoeuvre in whether the agency will go ahead. Some language in the Government’s response suggests that it has already been decided that it will go ahead. Furthermore, it seems that the European
My sixth question relates to the agency’s accountability. The Government propose that the agency should be accountable to the European Council and report to the European Parliament. How will the agency retain its independence when answering to two political bodies? My seventh question relates to the use of national institutions as a model. The Commission stated that national institutions may serve as a source of inspiration for the creation of the agency. Will that be the case? Is not that approach ill-conceived and dangerous, given that nation states within Europe are of such a different nature? My eighth question is: what will the agency do? Who will decide which projects it should take on? The Minister mentioned data collection and analysis in his opening remarks, but will the agency initiate work or deal only with work proposals put to it? I note that the hon. Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) asked the Minister that question in the Adjournment debate of 2 February, to which the Minister did not then give an answer. If he has had time to think about that further, I should grateful for an answer now. My next question relates to vertical and horizontal effect. Will the agency monitor only relations between individuals and EU institutions and member states, or will it also cover social relations between individuals, as is the case for the monitoring centre? I also want to ask about duplication of work. The Commission stated that confining the agency’s remit strictly to community competence would prevent it from duplicating the work of other bodies that operate at international and national levels, but I am not sure how that can be the case. Surely, with so many European, national, international, regional and non-governmental bodies in human rights, it is inevitable that the agency will duplicate work in that field, whatever its remit. What relationship will the agency have with other human rights organisations? I note that the hon. Member for Hull, North asked the same question about the Council of Europe during the Adjournment debate to which I have just referred, which the Minister attended. However, it goes further than that. The Opposition do not believe that the Government have taken on board how the agency will relate to other organisations such as the Human Rights Commission, the European Coordinating Group of national human rights institutions, the European Gender Institute, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, and the European convention on human rights and the Strasbourg Court. I will talk about that later when I make my fuller remarks. All that boils down to one overriding question: are all those organisations necessary? If they are, what will the hierarchy be between them, and how will we ensure that the work of one does not overlap the work of another? Column Number: 6 Mr. Lammy: It is important to say from the outset that the whole nature of setting up a fundamental rights agency is quite rightly the subject of negotiations between us and our European partners. We are at the midpoint on that journey, and some of the questions that the hon. Gentleman asked almost presuppose the outcome of those negotiations. That has a bearing on what I might say this afternoon. It is right that the UK Government should set out their position when entering into negotiations and, as I said, we believe that a fundamental rights agency has a useful role to play. Nevertheless, that role is limited to an examination of human rights through the European institutions. The cost of the European monitoring centre, as I indicated in the Adjournment debate to which the hon. Gentleman referred, was £4.5 million. If we achieve the desired outcome for the fundamental rights agency, we would expect it to cost about the same. I cannot be more specific because we do not have the costings that we can expect to come from the EU when we know what the end model will be and when we at least have draft regulations so that we can begin negotiations. That relates to another point made by the hon. Gentleman on the ability of the House of Commons to debate these important issues. The House has debated these important issues. He referred to an Adjournment debate in Westminster Hall on the issue that we are debating in Committee today, so the House has considered it. The hon. Gentleman said that the European monitoring centre had not been a success. I refer him to the very useful work done by the centre on anti-Semitism and asylum-seeking children in education throughout Europe. It also has a role to play in tackling discrimination and human rights issues, and I am surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman depart from that view. The Government have said that the European institutions have a role to play in data collection and monitoring more widely. We have also said that such a role fits in with the direction of policy in this country and with the setting up of the commission for equality and human rights, which brings equality and human rights together to assist us and our public services to deliver for people across a wide spectrum of local and national authorities. The Government believe that that will be a useful contribution, within the confines of European law, to human rights across the EU institutions. The hon. Gentleman asks what our position is and how the negotiations will turn out, but I cannot say. He knows—he is a lawyer and has been in this place for some time—that we enter into negotiations with our European partners. We stated our position in the document issued by my hon. Friend, Baroness Ashton of Upholland, in February. We made our position clear, but we understand that other member states will take a different position. It is not about whether we will use our veto or not. It is rather depressing that when we have these important debates about Europe, the Opposition are always hostile, say that we misuse our veto, are critical
Many others share our position. The legal basis that we believe that the institution should take up is in articles 284 and 308 of Community law. That is the right framework and I am quite sure, given that it is already the foundation for the European monitoring centre, that we will be able to go forward in a constructive way. Of course the body will be able to have a degree of independence in the same way as the European monitoring centre, which provides added value to countries on important issues, such as anti-Semitism and asylum-seeking children across Europe, and will make useful contributions to assist member states and EU institutions to move towards a better situation for those groups of people. There is no reason why the centre as it will be finally framed within the context of European law should not be able to have independence and add such value. We do not need to begin the discussion from a position that is instinctively hostile. The agency will have a management board and we would want member state membership of that board. We would like the UK to be part of it, so that we can make our contribution. We do not want duplication, as the hon. Gentleman knows and as I have said many times. However, we believe that within a tight ambit the agency can provide a useful purpose in the UN. It is for that reason that we have welcomed the proposals but have made quite clear our position and the need not to duplicate the roles of the Council of Europe or the European Court in Strasbourg. The hon. Gentleman is right to cite those two as institutions that we would not want to see duplicated, but we believe that the agency, if it is properly framed, will have a role. The Chairman: No other hon. Member seems to be eager to ask a question, so we can proceed to the debate on the motion. Motion made, and Question proposed,
4.24 pmMr. Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con): We are considering a proposal from the European Commission on the creation of the European fundamental rights agency, building on and replacing the European monitoring centre on racism and xenophobia. The proposals were published on 25 October 2004 and they suggested various models for the proposed agency’s remit, structure and tasks. The
Numerous bodies already carry out the activities with which the agency would be entrusted. Indeed, I would not have time to list the national, European, international, regional and non-governmental organisations working on human rights. At the European level, we have the European monitoring centre on racism and xenophobia, the Human Rights Commissioner, the Council of Europe, a network of independent experts, the European co-ordinating group of national human rights institutions, the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance, and a recently proposed European gender institute. Why does Europe feel that it needs yet another body to monitor its treatment of human rights? Does it have so little confidence in the internal checks and balances of its institutions? In fact, modern Europe generally prides itself on its excellent human rights record, but it expects British taxpayers to pay for yet another organisation, which will repeat the work carried out by countless other bodies. Although the Government find it highly appropriate that the proposal for the FRA builds on the foundations established by the EUMC, the Opposition believe that that is not a sound basis on which to build an organisation to monitor human rights. Indeed, an external evaluation of the centre concluded that the centre cannot be said to have represented value for money and that improvements in quality and value are necessary. That underlines the likelihood that the FRA, which is modelled on the centre, will swallow more taxpayers’ money without delivering results. Furthermore, it is important to appreciate that the agency is technically meant to be independent of the European institutions, even though the EU intends to fund it in its entirety. We doubt that the agency, or any organisation built on the same model, will possess the necessary independence. Indeed, the centre has a poor record of transparency, independence and accountability. An external evaluation report found that it suffered from some confusion as to its objectives, giving too much weight to establishing a profile as a campaigning organisation. That is particularly worrying, given that it currently has a mandate to consider the acts of individuals between themselves. In short, a political European body should not be able to dictate to British people, on the basis of some kind of European snooper’s charter, how they should act. In the Adjournment debate, the Minister stated, as he has again today, that
Column Number: 9 and other issues. It is true that the centre produced a 112-page study on anti-Semitism in 2002, but the Minister failed to mention that the report was not released. A source familiar with the report stated:
Apparently, the centre was not comfortable with the conclusion that Muslims and pro-Palestinian groups were behind many of the anti-Semitic incidents examined. It took the complaints of American politicians to get the report released in a varied form. That is how poor the organisation was at delivering and is hardly an advert for European joint working. How could an agency modelled on the centre provide a valuable contribution to human rights if the centre shies away from issues central to human rights transgressions? Just because an issue is sensitive, that does not justify hiding certain conclusions from the public, especially when they are paying for the report. No matter what the result, the centre should have published its report on anti-Semitism, as any truly independent body would have done. How can we make progress on human rights if we allow political bodies to shield us from meaningful debate on real issues? We cannot. In any case, whose politics should the centre follow? For those reasons, the proposal will not work in theory or in practice. In addition, the Opposition do not support the creation of a fundamental rights agency because it is beyond the EU’s mandate to create such a general human rights monitoring body. It is entirely inappropriate for continental bureaucrats to monitor such sensitive national issues, yet that is typical of the competences at EU level, which the Government have failed to recognise and control. As the hon. Member for Hull, North said in that Adjournment debate, it would amount to a federalising, creeping encroachment by the Commission into human rights and would be tantamount to giving the EU a general human rights competence—and he would, I think, describe himself as pro-European. It is typical of Brussels’s self-perpetuating bureaucracy, answerable to nobody and paid for by the taxpayer. To add insult to injury, the proposal would not only allow Europe to gnaw further into our national sovereignty, but lead to the institutionalisation of the cult of political correctness at European level. For that reason, were the agency unfortunately to go ahead, the Opposition would, in the alternative, support only the narrow, internal mandate that would limit its remit to monitoring issues within the ambit of EU law. In that respect, we agree with the Government that to act outside the scope of European law would be wholly unacceptable. There would be no legal basis for the agency to have such a wide remit. That would be contrary to the principles of subsidiarity. Indeed, it would be the first embodiment of a federal social policy. Nor do we believe that the agency should have competence to monitor national implementing legislation. The Joint Committee on Human Rights is doing a fair job monitoring domestic legislation on human rights that has been incorporated into British law following proper parliamentary procedures. Why should British taxpayers pay for another
The Government’s policy on this is unclear at best. The explanatory notes to the Commission’s proposal state that it is doubtful that comprehensive data collection is necessary or practicable, and that it may be argued that there is already sufficient human rights law and monitoring at member state level. On the other hand, the Government’s official response to the European Commission proposes that national implementing legislation be included within the agency’s remit. Has there been a dramatic change in policy, and, if so, why? In line with its internal remit, the agency should not have any mandate for third countries. Generally, all the responses to the Commission’s proposals objected to such a wide remit. However, our Government’s response seems to indicate that the agency should assist civil society in establishing NGOs and other networks at national level and provide assistance to third countries at their request. It would be entirely unacceptable for British taxpayers to have to foot the bill for the requests of third-party countries that recognise that Europe is a soft touch when it comes to spending its budget on non-EU matters. Again, the Government’s policy regarding application to third countries is rather confused. On one hand, as the Minister clearly stated in the debate on 2 February, they do not believe that the FRA should play a policy or operational role in human rights issues in third countries. On the other hand, they seem to support the principle that the agency should give advice and assistance to third-party non-EU countries. I hope that the Minister will clarify that. However, even if the narrower, internal mandate were preserved, we suggest that what my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West described as institutional mission creep would spread into domestic British law and matters within our national competence. As is increasingly clear, EU law affects all aspects of British life in one way or another. Not only would the European legislation be monitored, but the subject area to which it relates would be monitored as well. For example, the Government propose that the agency could usefully consider fundamental rights in employment. As we are all aware, some aspects of employment law and practice are within the ambit of European law and some remain within domestic competence. How, in practice, could the agency usefully study those aspects of employment covered by EU law without straying into the areas exclusively maintained by our national institutions? Even if that were possible in practice, it would produce incomplete, misleading reports that could take account only of an imperfect snapshot of limited factors that affect employment issues. Therefore, the agency’s remit would inevitably extend beyond the context of EU law. That scenario is not confined to employment law. Despite the Opposition’s efforts to retain exclusively domestic influence in various matters, it is difficult to
The agency’s proposed mandate is unacceptably vague and would inevitably allow its competences to seep into matters outside the European institutions’ actions. In their response to the Commission, the Government merely state that the agency should be
which allows for any number of peripheral activities that could be external. Furthermore, the same response refers to social and legal policy, and states that the agency’s work should be decided according to where the need for more information and awareness of fundamental rights is greatest. How could the Government ensure that that would not include matters outside the EU’s competence? That is crucial, particularly as many of the most controversial human rights issues, such as justice and home affairs, remain outside the ambit of EU law. Even more worrying is the Government’s suggestion of using the charter of fundamental rights as a starting point. The charter, a purposefully wide-reaching document, contains a statement of rights that touches every aspect of our society. Indeed, the Commission itself stated:
However, that extensive reach, which would be given to the agency if the charter were to be included, is not what concerns the Opposition most at this stage. Rather, we are concerned that any reference to the charter in the establishment of a European fundamental rights agency would effectively introduce an enforcement procedure of the charter by the back door, thereby undermining the referendum that the Government have promised to the British people. The Opposition are not alone in expressing such concerns. The European Scrutiny Committee’s report of 1 December stated:
The Joint Committee on Human Rights went further in its response to the Commission, concluding that the unclear status of the charter should perhaps prohibit the agency’s very creation. Referring to the legal status of the charter and the possible accession of the Union to the European convention on human rights, the Committee stated that there was a case for establishing an agency, and any consideration of the precise functions and powers should be postponed until such matters had been clarified or decided. It is premature to consider establishing the fundamental rights agency, not least because it undermines the British people’s right to vote on the European constitution in the upcoming referendum. When the charter was first drafted, in 2000, the Government promised that it would not become legally binding. They then promised the British people that it would not affect national laws. Now we face not
That is typical of the Government’s empty promises, underhand backtracking and lack of respect for the British people and for our constitution. It is for those reasons that the Conservative party does not support the creation of a European fundamental rights agency. However, if the agency must go ahead and we must choose the lesser of two evils, we would support only an agency with the narrowest remit, acting exclusively within the ambit of the internal work of the European institutions—if, indeed, that is at all possible. 4.39 pm |
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