European Union (Information, etc.) Bill [HL]

My Lords, that may be so, but I was specifically taking up his point about my party’s leadership, which he described as fragile. There is always a fine line between information and propaganda. Is the noble Lord, Lord Dykes, asking for greater transparency and accountability in the European Union? If so, I fear that these are changes that need to be made to the workings of the European Union, not simply to ensuring access to the current information and statistics. Moreover, there are many different views within the EU about its role and future shape. Is the idea that all these should be communicated? Subsection (4) requires that the information and statistics shall be provided in ““written”” and ““electronic”” form. Am I to take the use of the word ““written”” literally? Is the noble Lord expecting employees to write out the reams of information that the very wide definition of information and statistics in subsection (3) would require, or does he mean ““printed””? Would he expect hard copies to be kept at all times or printed only on request? We must think environmentally of the potential waste of paper proposed here as reports or statistics become outdated. In subsection (3), does the noble Lord intend the definition to encompass only material produced by the European Union? My reading of it suggests that it could include all material ever written about the European Union, as per the issues in paragraphs (a) to (c), regardless of the source. I am sure that that is not what the noble Lord has in mind, but it would in fact be the consequence. Clause 2 would legislate that the flag of the EU shall be, "““flown on Government and public buildings alongside the union flag””." What about the Commonwealth flag? Once this precedent is set, where will it stop? It is absurd to suggest that we give the same status to the European flag as we do to our own national one. Clause 3 is on town twinning. I have already highlighted my concerns about the term ““information””, about how the noble Lord envisages it being ““made available”” in public buildings, and about the fact that there is already provision for free access to this information on the internet, in some public buildings and via other schemes. As your Lordships are well aware, town twinning is a concept whereby towns or cities in geographically and politically distinct areas are paired with the goal of fostering human contact and cultural links. Town twinning is by no means a modern or exclusively a European Union concept. There are other projects, such as Sister Cities International, the Brother Cities Programme and Partnership 2000, just to mention a few. There are historical suggestions that twinning took place long before the current processes started in the 1960s. By comparison, the EU scheme was set up only in 1989. The EU's own website states that its scheme has been well received by towns and municipalities in Europe. The EU received more than 2,450 grant applications this year. It appears that people are already well aware of the EU twinning scheme and do not need prompting. We are a party of choice. I believe that twinning should be a local decision, taken at a local level. It is clear that people already have access to the information that they need. I would not wish a system to favour one scheme over another through an attempt to legislate just for information on the European twinning scheme. I hope that the Minister will agree with me that this Bill is unnecessary and would have implications that we do not wish to be set as precedents. We oppose the Bill.