European Union (Amendment) Bill

I shall not prolong this as the hour is late and noble Lords wish to go. I shall of course ensure that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, gets all the billets-doux. I normally note who is in the Chamber so we shall ensure that noble Lords get copies of all the relevant material. I am noted for giving people too much paper rather than too little. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, rightly gets to the heart of the matter—what is it that we are trying to describe in this principle. I did not know the background with regard to the Catholic Church. I was grateful for that information and I shall read up on the matter. Certainly it is not a word that trips lightly off the tongue in terms of explanation. The noble Lord is right; traditionally we have looked at it in the context of saying that you devolve down to the lowest possible level where decisions should rightly be made. I put it a different way in saying that the European Union should and must undertake only action which is better achieved at Union rather than national, regional or local level. That is where it can add value. If it cannot do that, it should not undertake that action. Because this principle needs to be probed, prodded, looked at, examined and questioned, it is important that the mechanisms exist for that. Members of the Committee will know too that we have successfully invoked subsidiarity on a number of occasions; for example, in 2003 on taxation, where we argued that a Commission proposal to abolish the UK’s VAT zero rates on food, children’s clothes and so on was inconsistent with subsidiarity. In 2006, following a Commission report to determine what was needed next on labour law, the UK successfully argued that no new EU-level legislation was necessary. As noble Lords have pointed out, in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, we have now given national parliaments for the first time direct powers enforcing the principles of subsidiarity. We accept too that what will be important about that is how we make sure that they actually work. I referred earlier to my conversations with Catherine Day at the Commission the week before last. I know that she was very concerned to think about the broader dialogue that the Commission can have with national parliaments beyond the treaty; in other words to be able to engage quickly and to engage parliaments at the Green Paper stage of Commission thinking, which is something that they are obviously clearly interested in and involved with, and something that I very much encouraged them to do. As well as the formal mechanisms described of orange and yellow cards, having a dialogue that informs the Commission’s policy-making process would be just as important, because those informal dialogues, in the sense that they are not formally in the treaty but are formal in terms of making sure that they take place, would be very important in so doing. We have talked about the eight-week timetable, which is an improvement on what has been proposed before. During that time, nothing can be placed on the provisional Council agenda, so nothing can be prepared while that process is going on, which is an area that noble Lords will be concerned with. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said about COREPER. When I was in Brussels 10 days ago, our permanent representative was hotfoot from several extremely long COREPER meetings, and that is certainly what I recall from being involved with the justice council. It is worth bearing in mind, for those who are not familiar with the process, that if you are a Minister attending from 27 states, you fly in for the meetings. Noble Lords opposite will remember well that you are well briefed, but you have not had time to have the detailed discussion. The work that goes on in COREPER is completely invaluable. What will happen post the ratification of the treaty is that all proposals for legislation will go through COREPER. Noble Lords know the work that it does in preparing for the Council, together with the European Parliament, which is the legislator, as the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, mentioned. Article 240 of the TFEU sets out with minor changes what have been the long-standing provisions on the way in which COREPER works. As I said, I agree with those who paid tribute to it. Again, we find ourselves very quickly into the role of the European Court of Justice. My noble friend Lord Radice said it very well when he said that the role of the European Court of Justice is to interpret the treaties. By definition, its role is described and proscribed by that; by the treaties that the member states agree. It is a creation of the treaties; it is not superior to the treaties. Its job is to interpret the legislation that is decided by the Council or, where co-decision applies, by the European Parliament as well.