European Affairs

I think that it is extremely difficult. A couple of weeks there was a programme on Radio 4 called "Analysis: Divorcing Europe", which was starting to look at some of the options for challenging these presumptions. I want to make two other points, and the first is about this place. We are kidding ourselves if we think that by voting on Select Committee Chairmen, setting up better visitor centres or going online and so on, we will achieve a deepening of parliamentary democracy. We are losing power every step of the way: we have not even begun to come to terms with how we deal with legislation coming out of Brussels, because merely being told more about it is very different from actually having power and influence over it. We have devolved power to Wales and Scotland, but we did not think about what would happen to England as a result of that process. We sit in Westminster, but we have lost power on both sides and we have lost our purpose. I suggest that that is why the expenses scandal has been so damaging. We have failed to defend ourselves, individually and collectively, because we have lost our sense of purpose as an institution. The real challenge for the next Parliament, when it comes in after the election, is to remind itself that its function is not just to talk about things but to hold the Executive to account. We have singularly, totally and completely failed to do that in respect of Europe. I shall finish with one example to illustrate that. We have known that there was going to be a President of the European Council and an External Action Service, because they have been in the pipeline for years. Nothing has changed: it is just that the negotiations have dragged on, but do we know what the Government's position in those negotiations has been? I have here a letter to the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, dated 20 November. The Europe Minister always glares at me when I say something, and then he always assures me that my challenges are baseless. However, I want him to prove that he can be a serious politician and engage with the question that I am putting to him. I should like some precise answers to the questions raised by the letter, which speaks of the""establishment of the European Council as an institution under the Lisbon Treaty"." That is important, because it is the first time that the Council of Ministers has been recognised as an institution. The fact that it is an institution that can define its own powers is much more significant than who the current President is. At the moment it might be a Belgian, but it could be anybody in five, 10 or 20 years' time. The rules of procedure will be agreed. The letter says that""a set of Rules of Procedure for the European Council"" is being drawn up,""which we expect to be tabled for adoption by the European Council either at the December European Council or by written procedure"." So if we already have the rules of procedure—if it is known what they will be—it would be helpful for the House to know them. I hope that the Minister does not just fudge things by saying that this will be done by written procedure, and the House will not be involved. We need to know what the rules will be, because that will decide who draws up the agendas and final conclusions, and who has a role in the Internal Affairs Council. It is no good the Minister frowning like that; these are incredibly important institutional questions about which the House is never told, and which we are never even given the chance to discuss. We would like to see the draft text and know what the review procedure is. As I have said, this is the last such debate before the general election. An extraordinarily select few Members keep turning up, and 90 per cent. of the speeches that we give could be, and probably have been, given at every one of our six-monthly debates, so I suggest that we take them seriously. If they are meant to be about European affairs and the run-up to a Council, will the Minister give me some indication whether any Foreign Secretary, on going to a European Council meeting, has changed their mind or position as a result of such speeches?