Examination of Witnesses (Questions 172-179)
Mr Pat McFadden, Mr Andrew Steele and Mr Neil Bond
26 FEBRUARY 2008
Q172Chairman: Minister, thank you for sparing
us your time this morning. You have an hour, which will be very
helpful. Is there anything that you would like to say by way of
introduction before we go to the questions?
Mr McFadden: No, I do not think so. My predecessor
in this role, Stephen Timms, sent you a written submission a couple
of months ago, which you can take as the basis of the position
and I am quite happy to go straight into questions. Perhaps before
we do that, I should allow my colleagues to introduce themselves
and tell you what they do.
Mr Steele: I am Andrew Steele. I am Director
of National and European Policy in BERR's Regions Directorate.
Mr Bond: I am Neil Bond. I am Head of the Structural
Funds Team within BERR Regions Directorate.
Chairman: We have reordered the questions
but will cover them all eventually.
Q173 Lord Renton of Mount Harry:
Minister, I have read your letter to Lord Grenfell of 31 January
and also the enclosed Government answer on the question of Cohesion
Funds, but I wonder if we could start at the beginning and you
could tell us, in your judgment, what should be the basic objectives
of the Structural and Cohesion Funds and how can the Funds become
more effective in supporting public policies in the EU States
and regions?
Mr McFadden: The basic objectives of the Funds
are economic; they are about jobs and growth and about closing
the gap between the poorest regions and the rest of the EU. The
Government is quite keen to maintain that economic focus of the
Funds. We set that out quite clearly in the Global Europe pamphlet,
which was published about four or five months ago. Keeping that
focus on jobs and growth is the key thing for us; it is how we
try to use them in the UK and that is how we want them to be used
across the European Union.
Q174 Lord Renton of Mount Harry:
Are you satisfied with the Funds as they are at the moment, and
what mechanisms of delivery could make the policies simply more
performance-based, more user-friendly and perhaps less complicated?
Mr McFadden: There is a good argument for simplification,
you are right about that. The best way to make them more user-friendly,
or more performance-based, is to align them more closely to the
Lisbon Agenda on growth and jobs. If you take this in a wider
context, the European Union is hopefully emerging from a lengthy
period of an internal focus—the Treaty is being debated
day-by-day in Parliament—and, as the Global Europe pamphlet
said, our aim would be to move on from having that approved to
getting on with what was decided in Lisbon. The truth is the European
Union has probably spent too long with an internal focus and not
long enough with an external globalisation focus on how to compete
and how to succeed in a much more open and competitive world than
was the case in the past. The best way to make these Funds more
effective, more user-friendly, is to align them with those goals—the
Lisbon Agenda.
Q175 Lord Renton of Mount Harry:
I still think the Commission might disagree with you about those
words "internal focus"; after all they have just taken
on board six or seven new members.
Mr McFadden: They might, but we have spent some
time debating the internal rules.
Q176 Chairman: Many proponents of
significant European level Structural and Cohesion Fund policies
argue that there is more to it than economic issues. Article 158
of the Treaty emphasises strengthening economic and social cohesion.
You have not mentioned social cohesion at all in your response,
is that because you think it is less important than economic issues?
Mr McFadden: No, you are right; there are other
things to be taken into consideration. There is also the question
of institutional capability, which these Funds are supposed to
promote. I am not denying these other things for a moment, but
if you want my clear answer on what the main focus should be here,
it should be on growth and jobs and improving the economic performance
of the poorer regions of the EU.
Q177 Chairman: So, in paragraph 10
of your written submission to us, where you say that Integrated
Guidelines for Jobs and Growth at European level and National
Reform Programmes set out the key challenges, there is no need
for a separate set of challenges to be identified for cohesion
policy; the task is to identify how cohesion policy can support
Member States' policies at national and regional level. So, is
it fair to summarise Her Majesty's Government's view about that
to be that if Member States apply national reform programmes in
the framework of integrated guidelines for jobs and growth—pursue
the Lisbon Agenda—there is no different agenda for Structural
and Cohesion Funds and their underlying policies: get on and do
something about growth and jobs and that would do the job, essentially,
of European social cohesion.
Mr McFadden: We would take the view that it
would be wrong to have two different agendas. There is an overarching
Lisbon Agenda around growth and jobs that is supposed to drive
the European Union in a whole number of different ways in the
next few years, and that you should somehow have an entirely separate
agenda is odd. I am not denying the social dimension, I am not
denying the institutional capability, these are important, but
if you are asking in simple terms what I think these Funds are
for, I would say, jobs, growth and pursuing the Lisbon Agenda.
Q178 Chairman: Do you find that our
European partners share that view of where social cohesion fits
in? Do you get any different views from that of the UK?
Mr McFadden: In a club of 27 Member States you
will always hear different views.
Q179 Chairman: Which particular views
would you be listening to, taking account of and responding to?
Mr McFadden: My brief experience of ministerial
involvement in dossiers and so on, leads me to believe that you
will always have a moving set of alliances in the EU. What we
have tried to do, as a Member State, particularly in recent years,
is to try to focus the EU more on the external challenges that
I mentioned at the beginning; on globalisation and on competing
in a more open world. The current Commission for the most part
are supportive of that agenda, and are allies of that agenda;
certainly President Barroso is supportive of that. On that broad
front, we have many allies in Europe but, of course, with 27 different
countries with their own histories and their own views, there
will be different emphases in different Member States.
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