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EU Legislation (EUC Report)

My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, has been able to join the debate. I am familiar with his views on this issue. All forms of international co-operation have problems regarding democratic legitimacy. Other forms of multilateral co-operation, such as the G7, the G8 or the climate change discussion now taking place at the Poznan conference, suffer the same sort of problem. We have to have international co-operation, much of which leads to decisions that directly affect this country. The least undemocratic of them, and the one that tries the hardest to be legitimate, is the European Union. I know that the noble Lord will not to his dying day accept that, but it is where we are. When Britain first joined the European Union back in the 1970s, there was a culture in the Commission that had grown around the belief of many that, in the making of Europe and what would be good for it, they knew better than the rest of us. It left me uneasy at the time and, in retrospect, I am still uneasy about it. However, I am happy to say that it has changed with the generations as the European Parliament, national Governments, national parliaments and lobbies have become much more actively engaged in the Commission’s policy-making process. I regret that the Lisbon treaty has not taken us as far as I wanted it to in terms of subsidiarity. It has strengthened the power of national parliaments, but they now have to make use of the leverage that they have been given. There is some way to go. I regret, too, that the coherence of the Commission is an increasing problem. We will now give in to the Irish and recognise that there will continue to be 27 Commissioners, rising to 30 as the Union expands. I think that that is a categorical mistake. It would be much better to have a Commission of 11 or 13 and to recognise that it is the national permanent representatives who look after national interests in Brussels. The Secretariat-General tries hard to pull the different directorates-general and the Commissioners with their interests together. Moreover, as the report rightly flags, multiannual programmes are agreed between the European Council and the Commission, while the annual work programmes and/or legislative programmes provide levers that national scrutiny committees should use and pay more attention to. One should say also that, if there is criticism of EU legislation, some of us have felt while working on the Bills that have come through this House over the past few years that the quality of national legislation can sometimes leave a certain amount to be desired. I want to make a few points arising from the report. The question of British staff in the Commission is one that, as the report rightly notes, we ought to be more actively concerned about. There is a real problem in that the number of people coming out of British schools and universities with language skills is declining, which means that the number of British applicants to the College of Europe, with which I have some association, has declined over recent years. The college is one of the most useful sources of direct recruitment into the Commission. I regret that the European fast stream, a good initiative to encourage more bright young British people to go into the Commission, the Council Secretariat and other Brussels institutions, has been closed. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us whether it may reopen. I regret the closing of the Diplomatic Service language centre, which helped to ensure that enough British officials spoke other European and non-European languages. The Government need to do a number of things to make sure that there are enough people in the Brussels institutions who, as the Brussels saying goes, know this country best. Secondly, Brussels is a paradise for lobbyists, both in and out of the Commission. I strongly agree with the report’s conclusion that there should now be a compulsory register of lobbyists in the Commission and I trust that the committee will, if necessary, return to this issue. There is a clear overlap between lobbyists and the stakeholders whom the Commission consults. We have all seen the extent to which well funded law firms and others in Brussels operate, walking in and out of Commission offices. This requires watching. For example, I was told that the origins of the famous, or infamous, regulations about straight bananas and cucumbers and so on were, in part, lobbyists from supermarket groups that wanted to make sure that they got what they wanted rather than the misshapen products of the past. Box 2 on page 30 refers to Article 13, the amazingly ambitious addition to the Amsterdam treaty, outlawing discrimination on grounds of disablement, race, gender and so on. That was pushed through by a coalition of non-governmental organisations in collaboration with the Commission and various others; most national Governments did not notice. When I chaired Sub-Committee F, we had a look at this and I was struck by the fact that all those who came to talk to us about it from various Brussels NGOs seemed to know the noble Lord, Lord Rix, extremely well. It was all part of an issue that had got round national Governments. It did not affect the British very much because we already had a great deal of the legislation in place, but the implications for Germany, Austria and other countries that had not yet passed anti-discrimination legislation were considerable. I have some reservations about the Commission funding of NGOs. ““Friendly”” organisations, which the Commission consults and says that they represent the people of Europe, ought to make us all nervous. I have been to one of those consultations and I thought that it did not provide a cross-section of popular opinion throughout Europe. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Bowness, said, the overall process is clearly not controlled by the Commission. It involves a range of interested parties. The question for Her Majesty’s Government is how actively we engage and how effectively we play our corner. It has not helped that there have been 10 Europe Ministers in the past 10 years. We would have had a more effective engagement if we had had greater consistency in British voices. The European Union Committee may first have to maintain the excellent quality of its reports. I, too, have on many occasions found in Brussels, in the European Parliament and in the Commission, people who have our reports on their desks and quote them back at us. We have a useful role in the process. We have COSAC, the Conference of Community and European Affairs Committees, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Roper, has told me, a useful developing network of national chairs of committees in national parliaments, which also helps to build up the network of national scrutiny. Moreover, national parliaments, including our own, now have offices in Brussels. I shall add one point to this, which perhaps is a subject for another inquiry. Most other national parliaments also have useful and constructive co-operation between their national Members of the European Parliament, their national scrutiny committees and themselves. We do that remarkably little. Perhaps the European Union Committee might inquire into that further.