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EU Legislation (EUC Report)

My Lords, it is a great pleasure for me, on behalf of your Lordships’ House, to congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, on his maiden speech and his clear and informative explanation of the purpose, key observations and conclusions of the report on the initiation of EU legislation. Command of the English language, which manifests itself in an ability to make every word count in speeches that flow seamlessly from one point to the next so that the whole is a focused, cogently argued and persuasive case, is a priceless skill that one associates with eminent and distinguished noble and learned Lords. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, has shown in his speech that, as I am sure we all expected, he is no exception. I am a member of the European Union sub-committee involved in the report that we are considering, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, chairs that sub-committee with great skill and authority. His wife is also a distinguished and eminent judge. They were the first married couple both to sit on the High Court Bench and the first and, I believe, still the only married couple both to sit in the Court of Appeal. The noble and learned Lord became a member of your Lordships’ House in 2005, on his appointment as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary. It has been our loss that the self-imposed constraints that limit the occasions on which Law Lords address your Lordships’ House have until now denied us the opportunity of hearing from the noble and learned Lord. We very much hope that there will be other occasions when we will have the benefit of hearing from him. The noble and learned Lord has drawn our attention to the key observations and conclusions in the report. I await with interest my noble friend’s speech, in which I assume that he will talk about the Government’s response. However, I shall confine my contribution to a few—““few”” is the operative word—general observations and impressions. My key feeling, having heard the witnesses and read the written evidence, is that the process by which ideas are transformed into legislative proposals is very much collective. The Commission is the body with the near monopoly of power to submit proposals for adoption as EU legislation but, as witnesses said to us and as the report indicates, it does not have the monopoly of ideas. The Commission was given the power that it has as the body representing the collective interest of the European Union and able to act impartially in that general interest. That may not always be the approach of a member state, which may consider issues with its own interests uppermost. The Commission is also the guardian of the treaties and the enforcer of the law and it follows through the policies adopted by the Union. It has to assess and cost ideas and consult on them and form a view on the level of support or otherwise among member states. However, the Commission does not work in a vacuum. There is little point in the Commission putting forward proposals that are unlikely to find favour in the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament because, although the Commission can propose, it cannot enact any required legislation. The wishes of the European Council, the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the individual member states are a key source of Commission proposals, which come forward as draft legislation. Of course, those wishes may at times be expressed in very general terms, which gives considerable scope and influence to the Commission in developing and proposing the form and manner in which those wishes and general ideas may be implemented. It would also be true to say that, with the small army of lobbying organisations in Brussels, to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, referred, pressing their particular and varying viewpoints in addition to the member states, the Commission can probably claim that just about any proposal that it decides to make reflects at least some representations made to it and that it is not simply a new initiative from the Commission alone. However, I formed the view from the evidence that I heard and read that the Commission did not seek to impose its views and thinking on unwilling elected politicians, but rather sought to listen to the views of a wide variety of organisations and interests and to put forward proposals for legislation that were likely after consultation and, yes, compromise to attract support from the elected legislators. In short, ideas incorporated in proposals for legislation from the Commission come from a wide variety of sources and the extent to which elected politicians, through the Council of Ministers, the European Parliament and member states, want to be the key players in originating and pressing such ideas into legislation is a matter for those elected politicians to decide and determine. Perhaps they should seek to play a bigger role, because the processes and procedures are there—and would be even more so under the treaty of Lisbon—to enable them to be the key players in influencing and shaping what the Commission proposes, in addition to being the ultimate arbiters in determining what proposals become EU legislation.