Examination of Witnesses (Questions 438-439)
Mr Jim Murphy and Mr Ananda Guha
4 JUNE 2008
Q438 Chairman: Minister, thank you
very much for coming, and Mr Guha for accompanying the Minister.
This is a live public session. There will be a transcript and
you will be given a copy, and obviously if there are any points
which you wish to make in writing afterwards we would be delighted
to have them. The interests, such as they are, which the Members
of this Sub-Committee have will have been declared in the Lords'
Register in the usual way and I think I can simply ask you at
the outset whether there is any statement which either or both
of you wishes to make on the subject matter, otherwise we will
go to the questions.
Mr Murphy: I would be delighted to go straight
to the questions, if that is not considered bad manners.
Q439 Chairman: No. We have had a
considerable amount of evidence, and I think you have seen at
least part of it. The theme, as you know, is the initiation of
Community legislation and European Union legislation. Could I
just ask you first about the Commission's continuing monopoly
of the right of initiative, as it has been described, although
one of our witnesses said that it was really a right of proposal
not initiative. Is that something which the Government is content
with?
Mr Murphy: I think generally we are, but if
I was to think back roughly a year ago when I became the Minister
for Europe the concept that the Commission in some vacuum initiated
legislative proposals, at that level you think, is this the right
thing to have, but very quickly getting into the detail of the
job you understand much more closely the fact that it is not in
a vacuum and it is in the context of European Council conclusions,
in the dynamics of Member States, interaction with the Presidency,
interaction with pressure groups and others to set a framework
inside which the Commission has that sole right of initiative.
I do not know which previous witness described it in the way it
is recorded -
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