Relations Between the European Commission and National Parliaments
The Committee consisted of the following Members:
† Barwell, Gavin (Croydon Central) (Con)
† Clwyd, Ann (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
Davies, Geraint (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
† Duddridge, James (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)
† Elphicke, Charlie (Dover) (Con)
† Horwood, Martin (Cheltenham) (LD)
† James, Mrs Siân C. (Swansea East) (Lab)
† Jones, Susan Elan (Clwyd South) (Lab)
† Lidington, Mr David (Minister for Europe)
Paisley, Ian (North Antrim) (DUP)
† Smith, Henry (Crawley) (Con)
† Stewart, Rory (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
† Thomas, Mr Gareth (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
Anna Dickson, Committee Clerk
† attended the Committee
European Committee B
Thursday 30 January 2014
[Martin Caton in the Chair]
Relations Between the European Commission and National Parliaments
11.30 am
The Chair: Does a member of the European Scrutiny Committee wish to make a statement about the decision to refer the relevant documents to this Committee?
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con): It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. It may assist the Committee if I give some background as to the nature of these documents and why the European Scrutiny Committee has recommended them for debate. The Commission publishes these reports annually. Their purpose is to review the level of national Parliament engagement in political dialogue with the Commission and to assess whether the Commission has complied with the subsidiarity principle when proposing new legislation. The reports before this Committee relate to 2012.
The annual report on relations between the Commission and national Parliaments notes that there has been increased dialogue, possibly arising out of the economic crisis in Europe. The annual report on subsidiarity and proportionality notes only a slight increase in the more formal engagement of national Parliaments through the submission of reasoned opinions under the subsidiarity protocol. However, in 2012 we did see the triggering of the first yellow card in relation to the Monti II proposal on the right to take collective action, which obliged the Commission to review or withdraw its proposal. The Commission chose to withdraw the proposal rather than respond to the points raised by national Parliaments. More recently, the Commission rejected the second yellow card, which had been adopted in respect of the proposal to create a European public prosecutor’s office.
The European Scrutiny Committee raised a number of issues with the Minister. It asked to hear whether the Prime Minister’s Bloomberg speech and the red card initiative announced by the Foreign Secretary, which would permit national Parliaments to block EU legislation for breach of subsidiarity, have advanced the cause of national Parliaments in any material way, and what further steps the Government propose to take to help empower national Parliaments. We also commented on our concern at what we saw as the inadequate subsidiarity assessments contained in a number of Government explanatory memoranda and asked the Minister how he intended to ensure that future assessments were of sufficient detail and quality to allow the Committee effectively to carry out its scrutiny in relation to this critical protocol. We found that the Minister’s response to these points reiterated past practice but provided little in the way of new thinking.
The European Scrutiny Committee recommended that these documents be debated on the Floor of the House because of what we saw as the crucial political
importance of engaging the House in the debate about the role national Parliaments play in the democratic legitimacy of the European Union. We would be interested in the Minister’s explanation as to why the Government have chosen to hold the debate in the European Committee rather than on the Floor of the House.The Chair: I call the Minister to make an opening statement.
11.33 am
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington): Mr Caton, as always it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. As my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley has said, today’s debate relates to two routine, interlinked annual reports for 2012 on the European Commission’s relations with national Parliaments and on the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. The Commission produces each of these reports annually. The report on relations between the Commission and national Parliaments is the eighth such report and the report on subsidiarity and proportionality is the 20th. These are both routine, non-binding and non-legislative reports which summarise the Commission’s actions in a particular year.
The report on relations with national Parliaments is an overview of relations in 2012. It sets out the Commission’s views on democratic accountability and how this can be increased through political dialogue between national Parliaments and the Commission. The Government welcome the Commission’s calls for greater scrutiny by national Parliaments and call on the Commission to keep its side of the bargain and to respond fully and in detail to concerns which national Parliaments have expressed. The second report, on subsidiarity and proportionality, examines how those two principles have been interpreted by the European Union’s institutions during 2012. Both those principles are written into article 5 of the treaty on European Union and are about whether and how the European Union should act. The principle of subsidiarity governs whether the EU should act, rather than leave action to individual member states, and the principle of proportionality governs whether actions proposed for the European Union go beyond what is necessary to achieve an intended outcome.
In 2012, national Parliaments submitted 70 reasoned opinions on subsidiarity to the Commission, covering 34 different proposals, which was a slight increase on the 64 issued in 2011. The first yellow card was issued in response to the Monti II proposal, otherwise known as the regulation on the right of collective action within the context of freedom of establishment and the freedom to provide services. The Commission responded by withdrawing its proposal, which illustrated the powerful impact that the yellow card process can have.
As Commission President José Manuel Barroso said recently,
“Not everything needs a solution at European level…The EU needs to be big on big things and smaller on smaller things”.
That goes to the heart of subsidiarity and proportionality. Issues can best be tackled through national Parliaments and national Governments, as represented in the European Council and the Council. It is via those routes that the
voices of the peoples of Europe are best heard and the democratic legitimacy and accountability of EU-level decisions are best upheld.The Government think that part of the answer is to make the existing systems work better, and that we should make better and more frequent use of the yellow card procedure. There are three elements to that: first, facilitating national Parliaments’ issuing of reasoned opinions; secondly, further enhancing co-ordination with Chambers in other countries, including through the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs; and thirdly, ensuring that the Commission responds appropriately to the concerns expressed.
On the last point, I raised the Commission’s disappointing response to the recent yellow card on the European public prosecutor’s office, during the 17 December General Affairs Council. My concerns were shared openly by a number of other member states, which spoke in support. The Commission’s response was, at best, unsatisfactory, and at worst, disrespectful of the views of the Parliaments of no fewer than 11 member states. After only four weeks’ consideration, the Commission announced that its proposal on the EPPO would remain unchanged. Its response took a narrow view of subsidiarity, introduced no new evidence to justify the proposal and failed to engage with the thoroughness and detail that rightly should be expected with the genuine concerns that so many national Chambers had expressed. That makes the case for strengthening the yellow card mechanism more urgent.
It was clear from the subsidiarity and proportionality report that the principle of proportionality currently receives less focus from the Commission than the principle of subsidiarity. That is not surprising, given that the current reasoned opinion yellow card mechanism covers only subsidiarity. But both principles are set out in article 5, both are central to the way in which the EU is supposed to function, both govern the use of Union competences, and all Commission actions—frankly, the actions of all EU institutions—should be compliant with proportionality and subsidiarity.
National Parliaments already have a role, through the exchange of views, in ensuring respect for the principle of proportionality, but I would like that to be extended to a formal role through the yellow card mechanism. That could be achieved without treaty change through a political commitment from the Commission. Beyond that, the yellow card could be further strengthened by lowering the threshold required to trigger a review and by giving Parliaments more time to scrutinise proposals.
Further potential reforms in this area include introducing a so-called red card to block outright new Commission proposals or retroactively annul existing legislation. There is a Dutch proposal for national Parliaments to be able to exercise those prerogatives after co-decision is complete through a so-called late card. There is a proposal for a green card, with which national Parliaments could propose new policies to the Commission, including proposals to amend or recall existing European legislation. We should also look at establishing more clearly the practice that European Commissioners should meet with national Parliaments to explain a proposal if they so request.
As the Committee knows, the Lisbon treaty conferred a new power on national Parliaments to bring challenges to EU legislation on subsidiarity grounds. The Government
and Parliament have just signed the memorandum of understanding that sets out the arrangements for how such a challenge should be brought. That adds another string to Parliament’s bow on subsidiarity and completes the package of subsidiarity powers created under the Lisbon treaty.The Chair: We have until 12.30 pm for questions to the Minister. I remind Members that they should be brief. However, it is open to a Member, subject to my discretion, to ask related supplementary questions.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op): I appreciate the opportunity to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I apologise to the hon. Member for Crawley for missing part of his opening remarks and to the Committee generally for being slightly late.
I want to start with the point made at the end of the hon. Gentleman’s opening remarks. Why did the Minister decide to choose this format for these reports when the European Scrutiny Committee specifically suggested a debate on the Floor of the House?
Mr Lidington: As I said, these are routine reports issued annually by the Commission. Last year, neither of the reports was recommended for debate at all. Neither of the reports includes specific commitments to legislation or action. There is nothing in the documents that constitutes decision points for the British Government or Parliament. I think the two and half hours we have available in this Committee, rather than 90 minutes on the Floor of the House, should give all Members of the House who wish to attend a full opportunity to discuss the reports, and if they wish the broader debate about subsidiarity, proportionality and the role of national Parliaments in holding EU decisions to account.
Mr Thomas: I recognise that some Members of the European Scrutiny Committee on the Government side might be seen as troublemakers by the Minister, but the hon. Member for Crawley surely does not fit that description. He has suggested a change in practice that might have drawn more hon. Members into debates about subsidiarity and proportionality. Given the thinness of the Government’s agenda for the House—notwithstanding today’s events in the main Chamber—why could the Minister not have shown a little more imagination and gone with the Scrutiny Committee’s request this time?
Mr Lidington: When I heard the hon. Gentleman use the word “notwithstanding” I thought there were some strange coalitions emerging. To treat his question seriously, when I attended the most recent evidence session of the European Scrutiny Committee I set on the record there the figures that showed the significant increase in the number of debates on the Floor of the House referred by the ESC in the nearly four years of this Government compared with the last two or three years of the previous Government’s time. I think we have a pretty good record to defend in providing greater opportunities for debate on the Floor of the House than previously.
The Government will respond as soon as we can to the detailed, thorough report and recommendations from the Scrutiny Committee about the scrutiny process.
The recommendations touched closely on the issues that we are debating this morning and I am sure the House will want to make time for proper consideration in the appropriate forum of that report and the Government’s response to it. Clearly, I am not going to pre-empt today the Government’s detailed response to that Committee report.Mr Thomas: That is disappointing because I wanted to move on to that report next. Perhaps the lesson for the hon. Member for Crawley from the answers to the last two questions is that he needs to become a bit more of a troublemaker if he is to get a bit more time on the Floor of the House for his suggestions.
Let us take some of the recommendations in the European Scrutiny Committee’s helpful analysis of the scrutiny process so far. It concluded
“that there should be a mechanism whereby the House of Commons can decide that a particular EU legislative proposal should not apply to the United Kingdom.”
Does the Minister agree with that proposal?
Mr Lidington: The Foreign Secretary has set out the reasons why the Government have concerns about that particular proposal. If the intention is for a veto to be exercised by Parliament on every aspect of European legislation, it remains the case, since the European Communities Act 1972 became law and was reiterated by the European Union Act 2011, that the only reason why European law has direct legal effect in this country is because of Acts of Parliament—the European Communities Act and the subsequent Act—which had so given that primacy to European law. So it is open to Parliament, if Parliament so chooses at any stage in the future, to vary the terms of that permissive legislation.
Mr Thomas: Presumably, we can take it that the Minister and his boss are opposed to recommendation 36 and presumably recommendation 37 of the European Scrutiny Committee report.
I want to ask the Minister about a further suggestion in the report: the idea of oral questions on EU matters. The Minister has not always been generous in giving way in debates on the Floor of the House. He tends to be more generous in these Committees. I distinctly remember his being difficult during debates on the European Union (Referendum) Bill on Report. How does he feel about the idea of oral questions on EU matters? Will he support that?
Mr Lidington: If the hon. Gentleman found me difficult during the Report stage of the European Union (Referendum) Bill, he knows that that is because I can recognise filibusterers when I see them. I am very happy for the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends to go and trawl through the various Hansard reports of the speeches I have given in the Chamber on European Union matters since May 2010. I think he will find I have given way plenty of times. The hon. Gentleman will have to contain his impatience. The Government will give a full, considered response to every recommendation of the Scrutiny Committee in due course. We are considering the report with the thoroughness that it merits.
Mr Thomas: The Minister clearly has not made up his mind, or he has not got permission to give a view on that particular question, which is a shame. I will tempt him with the idea—again, from the European Scrutiny Committee’s report—of a permanent membership for an EU Committee. Perhaps the hon. Member for Crawley might be a candidate to be chair of such a committee. A permanent membership might allow particular flows of expertise to develop. How does the Minister feel about that idea?
Mr Lidington: I am tempted to say, “I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave some moments ago.” The subject came up during the oral evidence I gave to the European Scrutiny Committee. Having served on a permanent European Standing Committee during my first term in the House, I can see the merits of that proposal, because it would allow a cadre of members to establish expertise in particular areas of EU policy. The downside of the recommendation is that history showed it became difficult to persuade members of all political parties to serve as permanent members of such Committees. I am not going to rule in or out the Government accepting that proposal. We will publish our response when we respond to everything in the Committee’s report, but there are pros and cons to that proposal.
James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con): Does the Minister agree that the shadow Minister is being uncharacteristically critical and perhaps did not have a good night’s sleep? The Minister has been superb as Europe Minister, and he has been very gracious in giving way and listening to colleagues. In some cases, I would say that he has been too gracious and accepting of colleagues. I think we both have an idea of whom I am talking about.
On the document before the Committee, is there not a risk of seeing everything through the prism of Europe? Some of the departmental Select Committees are a much better way of considering Europe than simply defining it as a geographic zone.
Mr Lidington: I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I have said more than once, both inside and outside the House, that it would be beneficial to the debate about Europe in Parliament and in the country if the departmental Select Committees gave greater weight to the European aspect of their responsibilities, which is provided for in their Standing Orders and terms of reference, than some tend to do at the moment. That would provide an opportunity for Parliament, through the Select Committees, to consider European policies both prospectively—such as by inquiring into proposals while they are still at draft stage, in a work programme or as a Green Paper or White Paper from the Commission—and retrospectively. A few years after the implementation of a directive, a Select Committee could examine whether the directive was delivering the promised results or whether it was having unintended consequences.
Mr Thomas: Notwithstanding the nonsense from the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend East that prefaced the Minister’s reply—[ Interruption. ] It was characteristic nonsense. I agree with the Minister that it
would be helpful if the Select Committees spent a little more time on EU matters. A permanent EU Committee might also be helpful.I want to take the Minister back to the two instances in which the yellow card has been successfully used. I share the disappointment that the Commission has not embraced or been willing to acknowledge that the yellow card thresholds were achieved. In his discussions with Commission officials or other member states, has he had any sense as to why the Commission has felt so nervous about accepting that the yellow card threshold was achieved in both Monti II and the latter proposal?
Mr Lidington: We have continued to raise that matter with the Commission. I raised it directly with the Commission when I was in Brussels last week. One thing we find frustrating about that decision is that there has not yet been what I would consider to be an adequate, detailed explanation from the Commission as to why it believed that the criticisms made by 11 national parliamentary chambers were inappropriate or misjudged. Whether or not one agrees with the Commission’s position, one might have more respect for that position if the Commission was prepared to express its argument in detail. I will have further conversations with Commissioners over the next few weeks, and I intend to pursue the matter.
Mr Thomas: The idea of a so-called red card would, as I understand it, require treaty change. Will the Minister give us a clue as to how likely treaty change is by, say, the end of 2017?
Mr Lidington: We have gone over that ground a number of times, and I continue to believe that there is a readiness for reopening the treaties. The European timetable points to 2015-16 as the logical window in which to do that, and the pressures on our friends in the eurozone to integrate their economic and fiscal policies more closely is pushing them in that direction. It is interesting to note that the German coalition agreement makes specific reference to the need to reconsider the treaties in order to facilitate eurozone integration. However, to return to the red card proposal, we could make an advance ahead of reopening the treaties if the Commission were to say, “We agree that, once a given number of national Parliaments deploy a reasoned opinion against a proposal, we will treat that as an effective veto. We promise, as a matter of political commitment, that we will withdraw such a proposal.” We could get a change of working practice at political level ahead of codifying it through treaty change.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD): Will the Minister confirm that the Commission report was published on 30 July 2013 and related to the work of the Commission in 2012? Will he also tell us how long it took the Commission to give the report to the British Government and how long it has taken the Government to bring it before this Committee?
Mr Lidington: That is a fair question on which I must take advice. I will respond either at the end of the debate or write to the hon. Gentleman and send a copy to the other members of the Committee.
Martin Horwood: The implication of my question is that the Commission gave the report to the British Government reasonably swiftly, but it has now taken the best part of seven months before we have even been able to debate it in Committee, let alone on the Floor of the House. We have repeatedly raised the issue of such general tardiness in reports being debated and European business coming before Committees or the House. I would like to add my voice to those who think that the situation really is inadequate. Will the Minister look at some way of ensuring that in future we debate such matters in a more timely fashion?
Mr Lidington: I can give my hon. Friend some information. The 25th annual report on relations between the Commission and national Parliaments originated from the Commission on 30 July 2013 and was therefore deposited in Parliament—this happened ahead of an explanatory memorandum—on 5 August 2013. The explanatory memorandum was sent to the Scrutiny Committee from the Foreign Office on 28 August 2013. Recess poses challenges for both Government and Parliament. The issue is another of those addressed in the Scrutiny Committee’s recommendations in its report on the scrutiny process. I understand the frustration behind my hon. Friend’s comments, and those of other Members; I am always keen to see debates take place as swiftly as possible.
The business mangers in the House clearly have legitimate interests in providing time for a wide range of business, rather than solely for matters referred by the European Scrutiny Committee, whether to a Committee or the House. It is also clear that during this Parliament there has been a pattern for significantly greater numbers of documents to be referred for debate both in Committee and on the Floor of the House. Although I accept that the Lisbon treaty makes some of that inevitable—for example, the collapse of the third pillar into the community legislative system means that we should, quite properly, expect more referrals in respect of justice and home affairs measures than before—Parliament and the Government must think about how we ensure that we give proper priority for debate to European Union issues of the greatest political or constitutional importance.
There are reasonable questions that I have debated with the European Scrutiny Committee, and on which I am looking forward to responding in detail following its report, where some of these tensions are addressed. Are there ways in which we could streamline the process and focus more on the most important issues? We could perhaps have a fast-track process for relatively minor decisions. We will return to such matters when the Government respond to the Scrutiny Committee’s report.
Martin Horwood: I thank the Minister for his answer. I must say in passing that I have always found him very courteous and obliging in answering such questions. He often has the patience of a saint, which is required of any Conservative Minister for Europe.
I shall delve a little further back into the mists of time to his written ministerial statement on 20 January 2011 when he told the House:
“The Government are committed to strengthening its engagement with Parliament on all European Union business as part of our wider work to reduce the democratic deficit over EU matters. It will review the arrangements for engagement on EU issues in
consultation with Parliament, and make a further announcement in due course”.—[Official Report, 20 January 2011; Vol. 521, c. 52WS.]We have discussed this written ministerial statement and exactly what announcement was expected from the Executive, but what are the Government trying to do in order to facilitate a wider review of our engagement with EU matters? The issues of scrutiny have come up from the European Scrutiny Committee and from these Benches on quite a number of occasions now.
Mr Lidington: Before I answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, I hope, Mr Caton, that you will forgive me if I respond, as I am now able to, to the half of his previous question that I was not able to answer, which was about the process for handling the Commission report on subsidiarity and proportionality. That report was issued by the Commission on 30 July 2013. It is fair to say that that explanatory memorandum was not sent by the Government to the Committee until 9 October 2013. The reason for that was that the issues of subsidiarity and proportionality touch upon the responsibilities of every Government Department, so there had to be cross-Whitehall agreement involving all department and, of course, that was taking place over the summer when a lot of the key officials were, at different times, on summer leave.
I completely accept that we need to learn the lesson from that and we have set in train an arrangement that I hope and believe will enable us in future years to get an explanatory memorandum of that kind in front of the Committees more swiftly than was the case last year. On the broader question of the Government’s engagement with Parliament, we have had more debates, both on the Floor of the House and in Committee, every year since 2010. We have introduced enhanced scrutiny arrangements for important justice and home affairs matters, as a follow up to the written ministerial statement I gave on 20 January 2011.
The Foreign Office provides guidance to other Departments around Whitehall to try to improve their performance in the submission and content of explanatory memoranda and dealing with scrutiny issues more generally. We do not always get it right, but we have tried. For example, where, as my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley said, there is a complaint about a particular explanatory memorandum being inadequate, while that is the responsibility of whichever Department is concerned, the FCO does, at that point, offer the Department some help, if it wishes to take it, because sometimes there are officials who are genuinely inexperienced in dealing with scrutiny. We try to update Parliament regularly, through discussions with the Committees, in evidence sessions, in some informal sessions and through correspondence with the Chairs that is placed in the Library of the House.
I will be honest with the Committee—one key reason why we have not come forward with proposals as early as we might otherwise have done is that I have always taken the view that changes we make have to be ones that Parliament itself feels that it owns. The European Scrutiny Committee has undertaken this comprehensive inquiry report into the scrutiny system and I think it took longer to complete than the Government had expected and perhaps than the Committee itself had
expected. The Committee went into this with great thoroughness and in great detail and I felt that it would wrong for the Government to come out unilaterally with their own statement about the way forward before hearing what the European Scrutiny Committee of the House itself wanted to say on the subject. I think we should take the Government response to the Committee as the next important step forward.Martin Horwood: I am very grateful for the Minister’s response, but we seem to be like cars stuck at a roundabout where everyone is waiting for everyone else to move. We have been talking about this for years. There have been repeated calls from the European Scrutiny Committee, endorsed by Liberal Democrats and by Opposition Members too, for greater involvement of departmental Select Committees in more regular scrutiny of particular pieces of European legislation and Commission proposals. Yet for the reasons the Minister has eloquently explained, the Executive does not want to take it forward because they think it is Parliament’s responsibility. But Parliament, through the European Scrutiny Committee, has repeatedly said that it wants this to happen. Many voices on both sides of the House have said that they want this to happen and yet it never seems to move forward. I am a little unclear how the Minister, even if he does not want to take personal responsibility for making it happen, thinks this will ever happen now.
Mr Lidington: Cultural change in any institution, including Parliament, takes time. I would be delighted if every Chair of every departmental Select Committee decided that they would give a higher priority from now on to EU matters. Some Select Committees already devote quite a lot of their time to European Union matters. I have made the case for them to engage more energetically with the European dimension of their work, both in meetings with the Liaison Committee and with individual Select Committee Chairs. I will continue to urge that. But it cannot in the end be for the Government to instruct a Select Committee of the House on how to order its priorities. Members who share the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham on this can use peer pressure on Members who sit on these Committees to urge them to reconsider the current priorities.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That the Committee takes note of European Union Documents No. 12989/13, the 2012 Annual Report from the Commission on relations between the European Commission and national parliaments, and No. 13002/13, the Commission Annual Report on subsidiarity and proportionality; recognises the importance of the principle of subsidiarity and the value of stronger interaction between national parliaments and the EU Institutions; and welcomes the Government's commitment to increasing the power of national parliaments in EU decision-making by strengthening and, where possible, enhancing current provisions.—(Mr Lidington.)
12.7 pm
Mr Thomas: We will certainly not object to these two reports. The questions to the Minister have been notable for the way in which the hon. Member for Crawley advanced his case to be Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee and also for the way in which the cases of the hon. Members for Cheltenham and for Rochford and Southend East were weakened by their obsequious questioning of the Minister.
I genuinely welcome the opportunity to discuss the Commission’s annual report on the relations between the European Commission and national Parliaments and the report on subsidiarity and proportionality. Inevitably the focus of the first report is on the engagement of national Parliaments in debates about the multi-annual financial framework for 2014 to 2020 and the EU’s response to the economic and financial crisis. I am sure the Committee will agree that it is welcome that the Commission shares the now widespread view across Europe that democratic accountability needs to be enhanced, not least through political dialogue between the Commission and national Parliaments.
It is also encouraging that national Parliaments are increasingly exercising the option of flagging up domestic concerns by submitting written opinions on both legislative and non-legislative documents. To draw out some of the figures that have encouraged me to take that view, there have been 663 written opinions—a 7% rise on the 2011 figures—covering more than 354 different EU documents. In the UK, 22 opinions were issued, six from our Chamber and 16 from the other place. There are essentially two routes for national Parliaments to air their concerns. The first is through a written opinion on a particular concern. The second is through a reasoned opinion, allowing Parliaments to address specific concerns about whether a proposal is in line with subsidiarity guidelines. That in turn can trigger the yellow card mechanism.
As I am sure Members will be aware, if the Commission receives reasoned opinions amounting to a third of the total votes allocated to national Parliaments it must review the proposal and can amend or withdraw it. As I alluded to in one of my questions to the Minister, I understand that a yellow card was first triggered in the Monti II proposals but that the required number of reasoned opinions were also received more recently in relation to the proposal for a European prosecutor. I underline my disappointment that the European Commission has decided to press on with the European prosecutor proposal and that, while effectively accepting the reality of the yellow card to the Monti II proposals, it chose not to acknowledge that it was the yellow card process that had led to the decision to withdraw the proposal.
I am sure that the Committee would want to acknowledge the role that the previous Labour Government played in delivering the yellow card process, just one of many sensible reforms to how Europe works that they delivered. I gently remind the Committee that it was by building up allies for change, a process that the Minister might want to reflect on at this particular moment. Members of the Committee would, I am sure, want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who first suggested a red card mechanism during the negotiations that eventually led to the Lisbon treaty. The shadow Foreign Secretary in his speech last year at Chatham House on the future of Europe also suggested a form of collective emergency break procedure that could further amplify the voice of national parliaments within the EU’s law-making process. I welcome the adherence by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Europe to this aspect, at least, of Labour’s future agenda for reform of the way the EC works.
The European Scrutiny Committee has done the House a service in producing a very interesting report on how European scrutiny in this Chamber might be
taken forward. We are reflecting on the different ideas within that report and look forward to the Government’s publication of their response to that report, triggering a debate certainly in a Committee but hopefully on the Floor of the House too. I welcome these reports and look forward to the bigger issue of the suggestions from the European Scrutiny Committee.12.12 pm
Martin Horwood: I will not delve into the fine detail of the European Scrutiny Committee’s report, except to say that it raises a number of very important issues. These issues of sovereignty, proportionality and subsidiarity deserve debate on the Floor of the House. In the last year—because of the stringent procedures set out in the European Union Act 2011, which implemented the then Conservative policy on Europe—we have had time to debate on the Floor of the House such critical matters as whether the Official Journal of the European Union should be printed in electronic format. If we can find the time to debate something of that level, these major issues of proportionality and subsidiarity ought to find time on the Floor of the House at some stage. The Committee’s recommendation that this should take place before Easter is a good one and the Government should consider doing it in Government time.
In terms of the wider reform of European scrutiny that that might bring about, we have got to be a bit realistic. If we go to Berlin and see the procedures that the Bundestag has for scrutinising European proposals and ideas for European legislation, they are typically rigorous, thorough and organised. They are not left to these rather vague ideas of cultural change and peer pressure gradually encouraging Select Committee Chairs to take up a perhaps more rigorous and systematic process. Somehow we have to break this logjam on reform of the way in which we scrutinise European legislation and to give it the expert attention that it really deserves.
This stuff does actually matter and there was an example very recently in my constituency. A company based in Cheltenham called Premier Products, which produces cleaning products, warned us a couple of years ago that there were issues relating to the biocidal products regulation that was going through the European Parliament and Council at the time. If it worked well, it would be an important and positive move that would apply environmental standards across Europe—that is a good thing—and would also allow access for small and medium-sized enterprises to a wider European market, so that instead of having to go to 28 different countries to seek authorisation for some of the more toxic active ingredients to be included in their products they could have a single EU-wide authorisation process. We were assured by Commissioner Potocnik that as a result authorisation fees for small and medium-sized enterprises would be lower than they were at that moment.
A year or so on, we have ended up with a regulation that does almost precisely the reverse. The authorisation fees are going to be astronomical and the bureaucracy of the application procedure at European level requires consultants to produce potentially dozens of lever arch files of documentation relating to each active ingredient in each product that each company puts forward, a process that will cost the companies tens of thousands of pounds in consultant fees. The effective result of the
regulation will be to block small and medium-sized enterprises from access to those markets, thereby undermining competition, and undermining the idea of the single market along the way.That kind of process ought to have been scrutinised, and not necessarily by the European Scrutiny Committee, as with the best will in the world that Committee does not have the expert knowledge needed to look into biocidal products or the implications of such things for business. It should have been looked at by expert Select Committees, such as the Environmental Audit Committee and the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, to examine the implications for British business and for the environment. Those Committees should at least have been aware of the issue and that there was the potential in this case to cost probably about 30 jobs in my constituency, potentially hundreds of jobs across the UK and potentially thousands of jobs in small and medium-sized businesses right across Europe.
This stuff matters, so it is important that we give proposals that are going through the European Parliament or coming from the European Commission really rigorous scrutiny. If we miss these issues, it can have a real impact on our constituents. I plead with the Minister that we have to break the logjam somehow. We have been talking for years about how to improve European scrutiny, and I do not think that simply talking about peer pressure or cultural change is sufficient. Perhaps this is something to give back to the European Scrutiny Committee, if the hon. Member for Crawley will take the message back: that Committee needs to address the specific issue of how to break the logjam and achieve better scrutiny in this place of European legislation and proposals as they come forward. That needs to happen. However, I am happy to support the motion we are considering today.
12.17 pm
Mr Lidington: I am grateful to hon. Members who have taken part in the debate and in our earlier exchanges. There has been agreement in all parts of the Committee that we need to look for ways in which we can both improve further the quality of law-making within the European Union and, as an element of that, have more effective and stronger systems of scrutiny here. The two points—both improving scrutiny and the role of the British Parliament, and ensuring that the EU institutions themselves improve the quality of the legislation—fit together and are complementary.
I listened with interest to what my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham said about the particular difficulties that his constituents had had with the biocidal products regulation. I agree with him that more prospective and retrospective scrutiny of the consequences of such legislation by Select Committees in this place is exactly the sort of thing that I would welcome, but it is also true that we need to strengthen still further the already large effort we are making to secure an improvement in the quality of law-making in Brussels. This is partly an issue of ensuring that the quality of impact assessments—from all of the European Union’s institutions, not just the Commission—improves. We must ensure that good business-friendly principles, such as the compete principles described recently by the Prime Minister’s business taskforce,
are taken seriously into account and applied by people in directorates-general when they are drafting and framing particular regulations and directives.I have said repeatedly that the Government will respond in detail, as soon as we can, to the detailed report of the European Scrutiny Committee. I am sure there will be other opportunities then to take forward the debate. I was interested in my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham’s reference to the Bundestag. I agree with him about the thoroughness of both the Bundestag and the Land governments in Germany when examining European legislation and its likely consequences for them. A number of Parliaments, like the German one, organise their affairs in a significantly different way from us. For example, there might be a week in Berlin when there is no meeting of the Bundestag in plenary session but it is given over entirely to sessions of the various committees, which are deliberately given a more prominent leading role than traditionally under our system.
I want to make a couple of further points that touch on matters raised during our debate. The hon. Member for Harrow West drew attention to the increase in the number of reasoned opinions since the yellow card mechanism came into place. I also welcome that. I think there is more that can be done. I noted that the 2012 report records that in that year the House of Lords submitted one reasoned opinion and the House of Commons submitted three. The Swedish Parliament submitted 20 reasoned opinions. That is not a criticism of the Committees of our Parliament, but there are some questions there to ask ourselves. Are we using the opportunity of the yellow card with sufficient frequency? Or does the infrequency of our resort to that illustrate some real problems over the short time limit that is allowed to national Parliaments before the deadline expires, by which a reasoned opinion has to be submitted? Or is the problem more with the limited scope for deploying a yellow card; the fact that it can be deployed only on grounds of subsidiarity and not on wider grounds?
On the European public prosecutor’s office, I am sure the hon. Gentleman would want to acknowledge and welcome the fact that not only does the UK have the right to decide for itself, if the proposal comes to fruition, whether to opt in or out of that measure, but thanks to the provisions of the European Union Act 2011, for any future British Government to participate in a European public prosecutor’s office would require both an Act of Parliament and a referendum before it could go ahead.
I would also like to draw the Committee’s attention to the forthcoming balance of competences report on subsidiarity and proportionality. In spring this year I will launch a formal call for evidence for that report, which will also cover the flexibility clause. That is article 352 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham alluded. I would encourage parliamentarians of all parties and others to respond to that call for evidence to ensure that their views are recorded and fully taken into account. An e-campaign and consultation process will be launched at that time to ensure that responses are received from a wide range of stakeholders in Parliament and outside.
Mr Thomas: Bearing in mind that the Government seem to have made up its mind on the justice and home affairs provisions of current EU treaties, why should we take seriously the notion that the Minister is interested in MPs’ opinions on European matters, when such a big chunk of the EU’s competences is already being discussed in negotiations between the Home Secretary and the Commission at the moment?
Mr Lidington: The hon. Gentleman referred earlier to the Lisbon treaty negotiated by the previous Government. I hope he has not forgotten that it was that Lisbon treaty that provided for the UK to exercise a choice before the end of 2014 on whether it wanted to remain party to those justice and home affairs measures that predated the coming into effect of the Lisbon treaty. So what is going on in the negotiations that he mentioned is nothing other than the fulfilment of the provisions of the Lisbon treaty in that respect.
There has been agreement across the Committee on the need to strengthen our scrutiny arrangements further, and to work to enhance the role of national Parliaments. Not just in the UK, but right across Europe, we see profound public disaffection with how decisions are taken at European Union level, with a lack of accountability and a remoteness that appear to many citizens in many different countries as sadly a hallmark of how decisions
are taken at EU level. I believe strongly that a stronger, more powerful voice for national Parliaments in holding EU decisions to account in influencing decisions about future legislation and amendments to it is a key element in trying to bridge that gulf that presently exists between the institutions in Brussels and the peoples of Europe in whose interests those institutions are supposed to act. It is in all our interests, from whichever political tradition we come, to see our own scrutiny arrangements made more effective and stronger and to push for a more powerful voice for national Parliaments in how the EU operates.That the Committee takes note of European Union Documents No. 12989/13, the 2012 Annual Report from the Commission on relations between the European Commission and national parliaments, and No. 13002/13, the Commission Annual Report on subsidiarity and proportionality; recognises the importance of the principle of subsidiarity and the value of stronger interaction between national parliaments and the EU Institutions; and welcomes the Government's commitment to increasing the power of national parliaments in EU decision-making by strengthening and, where possible, enhancing current provisions.