6 Role of UKREP in using scientific
advice
73. The UK Permanent Representation to the European
Union (UKREP) represents the interests of Government departments
in negotiations on EU business. It also provides up-to-date advice
on the progress of Commission proposals and acts as a link between
Whitehall and Brussels. Its staff are organised around the subjects
of different specialist Councils. It has no dedicated scientific
staff but relies on the responsible Government departments to
obtain the necessary scientific advice in support of policy. During
the negotiation of this Directive, UKREP took its instructions
exclusively from the HSE. As we have noted, the UK was not in
favour of the Directive in principle. As the Directive was subject
to Qualified Majority Voting and given that it was supported by
the majority of Member States, the Government was right to engage
in negotiation and to seek to dilute the more onerous requirements.
74. We heard that the concerns of the HSE during
negotiations in 2003 were around the burdens imposed by health
surveillance requirements and about the approach to risk management
which did not distinguish between cumulative and acute risks.
From mid-2003 UKREP, under instruction from the HSE, argued in
support of other States for the removal of static fields from
the Directive. This pressure, as we have seen, was successful.
However, officials at UKREP told us that no attempt was made to
seek to remove time-varying fields from the Directive. This reflected
the focus of the representations being made to the HSE during
the latter half of 2003. An attempt by the UK and other Member
States in May 2003 to seek a derogation for those working with
MR in the medical sector was rejected on the grounds that medical
staff were not expected to be present in the area when patients
were exposed to MR.[169]
We were surprised that this attempt by the UK was not mentioned
in the Government evidence to us nor highlighted by UKREP staff
during our visit to Brussels. Taken in the context of the HSE's
mixed messages in the UK and Brussels, we take this as further
evidence of the lack of clarity in Government policy on this issue.
75. UKREP was reliant on one source of advice during
the passage of the Directive. It was therefore not aware of the
representations being made by COCIR directly to the Commission
during negotiations in April 2003.[170]
This preceded the involvement of the UK MR community. There is
a weakness in a system in which UKREP has no means of direct engagement
with scientific advice but is completely reliant on the sponsoring
department. The Wellcome Trust comments on the difficulty of following
the progress of Directives through the EU, a problem exacerbated,
in its view, by the fact that more than one Commission Directorate
can be involved and that there is no single source of information.[171]
In this case, UK policy might have benefited from earlier detection
of the concerns being raised in Brussels and from a capability
at UKREP to receive representations directly from stakeholders.
Such a capability would have provided an opportunity for the HSE
to discover that it was giving two different messages in the UK
and in Brussels. Some form of scientific capability, even just
a dedicated contact point for scientific issues, would provide
a useful backstop for any failures in the UK consultation process,
particularly in cross-departmental issues where a wide spectrum
of scientific interests may be involved and affected. It would
also provide the research community with a straightforward method
of obtaining information about relevant developments in Brussels.
We recommend that UKREP reviews its channels of communication
with the scientific community in the UK and considers developing
some capability for direct links, on a systematic basis, or at
least on an ad hoc basis in response to the introduction
of proposals.
169 Council of the European Union, Outcome of proceedings
of the Social Questions Working Party, 2 September 2003, Section
IV, footnote 22. The other Members States were Germany, France,
Austria, Portugal and Finland. Back
170
Ev 71 Back
171
Ev 53 Back
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