---

Subsidiarity Assessment: Food Distribution (EUC Report)

My Lords, I remember when the UK last participated in this scheme because I benefited from it. Before I receive commiserations from noble Lords, it was not because I was a poor member of the public who received the unfrozen butter that came out of cold stores in the south-west, but because I was a Member of the European Parliament representing Cornwall and Plymouth and it was a fantastic photo opportunity around Christmas time, when these schemes, whether at European or UK level, strangely came out. I was able to do a press release, and I was reported in the press as securing the south-west’s share of this bounty from the European Union. Unfortunately, I was not pictured distributing our share as Father Christmas, but it was a good wheeze then. Things were very different at that time. There were surpluses within the common agricultural policy, and rather than export them and destroy the third world’s farming populations, we instead decided to try to save some of our own populations from poverty and starvation at Christmas, which I suppose was not a bad objective. Despite being one of the most pro-European Members of this House, I would say that one of the most important things about Europe is that it knows its limits. Certainly, even when I was a Member of the European Parliament, I voted against things like the working time directive and the drinking water directive, not necessarily because I was against them but because they were things that the European Union should not have been involved in. They should have been left to the member states, which were best placed to decide what was right for them. There is no better example of that than this regulation which is being discussed at European level. I should be very interested to hear from the Minister as to where those negotiations have got to. I raise one other question, which perhaps is more to do with the administration of the House. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Roper, can inform me as to whether he believes that we now have procedures in the House suitable to ensure that whenever an issue such as this comes up again—exercising our judgment in terms of the yellow card procedure—we can do this quickly enough so that we can raise support among other national Parliaments within the European Union to make sure that our message is heard. I am disappointed that it is just the Swedes who are following our example—that is not a good sign—but I do not commiserate at all with the Members of the European Parliament in the UK this Christmas who will not have the opportunity that I had back in 1994.