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A Citizens’ Agenda

I have a constructive suggestion—opening up all the secret committees to public scrutiny. The Government are guilty of secrecy in the House. I serve on the European Scrutiny Committee, along with the distinguished new Chairman, who contributed earlier. Our deliberations take place in private. The public are not allowed even into those. In the previous Parliament, we passed a motion to open up the Committee to public scrutiny so that the press and the public can see what we do on their behalf. That sat in the in-tray of the then Leader of the House and he did nothing to change Standing Orders. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) is right—not only the European Union but the British Government have a conspiracy against the public. That makes any initiative about openness and transparency a sham. The documents also refer to the allied question of over-regulation and discuss the need to reduce the burdens and intrusions suffered by businesses and the public. I have counted last year’s directives, regulations and binding decisions, of which there are 2,900. That adds to the acquis communautaire in the European Union, which already runs to more than 100,000 pages. The European Scrutiny Committee grapples with the issue as best it can, but we cannot stop those regulations, and, increasingly, the Government cannot stop them, too, because more and more of them are decided by majority voting. Again, the analysis is correct, but the policy is lacking. The hon. Member for Cardiff, Central (Jenny Willott) referred to one of the specifics in plan D, the entitlement card. Who will pay for the entitlement card? What will be on it? Will it include a chip containing all 100,000 pages of the acquis communautaire to let us know what we are entitled to in the European Union? Is that really the way to close the gap between the public and the politicians in Europe? It has also been suggested that a corps of European goodwill ambassadors will go around telling us about plan D. Have they arrived here yet—I have not met them? Who will pay for them? I am willing to meet them, because I am a man of goodwill. There is a serious problem, and it cannot be solved by reviving a discredited European constitution. If we are to create a people’s Europe rather than a politician’s Europe, if we want a democratic Europe rather than a bureaucratic state and if we want an open Europe rather than a closed shop, we need the fundamental, thoroughgoing reform of the entire way in which the European Union is structured, financed and run. Such a project is entirely lacking in the documents, and it was not even attempted in the Convention on the Future of Europe. In a notably weak contribution this afternoon, the Minister gave no hint of any Government ambition in that direction. It will therefore fall to this party, when in government, to take forward that task not only on behalf of the people of this country, but on behalf of the people of Europe, who are struggling to create a different Europe that yearns to be free.