APPENDIX 4: CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE
HOME SECRETARY
Letter from the Chairman to the Rt Hon Dr John
Reid MP, Secretary of State for the Home Department, 30 October
2006
You may remember that on 10 May I invited you to
nominate a minister to give evidence to Sub-Committee F of the
Select Committee on the European Union, which was then starting
an inquiry into the meeting of the G6 interior ministers at Heiligendamm
on 22-23 March 2006. In your reply of 6 June you gave us details
of the workings of G6 meetings in general, and you answered a
number of specific questions. At that stage you thought it unnecessary
for a minister to give oral evidence to the Sub-Committee, but
following a further letter from me of 7 June, Joan Ryan MP
and Peter Storr helpfully came to give oral evidence to the Committee
on 28 June. (Our correspondence is set out in Appendix 4 of the
Select Committee report on the Heiligendamm meeting, which was
published on 19 July—40th report of the session 2005-06,
HL Paper 221.)
You explained in your letter of 6 June that you did
not think it right to give oral evidence at that time because
the Heiligendamm meeting had been attended by your predecessor.
But you very helpfully added: "I would be happy to brief
your committee after the next G6 meeting, which I will be chairing
and is provisionally booked for 26-27 October". Joan Ryan
has reiterated your offer to give evidence to the Committee in
her letter to Lord Wright of 18 October, responding to our report.
The G6 meeting has now taken place at Stratford-upon-Avon,
and we have seen the Conclusions. We would like to take you up
on your offer. We would be very grateful to hear oral evidence
from you about the matters discussed.
I have asked the Clerk to the Sub-Committee to be
in touch with your private office to arrange a mutually convenient
date for this.
I am sending copies of this letter to Baroness Ashton
of Upholland at the DCA, and to the Parliamentary Clerks of both
departments.
Letter from the Home Secretary to the Chairman, 20
December 2006
I am writing in response to your letter of 30 October
in which you invited me to provide oral evidence to your Committee
on the matters discussed at the G6 meeting that I chaired in Stratford-upon-Avon.
I should apologise for the delay in replying.
I hope that the appearance before your Committee
by Ministers and officials from the HO and DCA in June gave you
sufficient opportunity to question the Government about the Heiligendamm
meeting and the G6 more generally.
In my letter to you dated 6 June I said I would be
happy to brief the Committee after the Stratford meeting. Joan
Ryan wrote to you on 8 November with a link to the Conclusions
from the Stratford-upon-Avon meeting. These conclusions contain
the substance of the issues that were discussed and agreed.
There were only two other real issues that were raised.
The first was on the question of how international legal frameworks
shape the possibilities of effective counter-terrorist action,
where we agreed to share at expert level national experience and
practice. The second was a Franco-German paper on migration, which
was discussed in the meeting and subsequently at official level
before forming the basis of a G6 letter to the EU Commission and
Presidency. The letter proposed some ideas and priorities for
EU action in the area of migration management, border control,
illegal immigration and asylum. It was sent in the spirit of stimulating
EU level debate and action. I attach a copy for information.
I know that the Committee has asked that I appear
in person to give oral evidence. However, while I am not opposed
to doing so in principle my diary commitments are already onerous.
Given that the Conclusions from Stratford are comprehensive and
freely available and that Ministers have already appeared before
the Committee, I hope that instead you might be satisfied with
the additional written evidence provided in this letter and the
offer to answer in writing any further substantive questions you
might have. Of course, I will also ensure that you are provided
with information about future G6 meetings.
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