European Union Committee Report

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, and indeed to precede the noble Lord, Lord Roper, the present and past chairs of the committee. As a member of the committee, I have seen how much work it does. It is a Trojan amount of work. As noble Lords have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, it sees and sifts hundreds of documents before we see them on the sub-committees. I pay tribute to each of the members, because they have done—and are doing—a fantastic job. Well deserved praise should be showered on them.

I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Boswell. I find it strange that on a subject that is so important and so central, particularly to politics in the United Kingdom at the moment, we are discussing this report in Grand Committee and not on the Floor of the House. It is even more ridiculous when we have a Statement on the European Council on the Floor of the House that no doubt all of us would like to be in on. It is really quite astonishing.

I am proud and pleased to serve on the committee. I find it fascinating to be a member of the European Union Committee of this House. I have been on committees elsewhere and I find this one of the most interesting jobs that I have undertaken—particularly Sub-Committee C, which the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, chairs with great skill. We are carrying out a huge volume of work.

The work of committees is central to this House and this part of the legislature, and sometimes it is undervalued. I was dismayed when the House agreed to cut the number of sub-committees and make the work of this committee and its sub-committees much more difficult. I am even more dismayed to have read in the Guardian on Saturday that we will have to put up with 80, or maybe 100, more Peers at a time when we are cash-limited. I do not know where the money is going to come from; we are going to be squeezed again, and no doubt the committees will be squeezed again. What committees will they serve on? It really is quite outrageous that this should be forced upon us. There seems to be an unlimited amount of money for ceremonial purposes or new security measures, but not for the central work of the legislature—the committee work that we are undertaking. Well, noble Lords did not expect me to be non-controversial!

I move on to the very valuable reports. As the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, said, they are very well thought of. I have heard some really great comments about them. However, there are two things to express some regret about, one being that they do not get enough coverage in the media, as the noble Lord said. We need the resources and skills to enable that to be done, and we need opportunities to get more coverage. Thankfully, the situation has improved in the past 12 months but more needs to be done. We also need to push the Commission to get more responses from it more quickly. The Commission says that it likes our reports, but it is not responding to them as quickly as I and the committee would like.

I shall mention some of the reports that are worth further publicity and further noting. One is the report on Operation Atalanta, which was fantastically interesting work. We went up to Northwood and heard some very valuable evidence about what is being done to combat piracy in the Indian Ocean. That is absolutely vital work and it is life-saving—it is a life or death operation that is being undertaken. Much more attention should have been paid to that. Then there was the very important report on the multiannual financial framework. What is central and what is happening in the Chamber is the Statement on the European Council. This is central to the discussions that the Prime Minister has in Brussels—and we have been working on that.

Two other reports have been particularly valuable. One is on the equivalence of medical professional qualifications, on which the former Sub-Committee G, under the excellent chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, produced a report—and then they abolished her committee to save money, in the strange way that they have here. This was a vital report. We know that there was one example where someone purported to be a medical doctor and a death resulted because he was not qualified. In the report we suggested putting the safety of patients before the free movement of labour. The ability of people to move from one jurisdiction to the other with qualifications being automatically accepted is a vital matter.

The last of the reports that I want to mention—I am conscious that a lot of noble Lords want to speak—is the one on credit rating agencies. That was a prescient report. To be honest, it did not go as far as I would have liked because I see them as a problem as far as the economy of the world is concerned. Nevertheless, we were ahead of the game in relation to that.

As the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, said, there are two fascinating reports under way: one by the committee itself on enlargement—again, a central issue—and one by Sub-Committee C, on which I serve, on the External Action Service. We have already started work on that with a seminar that the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, mentioned and with the evidence that we have had. Each report will prove very useful.

Finally—I am watching my time—I come to a wider issue. It is really quite depressing that for short-term, party-political gain, some people, not just in the government parties but in my own party, are starting to think or even talk about a further referendum on being in or out of Europe. It is about time that those of us who believe in Europe stood up and said so, and said that we think Europe is important not just for trade in the United Kingdom and a free trade area but for the security and prosperity of the United Kingdom. Therefore, we want to make sure that that is spoken of loudly. Of course we can be sceptical about Europe. We can challenge it, rightly, but we should be right in the centre of Europe to do that challenging and questioning. I hope that Members of this Committee, who know the work of the European Union better than anyone, will join me during this debate in echoing the fact that our membership of the European Union is absolutely vital for the future prosperity of this United Kingdom.

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[Baroness Young of Hornsey]

My Lords, I will focus on the work of the sub-committee formerly known as G on social policies and consumer protection, which I chaired before it was wound up. I take the opportunity to thank the sub-committee’s clerk, admin assistant and analyst, and all the sub-committee members, for their contributions to the work outlined in the report. Many noble Lords this afternoon acknowledged the effectiveness of the noble Lords, Lord Roper and Lord Boswell, as chairmen of the EU Select Committee, and I, too, express my admiration for their hard work.

During the 2010-12 Session, EU Sub-Committee G undertook the varied work that is set out in the report. As many noble Lords will be aware, EU legislation and issues are such that they invariably take several years to sort out. In the 2009-10 Session, we undertook an inquiry into the European Social Fund, identifying the types of changes that might be helpful for the period, both in the short term and in the longer term for the 2013-20 period. The proposal for the new European Social Fund, published in October 2011, was an important item of scrutiny for the sub-committee. We decided to reconvene some of the witnesses to our original inquiry, along with other stakeholders, the Government, the European Commission and the devolved Administrations, at a public seminar in December 2011 to share views on the new European Social Fund. In addition to committee members and staff, around 50 stakeholders attended. Feedback on this seminar was very positive and it gave us helpful input into our scrutiny of the European Social Fund proposals. Notable issues we pursued were simplification, local flexibility and strategic alignment with other structural funds. The latter point is one that Sub-Committee A is still following in its continued scrutiny of the structural funds proposals.

It was most encouraging to see so many stakeholders coming together and debating key issues at the invitation of the EU committee and on the basis of an EU committee report. Building on this work, we organised a more general stakeholder engagement seminar, which has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Roper. That was some months later. In fact, this was originally his brainchild. It was correctly identified that a great many stakeholders from across the range of subjects with which Sub-Committee G dealt simply do not understand the work of the EU Committee and its sub-committees. This is something that a number of noble Lords have raised this afternoon. How can they engage with what we do if they do not understand what we do? Why should they engage? What is it that we do that is important to them? Calling it a stakeholder engagement seminar makes it sound a bit more formal than it actually was. It was a very informal event. Part of its value was simply mingling with colleagues from across the range of subjects which we dealt with. We also had a very good discussion and some of those groups certainly have had more of a dialogue with the committee since then. It has also led to work improving the website to ensure that it is more accessible to those wanting to find out more about our work, although I appreciate that there is an awful lot more work to be done on that score.

During the 2010-12 Session, Sub-Committee G undertook three substantial inquiries. The first was a subject which at first glance does not sound like the kind of thing that we would be discussing in an EU committee. This was grass-roots sport and there were members of the sub-committee and elsewhere who took the view, at least initially, that it was not a suitable subject for us to look into. However, the Lisbon treaty had introduced sport as a policy area in which the European Commission could encourage member states to work more closely and we wanted to find out what this would mean for grass-roots sport in this country. This was pre-Olympics and before all of that euphoria. Above all we heard that grass-roots sport should be mainstreamed into other policy areas, such as health, education and social inclusion. We met with some previously excluded individuals who had developed core social and leadership skills through sport. One of our specific recommendations was that there should be a distinct budget to support grass-roots sport-related actions. We were therefore pleased to see the inclusion of such a budget within the new Erasmus for All programme. The budget will support actions which include exploitation of the potential of sport to foster social inclusion. An interesting benefit of pursuing this issue was that we were able to communicate with a wider range of individuals and organisations, both as witnesses and during visits, who would not normally consider themselves to have an interest in the work of the House of Lords in scrutinising EU issues.

Our second inquiry concerned the mobility of healthcare professionals in the context of the review of the professional qualifications directive published in October 2011. We considered that the current directive failed to command the confidence of patients and professionals, striking the wrong balance between encouraging mobility and ensuring patient safety, and therefore needed to be revised. We hoped that our recommended improvements to the directive would enhance rather than undermine free movement by rebuilding confidence among patients, employers and professionals.

The report was very well received among stakeholders, including the General Medical Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council. The Government also credited it with influencing their response to the Commission’s Green Paper consultation on the revision of the directive. After the Commission’s proposal for a revised directive was published in December 2011, I met with senior representatives of all the UK professionals covered by it at the beginning of this year and their views helped to inform the sub-committee’s subsequent scrutiny of that proposal. I am glad that Sub-Committee F has continued to scrutinise this important matter, most recently in its oral evidence session with the Health Minister, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, on 21 November.

Sub-Committee G’s third and last inquiry was into the modernisation of higher education in Europe, which was published last March. We considered not only the EU’s role in this area but also the ongoing Bologna process, which has seen the creation of a European higher education area, including 47 European countries. We concluded that while the EU can continue to make a positive contribution to European higher education, it must nevertheless be pragmatic and concentrate only on the areas where it can add value. In addition, we considered that the Government should place higher education at the centre of their growth agenda, domestically and across Europe, by maximising the potential of both the EU and the Bologna process. The report also considered the Erasmus programme, which we considered to be an important activity in terms of increasing students’ employability. However, the UK’s participation has been historically low compared with other large member states, and we decided that making language learning compulsory in both primary and secondary school would be one way of increasing the UK’s participation, alongside taking steps to encourage a more diverse range of participants. In this vein, we also called on the Government to support the allocation of a greater proportion of the next multiannual financial framework budget to research, innovation and education.

The day after the report was published, I also participated in an LSE workshop, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and attended by a range of academics which discussed some of the same themes as our report. Like other noble Lords, I think that we could be much more effective in obtaining press and media coverage. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, points to the need for a media strategy and I would concur with that. We should also embrace more fully the opportunities afforded by social media. Chairs of sub-committees have appeared on YouTube—to great acclaim, I understand—and written blogs. But there is more we could do with Twitter, for example, in spreading the word to a wider public about the work we do.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I know that it is very seldom that we intervene, but this is brilliant as I have just tweeted with regard to this Committee on the excellent contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Haskel. I am now about to tweet about the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Young.

[Baroness Young of Hornsey]

I have to tell the noble Lord that I tweeted before him. We should embrace all social media and spread the word about the work we do to a wider public. I concur absolutely with the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, on engaging much more widely, whether we call it outreach, engagement, stakeholder engagement, or whatever. There are structures such as those named by the noble Lord—the Peers in Schools programme, Parliament Week and so on—which all represent opportunities for us to do so.

I now have the privilege of sitting on Sub-Committee C on External Affairs—a very different set of challenges to those posed by social policies and consumer protection. I am pleased to state that there, too, our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, is also keen on new ways of communicating with different sets of stakeholders. As has already been said by the noble Lords, Lord Boswell and Lord Roper, we held a seminar last week, attended by a wide range of stakeholders with an interest in our current inquiry on the European External Action Service. I look forward to further discussions on this matter on how to make more progress in outreach, engagement, et cetera. I know that that is something that both the present chairman and the previous chairman hold close to their hearts.