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Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, we all admire the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, chairs and presides over the European Union Committee and its widespread family of sub-committees. It seems to me that this report and the follow-up report are well up to the standard of the reports produced from that network of committees.
I say at the outset from this position in your Lordships' House that we on this side are wholly in favour of substantially more say by national parliaments in the affairs not merely of the Union but of the whole network of international obligations. We are also wholly in favour of greater co-operation. I am happy to have heard about the way in which the COSAC organisation has developed and grown in confidence and strength over the years. Greater co-operation and greater say by national parliaments is a principle to which we would all adhere, and not just in Europe.
As the centre of economic gravity moves eastwards to Asia, the parliaments of other countries are just as close as those of Europe—they are only one click away in terms of electronic communication. We should be very close indeed to the Parliament of Japan and the Lok Sabha in Delhi in an age of globalisation. It is not just a question of more say by national parliaments; I hope that they will also have more power—a proposition that raises questions about relations between parliaments and executives, as the noble Lord, Lord Woolmer, rightly raised.
In an interdependent world, where, more than ever, we are bound by a massive web of obligations, the question of holding our governments to account is more important than ever. That point was raised in the
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very interesting speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, and—dare I say this without ruining his reputation?—I agreed with what he said a little more than I have done in the past. Am I reading too much into his remarks when he seemed to grasp the realisation that social policy should be as near the shop floor and the citizen as possible and that the whole principle of trying to push it away to remote multinational or supranational institutions is flawed? I like that tone and I hope that we will hear more of it.
It seems to me that our Parliament is better placed than a decade ago to take on the kind of additional functions suggested in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell. Both Houses are much better equipped. The noble Lord, Lord Woolmer of Leeds, raised the practicality of taking on these functions. I think it is possible for our Parliament, at least, which on the whole works extremely well, with an elected Chamber and a cooling Chamber in which we are now sitting. We are in a position to take on these additional functions in a way that could not have been contemplated 10 or 20 years ago.
This is an extremely useful report for promoting and thinking about this issue. Of course, in a sense, it got overtaken by the constitution fiasco. However, I agree with those who say that, if subsidiarity means seeking ways of bringing national parliaments more into the game, it does not need additional legal force. We always needed to press the case for national parliaments to have more say, a case which gets stronger and stronger in the modern world. That existed before the constitutional treaty attempt, it exists now and it will exist afterwards. I hope I do not disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, in saying that I do not think that has got all that much to do with the treaty, which isn't going to happen anyway.
The noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, raised the question of those critics who said "Oh, this is bringing in something by the back door". I think we should have been bringing it in by the front door before the treaty, and should continue to do so. This is the crucial issue of how, in this interdependent world, we maintain contact with citizens and people at a national and sub-national level more effectively than we have in the past; otherwise we lose all popular support and, eventually, the popular mandate. Here we have the central need to challenge centralism through the front door. We should make no apologies for that.
Of course, the question arises of whether the defunct constitutional treaty helped much. I have already indicated that I do not think that it did. Our view, all along, was that the yellow card subsidiarity idea was not nearly effective enough to do the job. I quote two distinguished witnesses to this operation. Professor Wyatt said that subsidiarity is:
"a principle ill-designed to achieve the objective of ensuring that decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen".
That seemed pretty damning to me. Then Professor Weatherill came before the committee and said that the principle of subsidiarity had:
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"done little to curb an institutional tendency at the EU level to err on the side of centralisation rather than preservation of local autonomy".
The most obvious interpretation of that—and, I think, the right one—is that the principle of subsidiarity is too weak a weapon and concept to do the job that we all know needs to be done, with increasing urgency, which is to challenge the tendency to centralism. That is my opinion.
There are two much more fundamental issues behind the thinking in this report which should perhaps have been addressed, and perhaps now have to be; whether that is best done through more effective operations of committees in this House or in other ways, I do not know. First, should this subsidiarity mechanism of challenging the competences and powers of the Commission and the EU itself—which we want to develop and strengthen—be confined to future activities and legislation? What about the vast, overloaded, verbose, almost unintelligible acquis, with its 98,000 inscrutable pages? Is that to be left? Should that not have the subsidiarity filter, or comb, applied to it with some vigour? Hitherto, such a thought has been dismissed. We have always been told that the acquis is sacred and cannot be unravelled. I think that the Eurocentrists will have to give way on that before too long. At the moment dogma prevents them agreeing with it. But the fact is that the more we look at the enlarged Europe and consider the accession of the new countries, the more obvious it is that the sacredness of the acquis will have to be challenged. The instruments we are talking about today may be the instruments for doing that.
The second fundamental question, which, understandably, is not addressed in the report but is hanging right behind it, is whether, if we are looking at the whole process of law-making and involving national parliaments in that, as paragraph 250 of the report says is the purpose and aim—we all agree—do we leave unchallenged the monopoly power of the Commission to initiate legislation? That is another sacred cow which no one has dared to shoot. But if we are now moving towards a new treaty pattern, given that the constitutional treaty in my view will not fill the need or be revived, should that issue not arise as well?
So, I leave those questions hanging in the air. I realise they are fundamental, but unless we face up to them in due course, we will find that subsidiary is, as the professors remind us, a very weak and inadequate weapon in dealing with this central issue.
I enjoyed, in a curious way, the Government's reply to this report. It is a series of eager assents. It says that it was a matter for the House—that is easy for civil servants to write. Then we suddenly get to an item where it appears that the committee is actually telling the Government to do something, and up come the weasel words. They are in paragraph 10. The Government are busy agreeing with the committee, but, when it comes to even the yellow card, they hastily say, well, of course that is a good idea but they may have to override it, and they agree—big concession—that they will not do so without first explaining to
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Parliament why they have overridden the committee's views. I do not see governments changing from that view for the time being, but they should continue to be pressed by our Parliaments, because that is our job.
As for Article 8 and the submissions to the European Court of Justice to get a ruling on whether some competences have been exceeded—this is a small point—there seems to be something wrong with the print on page 8 of the follow-up report. As I read it, paragraph 15 is the committee's views and therefore should be in bold, whereas it is the Government's views which are in the normal print. I do not know what has gone wrong there. Anyway, what emerges at the end of paragraph 15 is paragraph 16, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, rightly said, is bureaucratic speak for the fact that the Government have no idea about Article 8. They have not done the work. They have given up because the constitution is on hold. And we are all left in mid air about that.
I hope I have indicated some of our approval for the issues being tackled. We believe that we need to go further if we are to get a better and fairer Europe and to design a treaty or pattern of rules for the future that are better than anything that could be offered by the draft constitution, which has now been so vigorously turned down.
What we see from this side is an amazing reluctance by the Government to seize the initiative in these matters. I know it is all called a period of reflection, but there does not seem to be very much reflection going on. The UK presidency, which is now coming to an end, has been, as agreed by all sides, a complete flop. There remains a tendency in looking at these matters—and here I think that the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, spoke with characteristic percipience—to be inward looking and to try and repair bureaucratic problems with bureaucratic repair kits. That is of no interest to the wider public. We should be putting forward new proposals for a better, fairer, more equal Europe suitable for the 21st century. Of that, I see no constructive sign in government circles.
6.40 pm
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