European Scrutiny Committee
Oral evidence: European Document debates, HC 975
Tuesday 7 January 2014
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 7 January 2014.
Members present: Mr William Cash (Chair); Andrew Bingham; Mr James Clappison; Michael Connarty; Chris Heaton-Harris; Kelvin Hopkins; Jacob Rees-Mogg; Mr Michael Thornton
Questions 1-105
Witnesses: Rt Hon David Lidington MP, Minister for Europe, FCO, and Dr Andrew Murrison MP, Minister for International Security Strategy, Ministry of Defence, gave evidence, accompanied by Chloe Squires, Head of Security Policy Department, FCO, and Kenny Maclure, Assistant Head, Defence Equipment and Support International Relations Group, MoD.
Chair: Good morning, Ministers. Yesterday we had a written ministerial statement from the Prime Minister on the European Council, which focused on Defence and Economic and Monetary Union. As you will know from our report, which has been published and to which the Government are about to respond, and in other correspondence with the Prime Minister, we made it clear that the Committee expected to have oral statements on the Floor of the House in respect of matters of this kind. In the past, Urgent Questions have been accepted by the Speaker. It is not a matter for you, Minister, to answer for the Prime Minister, and I am sure that you would not want to do so, but I want to put on the record our concern about this and say that I have written to the Prime Minister today on that subject. Let us leave that as a matter of record for the time being.
Q1 Mr Clappison: Good morning. Welcome to you and your colleague. You wrote to us on 16 December and thanked us for our “important report” on reforming the European scrutiny system and for the “considerable thought that has clearly gone into the report and its recommendations.” However, since mid-November when our report was agreed, the Government—the Foreign Office, your Department—have denied us debates on the Floor of the House on Syria, on the run-up to the Defence European Council, which the Chair just mentioned, and on relations between the Commission and national Parliaments, and the debate on the Commission Work Programme for 2014 is still pending. In the light of that, can you give us an assurance that no policy decision has been taken by No. 10 and the Foreign Office to restrict the time taken on European business on the Floor of the House?
Mr Lidington: Thank you, Chair. Before I answer, it might help to know that Dr Murrison from the Ministry of Defence is here with me; for the record, I am being supported by Chloe Squires from the Foreign Office, and Dr Murrison by Kenny Maclure from the Ministry of Defence.
Obviously the report produced was detailed, and I do not resile from the words that I used in my initial response to it. I am sure that the Committee would not expect me this morning to pre-empt the contents of the Government’s comprehensive response to the Committee’s recommendations, and I am not going to do so. That is already the subject of a fair amount of interdepartmental discussion, and there will have to be senior ministerial discussion within Government to agree the Government’s response to the Committee’s report in due course. We hope to get that out as early as we are able to this year.
In direct response to the points that Mr Clappison made, no, there is not some policy deliberately to restrict debates on the Floor of the House. I am perfectly willing to go through each of the various measures—
Q2 Mr Clappison: I am grateful for that, but could I ask you to focus particularly on the Syria question and to explain why it was thought to be not appropriate to have a debate on the comprehensive EU approach to Syria? Many MPs would think that that was pre-eminently suitable for parliamentary debate.
Mr Lidington: I think that this request needs to be seen, if we look at it in terms of the Government’s accountability to Parliament for its foreign policy, in the context of the broad, overall pattern of Government statements to Parliament and debates in Parliament about Syria. As the Committee will recall, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has made regular statements about Syria on the Floor of the House, and on pretty well all of those occasions he has taken questions from MPs of all parties for about an hour; also, there was a full day’s debate on Syria on a substantive motion immediately after the long recess, so I do not think that one can argue in any way that Parliament has somehow been denied the opportunity to challenge and question the Government on their policy towards Syria.
I am not trying to dodge Mr Clappison’s question. This document was specifically about where the European Union, in terms of its particular niche expertise and its funding mechanisms, might be able to play a more effective part in overall Syria policy. For that reason and in that broader context, certainly it was my judgment that it was a matter that would be appropriately explored in detail in Committee, with my hon. Friend the Minister responsible for the Middle East able to take questions from members of that Committee and from whichever other Member of the House wanted to take part in that Committee’s proceedings.
Q3 Mr Clappison: Well, can I gently probe you on that? First, you mentioned a full day’s debate on Syria after the long recess, but I think you would accept, with your expert knowledge, that things in Syria have moved on pretty considerably since then.
On your second point, that there have been statements on the issues, I hope you are not putting forward the proposition that because there has been a statement, there does not need to be a debate. Statements are very welcome—the Foreign Secretary is very good at answering questions about statements—but there should be an opportunity for Parliament to debate things, should there not? A statement is not a substitute for debate, is it? Or is that a new thesis?
Mr Lidington: No, it is not a new thesis. Of course, there have been debates on the Government’s policy towards various aspects of the Middle East and on foreign policy in general since the general election and under previous Governments. Things have moved on in terms of events in Syria, but the document that was scheduled for discussion was a specific EU document about the EU role. It did not, for example, touch on the wider issues of United Nations involvement in the process that had been entered into for the surrender and dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons stocks. It would be quite within reason for Members of the House to ask for statements or debates on those broad issues to do with Syria policy, and if they felt that the Government were not being sufficiently forthcoming, they could go to the Backbench Business Committee and ask for Back-Bench time to be made available on a Thursday for that sort of wide-ranging debate. This was a debate, however, about a specific angle—what the EU and the EU specifically was doing.
Q4 Michael Connarty: With all due respect, Minister—a terrible phrase, which means, “I think you are missing the point”—this is a European Scrutiny Committee and you are the Minister for Europe. There are major concerns in the country about our relationship with the EU, as well as about Syria. A debate seems appropriate to me. I enjoy probing Ministers in the Standing Committees, particularly when they are well enough briefed to reply and do not just promise to write, but the interest to the public is to see what our relationship to the EU is and what is going on in the EU in relation to Syria. There is concern that—I will come to this later—the EU is extending its remit in matters of international security and defence. People want to know what the relationship is, then that is a debate for the Floor of the House, because, sadly, under both the previous Government and this Government, we have downgraded the interest in the Standing Committees, in the way they are formed and the way they do their business. That is why a debate in relation to the EU would be reasonable on the Floor of House. That is why it was requested by this Committee. To talk about the generality, which can be covered in other ways, is to divert the attention of those listening to or reading this debate as to why you did not debate the EU’s involvement in Syria on the Floor, because there is a reasonable case for you as a Minister to explain to the House and to the public through Parliament in the Commons, on the Floor of the House rather than in Committee, what that relationship is and what the EU role is.
Mr Lidington: I can make three points in response to that. First, part of the context in which this needs to be seen is a very significant increase in the number of debates referred from this Committee and held on the Floor of the House each year, compared with the situation before the last election and before the Lisbon Treaty. Part of that is because of the enhanced arrangements for JHA, I acknowledge, but that is part of the overall picture.
Secondly, I do not accept that there was any question of competence creep involved in the European Union’s activity as regards Syria. It has not been any great secret that there have been disagreements between different members of the European Union as regards Syria policy, and the fact that CFSP decisions have to be taken by unanimity means that you are therefore limited in what you are able to do. Where the EU does have a role to play is partly through its funding mechanisms—for example, in humanitarian relief to the many hundreds of thousands of displaced people within and outside Syria’s borders—and partly through some of its mechanisms to do with reconstruction in the event that there is some kind of settlement in Syria. So I genuinely do not agree that there was any question of competence creep or of the EU trying to tell the United Kingdom, France or anyone else what they should do.
Thirdly, I understand what Mr Connarty is saying about the primacy of the Chamber and I alluded to the fact that there have been a lot more debates in the past three years on European matters in the Chamber than before. I have to say that my genuine conclusion from my experience in the House is somewhat different. In my view, if one is wanting to hold the Government to account on something like Syria—to question Ministers in detail about whether there has been competence creep and whether there is evidence of that—a two-and-a-half-hour slot in Committee, including up to 60 minutes of question and answer, is often a more effective way in which to do that than a 90-minute timed debate on the Floor of the House, most of which is taken up by the Minister, the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, the spokesman for the Liberal Democrats parliamentary party and someone from this Committee. Once those four participants are out of the way, that is most of the 90 minutes done, whereas, in Committee it is often possible—if the Committee is willing to undertake the work and other Members not on the Committee attend—to go into greater depth and really challenge the Government.
Chair: With great respect, Minister, you have read our report, even though you have not replied to it yet, and we made it absolutely crystal clear—I do not think there is any doubt about this—that the functioning of the Committees as they now operate is not effective. Furthermore, we are calling for permanent membership of those Committees precisely to deal with the point you just raised: because of the manner in which the questions are put, the fact that Members are drafted on to those Committees by the Whips, the fact that that quite often people are sitting there in hope that the thing will finish as quickly as possible—that is no substitute for a proper discussion. In matters of this kind, for example, where we are dealing with extremely sensitive questions which relate to Middle East policy, people from the Foreign Affairs Committee and from all parts of the House would want to ask questions. I really have to say that, in light of our report, I do not regard your answer as anything near adequate.
Q5 Jacob Rees-Mogg: Minister, in response to Mr Clappison, you very helpfully said that the document we had recommended was a document on the EU role. Well, isn’t that self-evident, as otherwise we would not have recommended it, and isn’t that the job of the Committee? Do you agree with that?
Mr Lidington: Of course.
Q6 Jacob Rees-Mogg: Thank you. And therefore, because it had been debated generally, there was no need to debate the specific EU aspects on the Floor of the House. Surely it is this Committee’s job to make such recommendations?
Mr Lidington: It is the job of the Committee to make recommendations, by all means. I completely accept that. The Government, collectively, then has to decide, taking into account other pressures on Government business and our judgment about the appropriate way for a particular document to be debated, whether this should go to the Floor of the House or to Committee. That dilemma is not novel.
There has been a significant increase in recent years in the number of documents which this Committee has chosen to refer for debate on the Floor of the House. That is the prerogative of this Committee. The Government has to decide, case by case, whether it will accede to those demands. We have found Government time for significantly more of those debates to take place on the Floor of the House than used to be the custom.
Q7 Jacob Rees-Mogg: You say, Minister, that there is pressure on Government time. If we think back over the week before Christmas—and indeed yesterday—I wonder on how many occasions Government business has finished early and whether this pressure on time is a real pressure or a convenient pressure.
Mr Lidington: I think it is a real pressure. When the Government tables business such as the Report stage of a Bill, it cannot be certain, until the day of that debate, whether amendments will be tabled and whether they will be debated at length and pressed to Division, such as to use up the allotted time.
Q8 Jacob Rees-Mogg: So you are saying that the Government is not good at managing its time?
Mr Lidington: The Government has to make assumptions about the time that the House would expect to take to consider legislation properly. I understand completely the sense of frustration—I have shared it myself on many occasions—when business has collapsed without a Division, but, to complete my point, the Government would be criticised with some justification if it were to announce that a Report stage or Second Reading of a Bill should be confined to, perhaps, half a day of parliamentary business because the Government, in its wisdom, had assumed that that was all the time that Parliament needed. The argument cuts both ways.
Q9 Jacob Rees-Mogg: So, if I understand you correctly, you are saying that the document was an EU document and there were pressures of time and, therefore, the Government decided that it would not make any time available for a debate on an important issue. On that basis, couldn’t you prevent ever having a debate on the Floor of the House? Almost all of the documents we present are of a detailed nature—that is the basis of how scrutiny works. Government time is always under pressure in the vague sense that the Government is able to fill it—that is never really a great difficulty. Therefore you downgrade the role of this Committee by essentially arbitrarily deciding that you think that a two-and-a-half hour debate would be of greater interest, which is surely the role of this Committee in the first place: if we have recommended something for a debate we have clearly decided that a two-and-a-half hour debate is not better.
Mr Lidington: I do not think I can accept the principle that the Government should automatically agree to every request from this Committee for a particular EU document to be debated on the Floor of the House rather than in Committee. That would take us on to a broader debate that would have to involve business managers and different Departments.
I go back to the point I made. Looking at the record: in the 2010-12 Session, which was a long Session, there were 18 debates on the Floor of the House covering 36 documents on references from this Committee, and in the incomplete figures for 2012-13 that I have so far—I am not sure whether they go right to the end of that Session—there were 10 such debates covering 33 documents. If I go back to previous Sessions, in 2009-10 there was one motion covering nine documents, in 2008-09 there were four motions covering 14 documents and in 2007-08 there were three motions covering four documents.
Now, I accept that Lisbon has made a difference, and the agreement the Government gave to enhanced scrutiny of Justice and Home Affairs accounts for a number of those debates on the Floor of the House, but looking at that record overall, I do not think that it could be said that the Government is somehow conspiring to deny this Committee the opportunity to go for a debate on the Floor of House.
Q10 Jacob Rees-Mogg: So you are saying that it would be uncharitable of me to think that the Government, having lost a vote on Syria, did not want to have another debate on the Floor of the House?
Mr Lidington: I would never accuse Mr Rees-Mogg of a lack of charity, but I think that would be to apply a mistaken interpretation to the Government’s motives here.
Q11 Kelvin Hopkins: Before I ask my question, to follow the strong line of argument put by Jacob Rees-Mogg, would it not be simpler to have two-and-a-half hour debates on the Floor of the House instead of 90-minute debates? I will leave that thought with the Minister.
Mr Lidington: I make no comment. I will share that request with the Chief Whip and the Leader of the House.
Chair: Before we move on to the next question I would like to make a point that is becoming increasingly apparent to me as we go forward in this session. Minister, you are continuously saying—you have just made the reference by the statistical analysis that you presented—that we are asking for a lot of debates on the Floor of the House and that that is a new development. I would like to make it quite clear, as Chairman of this Committee, that the reason for that is quite simple: it is that there are ever increasing incursions into the activities of the House of Commons by what goes on in Europe. As the process of integration grows, the functions have been greatly increased, as a result of which there is more activity of political and legal importance that is coming before this Committee. It is not because we necessarily want to have debates for their own sake, but because matters of great political and legal importance are coming before the House of Commons as a whole, and it is our job—and we have not the slightest intention of demurring from it—to insist on these questions being dealt with on the Floor of the House when they merit it.
Q12 Chris Heaton-Harris: Minister, to draw these matters together, when this Committee was looking at these various papers as they came before us, it was obvious that at the Council in December there was going to be the big Foreign Affairs debate and lots of Defence outcomes, so it was very reasonable of us to want to tease out the Government’s initial thoughts going into that. The Chairman politely skipped past the fact that there was no statement on Monday by the Prime Minister, but what came out of that Council were calls for improved rapid response capabilities; for an EU cyber-defence policy; for a maritime security strategy; for the EU to become engaged in all domains, land, air, maritime and cyber; for bilaterals on drones; for a policy framework for the European Defence Agency to be discussed a bit further; for integration of technology and the industrial base of defence industries; and for a road map for developing defence standards. There is some quite meaty stuff in that. All that seems to be coming at a time when it feels like we are just doing the mandatory debates—the Lidington debates, no less.
This Committee had a strategy in trying to tease out Government policy before we went into that particular Council. You said that there was a limited EU focus back in September, when we called for the Syria paper to be debated, but actually that was this Committee doing its job and worrying about the direction of travel of our European partners on such matters.
Mr Lidington: On the other questions of the External Action Service review, the CSDP report and the Commission taskforce on European defence, both my Department and the Ministry of Defence alerted the Committee as early as we reasonably could, and in as much detail as we were able to give on what was going on in negotiations, both through the formal explanatory memorandum process and through subsequent correspondence. I think we did so in a timely fashion. I am quite prepared for us to answer any more detailed questions about that.
Initially, my understanding is that on two of those documents—the Commission taskforce communication and the High Representative’s report on CSDP—the Committee itself initially indicated that they would expect a debate to take place after the relevant Council meeting and conclusions had been reached, so that they could, understandably, look at the final version and actually hold Ministers to account for what they signed up to. There were genuine timing reasons why it was not possible to accommodate the request that came in on 11 December for debates before the December European Council.
I would argue strongly—both Dr Murrison and I were at the Foreign Affairs Council meeting that agreed the provisional FAC conclusions on CSDP—that we managed to get a statement that, far from extending the reach of the European Union, actually established a perspective for the development of the Common Security and Defence Policy that was aligned with the United Kingdom’s national objectives: that it should complement and not duplicate NATO; provide for a more competitive European defence industry; avoid in any way curtailing our ability to establish close and continued defence and procurement partnerships with the United States and other countries outside Europe; get greater small business access to the defence procurement market; and get common agreement that CSDP should focus on capabilities and areas where Europe could genuinely add value, rather than on new institutional arrangements like some EU operational headquarters, which had come up the previous year and was subject to quite a bitter row at that time.
I think we had a good story to tell. It was hard negotiating right the way through the Foreign Affairs Council and on to the subsequent December European Council, but I think the outcome that we, our officials, and the Prime Minister at the December summit, were able to secure was a good one for this country.
Q13 Mr Clappison: I am grateful for your answers on that. Can you tell us when we can expect to have the debate on the Commission’s Work Programme?
Mr Lidington: I am conscious of the fact that we have yet to respond formally to the Committee. I have to be careful with what I say, given the internal Whitehall process. I am very alive to the fact that the Committee deserves to have this response at the earliest possible date, and I hope very much that that will be possible before very much longer has elapsed.
Q14 Chair: Minister, I would like to move on to the run-up to the Defence European Council. Five years ago, on 4 February 2009, the then Minister for Europe, the right hon. Member for Don Valley, gave evidence to the Committee about the scrutiny performance of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on defence questions. She was called to the Committee because we were deeply dissatisfied. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk was in the Chair at the time. We were deeply dissatisfied with the way the Government had handled parliamentary scrutiny of proposals prepared for the previous European Council in 2008. In the light of the questions you have received this morning and our reasons for calling you, on what basis do you think you have done a better job than that Minister for Europe and, if so, why?
Mr Lidington: I invite you to look at the record of what happened in respect of these three documents. If we look at the External Action Service review, the explanatory memorandum was sent to the Committee on 27 August; you reported on 4 September that it remained under scrutiny and asked us to update you by the end of October. I did that on 28 October, at which time I mentioned possible conclusions at the December General Affairs Council. On 6 November you asked me to provide further information before 18 November to help you to determine whether to refer the matter for debate; on 15 November I sent you that information by letter. On 20 November, as I understand it—there was some confusion at that stage—the uncorrected version of the Committee’s report requested further information to be examined and debated in European Committee B, before and as close as possible to the 17 December General Affairs Council.
It was when that was checked by the Whips that we were told that actually the Committee’s intention was to refer for debate on the Floor of the House, rather than in Committee. I wrote to you on 4 December, having consulted the business managers, to tell you that the debate could not take place before the Christmas recess but would take place early in the new year in Committee, because a Committee debate would mean not only—to take us back to the Syria argument—more time, but critically it would mean a significantly earlier opportunity for the debate to take place than if we had had to wait until time could be found on the Floor of the House.
We have tried at every stage on this and, I would argue, on CSDP more generally. I could go through the history on the taskforce communication and on the High Representative’s report on CSDP as well. I have to say that in the spirit in which you put your question to me, Chairman, that if the Committee had asked at its September, November meetings or in October for a debate to have taken place in advance of the General Affairs Council December summit, then I think it would have been much easier for me to have gone to the business managers and got that slot on that timetable. But when the formal request came on 11 December it was really difficult, with all the good will in the world, to accommodate that.
We have tried at every stage to let the Committee know what the British negotiating objectives were and where we felt there were risks in some of the draft language being proposed, in those circumstances where we could share the draft language with you because it was not classified. Then we would tell you subsequently where we felt we had succeeded in modifying that draft language to safeguard key United Kingdom interests. Both the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office have been working in co-ordination on the same question.
Q15 Chair: I am extremely glad that, in the light of being asked to come to the Committee, you have taken the trouble to go through the history and chronology, for a very good reason, which is that we are not satisfied. Is it not the case that the Committee still had to initiate a dialogue with you back in the summer because we had nothing from you subsequent to the 12 December “agenda setting” European Council?
Mr Lidington: What we were going to do, of course, was let you see the documents as soon as they were published. We certainly sent you some things. The EAS review came out on 27 August. I think here were previous working documents—I will ask Ms Squires to comment—but they were classified at a Brussels level, I think.
Chloe Squires: Yes. On the Ashton report, as you know, we wrote to you on the basis of a draft report that was at that point restricted.
Mr Lidington: That was the high reps report on CSDP.
Chloe Squires: That was before the summer, so we could follow up when the report was—
Mr Lidington: So we wrote on 2 August about the Ashton report on CSDP. It came to us as a “restreint” document, so we were not able to share it with you, but we tried to give as much information as possible within the limitations. We sent you the document itself with an explanatory memorandum in October once the published article was available to us. You looked at it on 6 November and asked us for further information after the November Foreign Affairs Council and the Defence Ministers formation Foreign Affairs Council in November. You asked for a debate in the new year.
We wrote to you again on 4 December about that document and said that we had successfully protected all our red lines at the November FAC meeting. On 11 December you responded by formal report and referred the report for debate on the Floor after the Christmas recess. I think there was a subsequent request from the Committee that we hold a joint evidence session on 17 December so that you had the opportunity to look at the detail and question Ministers ahead of the December European Council. I am afraid that, with the best will in the world, on 17 December I was at the General Affairs Council dealing with the draft conclusions of the summit meeting, which were available for the first time for political consideration, and quite a bit of other business. There were some tricky negotiations at the General Affairs Council about the role of the External Action Service in consular matters, to which this Committee has rightly paid close attention in the past. It was important that I was there, so I could not be available.
Q16 Chair: Do you not recall that we had to press you several times on the key question of depositing two of the three essential documents?
Mr Lidington: I do not think that there was any delay on our part in depositing those documents. They were given to you as soon as we were able to give them to you.
Dr Murrison: Chair, the second set of documents—the Commission taskforce documents—relates directly to the Ministry of Defence. I have looked at the timelines in relation to what was provided to this Committee. I see that we submitted the explanatory memorandum on 22 August, and on 6 November your Committee responded and asked for various things. I put up my hands and confess that we have no record of that; we cannot find it. It was resubmitted on 22 November and was actioned shortly thereafter.
I contrast the time difference between 6 November and 22 November, and 22 August and 6 November. The former we admit to having some control over if we received that response, but the latter we simply did not. I am reasonably satisfied that we acted in a reasonable way, but I accept the point that where possible we should shorten timelines, particularly in relation to matters to do with Europe, where we are only partly in control because the Commission and the institutions of the European Union are responsible for submitting things in a timely fashion. Clearly we cannot control that.
Q17 Chair: We would just like to note that we reported on 4 September and we asked for an opinion from the Defence Select Committee as a result of that.
Dr Murrison: But I would like to make the point that there was a ten-and-a-half-week gap, Chairman. I know that the MOD has been criticised for not responding until 22 November to the document that the Committee says it sent on 6 November, and I would like to put that in some sort of context.
Q18 Michael Connarty: I am jumping ahead slightly, Chairman—I thought you were going to link this with the vital question about CSDP. The Minister referred to a red line; one of the achievements in response to Parliament’s wishes in the last Government. That was an overarching concern that we had at the time. As the Chair said, I was Chairman of the Committee at that time, when the Government’s view was that, if the EU negotiators or drafters—whoever did it—put a restriction on the circulation of any documents, it would then be gold-plated by the UK Government. Practically no discussion went on with the last Government about the development of CSDP.
I give you that there has been some progress, Minister, but it has not been early enough. You seem to be telling us that, if the EU decides to put a restriction on a document that really should be discussed with Parliament if we are going to do this properly, on a UK policy competence on which we have a veto, there is not any point in coming to Parliament in the later stages, when you are 90% down the road towards making an agreement, to indicate to Parliament what it is you are thinking of agreeing, because by then it is almost a done deed.
There was clearly a large gap between the receipt of the original documents that would form your negotiating package and your coming to us in August and indicating to this Committee by correspondence the response to our concerns. There is no indication of consulting the UK Parliament on the pursuit of a UK competence, which defence matters are. There is always a concern, although you gave us an indication earlier that you won a number of victories and pushed back some of the sillier ideas that were on the table last year. But should that not be done in co-operation with Parliament, rather than by telling Parliament later what you think you have managed to achieve?
Mr Lidington: This takes us, of course, on to the agenda that the Committee quite properly set out in its report on scrutiny—both the proposal to introduce elements of the mandate system and the proposals for the Government to share “limité” documents with the Committee in future. We will respond to those and the other recommendations of the Committee in due course.
I have some sympathy for where Mr Connarty is coming from on this. It is a difficult balance to get right between on the one hand being fair to Parliament in not simply presenting it automatically with a done deal and saying, “Right, this is it and you have no opportunity to comment on the development of Government policy,” and on the other hand maintaining a space for confidential discussion within the European Union. The issue applies to other international organisations too, although obviously they do not have direct, potentially legislative powers.
We do get documents, however. The draft on CSDP was one instance of this—Baroness Ashton put it out quite deliberately as a work in progress in order to invite national Governments to make comments. At that early stage it was difficult for us to predict with any certainty how it would end up. At that stage, our diplomatic efforts were not simply confined to making representations to Lady Ashton about what we thought she should include and exclude from that document, but included representations to other national Governments as well, to try to win allies or to close down challenges to particular British interests that we thought might be at risk, and indeed to win support for language to enhance United Kingdom objectives that we wanted positively to see included in the final version. It is about trying to define where the boundary should be between the confidential space for diplomatic negotiation and having the proper degree of openness to Parliament about matters before they reach their final versions. We try, in correspondence, to keep the Committees informed where we are not able to share things in detail.
In evidence I have given to the Committee as part of the inquiry into scrutiny, I have alluded to the fact that with the European Union Committee in the House of Lords, we sometimes send officials to give confidential briefings to that Committee in private session. That is one tool by which the Government is able to share policy on a confidential basis with a Committee, but it of course expects the Committee to observe confidentiality and disavow its normal openness about its proceedings. There is a question there for the Committee as well as for the Government.
I am always willing to explore ways in which we can improve our performance. I would defend firmly our record in giving more information to the Committee by way of letter than we are strictly obliged to do if we were to stick to the letter of the scrutiny resolution when it comes to CFSP matters.
Michael Connarty: As I have said, progress has been made. It is worth noting that the criticisms were quite strong in the previous Committee with a Government of the same complexion as the Chair of this Committee. There seems to be some sense in what you have said, Minister—that the Chair might want to investigate private sessions and proper briefings. I have absolutely no doubt that members of the Committee would treat such matters in the strictest confidence. But it would help us in our scrutiny process.
Q19 Mr Clappison: Minister, you may perhaps have heard of one, but I have never heard of a case where a Minister has come back and told the House that they got a bad deal in Europe. That is because the Ministers and officials in the Foreign Office are the judge and jury of what is a good deal. They are the ones who say what the national interest is, and then they determine afterwards, almost inevitably, that it has been fulfilled.
Can I give you an alternative scenario where Parliament can actually help and make it absolutely clear that the national interest has been fulfilled? That is the example of the Prime Minister’s excellent achievement in reducing the EU budget, which was debated in the House of Commons. We set out what the objective would be, and the Prime Minister surpassed all expectations and did a wonderful job. That is a better way of doing it, isn’t it?
Mr Lidington: Parliament of course has the right to hold Ministers to account for the decisions that they take as regards the national interest. The Prime Minister certainly did get an extremely good deal, working very closely with allies across Europe, in the multi-annual financial framework. If Parliament expresses an opinion strongly, particularly if that opinion cuts across party boundaries, that undoubtedly has an influence on our ability to get our way at European level, but it is not enough on its own. It has to be allied with a very well argued, evidence-based case for what we want to achieve, and intensive diplomatic engagement with other countries to try to defuse opposition and to win active support from others around the table. It does involve compromise. Even the MFF deal involved us in some areas not getting everything our own way, but we got our key objectives secured.
Q20 Chair: Minister, you may be interested to know that an Urgent Question has been granted in respect of the European Council. I have been active on that front, as have other Members. For practical purposes, you can now take it that that will take place.
Mr Lidington: Chair, may I interrupt? Since I will have to take that Urgent Question on behalf of the Prime Minister, that does constrain my time.
Chair: I thought you would not be able to see the screen, so I just thought I would notify you that that was the case.
Mr Lidington: I had a note passed to me.
Q21 Chair: On the question of the primary custodianship of CSDP being the member states’ national Parliaments, what you are really saying is that you must strike a balance to achieve the maximum degree of purchase that the Government can obtain in relation to the increasing incursions by the European Union establishment into the whole role of defence and related matters. But aren’t you really saying that you will allow this process to continue, and that you do your best, but that in practice the creep towards greater involvement in matters for which the United Kingdom Parliament has primary responsibility is not being diminished? That is the question at the heart of so much of this. It may be that you are doing your best to be able to increase the degree of purchase that you can get on what is going on in the European Union, but in practice we are being drawn deeper and in a more determined fashion into a greater degree of European penetration of this area of policy. Do you agree with that?
Mr Lidington: No, I don’t agree with that. I think what is true is that the Lisbon Treaty has created a different legal and policy framework from that which existed before, and how that treaty is being interpreted and worked out in practice is something that we are still seeing the consequences of and about which arguments still take place.
I would accept the point that there is a move towards greater European co-operation on defence and foreign policy matters. It seems to me that the key objective for this country is whether we can do that in a way that is aligned to our objectives but serves the foreign policy and security interests of the United Kingdom by, for example, providing for greater European allied capabilities, including willingness to deploy where necessary, but in a way that does not subvert the role that NATO plays in our collective security and does not transfer to EU institutions new powers to act that they do not have at the moment.
I thought it was striking, for example, that the Secretary-General of NATO was present at the December European Council, largely as a consequence of our lobbying that he should be invited. It was of both symbolic and practical significance that he was there. Secretary-General Rasmussen warmly welcomed the conclusions of the Foreign Affairs Council and of the December European Council. He certainly did not see us as threatening NATO in any way. The Prime Minister made sure in the language about the need for CSDP to respect and complement the role of NATO that that was achieved.
I accept that we must be vigilant, but others, particularly in the Brussels machine, will want to see greater control by the institutions over foreign and security policy. However, it is not the case that we are on some inexorable path in that direction. The task of British Governments is rather to ensure that we are able to see sensible and pragmatic development of European co-operation on foreign policy and defence matters and a habit of working together that enables European co-operation to give genuine value added.
Dr Murrison: May I chip in, Chair? I agree with that, and the issue of competency creep clearly has a great deal of purchase and is something the press likes to dwell on. The reality is far more complex and far more nuanced than that. The European Defence Agency, which I have had quite a lot to do with, has had its budget frozen. Its cash is flat, which means it has had a real-terms reduction. It has been the United Kingdom, acting alone, that has insisted upon that, so I do not think that anybody can accuse us of being anything other than energetic when it comes to restraining any growth that the European Union might be tempted to pursue in respect of defence and security at European level.
The reality is that we are doing much more with European colleagues—I am afraid that the Committee is going to have to accept that—which is quite different from having more to do with the European Union, in terms of defence and security. There is a great deal of variable geometry going on, which means that various member states do various things, very often completely separate from the institutions of the European Union. I cite the Northern Group, for example, and UK-Netherlands amphibiosity, which celebrated last year its 40th anniversary and is going from strength to strength.
I would even cite the European Defence Agency. We have been very clear that if the EDA is to expand what it does within the budget that we have insisted upon, it needs to focus on so-called category B projects. In other words, that means opt-in projects, which are things that member states may want to take up, but also may not. There are also things such as the European air transport command, which despite its unhelpful name is not a creature of the European Union. It is therefore wrong and overly simplistic to say that it is inevitable that we will continue to see competency creep in relation to defence and security. That is not right, but I do think it is likely that we will see European nation states doing more together, particularly given America’s reposturing.
Q22 Kelvin Hopkins: This is all very interesting, and I am pleased that the Ministers have had success in negotiating in European Councils. This does not, however, answer the question of why we are frustrated in achieving debates on the Floor of the House. We have competent Ministers who can deal with the House, and it would enable Members of the House of Commons to put views to Ministers, who could then go away informed with the House’s views. That would not constrain them from negotiating. There are no motions or constraining force that the House would exert over Ministers, but they would at least go to the negotiations knowing what Members think. There may of course be a range of views across the Commons. Why is all this negotiation somehow making it difficult for Ministers to accept debates on the Floor of the House?
Mr Lidington: There is a broader issue here about the extent to which decisions about foreign policy and defence policy should be subjected to some kind of parliamentary mandate in advance. What Mr Hopkins is asking for is quite a significant shift from how those policy matters have been conducted in this country up until now, which is that—if we look at the historical antecedence, it is an inherited Crown prerogative—Ministers are subsequently held to account for their foreign and defence policy decisions by Parliament.
Dr Murrison: I can only speak for Defence Ministers and say that we are perfectly happy to answer to Parliament. Indeed, one of the frustrations, because by and large it is not terribly politically sensitive in the minds of the public in the way that other Government Departments’ business is, is that Defence Ministers do not get the same airtime as our colleagues. On a purely personal level, I think most of us would probably welcome the ability to debate matters more fully in the House, but I am afraid that the case is that we are stuck with the time limitations that we have, and the business managers are of course very much alive to the need to satisfy the needs of other Government Departments and policy areas. I suspect that that is the reason why Departments such as mine sometimes feel somewhat frustrated that we cannot spend more time on the Floor of the House. Personally, Mr Hopkins, I would very much welcome the opportunity to do so.
Chair: May I now ask Mike Thornton to ask about European Committees and debates in those Committees?
Q23 Mike Thornton: This is for both of you. Your joint letter of 17 December states that “the Committee’s own procedures mean that we cannot schedule debates with less than 10 sitting days’ notice”. We are not aware of any such procedures. The Government’s scrutiny guidance states: “Exceptionally, Committees may meet at relatively short notice”. The only reference to a time period relates to the provision of the document pack, which is two weeks, but that is not a hard and fast rule. So can you let us know where the 10 sitting days rule comes from?
Mr Lidington: Mr Thornton is right. This is the latest version of the Cabinet Office guidance on the scrutiny of European Union documents, from August last year, and as I understand it, it was agreed by the Committee as well as by Government Departments. This states that the document pack which includes the Committee’s referral and the confirmed date and time of the debate should be provided to the Committee “not later than two weeks before the debate. Failure to do this may result in … a debate being adjourned”. This is on page 67 of the guidance.
It is sometimes possible that we have done it. We bent over backwards, for example, to make sure that a request from the Committee for a reasoned opinion to be submitted within the deadline permitted by the EU institutions was given the requisite debate on the Floor of the House, but the normal process is the one that is set out here. We go back to what Dr Murrison and I said earlier. With the greatest of respect to this Committee, had we had a request for debate at an earlier stage, we could have done our utmost to accommodate that. It is a separate matter whether it would be in Committee or on the Floor of the House, but when a request came in on 11 December and Parliament was going into recess on the 18 or 19 December, frankly it was not possible to get a slot from the business managers at that period of notice.
Q24 Mike Thornton: If it is genuinely not possible to get a slot—I think that is the reason given—you should not give as a reason that the Committee’s own procedures, which are not actually there, mean that it cannot schedule debates with less than 10 sitting days’ notice. That is not really an adequate reply, is it? “We have tried, but we cannot get a slot” is one reply, but I wouldn’t have thought that stating this arbitrary 10 days thing is actually a correct answer.
Mr Lidington: Ten days is the two parliamentary weeks referred to on page 67 of the guidance.
Q25 Jacob Rees-Mogg: I wonder if we could come back to this document we have debated and the 10-week delay? We responded in September, and it is in our 13th report of the Session. The conclusion is that the Minister’s letter is relevant to various things and states: “In the first instance, we wish to hear more from the Government”. We then set out points that we wished to hear from the Government on. So is the Minister telling us that he doesn’t read the European Scrutiny Committee’s reports? This is our document, the 13th report of the Session 2013-14, from September, and the Government are saying that they did not hear anything from us until November. I do not understand that. At the same time, we passed it to the Defence Select Committee, but that does not mean that there weren’t points raised for the Government to answer.
Dr Murrison: Are you referring to the Commission taskforce?
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I am referring to page 131 of that communication, yes.
Dr Murrison: You will have to forgive me. I cannot bring to mind immediately page 131 of that particular document.
Q26 Jacob Rees-Mogg: Okay. We had specific questions for the Government. Minister, your answer to us was that we took 10 and a half weeks to reply. We did not. We took a month.
Dr Murrison: We sent our explanatory memorandum to you on 22 August. We are told that you wrote to us on 6 November. With respect, Chairman, if you want a response to a specific point, it is courtesy, at the very least, to write and request it.
Q27 Jacob Rees-Mogg: How many officials are there in the Ministry of Defence?
Dr Murrison: No, I think that is unreasonable. If you want a response to a specific point, you really do have to write.
Q28 Jacob Rees-Mogg: This is a House of Commons proceeding on a matter where the Ministry of Defence was intimately involved, and you are saying that you didn’t read the report of the Committee.
Dr Murrison: No, I am saying to you—
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Your officials didn’t bring it to your attention. It doesn’t matter which way you put it.
Dr Murrison: If you want a response from the Ministry of Defence on a particular point, it would be at the very least courteous to write to the MOD and to Ministers.
Q29 Jacob Rees-Mogg: Would it not be efficient for the Ministry of Defence to read the reports that relate to it?
Dr Murrison: So you are suggesting, then, that we should write to you suggesting that you make certain recommendations.
Q30 Jacob Rees-Mogg: Well, there are specific questions raised. Is this not how parliamentary procedure works? If questions are raised by Committees and on the Floor of the House, they are looked at by Ministers. What you are saying is that this was simply overlooked.
Dr Murrison: No, no. The gist of one of the principal criticisms that have been made to Ministers is that we did not respond in a timely fashion. I think that that is one of the reasons why you have asked us to appear today.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: And you were saying—
Dr Murrison: If I can, since you raised the point, I just point out to you that the timelines we have, notwithstanding your report, have a 10-week gap, against which you are saying there was a two-week delay—
Jacob Rees-Mogg: But, Minister—
Dr Murrison: Hang on. You are saying that there was a two-week delay between 6 November and 22 November in which we apparently did not respond. That is a little unfair. My point in raising that was to put that criticism into some sort of context.
Q31 Jacob Rees-Mogg: But the context is that we made a report in just over a month, even though there was limited sitting time available. What happened was that the Ministry of Defence did not see our report.
Dr Murrison: At the same time, you asked for a House of Commons Defence Select Committee response.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Yes, we sent it to another Committee, but there were specific points that we asked the Government to answer, and that was overlooked. That might have been inadvertent, but it is unreasonable to say that we took 10 weeks, because we did not.
Chair: I will just ask Kelvin Hopkins to ask one last question.
Q32 Kelvin Hopkins: We were not successful in persuading the House business authorities to give us a Floor debate before the crucial meetings in December, but can I now ask that we are granted, at the very least, a Floor debate to bring this sorry episode to a conclusion? The issue is still live and we can still debate it.
Mr Lidington: I think that we have a debate in Committee on the External Action Service review next week. That has been set, and that will be a significantly earlier occasion than would be possible if I went back to the Chief Whip and asked for a debate on the Floor of the House.
The point was made earlier that the 90-minute debates on the Floor would, at least in theory, allow more Members to take part. It is open to any Member of the House, even if they are not a nominated member of a European Standing Committee, to attend, to ask questions and to speak in those debates. There is no opportunity lost, and I think that the Committee will be the appropriate place to explore that, given the breadth of the issues covered in the EEAS review and given the wish that some Members might have to probe on questions to do with the wording that we have successfully got into the conclusions on consular matters.
We are still looking for an opportunity for a separate session on CSDP and on the Commission taskforce communication. To some extent I am in the Committee’s hands on this, as is my hon. Friend, but I would have thought that there might be merit in putting the two together for a single debate, given that the issues that the two documents raise interweave with one another.
Q33 Kelvin Hopkins: The Chairman has strongly made the point that the status and effectiveness of the European Standing Committees is not the same as a debate on the Floor of the House. The European Committees do not have the same profile or the same public scrutiny. They do not give opportunities for all Members to debate with all other Members. The reality is that many Members are hardly aware of the existence of European Committees. Those of us who, like me, go to many of them think that they are wonderful things, but they are not well known.
Floor debates, however, are well known, both publicly and to other Members. Having a Floor debate is quite a different matter, even if it is shorter. I suggested earlier that we could easily increase the debate time to two and a half hours from one and a half hours. That would be a good idea. However, there is a lingering suspicion—I would suggest that it is Departments, rather than Whips—that there is a reluctance to have Floor debates on some issues relating to the European Union, these issues in particular being matters where such reluctance is most evident.
Chair: One last point.
Q34 Andrew Bingham: I want to add to what has just been said. We have already spoken about way that the public view Europe and how it is all done. I take the point about the issue being discussed in Committee and Members being able to attend, but do you see, like we do, that it is all about doing things in a public way to let people see what is going off? I have written down here, “Committee versus Floor of the House is dusty rooms versus open and visible to the public.” There are people—not just my mother—who watch the Parliament channel. They can see these things being debated in front of them—there is easier access for the public, and I think that it would engender more public confidence if we could have more of these debates on the Floor of the House as opposed to in Committee Rooms.
Dr Murrison: We simply do not have the time, but what I would say is that appearing before a Committee as august as this one is a big deal for Ministers. If your intention is to probe Government and Ministers to ensure that they are doing their jobs, I think that you do a very good job, if I may say so. Very often the questioning is far more incisive than we could ever expect to receive on the Floor of the House, so I would be careful about denigrating your efforts in Committee.
Chair: I can assure you that we do not denigrate our efforts. Just before the Minister goes—I know that he must go to the Floor of the House—I must say that we do not regard it as satisfactory that the Minister for Europe should answer the questions relating to the most recent European Council. It should be the Prime Minister. We have written to him today, and an Urgent Question has been tabled, in which I have taken an active part. I want to put on the record that although the Minister will have to go now, it should be the Prime Minister who answers the Urgent Question and not the Minister for Europe. Thank you very much.
Oral evidence: European Documents debate, HC 975 17