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Fundamental Rights Agency (EUC Report)

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, and to be the first to congratulate him on his maiden speech. It was particularly pleasant for me to listen to him because, as a former member of Sub-Committee E, it was delightful to hear the successor to my chairman show the same stout defence of human rights and the rights of the individual that characterised the committee under its previous leadership. It is a good tradition, and it is great to see it continuing. The noble and learned Lord has had a distinguished career in the law, with particular emphasis on public law and as a Treasury devil—a phrase which I only partly understand. I think it is to his credit that, despite that, he is widely liked in his own profession and very much welcomed in this House. I understand from private sources of information that it is not very long since he had a hip operation. I am sure that we all wish him a total recovery and look forward to hearing him again in this Chamber when his other duties permit. The noble and learned Lord described the fact that our inquiry into the proposal for a European institute for gender equality was subsumed at our request into Sub-Committee E’s inquiry into a fundamental rights agency, which I will not go into. Members of Sub-Committee E first considered the Commission’s proposal to establish a European gender institute in April 2005. From the first, we were doubtful about the role and purpose of the proposed institute and whether it could do anything which was not already being done at a national level or by collaboration with national bodies. After a good deal of correspondence with the Minister, we therefore invited oral evidence from the Minister and the Equal Opportunities Commission, which was given in November 2005. The EOC endorsed the need for a European body to collect data, exchange information and good practice, and run studies and conferences on gender issues. It very much welcomed the creation of this area of work, but would have preferred to see a single EU body bringing together work on all the equality strands—race, age, disability and sexual orientation, as well as gender—to support a comprehensive policy approach. That preference was to bring all this activity under the proposed fundamental rights agency, although it already felt, a year ago, that this was ““not politically possible”” at that time. The Minister said that she agreed with the EOC on the need for the institute. In line with government policy on the organisation of equality bodies in the UK, she initially sympathised with the comprehensive fundamental rights agency approach. However, she seemed to regard the two-institute approach as a fait accompli. At that stage we were still far from convinced that a separate gender institute could be justified, but we also had other concerns. In particular, the proposed management structure, which involved a 25-member management board supervising a smaller executive board, which supervised in turn a director and a small staff of up to 30 people, seemed totally inappropriate. It was not merely expensive and unwieldy, but likely to undermine the director’s authority. We concluded that if, despite our recommendations, a stand-alone gender institute was established, a more efficient and cost-effective management structure should be created in proportion to the size of the institute. We thought that it was high time, and a good opportunity, to question the practice of automatically awarding a seat on EU agency boards to every member state—a view very strongly endorsed by the Select Committee. Another concern was that the budget for the new institute was to be cost neutral. The new institute, with an estimated budget of €8.5 million in 2013 when it will be at full strength, would be in danger of either being underfunded or taking funding from another body in the same group of bodies and programmes. We were concerned about the legal base of the proposal. This is a question of whether incentive measures under Article 13 of the treaty are an appropriate base for the establishment of agencies. The Government’s response to our findings argued, first, that gender equality would be better served by a separate institute whereas merging with the fundamental rights agency would result in a ““loss of focus””. Secondly, the management structure was still under discussion, but might end up as originally proposed by the Commission. Finally, the appropriateness of the legal base would depend on an ECJ ruling on a case about the European Network Information Security Agency. For completeness, I should say at this point that although we understand that the ECJ has made its ruling, we have not received any formal notification of this from the Minister, nor been told what the implications are of that ruling for the legal base of the new gender institute. I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to enlighten us today. On 19 May last we were told that the Commission had produced an amended proposal. This new text reflected changes in the management structure recommended by the European Parliament and would be considered at the Social Policy Council on 1 June. We considered the new proposal at our meeting on 25 May. The Commission’s proposal still involved a separate gender institute, but also contained a proposal to reduce the management board to 13 people—nine representatives of member states, one from the Commission and three stakeholder representatives. This composition, I should point out, closely mirrors that suggested by the Select Committee for the fundamental rights agency. The response of the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, sent the same day, pointed out that the proposal for a separate gender institute was still at variance with the view taken in our report and that scrutiny could not be lifted prior to the debate on the original proposal. However, the Minister’s letter, which crossed with that of the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, indicated the Government’s decision to override scrutiny on the grounds that the proposal would be carried under qualified majority voting no matter what the UK Government did. The argument was that British agreement on the main issue might help secure a better settlement on the budget issue and the management structure. In the event it has become clear that the proposal was indeed carried on 1 June. However, the presidency compromise solution went against the recommendation of the European Parliament, the Commission and Sub-Committee G in favour of a 25-strong management board, one for every member state, with the support of the British Government. It seems unfortunate, to put it mildly, to have overridden scrutiny reserve, something we take very seriously, and arrive at so unsatisfactory a conclusion. It is clear to us that it is more than time for the European Union to face up to the issue of member state representation on European Union bodies now that we are already 25 member states and will soon be 27, with a further potential extension to a total of 35. Of course any change will need careful management to provide a solution that does not disadvantage, for example, smaller or newer member states. Can the Minister tell us whether there is any interest or determination on the part of the Commission, the Council, the European Parliament or, for that matter, the United Kingdom Government to make progress on this issue? Meanwhile there are still some issues, albeit relatively minor ones, awaiting decision, of which the most important is the location of a new gender institute. Will the Government at least try to ensure that it is co-located or located close to the fundamental rights agency, which seems likely to find a home in Vienna? That would at least help to ease the business of collaboration between the two bodies, which is so essential to the good work of both. I hope that in trying to describe the history of our consideration of this matter I have not sounded too tetchy. I think we all found it a somewhat frustrating episode, where both principle and practice seemed to lead to an unsatisfactory solution which in the end we were unable to influence. I hope that despite everything the institution will be able to do the work it was set up to do. I cannot close without thanking the members of Sub-Committee G for their work, and all members of the committee and I are enormously indebted to our Clerk, Gordon Baker, who assists us so valiantly and maintains his persistence and good humour no matter how difficult things appear to be. Finally, I hope that in the end such work on behalf of women’s rights, and indeed all the equality strands, will be reunited within the fundamental rights agency. Can the Minister support that pious hope? After all, it reflects the policy of Her Majesty’s Government when acting within the UK.