Asked by: Lord Boswell of Aynho (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the answer by Lord Bates on 4 December, why they have refused the European Union Committee’s request of 26 November for an oral statement to be made regarding the override of the House of Lords scrutiny reserve resolution over the draft Council Decision concerning the United Kingdom's participation in provisions of the Schengen <i>acquis</i> on 1 December.
Answered by Lord Bates
The Council Decision concerning the United Kingdom’s participation in provisions of the Schengen acquis gave effect to the decision of the House of Lords on 17 November that the Government should re-join a package of 35 measures following the exercise of the UK's opt-out under Protocol 36 to the Treaties on the functioning of the EU (the 2014 opt-out decision). The Government accepts that the draft of this document should have been deposited earlier and apologises for the delay in its provision to the Committee.
Whilst we have noted the wishes of the Committee for an oral statement on the override, the Government does not believe it to be necessary given the number of debates and the extensive engagement with both Houses of Parliament and their Committees on the Protocol 36 op-out. We have responded to the Committee's correspondence on this matter and a written statement was laid in Parliament on the 10th December.
Asked by: Lord Boswell of Aynho (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, for each government department, from July to December 2013, (1) on how many occasions the scrutiny reserve resolution in the House of Lords was overridden, (2) on how many occasions the scrutiny reserve resolution in the House of Commons was overridden, and (3) in respect of how many documents an override occurred in (a) both Houses or (b) either House.
Answered by Baroness Warsi
The Government seeks to avoid breaching the Scrutiny Reserve Resolutions, continuing to account for overrides in writing to the Committees. The last EU Committee report recognises that engagement between the Committee’s Secretariat and Departments helped the number of overrides fall, the largest category of override being on sensitive, fast-moving Common Foreign and Security Policy matters (16 of the 20 overrides across the two Houses) which cannot be publicised beforehand, making overrides difficult to avoid. During this period, 568 Explanatory Memoranda were submitted, the 20 overrides representing the lowest number since 2010.
The figures requested are in the attached Table 1.
Overrides July-December 2013
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