European Union (Amendment) Bill

I start by seconding what the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, said about John Major and Strasbourg, as someone who is on the 7 am flight to Strasbourg tomorrow morning and is doing the shuttle twice this week. I must add to the criticisms of Tony Blair, who allowed the protocol to be enshrined in the treaty of Amsterdam in 1997. Unfortunately, we cannot vote on our own seat, which is disgraceful. I also felt that the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, who had our thanks for her mercy mission for the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, must have dropped the papers and jumbled them up before she delivered them to the noble Lord, because I was a bit confused as to why we went via social policy and all around the highways and byways in talking about subsidiarity. Like the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, I am completely mystified as to the motives of the movers of this amendment. I accept that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, wants to be out of the EU altogether but, since he cannot achieve that this evening, I should have thought that the provisions on subsidiarity and the strengthening and reinforcement of those provisions in the treaty of Lisbon were right up his street. I, and I believe others on these Benches, would strongly welcome that reinforcement, and the associated strengthened role through the two protocols of national parliaments in monitoring respect for subsidiarity. A principal objective of the Lisbon treaty is to strengthen the democratic element in the EU, which means enhancing the powers of the European Parliament and boosting the participation of national parliaments. The noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, referred to the demand from the British people that their laws should be decided by the people whom they have elected. That is absolutely right—but those laws are decided by national Ministers and directly elected MEPs. The increase in the role of national parliaments will strengthen that element. National parliaments will be sent draft legislation direct from Brussels and the Commission; it is not mediated or filtered through national Governments. That is important. There is a role for national parliaments in ensuring compliance with subsidiarity, and especially a very strong role with regard to freedom, security, justice and home affairs—which happens to be my speciality. We have benefited a great deal on the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee in the European Parliament, from the increasing number of meetings that we have had with representatives of national parliaments, not least from this house. The noble Lord, Lord Wright of Richmond, is not here, but I pay tribute to him for the strong role that he took in that liaison and partnership function. We will have to do more of that. The EU Committee’s report on the impact of the treaty of Lisbon rightly makes the point that although eight weeks is better than the six weeks that is in the treaties at the moment for the response from national parliaments, it is still not an awfully long time. One of the needs will be for national parliaments to get their response in upstream, to get in early. A close relationship between Members of the European Parliament and their counterparts in national parliaments will be essential to doing that. That is particularly necessary with a tendency to First Reading deals. I was rapporteur on a First Reading deal last year and I am very conscious of the criticisms and the need for more transparency in First Reading agreements. There will be every motive for us all to work together in interparliamentary co-operation among the national parliaments, and between them and the European Parliament, with a particularly strong role on things like monitoring and scrutiny of Europol, Eurojust and other functions in the justice and home affairs area. The orange and yellow card arrangements strengthen the scrutiny function of national parliaments. Some wanted a red card. That was not achieved. But that is to confuse the roles of the national and the European Parliaments. It is a pity that the orange card only covers Commission proposals, which apparently is an oversight since member state proposals often need a great deal of scrutiny. I end on a point made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. National parliaments will have to streamline and enhance their machinery to input both to the Brussels system and with national Governments. That is far from being achieved in this Parliament at Westminster.