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EU Trade Policy: EUC Report

My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Cohen, and her sub-committee on having produced such an excellent report for our discussion today. It has taken some time to get this debate but it is a report of great importance and I believe that, as we have already heard, it is a debate that we need to have here. I thank the Lord President for his work as Trade Commissioner and for the evidence that he gave to the committee, as well as for coming to reply to the debate today. It is probably unprecedented for a non-ministerial witness to a Select Committee to reply to a debate on the committee’s report in this House. However, that has occurred on this occasion. As the Lisbon treaty has come into effect today, I also send my good wishes to our colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, who today takes up her responsibilities as high representative and will in due course be a vice-president of the Commission. I do not usually speak in debates on reports prepared by one of the European Union sub-committees. However, given that the Lisbon treaty comes into force today, I thought that it might be appropriate for me to say a few words. The coming into force of the treaty marks the end of a long period of institutional discussions and negotiations. I hope that this means that the European Union will now be able to concentrate on policy issues that are crucial to this country and to the world. The EU’s trade policy, which we are considering today, is an important example, and it is perhaps worth noting that the Lisbon treaty today extends the competences of the European Union in trade matters to include international negotiations on trade in services, intellectual property and foreign direct investment. As the Lisbon treaty has today come into effect and this has implications for the work of your Lordships’ House and for the committee which I chair, I hope that I may be permitted to say a few words about that. For the first time, the treaty recognises a specific role for national parliaments. From today, either Chamber of Parliament is able to submit to the Commission a reasoned opinion drawing attention to any proposal that it believes is inconsistent with the principle of subsidiarity. If enough chambers of national parliaments across the European Union submit reasoned opinions, the so-called yellow or orange card procedure will apply. This will put negotiations on the proposal concerned on hold and require the Commission to respond to the concerns of national parliaments. Your Lordships may be interested to know how the EU Select Committee has prepared for this new power. We already pay particular attention to subsidiarity in the scrutiny of proposals but will in future work to try to identify subsidiarity issues at the earliest possible stage. This will be perhaps as a result of an alert from another parliament, through our own examination of one of the Commission’s strategy documents or when proposals are deposited in Parliament. If a concern is raised, the committee will have the option to fast track its scrutiny of a proposal to ensure that its work is completed within the eight-week scrutiny period allowed for in the treaty. As soon as concern is identified, our committee staff will alert the devolved Assemblies in this nation and other national parliaments. If a sub-committee agrees that there is a breach of subsidiarity, it will produce a reasoned-opinion report for consideration by your Lordships’ House. The treaty also enhances the House's scrutiny of government decisions to opt in to justice and home affairs measures. That goes beyond the topics of today’s debate, but I will return to it on another occasion. These are potentially significant new powers, but I remind the House of one of the conclusions of the 2008 report on the Lisbon treaty prepared by the committee under the chairmanship of my colleague the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell: ""The novelty of the card procedures, and their prominence in the Treaty, should not give rise to overestimation of their importance … National parliaments will no doubt take the new procedures seriously, but they should not distract attention from scrutiny of policy"." The committee will make full use of these new powers, but it will continue its vital scrutiny work of which this report of the committee of the noble Baroness, Lady Cohen, is such an excellent example.