The
Committee consisted of the following
Members:
Chair:
Annette
Brooke
†
Campbell,
Mr Ronnie (Blyth Valley)
(Lab)
†
Clwyd,
Ann (Cynon Valley)
(Lab)
†
Crabb,
Stephen (Preseli Pembrokeshire)
(Con)
†
Crockart,
Mike (Edinburgh West)
(LD)
†
David,
Mr Wayne (Caerphilly)
(Lab)
Dodds,
Mr Nigel (Belfast North)
(DUP)
Elliott,
Julie (Sunderland Central)
(Lab)
†
Hamilton,
Mr David (Midlothian)
(Lab)
†
Holloway,
Mr Adam (Gravesham)
(Con)
†
Kelly,
Chris (Dudley South)
(Con)
†
Lidington,
Mr David (Minister for
Europe)
Rosindell,
Andrew (Romford)
(Con)
†
Zahawi,
Nadhim (Stratford-on-Avon)
(Con)
Alison Groves, Committee
Clerk
† attended the
Committee
European
Committee B
Monday 17
January
2011
[Annette
Brooke
in the
Chair]
Citizens’
Initiative
4.30
pm
The
Chair:
As no member of the European Scrutiny Committee
wishes to make a brief explanatory statement about the decision to
refer the relevant document to this Committee, I call the Minister to
make his opening statement.
The
Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington):
It is a pleasure
to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke. I am pleased that the
European Scrutiny Committee has referred the European citizen’s
initiative for
debate.
The
Government regard as important the principle of participatory
democracy, which lies behind the ECI. That same principle lies behind
our plans for a system of national petitioning to Parliament. For too
long, the general public in this country have felt disconnected from
the European Union and from the decisions it reaches on behalf of the
United Kingdom. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary stated on
Second Reading of the European Union Bill,
“there is a
widespread perception that the really important decisions about the
EU”
—the
framework within which the EU
operates—
“are
taken without real consideration for the wishes of the
people”.—[Official Report, 7 December 2010; Vol.
520, c.
196.]
The
ECI will help by enabling citizens of EU member states to play a
participative role. It will give them the ability to highlight key
concerns about major political issues. I shall not pretend for one
moment that it will be a magic bullet, but it will be one way in which
to give citizens a voice in Europe. At the same time, we shall continue
to urge the EU to improve its systems for consultation and its
arrangements for assessing the impacts of its proposals. The ECI,
however, is still a positive step. It will enable people to petition
the Commission to propose or initiate change within areas of EU
competence. It is worth my repeating that point to put it beyond
doubt.
The
citizens’ initiative cannot be used to put forward ideas that
would require treaty change in order for the EU to act. Any proposal
for legislation that was introduced following a petition under the ECI
would have to be negotiated through the Council and Parliament in the
usual way, and therefore would be subject to scrutiny in this House.
The measure does not provide a procedure that allows the Commission to
bypass normal legislative process.
Of course,
there is a risk that the ECI will end up being a lobby group charter,
with one lobby group petitioning in one direction and another doing so
in the opposite direction. We must try to guard against that. There is
also a risk that petitions will be introduced that most people in this
country do not like, but we should not be defeatist. The ECI will also
allow people to petition the Commission to suggest areas of legislation
that it should propose repealing or simplifying, for example, and I hope
that citizens of this country will do so. The measure will be reviewed
in three years and the Government will monitor the system in the
interim period.
Although I
have sympathy with the overall aim of greater engagement between
citizens of EU member states and the European Union institutions, I had
grave doubts about the early version of the proposal. It was one of the
first legislative measures that I looked at after taking office and it
was not wholly reassuring. The initial approach was excessively
bureaucratic and would not have delivered good value for money. It
risked treating what should be a light-touch mechanism for generating
good ideas into something closer to an election campaign for public
office, which risked discouraging people from signing a petition. I
wanted to ensure that the system was more in accordance with national
laws and practice. In particular, I wanted to guard against any risk
that the Government might be compelled by the regulation to establish a
system of personal identification numbers or cards just so that UK
citizens would be able to sign petitions to the European Union. That
would have gone against the heart of what the coalition Government
stand for, and would have added further to the substantial erosion of
civil liberties that happened under the previous Government. That
battle has been well
won.
The
Government have negotiated hard and worked with other member states,
the Commission and the European Parliament to achieve a number of
important alterations to the original proposal, which I shall spell out
for the Committee. First, we secured an addition in article 9 of the
regulation that checks should take
place
“in
accordance with national law and
practice”.
This
gives us the flexibility to implement the ECI in ways that best suit
the United Kingdom’s way of doing
things.
Secondly,
there has been a simplification of the process for deciding whether a
petition is admissible. The initial proposal had a two-stage
admissibility check, which risked campaigners going to a lot of trouble
to get a petition going and amassing a large number of signatures only
to discover at a relatively late stage that the idea that they wished
to promote was not within European Union competence and therefore could
not be taken forward by the Commission. We have succeeded in replacing
this bureaucratic approach with a single admissibility check by the
Commission before signatures are collected by petition
authors.
Thirdly, there
will be a review of the whole ECI in three years rather than five. This
will enable us to check that it really is working in a light-touch way
and meeting the purpose for which it was set up. It will also give us
the opportunity to revisit those parts of the proposal on which I would
have liked further simplification.
Fourthly, we
secured agreement on a random sampling approach to the verification of
signatures on petitions instead of a requirement for blanket
verification, which will greatly reduce the expense of the verification
exercise. Fifthly, we obtained an exemption for British residents from
having to provide personal identification numbers, including passport
numbers. This clearly reduces the risks of compromising sensitive
personal data and also means that we do not have to set up a system to
verify
the information provided. We certainly feared that if we had required
such information of United Kingdom citizens, they might have been
deterred from signing a petition at all. Sixthly, the minimum age of
participants will be set at voting age—18. This simplifies the
checking process, and is likely to be the approach taken for
Parliament’s petitioning
system.
The
regulation agreed at December’s General Affairs Council is still
not perfect, however. I shall describe the issues that still cause us
concern and dissatisfaction. First, there is an issue around the
protection of citizens’ data. That is a matter of concern for
not only us, but all member states. For example, we have concerns about
requirements to certify the compliance of online data collection
systems with data protection legislation for every ECI. That is a
blunt, one-size-fits-all approach, rather than a risk-based approach to
compliance, and in our view it is unnecessarily
expensive.
Secondly,
member states have a duty to check a random sample of statements of
support to verify that the petition is accurate. Depending on how many
ECIs are launched, this could create a sizeable administrative burden.
We have reduced the amount of checking, but not eliminated it entirely.
Thirdly, there will be a 12-month implementation period, and it will be
extremely challenging for us to set up the necessary structures in
time. Fourthly, we think the absence of a full impact assessment report
is, frankly, unacceptable. We will take that up at the review, when
data will be available on the actual
impact.
For
those reasons, and because scrutiny clearance had not been granted by
Parliament, I abstained on the vote at the General Affairs Council,
having tried to delay political agreement in Brussels against
considerable opposition from the presidency and other member states. I
regret that we were not able to discuss those issues with the European
Scrutiny Committee before political agreement on the regulation was
reached at First Reading, which was due to the rapid progress in
negotiations. However, I hope that I have been able to show that,
during the negotiations, we made considerable progress in following up
the concerns of the European Scrutiny Committee about reducing the
burden of verification and admissibility
checks.
The
regulation text will now go to the Council on 14 February
for final adoption. No further discussion is proposed. I plan to
confirm our position—to abstain—even if the proposal has
by then cleared parliamentary scrutiny. We will seek to dovetail the
implementation of the measure with plans to introduce a national
petitioning system to
Parliament.
The
Government remain committed to playing a strong, positive and active
role in the European Union, while robustly championing our national
interests. We want to bring the citizen closer to decisions made in
Brussels and to give ordinary people greater sway over matters that
affect them. We made progress during the negotiations on ensuring that
the ECI provides our citizens with a light-touch vehicle for
influencing the issues with which the EU should concern itself and make
progress on, and we will now implement the regulation in the least
burdensome way
possible.
The
Chair:
We have until 5.30 pm for questions to the
Minister. I remind Members that such questions should be brief. It is
open to a Member, subject to my discretion, to ask related
supplementary questions. I suggest that
we limit anyone to three questions in the first round but, obviously,
how we continue will depend on how many people wish to ask
questions.
Mr
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab):
It is a pleasure to serve
under your chairpersonship, Mrs Brooke, especially as this is your
first such European
Committee.
My
first three questions are general but, with permission, I shall proceed
to more specific questions later. The Minister has already touched on
two of points that I wanted to raise, but I shall press him a little
more.
The
Minister indicated that he is already aware of my first
point—what safeguards would be in place for a member state if
individuals from seven member states came forward with a petition that
would have a particular impact on another member state. Is there any
safeguard whatsoever if the Commission wished, after a full petition,
to introduce an initiative with a direct impact on that other member
state?
The Minister
also referred to the subject of my second question: lobby groups. It is
almost inevitable that organised lobby groups, with members in several
member states, will see the measure as an opportunity for them to push
their particular cause or case. That is not necessarily a bad thing,
but the emphasis is still very much on citizens’ ideas. Is there
any way in which the Commission can differentiate between organised
lobbies and the spontaneous views of
citizens?
Thirdly,
does the Minister believe that there might be a danger in the European
Commission deciding which issues focused on by the initiatives will be
permissible? For example, an entry dated 15 December on the
Commission’s website states
clearly:
“The
Regulation foresees that proposed initiatives which are obviously not
serious (e.g. those that are frivolous, abusive or vexatious) will not
be
registered.”
However,
what might be “frivolous, abusive or vexatious” to the
Commission might not be so to other people. Those subjective terms
imply that there will be a subjective evaluation, so is there any
safeguard about
that?
Mr
Lidington:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his
questions because they raise some important issues. The truth is that
the Commission has a considerable measure of discretion within the
framework of rules laid down in the text of the
regulation.
Let
me take each of the hon. Gentleman’s points in turn. He first
asked about a situation in which we have petitioners from seven member
states—the minimum permitted—ganging up, in effect,
against the interests of one other member state. Nothing in the text
guards against that any more than there is such a safeguard in any
current law-making process in the European Union. Of course, the
Commission would have to decide whether to bring forward any
legislation—there is no obligation on it to do so in response to
a citizens’ initiative—and it would have to follow due
process. If such a measure required unanimity, the member state
affected would undoubtedly block it. If it did not, that state would
try to assemble a blocking minority in exactly the way that we do when
we hold day-to-day negotiations over European Union measures that would
adversely affect our interests. The Commission would be wary of trying
to take on any member state without having regard to the impact that
that would have on other EU business.
The hon.
Gentleman asked about lobbyists. Again, nothing is spelled out in the
text to enable people to distinguish between causes promoted by lobbies
and those that we might agree are genuine products of citizens’
opinions. It is difficult to draw a line. Does a big, voluntary
organisation—the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, for
example—count as a lobby, or is it simply expressing the views
of its mass membership? The important point is that the action of
lobbyists should be as transparent as possible. If lobbyists are trying
to campaign on a Europe-wide level on an ECI matter, it will be pretty
obvious that they are behind the
initiative.
On
the grounds on which the Commission may reject an initiative, it is for
the Commission to decide whether it is frivolous, abusive or vexatious,
although I think that the phrase is actually “manifestly”
frivolous, abusive or vexatious. The Commission must also reject a
proposal that is manifestly beyond its competence—in other
words, a proposal that would require a treaty change—or that is
manifestly contrary to the values of the European Union, as embodied in
article 2 of the treaty on European Union, which states that the EU is
committed to democracy, human rights and so on. For example, I suspect
that if an initiative was made by fascist groups from around Europe to
take action against people on the grounds of ethnicity, religion or
sex, the Commission would rule it out of order by using that provision.
It is right that there is such a
safeguard.
If
citizens do not like the Commission’s decision, they can go
either to the European ombudsman or probably, if they think that the
Commission is acting illegally, to the European Court of Justice. We
are waiting to hear from European institutions exactly how the
safeguards will operate, but it will be possible for organisers to
challenge the Commission’s verdict, if they have grounds on
which to do
so.
The
Chair:
If no other Members wish to ask questions, we shall
return to Mr
David.
Mr
David:
For my second set of three
questions.
The
Chair:
If you wish to ask them singly, please do—it
is your
choice.
Mr
David:
Going from general to more specific questions, I
was interested to read the Minister’s correspondence in the
document bundle. First, has he received any indication of the projected
cost of the implementation of the initiative, and have the Government
decided which lucky Department will have responsibility for running
it?
Secondly, I
understand from the paperwork that some member states will require
legal changes—I assume that that does not apply to the United
Kingdom. Will the Minister indicate which countries need to change
their statute book for this Europe-wide initiative? Obviously, those
changes must be made before the European Union as a whole can engage in
the initiative. Is the time scale, which was referred to earlier and is
in the documentation, entirely realistic? If it is not met, because
member states are not able to change their statute books, what do we do
about it?
Thirdly,
the Minister mentioned, quite rightly, that the European Commission is
likely to rule out of order any attempt by extremist
groups—fascists, for example—to make use of this process.
It is possible, and perhaps desirable, for political parties to make
use of the initiative. As some of us are aware, there are Europe-wide
political parties, such as the European People’s party and
the party of European Socialists. I imagine that there are some
individuals in those parties who have the structures in place, however
embryonic, and who would want to make use of this initiative. Would the
European Commission be glad to receive that, or would it frown upon it?
Would the Minister respond to
that?
Mr
Lidington:
Let me answer the hon. Gentleman’s
questions in reverse order. On political parties, there is nothing in
the language of the measure that stops them from taking the lead,
although there would have to be named individuals in each of the seven
or more member states who were legally charged with the duty of
organising and taking on the responsibility of data protection, which
would come with being an organiser. We expect the Commission and the
European Parliament to produce some guidance or illustrative examples
on topics that would be permissible. Provided, however, that a measure
proposed by a political party dealt with something within existing EU
competence, respected article 2 and was not blatantly frivolous and
vexatious, then I see no
problem.
Mr
David:
Or
manifestly.
Mr
Lidington:
Or manifestly vexatious and
frivolous—indeed. On the other questions that the hon. Gentleman
asked, we are nearing a decision on which Department should take
responsibility for this measure. As he knows, when a European measure
is under negotiation, the Foreign Office takes the default position of
being in charge until the final allocation of departmental
responsibility for implementing that measure is agreed.
The issues of
cost and primary legislation are tied up with exactly how we implement
this. Since it was only agreed at the General Affairs Council shortly
before Christmas, and will be finally signed off later this month, we
are at the early stages of that work. The cost will partly depend on
exactly how onerous the verification exercise turns out to be, and also
on the number of citizens’ initiatives that are introduced
forward each year. Our hope is that we would be looking at annual costs
of six, rather than seven, figures. There will be a start-up cost as
well, to get the system up and running. On that basis we believe that
it would not be excessive for the Government as a whole.
Primary
legislation depends on what source we use to verify the identity of
people in this country who have signed a petition. One of the most
obvious sources to use would be the electoral register, but we have not
taken a decision on that. If we were to use it, we would need to see
how the use of the data in that register fitted alongside current data
protection legislation. It is possible that there might have to be
legislative change, but the Government are still considering that. We
do not know which other member states will need to change their law. In
a sense, it would be easier for states to have an identity card or
national database system of some sort, but that is not something on
which they have shared information with us.
The
Chair:
Are there any more questions? If no more hon.
Members wish to ask questions, we will now proceed to the debate on the
motion.
Motion
made, and Question proposed,
That the
Committee takes note of European Union Document No. 8399/10 and
Addendum 1 relating to the draft European Citizens’ Initiative
Regulation, on which political agreement was reached by Council and
Parliament at First Reading in December 2010; and supports the
Government’s intention to develop a mechanism to implement the
Citizens’ Initiative which encourages citizen engagement while
minimising the burden on Member States.—(Mr
Lidington.)
4.55
pm
Mr
David:
I will be quite brief. In a previous life, I was a
member of the European Parliament, as was my right hon. Friend the
Member for Cynon Valley. For a short time, I served on the European
Parliament’s Committee on Petitions. That was an interesting
experience, as we saw all manner of petitions, and they all came from
individual member states. During my decade there, I do not recall a
petition with signatories from more than one member state. In
principle, it is a good thing but, thanks to the Lisbon treaty, such a
facility will soon be put in
place.
I
have some reservations about the concept behind such petitions. The
Minister will have heard of the coalition agreement to the commitment
for a citizens’ initiative of sorts to make representations to
Parliament, but I have a certain reservation on a European level about
representations being made and the Commission, the initiator of
legislation, then being legally obliged to produce a response that may
lead to legally binding
legislation.
Britain
and the European Union essentially have a representative democracy,
where individuals are elected on universal franchise by the people on
the basis of manifestos, then make decisions and are held accountable
to the electorate for those decisions. My guess is that we might well
touch on that issue next week when we consider the European Union Bill
and the Government’s proposal possibly to have referendums on a
host of different Bills—and what exactly that says about the
role of the mother of Parliaments in our democracy. It adds certain
conceptual reservations about the move in the European
Union.
I
agree with the Minister that, initially, the draft regulations from the
Commission certainly did seem to be excessively bureaucratic. It is
frequently the criticism made of the European Union institutions that
there is a lot of bureaucracy in such matters. Rather than provide a
link between the institutions and the people, my worry is that the
measure would create another bureaucratic system to muddy the waters
still more of the already tenuous connection. I am pleased that the
Government have been successful in negotiating changes to what is being
proposed, and I hope that further clarification can be achieved during
the next few weeks and possibly months before final
implementation.
Finally,
I was pleased that the Minister said that, because of respect for
Parliament and the European Scrutiny Committee, the Government have
decided to abstain at the General Affairs Council and not give their
support to the initiative. However, I was slightly confused when he
added that, even though we have gone through the scrutiny process with
support for the
initiative, the Government still intend to abstain. Is not that a slight
contradiction? Either the Government abstain because they do not think
that it is a particularly worthwhile initiative, or they abstain
because of their respect for Parliament. They cannot have it both ways.
I would like clarification from the
Minister.
5
pm
Ann
Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab):
Since I was referred to, I
would like briefly to mention my experience of dealing with petitions
in the European Parliament. Before I was an elected Member, I took the
first petition from the United Kingdom to the European Parliament. A
group of women went in a minibus all the way to Luxembourg, to
introduce a petition calling for equal treatment for men and women. It
referred to the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Equal Pay Act 1970.
As we were the first from the UK, a reception was put on for us in the
European Parliament. I sat next to Mrs Elaine
Kellett-Bowman, whom some Members may remember. She asked what the
petition was about and, when I told her, she snorted, “If I had
known the subject matter, I would not be here at this
lunch.” The petition was discussed in a subject committee of the
European Parliament because we followed its progress but, of course,
nothing happened afterwards.
That is my
concern: raising expectations. People expect something to happen as a
result of putting in a petition. It is important not to raise
expectations because, unfortunately, too many people are sceptical
about Europe as it is. I hope that when this proposal is introduced
people do not expect too
much.
5.1
pm
Mike
Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD):
It is a pleasure to be
called to speak under your chairmanship, Mrs
Brooke.
I would
principally like to record wholehearted support for the proposals in
the European citizens’ initiative regulation. The initiative
will increase direct democracy in the European Union and enable
citizens to have a direct say in its affairs, raising those citizens
effectively to the same level as members of the European Council, as
they will be able directly to influence the political priorities of the
Union. That form of direct democracy is a very effective tool to
improve engagement and ownership of our political institution by its
electorate.
An
individual’s need to participate in direct democracy increases
as the elected representative and representative institutions become
more remote. Remoteness is certainly the perception of many of the
European Parliament. A couple of years ago, one of the Scottish news
teams went on to the streets of Edinburgh offering residents £5
for every Scottish MEP they could name. Needless to say, that was not
an expensive afternoon. More people named my predecessor John Barrett
from Edinburgh West than named many of the MEPs serving at that
time.
The
ability to take part in direct democracy of this type is to be welcomed
and will serve only to strengthen links between citizens and their
European representatives and Parliament. This type of direct democracy
already exists, to a lesser extent, in that modern Parliament in
Edinburgh, through the workings of the Public Petitions Committee. That
initiative has proved very popular, with the Committee receiving almost
1,000 petitions in
the Scottish Parliament’s first two sessions. That is a large
number, but there is no minimum number of signatures required to enable
the submission of such a petition. Many have successfully gone on into
legislation. An early success was achieved by the Blairingone and
Saline action group, which in 2000 petitioned to end the practice of
spreading non-agricultural waste on land.
I can provide
some statistics on where petitions have come from and the types of
groups involved, which might be useful for our debate. Over half of
them were submitted by individuals; 18% by community groups; and only
15% by pressure groups. Political parties have been mentioned: only 1%
of petitions to the Scottish Parliament have come from political
parties, with twice as many, 2%, from unions.
We can expect
more direct local involvement once another part of the coalition
agreement is enacted, which will allow petitions with 100,000
signatures to be debated in this House. While supporting the
principles, I welcome the UK Government’s efforts to ensure that
the system is workable and minimises bureaucratic burden and
implementation costs. That is a fine line to tread, but I believe the
final proposals before us manage it very
well.
The
proposals simplify verification procedures for participants in the UK
so that they are broadly in line with inclusion on the electoral
register. They limit the information required from UK citizens, so only
randomised verification is now required, which provides a balance
between the minimisation of an implementation burden and the deterrence
of fraudulent submissions of statements of
support.
My
one remaining concern is on data protection access across multiple
member states with differing data protection laws. Putting together a
petition of 1 million names with sufficient data to enable verification
means that many millions of valuable pieces of personal data will, in
some cases, be harvested by online systems. We must do everything we
can to ensure both that we minimise the amount of data necessarily
collected and that sufficient security is in place for its transmission
and
storage.
With
that proviso, I return to where I started by expressing my enthusiastic
support for what I believe is a step forward in the democratisation of
the Union and the creation of a link between its too often remote
institutions and its citizens. The citizens’ initiative will be
a huge boost to the popular legitimacy of the European
Union.
5.6
pm
Mr
Lidington:
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh
West for his support. I also thank the hon. Member for Caerphilly and
the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley for their constructive approach
to the debate. I shall try to respond to the points that they
made.
Let
me start by sharing with the Committee some information that I received
during the debate about the position of lobbyists promoting a petition.
The organisers of a petition will need to declare the source of their
funding when they submit petition questions. I think that that
obligation will help to identify lobbyists at
work, and it will at least provide a safeguard of public scrutiny and go
some way to address the concerns expressed earlier by the hon. Member
for Caerphilly. I am happy to give an undertaking that the
Government will keep Parliament informed of progress on the
implementation of the
measure.
My
hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West was right to draw attention
to continuing concerns about data protection. That was why, when I came
to deal with the final text at last month’s General Affairs
Council, I abstained on the grounds of both parliamentary scrutiny and
substance. That is also why we will abstain when the measure comes back
for formal sign-off on 14
February.
There
are still some major concerns about the way in which the measure will
affect data protection. Under the initiative, a citizens’
committee has to be established for a petition to be considered by the
Commission. At least seven different people from seven different member
states will sit on the citizens’ committees, and they will
collect signatures from seven different member states with seven
different implementations of the data protection directive 95/46/EC.
There is a risk that that will present challenges as to which member
state’s law will apply if something goes wrong and data are
misused or records are not properly kept. Let us say, for example, that
a member of a citizens’ committee in Bulgaria shared information
with his colleagues on the committee and data relating to someone in
Ireland were misused in a way that led to a risk of identity fraud in
breach of data protection law. Would a prosecution be brought forward
on the basis of Bulgarian law, or on the basis of Irish law? We simply
do not know; the position is still
unclear.
The
exact obligations on the authors of petitions are also still unclear.
The regulation designates the organisers of ECIs and the competent
authorities designated by the Government of each member state as data
controllers for the purposes of the data protection directive. The
directive imposes significant legal duties on data controllers, such as
the duties to process data fairly and lawfully, to use them only for
the purpose for which they have been collected, and to ensure that they
are kept and stored no longer than necessary. The question, however, is
whether unnecessary burdens and liabilities will be imposed on
individuals that would not be imposed on them for the purposes of data
protection for any reason other than the ECI. For example, under the
measure, data controllers must register with the Information
Commissioner and pay a yearly fee. In most cases, the individuals who
would be petition organisers would not, were it not for the ECI, have
to register as a data controller, because any data that they processed
as an individual would usually fall within the domestic purposes
exemption of our law, which, of course, also applies European data
protection law in this country. Failure to register as a data
controller when required is a criminal offence, but we could be talking
about an ordinary citizen with no expert knowledge of data protection
law. Partly for those reasons, we therefore have concerns about
substance, as well as about parliamentary scrutiny, which have led us
to abstain.
The hon.
Member for Caerphilly expressed concern that the measure represented a
shift too far away from representative democracy and towards a model
based more on direct and participatory democracy. I want to emphasise
that the ECI in no way undermines our rights and responsibilities as
the elected representatives
of the British people to represent the views of our constituents. It
does not affect the House’s ability to scrutinise what I and
other Government Ministers do in EU negotiations, or its ability to
hold us to account. If we look at how the Scottish Parliament, through
its Public Petitions Committee, is seeking to find a way to give a
direct voice to ordinary citizens on how political priorities are set
and decisions are made, we see that we are moving, in line with public
expectation, towards a model where we try to combine some elements of
direct democracy with the tried and trusted principles of
representative democracy.
In case I
misspoke earlier, I want to put a point clearly on record about the
verification of statements of support for a petition: the regulation
does not require member states to verify statements of support
universally. We battled for—and secured—text in the
regulation to allow member states to carry out such verifications on
the basis of random sampling and according to national law and
practice.
Mr
David
:
I understand the Minister’s point,
but are we talking about any percentage or proportion? Random sampling
can be very random indeed. Is any quantification
available?
Mr
Lidington:
No quantification is laid down in the
legislative measure. We have to put a system of random
sampling in place that not only satisfies the Commission, but lets us
assure it that a petition is genuine and that there is no serious risk
of fraud, or of bogus or invented signatures and identities. We will
obviously be in close touch with the Commission during the 12 months we
have to implement the measure, and we want to ensure that we avoid
infraction proceedings. The Commission understands, given the arguments
that we made repeatedly in negotiations, that verifying every signature
would be disproportionately burdensome and costly. I think that it
accepts that point, which is why the concession was made before the
final text was agreed.
The right hon.
Member for Cynon Valley rightly advised the Committee that we should
not raise expectations beyond a level that is appropriate, which is
probably good advice for politicians at European and national level
when dealing with any legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for
Edinburgh West was correct to say that the measure is a step forward.
It gives a political instrument to the men and women whom we represent.
If they choose, they can use that instrument to tell the institutions
and decision takers in the European Union that there are priorities
that citizens wish them to follow. In that sprit, the measure is to be
welcomed, and I hope that it has the Committee’s
support.
Question
put and agreed to.
5.17
pm
Committee
rose.