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EU Legislation (EUC Report)

My Lords, I begin with a brief apology. The Government would have preferred that the Minister replied to this debate but, as noble Lords will have appreciated from their television screens, my noble friend Lord Malloch-Brown is somewhat preoccupied with the disastrous developments in southern Africa, particularly in relation to the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe, and it will be appreciated that he is doing such distinguished and sterling work with regard to that aspect of the Foreign Office that it precludes him from responding to a debate of this significance today. It therefore falls to me to respond and to begin by congratulating the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, on what I think was a unique maiden speech. A maiden speech that is also a sad swan-song is an interesting concept. The noble and learned Lord also indicated that it might be a little while before the House heard from him again because of the constitutional changes that are being effected. In due course, however, I hope that his maiden speech will be looked upon as the first of the contributions that the noble and learned Lord will make to the House. We have all valued his work; strange it is that that work should be done by someone who has not spoken in the House before and yet has made such a contribution, as represented by the report. I both congratulate him on the report and thank him for the precise, accurate and effective way in which he made his maiden speech today. I did not detect the bundle of nerves that normally besets some of us when we first address the House, but then the noble and learned Lord has been with us for several years and has been doing sterling work alongside his colleagues. We very much respect that contribution. The Government broadly welcome the report and recognise that it points to ways in which we can be more assertive about the need for reform in Brussels. In a moment I shall come on to the various contributions to the debate that have raised issues of principle. The noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, presented his case with his usual forcefulness. That case is not related to the constructive concepts of this report but is to damn the Commission and all its works as having failed any conceivable democratic test. Therefore, there is not much that the report can possibly have in the way of enlightenment for the noble Lord. However, he will appreciate that my noble friends Lord Tomlinson and Lord Rosser had partly anticipated that onslaught, as indeed had the noble Lord, Lord Bowness. Having worked so hard on the report and on how we can make European institutions and the Commission more effective, they were concerned to present a rather robust, principled position on the role the Commission plays. I do not have time to deploy that case in full; indeed, that has already been done successfully for the Government by the three noble Lords to whom I have made reference. Instead I shall respond to the report, which identifies where we can effect greater reforms in Europe to improve the work of the institutions. The Commission is much misunderstood in Britain. That is not surprising. The noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, berates the Commission—we have heard the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, do the same on other occasions—for being very different from any structure that we know of in the United Kingdom or indeed in other parliaments and democracies that follow our model. The Commission is different because the European institutions are different in their approach to representation of the democratic will and to how decisions are taken in Europe. Of course I understand the extent to which criticism against the Commission can be voiced, but let us not exaggerate. The noble Lord, Lord Astor of Hever, indicated that he had reservations about the amount of legislative proposals that emerge from Europe. There was a time under a former Administration when there were a very large number of regulations relating to the essential building work of establishing the single market. We are all aware that a large amount of cross-European legislation was necessary. A House of Lords Library report indicates that about 8 per cent of our legislation emanates from Brussels. So let us not be caught up in the myth that the United Kingdom has handed over its law-making capacity to Brussels. That is just not so, and it needs to be understood.