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A Citizens’ Agenda

I agree with my hon. Friend. The House has a crucial contribution to make to openness and transparency. A notable feature of the wonderful plan D is that it advances the proposition that people should be better informed about decisions that are made on their behalf but does not tackle the problem of the vast number of committees in Europe that are submerged from public view. When Lord Kinnock was vice-president of the Commission, he told an Austrian newspaper three years ago that"““the citizens do not know that there is a secret governing system in Europe… We have more than 300 formations in which officials from the member states meet and pass decisions. That is the largest source of bureaucracy and the black hole in European democracy””." At the same time, Professor Larsson, an academic from Sweden, noted the existence of 1,352 other committees under the Commission that meet in private. However, plan D tackles none of that. The submerged part of the iceberg will therefore remain hidden from public view and parliamentary scrutiny. Let me give the House another relevant example. I am interested in trade reform and fulfilling all the promises that we made last year in the public debate and lobbies about making poverty history. We need to reform our trade procedures, tariffs and quota systems for the benefit of not only those whom we represent but the poorest people in the poorest countries. I naturally turned to the European Union debate on the subject because it takes the lead on trade policy. It transpires that most of the decisions originate in a committee called the ““article 133 committee””. I asked to see the minutes of the discussions on those crucial subjects in the first half of the year. On 15 occasions, I was told that I could not access the minutes. They were blocked—indeed, censored—by something called the ““general secretariat””. The one set of minutes that I obtained was of a meeting that officials from this country attended on 17 February. The decisions and the discussions are interesting, but, in 16 places, the word, ““deleted”” appears. In other words, the especially interesting part of the discussion has simply been erased from the record. As an elected person, trying to do my best for my constituents in delivering the agenda on trade reform, I not only have no influence on the discussions but cannot find out what is being discussed. However, none of that is the subject of plan D. The much-heralded initiative on openness and transparency does not tackle the issue.