Examination of Witnesses (Questions 380-387)
Ms Catherine Day and Mr William Sleath
8 MAY 2008
Q380 Chairman: Looking at it in domestic
terms, it is a sort of Law Commission function of research into
the implications. That is helpful. The Impact Assessment Board?
Ms Day: It is independent of the policy-making
departments and I think that is the important thing to say. I
feel very strongly that impact assessment has to be done by the
Commission departments themselves because it is about a reasoning
process, about looking at a problem, looking at options and being
able to explain in the end why you recommend one option and not
others and demonstrating that you have done a serious and objective
job of taking into account different options in order to arrive
at the proposal that you make. That has to be done by the departments
working in the policy area. Why the President set up the Impact
Assessment Board and put it in the Secretariat-General, where
it is chaired by one of my deputies, was that he wanted to have
a quality control. So when the departments have done their work,
and very often they do it not alone but involving four, five or
ten other Commission departments, they apply that quality control.
I believe that the average quality of our impact assessments has
gone up a lot since we introduced this. We have done some excellent
ones, and which have been acknowledged as excellent, but I would
also be honest enough to say that they do not all yet reach the
standard of excellence. This is a way of levelling up the quality.
What it also has done is to have the effect of DGs either not
pursuing certain things because they know their proposal will
not meet the quality standard or of radically revising their proposals,
because having to go before an independent board and explain your
reasoning and that you have properly consulted and you have properly
analysed is having the effect of making the whole process a lot
more serious. I think it has had a beneficial effect.
Q381 Chairman: I can see that is
helpful. Can you very briefly tell us why it would not be feasible
to have an independent impact assessment? External consultants
often advise on the impact of various policies. Is it not an objective
matter, in other words?
Ms Day: It is an objective matter, but I think
it is a confusion of understanding. You could have an external
body to look at the work that the Commission has done and to pronounce
on it or you could have an independent body do a cost-benefit
analysis of Commission proposals, but for me impact assessment
is about a reasoning process and how do you arrive at making your
selection in the first place. I do not see how an outside body
can do that. The process we have been talking about this afternoon
is one that can last maybe three, four or five years of starting
from identifying a problem, consulting, working backwards and
forwards and then coming to the moment when you say, "Okay,
this is the proposal we are going to make because we have spent
four years consulting and we have decided that this road does
not work but this is the option that gives the best return on
the effort that will be needed taking account of the views of
all the Member States, all the stakeholders, et cetera".
I do not see how that can be replicated by an independent body,
you would have to set up a sort of parallel Commission. I think
that people who advocate this are making a big confusion between
what is impact assessment, which is about looking at how do you
arrive at making your proposal and what would be the impact of
the proposals, versus then wanting to look at what is the burden
of Commission proposals or what is the cost-benefit of Commission
proposals, which is a different proposition. I regret that we
have never managed to fully clarify this confusion.
Q382 Chairman: I think the title
is perhaps prone to give rise to confusion because it does suggest
an objective assessment of what the impact is going to be and
I understand from you that, in fact, impact assessment is more
a justification, an explanation of the decisions that have been
taken along the road.
Ms Day: No, no, it is an assessment of the economic,
social and environmental impacts of different options, so it is
a way of helping the Commission to take better informed decisions.
A lot of the people who advocate an independent board seem to
have in mind that it would act as an automatic filter and weed
out Commission proposals that they do not want. It will never
do that because it is not designed to say that X is the right
answer, it is designed to test and assess whether we should do
something or not. There are examples of where having gone through
the impact assessment we have come, to our own surprise, to the
conclusion that what we started out thinking was a good idea turns
out not to be operational or not to be effective or cost-effective.
It is about impacts but it does not take away from the fact that
the Commission is also a political body and has to make a political
choice sometimes between options.
Q383 Chairman: I think we have got
to draw a line, but before we do, we have been told that the Commission
does not always regard provisions in EU legislation calling for
further legislative proposals as binding. Is that right?
Ms Day: When you put it like that it sounds
like we are very naughty and disobedient or something, and I would
not like to leave you with that impression. If I go back to the
very first thing we talked about, the Commission's right of initiative,
it is not possible to instruct the Commission to come forward
with a proposal, it is normally more in the form of an invitation
and we have the right to say no. If we think that something that
was put in legislation ten years ago is no longer relevant and
appropriate, and that happens from time to time, it is only responsible
of the Commission to say, "No, we have this obligation but
we have decided not to do what we were instructed to do because
... " and then we have to give a very well-justified reason.
It is rare but it can happen. It particularly happens since we
have a lot of old legislation, so times and techniques change.
Yes, it could happen but it is very rare.
Q384 Lord Rosser: Could I ask for
clarification of what has just been said. You rightly said that
the Commission is a political body and has to make some political
decisions. You were referring them to a decision as to what might
prove acceptable as far as Council and the Parliament are concerned
rather than the Commission making a political decision of its
own but rather trying to assess what might be acceptable or might
not.
Ms Day: Yes. I will give you a good example
from the field of environment where one can be very, very ambitious.
What we use impact assessment for is to try to help the Commission
to decide what is the right level of ambition. You can go very
far in saying people's health is priceless and, therefore, you
must have totally clean air, but that is simply not feasible,
so we use impact assessment to set a high, medium and low level
of ambition and try to help the Commission to judge what is in
the interest of the citizen but also likely to be adopted.
Q385 Lord Rosser: That is what you
mean by political decision?
Ms Day: Yes.
Q386 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed for coming, it has been a very interesting session. Thank
you for your paper too. Are there any points which you would wish
to make? Are there any points you would like to make in writing?
We were going to ask you whether you prepare figures on the factors
prompting legislation annually, and about how effective your Annual
Work Programme and Annual Policy Strategy are in setting the legislative
agenda.
Ms Day: On the figures I can answer immediately,
we do not do these exercises annually, we do them from time to
time. On how effective we are with our policies, we are getting
much more effective. For 2007 we had a 93% delivery rate for our
strategic initiatives, I am proud to say. By having the process
I was talking about of vetting in advance we automatically improve
our success rate because we weed out all the ill-prepared or not
very well developed, not very mature proposals, so therefore naturally
we should have a higher success rate. I think it makes us more
credible.
Q387 Lord Bowness: My Lord Chairman,
can we very briefly ask what the opinions of ECOSOC and CoR are
and how the Commission view those?
Ms Day: We work in different ways. For example,
we use the Committee of the Regions particularly to try to give
us a feel for the situation on the ground because they have a
lot of local representation. Again, if I go back to some of the
environmental issues, when we were working on revising waste management
legislation a few years ago we had a very active involvement with
the Committee of the Regions because we felt that they represented
municipal and local authorities and were able to give us a very
good feel for what was and was not working. In terms of getting
feedback on implementation, both bodies are very useful. We also
have been working with ECOSOC on issues like sustainability and
they are keeping a database for us on self and voluntary regulation,
which is an interesting area for us to see what works. On our
behalf, and together with us, they are keeping track of voluntary
codes to see are they effective and do they deliver. We find them
very useful bodies because they are plugged into parts we cannot
reach.
Chairman: Thank you very much. We really must
release you because I know you have got another meeting.
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