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Hague Programme

Anyone reading the motion on the Order Paper could be forgiven for thinking that it says it all. Unfortunately, the context in which this debate has arisen demonstrates that what we see on the Order Paper is no more than some fairly woolly words that do not describe with any accuracy what has gone before. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) and his European Scrutiny Committee have, in their disappointment at the Government’s response to their questions, required that the report should be debated on the Floor of the House. I accept that the Chamber is not particularly crowded this afternoon, but some Members present were not on that Committee. It is essential that the Minister and, through her, the rest of the Government, should be left in no doubt that so far the Government’s performance in such matters has been wholly unsatisfactory. One does not have to read the question and answer session before the hon. Gentleman’s Committee on 18 October to feel a terrible sense of foreboding that we are being represented inadequately in negotiations in Europe about these very important home affairs and justice issues. When the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) held the Minister’s current role, I debated with her in Committee a similar set of proposals in relation to the penal regime that flowed from breaches of environmental law. On 13 September 2005, the European Court of Justice ruled on the powers that allow the European establishment to impose criminal sanctions for breaches of legislation in policy areas where the European Union has primacy in matters of law. That disappointed many of us. When I asked the hon. Member for Slough what would be the effect of a vote negativing the take-note motion that she was moving, she candidly said that it would have no effect at all and that the Government would not be influenced by it one way or the other. It strikes me as strange that a Committee of the House set up to discuss a particular European activity was being told by a Minister of the Crown that we could do and say as we wished, but it would make no difference to the Government’s implementation of policy.