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The Government have taken up one of my proposals, which was to have a sort of cross-fertilisation between the Standing Committees and departmental Select Committees to ensure a better flow of knowledge and expertise. I would prefer to go further. There is some merit in exploring the wider use of Select Committees or perhaps specialist sub-groups in Select Committees where Members have built up an expertise in a particular policy area and would therefore be able to bring that expertise to bear if issues from Scrutiny Committee documents were referred to them rather than being referred to a European Committee set up for the purpose.
Mr. Cash: Does my right hon. Friend agree that there could be dangers if a departmental Select Committee, however experienced, were to make decisions, with the centre of gravity on that Committee, if it did not necessarily understand the nature of the legislative procedures and some of the complications that can arise? I offer that as a helpful suggestion.
Mrs. May: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It sounded to me as if he was offering his expertise to every departmental Select Committee to explain the legislative process to them when they consider these matters.
Mr. Cash: That is not impossible.
Mrs. May: For the benefit of the Hansard reporters, my hon. Friend says that that is not impossible.
Another matter of concern to me is the lack of time given to debating European issues on the Floor of the House. The Deputy Leader of the House said in her wider proposals, outside the motion, that she will be looking to have two extra debates each year in Westminster Hall on the Council’s programme. That would take us forward a little, but we should consider other innovative ideas. For example, perhaps there should be questions to the Minister for Europe, allowing for a specific time when questions on European matters could be put to the Minister responsible.
I am glad that there are going to be further opportunities to consider changes to the system because there are some real ways in which—
Mr. Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con): I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. She has proceeded with great calm in considering a matter that should surely generate great heat. Why has she not addressed the fact that this process is a charade as long as we have a Government who ignore and despise what Select Committees say? On the central issue of whether they keep their election promises, the European Scrutiny Committee said that their excuse for not doing so was completely bogus. They ignored it. Another Select Committee said the same thing; they ignored that, too. What possible use is there in fiddling around with the procedures in a minor way when the Government treat Parliament and its Committees—Committees with a Labour Chairman and Labour majority—with total and complete contempt?
Mrs. May:
The Government’s approach, which was set out correctly by my right hon. Friend, is not in itself a reason for us not to do what we can with the systems of this House in order to improve them and to make
Ministers more accountable. He referred to examples where the Government have ignored Select Committee views on this issue. Of course, every Member of the Government is ignoring the mandate given to them when they were elected to Parliament by refusing to give a referendum on the treaty to the British people. I am tempted to say that if they are prepared to ignore their mandate and what they put in their manifestos, it is little wonder that they ignore the views of Select Committees.
I support the Government’s attempts to take the matter forward and improve our system of European scrutiny through their proposals. They could have gone further, and I would like to see the House go further at some stage. We should have a statutory scrutiny reserve so that Ministers would have to gain parliamentary approval before negotiations in the Council of Ministers. There should also be new powers for MPs to challenge the European Scrutiny Committee and debates on the Floor of the House. Perhaps such a debate could take place if a large number of MPs required it. I would prefer the House to go further on the question of adaptations to the Standing Committee system to bring more expertise into it. As I said, there are other innovative ideas, such as oral questions to the Minister for Europe.
I am grateful to the Government and I welcome the fact that they have undertaken this exercise, but their proposals will not remove the democratic deficit that lies at the heart of our relationship with the European Union.
3.38 pm
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab): I do not know whether I can be brief, but I shall try not to keep the House too long.
I welcome the progress that has been made on this issue since it was taken over by the Deputy Leader of the House. I commend her. She has laboured long in the vineyard, and I know that when it comes to European matters, the vineyard is a very dry one. I thank her for her generosity in accepting amendment (a) in my name and those of my colleagues from the European Scrutiny Committee. I know that I cannot withdraw an amendment that is on the Order Paper, but in the spirit of the way that we have been doing business since the Deputy Leader of the House and others became engaged in the process, I shall not press amendment (b).
I want to thank several people. The Leader of the House obviously takes the matter seriously. As the shadow Leader of the House said, it has been on the agenda for at least three years. Indeed, before the Modernisation Committee produced its report, submissions were made from several quarters, including our Committee, that were not accepted and were perhaps too radical at the time. I hope that, in the distant future, someone will pick up on our suggestions to change the system substantially and move from the current Committee system, in line with the recommendations of the European Scrutiny Committee, which I did not chair at the time. I did, however, support the recommendations.
The idea that our system is flawed and imperfect is not shared by other countries in the European Union. Only four countries have gone down the mandating
road: Denmark, Finland, Sweden and now Slovenia, although it has still to perfect its system. In our understanding and experience, when something is made so rigid, the first thing that people do is to find a way round it. That is what happens in jurisdictions that have a mandating system. They encourage others to move in Council things that they have been mandated not to accept and then they blame other countries, including us—we have been caught out in that way—for moving against and gaining, by qualified majority voting, the proposal that their Government did not want them to vote for. That is one method of getting around the system—there are many others.
We are regarded as probably the best non-mandating Parliament of the other 23 countries. We are so highly regarded that Macedonia, which wishes to join the European Union but has been criticised by the Commission, has asked the Clerk to our Committee to assist it to build a system of European scrutiny based on ours. When travelling, our Committee goes on a presidency visit and then to see an aspirant country. Macedonia has been soundly criticised for not having a parliamentary system that allows proper scrutiny across the board but hanging on to possibly ethnic groupings in debates in that country—which was at war internally, across its ethnic divide, not long ago. There are many good examples of our practices, and we look to improve them further.
As I said, people who have helped us include the Leader of the House and the Deputy Leader of the House. I wish publicly and on the record to thank the shadow Leader of the House and her deputy, the hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Mr. Vara), who have engaged with the process seriously. I have read the pamphlet that the shadow Leader of the House produced. It contains some good items. It is like the curate’s egg in that nothing is ever perfect, but I hope that we can discuss some of its good ideas outside the Chamber.
I thank the usual channels. The Government and Opposition Chief Whips have worked diligently to try to find a way forward, with assistance from other Members who form part of the usual channels, and we have made progress.
I thank the Chair of the Committee of Selection, who made serious representations to the Liaison Committee, which have helped us to deal with amendment (b), and the Chair and members of the Liaison Committee, who are, of course, the Chairs of the Select Committees. They have said that they are worried about the proposal because it is different from Standing Order No. 119, which provided for fixed membership. We argued that a fixed membership would have more experience as a result of permanently dealing with the business and having set agendas, which happened under Standing Order No. 119. However, the Chairs of the Select Committees are willing to take a chance and try out the proposal. It may impose on some of their members an extra commitment that they do not want.
The proposal would effect something that we have believed should be done for at least nine years, which is the time that I have served on the European Scrutiny Committee: engage the Select Committees, which have
subject and departmental responsibilities, in the European debate. That is important because ultimately the Departments will legislate. What comes from Europe does not get passed in Europe; that must happen here. The Select Committees must therefore engage with it more closely.
I sometimes get the feeling that the only people who are supposed to get involved in European matters are members of the European Scrutiny Committee. However, that is not only our job, but that of every Select Committee. Some Chairs have been diligent; for example, my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) who formerly chaired the Home Affairs Committee, regularly attended European debates. The Chair of the Treasury Committee and the Chair of the Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Committee, formerly the Trade and Industry Committee, engaged with European affairs. However, the membership needs to engage with the process too, and that could happen through the mechanism that we are considering.
Mr. Cash: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Michael Connarty: I will, but I do not want to take too many interventions because of the time.
Mr. Cash: I very much commend the line that the hon. Gentleman is taking on advising departmental Select Committees, which is all I meant when I intervened on the Deputy Leader of the House. As the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) has said, an enormous proportion of the legislation that we in this House deal with comes from Europe. Therefore, what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting—and what I reinforce from the Opposition Benches—is that because such a high percentage of legislation comes from the Council of Ministers and affects the whole House, the whole House must respond to it.
Michael Connarty: Although we sometimes spar, the hon. Gentleman knows that I respect him greatly, just as I also strongly respect the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), who is about to leave his place, even though he has different views from me on Europe, because they are serious participants in the debate. That is why we want to engage with Select Committees, so that they, too, engage on a daily basis.
We have already made some progress. Until about six months ago, consultation on Green Papers and White Papers did not involve Select Committees, believe it or not—everyone outside the House was consulted, but the Select Committees, with their expertise and interest, were not asked to give an opinion. The House agreed to change that when our Committee spotted it, and we are definitely moving on.
Mr. Mark Francois (Rayleigh) (Con):
I am grateful to the Chairman of the Committee for giving way—he knows that I have a lot of time for him. On the point about consultation and papers, I served on one of the European Standing Committees in the previous Parliament, but the documentation that we had to read often arrived late in the day and was voluminous. The most extreme example was the occasion on which I received 900 photocopied pages the night before, which it was almost not humanly possible to assimilate, as
hon. Members will appreciate. I did my best, but the European Scrutiny Committee summary was the only fighting chance that one had. However, if we are going to have a crack at making a revised system work—I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will take this on board and that the Chairman agrees with me—there is a responsibility to ensure that members of the revised Committees have a sensible period, of at least a week, in which to read the documents in detail before they speak about them. If that does not happen, that threatens to undermine the integrity of the whole process.
Michael Connarty: That is a perceptive and lucidly expressed concern, and there are a number of things there. We know that the Whips and the business managers have a problem in getting hon. Members who can attend Committees named for them, but it would be useful if at least a week—or perhaps even a whole week and a few more days—could be given, for two reasons. The first is the very reason that the hon. Gentleman mentioned: so that Committee members can receive the papers at the same time, not when they walk into the Committee, and can work on them in their own time. I also believe that something should be done to make an executive summary.
We will certainly be referring documents with the questions that we have raised in our reports that we wish to be taken up in those Committees, so that Committees do not have rambling discussions—this is the whole point of what, I hope, our amendments will achieve. Another point is that people outside this place—civic society organisations and businesses—want to know the membership at least a week in advance, so that they can send members briefings and ask them to ask questions on their behalf, thereby engaging people with Parliament’s scrutiny process.
Let me move on to the reasons for our amendment. Neither of the two reasons suggested is correct. In the past few days, when Europe has been to the fore, I have been accused of doing things for my own ego. However, my battered ego is not helped by the number of barbs I get when we are talking about Europe and some people would perhaps rather we were not, but I think it is a good thing that we are talking about Europe. Nor is the reason fear of bullying—I have been threatened by a number of people from this august organisation with dire consequences if I do not sit down and shut up more often, and stop raising Europe all the time. Those reasons might make other people move amendments, but they are certainly not my reasons.
Our two reasons are these. First, this proposal must be tested for the rest of the Session, because it is not a fully fledged set of amendments to deal with everything recommended in the Modernisation Committee report. It has been negotiated in good faith by the Deputy Leader of the House and myself, by other colleagues in the Select Committees and in our own European Scrutiny Committee, and by Opposition Members. We need to check that it will work in good faith, and that we do not find that Members are being put on Select Committees that they do not wish to be on, or that Select Committee Chairs are getting upset by the process, or that my members are nominating people who are not being taken up, while others are being put on instead. If the process works in good faith, that will be a great thing.
Secondly, we have mentioned January because we believe that, between October or November and January, there will be a need for other Standing Order amendments to be made, some of which have been discussed today. Others still lie in the Modernisation Committee report, including the recommendation that the European Scrutiny Committee have a role in initiating the subsidiarity process—the yellow and orange cards that have been mentioned in the main debates that we have been having on the treaty of Lisbon. Also, mention has already been made of the Standing Order amendment that is required to deal with the question of a general approach. We think that we are moving forward from a point where we are always in conflict with Ministers about this, and there are indications that the Cabinet Office is considering putting the matter in its scrutiny reserve resolution. Other Standing Order amendments would therefore be required, which I hope could be looked at between October or November—after looking at what has happened in the rest of the Session—and 1 January.
I thank the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) for not pressing her amendment on how we do our business in the European Scrutiny Committee. That matter will have to be looked at and resolved. It has been suggested that we should work in the full glare of publicity, but my worry is that the publicity can become the point of the meeting. It begins to be about getting publicity for a political position, rather than about the issues before us in the documents that we deal with. If we can square that circle, so that we can have a genuine debate rather than facing out to the latest member of the press to walk into the room—which we have seen a few times in our Committee when it has been in public session—we shall do a service to Parliament rather than a disservice to the whole process of scrutiny.
Mrs. May: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I simply want to clarify matters, because I think that he is basing his argument on a slight misunderstanding of what I said. I have not actually said whether I intend to press amendment (e) to a vote. I shall wait to hear what the Minister has to say. It seems only fair to clarify that matter.
Michael Connarty: I had misunderstood the right hon. Lady. I thought that the negotiations had allowed us to reach a position in which we would not try to force this through today. I believe that this is something for which we can work out a methodology in future.
On the general Standing Orders, I welcome the fact that we shall have focus, which we lacked in the interim when we had Sessional Orders, which collapsed the old Standing Order No. 119 Standing Committees but did not put anything of any substance in their place. We just had ad hoc meetings that were like those for statutory instruments, and they were rather pointless. There will now be focus through the European Scrutiny Committee membership—and, I hope, through the Select Committee membership—on that Committee.
I also hope that there will be breadth of engagement by Members. I know that the aspiration of the Deputy Leader of the House is that people will indicate interests and preferences, and will then be put on to the appropriate Committee, bringing their interests and
expertise to the discussions that take place. The aim is to have more accountability through Parliament and through us. Through our Committee, and through the structures under Standing Order No. 119, as amended, we want to give Parliament—on the Opposition side and on the Government side—the feeling that it can make Ministers accountable. We diminish ourselves when we are not seen to engage with scrutiny properly. The late Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook—who was a good friend of mine—said again and again that good scrutiny made for good legislation, and that poor scrutiny made for poor legislation. We, and the people we represent, want good legislation.
Mr. Anthony Steen (Totnes) (Con): The hon. Gentleman is a very astute, august and respected Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee—speaking as a member of it, I can say that—but can he give the House some guidance about when he believes the deliberations will take place in public? He represents a party that believes in transparency, so is it not important that the public can actually see the wonderful work we do?
Michael Connarty: If I am august, the hon. Gentleman, as one of the longest serving members on the European Scrutiny Committee, is majestic— [Interruption.]—the longest serving member after the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), I am told. As the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) knows, we take transparency seriously, as demonstrated in the report on the Council’s conclusions that we published on Monday. We said that draft conclusions should be made available to this House’s scrutiny process before the Prime Minister goes off to Council meetings to agree them. I repeat that we believe in transparency, but I take the hon. Gentleman’s friendly admonishment that we may not have looked into that matter sufficiently for a number of years—not since I became the Committee’s Chairman, in any case. I give the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members an honest pledge that we will look into it further during this Session.
I shall not hold up the debate any more. We are making progress. The position that we are debating here represents progress from where we found ourselves when the Sessional Order resolution was moved and amended three months ago. I hope that the House will accept the amendments proposed by Government Front Benchers and our amendment (a).
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