Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 147)
TUESDAY 8 MAY 2007
RT HON
GEOFFREY HOON,
MR ANTHONY
SMITH AND
MS SHAN
MORGAN
Q140 Lord Harrison:
Minister, I have searched high and low but I think I have found
a negative priority which falls under Commissioner Verheugen's
better regulation reviews, especially those areas which want to
cut red tape and excise regulation which is either redundant or
past its time. Could you give a view from where you sit about
the success or otherwise of that? Our reports are that better
regulation is now beginning to bite more effectively than in the
past; do you see it that way and do you think that within the
APS there is more to be done to promote better regulation which,
in a sense, is part of what you have said in reply to Lord Freeman
about making the free and single market more effective. To throw
back your own question, how do we do it? How do we improve the
promotion of better regulation?
Mr Hoon: Having spent 12 months chairing the
Government's own Cabinet committee on better regulation I am tempted
to say with great difficulty, but I am assured that the Commission
have begun to make real progress and that they have identified
the first four administrative burdens to be tackled in relation
to food hygiene, company law, transport and agriculture and they
have been fast-tracked to agreement, that they continue to look
at ways of simplifying the existing legal regulation and that
they propose about 140 initiatives. I will not go through all
of them but they are concerned with making legislation simpler
and straightforward in relation to additives and organic standards
for food manufacturers, so there is a recognition that we had
placed too great a burden in terms of detailed regulation, particularly
on small and medium-sized enterprises, so the approach is very
much to try and find a more sensible basis for particularly smaller
businesses to be able to satisfy a regulatory requirement, perhaps
not to the full extent that we might expect of a larger organisation
with more resources available to it.
Q141 Lord Harrison:
Do you think the pace should be quickened?
Mr Hoon: As I say, as someone who has spent
12 months struggling with this just in the context of the United
Kingdom, the Commission have set themselves a very ambitious target.
We support that and it is right that we should be ambitious, but
this is something that will take some time to realise. All that
we can say at the moment is that they have started extremely well.
Q142 Chairman:
Thank you very much. Minister, let us wrap up this very useful
exchange with just a little bit of reflection on your part about
the extent to which, if any, the Government and extending that
to the Council, really has any impact on the formulation of the
Annual Policy Strategy or whether indeed you would wish it to
do so. Is the Government's attitude let us wait and see what drops
into the in tray and then we will have something to say about
it, or do you think it is better if the Government makes its own
point at some stage so that it has actually some impact on what
is finally produced?
Mr Hoon: It is quite hard to describe the process,
but I know what it is not. It is not the Commission going off
and dreaming up a strategy all on their own and then producing
this document, there are a range of contacts between the Commission
and Member States at all levels, including within Member States
for Whitehall departments to set out their views, they are in
turn passed through up the ranks to the European Commission so
that there is a dynamic process of exchanges of views and information.
Whilst not being able to identify the specific parts that we have
fed into this process, the fact that it has come out in a way
that we are more than comfortable with does indicate that there
has been a real exchange of views between Member States and the
Commission. I hope all Member States feel as positively and as
strongly about it as we do, but we have always had the opportunity
of setting out our opinions and the Commission, as I say, probably
more than ever before, are taking notice of what we say which
is a good thing.
Q143 Chairman:
It is more of an informal process rather than a structured dialogue
between governments and the Commission.
Mr Hoon: We have formal meetings.
Q144 Chairman:
There are formal meetings?
Mr Hoon: Shan knows about it, she knows the
answer.
Ms Morgan: There is a mixture of a formal process
of the Council responding to the Annual Policy Strategy and informally
feeding into the Commission's thinking during the course of the
year, and indeed we fed into the original thinking behind the
five-year strategic objective paper on which this is based. Then
of course there are the formal processes of negotiating the actual
budget that will support this, the Policy Strategy and the legislation
that flows from it, and there is the formal process of negotiating
the individual proposals including the legislation that comes
out of it, so it is a mix of formal and informal.
Q145 Chairman:
In the initial stages when the Strategy is being formulated by
the Commission is there contact, for example, between a Commissioner
with a particular portfolio and corresponding ministers in governments?
Ms Morgan: There is not a process of discussion
with individual ministers; there is a process of the Council co-ordinating
views and feeding them in in one process.
Mr Hoon: At the level of the Government there
is a parallel process for each department to set out its thoughts
and they are co-ordinated through the Cabinet Office and ultimately
through UKREP.
Q146 Chairman:
What I am really asking is are you satisfied that the inputs of
governments are adequate, do you feel reasonably content that
the Annual Policy Strategy when it appears as a communication
from the Commission broadly corresponds to what you would expect
and that it does not give you headaches when you read it and say
"My God, I wish we had known they were going to put that
in"?
Mr Hoon: No, we are pretty comfortable with
the results. As I say, I hope that all Member States feel that
they have the same success in influencing the shape of the programme.
Q147 Chairman:
It sounds as though you feel that we have as good an input as
anybody.
Mr Hoon: Rather better I think.
Chairman: On that very upbeat note, thank
you very much indeed, Minister, for your very valuable time, it
has been very helpful to us. We will send you the transcript.
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