4 Papers deposit
37. Our Scrutiny Reform Report made the point that
our existing Standing Orders, and the associated Scrutiny Reserve
Resolution are now out of date, originating from 1998 - well before
the agreement of the Lisbon Treaty.30F[31]
The Government rejected our proposed revisions and its subsequent
correspondence has instead concentrated on the Government's desire
to "streamline" the existing system of formal deposit
of documents before Parliament. The effect of this would be to
remove various categories of EU document from the requirement
to deposit and therefore for the Government to prepare an Explanatory
Memorandum.
38. There was liaison at official level in autumn
and winter 2014-15 between our Committee, the House of Lords EU
Committee and the FCO, in which the FCO provided more detail where
its original proposals were ambiguous, following which officials
of both Houses reported back to their respective Committees on
the implications of this proposed "streamlining".
39. We do not
accept most of the Government's proposals for future non-deposit.
At this stage of the Parliament, however, we consider that the
best approach is to publish our recommendations for consideration
by our successors.
40. We set out in the Annex to this Report our
response to the Government's proposals on "streamlining"
which documents are formally deposited in Parliament. While we
accept some of its proposals, the cumulative effect of the others
would considerably reduce the number of documents formally scrutinised
by Parliament, which we think would be a retrograde step. We trust
that once the debates issue is resolved our successor Committee
will engage with the Government to resolve the future scope of
document deposit, and the associated updates of the Scrutiny Reserve
Resolution (including an opt-in version of the Scrutiny Reserve
Resolution). We note that deposit is a bicameral process, so any
such changes will also need to be agreed by the House of Lords
EU Committee.
31 Scrutiny Reform Report, para 8 Back
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