European Community Secondary Legislation

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 24 January 1974.

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Photo of Mr George Darling Mr George Darling , Sheffield, Hillsborough 12:00, 24 January 1974

I was coming to the point about the Select Committees that we already have. With my hon. Friend's help I can now make it very briefly One important point relating to Select Committees is germane in this respect.

We know from our discussions in this House on subjects with which the Select Committees have dealt how extremely useful are the reports for the purpose of our debates. But, in addition, members of the committee who have been involved in producing the reports can give even greater help than the mere discussion of a report could possibly achieve.

This idea of our Select Committees going to meet their opposite numbers in Brussels has been opposed by the Commission. But it can go on opposing that idea only so long as the national Governments concerned allow it to do so. If we believe that some development of this kind is worth while, obviously we must get the Parliaments of the other eight countries to agree to it.

I think that if the representatives of these committees meet the Commission and assist with the formulation of policy, it will lead to fewer regulations. I should like that to happen anyhow. The directives clearly should be matters of principle to be accepted and put into operation in whatever way the Parliament of each individual country considered desirable. No more regulations would be a welcome development.

I do not know whether my proposals would require any amendment to the Treaty of Rome. If the idea of parliamentary committees were accepted and put into operation it would, in effect, supersede the consultative assembly. If, to keep within the terms of the Treaty, amendment on these lines is likely to be difficult, we might consider the representatives of the parliamentary committees meeting in plenary session now and again and, in effect, becoming the consultative assembly. It would not be proper in this debate to go into detail about the development of this idea.

Hon. Members will see in the Select Committee's report the complicated procedures for consultation which now exist between the Commission and committees of the so-called European Parliament set out in ten long paragraphs. I am sure that my suggestions would not produce anything more complicated than what we have already.

I am not convinced that the responsibility for keeping Parliament informed of all the Community's proposals should devolve on only one Minister, whether a Law Officer, the Chancellor of the Duchy, or whoever it may be. We must accept that on all these issues we are dealing with Ministers concerned with policies. We must devise a better system of questioning Ministers—not just the one representative, the Chancellor of the Duchy— concerned with the policies being developed within the Community.

Frankly, I do not think that one session a month in the rota of Questions will be sufficient for that purpose. This is a complicated business. However much Mr. Speaker may try to help us by cutting off supplementaries, I doubt whether we would get through more than a dozen or 15 Questions in the 55 minutes allowed for Question Time. Once a month is nearly as futile as the suggestion that has been floating about in the Consultative Assembly at Strasbourg. A copy of our system of Question Time will not make any difference to the procedures there. The European Parliament's Question Time is indeed futile. We must do a much better job here. However, I do not think that we would get the opportunity to ask all the Questions that we might like if we adopted the proposal that has been put forward in the Select Committee's Report.