EU: Financial Management and Fraud (EUC Report)

My Lords, I agree with that—it is a constructive contribution to this evening’s debate. Another constructive contribution came from the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, who stressed the supervisory role for the Court of Auditors over national audit organisations, in auditing EU expenditure. We believe that the court should continue to develop its relationship with national audit institutions—but of course such institutions inevitably report in democracies to their national parliaments, so a formal supervisory role for the court would clearly be inappropriate. So there are limits on that dimension—but I am grateful for the point that he made. I agree with the noble Lord, too, about extending the internal control system for agriculture. It is being steadily extended to cover an ever-greater proportion of agricultural spending. As agriculture is such an important part of EU expenditure, we cannot make progress unless we have improvements in that area. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson, covered a very wide range of issues from his well-known standpoint on Europe. He suggested that the Commission stood idly by while the rampant culture of corruption persists. I have already indicated that the committee’s report does not give much support to that idea—but what is this about the Commission doing ““nothing””? There were the reforms introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, and the annual activity reports by each director general. Accrual accounting has been introduced—and the Commission was one of the first public bodies in Europe to introduce that concept. There is also the action plan to improve internal financial control and Barroso’s political commitment to getting a positive statement of assurance. So what is this suggestion that somehow the Commission is just complacent in that regard? How could it be in circumstances in which there are, in the European Parliament and nation state legislatures, debates such as the one that we are having this evening, identifying the weaknesses that obtain? I do not accept the noble Lord’s concept that all that Europe does is stand idly by while these charges are made. It may stand idly by when it detects that charges are made from an ideological perspective that wishes that it did not exist, but it does not stand idly by when a considered report comes from a House of Lords committee comprising people who have thought about and investigated the issues intensely and produced a coherent and cogent report such as the one that we are debating this evening, which gives us a base for challenging the Commission. As I said earlier, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, on his contention about whistleblowers. I shall not comment on the Marta Andreasen case in detail, as this Dispatch Box would not be the place from which to comment on what we all recognise is a complex issue. In any case, this Government are not her employer—the European Commission is, and it is the Commission’s business to sort this out. However, I accept that we should learn from the case in terms of practice—and I accept a good deal of what the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, said about the necessity for the protection of whistleblowers. He was supported from his own Front Bench in those terms.