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The Minister read out a list of eminent Eurocrats who inhabit your Lordships’ House, and of course we acknowledge that—it is one of the things that makes your Lordships’ House such a Europhile place. However, it really does not help if the Minister and other noble Lords say, “There is nothing to worry about here, because this was part of the original Treaty of Rome in 1957”. Indeed it was—I said so myself. This has always been part of this project, but that does not mean that we have to accept it. Noble and Europhile Lords, and Europhiles generally, very often advance this point. They say, “This is nothing new, so it is all right”. The answer is, “It is not all right just because it is there”.
Nothing that any noble Lord has said will convince me that the ancient privilege of the British people to elect and dismiss those who make their laws has not been broken by our membership of the European Union. I refer to the House of Commons, not the elected Government. The people’s pact is with Parliament; it is not with the transitory Government of the day. That is why more and more people—millions of them—do not like this project and want us out of it. However, I accept that we are not going to reach that conclusion now, so I am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Howell of Guildford moved Amendment No. 11:
“(i) Article 1, paragraph 18, inserted Article 9D TEU, paragraph 5; and(ii) ”The noble Lord said: This amendment is on a specific and narrow point, and I hope that it will gain some approval and a clear exposition from Ministers.
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The Government very strongly opposed that change at the time of the convention that drew up the original constitutional treaty, and the words of the proposal here are identical. The Labour Minister at the time, Peter Hain, said:
“Another suggestion is for the European Parliament to elect the Commission President. However, I am sceptical of that idea. My concern is that such an independent figure, who must be acceptable to the member states through the Council, will get caught up in the politics of the European Parliament”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/3/03; col. 309WH.]
I could not have put it better, and it was a perfectly sensible concern. Attempts were made in the convention to delete the proposal, but I am afraid they failed. The reason Mr Hain was worried and why the Labour Government of yesterday were worried and fought not to have it in this treaty either is that they feared the outcome that the dominant EP party blocs, whatever they happened to be, would have the initiative in choosing a name, and the European Council would have to go along with that candidate. I know that our excellent European Union Select Committee report rather bravely thought that this would not stop the Council coming to its decisions, although it was very candid in adding,
The lack of clarity is now beginning to dissolve, and there is already a campaign website from the European Parliament to announce its preferred candidate in what it calls, “the first European presidential election”.
All that will please many people who want things to go that way and who believe that Europe is moving in the right direction; a prospect that many of us are not at all sure about. This is light years away from the Monnet ideal that the Commission would be a genuinely independent college of wise men and women standing clear of national party politics and lobbies. It also shifts power away from national Ministers and national Parliaments—again this may be welcome to some but not to me—in which we on this side have argued again and again that the modern European Union should have its powers properly anchored.
The European Parliament does an excellent job and many of its Members work extremely hard but it really cannot be said, except by a fantasist, that moving powers to the European Parliament somehow fulfils the Laaken dream—it is only an unfulfilled dream—of bringing the European Union and its works closer to the people. That is why Ministers fought strenuously against the idea when it first surfaced in the rejected constitutional treaty; but here it is now in identical
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Lord Blackwell: I shall address Amendments Nos. 11 and 12 because they both reflect a shift—which one may or may not like, but which cannot be disguised in the treaty—towards a European Union that is increasingly establishing itself as an independent sovereign body rather than an association of member states.
Amendment No. 11 refers to a reduction in the number of commissioners so that there is no longer a commissioner for each member state. I understand the practicalities of the difficulty in having a large number of commissioners but there are other ways of dealing with that. For example, there are rather more Ministers than members of the Cabinet in the UK Government. Not every Minister has the same status and not every commissioner need have a front-line portfolio. The problem is that this proposal has not been thought through in terms of the impact that it will have on the linkage with member states. While a commissioner is not there to represent the member state directly, it is important symbolically for each country to see that it is involved directly in the commissioner body and has a voice within it.
The move to break the link between commissioners and countries is part of the overall trend that says that the EU is primarily not an association of member states but a governing body that is increasingly accountable first and foremost to a European democracy, represented in the European Parliament. As noble Lords have said, a number of shifts in the treaty increase the power of the European Parliament.
Amendment No. 12, as the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, talks to that specifically in that under this treaty the Commission will be elected by the European Parliament. If the European Union is seen as an association of member states we might think that the Commission is there to do the bidding of the member states, which have appointed it. If we see the European Union as a democracy where the primary legitimacy comes from the European Parliament, of course we shift the responsibility of the Commission to that Parliament. Paragraph 8 of the Article 9D in the Lisbon treaty states:
To my mind, that is a significant shift in emphasis and takes us away from the notion of the European Union as an association of member states. The Government need to explain whether their intention is to sign up to that direction, or whether they will stand on the principle that has hitherto been the case of Europe as an association of nation states of which we were a member.
Lord Dykes: We on these Benches welcome the proposals in the Lisbon treaty for the new developments involving the Commission and the number of commissioners. Therefore, we do not support the amendment, and hope that the noble Lord who moved it will kindly consider withdrawing it at the end of this debate, depending on the Government’s response.
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I am sure that it is coincidence—I referred to this on our first and second sittings in Committee—that amendments proposed by the Conservative Front Bench sometimes bear an amazing resemblance to the ones tabled in the House of Commons. On this occasion I refer to Amendment No. 92, tabled, yet again, by Mr William Cash and Mr John Redwood. Theirs was an umbrella amendment excluding the whole of Article 9D, and not just the relevant portions, as is proposed in the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford. It can be seen that the amendment appears word for word on page 564 of the Commons Order Paper.
Lord Tebbit: Is the noble Lord suggesting that there is something improper, or not quite right, about Members of the Committee putting down amendments similar to ones which have been discussed in the other place, so that we can do so? It would seem a rather extraordinary doctrine if that is what he is saying; it sounded like it.
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Lord Dykes: Unless I am mistaken, the noble Lord was not in his place on the previous occasions; that was all dealt with then. I was just making a passing reference. I shall make a number of brief points on the amendments and will not waste the Committee’s time.
Lord Howell of Guildford: Perhaps I can help the noble Lord and save him having to repeat these observations again and again. Following my noble friend’s intervention, is not the concern—and does he not share it—that a great many of these amendments were not discussed in the House of Commons? Through the guillotine, as we used to call it—now the timetable Motion, and various kinds of procedural Motion—a great many crucial amendments were not examined at all. The Prime Minister urged that we look at these matters line by line, and we are trying to do so. The noble Lord’s observations do not help matters at all.
Lord Dykes: It is up to Members of the Committee to make their own judgments about the fact that there is a similarity of language in the amendments I have referred to.
As I was going to say, the provisions of Article 9D in the treaty text set out the appointment, procedure, role and functioning of the European Commission and the European President. Although it will be for any member state not to have a commissioner, as far as I recall, the Government originally said that they now welcomed the reduction in the size of the Commission, to make it a more practical and viable body. Certainly, we on these Benches share those feelings. An unwieldy Commission, with the larger number of member states, would be a future obstacle to efficient EU delivery and risk creating non-jobs, which would perhaps encourage legislation in non-priority areas. The EU must be made more efficient and effective to carry out the relatively small number of legislative and administrative tasks that it should on behalf of all the member states, leaving the vast mass of all national legislation to those individual member states and their national parliaments.
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Similarly, we would not support Amendment No. 12A of the noble Lord, Lord Howell. The appointment procedures are admittedly being reformulated and reconstructed, but there is not much change in substance from existing procedures except for the beneficial aspect of bringing the European Parliament and Commission closer together in mutual support in the co-decision context. We on these Benches therefore oppose these amendments.
Lord Tomlinson: Can the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, help me on this question we have come to a number of times: the frequency with which we are having amendments retabled in this House that had been tabled in the other place? Does he share my surprise that all these amendments seem to be in the name of Mr Cash and Mr Redwood? If they were such paragons to be followed so slavishly by the Opposition Front Bench here, does the noble Lord share my worry about why they are not leading in the other place?
Lord Dykes: That was precisely the point I was making last week, so I do not want to take too much of the Committee’s time on that today, save to thank the noble Lord for making that obvious point. I also reflect that in the final stages of the various Commons debates on the amendments, there were not even any Front-Bench amendments; they were all left to Mr Cash and his colleagues on the Back Benches.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick: I start with a brief comment on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Howell. He put all the emphasis on the European Parliament’s power of decision on the President of the Council, and moved rather rapidly over the fact that any name put to the Parliament must be proposed by the European Council. He might draw some comfort from the fact that the only other international organisation where that system is replicated is the United Nations, of which we have been a member since the outset. It provides that a secretary-general is chosen by the General Assembly, but it can only do so on the recommendation of the Security Council. No recommendation of the Security Council has not been endorsed by the General Assembly. Perhaps the noble Lord can take some comfort from that. The European Parliament has the right to reject the name put forward by the European Council, but it does not have the right to propose a name. That is clear from the text of the treaty.
On the question of the size of the Commission, nothing has brought it into greater discredit, quite without any help of its own, than the continuing increase in the number of commissioners that has followed enlargement, to a point where there are now more commissioners than would be found in the Cabinets of any of the member states. That has occurred over time, irrespective of the fact that there is not that number of effective jobs to do. That has brought discredit as people with high-sounding titles and small responsibilities are guyed in the papers and given a rough time. It is not a sensible way to run a railroad, and everyone has recognised that for a long time. It was bad enough when there were 12 member states and 16 commissioners because there were not 16 jobs to do. Now there are 27 member states and
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Therefore, I think this is a move in the right direction. In case people put excessive weight on commissioners representing their country of origin, has anyone complained that we no longer have a second British commissioner since the appointment of this Commission? That has not been a cause of complaint. Out in the country, people are not going around saying that the place has been going to the dogs ever since the second British commissioner was removed. What is now being proposed is a bolder step, but we must remember that every member state that ratifies this treaty is accepting that on some occasions its nationals will not be represented in the Commission. France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland—large member states that previously had two commissioners—are accepting that from time to time they will have none. I agree that this is an important step, and I think that it will produce more care and caution with the vital interests of member states in this college that does not have representation for every member state. The present situation is that there is often a rather unhealthy tendency to leave the members who come from that member state to argue their corner, which is not what they are there for.
Whenever the EU Select Committee of this House has looked at the system of one member per member state, whether in the Court of Auditors, which was looked at twice, or in the European Central Bank, it has come to the conclusion, which the House has accepted, that functionally the sensible solution is to have fewer than 27 or more members of these institutions. I hope we will have the courage of our convictions in this case and that the amendment will not be pressed.
Lord Bach: Amendment No. 11 excludes paragraph 5 of new Article 9D. As the Committee heard, that paragraph will slim down the Commission so that from 1 November 2014 the number of commissioners will correspond to two-thirds of the number of member states; in other words, 18 out of the current 27. Commissioners will be selected from all member states on the basis of equal rotation, reflecting the demographic and geographical diversity of those member states. We believe that the Lisbon treaty will deliver a smaller, more efficient and more focused Commission that is better able to deliver on issues that matter to our citizens.
The UK has long supported a smaller Commission. An unwieldy one would be an obstacle to delivery by the EU and would lose focus on those priority tasks that the Commission needs to carry out. Of course, the EU needs an effective, efficient and well-led Commission to ensure that it delivers on the policies that, as I have said, actually matter to people in Europe.
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I remind noble Lords that the report of this House’s EU Select Committee concludes that,
A smaller Commission is, in any case, an existing obligation under the Treaty of Nice, which requires that the number of commissioners be less than the number of member states once the EU reaches 27 members. However, it is the priorities delivered by the Commission that are important and not, frankly, the nationality of the commissioner.
The current Barroso Commission is, of course, only one-27th British, but the priorities it is delivering on issues such as climate change, better regulation, the single market and competition and the Lisbon agenda itself are largely in line with our own approach. Commissioners are to be chosen on grounds of their competence and independence and we have benefited from their independence, for example, in driving forward market liberalisation. Once member states do not have permanent commissioners, the criteria of independence will be even more important under this treaty than ever before.
A further argument is that it is not only the commissioner jobs at the top that are important—they are crucial but not the only ones of great importance. We are very well represented as a country at the highest levels of the Commission below commissioner level. If I may just remind the Committee, we have four chefs de cabinet of commissioners, three deputy chefs de cabinet of commissioners, four directors-general, three deputy directors-general and 39 other directors who are also British. There was a debate in this House not many weeks ago in which it was generally agreed that we do pretty well at the top level of Commission appointees. Therefore, we do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howell, who tabled Amendment No. 11.
Let me move to Amendment No. 12, which the noble Lord largely spoke about and which would exclude from the Bill the way in which the President and members of the Commission are to be appointed. The reformulation of the procedure is part of the process of updating the Union’s institutional framework. The particular aspect of the appointment procedure which has attracted attention, and did this afternoon, is that of the appointment of the President of the Commission, under which the European Council will have to take account of the political complexion of the European Parliament when nominating a new Commission President and that the Parliament will “elect” that person if it agrees with the nomination.
As has been said—the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, made the point just a few minutes ago—the European Council proposes a candidate to the Parliament and the Parliament either elects that person or does not. If it does not, it goes back to the European Council to consider the position. At a later stage, the President-elect, if he has at that stage got the approval or the election of the Parliament, goes back with his team to the Council. We argue that what will happen is broadly similar to the existing procedure under which—and I
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The European Parliament already makes its views clear on possible candidates for the Commission President. We saw that with the process that led to the appointment of the present Commission President, José Manuel Barroso, in 2004. The European Parliament at that time made clear its intention to ensure that the Commission President reflected the political majority in the European Parliament. The European Parliament President, Hans-Gert Pöttering, made it clear that the largest political group in the Parliament, the centre-right European People’s Party, to which, at the moment at least, the party of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, belongs and which in many ways has control as it has the largest number although no overall majority—I am sure that pro-Europeans like the noble Lord and others in the party will wonder why on earth the Conservative Party is thinking of leaving the European People’s Party to move to the outer reaches of that Parliament—could not support a candidate of another political colour. That is what happened in 2004, and what is likely to happen after the next European elections.
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As the noble Lord, Lord Brittan, told the Select Committee when he gave evidence to its inquiry into this treaty, the provision in the treaty for the European Council to take into account the political complexion of the European Parliament when choosing the Commission President,
- “will mean ... that it would be difficult for Member States to come up with a proposed president who was known to be violently contradictory to and opposed to the weight of opinion in the European Parliament”.
I do not think that it will make as much difference as all that.
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