HUMAN RIGHTS PROOFING EU LEGISLATION
Letter from the Chairman to Rt Hon Baroness
Ashton of Upholland, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Department
for Constitutional Affairs
Thank you for your letter of 26 March 2006[95]
which was considered by the Select Committee at its meeting on
24 April. As you say there has been a long delay in this matter
but we are pleased to see that this has given you the opportunity
to discuss with your colleagues how best to respond to the Committee's
concerns. We have a common interest in ensuring that EU legislation
is compatible with human rights; it is one element of ensuring
better regulation.
We are most pleased to see that the Government
have revised their position and will, in future, provide an analysis
(not just a statement) of compliance with fundamental rights (as
described by Article 6(2) of the TEU) in explanatory memoranda
of EU legislative proposals submitted to Parliament for scrutiny.
We would be most pleased if your officials, together with those
of the Cabinet Office, would proceed, in conjunction with the
Clerks, to finalise the arrangement for putting this into practice
in the near future.
We fully appreciate that providing a fundamental
rights analysis could, in some cases, delay the submission of
explanatory memoranda. Our initial reaction is to prefer the submission
of explanatory memoranda within the 10 day deadline with the analysis
to follow—we would not wish to delay consideration of the
merits and other aspects of proposals pending completion ofthe
fundamental rights analysis.
Finally, may I record the Committee's gratitude
for the work you and your officials have put in to this matter.
Let us now see how it works in practice. I hope you would agree
that it would be helpful to review the procedure in the light
of one or two years' experience.
25 April 2007
95 Remaining Government Responses Session 2004-05:
Government Responses Session 2005-06, 37th Report of Session 2006-07,
HL Paper 182. Back
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