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Lord Goodhart: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Is he aware that the passages that he is reading are not the views of the Foreign Office but the conclusions in the report on which the Government are commenting by way of reply?
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, I shall simply read the heading to the noble Lord, unless the document is another example of deliberate fog. It states:
- "Response of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs".
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, I am prepared to let the House judge when noble Lords have read the document. I do not propose to try to deceive the House in this matter.
The fault lies with us. We must make governments responsible to Parliament. We must have open transparency with them. We must insist on the matters that really need attention in our country being attended to, rather than obscured by a flood of directives and semi-directives emanating from the European Commission—and, indeed, to some extent originating within our own country.
5.18 p.m.
Baroness Ludford: My Lords, I warmly welcome the report. The modest input that I can make is as a practitioner rather than as a constitutional thinker. My focus in the European Parliament is the justice and home affairs committee, rather than that on constitutional affairs. Any contribution to the bigger question of how to improve the effectiveness and legitimacy of the European Union is highly welcome. But I share the view of those who believe that the "national Euro-MPs" proposal is a diversion from, not an advance towards, that goal. The practical difficulties are immense and would end up making it more difficult to understand who does what.
Clearly, the overall conclusion of the report is absolutely right. We need co-operation between all of Europe's parliaments and parliamentarians. That means co-operation among national parliaments and between them and the European Parliament. As part of that, there must be close liaison between the national parliaments and the MEPs from the same country. Hence I hide my embarrassment at criticising a type of dual mandate while being an MEP and a Member of this House by saying that my participation in this debate is the practical expression of the desire to co-operate.
I must admit that, unlike my MEP colleague, Andrew Duff, I have not had much contact with the UK Office of the European Parliament in Brussels. Even if I had, I might still not have been aware of the inquiry on the EU democracy and accountability being carried out in the other place, as even Mr Duff says that he learnt of it only by accident, and he is our party's EU constitutional expert. Information flows could be improved.
In the United Kingdom, I rely to a considerable extent on the reports of this House's Select Committee on the European Union. Recently, I was rapporteur—draftsman—of a report approved just last week in the European Parliament on the integration of long-term resident immigrants, so-called third country nationals. I found the report of the sub-committee chaired by my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond most helpful. As an aside, I must say that I share their view that the UK's opt-out from that directive is regrettable. It would be a good investment to find the budget to send copies of those reports to all MEPs, not just British ones. It would be good public relations and would not be seen as national presumption.
We could and should pursue various imaginative ideas for co-operation between institutions, for instance involving UK MEPs in the work of the Select Committee on the European Union. We should also have links between specialist committees, for example between my own European Parliament committee on justice and home affairs and the Home Affairs Select Committee in the other place. I also recall a useful meeting of chairmen and representatives of the justice and home affairs committees of the national parliaments that took place a year ago in Stockholm under the Swedish presidency. My noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond was there, and I was there from the European Parliament's equivalent committee.
We could do more on an individual and party level to liaise within our parties between colleagues in Brussels and Westminster, not least on joint policy positions. One problem that I find is that we in the European Parliament deal with matters that Members at Westminster—certainly those in the other place—have not begun to think about. I find myself making policy for the party, but I am nervous that either it will feel constrained by it or that it will not feel constrained by it and disown it. We must network, pursue dialogue and share best practice. We must help each other to call the executive to account. I read that COSAC has a permissive role in examining third pillar matters—that is, justice and home affairs—and is permitted to
address contributions to the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission. I have never seen such reports, and I would find them useful.Dialogue and co-operation are one thing, but a new institution is another matter entirely and risks setting up rivalry and competition between national parliaments and the European Parliament, when we should be recognising our complementary roles and establishing a co-operative partnership. We should not argue the toss over who is the more democratically legitimate—"My democratic legitimacy is greater than yours". It is a question of horses for courses, and we should respect each other's roles.
I find it peculiar that a remedy for the lack of formal monitoring of the respect for subsidiarity should itself breach subsidiarity because national parliamentarians in a second or third chamber would be acting as an EU-level body. The idea that national parliaments should monitor the observance of subsidiarity cannot be seen as entirely free from the temptations of self-interest.
There is something of an agenda—not least, perhaps, from our own Government—that is not always pure. Sometimes, internal political struggles are behind the motivation. I recall that, in 1994, a group of Labour MEPs—now, we would call them old Labour MEPs—took a full-page advertisement in the Guardian to decry Mr Blair's campaign to abolish Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution. It would be unfortunate if memory of that political dispute were to colour any present views within the Government of the worth of the European Parliament, just as it would be unfortunate if the drive for elected mayors at local level were driven by the need to sort out problems where a particular party had run a one-party state.
As an MEP, I find it a bit rich for national governments—including the present Government and their Conservative predecessors—who have condemned us in the European Parliament to an expensive and ridiculous travelling circus between Brussels and Strasbourg to turn round and belittle our work. I estimate that we are one third less efficient than we could be if we had one place of business. I welcome what the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, said on the matter.
- "At the root of all the proposals for a second chamber there seems to lie a perception that there is a problem with the democratic legitimacy of the EU and its institutions".
It is true that, to a considerable degree in this country, the EU lacks the popular legitimacy that my party and I would like it to have. That is a political
problem, however, and not especially one of institutional architecture. There is not the acceptance of the scope of the EU's responsibilities that there is of the scope of the work of a local council or the Westminster Parliament. However, how many people could describe the way in which things are done at Westminster? In this Chamber, for example, we call the Chamber along the way "the other place", rather than "the Commons", as most normal people call it. We have jargon that matches any Euro-jargon.The problem that people do not connect with the European Union or the European Parliament is not necessarily that the European Parliament is not legitimate but that we are not acknowledged on the radar in the same way. I agree with—I think—the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, who talked about the problem of being seen to be doing the right value- added things at EU-level. That, of course, is where the question of a constitution comes in.
We must not infer from the problem of popular political legitimacy that there is a problem of democratic legitimacy with the EU institutions or the European Parliament alone that will be solved by having a second chamber of national parliamentarians. Of course, there is a democratic problem, but that is chiefly about secrecy and the way in which national government representatives meet in the Council, especially in the second and third pillars. It has been said, rightly, that the proposal is not for a second chamber, but for a third chamber, so that the spotlight rightly falls on the way in which the Council lives up to the criteria of accountability and transparency proper to a second chamber representing the states or senate. It falls lamentably short.
I agree that the major need is to strengthen national parliamentary scrutiny and control. In addition, national parliaments should monitor the implementation of EU legislation in national law, to prevent the well known habit of gold plating EU directives. The Environment Minister, Mr Meacher, recently tried in the other place to blame the Commission for the UK Government's being caught on the hop about fridge mountains. The Westminster Parliament should be well enough briefed to challenge him on the truth.
Like others, I hope that the present convention will make some proposals on the particular problem of the common foreign and security policy and how to get democratic oversight of it. There is a worrying gap. On justice and home affairs, we fall between Community competence and the inter-governmental third pillar. On the first, which includes asylum and immigration, I hope that in 2004 we will get co-decision with the Council. On police and judicial co-operation on matters such as European arrest warrants, which remain inter-governmental, we need tighter co-operation with national parliaments.
Finally, my party and my group in the European Parliament fully support the present convention to draft proposals for treaty reform. The convention model is an excellent one for constitutional matters and to shape debate on the future of the European
Union by co-operation between all Europe's parliaments. But let us not be diverted and allow national governments to divide and rule parliamentarians through rivalry between ourselves when we should be joining together.5.30 p.m.
Lord Lea of Crondall: My Lords, in Warsaw the Prime Minister captured Europe's attention. That was extremely important. Rarely does Britain capture Europe's attention by being on the front foot about any issues. So even if now we gloss what the Prime Minister said by saying that it was a good wheeze, I think that it was more than a wheeze because, as was pointed out by my noble friend Lord Desai, in the past we have left it to the rest of Europe to be the architects and visionaries. Sometimes I think that we do not see the point of the rhetorical level of discussion about Europe and that we prefer to leave it to the French to be those with the vision.
It is odd that we always assume that the French are the Cartesians, whereas in fact it is far more par for the course that noble Lords like my noble friend Lord Tomlinson are the Cartesians, while the French are the Romantics. The Prime Minister redressed that balance to some extent. I very much welcome that development because it means that, over the next three years, we shall become known for having good and positive ideas to put on the agenda.
This debate has come soon after our debates on Nice. Earlier I wondered why some of the contributions sounded so familiar. Of course to a certain extent many of us are making the same speeches as we made about Nice, and why not? Generally they were pretty good speeches. But it was interesting to note that this report has slightly shifted the furniture around on some of the questions raised by Nice. My noble friend Lord Williamson of Horton said that we must be careful not to introduce new bodies which might fall between two stools by being either too early in the process or too late. Happily it is the case that the convention is a new body which is coming into being early. It is an accident of history that here we have a new institution. It is a new chamber because, as Shakespeare would have said, a rose would smell as sweet by any other name. Thus the convention is a chamber—it has people in it so it is a chamber—and it is not the first chamber. Therefore it is the second chamber.
We could carry on playing games like that, but on a rather more serious note, I suggest that if this report had been written six months previously it would have been couched in the following terms: the convention has a positive job to do, but by the time it has done its job, it may well be that the convention—I refer to the input to the convention rather than its output—will have an ongoing role. It would not be the first time that pragmatism had triumphed in that way and it is in that spirit that I wish my noble friend Lord Tomlinson well in his role serving on the convention. Then we shall be able to blame him.
The European Charter of Fundamental Rights was a good illustration of how pragmatism produced a result which surprised us. Wearing a different hat at the time, the Attorney-General made the point that there was nothing much to it, but I do not know whether an intergovernmental conference would have produced as powerful a result as that particular meeting. I suspect that the same may be true of the convention. In that respect, why do we not talk up the convention as meeting many of the agenda items that the committee prefers? Here I would say that my mindset is similar to that of my noble friend Lord Desai, but some people may abjure such ideas of vision and would prefer simply to get on with the points on the agenda one by one—and, lo and behold, we shall have the same result.
Many people create new institutions while their rhetoric declares that they are not doing so. All those serving on Sub-Committee A were rather struck by a speech made last summer by Chris Patten. I think I have it right. He said that, first, the Balkans should be an initiative-free zone. That is why he would take the initiative to revitalise the aid process to the Balkans. We all do that, do we not?
I always enjoy listening to the speeches of my noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington, so long as I have a chance to speak after him. He waved around a piece of yellow paper, saying that those were the documents coming out of the European Parliament. I have news for my noble friend. I do not know whether he has ever been a member of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments—for my sins I am a member of that committee—but if he had been he would know that each week a stack of papers around three to four inches high is placed before it. Occasionally we change a semi-colon. What about the mote in our own eye? I do not speak generally here but rather when we have to deal with European legislation. We are not very good at it. I believe that there was something in the interchange between my noble friend Lord Desai and the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, on that point.
My noble friend Lord Grenfell raised the same issues by remarking that there is no point in thinking about the institutions without thinking about the infrastructure that is needed to make them work. That is a big question. There are all the problems of language and so forth associated with the convention. Thus we have to think about the institutional architecture as well as about the more practical points, such as how people are to be in two places at once.
I am not so convinced about the democratic deficit argument per se. I think that a noble Baroness on the Liberal Democrat Benches made the distinction along the lines that there may not be a democratic deficit, but rather there may be a political deficit. Someone once remarked that they are not talking about this in the Dog and Duck in Hebden Bridge. Of course there are two answers to that. You must be pretty mad to be seen talking about this subject in the Dog and Duck in Hebden Bridge.
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