European Union Bill

This has been a genuinely interesting debate which—somewhat unusually for European debates, dare I say it—has developed in a way that I did not altogether anticipate. We started by discussing a new clause dealing with transparency and public and parliamentary access to information concerning European negotiations, but as the debate continued it developed along the broader theme of the adequacy or inadequacy of our current arrangements for the scrutiny of decisions taken by successive Governments of the United Kingdom on behalf of Parliament and people within the institutions of the European Union. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. The key choice that has to be borne in mind in considering the proposition put forward in the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) concerns the most effective balance between, on one hand, appropriate access to information that provides the flexibility to allow citizens and other interested parties to see documents that contributed to policy making and, on the other hand, the need to preserve a space for candid, confidential discussion, deliberation and negotiation to ensure the best possible outcome in the interests of our country. I have sympathy for many of the arguments—certainly the motivations—of the hon. Members who tabled the new clause, but I do not think that it would deliver the right balance. I will make my arguments in more detail in due course, but I hope that at the end of the debate they will not press the motion to a Division. I want to start by addressing some of the broader issues that have been raised. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston said that we needed to know when and how Ministers voted. Of course, one of the changes introduced by Lisbon is that we have new rules for the workings of the Council, including not only a public record but a public broadcast of the final deliberations at a Council session on legislative dossiers. At that point, it is apparent how each member state has voted, if indeed there is a formal division, and the arguments or the statement of position that the Minister or other representative of a member state chooses to put forward are also be made public. I have sat through a number of those public sessions over the past 10 months. I do not think that they will ever command a mass audience on a Saturday evening. I am not aware that they have ever been broadcast as part of the regular prime-time news bulletins in this country or any other member state. The new clause and many of the contributions to the debate have tried to get at how Parliament, on behalf of the public, can hold Ministers to account more effectively, not just for that final, often rather formal, process of taking a decision on live TV, but for how the negotiating position of the United Kingdom is shaped in the numerous bilateral contacts and contacts with European institutions that are undertaken by Ministers and officials, sometimes over many months. A number of ideas have been suggested. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) said that we need to look at the matter in the context not only of the EU, but of our participation in other international institutions and considering the use of royal prerogative powers more generally. It is interesting that no hon. Member has mentioned the House of Lords, which has distinct and different scrutiny arrangements. There is a question for parliamentarians at both ends of this building as to what methods of scrutiny experience teaches us work best and most effectively. If Government and Parliament are to agree on new scrutiny arrangements, the position of both Houses will have to be taken into account.