European Affairs

There has been a lot of debate this afternoon about influence and securing positions, and we have discussed how the work of the European Parliament can impact on the UK's influence on legislation and other matters. Having been a member of the European Parliament for five years—more than five years ago now—I know that there are interesting contrasts between debates there, where one is allocated two minutes at 8 pm so that one has to sit down at 8.2 pm, and debates here, where there is genuine discussion and testing of arguments as a result of interventions and so on. The problem in this Parliament, partly because one party is either in government or not, is there is no real communication between the parties aimed at reaching a consensus. That may be a good thing in some ways, but it often means that the views of minorities are not taken into account in quite the same way. The voting system in this Parliament means—we saw this happening last night—that amendments sometimes cannot be debated or voted on. At least the European Parliament could vote on 300 amendments in the space of an hour, and Members could table amendments in order to put down a marker. Even if they knew the amendments would not succeed, it would allow them to smoke out the opposition, who might have to declare their position. There has been much talk about the new Conservative group in the European Parliament. There has been some criticism from Labour Members, much of which is, I think, due to a misunderstanding among both the wider public and the political elite—if that is the right word for the House of Commons—of the way in which the European Parliament works and influence is brought to bear. That is not helped by the fact that our newspapers rarely, if ever, report on the ministrations and machinations of the European Parliament. Only The Financial Times seems to take the processes there seriously. Today a Liberal Democrat made the sensible suggestion that a European Question Time in the House of Commons might provide a useful way of separating European policy from wider foreign policy.