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A Citizens’ Agenda

I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. The rock is being damned by the Opposition’s faint praise of the work of the European Scrutiny Committee; the hard place is trying to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Lanark and Hamilton, East (Mr. Hood) as Chair of the Committee. My hon. Friend held that position from 1992, when the Committee was the European Legislation Committee, until he demitted office on 18 October 2006. He now represents Parliament on one of the NATO Committees. It is a great honour, but greatly difficult, to follow someone who outlasted 10 Europe Ministers and five Committee Clerks—quite a record. He may have been the longest serving Chair of a Select Committee. He made many friends and many important contributions to progress in Europe, especially in strengthening the role of COSAC. I want to represent the Committee’s position, much of which has been quoted selectively. The Committee doubted that the communication provided a new vision for the future of the EU—which future would be of great importance to everyone in the UK. It doubted that the proposed agenda, which was not new, would be effective in bridging the gap between the EU and the public and found that the Government were generally unwilling to give more than, at best, a sketchy view on the proposals in any of the important communications. We found that the Government’s position seemed to be to shelter behind the obvious absence of any consensus in the EU on the future of Europe. Instead, they preferred to say, in their explanatory memorandums and in the ESC Sub-Committee debate on ““Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate””, that there was no consensus on the future of Europe and that they would inform the House when one emerged. The Committee thought that it was right to recommend the communication, along with the documents tagged to it, for debate on the Floor of the House, to give Ministers an opportunity to set out their views on it and the outcome of the discussion in the European Council. As the Minister noted, in paragraph 8 of our 38th report of 18 October, we invited him to discuss the issues in today’s debate. When we look at the huge scope of the communications—on Europe in the world, neighbourhood policy, trade and competitiveness, development, strategic relations, political dialogue, common foreign and security policy, disaster response, crisis management and European security and defence policy—we find that there is a huge range of agendas. A question on our agenda was asked by House of Lords Sub-Committee C. We repeated it in our 38th report, but it remained unanswered. It was about"““which of the proposals in ‘Europe in the World’ could be implemented without further consideration of the Constitutional Treaty.””" Having listened to the Minister today, I am not convinced that Members serving on the European Scrutiny Committee and other hon. Members have a clearer notion of the Government’s view. I am not convinced that any of us know whether the Government take the Foreign Secretary’s view or the Minister’s view, as they seem to diverge on the double-hatting of EU officials in defence security policy. The question has not been answered, but we hoped that it would be answered before today’s debate. We should welcome substantial elements of the European transparency initiative document, including what it says about consultation, the disciplining and registration of the lobbying process in Europe, and transparency. I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson) would welcome the document, because it will introduce a binding EU-level framework on member states that will ensure a consistent approach to access and transparency with regard to all beneficiaries of EU funds. From the Committee’s point of view, when anyone asks the Commission for the facts, it either says that it does not have them to hand, or it says that it cannot give them to anyone because it must first obtain the permission of the member state that spent, or mis-spent, those EU funds. The document will be a great step forward, if it is introduced across the EU. I thank the Minister for his considered view, which appears in the addendum to our 38th report of 18 October. It is an excellent document, and it represents progress. I would have liked him to explain further what he said in that addendum, because it gave us some heart that we would be able to engage in serious dialogue. Although it has not yet been deposited by the Government, the Commission’s 2007 legislative work programme has been introduced, and I look forward to a dialogue with the Minister, as well as the opportunity to work with our colleagues in the other place, on the programme’s details. I should be grateful if we secured a debate on the subject. We received a disappointing result to a perfectly courteous request from the Committee for a detailed explanation of the Government’s position on the items in the document, although the items themselves are to be welcomed. I welcome the Minister’s statement that the EU is seeking no new competences; that is what everyone wanted to hear. People want a position of stability, so that we can have a genuine debate in this period of reflection, as it is called, after the constitution failed to be adopted in some countries.