It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) on a subject about which he knows so much and speaks with such passion.
My primary interest in contributing to this debate is to talk about the process that has been adopted and speak in support of the amendment tabled in the name of the Chairs of the Liaison Committee, the European Scrutiny Committee, the Backbench Business Committee,
myself and others. However, I should also say that it is pretty rare—I am trying to think of a single other such occasion—for many of the Chairs of the Select Committees to come together in this way to amend a Government motion.
Our amendment has had to change over the past 48 hours or so because the Government’s motion changed. I should thank the Home Secretary for engaging with the Select Committee Chairs following her statement to the House on Tuesday. The Government’s original motion did not allow for any scrutiny by Select Committees before a vote of the House. The new motion, which the right hon. Lady tabled on Friday, allows for scrutiny and permits the Select Committees to scrutinise the Government’s proposals so that the House can vote on the matter at the end of October.
I say “permits the Select Committees”, but throughout the process the Government have always said that scrutiny by the Select Committees was of paramount importance in dealing with this issue. In fact, in a letter to the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee on 15 October 2012, Lord Boswell said:
“This Government has done its utmost to ensure that Parliament has the time properly to scrutinise our decisions relating to the European Union and that its views are taken into account.”
On 20 January last year, the Minister for Europe said this in a written statement: “I hope that today I have conveyed to the House not only the Government’s full commitment to holding a vote on the 2014 decision in this House and the other place, but the importance that we will accord to Parliament in the process leading up to that vote.” I was therefore very surprised, when I heard the Home Secretary’s statement on Tuesday, to find that the Select Committees had, in a sense, been shunted to one side and not been given the opportunity to scrutinise the Government’s decision.
I accept that this is a long and difficult process. Anyone who has served as Minister for Europe—I see quite a few former Ministers for Europe dotted around the Chamber—will know that dealing with the European Union is not a piece of cake. It takes a huge amount of time and effort to get one’s negotiating stance together, especially when one is putting forward a view that will not be accepted by our European colleagues. However, if the Government have had a long discussion about these matters, the Home Secretary can expect the Select Committees to want to scrutinise them. The Justice, Home Affairs and European Scrutiny Committees all have right hon. and hon. Members—I see here the hon. Members for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) and for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe)—who are seeking to ensure that their views are put forward.
As a result of the Government’s decision last Tuesday, of which we had absolutely no notice, we have had to change the business that the Committee had agreed in order to pursue this when we come back in September. There will be only two sitting weeks in September to scrutinise every one of these proposals. Then there is the natural break for the party conferences, and the House will also come back for two weeks in October. By and large, Select Committees, sit once a week. Their members are very reluctant to sit more than once a week because they are all assiduous Members of this House who have other things to do, usually serving on
other Committees. That means that if we devote all our time to this cause, we will have just four sittings in which we can scrutinise the proposals.
As the Home Secretary knows, a lot of business is going on in the Home Office. I do not have to tell her that, because she is one of the most active Home Secretaries making structural changes to how policing, immigration and counter-terrorism are dealt with. She has set the Select Committee on Home Affairs a huge amount of work over the past three years. We will have to put that to one side in order to spend our time scrutinising these proposals. I am sure that that will also apply to members of the other Committees.
Today’s motion still does not give us enough time. There is not enough time before 31 October to be able to do justice to the kinds of things that the right hon. Member for Wokingham talked about—not just individual matters but fundamental issues of principle. However, we will do our best. As I promised the Home Secretary last week when I met her, the Home Affairs Committee, subject of course to the views of its members, will have a report for her by the end of October, but to do so by then will be extremely tough.
My question to the Home Secretary is this: why should we have a vote tonight, given that we got these proposals only on Tuesday last week? What is the point of asking the House to deliberate on these matters before the Committees have had the opportunity to discuss and to scrutinise them? She says that she needs a mandate in order to be able to show the Commission that the House is prepared to opt out.