European Affairs

My hon. Friend—I regard him as a friend—has a very balanced view about these matters and many others that we share an interest in. I think we have a potential for earlier intervention that may be denied us if some of our Committee's requests are not listened to by the Government. We are concerned about what is happening post-Lisbon; I am sure that Opposition Front Benchers will say, "We told you so." The main problem is that the Lisbon treaty creates a whole new concept of non-legislative Acts. Those need to be properly scrutinised. They will be decisions of the Council rather than legislative Acts. Unfortunately, Lisbon does not refer to their having to be scrutinised in any of the processes. We are requesting the policy papers that lead to the common foreign and security policy, which has been a concern of many Members, and the European security and defence policy, which will now not be legislative Acts. We are asking for a change in our Standing Orders specifically to say that legislative Acts and non-legislative Acts will be referred to our Committee for the scrutiny process. Another aspect that we are concerned about is the new European external action service, which will become an acronym of some kind and we will not remember what it means two months from now. Again, that was required on the basis of a Council decision, and it needs to be properly scrutinised. There are major uncertainties about the external action service. Will it be a Commission entity, or will it sit somewhere indeterminate between Council references and Commission references? We have to get that cleared up. What will its external delegations do? Presumably they will promulgate the new common security and defence policy, but under which supervision method, at European level and at national Parliament level? There has always been a mystery about this. A previous Defence Secretary and Europe Minister has defended the right of the Government not to give our Committee access to these papers on the ground that it is far too sensitive for Parliament to know what is happening in foreign policy and defence, which is of course ridiculous. Perhaps I am paraphrasing what the former Minister said, but I am certainly quite clear about what he meant. [Interruption.] Add the two ministerial positions together to work out which former Minister it was—they held both. I am not into personalities, I am much more into the substance of what is said. Will the new European external action service missions be responsible for delivering EU aid, and how will that cut across the role of the Department for International Development and the interest of national Parliaments? All that must be brought to us for proper scrutiny before the Council's decision is reached, and I hope that the Government will take those matters on board in the forthcoming negotiations and discussions about what we should do to our Standing Orders. There is also the problem of derogations from the eight-week period for parliamentary scrutiny. The Lisbon treaty extended that from six weeks, but it was then agreed that if there were exceptional circumstances, Parliaments would not be given those eight weeks. Those exceptional circumstances will not be available to us to debate, because the decision will be taken in the Council. It will decide, "This is an exceptional matter. We are not going to give the Parliaments the eight weeks we promised to scrutinise this process". That is very dangerous, and I should like an assurance from the Minister and the Government that they will not allow that to happen and will veto any proposal to take away this Parliament's power to have eight weeks to scrutinise anything coming from the Council.