My Lords, I spoke at Second Reading about the dropping of Clause 31, which was in the October 2019 version of the Bill and is in Amendment 27, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has just said. I thought it would be helpful to have better detail about the position for MEPs, among other things. The position is set out in Article 218 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which says:
“agreements between the Union and third countries or international organisations shall be negotiated and concluded in accordance with the following procedure.”
It runs through that procedure and says, in paragraph 10:
“The European Parliament shall be immediately and fully informed at all stages of the procedure.”
That is further backed up by the interinstitutional agreement between the European Parliament and the European Commission, which says in part III:
“Parliament shall be immediately and fully informed at all stages of the negotiation and conclusion of international agreements”.
That is at paragraph 23. It goes on:
“The information referred to in point 23 shall be provided to Parliament in sufficient time for it to be able to express its point of view if appropriate, and for the Commission to be able to take Parliament’s views as far as possible into account.”
4.15 pm
As a European Union Committee member, I find that the extraordinary thing that one has been able to see with MEPs over the last four years is the way in which they have started using those powers to get a good grip on the scrutiny of the process that is Brexit.
The Brexit Steering Group, energetically chaired by Guy Verhofstadt—a regular on all our TV screens—is regarded as a deeply successful model. I have been told that by more than one Commissioner, by many officials within the Commission, by Guy Verhofstadt naturally, and by Michel Barnier. I have checked with various other members of the European Union Committee and they believe that to be the case. I have not checked with my noble friend Lord Kerr of Kinlochard; perhaps he will confirm his agreement. It really has been deeply successful, and the Commission members have found it good and have enjoyed the process.
There was evidence of that on Monday, when 45 pages of slides, entitled Internal EU27 preparatory discussions on the future relationship: “Free trade agreement” were published. They give a very detailed and interesting background about how the European Union is getting ready for the free trade agreement negotiations—and, boy, do I wish that we had access to a similar document, which I am sure exists, in preparation for our own negotiations.
I come back to what, in the summer of 2016, the then Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, David Davis, said to us in commenting on whether the UK Parliament would enjoy parity—that was the word we put to him—with the European Parliament during the withdrawal negotiations. He said:
“We will certainly match and, hopefully, improve on what the European Parliament sees.”
We took him at his word, and Amendment 27—which was in the previous Bill and was, after all, a government amendment—was a step in that direction. I am sure there would have been amendments to Clause 31 in that Bill as well. It seemed to me to respect an undertaking given to us by the then Secretary of State. I ask the Minister whether the Government are still behind those words said by David Davis to the European Union Committee and, if so, how they will ensure that they live up to those words.