European Union (Amendment) Bill

In the United Nations system, there is, of course, no democratic parliamentary body of a global form. We have the parliamentary network for the World Bank. We have various parliamentary bodies, but they are not real parliaments. The European Parliament is a parliament that has real, and increasing, powers. Under the terms of the Lisbon treaty, European legislation will be submitted for a process of dual approval, in equal terms, by the Council, which represents the member states and is composed of Ministers from the democratically elected Governments, who are accountable to their national Parliaments, and by the directly elected Members of the European Parliament, who come from the different political groupings and different countries. It is a dual process of accountability to directly elected Members of the European Parliament and to indirectly appointed Ministers who are indirectly accountable to their national Parliaments. The dilemma for those of us in national Parliaments has always been the inability to get to grips with the accountability of our Ministers when they have gone from our national Parliament to a supernatural body—I mean supranational—[Interruption.] It would be if the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green had his way; of course, those who live on other planets do believe the same thing. There is a need for much greater accountability, and in many ways we are still grappling with that in our own Parliament. When the Foreign Affairs Committee or the European Scrutiny Committee consider these issues, we are frustrated about how Ministers can be properly accountable to this House in our scrutiny of European legislation and in respect of dealing with these matters when they go to meetings of the Council of Ministers. The situation is not satisfactory at present. The current arrangements do not work well, and we must find ways to improve them. The directly elected European Parliament also has an important role. The prior scrutiny of national Parliaments must be reinforced by a change whereby we receive all European legislative proposals directly, in good time, so that we are able to discuss them with Ministers prior to the adoption of common European positions within the EU Council and not, as at the moment, in a rather inadequate way.