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EU: Codecision (EUC Report)

My Lords, I do not think that anyone would disagree that today it is more important than ever to ensure effective scrutiny of European legislation. The reason it is more important than ever—I do not say that just as a cliché—relates to the number of policy areas which are subject to what we must now call the ordinary legislative procedure. They have been increased by the Lisbon treaty. It is not surprising that the report we are debating today into the existing pattern of scrutiny has recommended a number of detailed changes to the present arrangements. I congratulate the committee and the noble Lord, Lord Roper, on the great care taken in considering the changes and making recommendations and practical suggestions about what should be done to take account of them. I also congratulate the Government on the constructive way in which they have responded to the report. Anyone who has read the correspondence between the noble Lord, Lord Roper, and the Minister, in all fairness, would have to come to that conclusion. Reading the exchange of correspondence since the report, one sees what I suppose would be called an iterative process; put more colloquially, the committee has squeezed and, without squeezing too hard, has got most of the juice out of this orange. As was pointed out in the last letter in the correspondence and reiterated by the noble Lord, Lord Roper, two outstanding issues are left. One is the publishing of the scrutiny guidance; the second is the provision of limité documents. Coming to this afresh—or perhaps I should say after a decent interval of a decade—it seems to me that there is no valid reason for withholding the scrutiny guidance, or providing the limité documents, perhaps with certain safeguards. It may be, knowing the ways of government, as most people in this House do, that the Government have held up these two little prizes for presentation in this debate. The final fruits of the work of the committee may be greeted with success at the conclusion of the debate. I hope that that is so, because I cannot see any justification for not giving them. In a sense, I have sympathy with both sides of the argument. It is obviously important for effective scrutiny that information should be properly and adequately supplied, and that it should be supplied in a timely fashion. No useful purpose would be served by ensuring just an academic, backward-looking analysis. The information should be provided in time for comment and criticism before the final government decision on the legislation. The report rightly points out that the use of informal trialogues—that is to say, small, private meetings between representatives of the Council, the Commission and the European Parliament—which may have increased, makes that more difficult to achieve. However, that process—the use of the informal trialogues—is inevitable as a way of reaching agreement in reasonable time. Things move fast, and have to move fast. All I say from my experience as a Commissioner is that when Parliaments tie down their Governments totally in advance and remove flexibility, that does not result in a better outcome for the country concerned. Denmark is of course the locus classicus where that happens. Sometimes, countries are unable to negotiate in a nimble and dextrous way if they are tied down by a rigid parliamentary mandate, which makes them less effective partners with their colleagues in working out the final legislative solution. Our system is a long way from that, but one can understand Governments—any Government—not wanting, by conceding too much, to get closer to the Danish position. It is boring but true to say that we need the right balance. I believe that the process of push and pull between the committee and the Government has updated that balance in the light of changing circumstances and should improve the scrutiny process. I should say that it will improve the scrutiny process; it would be churlish to say just that it should. I was going to say that it should significantly improve it, but the correspondence shows that in this context "significantly" and "substantially" have special meanings which are viewed with deep suspicion, so I shall leave it by omitting adverbs and say only that I welcome the improvements that have arisen and will arise from that iterative process.