Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
TUESDAY 1 MAY 2007
MR TIMOTHY
KIRKHOPE AND
MR JAMES
TEMPLE-SMITHSON
Q1 Chairman:
It is a pleasure to welcome you, Mr Kirkhope, a familiar figure
to all of us who have had the pleasure of seeing you in our tripartite
meetings in Brussels and here in Westminster. Also, it is very
nice to see Mr Temple-Smithson with you as well. As you know we
are engaged in an inquiry into the Annual Policy Strategy and
we have a few questions to put to you about that. We are very
grateful to you for coming here to see us because I know it will
not be possible to see you when we are in Brussels next Thursday.
Five of us will be there for a discussion with Margot Wallström,
Klaus Welle and Gary Titley MEP on the Annual Policy Strategy.
I should explain that the Select Committee here attaches great
importance to this. It is taking a good look at the Annual Legislative
and Work Programme and then the Annual Policy Strategy as the
precursor of the following Work Programme. We are very grateful
for the opportunity to draw on some of your wisdom as a senior
member of the European Parliament who is very experienced in these
matters, to help us as we look how the strategy is drawn up and
how you handle it at a parliamentary level. We are on the record
and the session is being webcast. We will be sending you a transcript
of our conversation afterwards so that you can make sure that
what you say has been correctly reflected. Can I begin by asking
you whether there is anything you would like to say by way of
introduction?
Mr Kirkhope: My Lord Chairman, first of all,
I want to say thank you very much indeed for offering me the opportunity
to come and meet with you and to answer your questions. It is
also very kind of you to allow me to do it here rather than in
Brussels because of the pressure I have later this week. It is
very good of you to arrange that. I know it is slightly out of
sequence with your agenda, but it seems you had a very exciting
session before. I would like to say in introduction, first of
all, I do welcome very much indeed, as do my colleagues, the increase
in engagement between the House of Lords EU Committee and members
of the European Parliament. I and my colleagues have been very
strong advocates of greater involvement with national parliaments
in the EU process and, in particular, for joint scrutiny. I think
it is very good to have that increase in dialogue and interaction.
I am very proud of my members, I have a great number of MEPs who
occupy influential positions within the European Parliament. I
have seven committee co-ordinators at present from the group on
which we sit. I have got a committee chairman and I have got three
committee vice chairmen so I think between us we probably can
be of assistance to you and provide a useful insight. The Lords
EU Committee reports and the regular newsletter are of great interest
to Conservative MEPs. I know that some members here benefit from
a newsletter that comes from us in the other direction, although
ours is, I am afraid, rather more party-political so it would
not be of interest necessarily to everybody. I know several of
my colleagues have given evidence to the Committee in recent months—John
Bowis gave evidence to your inquiry into mental health services
which reported last week. In addition, the tripartite meetings
which you have referred to earlier are very well established and
very useful and we are looking forward to the next one on 14 June.
I would like to also thank the permanent official Richard McLean
and indeed his Commons opposite number Martyn Atkins who have
been talking to us recently about the way in which the Parliament's
processes work. Having said that, and just for one or two minutes
more, if I may, of your indulgence, I want to say this, from my
perspective, what we want to see, looking at this particular report
on Europe and the Work Programme, we Conservatives want to see
much more positive reform. That agenda is one which we have consistently
and vigorously supported. We think that this particular report
does move us along better than previous ones in the sense that
the President of the Commission, Mr Barroso, seems to be someone
worth supporting because he does have the right general priorities
for Europe. He wants to see a more effective delivery with results
and he wants to see greater priority given to economic reform
and strong but practical environmental policies. That is the area
where we are particularly concerned. Although the 2008 APS document
does stress several of the right priorities, we also think that
it contains a significant number of shortcomings, things that
we think are "out of tune" with the general reform approach.
The commitment to better regulation is welcomed although we would
like to see that re-designated as deregulation with a lot
more action in that particular area. We think there are serious
concerns over distractions such as the Globalisation Adjustment
Fund which has a grand title but seems to us to have a lot of
protectionism around it. Also, the Institute of Technology—the
report which you published in April is extremely interesting.
We would certainly concur with many of the things that you said
in that report but we think the Institute is something which is
a distraction. We also believe that the issue regarding social
policy and some of the elements which are still being pushed are
unacceptable from our point of view. We may be taking our eye
off the ball on that too much; and also there is the continuing
question of institutional settlements and the constitution. Of
course it is well known that my party is opposed to the European
Constitution. It is fair to say that treaties always have to be
looked at, there have to be changes in treaties as time goes on,
but I think our clear position is that anything in terms of constitutional
treaty or a constitution which moves more powers away from our
national parliament, or indeed from our national institutions
to European institutions, would have to be subject to a referendum,
a democratic consideration by the people of this country. Apart
from those points, we would like to emphasise again that there
have been some great successes, the implementation of REACH is
something that is very welcome and significant. I think the Services
Directive in which a number of my colleagues, particularly Malcolm
Harbour in this case, have been very much involved in trying to
liberalise the European economies, we are very happy with it.
We are however unhappy in the field of Justice and Home Affairs
with the driving forward of the harmonisation process, the "in
and out", "hokey-cokey" approach of the British
Government towards the Schengen Agreement which does not seem
to make sense at all. In terms of the EU and the world, my final
point if I may, we do welcome the whole approach to enlargement
and the right kind of enlargement process, and the commitment
to the accession negotiations with the Western Balkans is very
important. It is interesting to note that in the report there
is not a lot about Turkey and the ongoing progress or otherwise,
although admittedly as we sit here today, there is a lot of domestic
excitement in that country but hopefully that is a matter which
can be resolved. I think that is probably enough for me to start
with and I am very happy to take your questions.
Q2 Chairman:
Thank you very much, indeed. I will not say that was provocative,
but it was extremely illustrative of some of the views of your
party and that is very helpful to us. In that spirit, if I might,
I am assuming the omission of a social element from the APS does
not give you sleepless nights.
Mr Kirkhope: No, indeed. Seeing we are on the
internet, maybe this is part of my ongoing "blog" for
the day, but one of my big problems is to try and grapple with
the terms like "social reality stocktaking", that is
a rather good example of what one should not do or even say. It
is the Commission's initiative. I am afraid this is a classic
example to me of an area where frankly the Commission should certainly
not be involved at all—indeed I am rather dubious as to
whether Europe as a whole should even be involved. This is clearly
an issue for national competence, and it is merely one example.
I would say also to you that general issues like policies to tackle
radicalisation, for instance, are areas where we must be very
careful. Are they going to help or are they not? My view is that
we should be polarising our thoughts around making Europe survive
into the future and it can only survive, in my submission, if
it concentrates very hard on the world competition that there
is now and on economic issues which, I am afraid, are too often
left aside.
Q3 Chairman:
I should interpose here, since you mentioned the European Institute
of Technology, that Baroness Thomas of Walliswood who chaired
that inquiry is with us here at the table and I saw a very warm
smile on her face as you mentioned your own feelings on that subject.
We have two Liberal Democrats around the table here. I know that
the ALDE group in the Parliament felt that the devotion of only
three lines to the subject of the future of Europe in the Policy
Strategy was rather surprising. If I could venture a personal
opinion—certainly not on behalf of the Committee, each Member
will speak for himself or herself—I thought the crafters
of the APS were wise not to do more than to devote that small
amount of space to it, given the fact that we do not know yet
where we are going.
Mr Kirkhope: If I may say so, my Lord Chairman,
I think the world is littered with visions, we need to be quite
sure when we have a vision that it is a vision which has some
real accountability behind it, and I hope I make that clear. The
Commission having its own vision for the future of Europe grates
with me anyway. I feel that the Commission with its particular
status should not really pursue an opportunity of that kind and,
indeed, because the vision is very much tied to the issue of how
we run Europe in the future this is more an area where democratically
elected politicians should have sole entitlement whether or not
to develop visions. Institutionally, it certainly seems quite
clear to me that the Nice Treaty on which we are, of course, reliant
in many ways, is not perfection. I would not contend that Europe
can go on forever relying on the Nice Treaty, particularly as
we go through the enlargement process. We will need to look again
at the institutions and I know for a fact that my Party is never
reluctant to look carefully at the ongoing institutional developments
in Europe and to comment on them, but I do think that if we do,
it is a process which we have to look at more in line with the
terms of the Laeken Convention. You may recollect, my Lord, that
I served on the Convention which drafted the Constitution. That
convention was set up by that Laeken Convention which had set
out very clearly—I have not got the words in front of me,
but it is something one should always read—what the charge
from Laeken was for that convention and its work. My colleagues
and I would have no problem whatsoever, I suspect, in organising
our institutional arrangements to meet with those objectives given
to that convention, which were to make Europe simpler, more understandable
to the citizen, more polarised, on the real problems, more relevant
and obligated to look again at economic competitiveness and issues
of that kind as a matter of the greatest priority.
Q4 Chairman:
If you leave aside the institutional arrangements, do you feel
that the Annual Policy Strategy, as it is crafted, does, in fact,
contribute a little bit towards the aims or the charge that was
given by Laeken to the convention?
Mr Kirkhope: Yes, I do. I opened my remarks
by saying that I personally have some admiration for the President
of the Commission, I think the President of the Commission is
a good one. In fact, the Commission, albeit with its democratic
deficit, is as good a Commission as we are likely to see, certainly
better than some past ones. There are a lot of areas where they
have been quite clear, they have talked of the need for competition
and for us to make sure that we are interested in the environment
and doing more about it. They are interested in freeing up trade
even more, the issues and relationship to the Doha Round, for
instance, I think that is very important indeed. I am quite satisfied
that they have done quite a lot in terms of the modernising or
reforming of Europe in what they have said in the document. It
is just that there is a continuation of that social agenda, it
is part of the balancing act when they prepare such a report.
My view is that perhaps we should not be over-balancing here,
we should be stating clearly what is necessary and where our priorities
ought to lie. In general, I like the tone but I have those particular
concerns.
Chairman: We will come on in a little
while to the input that the parliament has into the crafting of
it but, first of all, I would like Lord Blackwell to ask a question.
Q5 Lord Blackwell:
I wanted to follow up, Mr Kirkhope, on the process. If you could
explain to us a bit about the process by which we get to this
because when I read it the first thing you do is to check whether
the things which you think ought to be in it are in it. Having
gone through it, it is so comprehensive that I struggled to think
of anything that was left out of it. Therefore, it reminds me
of a process where every directorate will lobby to have its particular
area included, then the Parliament gets involved and by the time
everyone has had their point of view you get something that covers
everything and anything set against the test of where the priorities
and the notion that some of us have of a Europe which maybe does
a few things but does them better seems to potentially be going
in the wrong direction in terms of trying to assume into Europe
every issue that you could put on the table. I am interested in
whether there is anything in the process that does focus on the
priorities. You mentioned the point about competitiveness; you
could say the one thing that the Commission ought to focus on
in 2008 is facing up to the realities of economic globalisation.
That does not leap out at me as top of the agenda.
Mr Kirkhope: There are two points: one is the
process and one is the outcome. As far as I am concerned, I think
there is a deficiency in the process. First of all, the involvement
of our parliament in this preparatory stage is limited. Indeed,
it is actually only when the Commission Communication is published
that we have a proper debate in plenary on it. Clearly, there
is a lot of scope for some better approach to this and earlier
involvement of ourselves but also, may I say, with yourselves,
with national parliamentarians at an earlier stage. Although I
think it is fair to say there have been some improvements, there
has been some evolution and a greater awareness of a need for
more people to be consulted who are in the democratic process,
I have to say that I am still not satisfied with that actually.
I think it is just an example of the historic position of the
Commission and its ability to instigate legislation and, indeed,
to have responsibility for the preparation of this document. As
for the contents of the document, inevitably there is a temptation,
almost a necessity, for all the areas of the Commission's Work
Programme to be reflected in the document. I think it is extremely
difficult. Bearing in mind we now have rather a lot of Commissioners
and sub-Commissioners, because that is an inevitable result of
enlargement, and the question of debate as to how many Commissioners
you should have, whether every country should have a Commissioner,
I am very open on that debate, but it does seems to me that whilst
we have that situation, it is very difficult not to reflect views
from all of them. I am just surprised, to be honest with you,
that what we get is sufficiently positive and sufficiently polarised
in the right direction. I think if one looked at a policy strategy
just a few years ago from the Commission, it would be enormously
tedious and indeed, from my political perspective, I am afraid
I would probably be unable to say very much positive about it
at all looking back. This time we have got elements here which
I think we should welcome and where there is a genuine sign of
a changed attitude, brought about partly by enlargement itself,
in the way in which Europe has to do its business.
Q6 Chairman:
Just clarify one point for me, you speak of the reluctance of
the Commission to engage with parliament before they have produced
their Annual Policy Strategy in draft form. I can understand that
they would not seek formal meetings with, say, the chairs of the
European parliamentary committees or anything like that, but would
they at least read the documentation from the committees? This
is a question that I think we will certainly put to Margot Wallström
when we see her later this week. From your perspective, there
really is no communication on this?
Mr Kirkhope: I do not want to be unkind here
and I think you should certainly ask Commissioner Wallström
about this, but my reading of it is, of course they are aware
and they do take soundings, but there is not a formal procedure
as I understand it in the Parliament in preparation. There is
a formal process once the document is available, as I said, and
there is a plenary debate and lots and lots of comments and so
on. I have no doubt you will be asking Commissioner Wallström
about a brief in relation to communication which I did not mention
incidentally but I do feel that is another example of something
which we should look at with a rather high level of suspicion.
I am not very keen on it. I know that Members in the other place
have just been encouraged in various ways to increase their communications
with the people they represent with a new budget but I do have
some suspicions about too much—I would hate to do it in
the present context—of this spin and too much of this putting
forward a particular perspective with a lot of money behind it.
I think it has to be justified and I am a little suspicious of
that in terms of its priority within this programme.
Chairman: Thank you. That is one of the
questions we were going to put to you anyway, but we will come
back to that in a moment.
Q7 Lord Harrison:
My Lord Chairman, as one of the two members sitting around this
table supporting the hokey-cokey party that is the Government
of this country at the moment, I will not rise to Timothy Kirkhope's
provocation but can I dwell on better regulation for the moment?
I wonder whether you would agree with his aspiration to change
that to deregulation. Whilst I think we would agree that there
are many laws, directives and regulations that might be taken
away, the emphasis must still be right in promoting better regulation
because that has to do with new directives and new powers that
are given to the Commission but also in the light of his comments
about the ability of this current Commission, would you like to
say a little more. I say this in the light of having read a recent
internal report of the ACCA accountants who say that the Lisbon
strategy and that element of it which contain the better regulation
elements has to some degree come to fruition. They feel that there
has been an advance in wiggling away some of the excess legislation
which should be taken away but also, in the promotion of better
regulation. Mr Kirkhope, I wondered from your perspective whether
you feel that that is being tackled and whether it might be tackled
with greater dispatch.
Mr Kirkhope: I was one of those lucky people
to be an original minister on the deregulation task force which
the Conservative Government put together in about 1995 under Michael
Heseltine. I had to go to meetings from the Home Office and offer
up to the "mighty Mr Heseltine" a bunch of regulations
which could be dumped in the bin, otherwise I was not allowed
to go back to my Home Secretary, Michael Howard, and have any
more measures at all coming through the Home Office for the next
X months. It was a salutary experience, and it did teach one that
deregulation is an essential part of the overall government process.
Q8 Lord Harrison:
What I am saying is you want to change better regulation to deregulation.
We all support deregulation but it misses out on the as important
if not more important better regulation.
Mr Kirkhope: I am prepared to see a twin track
approach. Undoubtedly, where you cannot deregulate, you must at
the very least make sure that new regulations have got certain
positive qualities. First of all, one of those qualities has to
be in the vast majority of cases some form of impact assessment.
We also argue for "sunset" clauses, and that is an element.
I think impact assessment is something where Europe needs to improve
its act. Impact assessment, which is made by people who themselves
have prepared the proposals, is not independent assessment. I
think that is something you have discovered also, was it in the
Institute of Technology, I am not sure, but certainly it is an
issue in itself and I think we have to be quite careful about
this. Commissioner Verheugen has been pushing very strongly that
we should develop this whole issue of deregulation, as has President
Barroso, but I do not think they are mutually exclusive, and I
do think that we need to have both and there is no reason why
we cannot. My worry is that sometimes we are disguising a continuing
serge of regulation for regulation's sake simply by adding that
sort of helpful "betterness", as it were because some
regulations, I am afraid whatever you do with them, cannot be
made better.
Q9 Lord Harrison:
Can I push you one step further because when I was in the European
Parliament before you, many of us were very keen on having an
impact assessment of one kind or another, but I think we were
very conscious of the difficulty of having something that was
there other than in name. I wanted to invite you to say how can
we tighten up to make sure that we get a true view of business
and the effect that regulation or a directive might have in its
impact on business here in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in
the European Union?
Mr Kirkhope: You will know as well as I, as
someone who is representing people, we have, particularly in the
European area, a considerable amount of pressure on us and a lot
of opinions which are pushed upon us. We are not short of information
coming from those groups who might suffer as a result of regulation,
either joining its movement through the legislative process or
indeed subsequently, we do know that. As for making independent
assessments, that is slightly different and I do not think we
have got in place an adequate process for having those assessments
made. It may be that we need some special body to do this. I do
not claim to have all the answers about that but I do think it
is probably necessary. When we got through something like REACH
we had an enormous amount of interest from both sides, I had never
seen anything quite so boisterous, from the chemical interests
on the one side, to the environmental interests on the other and
everything in between. We are not short of people's opinions,
but I still think there is room for something where there is an
independent assessment, as perhaps there is here and I think that
is something we have not achieved yet.
Q10 Lord Geddes:
I have got a very specific point, but it may be a bit early. Mr
Kirkhope, in your opening remarks you made a comment that interested
me and disappointed me and to be quite honest absolutely gobsmacked
me when you said that you were—and I wrote it down because
it was such an extraordinary statement—"very happy
with the Services Directive". How could you possibly be happy
with a Services Directive that ignores the country of origin principle?
Mr Kirkhope: I am sorry it gobsmacked you, my
Lord, but I think that all these things are fairly relative. The
Services Directive, of course, did not achieve as much as certainly
my Delegation would have liked to see; we would have liked to
see a higher level of liberalisation and faster liberalisation.
However, the fact that we did move the Services Directive forward
in the way that we did, that we achieved something in the teeth
of opposition from a number of left wing politicians and, indeed,
groups within the Parliament who wanted that Services Directive
to be minimised because of social issues and so on, I think that
was a move forward, I was happy with that. I would be happier,
of course, if we could go further but certainly it is making a
contribution, it is making a contribution to developing our markets
to the Single Market process itself and concentrating our minds
in that area. I am sorry if I caused you upset, I was not meaning
to and I hope that what I said was not quite as enthusiastic as
you suggest.
Lord Roper: If I could follow it up because
I would draw Mr Kirkhope's attention to the two reports of our
Sub-Committee B on the Services Directive where we expressed a
very clear view of the sort of directive which we wanted, and
I think the Committee felt what we have is a bad piece of regulation
and it is going in the wrong direction. On some occasions no progress
is better than bad progress.
Lord Geddes: I totally endorse that comment.
Q11 Chairman:
I notice that although there is quite a lot of attention paid
in the APS to the allocation of financial resources and financial
implications of one area and another, there is nothing spelt out
about the financing of the European Union as such. Is there just
a red line that you come up with which the Commission does not
cross when it comes to future financing of the European Union?
Mr Kirkhope: I am not trying to avoid any of
your questions at all, but I have to admit at this point that
those aspects are more specialised than is the main body of the
document which is of course, as we know looking at it, primarily
a political one. Members of my Budgets and Budgetary Control Committees—I
think you may in fact, my Lord, be hearing from one or other of
them in the future, either James Elles or Richard Ashworth—but
I do not claim to be sufficiently expert on that.
Q12 Chairman:
That is all right. It was just curiosity, we can clear this up
when we go to Brussels and talk to Commissioner Wallström,
but it struck me that there must be some prohibition on them making
any mention of the 2008-09 review. I was just a little puzzled
as to why that was. What would you say would be the real contribution
of the Annual Policy Strategy? Do you regard it as just a useful
indication of what may end up in the next Legislative and Work
Programme or does it go further than that?
Mr Kirkhope: First of all, I think it is useful.
It identifies the key issues, whether these key issues are coming
from too many sources is a matter of discussion, I suppose, but
it does identify key issues for the coming year. I think it gives—I
would say this of course—the European Parliament an opportunity
for a debate and that is welcome, it is important in terms of
our institutional relationships. Similarly, your desire and the
desire of the Commons to examine that document in detail and to
take evidence on it, I think is a welcome opportunity for a general
engagement in what is going on in the European Union. I said before
I would like to see greater consultation and involvement and that
would include national parliaments in the process. As I think
you know, my Lord, I have been arguing for a long time now that
there should be a more formalised relationship, so that at an
earlier stage we are able to debate with the involvement of my
colleagues from the European Parliament with the Houses here.
In order that we have more of a warning system in place and action
can be taken before one is suddenly confronted, as I am afraid
we too often are, with something that appears to be a fait
accompli, or something which could have been improved or fended
off, if necessary, if an earlier combination of discussions had
taken place. I am still very hopeful that we can move that process
forward. Various leaders of the House in the Commons have certainly
debated with us before on the possibilities and they have all
sounded enormously enthusiastic until they have looked at the
constitutional questions. That, I am afraid, has thrown the whole
process and I agree there could well be complications, but it
is important that we know more and talk more at an earlier stage.
There are things coming out of the European Union which are, I
think, good and there is co-operation in areas where we ought
to co-operate, but I am afraid all too often there are things
which we know and identify as being completely unacceptable, where
rumours abound, and we end up with a situation where, quite rightly,
there is a belief in this place that in some way national parliaments
are simply being made second class in relation to what is going
on in the European Union.
Q13 Chairman:
That is, I am sure, music to the ears of all of us around this
table anyway because we do face this strange problem where we
are able to get in fairly well upstream as far as scrutiny of
the Annual Legislative and Work Programme is concerned by talking
to the officials as they are in the process of drawing it up,
but with the Annual Policy Strategy it seems to be presented to
us as a fait accompli. I would wholly endorse what you
say, that we have to find some system whereby we can get an earlier
indication of what is going to go into it and, hopefully, maybe
even have some influence, but I appreciate very much your support
in the matter of national parliamentary involvement in this. I
have got a number of other questions coming up, is it all right
if we keep you until a little bit after six o'clock?
Mr Kirkhope: Yes, certainly. I am entirely in
your hands.
Q14 Lord Marlesford:
Mr Kirkhope, what I would like to raise with you is going back,
in a sense, to an earlier question on the Annual Policy Strategy
lacking a social element. Any observer of Europe either from within
it or outside it would be very aware that there is a struggle
going on between a social Europe and a liberal economic Europe
and, in particular, at the moment of course inside France and,
maybe to some extent, still inside Germany. The traditional approach
to protecting social Europe has, of course, been harmonisation
of the social dimension, and harmonisation tends to require a
highly controversial issue of a level playing field; highly controversial
because, of course, it depends on whose level you harmonise. Do
you think that the apparent absence of tackling this fairly fundamental
issue in the report suggests that the Commission collectively
just find it too difficult to cope with or do you think they feel
that they really want to ignore the social Europe element because
they see fundamentally the need for Europe to advance further
in a more liberal economic structure?
Mr Kirkhope: I do not think that the two things
are contradictory in totality. We have a situation where if I
have to take a side on this then I am very interested in the liberalisation
field because it seems to me that is what we can do well together,
working with a Single Market and working in areas where I think
there is a greater level of freedom. What I do not like is this
over-concentration on the issue called "social solidarity"
and then a lot of various terms flowing from that. The level playing
field, of course, is something we argue for all the time but one
of our problems is not totally under our control; one of our problems
is how individual national governments decide to themselves deal
with directives, for instance. I have to say I do not want to
be disloyal to my country at this point, but I have got to say
that we do have a bad record, in my view, of, it is called, gold-plating,
I think perhaps it should be called something else, it is a way
in which we tend to take away what might start out as being a
level playing field and we then make it very un-level from the
perspective of our own businesses and our own citizens, and we
do that through domestic legislators in the UK rather than through
the European process. It is not always the case and it is perfectly
right to say that some EU regulations in particular, but also
directives, are unfair from our point of view because they are
too much contrived to take into account the way other countries
deal with their social policies, for instance. That is a fair
comment partly, but we have to take into account the domestic
issues as well. I would also say to you that if we take a look
at the attitudes of certain countries that are claiming to be
more interested in social policy, often that is a cover for protectionism
which is, of course, also a great problem for us. People sign
up to things but in fact behind them one finds a level of historic
protectionism, attitudes which I am afraid are not conducive to
developing the more liberal economic situation that I would like
to see. Also debating about modernising European labour law is
a very big issue in our Parliament at the moment, but I think
there is a general view among the United Kingdom representatives,
particularly my own colleagues, that we should in fact be moving
from the old out-dated social and employment model into a new
approach and modernising European labour law does not actually
quite mean what it says, it certainly does not mean that we will
have a much "freer" situation. So I am not very pleased
at that particular emphasis. The UK opt-out from the Working Time
Directive, for instance, which was very important in achieving
flexibility, I think that is something which started to get a
lot of minds working. I think people are now aware that Europe
has to be more competitive and it cannot go ahead with this idea
of `flexicurity', as it is called another word that I am afraid
is somewhat new in my political dictionary. Social security, and
I hope I do not blow anybody's mind, is absolutely to be an area
that must be for Member States to decide for themselves in their
own circumstances.
Q15 Chairman:
It would appear that the majority of countries within the European
Union would agree with that as far as I can make out.
Mr Kirkhope: Yes, they would agree with it but
the trouble is, of course, that I think we end up with pressure
all the time for some kind of harmonised approach, which I think
is unacceptable.
Q16 Lord Bowness:
The Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs is generally accepted
across the political divide to be what you might describe as a
good thing. Can I ask Mr Kirkhope if he had the opportunity to
write this strategy to include the priorities that we would probably
all like to see, Lord Blackwell referred to the document that
contains everything for everything, what would those priorities
be for advancing the strategy, apart from better deregulation,
and can it be done by leaving it to the Member States or would
it involve more power to European institutions?
Mr Kirkhope: It is very difficult to do a complete
agenda, or "re-agendarise" or whatever the word is on
that! It does seem to me, quite honestly, that the most important
element from the Lisbon Agenda would be the issue of labour market
flexibility, indeed the word "flexibility" seems to
me to be a very important one here. You mentioned obviously the
question of deregulation or better regulation. Of course, we have
talked about that before but the problem we have got is that there
are an awful lot of rigid structures still in Europe. Those rigid
structures do not present themselves for reform very easily and
yet they need to be reformed and therefore "flexibility"
is a key word. The Lisbon Agenda has been variously described
as having failed completely or having made some progress. My view
about this is that it has not failed completely, it had a "hiccup"
or two but the President of the Commission is still extremely
keen, as one would expect of a former Portuguese free marketeer
prime minister, and I think therefore we are inevitably, under
whatever heading you might call it in the future, still continuing
this process. I did experience for a while on that particular
committee where this conflict that we mentioned before, this conflict
between those that want to concentrate Europe in a social agenda
and those who want to accept that the world is a big place and
a very competitive place now and therefore our need for a great
level of flexibility. There was certainly considerable conflict
there, a lot on political lines but much was also down different
nationality lines as well because sometimes—and this is
one of the things about Europe which is a bit unusual in a sense
compared with normal domestic legislators—in Europe, of
course, you are working in extra dimensions as I am sure a number
of people in this room know anyway. Those dimensions are the dimensions
of nationality, and history, as well as political positions. Of
course, that is why it is not exactly easy to equate politically
in Europe because there are certain parties in some countries,
I do not want to pick any particular party but for instance liberalism
would be perhaps something I could mention where there is a vast
difference in approach and attitudes depending on where you are
a liberal. That was not meant to be a domestic reference at this
time, it is a wider European reference.
Lord Harrison: It depends on which part
of the United Kingdom you are enquiring about the Liberal Democrats
in!
Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: No, no,
that is quite unfair! I cannot let that go by!
Baroness Cohen of Pimlico: I think we
have all got them!
Q17 Baroness Thomas of Walliswood:
I want to say how much I agree with what you said about the relationship
between your Parliament and this Parliament. My Committee, Sub-Committee
G, certainly benefited enormously from the evidence that Mr Bowis
gave us which suddenly made us understand what the subject of
mental health was all about. He was absolutely brilliant and got
us going in an excellent way on what was a very, very difficult
subject to tackle. Equally, we did very well with Arlene McCarthy
and I presented, very briefly, a report on consumer credit within
the Parliament and that was equally interesting. We rather want
to see if we can gently keep these contacts going because there
is a lot of mutual interest between the various parliamentary
systems. These Committees are full of different points of view,
I mean the Committees that we are sitting on here, but within
my own Sub-Committee a point of view which almost everybody shares
as far as the Commission is concerned is that less and better
is better than more and not very good. That is a very broad way
of putting it but they seem to be in everything and as you say,
lots of interesting, clever people putting out lots of initiatives
and so on. You think, if you could calm down and do two or three
things really well with an impact assessment so that one knew
what the impact of it is going to be, then we might get on better
and some of the opposition to the work of the European Union might
in fact decline slightly.
Mr Kirkhope: I had the temerity during the course
of the constitutional convention to write what I call The Simplifying
Treaty for Europe which was about 40 pages in length which
compared fairly favourably in terms of the use of paper with the
final product. I did use the term then, "Doing less, but
doing it better" and I think that is a very good description
of how Europe should proceed. Having said that, I am very glad
that you benefited from my colleague John Bowis' knowledge in
his subject area. I am sorry, my Lord, I do not want to go off
the subject, I am hoping not to, you would not allow me to, I
know, but I want to say that this is something I am particularly
pleased about, that my colleagues do work very hard on their subject
areas, not quite as hard as you do because the Lords impresses
us deeply in its understanding of these matters. Certainly, I
am very pleased that the spokesmen who I have appointed and are
there in my team are so well briefed and so interested in the
subject matters they are responsible for. That is a key point;
whichever legislature you might come from I think that is very
important.
Q18 Lord Harrison:
I wanted to link, very briefly, two comments made by Timothy Kirkhope.
One is the fact that the European Parliament does have these cross-currents,
as you described them, of national interest, political interest
and historical interest, and your earlier comments about the imperativeness
for the European Parliamentarians to be talking to the national
parliaments, in our case the Commons and the Lords, because I
think it is often ill-understood here how often our colleagues
on the continent are much fleeter of foot in making sure they
understand each other nationally than we sometimes do. Certainly,
again, from my experience of 10 years, I was amazed—I would
not say gobsmacked—how often they were able to mobilise
much more efficiently about something which affected the national
interest of that particular parliament or state in a way that
we were still left far behind.
Mr Kirkhope: An example of this—I am not
going on a begging mission tonight—are my German MEP colleagues,
for instance, who have offices in the Bundestag and are constantly
in touch with their colleagues there. One or two of you may be
cheered slightly to know, despite that, there are a lot of grumblings
from some of these MEP colleagues that they are not treated properly
and that there is a certain level of disdain and suspicion from
their domestic colleagues and their friends in the Bundestag or
Bundesrat. I am not going to grumble, but I would say that we
all know Europe is one of those subjects which to get involved
in, in the way some of my colleagues and I do, not that we are
professional masochists, of course, but it is important for us
to represent the interests of this country in a robust manner
and that is what we try to do. I had the experience of being a
whip, as I think you know, my Lord, right throughout the period
of Maastricht and so on. Europe, therefore, is a matter which
has been on my mind for a long time, but total understanding from
colleagues in the UK is perhaps a little bit too much to expect.
Q19 Chairman:
Thank you very much indeed. I am afraid we have to close it there,
but I want to thank you for your very interesting thoughts, frank
comments and your answers to our questions. I was tempted to ask
you whether on your journey from the Home Office to the Deputy
Prime Minister's Office for the bonfire of regulations you were
carrying a single sheet of A4 or a suitcase. What was the scale?
Did you achieve anything when you were doing that?
Mr Kirkhope: I think you have got it absolutely
right, your analogy is perfect, because instead of carrying these
regulations to the bonfire, the only regulations that I could
ever find to take with me related to our fire service. I did not
make the connection myself but that, I am afraid, was an easy
vehicle, not a fire engine but the nearest to it.
Chairman: Thank you very much. We do
thank you very warmly. It has been most useful and we look forward
to seeing you at future tripartite meetings. Please convey our
best wishes to your colleagues. Thank you.
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