European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am, however, attracted to the flavour of my hon. Friend's amendment, which would insert additional provisions after clause 6(1), and is connected to Parliament's power and the scrutiny that Parliament can, or cannot, bring to bear on matters relating to the EU, particularly the timing of any such scrutiny or parliamentary oversight, whatever word we use, and whether it takes place before or after a decision by the Heads of State and Heads of Government in the European Council, or by Ministers, or by list A UKReps. I think that we have a deficit in both regards in the House, despite the valiant efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) and his European Scrutiny Committee. We do not scrutinise nearly as much as we ought to beforehand, and the flavour of amendment No. 286 would take us some way towards remedying that. Proposed new subsection (A3) addresses health services, public education, social housing, postal services and public transport; proposed new subsection (A5) refers to a special committee, which would deal with tariff and trade agreements; and proposed new subsection (A4) deals with the provisions of the treaty relating to workers' rights. As I said earlier in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth, one cannot conduct negotiations in a meaningful way that is helpful to our country by tipping one's hand completely before those negotiations start. That is why the wording in proposed new subsections (A1), (A2) and (A5), namely"““a statement on their negotiating mandate””," is not helpful. The wording would have been better—I suspect that this is what my hon. Friend meant—if it had been, for example, ““a statement on the issues to be discussed””. The thrust of my hon. Friend's remarks earlier today was right. We need better scrutiny and a better idea in advance of the general things that our Ministers, on behalf of the Government and answerable to the legislature, will be saying in negotiations and discussions with representatives of the other 26 member states of the European Union. We do not have enough of that under the current system in the United Kingdom. That does not concern this Government or previous Governments hiding things, although the conspiracy theorists think that it might. Over the years, matters relating to the European Union have not commanded a great deal of attention in the United Kingdom, apart from, as we have seen in the case of this Bill, among a small group of assiduous hon. Members. With that in mind, we should consider what goes on not only in this House, but in society at large. I studied law in the United Kingdom between 1982 and 1984. That was 10 years after we joined the Common Market and the European Communities, which is now the European Union, but there was no mandatory education on the European Communities—there was a little bit in the course on the UK constitution. Ten years after we joined, lawyers in training, as I then was, were not taught about the European Communities, despite the power of the European Court of Justice, which undoubtedly existed then—I am sure that the hon. Member for Stone would argue that it has grown in the ensuing years. Not enough attention was paid to the impact, much of which was positive, of the European Union in the United Kingdom, and that lack of attention to parliamentary procedures, which amendment No. 286 seeks to address, has continued. That is not to say that there is no attention, so perhaps ““insufficient attention”” is an accurate description. If the Minister opposes amendment No. 286 tonight, I will be with him, because the wording is wrong and it includes one or two points with which I might take issue, but its general tenor and flavour are commendable.