Before we start the debate, it may help the House if I set out how our proceedings on the European scrutiny motion will be handled. There will be a combined debate on the motion and on all selected amendments. The business of the House order governing proceedings allows any selected Amendment to be moved at the conclusion of the debate. Amendments will be called in order, followed, finally, by the main question.

I beg to move,

That the following Amendments to the Standing Orders shall have effect for the remainder of the current Parliament:

(A) Amendments to Standing Order No. 119 (European Standing Committees)

Line 2, leave out 'European Standing Committees' and insert 'European Committees'.

Line 13, leave out paragraph (3) and insert:

'(3) Each European Committee shall consist of thirteen Members nominated by the Committee of Selection in respect of any European Union document which stands referred to it, and the Committee of Selection may nominate the same membership in respect of several documents.

(3A) In nominating the members of a European Committee, the Committee of Selection shall have regard to the qualifications of the Members nominated and to the composition of the House; and where practicable it shall nominate at least two members of the European Scrutiny Committee and at least two members of the select committee appointed under Standing Order No. 152 whose responsibilities most closely relate to the subject matter of the document or documents.'

Line 30, leave out from 'below' to end of paragraph (5).

Line 41, insert new paragraph as follows:

'(6A) The chairman may permit a member of the European Scrutiny Committee appointed to the committee under paragraph (3A) above to make a brief statement of no more than five minutes, at the beginning of the sitting, explaining that Committee's decision to refer the document or documents to a European Committee.'

( B) Amendments to nomenclature in the Standing Orders

Leave out 'European Standing Committees' in all other places where they occur in the Standing Orders and insert 'European Committees'.

Proper scrutiny by the House of legislative proposals and other important documents from the European Union is extremely important. As we all know, decisions taken in Europe affect many aspects of our lives. Government and Parliament must play a full part in those decisions.

Today, I set out a new approach to scrutinising the way in which the Government do business in Europe. The motions will encourage a fuller debate on Government position on policy issues that are affected by European legislation.

In the past, the European dimension of policy issues has often mistakenly been considered to be separate from United Kingdom domestic policy. As a result of that disengagement, confidence in scrutiny of the Government's position on European issues has suffered, which has led to long-standing criticism of the processes.

In its report on European scrutiny, the Modernisation Committee made recommendations for reform of the existing scrutiny process to reinvigorate the House's consideration of European Union business. The Bill to enable the United Kingdom to ratify the Lisbon treaty, which modernises EU structures, is currently in Committee. There have been a good many debates on the Floor of the House and there are several more to come, but we are here today to debate other issues.

On 25 October, during a debate on a range of procedural reforms, the Leader of the House accepted a proposal from the European Scrutiny Committee that, within three months, we present proposals to improve the EU scrutiny system. Four successive Leaders of the House have drafted proposals, and the Modernisation Committee reported in 2005. There is widespread agreement across the House that we need to improve the current systems.

The German Parliament has calculated that 60 per cent. of its legislation initiates in Brussels. The same must apply to this country. In those circumstances, should not our procedures go way beyond what my hon. Friend is proposing today? Clearly the time that we spend in the House of Commons ought to be devoted mainly to European as opposed to home matters.

I am not sure that what my right hon. Friend says is strictly accurate because of the role of the Länder in Germany, but I hope that as I set out my proposals—some of which are on the Order Paper, while others stray into administrative matters—he will accept that they will lead to real improvements.

The hon. Lady is making a good start, but may I pursue the question put to her by Mr. Field? I asked the same question of one of her Cabinet colleagues during our debate on the single market. Will she tell us what proportion of our law comes from EU institutions?

I must confess that the figure is not at the front of my mind at this moment, but I hope that by the time we reach the end of the debate I shall be able to give the hon. Gentleman the answer.

May I ask a procedural question? The hon. Lady was kind enough to consult colleagues throughout the House before presenting the motion tabled by the Leader of the House. Would she be willing to place in the Library, or make available in some other way, the responses given to her during that consultation, so that people can compare the formal views represented to her with the proposals on the Order Paper?

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the consultations—in which he took part—were largely informal. I hope to be able to provide some further information that will satisfy him.

Consideration of European documents in the House of Commons is currently subject to the European scrutiny resolution of 1998, under which Ministers cannot agree to proposals in the Council of Ministers that have not cleared the House's scrutiny processes, subject to certain exceptions.

I am sorry to have to raise a matter that is of some concern to me. The hon. Lady mentioned the November 1998 resolution. The European Scrutiny Committee stated unequivocally that the Prime Minister must secure a full debate on the Floor of the House of Commons before signing the treaty of Lisbon. I should make it clear that I am referring here to the opinion of the intergovernmental conference. That document was not cleared at that time, and no debate was held specifically on the intergovernmental conference opinion, in contravention of the scrutiny process. I should be grateful if the hon. Lady explained why that happened. There is no doubt that it did happen; I am referring to the opinion, not the treaty.

I understand that the hon. Gentleman takes an earnest and sincere interest in this matter, and I know that he has taken part in the series of debates in Committee of the Whole House on the Lisbon treaty Bill. I am sorry if he is not satisfied, but the fact is that we are addressing a separate matter this afternoon.

The House's scrutiny processes are underpinned by a system of Committee consideration set out in Standing Orders. Documents must be deposited with the European Scrutiny Committee, usually within two working days of publication by the Commission, with a Government explanatory memorandum deposited within a further 10 days. The Committee examines documents for legal or political importance. It might then, after exchanges with relevant Ministers, clear the document or recommend it for debate in a European Standing Committee or on the Floor of the House.

The Modernisation Committee report to which the hon. Lady referred, which was chaired by the Leader of the House, said that scrutiny of EU business

"should be in the mainstream of our political life."

Should it not therefore be done in public? When I asked her that at questions earlier today, she said it should not be done in the full glare of publicity. Why should not part of the mainstream of our political life be conducted in the full glare of publicity? What have the Government got to hide about European business that means that it all has to be done in private? Why is she not recommending that Standing Orders be changed to permit us to meet in public?

The Government have nothing to hide, and I shall come on to the amendments towards the end of my speech.

The Committee examines documents for legal or political importance. It will then sometimes clear them, or recommend them for further debate. Standing Orders provide for three permanent European Standing Committees, to which documents can be referred, with 13 members each.

On the recent Intervention by Mr. Heathcoat-Amory, one of the advantages of that being in private is that officials can give advice that is blunt and to the point; that advice might not be the same were it in public. Does my hon. Friend accept that as being an advantage?

What my hon. Friend says is borne of his experience on the European Scrutiny Committee, and it is clear that there are contrary views on this matter, but I will now make a little more progress and come back to it later.

Any MP may attend or speak in the proceedings of the European Standing Committees, but the system of permanent membership fell into disrepair because of the excessive commitment required of some Members. Consequently, the House is operating under a temporary system, whereby each European Standing Committee meets with an ad hoc membership appointed by the Committee of Selection.

Last year, the European Scrutiny Committee examined approximately 1,100 documents, identifying nearly 500 as of sufficient importance to justify comment in a report and recommending nearly 80 for further debate, including five for debate on the Floor of the House. The system has strengths: in particular, it means that every document of any significance is examined quickly; it means that difficult or unclear points can be discussed between a permanent Committee and the relevant Department; it means that important issues can be identified and debated further in the House, with any Member able to participate; it means that the House can come to a view on every document so debated; and it means that the Minister cannot, without having to explain why he or she had had to do so, agree a proposal without those steps having been taken.

rose—

If I may, I shall make a little more progress.

The system is far from perfect. The Modernisation Committee's 2005 report concluded that scrutiny of EU business

"tends to be seen as a minority activity, of interest to only a few Members".

The following specific issues have been raised: Members feel that they do not get early sight of EU proposals, although that is improving; most Members do not find EU discussions relating to specific issues to be very visible and they are not able to participate even where they have a specific interest or expertise; the process for questioning is unhelpful to both Ministers and those doing the questioning; Members do not get the papers they need, when they need them; and there is a lack of continuity between the different stages of scrutiny.

Since becoming Deputy Leader of the House, I have continued the search for consensus on how we should make progress and have held a wide range of meetings across the House and outside it.

The Deputy Leader of the House referred to the fact that when a European document comes back to the Floor of the House it can be agreed. She will be aware that if a document is amended by a European Standing Committee—I know that that has happened on a number of occasions, because I have been on the Committee in question—that decision is immediately reversed on the Floor of the House. I am just a naive, unknowing kind of person, so will she explain to me why a European document never suffers a reverse on the Floor of the House?

As I said to the hon. Gentleman earlier, I shall come to the amendments on the Order Paper at the end of my speech. He will have to be a little more patient, if he can bear it.

My hon. Friend Michael Connarty, with support from colleagues on the European Scrutiny Committee, has tabled an Amendment that would allow the changes to run only for the remainder of the current year, rather than until the end of the current Parliament. As I have said, the proposals are experimental. It may be that the rest of the current year is long enough to assess their effectiveness, and I am happy to accept his amendment.

Let us turn to the improvements to the system that I am proposing, the first of which relates to the timetable. In 2005, the Modernisation Committee recommended that the Government undertake to alert the House at an early stage of consultation exercises, and the Government accept it.

It would be ungracious not to acknowledge that what is being proposed is better than we have had in the past. I am happy to place that on record. The Deputy Leader of the House agreed to accept the Amendment tabled by Mr. Connarty. That indicates that even if she achieves the rest of her business today, she is willing to take on board ideas that are made after today, with a view to introducing further proposals in due course. Will she confirm that that is the case?

I am happy to confirm that. The Leader of the House's office is a listening department. We are always glad to hear from Members and to build on our current position.

We believe that there also needs to be better scrutiny of the annual Commission work plan. The most appropriate way to do that would be through short debates in Westminster Hall on the annual policy strategy and on the legislative and work programme. Such debates could be expected to fall in March and November.

Our proposals do not set out any major change to the European Scrutiny Committee. However, it is noticeable that the parliamentary calendars of Brussels and the UK are different. A more effective approach might be if the Committee were regularly able to meet before the House returns in October, as it did last year. Ultimately that is a matter for the Committee itself.

I turn to the composition of the European Standing Committees. The proposal before the House would enable ad hoc appointments to be more targeted than has been the case hitherto. Out of 13 members, it is proposed that two places should be filled by members of the European Scrutiny Committee and a further two by members of the relevant departmental Select Committee, and that at least five members would be spokesmen or Whips. Overall, at least nine out of 13 places would thus be filled by Members specifically identified for what they can contribute to debate on a particular document. Furthermore, hon. Members can make representations to their party Whips to take part in a European Committee debate in which they are interested. In many ways, that should provide a more informed debate than those based on the old core membership model, partly because of the wide remits that they had, partly because some of the core members on the permanent Committees felt that they had been press-ganged.

I welcome what my hon. Friend has said. It is a matter for this Chamber and for the political parties. One of the flaws in the old system—one of the reasons there was an apparent, but not intended, lack of interest—was that Members were not given enough notice of subjects. We need a system whereby people can go to their party Whips and say, "I am interested in this. When you nominate, can I be in the frame?" Hon. Members will need to be given some notice, because people cannot be in two places at once. It is a time scale problem.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why we have looked at the way that papers are circulated and notice is given, as I shall explain later. Of course, it is not for me in my role as Deputy Leader of the House to make suggestions to other parties about how their Whips Offices should operate, but I hope that they have heard my hon. Friend's remarks.

I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that one of the reasons hon. Members are less interested and engaged than they might be is the enormous volume of turgid Euro-speak in the documents. One of the great advantages of the private part of the European Scrutiny Committee is that we have simple summaries by officials of the House that state precisely what the document is about, what we need to focus on and what their conclusions are. They are a quick read, and hon. Members could well do with such summaries in the European Standing Committee, too.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. I hope that his views, which are based on practice, will be heard by other hon. Members who are interested in that aspect of the matter.

In order to maintain all the necessary flexibilities, including the need to maintain the right party balance, the vehicle for delivering appointments to the European Standing Committee is the Committee of Selection—as with all other appointments to Committees. We also see two ways in which the actual proceedings of the European Committees can be made more effective. First, we are agreeing to the 2005 recommendation of the Modernisation Committee that there should be an opportunity for a brief opening statement at the beginning of a Committee sitting by a European Scrutiny Committee member to point out why the document or documents were referred.

Secondly, the period of questioning on a ministerial statement can often be unsatisfactory because members are called to ask a single question at a time, leading to a broken series of unrelated questions. It would be more effective for questioning to take place in a more Select Committee-like style, with individual members being able to ask a series of related questions in one stretch. So, I am grateful to the Chairman of Ways and Means for agreeing, through the Chairmen's Panel, to advise all Chairmen to make that the standard way for conducting the questioning on statements in European Committees. I hope that hon. Members across the House will find that useful.

The Government have also been looking at ways in which Members might be kept better aware of developments on EU issues through the flow of documentation. One way forward is for Members to indicate in advance to the Vote Office the specific matters on which they would be interested to receive European documents. Those documents could be sent directly to the Member concerned without the need to fill in one of the regular and often rather impenetrable yellow lists of EU documents that are available from the Vote Office. I am grateful to the Deliverer of the Vote for his work in making that possible.

A further step that is being taken is for the forthcoming business before the European Committees to be listed in the daily Order Paper along with other future business. I hope that Members will find that a helpful way forward.

I am terribly sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I have lost the place in my speech. While I wait for the rest of it, let me turn to the amendments tabled by Mrs. May.

Amendment (c) relates to motions taken on the Floor of the House after a debate in Standing Committee. I understand that the intention is to require that the motion tabled on the Floor of the House is the same as the one agreed by the Standing Committee and that a debate can be held if the Government then table an amendment to it.

The amendment does not achieve either aim. For example, it does not require the motion tabled in the House to be the one agreed by the Committee, but the Government recognise the long running view expressed by previous Committees, including by the Modernisation Committee in 2005, that the motion tabled should be the one agreed by the Committee. If the right hon. Member for Maidenhead will agree not to press the amendment, the Government will undertake to proceed in practice in the way the Opposition seek.

That would mean that, if a Standing Committee agreed a motion different from the one proposed to it by the Government, the motion tabled in the House for agreement would be the one agreed by the Committee. There should be the possibility of a debate if the Government then seek to amend the motion. If any such debate is required, there should be provision for the first vote to be on the form of words agreed by the Committee, rather than on the Government's amendment. That is what happens on Opposition Days.

I turn now to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead's amendment (e), which deals with the conduct of the work of the European Scrutiny Committee in public. It stems from a request first made in 2003 by the ESC in relation to its sifting of European documents for debate. The Modernisation Committee considered the matter in its 2005 report and concluded that the ESC should have the power to decide whether to meet in public for that purpose for an experimental period.

The ESC has considered the proposal, and taken a different view. I agree with the right hon. Member for Maidenhead that, in general, there is a good case for the important work of sifting to be done in public. However, amendment (e) is not limited to the formal sifting of EU documents undertaken by the ESC: rather, it applies to all of the Committee's proceedings and so goes much wider than anything envisaged by the ESC or the Modernisation Committee.

For example, amendment (e) would mean that a discussion in the ESC about internal communications, dates, summer recess work or the order of witnesses would have to end in a vote. If the right hon. Member for Maidenhead will agree not to press the amendment, the Government will come back to the House with a revised form of words providing for the ESC to have the power to decide whether to meet in public for the purposes of sifting documents.

A further step being taken is for the forthcoming business before the European Committees to be listed in the daily Order Paper, along with other future business. I hope that hon. Members will find that helpful, and I am grateful to Mr. Speaker for his authorisation of this measure. If the motions are approved, I shall also send hon. Members a resource pack so that they are aware of the support available for their European scrutiny work.

The Deputy Leader of the House has said that the Government accept Amendment (a), tabled by the Chairman of the ESC and others. Do they accept his amendment (b) as well?

My understanding is that my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk has withdrawn Amendment (b), but the Government entirely accept the intention behind it. We will use our best endeavours to ensure that when the Committee of Selection meets, the usual channels will have listened to the views of the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee on which hon. Members are best placed to take forward each European Standing Committee. Taken together, the measures that I am proposing will be of real benefit to the House. They will help to improve the accessibility of the processes to all Members, improve the effectiveness of the Government's scrutiny of European business, and make it clearer to the public what we are doing. As I have said, the measures will always be open to further review, and the motion envisages that the Standing Order changes will have effect only until the end of the year. I invite Members to support the motion.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate, and not just about the motion in the name of the Leader of the House and the amendments that I tabled. I start by welcoming the fact that the Government have taken the initiative to improve the way in which the House scrutinises European legislation. The system has needed reform for some time; indeed, the need for reform was pointed out three years ago by the Modernisation Committee, and successive Leaders of the House have been encouraged to act on its report. I congratulate the Leader of the House and the Deputy Leader of the House on grasping the nettle. I also thank the Deputy Leader of the House for her courtesy in consulting me on the issue, for talking to my hon. Friend Mr. Vara—the Shadow Deputy Leader of the House—and me about the issues, and for her willingness to try to find a resolution on the issues that I have raised.

I also congratulate the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, Michael Connarty, because it was the pressure that he put on the Government at the end of last year that led to the Government undertaking the exercise, to work being done, and to the motions before us today. I welcome the fact that the Government are prepared to act on the issue and have made proposals that would lead to a better procedure, as my right hon. Friend Mr. Knight said, but I am deeply disappointed by the result of the exercise. I do not believe that the proposal goes far enough. It is a bit of a damp squib, and wider reform is needed if we are to resolve the problem of the democratic deficit in our consideration of European Union legislation.

As the Deputy Leader of the House knows, I have made a number of proposals on how that democratic deficit can be overcome, and I will refer to some of them. First, I should like to comment on the context of the debate—the House's scrutiny of European legislation. Most people's knowledge of what happens in Westminster is probably confined to a 30-second snippet of Prime Minister's questions each week. Some will be vaguely aware of the daily work that Select Committees and Public Bill Committees do—discussing key issues, dissecting legislation and so forth—but few will realise the true extent of that work. If that is most people's view of Parliament's work on domestic legislation, let us just think how few people have any understanding at all of what happens to European legislation, beyond feeling that there is too much of it and that we should not be ruled by Brussels.

However, between 50 and 70 per cent. of UK Laws originate in the European Union. The EU produces four pieces of secondary legislation a week, and every year more than 1,000 European documents are deposited in Parliament. Only a handful of them receive full debate in the House. Dealing with EU legislation is clearly an enormous part of the House's work, yet our system of scrutiny for that legislation is woefully inadequate. I must make it clear that that is nothing to do with the members of the European Scrutiny Committee, who diligently carry out their role as best they can within the current system. However, the Committee lacks the teeth that it needs properly to hold the Government to account. Too often, Parliament is ignored and its decisions are overridden.

The only formal role that national Parliaments have in the European legislation process is in the implementation of European directives, regulations, legislation and decisions. Parliaments' only influence, therefore, is based on their right to hold to account members of their national Governments, so the purpose of our system of scrutiny is to ensure that our Parliament has the opportunity to influence and hold to account UK Ministers for their decisions in the Council of Ministers. It is in that context that I am deeply disappointed by the proposals tabled by the Leader of the House, because that demographic deficit—that gap in our system—is not redressed by the motion.

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

On European matters I always give way to my hon. Friend with some trepidation.

I intervene merely in a spirit of helpful and constructive suggestion. My right hon. Friend is talking about a situation where national Parliaments are considering matters dealt with by national Ministers in the Council of Ministers and, therefore, the exercise of qualified Majority voting. Will she bear in mind the fact that the decision taken on the Floor of the House about any such decision has to be related to the national interest as expressed by a significant number of people voting in the debate? Does she understand my point?

I may or may not have understood my hon. Friend's point; over the years I have discovered that often when I think I have understood his point I have not understood it as well as I might. He seemed to be suggesting that our national Parliament needs to be able to express a view on the national interest to Ministers before they take issues—

In effect, we need something in the nature of a veto. If enough Members of the House seriously disagree with a decision of the Council of Ministers on a document, the view expressed by the House should, if necessary, override the decision taken in the Council of Ministers.

Perhaps my hon. Friend could wait for my comments about the scrutiny reserve, as he may find that they address the point he has raised.

The right hon. Lady is making useful points about the extent to which we properly scrutinise European legislation, but does she agree that the real problem is the strict and rigidly disciplined party system in our Parliament? The excessive power of the Executive over the legislature is the real problem; we are whipped, so even if we have strong concerns, things do not change.

The whipping system in the House is a different issue. I have said on record that in general I should like the House to be able to hold a larger number of debates on motions that are subject to a free vote—although when I say that, the Whips normally start twitching. However, the issue we are addressing and which lies at the heart of questions about democratic deficit is the system that we use to scrutinise European legislation. There is much that we can do to improve the system, but it is not in the motion proposed by the Leader of the House.

Mr. Cash was describing a situation in which Parliament does not agree with something that comes through the European Council. One of the beneficial aspects of the treaty of Lisbon may be the idea that national Parliaments could intervene to say that something should be subject to subsidiarity, but I have nowhere seen a clear view expressed as to how Parliament could exercise such a power free of the Executive. Has the right hon. Lady given any thought to that process?

Our view is that the proposed system—the yellow and orange card system—is full of problems. Earlier, the Deputy Leader of the House said that she would be willing to look further at how Parliament deals with European matters. Perhaps the issue raised by the hon. Gentleman is one of those that she intends to take on board.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stone may be pleased to hear that I had intended, before his Intervention, to make the point that the House has no real power over positions taken by Ministers, and that if a Standing Committee or even the whole House objects to a European proposal, the Government can still support it in the Council of Ministers. That is the case because the scrutiny reserve system that we have is too weak. It is not defined in statute and Ministers have the power to override it. All they have to do is give an explanation to the Scrutiny Committee as to why they have chosen to do so.

Since figures were first collected in 2001, the override has been used 346 times. Some controversial pieces of legislation have been exempted in that way, including on the EU arrest warrant and the creation of the European Defence Agency. There are many excuses for Ministers to ignore the scrutiny reserve. The reserve resolution states that the Government can agree a proposal if it is

"confidential, routine or trivial or is substantially the same as a proposal on which scrutiny has been completed" or if the Scrutiny Committee

"has indicated that agreement need not be withheld pending consideration" by the House.

A Minister can also agree a proposal

"if he decides that for special reasons agreement should be given; but he should explain his reasons" to the Committee and to the House at the first opportunity. Sadly, there are too many examples where Ministers override that scrutiny reserve. That is why it should be put on a statutory basis.

My right hon. Friend spoke, understandably and correctly, about the scrutiny reserve in respect of a Minister who is about to make a decision in the Council of Ministers. I was referring to something significantly different—the situation in which a decision has been taken in the Council of Ministers, including our Minister, but we override it because the House takes a different view when it gets to know about it.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for further clarification of his point. The comments that I shall go on to make may edge towards the situation that he describes, but I suspect that they will not go quite so far.

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way on the subject of overrides, which I agree is important. I draw her attention to the fact that they frequently happen because of the long summer recess, and also because they are frequently on common foreign and security policy instruments—for example, the common position extending the mandate for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. In 2006, of the 29 overrides in the House of Commons, 14 were on instruments that were agreed at Councils in late July or September and early October when the House was not sitting.

The Deputy Leader of the House is trying to explain away the overrides that take place. I entirely agree that there is a problem with when the European Scrutiny Committee sits. The 12-week gap in the summer recess does cause a problem. That is an issue that needs to be addressed. As she said in her speech, when Committees sit is a matter for those Committees, but the issue must be examined.

There is a point of principle involved in the Government's treatment and override of the Scrutiny Committee. As I understand it, the hon. Lady is saying that that is a result of practical circumstances, but issues such as the EU arrest warrant and the creation of the European Defence Agency do not fall into that category. Those were significant, controversial issues. The House needs to make Ministers more accountable to it for the decisions that they are taking on the vast amount of legislation that affects our constituents, but on which the House rarely has proper debate.

It is disappointing that the Deputy Leader of the House should try to excuse errant Departments, rather than stand up for the rights of the House, which is her job.

May I remind my right hon. Friend of another abuse? Ministers are persistently reaching what they call a general approach in the Council of Ministers to get around the scrutiny reserve. They are not allowed to reach agreement while the matter in question is still under scrutiny, but they claim that a general approach exempts them from that. That has been explicitly censured in Another place by the equivalent Committee, which said that it did not accept the Government's view that agreement to a general approach does not constitute a breach of the scrutiny reserve resolution. Does my right hon. Friend agree with that, and will she recommend a change to our procedures to prevent such things from happening in future?

I certainly agree that it is disappointing and worrying to see how Ministers find their way around the requirements laid on them when there are scrutiny reserves, in respect of both the override and the circumstances set out by my right hon. Friend.

There is a real need for the House to go further than is being proposed today by the Deputy Leader of the House in setting out changes to our procedures and to the powers of our Committees—the European Scrutiny Committee and the Standing Committees, such as they are at the moment. I hope that within that process we would be able to find ways to ensure that the views of the House inform what Ministers do in Brussels and that Ministers recognise that they should pay more attention to the views of this national Parliament. They should not just think that they can go off to Brussels, agree what they like and come back and say, "We're terribly sorry, but we didn't have time to talk to you."

Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the fact that in my short experience in the European Scrutiny Committee I have felt exactly the same about the general approach as my right hon. Friend Mr. Heathcoat-Amory? I have been left with the impression that Ministers are simply subverting the scrutiny process by agreeing to a general approach. What is more, again in my short experience on the Committee, there have been cases of Ministers who have been repeatedly warned not to reach a position, but have gone on and done so without any of the excuses that have been put forward, such as long holidays. They have simply ignored the Committee.

My hon. Friend makes a powerful and valid point.

As I said, the scrutiny reserve should be put on a statutory basis so that Ministers are required to come to the Committee before negotiations at the European Council and cannot override it. My proposal is based on the Danish model. I recognise that there are some rigidities in that model and that it would be necessary to give the Committee a degree of flexibility so that Ministers could set out a negotiating position before they went to the Council. I accept that it makes sense for those particular discussions to be held in private so that the Government do not give the UK's negotiating position away. The minutes could be made public after the negotiations, however.

My proposal would work along similar lines to the Danish model, although, as I said, the Committee would need to recognise the occasions on which Ministers needed to be given a degree of flexibility. The system would also need to be backed by clear sanctions so that if the Minister broke the reserve—if he or she came to an agreement with the Committee and went on to negotiate a different position—there could be some kind of formal censure. The crucial thing is to put Parliament back in the driving seat and make sure that we help to reduce the democratic deficit by ensuring that Ministers are responsible and accountable in Parliament for the decisions that they take.

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

I shall, but I must then make quite a bit of progress.

The right hon. Lady said that some discussions should take place in private so that Ministers would have at least a chance to negotiate behind the scenes. Does she agree that minutes could be made of meetings at the European Council, at which Prime Ministers and other leaders meet in secret, no minutes are taken and crucial decisions are often made? Perhaps that could be done under a 30-year rule arrangement. In that way, we would have some record of what actually happens inside the European Council.

The hon. Gentleman has again made a powerful point about transparency. I have some sympathy with what he has said. One of the problems about the relationship with the European Union is that precise issue of the secret negotiations that are perceived to take place and the inability of people to have access to what is going on, feel that they are part of it, comment on it and hold people to account.

I perceive another problem with the current system, which I have attempted to overcome through Amendment (c)—the Government's ability to ignore amendments that are made by the Committees. When documents are referred, the resolution that comes to the House will not be the resolution agreed by the Committee but the Government's resolution, even when the Committee disagreed with the Government on their position, and the vote can be taken immediately without debate. I noted carefully what the Deputy Leader of the House said, and she is correct about my intention. The amendment would ensure that the resolution that is brought before the House is the resolution of the Committee and that where that differs from the Government's position the Government would have an opportunity to amend it, but that the Opposition day procedure should apply such that the Committee's resolution is the one that is first voted on. That would, again, put the Committee more in the driving seat than the Government. The hon. Lady said that my amendment would not quite provide for what I intended. Having had another look at it and some further discussions, I think that it may, but in the interests of trying to ensure that we get this right I welcome her offer to go ahead and think about a means of putting this into practice having accepted those principles.

Amendment (e) relates to the European Scrutiny Committee meeting in private. As I said earlier, one of the problems for many people is that because they do not have access, they are unable to see what is going on in many of these debates about European legislation. My amendment would reverse that assumption by assuming that the Committee should sit in public, but would still have the power to determine that it would sit in private for particular meetings or for part of a meeting. This issue has been raised on many occasions in this House, particularly in business questions; indeed my right hon. Friend Mr. Heathcoat-Amory raised it this very day. There are strong feelings about this, and it would be right to make it the assumption and the norm that the Committee sits in public but give it the power to choose to sit in private for whole meetings or for part of them.

I am sorry that the Deputy Leader of the House has not taken on board some of my other proposals. She is attempting to change the membership of the Standing Committees, which, to abide by the new nomenclature, will now be called simply European Committees. However, the fact that there are only three Committees means that they can have only very limited expertise, although they cover a vast range of topics. Standing Committee B deals with the Treasury, including Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, Department for Work and Pensions, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for International Development, the Home Office, and other matters not otherwise allocated to the other two Committees. That is a vast area for a Committee to cover.

The Government have taken up one of my proposals, which was to have a sort of cross-fertilisation between the Standing Committees and departmental Select Committees to ensure a better flow of knowledge and expertise. I would prefer to go further. There is some merit in exploring the wider use of Select Committees or perhaps specialist sub-groups in Select Committees where Members have built up an expertise in a particular policy area and would therefore be able to bring that expertise to bear if issues from Scrutiny Committee documents were referred to them rather than being referred to a European Committee set up for the purpose.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there could be dangers if a departmental Select Committee, however experienced, were to make decisions, with the centre of gravity on that Committee, if it did not necessarily understand the nature of the legislative procedures and some of the complications that can arise? I offer that as a helpful suggestion.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It sounded to me as if he was offering his expertise to every departmental Select Committee to explain the legislative process to them when they consider these matters.

That is not impossible.

For the benefit of the Hansard reporters, my hon. Friend says that that is not impossible.

Another matter of concern to me is the lack of time given to debating European issues on the Floor of the House. The Deputy Leader of the House said in her wider proposals, outside the motion, that she will be looking to have two extra debates each year in Westminster Hall on the Council's programme. That would take us forward a little, but we should consider other innovative ideas. For example, perhaps there should be questions to the Minister for Europe, allowing for a specific time when questions on European matters could be put to the Minister responsible.

I am glad that there are going to be further opportunities to consider changes to the system because there are some real ways in which—

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. She has proceeded with great calm in considering a matter that should surely generate great heat. Why has she not addressed the fact that this process is a charade as long as we have a Government who ignore and despise what Select Committees say? On the central issue of whether they keep their election promises, the European Scrutiny Committee said that their excuse for not doing so was completely bogus. They ignored it. Another Select Committee said the same thing; they ignored that, too. What possible use is there in fiddling around with the procedures in a minor way when the Government treat Parliament and its Committees—Committees with a Labour Chairman and Labour Majority—with total and complete contempt?

The Government's approach, which was set out correctly by my right hon. Friend, is not in itself a reason for us not to do what we can with the systems of this House in order to improve them and to make Ministers more accountable. He referred to examples where the Government have ignored Select Committee views on this issue. Of course, every Member of the Government is ignoring the mandate given to them when they were elected to Parliament by refusing to give a referendum on the treaty to the British people. I am tempted to say that if they are prepared to ignore their mandate and what they put in their manifestos, it is little wonder that they ignore the views of Select Committees.

I support the Government's attempts to take the matter forward and improve our system of European scrutiny through their proposals. They could have gone further, and I would like to see the House go further at some stage. We should have a statutory scrutiny reserve so that Ministers would have to gain parliamentary approval before negotiations in the Council of Ministers. There should also be new powers for MPs to challenge the European Scrutiny Committee and debates on the Floor of the House. Perhaps such a debate could take place if a large number of MPs required it. I would prefer the House to go further on the question of adaptations to the Standing Committee system to bring more expertise into it. As I said, there are other innovative ideas, such as oral questions to the Minister for Europe.

I am grateful to the Government and I welcome the fact that they have undertaken this exercise, but their proposals will not remove the democratic deficit that lies at the heart of our relationship with the European Union.

I do not know whether I can be brief, but I shall try not to keep the House too long.

I welcome the progress that has been made on this issue since it was taken over by the Deputy Leader of the House. I commend her. She has laboured long in the vineyard, and I know that when it comes to European matters, the vineyard is a very dry one. I thank her for her generosity in accepting Amendment (a) in my name and those of my colleagues from the European Scrutiny Committee. I know that I cannot withdraw an amendment that is on the Order Paper, but in the spirit of the way that we have been doing business since the Deputy Leader of the House and others became engaged in the process, I shall not press amendment (b).

I want to thank several people. The Leader of the House obviously takes the matter seriously. As the Shadow Leader of the House said, it has been on the agenda for at least three years. Indeed, before the Modernisation Committee produced its report, submissions were made from several quarters, including our Committee, that were not accepted and were perhaps too radical at the time. I hope that, in the distant future, someone will pick up on our suggestions to change the system substantially and move from the current Committee system, in line with the recommendations of the European Scrutiny Committee, which I did not chair at the time. I did, however, support the recommendations.

The idea that our system is flawed and imperfect is not shared by other countries in the European Union. Only four countries have gone down the mandating road: Denmark, Finland, Sweden and now Slovenia, although it has still to perfect its system. In our understanding and experience, when something is made so rigid, the first thing that people do is to find a way round it. That is what happens in jurisdictions that have a mandating system. They encourage others to move in Council things that they have been mandated not to accept and then they blame other countries, including us—we have been caught out in that way—for moving against and gaining, by qualified Majority voting, the proposal that their Government did not want them to vote for. That is one method of getting around the system—there are many others.

We are regarded as probably the best non-mandating Parliament of the other 23 countries. We are so highly regarded that Macedonia, which wishes to join the European Union but has been criticised by the Commission, has asked the Clerk to our Committee to assist it to build a system of European scrutiny based on ours. When travelling, our Committee goes on a presidency visit and then to see an aspirant country. Macedonia has been soundly criticised for not having a parliamentary system that allows proper scrutiny across the board but hanging on to possibly ethnic groupings in debates in that country—which was at war internally, across its ethnic divide, not long ago. There are many good examples of our practices, and we look to improve them further.

As I said, people who have helped us include the Leader of the House and the Deputy Leader of the House. I wish publicly and on the record to thank the shadow Leader of the House and her deputy, Mr. Vara, who have engaged with the process seriously. I have read the pamphlet that the shadow Leader of the House produced. It contains some good items. It is like the curate's egg in that nothing is ever perfect, but I hope that we can discuss some of its good ideas outside the Chamber.

I thank the usual channels. The Government and Opposition Chief Whips have worked diligently to try to find a way forward, with assistance from other Members who form part of the usual channels, and we have made progress.

I thank the Chair of the Committee of Selection, who made serious representations to the Liaison Committee, which have helped us to deal with amendment (b), and the Chair and members of the Liaison Committee, who are, of course, the Chairs of the Select Committees. They have said that they are worried about the proposal because it is different from Standing Order No. 119, which provided for fixed membership. We argued that a fixed membership would have more experience as a result of permanently dealing with the business and having set agendas, which happened under Standing Order No. 119. However, the Chairs of the Select Committees are willing to take a chance and try out the proposal. It may impose on some of their members an extra commitment that they do not want.

The proposal would effect something that we have believed should be done for at least nine years, which is the time that I have served on the European Scrutiny Committee: engage the Select Committees, which have subject and departmental responsibilities, in the European debate. That is important because ultimately the Departments will legislate. What comes from Europe does not get passed in Europe; that must happen here. The Select Committees must therefore engage with it more closely.

I sometimes get the feeling that the only people who are supposed to get involved in European matters are members of the European Scrutiny Committee. However, that is not only our job, but that of every Select Committee. Some Chairs have been diligent; for example, my right hon. Friend Mr. Denham who formerly chaired the Home Affairs Committee, regularly attended European debates. The Chair of the Treasury Committee and the Chair of the Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Committee, formerly the Trade and Industry Committee, engaged with European affairs. However, the membership needs to engage with the process too, and that could happen through the mechanism that we are considering.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

I will, but I do not want to take too many interventions because of the time.

I very much commend the line that the hon. Gentleman is taking on advising departmental Select Committees, which is all I meant when I intervened on the Deputy Leader of the House. As Mr. Field has said, an enormous proportion of the legislation that we in this House deal with comes from Europe. Therefore, what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting—and what I reinforce from the Opposition Benches—is that because such a high percentage of legislation comes from the Council of Ministers and affects the whole House, the whole House must respond to it.

Although we sometimes spar, the hon. Gentleman knows that I respect him greatly, just as I also strongly respect Mr. Heathcoat-Amory, who is about to leave his place, even though he has different views from me on Europe, because they are serious participants in the debate. That is why we want to engage with Select Committees, so that they, too, engage on a daily basis.

We have already made some progress. Until about six months ago, consultation on Green Papers and White Papers did not involve Select Committees, believe it or not—everyone outside the House was consulted, but the Select Committees, with their expertise and interest, were not asked to give an opinion. The House agreed to change that when our Committee spotted it, and we are definitely moving on.

I am grateful to the Chairman of the Committee for giving way—he knows that I have a lot of time for him. On the point about consultation and papers, I served on one of the European Standing Committees in the previous Parliament, but the documentation that we had to read often arrived late in the day and was voluminous. The most extreme example was the occasion on which I received 900 photocopied pages the night before, which it was almost not humanly possible to assimilate, as hon. Members will appreciate. I did my best, but the European Scrutiny Committee summary was the only fighting chance that one had. However, if we are going to have a crack at making a revised system work—I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will take this on board and that the Chairman agrees with me—there is a responsibility to ensure that members of the revised Committees have a sensible period, of at least a week, in which to read the documents in detail before they speak about them. If that does not happen, that threatens to undermine the integrity of the whole process.

That is a perceptive and lucidly expressed concern, and there are a number of things there. We know that the Whips and the business managers have a problem in getting hon. Members who can attend Committees named for them, but it would be useful if at least a week—or perhaps even a whole week and a few more days—could be given, for two reasons. The first is the very reason that the hon. Gentleman mentioned: so that Committee members can receive the papers at the same time, not when they walk into the Committee, and can work on them in their own time. I also believe that something should be done to make an executive summary.

We will certainly be referring documents with the questions that we have raised in our reports that we wish to be taken up in those Committees, so that Committees do not have rambling discussions—this is the whole point of what, I hope, our amendments will achieve. Another point is that people outside this place—civic society organisations and businesses—want to know the membership at least a week in advance, so that they can send members briefings and ask them to ask questions on their behalf, thereby engaging people with Parliament's scrutiny process.

Let me move on to the reasons for our Amendment. Neither of the two reasons suggested is correct. In the past few days, when Europe has been to the fore, I have been accused of doing things for my own ego. However, my battered ego is not helped by the number of barbs I get when we are talking about Europe and some people would perhaps rather we were not, but I think it is a good thing that we are talking about Europe. Nor is the reason fear of bullying—I have been threatened by a number of people from this august organisation with dire consequences if I do not sit down and shut up more often, and stop raising Europe all the time. Those reasons might make other people move amendments, but they are certainly not my reasons.

Our two reasons are these. First, this proposal must be tested for the rest of the Session, because it is not a fully fledged set of amendments to deal with everything recommended in the Modernisation Committee report. It has been negotiated in good faith by the Deputy Leader of the House and myself, by other colleagues in the Select Committees and in our own European Scrutiny Committee, and by Opposition Members. We need to check that it will work in good faith, and that we do not find that Members are being put on Select Committees that they do not wish to be on, or that Select Committee Chairs are getting upset by the process, or that my members are nominating people who are not being taken up, while others are being put on instead. If the process works in good faith, that will be a great thing.

Secondly, we have mentioned January because we believe that, between October or November and January, there will be a need for other Standing Order amendments to be made, some of which have been discussed today. Others still lie in the Modernisation Committee report, including the recommendation that the European Scrutiny Committee have a role in initiating the subsidiarity process—the yellow and orange cards that have been mentioned in the main debates that we have been having on the treaty of Lisbon. Also, mention has already been made of the Standing Order amendment that is required to deal with the question of a general approach. We think that we are moving forward from a point where we are always in conflict with Ministers about this, and there are indications that the Cabinet Office is considering putting the matter in its scrutiny reserve resolution. Other Standing Order amendments would therefore be required, which I hope could be looked at between October or November—after looking at what has happened in the rest of the Session—and 1 January.

I thank Mrs. May for not pressing her amendment on how we do our business in the European Scrutiny Committee. That matter will have to be looked at and resolved. It has been suggested that we should work in the full glare of publicity, but my worry is that the publicity can become the point of the meeting. It begins to be about getting publicity for a political position, rather than about the issues before us in the documents that we deal with. If we can square that circle, so that we can have a genuine debate rather than facing out to the latest member of the press to walk into the room—which we have seen a few times in our Committee when it has been in public session—we shall do a service to Parliament rather than a disservice to the whole process of scrutiny.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I simply want to clarify matters, because I think that he is basing his argument on a slight misunderstanding of what I said. I have not actually said whether I intend to press Amendment (e) to a vote. I shall wait to hear what the Minister has to say. It seems only fair to clarify that matter.

I had misunderstood the right hon. Lady. I thought that the negotiations had allowed us to reach a position in which we would not try to force this through today. I believe that this is something for which we can work out a methodology in future.

On the general Standing Orders, I welcome the fact that we shall have focus, which we lacked in the interim when we had Sessional Orders, which collapsed the old Standing Order No. 119 Standing Committees but did not put anything of any substance in their place. We just had ad hoc meetings that were like those for statutory instruments, and they were rather pointless. There will now be focus through the European Scrutiny Committee membership—and, I hope, through the Select Committee membership—on that Committee.

I also hope that there will be breadth of engagement by Members. I know that the aspiration of the Deputy Leader of the House is that people will indicate interests and preferences, and will then be put on to the appropriate Committee, bringing their interests and expertise to the discussions that take place. The aim is to have more accountability through Parliament and through us. Through our Committee, and through the structures under Standing Order No. 119, as amended, we want to give Parliament—on the Opposition side and on the Government side—the feeling that it can make Ministers accountable. We diminish ourselves when we are not seen to engage with scrutiny properly. The late Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook—who was a good friend of mine—said again and again that good scrutiny made for good legislation, and that poor scrutiny made for poor legislation. We, and the people we represent, want good legislation.

The hon. Gentleman is a very astute, august and respected Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee—speaking as a member of it, I can say that—but can he give the House some guidance about when he believes the deliberations will take place in public? He represents a party that believes in transparency, so is it not important that the public can actually see the wonderful work we do?

If I am august, the hon. Gentleman, as one of the longest serving members on the European Scrutiny Committee, is majestic— [Interruption.]—the longest serving member after Mr. Cash, I am told. As Mr. Steen knows, we take transparency seriously, as demonstrated in the report on the Council's conclusions that we published on Monday. We said that draft conclusions should be made available to this House's scrutiny process before the Prime Minister goes off to Council meetings to agree them. I repeat that we believe in transparency, but I take the hon. Gentleman's friendly admonishment that we may not have looked into that matter sufficiently for a number of years—not since I became the Committee's Chairman, in any case. I give the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members an honest pledge that we will look into it further during this Session.

I shall not hold up the debate any more. We are making progress. The position that we are debating here represents progress from where we found ourselves when the Sessional Order resolution was moved and amended three months ago. I hope that the House will accept the amendments proposed by Government Front Benchers and our Amendment (a).

I am happy to follow Michael Connarty and to say to him what Liberal Democrats have said before—that we owe him and the European Scrutiny Committee a debt for doing such a good job. We are grateful for the Committee's consistent and wide interest in ensuring that it does an ever-better job and for making its views clear to the rest of us so that Parliament can have better processes for dealing with European legislation. I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for that.

I would also like to thank the Leader of the House and the Deputy Leader of the House for picking up a ball that has effectively been on the ground since the Modernisation Committee reported nearly three years ago in March 2005. You will recall, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that the Modernisation Committee made about 25 recommendations covering the whole gamut of scrutiny of European legislation. It is not before time that we have come to this point. We all come to it from the same general point of view—that, by definition, there are now two ways in which Laws come to Parliament. They come either from the Executive—or very occasionally from a Back Bencher—or from the European Union and its processes. That is entirely understandable.

We heard Mr. Field suggest the cock-shy assessment that 60:40 is now the balance of the volume of legislation that we deal with—60 per cent. originates from Brussels and 40 per cent. from Whitehall. I do not have accurate figures, just as the Deputy Leader of the House said that she did not have them. It is certainly the case, by definition, that a large amount of legislation comes from Brussels, so it is absolutely right to have as good a system of scrutiny of Brussels proposals—and of the Government's attitude to matters on the European Council agenda—as we have of Whitehall legislation.

This can seem arcane, technical and anorakish for people outside Parliament, but I have a simple triangular diagram to understand legislative activity. Down one side comes Whitehall legislation to Parliament at the bottom of the triangle; down the other side comes European legislation—but of course Whitehall and Brussels keep on talking to each other, which means that the third side is in communication with the other two. We have to ensure that those two streams are well filtered so that we know what we are doing.

To try to bridge that point, we have colleagues who scrutinise secondary legislation. We all scrutinise primary legislation—now, mercifully, sometimes in draft as well as in the form of final proposals. We have colleagues who scrutinise secondary legislation and they alert us when they think that something is important. If it is important, it comes here. That is exactly the same system that we should have for European legislation. Members across the board—not whipped and dependent on their parties' views, but doing a job on behalf of Parliament—should spot what is important so that we are alerted to it.

I have never served on the European Scrutiny Committee, but I have attended sittings of European Standing Committees on specific subjects, and in my experience the main issue is the one raised by Mr. Francois, who made his apologies for having to leave early. On occasion, Ministers have not wholly shared with us what is happening or is about to happen, or we have been given the relevant documents too late to do anything about it. I can even cap the example given by the hon. Member for Rayleigh of the monster document that was almost impossible to digest. Of course, there may be a lot of preamble and general Eurospeak to start with. I was a member of a Committee that did not have the documents in the right language, and did not have the latest versions.

Those examples are incidental, and such incidents may occur less frequently than they did, but the fact is that they should never occur. The blunt truth is not that we should be able to mandate Ministers—I understand the point that has been made about that—but that we should be able to engage in honest scrutiny of what is on the table before an Agriculture Minister goes off to talk about fishery quotas, a Trade Minister goes off to deal with patents, a Foreign Minister goes off to negotiate treaties, or the Prime Minister goes off to negotiate the most important of treaties. At a time when we do not have a proper treaty scrutiny process, it is especially important for us to be able to quiz Ministers.

Impressions of Ministers have varied. It seems that some have been very good and co-operative, while others have been much less good and apparently much less co-operative. Members of the Committee, along with others, have sometimes felt frustrated by a lack of engagement in debate. I am well aware that therein lies the issue of when a session needs to be held in secret. Of course there will be occasions when it is necessary so that we do not show our hand in public when a crucial negotiation is taking place, but that does not preclude the presumption that a session should be open to the public unless there is a good reason to the contrary. That is why I support the Amendment tabled by Mrs. May: it does not propose that all sittings should take place in public, but suggests that it should be presumed they will unless a decision is made to hold them in secret.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned treaty negotiations. It may help him to form a view of the relationship between this country and the European Union when treaties are being negotiated, and also of the behaviour of the present Government, to know that the European Scrutiny Committee was kept completely in the dark about negotiations during the run-up to the June intergovernmental conference. Until a fortnight beforehand, we were told that nothing at all was happening. We were wasting our time even trying to scrutinise what was taking place.

I am well aware of that. I was alerted to it by a Committee colleague, my hon. Friend Richard Younger-Ross, and it is entirely unsatisfactory. At the top of the pyramid of importance in the current Parliament is the most important European Union document, the treaty that is the subject of the Bill currently before the House, and it really should have been possible for us to scrutinise and discuss its earlier drafts. It is nonsensical that that was not possible.

With the greatest respect, how can the hon. Gentleman expect to be taken seriously when he pays lip service to the importance of scrutiny and describes the European treaty as the most important issue before the House, given that although the European Scrutiny Committee has compared the treaty with the European Constitution and concluded that they are fundamentally and essentially the same, he continues to engage in the pretence that they are different? When the hon. Gentleman treats the European Scrutiny Committee—and the Foreign Affairs Committee—with contempt, why should we pay any attention to the lip service that he pays to the need to improve the prestige and authority of those Committees?

What lies behind the right hon. Gentleman's question is a difference of view on the treaty, which I understand. I do not treat the Foreign Affairs Committee or the European Scrutiny Committee with contempt in any way. I have looked at both the original proposals for the treaty and those before us now, and in my view there is a significant and substantial difference; I have formed my own judgment about that. The first set of proposals would have replaced all the European Union treaties with a new and much larger and more expansive document, whereas the second set would not. They are, therefore, different.

It does not follow from that that there is a difference between the right hon. Gentleman and my party colleagues and me on the notion that the people of the United Kingdom should have a vote on these issues; the difference between us is simply that we believe the vote should be on the larger question, "Do you, the British people, want to be part of the EU on the terms proposed, or not?"

Order. We are now straying rather wide of the matters under discussion. May I encourage the hon. Gentleman to come back on target?

Of course, Mr. Deputy Speaker, although I was only responding to the earlier Intervention.

On a specific point that I think is on target as it is to do with the scrutiny processes of this country, because of Majority voting there is necessarily an interaction with other countries' voting arrangements, so it is also important for us to bear in mind what happens in those countries. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees that many, if not most, of the 27 member states have a wholly inadequate scrutiny process in either their Committees or Parliament. Does he not therefore agree that there is a serious democratic gap in how this legislation is passed in Europe as a whole?

Yes, I do; my colleagues and I have argued that. Being mindful of your strictures on addressing the proposals under discussion, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I will be succinct in my comments on this matter. The two principal deficits are that the European Parliament does not have enough power and that the European Council meets behind closed doors where it can carve things up, out of the public domain. So, yes, there is inadequate scrutiny there, but we are talking today about scrutiny here.

There is an unresolved overlap or tension between the responsibilities of subject Select Committees and the European Select Committee. The most common overlap is with the Foreign Affairs Committee; it did its own work on the Lisbon treaty, for example. There is still work to be done on where the dividing lines should be drawn. The Liaison Committee has an interest in this matter as, of course, do the Committee chaired by the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk and the departmental Select Committees. Work must be done so that we make the best use of the expertise in this House and ensure that subject-specific areas of European legislative proposal are looked at by those who take the greatest interest in them. We might need to make further changes.

It might be the case that each of the subject Select Committees has a sub-committee dealing with European affairs and has relevant expertise so an interrelationship might be of benefit. I realise that there are proposals on the Order Paper seeking to deal with that, by allowing people from the relevant Select Committee to be on the relevant European Committee when it deals with certain matters. That is an improvement, and I welcome it.

The current commentary is to the effect that the scrutiny process in the other place has become very effective and we might still have quite a way to go to catch up. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk and his colleagues have done very well, but there is certainly now strong scrutiny in the other place. The Modernisation Committee proposed a Joint Committee; the largest number of recommendations to it were for a Joint Committee on Europe, which would be a very strong beast.

The Minister has not responded to that proposal, and I think I am right in saying that, unusually, we have not had a Government response to this Modernisation Committee report on these issues. Usually, we get a Committee report and the Government publish their response; in this instance, the response has come in the form of this debate and the proposals made. I urge the Deputy Leader of the House to think seriously, in conjunction with colleagues and being mindful of all the sensitivities, about whether there is not merit in having a Joint Committee of both Houses on these matters, not least to do the sort of things that the Modernisation Committee suggested, for example, questioning Commissioners. We have lost that good idea in the process of moving where we have.

The Leader of the House and her deputy have consulted on these proposals, and they are generally welcome, because they are all steps in the right direction. I thank them for their courtesy in consulting. They picked up the desire for moving in a more effective direction, and that is reflected in the motion. That is good.

I am glad that the Government have accepted Amendment (a), which proposes that we try this system for a period and then re-examine it. The Deputy Leader of the House says that she sees this as being the next phase and by no means more than that, and that we might need to move on relatively quickly in the light of ideas and suggestions. That is also good.

I heard the Deputy Leader of the House say that she has accepted the important principle of amendment (b), which is that the people who go on to the relevant Committee from the European Scrutiny Committee should be the people whom the European Scrutiny Committee judges are the most appropriate to do that job. Let us be absolutely honest about this. One of this bit of the system's traditional failings has been that many nominations were made because the Committee of Selection was under pressure to fit everybody in, and thus people who were not volunteering, who were not keen and who were not knowledgeable were chosen. People were selected because it was their turn to do this duty or because they had been naughty boys or girls and they had been selected as punishment. That approach is nonsense.

Given the issue's seriousness, we must be serious about who does the job, hence the principle that the European Scrutiny Committee should be permanent for a Parliament to enable it to build up expertise. The three new European Committees— there is a question as to whether we need only three—should contain a core of expertise that remains.

Let us consider the example of the Committee that will deal with justice and home affairs. Such issues—terrorism, immigration and so on—are important. Even if the UK has the opt-outs under the Lisbon treaty, or even with a loss of business, that Committee will need people who know what they are talking about, who have been there before and who do not just turn up for a week or two and then leave. I think that the Deputy Leader of the House understands that.

These Committees need to contain a core of people who see such scrutiny as a main and important function. That is the feedback that I have been given, and it is the impression that I have picked up when I have been involved. We might need to have a cross-party discussion, led by the European Scrutiny Committee, about the number of Committees we require. It may be better to have four or five Committees with fewer members, where people are able to take things seriously, covering the main subject areas of European Union legislative activity.

I come to a general reform of government point, which the Deputy Leader of the House has heard me make before. We have a Government who have grown to be far too big for the legislature—there are now more than 100 Ministers, in addition to the Parliamentary Private Secretaries. If none of them can be free spirits, the number of people available to do all the Committee work is reduced. Until and unless we rein in the number of Ministers and Parliamentary Private Secretaries relative to the number of Members of Parliament, we will always struggle to get the people with the expertise to do the scrutiny job. As everybody has said, it is very difficult for the legislative to rein in the growth of the Executive. It is always difficult for Governments to deliver on that because they get tempted to do otherwise.

I have two final points to make. On amendment (c), it must be right that a motion that comes from a Committee to Parliament is the motion that the Committee agreed. We must start with the starting point. There is no point in having a Committee that is then counteracted. I shall listen carefully to what the Deputy Leader of the House says in her winding-up speech, but if I have understood her correctly, she accepts that this case should be the same as that for Opposition Days, when the motion is chosen by the relevant party and then amended by the Government. For the benefit of outsiders, that would mean that the subject would come from the Committee, not the Government. That is important and would be the right way round.

An indirectly related point is the scrutiny reserve. That is another technical but hugely important point—we all know what it means, but if we were to do an opinion poll in any of our constituencies, we would get more than the usual number of blank looks from people.

And from many hon. Members too!

The hon. Gentleman, our friend from the Committee, suggests that not everybody here would know what it means, but I think that that would be unfair.

We need to get grips with that issue. Written questions are often asked about how often the scrutiny reserve has been used, and the answer is that it is used regularly. Sometimes that is understandable, but I have a clear sense that it is used far too much. There are some answers to that problem. The first, which is related to the summer holiday problem, is that the scrutiny process must go on over the summer recess if we insist on breaking over the summer. The better solution, which has been proposed by my colleagues and resisted by the Government, is to break when the school holidays start in the summer, come back when the schools go back at the beginning of September and do some work as a Parliament in September before breaking again around the party conference season. Alternatively, we could move the party conferences.

There is no justification for this Parliament going away from its business for three months when, for a large part of that time, the European Parliament sits and European business—whatever we think about holidays in Brussels for people in the Commission—goes on.

On that point, I did not mention the fact that we received correspondence as well as holding meetings. One piece of correspondence from the Deputy Leader of the House that we considered contained the suggestion that the European Scrutiny Committee should meet in the summer recess. We have already informally discussed that. In general, we agree as a Committee—although I would have loved the provision to be made by Standing Order, because it would then not have been blamed on me—that we should meet sometime in mid-September to deal with the business that would normally fall foul of the scrutiny reserve because we did not look at it in time.

If that is the view of the Committee, I am grateful. It does not trump the argument that Parliament should be here, but the scrutiny process should certainly go on.

The Deputy Leader of the House suggested that, even if there was to be no change to the Standing Orders, we should routinely have the opportunity for a gradated report back from Ministers by written statement on the least controversial issues, in Westminster Hall on the more controversial issues, or on the Floor of the House on the most controversial issues. I understand that that is what the Deputy Leader of the House proposes. It is a welcome development that will help to provide consistency. There will be a regular review of European legislation on the Council's agenda twice a year in May and autumn.

I am sorry if the hon. Gentleman thinks that the proposals are even better than they are. We are suggesting that there should be two debates in Westminster Hall on the Commission's work plan and legislative programme. Had hon. Members tabled amendments to the Government motion proposing reporting back in Westminster Hall, we would have been minded to view them sympathetically. However, they would have required changes to Standing Orders. At the moment, that is not on the table.

I am grateful for that honest clarification. I saw the note about the proposal that the hon. Lady circulated earlier, and it is clear that there is a bit of administration that we still need to do. She has said that the Government are willing to consider the proposition, and I hope that we can reach agreement quickly. After significant negotiations, a scheduled opportunity to hear from and question Ministers in Westminster Hall would be welcome.

rose—

I see that the right hon. Lady is going to support the proposal too.

I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, and I should probably put it on record that we have had conversations on this subject. As he said, it was in one of the earlier proposals circulated by the Deputy Leader of the House. I do not have concerns about the European dimension, although if the matters involved are so significant they should be discussed on the Floor of the House rather than in Westminster Hall. However, the possibility that oral statements could be made in Westminster Hall starts to change the nature of that forum and its relationship with this Chamber. That is why I am not comfortable with the proposal that has been made.

I understand that, and the right hon. Lady is elucidating a matter of principle, but the negotiations remain to be completed and I am sure that there is a way to ensure ministerial accountability.

I end by saying that we are asking for accountability before decisions are made, not afterwards. That is the fundamental thing that I and other colleagues are looking for. Before Ministers go to Europe, we must be able to hold them to account and express our views in a vote, free from the Whips and party pressures. We will be considering the position adopted by the UK in the 27 EU member states, so it is very important that we are seen to act honestly, openly and transparently.

We have taken a good next step today, but further work must be done if we are to regain the confidence of the British public. People must believe that what comes out of Brussels is properly scrutinised, and that requires that the UK Parliament play a full and central part in ensuring that the right decisions are made.

I am pleased to be able to contribute to the debate, as it is on a subject in which I have a considerable interest. I am pleased too that the measure under discussion is an interim provision and that we will be able to look further at how we scrutinise European legislation and documentation in the future.

I became a member of the ESC a few months ago. I much enjoy the work and take a great interest in it, but for eight years I was a permanent member of European Standing Committee B, so I speak on these matters with some experience.

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory has left the Chamber, but I hope that the remaining Opposition Members will accept that, when I say that European scrutiny should continue to be conducted in private, I am not trying to be secretive and to prevent the public from knowing what we do. Instead, my concern is to provide a space in which our advisers are able to speak freely and frankly to us. If we were to meet in public, my fear is that they would feel constrained and that they had to be much more reserved. Indeed, they might even believe that they had to resort to supplying written documentation rather than speaking to us, because there is no doubt that being reported on television and in the press would turn them into public figures.

That would not be right. They are very much our advisers: they are not part of the cat's paw of Government and they give us honest advice that I have found to be very valuable. It is refreshing because it is so direct. Although I do not always agree with it, we all know that the Government are not trying to control us by means of the advice that we are given. That is the point that I want to make about secrecy.

Three and a half years ago, I made a written submission about European scrutiny to the Modernisation Committee. I had forgotten about it, but I found it today and read it through. Much to my surprise, I discovered that, even now, I agree with what I wrote then.

I agree with much of what has been said in the Chamber this afternoon. My hon. Friend Michael Connarty is an excellent Chair of our Select Committee. He does a tremendous job, and I agree with what he said earlier. We had a meeting last week with my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House, and I agree entirely with the trenchant observations that he made. She may even remember some of the remarks that I made, and I still stand by them.

I should like to emphasise how important it is that European Committees, or European Standing Committees as we called them, have permanent members. It would not be the same if members were appointed ad hoc, even if we tried to ensure that they were enthusiasts. I was a member of European Standing Committee B for eight years and I saw things go wrong, in a sense. Right at the beginning, in 1997 when I first became a Member, everyone wanted to speak and ask questions in Committee. The Ministers came along knowing that they had a strong, robust Committee to deal with, and they did their homework.

I remember that one former hon. Friend, Helen Liddell—well, she is still honourable and still a Friend, but she is no longer in the House; she is ambassador to Australia—was concerned to make sure that she got a real grip on the documents and knew what she was talking about. She was prepared to answer all questions and to make a proper speech. Sadly, because Ministers are no longer treated so enthusiastically by Members who come to speak and ask questions, Government Members—I will not mention names—do not do their homework in the way they used to. The typical performance now is for the Minister to speak, then the Opposition spokesperson, and then the Liberal Democrat Front Bencher. Sometimes I speak, too. That is about it; very few other people participate.

Sometimes, the lack of enthusiasm has meant that there is pressure not to speak or ask questions, because if one did the meeting would go on longer, and people wanted to get away. The atmosphere is that of a Statutory Instrument Committee, where Members are not interested in the subject and want the Committee to be over quickly, and so do not speak or ask questions. That is not how we should treat European legislation; it is too important for that.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. We are on the same Committee and have experience of how it works in practice. However, I should like to add to what he said about the Whip system. My point also relates to what I said earlier to the Shadow Leader of the House. The essence of the problem is that whatever is decided in a European Standing Committee, based on the merits of the debate, really ought to matter, but in one sense it does not. Yes, there is a debate, but if the European Standing Committee turns down a proposal, the position is automatically reversed on the Floor of the House. As I am sure the hon. Gentleman will agree, that is why many people in Committee believe that they are going through the motions. To that extent, the process needs to be reformed much more drastically.

I understand that point, and I raised it in an earlier Intervention, but we have a strongly-whipped parliamentary system, and we cannot get round that too easily. I still believe that the scrutiny meetings and debates on the Floor of the House are important and have some influence. When I speak in a European Standing Committee—I spoke in one last Monday on rail freight, a particular interest of mine—I know that I am speaking to a Minister, who will hear my view. Departmental officials and staff of the House are also present, and hopefully they are all listening and taking note, and are somewhat influenced by what one says. There might even come a point when a Committee defeats a Government motion—the motions are mostly "that the Committee has noted" something. The defeat may then be reversed on the Floor of the House, but the point has been made. That puts pressure on the Government and Ministers, and will at least be a matter for future reference. Perhaps such a defeat will have some influence in the subject area concerned. That is the best that we can do.

One of the points that I made in my submission to the Modernisation Committee was that our system may not be perfect, but it is the best that we have, although I do not describe it as a Panglossian "best of all possible worlds". We consider issues seriously, and our arrangements are better than those of some other nations. One of my concerns, which I am sure is shared by some Opposition Members, is that under qualified Majority voting, things can be voted through because many European nations do not take scrutiny seriously. They rubber-stamp anything that comes from Brussels. Countries such as ours, which might take a more serious view, cannot obtain a blocking majority because so many countries simply rubber-stamp things, because we are all Europeans now.

Not long ago, I said in a debate in the Chamber that many European Governments—by which I meant systems of government—are less trusted by their citizens than ours. Even with the relative decline in turnout in the UK, by and large people still think our system of government is important and they continue to trust it. We take our Government seriously, whereas in Italy, which has had a chaotic system of government since the second world war, many citizens do not take their Government too seriously; they may say, "Well our Government is useless but at least we've got the European Union and it might knock some sense into their heads". I do not know whether they think that, but it is possible. We tend to think the opposite—we do not want to be governed by Brussels because we can perfectly well govern ourselves. Because we take such things seriously, we should at least preserve our existing scrutiny system and try to improve it, which we are discussing this afternoon.

Permanent membership of Committees is important. Our Whips, or those who appoint Committees, should explore with Members what their interests are and whether they are prepared to take their Committee membership seriously, as with Select Committees. In our party, we apply for membership of Select Committees and are, in effect, appointed by our Whips because we have at least an interest in the subject. If we took that approach with European Committees and their status was raised, even though attendance might still be whipped there would be proper participation and proper questioning of Ministers. Members would at least have looked at the documents and could ask questions or make a speech on the important things.

I agree with Mrs. May that we should have more debates on the Floor of the House, not just in Westminster Hall and not just general debates. There are two things that should always be debated on the Floor of the House, and with a good time allowed: the European budget and the report of the Court of Auditors. They are serious documents about whether our money is being spent appropriately and not corruptly.

Will my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House give serious consideration to the possibility of instituting permanent membership of the European Committees? That would be difficult if there were too many Committees, as I pointed out in an earlier submission, because we would have to find more members for them. When I was first an MP, there were two European Standing Committees and then there were three, which is enough. There should be three European Committees with permanent members who take the job seriously and make sure that we perform scrutiny as we should.

Although I have been a member of the European Scrutiny Committee only a few months, I think that it works well, which is partly to do with the splendid way it is chaired. Its members take the Committee seriously and they do a good job, for which I commend them. I enjoy being a member of the Committee because it is taken seriously, but I do not care to be intimidated by fellow Members into not speaking in Committee because it will delay proceedings and they want to go home. In the past, even one of our Whips has occasionally said, "You're not going to speak, are you?" That is inappropriate if we are to take our job seriously, and my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader should have a word with our Whips to make sure that it does not happen in future.

I hope that my hon. Friend will take note of the points I have made and ensure that scrutiny works well in future both on the Floor of the House and in the Committees.

The debate has been very useful and I am extremely glad that we have achieved so much agreement. I am also glad to learn that the measure, although important, is an interim one, because we shall need to tackle other matters, as Kelvin Hopkins—a co-member of the Committee—suggested.

I want to make a number of points to set the background for our debate. One of them arises from the Amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Shadow Leader of the House regarding the Committee's decision about whether it should sit in public. This is not in any sense a criticism, but an important addendum to the amendment. It relates to the manner in which the chairmanship of the Committee is decided.

The proposal from the shadow Leader of the House is that the Committee shall sit in public unless it determines otherwise. The Committee's decision about whether to sit in public would inevitably be determined by the agenda, which would be prepared by the Chairman. The Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee knows well enough that there are occasions when I do not agree with his decisions, although of course I abide by them, because we try to work as well as possible. Nevertheless, there are occasions when I vote against his proposals in Committee and they are registered in the formal minutes.

We should bear it in mind that there are many Select Committees but only two scrutiny Committees in the House of Commons: the Public Accounts Committee and the European Scrutiny Committee. Although the Public Accounts Committee undoubtedly has a much higher profile, I pay tribute publicly and openly to Michael Connarty for what he has achieved in the past months since becoming Chairman. In relation to a vast amount of European legislation—for example, in connection with the latest treaty—the issues that crop up get into some extremely sensitive areas in matters of concern to the Government.

The Public Accounts Committee, by convention, always has as its Chairman a member of the Opposition. Even with my 23 years on the European Scrutiny Committee—I would be extremely surprised if any other Member of the House had been on any Select Committee continuously for 23 years—I have never expressed any wish or desire to be Chairman of the Committee, but I think the chairmanship should be in the hands of the Opposition party. I would be grateful if the shadow Leader of the House took account of this point, which is a matter of extreme importance on occasions.

If the hon. Gentleman reads some of my remarks earlier in my own speech, he will see that our Whips think the Committee is indeed chaired by a member of the Opposition.

We would concur with that. That is why I wanted to pay tribute to the Chairman. Although we have had a number of disagreements, that is part of the political process. He takes a view on the treaty and on Europe in general that I do not share, but none the less his chairmanship has been extremely good. That is without prejudice to my main concern, which is that just as the Public Accounts Committee should be in the chairmanship of the Opposition, so the chairmanship of the European Scrutiny Committee should be, as well,

Remarks have been transferred back to me about what took place in the Modernisation Committee on one occasion, in the mistaken belief that I wanted to be Chairman of the Committee in view of my long tenure. Somebody suggested that the reason the Opposition did not get the chairmanship was that according to seniority, by a long way, I would get it and that would not be in the interests of those who oppose my views. Well, I do not worry about that because I do not and never have put myself forward as Chairman of the Committee, but the argument that I have advanced about the need for the Opposition to hold the Chair stands good, without prejudice to the excellent work that the current Chairman does.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and I apologise for not being present for most of the debate, as I have been in the Westminster Hall debate. Does he agree that the answer is that Select Committees should decide their own Chair? It is outrageous that that is laid down for Select Committees. Many of us would have no compunction about voting for someone of a different party if they were the best Chair for the Select Committee. That is the way the matter should be handled.

I agree. My party has a taskforce, chaired by my right hon. and learned Friend Mr. Clarke, on democracy and the workings of Parliament. I pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend's work, although I had one big disagreement about European scrutiny, which is one of the issues raised in the report. I also pay tribute to the contribution of my right hon. Friend Mrs. May on questions of scrutiny; I shall come to one of her specific proposals—Amendment (f)—in a moment.

There is a problem about how representations are made to the Committee. For the Committee to be able to deliberate as is proposed under these changes to the Standing Orders, and even as it does at the moment, there are excellent advisers, to whom the hon. Member for Luton, North referred. I pay tribute to them. I have been on the Committee for 23 years and believe that they have been an enormous bulwark and have offered excellent advice. They are completely dispassionate; I have never had reason to doubt the quality of their advice or of the enormous amount of work that they put into the incredibly complex documents.

I should like to pay special tribute to the current legal adviser to the Committee—and to his predecessors, but especially to him. He has shown dedication and an enormous amount of legal knowledge of a kind that simply cannot properly be quantified.

indicated assent.

My hon. Friend agrees with my tribute, and I know that my right hon. Friend Mr. Heathcoat-Amory also would if he were here.

I agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman has said on that. Does he agree that the cover notes on all the documents are absolutely first class—clear, concise, well written and to the point—and in extreme contrast to the almost unintelligible documentation coming from Europe?

On the whole, people outside the House, particularly media commentators, pay absolutely no attention to what goes on in the European Scrutiny Committee, although I have noticed that some of the sketch writers come in occasionally. Generally speaking, European scrutiny is regarded as a subject to be accompanied by an enormous yawn and seen as about the most boring thing on earth. However, the bottom line is that the scrutiny of European legislation is at the heart of what goes on in the House.

Earlier, Mr. Field said that the German Parliament had calculated that 60 per cent. of its legislation initiates in Brussels; in fact, former President Herzog put the figure at 85 per cent. I do not believe that such people are trying to mislead or exaggerate, any more than we are when we make our own estimates. The fact is that the whole of the legislative process has, in a sense, been inverted. Without going the whole way down that route, I simply make the point that that is why the focus on the European scrutiny process is so critical.

As the hon. Member for Luton, North pointed out, and as I did in an Intervention on Simon Hughes, if that scrutiny is not done properly in the other member states—if things are done in a way that is inconsistent with our vital national interests—and we are governed by qualified Majority voting in the Council of Ministers, the consequences could be dire for this country. I want to put that general proposition on the record.

Just before Christmas, another point arose in the context of a failure to comply with the resolution of November 1998. In a motion that I proposed in the European Scrutiny Committee—I am not disclosing any confidences, as this is well known—I proposed that the Prime Minister should be required to comply with the scrutiny reserve Standing Orders and that resolution with respect to the signing of the treaty.

As regards the document that we had considered, it was in the spirit of Standing Orders—the key thing in relation to the manner in which the procedures of this House operate—that for the words "IGC opinion", one could read, "reform treaty". We said that there should be a debate on the Floor of the House and that that should be done before the Prime Minister signed the treaty on 13 December. That was not done, and the bottom line is that there was a bit of buckling all round. My right hon. Friend Mr. Lilley and I, with about 12 of our hon. Friends, went through the Lobby to support our Opposition to the position that the Government had adopted. I think that there was a misunderstanding in some quarters as to the importance of all this, as I said when I intervened on my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead. I believe that our party should have put its foot down very strongly on that occasion. It caused a few ruffles, but let us not worry about that, because these things happen in the political arena.

I was delighted to notice that the next morning an excellent pamphlet written by my right hon. Friend the Shadow Leader of the House was published in which she laid down the requirement that if circumstances arose in which the Government did not comply with the scrutiny reserve, the most dire sanctions should be visited upon them. I will not go into the detail because I do not have the pamphlet with me. For practical purposes, she was completely right. We all learn from these experiences, and the shadow Leader of the House has done us a service by publishing that pamphlet, although I have no doubt that there are other matters which we could discuss further and which could be added to it.

Another question is that of representations to the European Scrutiny Committee by bodies such as the CBI, the Association of British Chambers of Commerce and the Institute of Directors. I mentioned that when I spoke on Second Reading of the Single European Act in 1986 and I wrote an article in The Times about it in the same year. I said, in the light of my experience in advising on the impact of legislation for 20 years before I came to the House, that in relation to scrutiny it is essential that trade associations that are concerned to get matters right for their membership—it applies to the trade unions as well—should make their views known in advance to the Committee. Our scrutiny reserve process provides a breathing space by putting on hold any decision by a Minister in the Council of Ministers, and in that intervening period, after we have given it due consideration, a change of mind could take place. That makes any overriding by a Government Department of a decision that is taken by the Committee, where it is done wilfully, a grievous breach of Standing Orders and of the resolution of 1998.

I put the matter of the Lisbon treaty and the Prime Minister into that category. I urge people in trade associations, professional organisations and trade unions to volunteer information to the Committee so that our advisers have the best possible advice available on what is going on in the world outside. With the best will in the world, they can form a judgment as expert advisers, but they need as well-informed a judgment as possible. What would be better, in relation to questions affecting industry, commerce or whatever, than all the people who wanted to make representations being able to use the Committee as a means to ensure that any debate that is held is held on the right basis?

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about outside organisations making representations so that we are better informed. Would it not also be a good idea for general advice to be issued to Select Committees stating that any documentation that comes to them that they think relevant to European legislation should be passed to us on a regular basis? Many Select Committees, such as the one I belong to, receive a series of documents submitted by outside organisations, which give very valuable advice. Those might be helpful to the European Scrutiny Committee, too.

I concur with that point. I support any means whereby the maximum useful information can be made available in a decision of matters that, once decided in the Council of Ministers, becomes apparently irrevocable. Such decisions cannot be changed by this Parliament except through the use of the formula

"notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972", which I believe we should use, perhaps more often than some people might suppose. The question is one of whether we legislate in this House, or through the Council of Ministers and the European Court of Justice.

On the point made by the hon. Member for Luton, North, there is a provision in the Standing Orders about the European Scrutiny Committee. Standing Order No. 143, paragraph (11) states:

"The committee shall have power to seek from any committee specified in paragraph (12) of this order"— that is, the Select Committees, their Sub-Committees, the Public Administration Committee, the Public Accounts Committee, and the Environmental Audit Committee—

"its opinion on any European Union document, and to require a reply to such a request within such time as it may specify."

That power has not been used very often, but it is important if we are to get scrutiny right because the interaction—

Order. I am sure that it has been extremely informative to put the answer to that question on the record, but it lies outwith the motions and amendments we are discussing. I think that I should steer the hon. Gentleman back to the proposals before the House.

I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because having served on the European Scrutiny Committee with you for 14 years, I know that you know a great deal about how the workings of the Committee.

I now move on to the proposal in Amendment (f), which is described as:

"Debate on decisions of the European Scrutiny Committee".

My right hon. Friend the Shadow Leader of the House—

Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman, before he goes too deeply into this matter, that that Amendment was not selected by Mr. Speaker.

I am extremely grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I had not appreciated that; I would not have referred to it otherwise. It is an interesting Amendment, but I had not appreciated that it was not selected. What a pity—particularly as I was one who proposed the idea behind it, which the Shadow Leader of the House then took up. But there we are. It is funny how these things go in circles. [ Laughter. ] I think that I am getting the message.

The other point I want to make relates to amendment (d), which I think has been selected. I hope that I am in order there, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Unfortunately not.

A number of amendments have not been selected, and I apologise for even referring to the existence of this one. It suggested that there would be a power to send for officials of the European Parliament and the European Commission—something we should do more regularly.

The essence of the important debate is whether we can improve the quality of the scrutiny process, for reasons that go to the heart of the way in which we tackle such issues. The Committee was set up immediately after the European Communities Act 1972 was passed to act as an advisory body and ensure that things were done properly. On the whole, in the years since 1972, the Committee has done a good job and is getting better. When I first served on the Committee, there was a tendency to be rather relaxed about some provisions. Nowadays, a serious analysis is conducted, possibly because the accumulated functions have become so great that we have to take the Committee even more seriously.

We need to improve our arrangements. I still believe that the "notwithstanding" formula will become necessary, for example, for the charter of fundamental rights, the supremacy of Parliament and the Bill of Rights provisions, which we will discuss later, when we consider the treaty. Having said that, the debate is important and the European Scrutiny Committee does a good job, despite the fact that not many people outside take a blind bit of notice of what we do.

I pay tribute to Michael Connarty—

I'm in trouble enough.

The hon. Gentleman should enjoy it while it lasts. He and his colleagues on the Committee do a terrific job, despite the difficulties, many of which have already been articulated. They should be commended for that. I thank all the speakers who have taken part in the debate, especially given that the House is due to rise for a few days.

I am pleased that the Government have recognised the inadequacies in the European scrutiny procedure, although I fear that the concessions are merely tinkering and do not go to the heart of what is required to scrutinise properly the legislation that stems from Brussels in an ever-increasing flow.

It is especially regrettable that no proposal has been made to challenge the override facility, to which my right hon. Friend Mrs. May referred. That mechanism allows the Government to override the scrutiny reserve power of European Committees to agree to European legislation at central meetings between Ministers of the member states and European Union officials. It is noteworthy that, since 2001, the Government have used the override facility on more than 350 occasions to bind Britain to European Union legislation without debate in either House or any express consent from Parliament. We also have the so-called fast-track system, whereby some 60 per cent. of all legislation is passed. It allows legislation to be adopted straight away after it has passed its First Reading in the European Parliament. Again, there is no scope for proper scrutiny of that legislation.

I am pleased that the Deputy Leader of the House acknowledges the problem of the 12 weeks when the European Scrutiny Committee does not sit but the European Commission still legislates. However, I am not convinced that the matter should be left, as she proposes, simply to the discretion of the Committee to sit during the recess. That needs to be reconsidered.

I endorse the point of my right hon. Friend Mr. Knight, who said that he greatly hoped that the Government would accept proposals that might enhance the scrutiny of the legislation that stems from Brussels. The proposals for opening up scrutiny to the public are simply not good enough at present. It cannot be right that a procedure that deals with so much legislation—believed to be some 60 per cent. of the legislation impacting on the British public—is held behind closed doors. The public are already rightly wary of the subject; continuing in a secret way will only add to that wariness. I agree with my right hon. Friend Mr. Lilley that there is a fair amount of contempt in some quarters for the lack of scrutiny. That will only increase unless we make a genuine attempt to open up the proceedings in that area.

Incidentally, the Deputy Leader of the House will no doubt be aware that the lack of openness flies in the face of what the Prime Minister said in his opening days about wanting his Government to be open and frank. I appreciate that that made a good soundbite at the time and that it might now just be detail that can be conveniently ignored, but I fear that it is detail of rather great importance that should not be ignored.

My right hon. Friend the Shadow Leader of the House rightly referred to the success of other countries. She mentioned Denmark, to which I should like to add Sweden and Finland, which also have increased scrutiny. We should certainly take lessons from those countries.

The Deputy Leader of the House said that she believed that our Amendment (c) would not achieve our aims. We have looked at it and we believe that it does, so I would welcome a further explanation from her on that point.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk made a thoughtful and knowledgeable speech. His experience as Chairman of the august European Scrutiny Committee was clear. I agreed with him entirely, as I am sure did many other hon. Members, when he quoted the late Robin Cook as saying that good scrutiny makes for good legislation.

Simon Hughes made a typically informed speech, identifying various points of serious concern. I was particularly pleased that he agreed that there should be more openness of the Committee and its proceedings. Kelvin Hopkins made a valuable contribution, although I did not agree with his reluctance to open up the proceedings of the Committee. I understand his reservations about advisers perhaps being reluctant to give free and frank advice, but when we are talking about 60 per cent. of the legislation impacting on the British people, we have a duty as elected Members to let the public know what advice we are acting upon. The hon. Gentleman and I will therefore have to agree to disagree on that point.

My concern is that the Government would effectively have more control if the proceedings were more open than less. For the House to have control, it is important that our advisers should be free to say what they want to say and not be pressurised through becoming public figures. My point was about ensuring that the House is as independent in the matter as possible, rather than having even more control placed in the Government's hands.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, but there has been a tendency in the past decade or so to make officials give the answers and advice that the Government wish to hear. If the Government put less pressure on advisers, they might be minded to give more free and frank advice. My understanding is that many such people are lawyers. If they were practising in another area of the law, the advice that they gave would be on record—if they were in open court, there would be journalists. If the advisers are lawyers, there is no reason why they cannot be open in their advice in this context.

To assist the hon. Gentleman, let me say that the point is that the advisers do not work for the Government; they work for Parliament. They work for our Committee with tremendous loyalty and they are in no way interfered with. Some of them have illustrious antecedence—they have been permanent secretaries or senior officials in Departments who have moved over to help us. The point that my hon. Friend Kelvin Hopkins was making was that, if the advisers felt that they might become the focus of attention by being named in the press for giving their advice in public, they would be reluctant to become, as it were, the stars of the show.

May I further help the hon. Gentleman? As I seriously promised, we have been thinking about how we could open up the Committee. It might be possible to structure the proceedings in such a way that we could have half a meeting in private, at which we could have an interchange with our officials, before moving into public session and formally discussing the documents without asking the officials to speak. We would already have received their written and spoken advice, before our public debate. I think that we might be able to square the circle in that way.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that Intervention. Let me make it absolutely clear that I recognise that we are the public figures, and that there should be no undue pressure on officers and advisers to Parliament. I hope that I have also managed to convey, however, that this is nevertheless an issue. I am grateful to him for providing that suggestion. It is one that needs to be considered, but perhaps we should also consider other angles in trying to resolve the issue. The British public have a right to know what advice we have been given, but we also need to protect those who are giving the advice.

In the interest of trying to assist, I point out that my hon. Friend might like to reflect on the fact that, if one were to apply criteria of the kind that are relevant to advice given within Departments, and the rules that apply in those circumstances and to evidence given to other Select Committees, there might be circumstances in which it would simply not be possible to have a completely open session of the kind that the Chairman of the Committee has mentioned. That is not because people want to be secretive about anything; it is simply because a different kind of process would be going on.

My thanks go to my hon. Friend for that advice. Given that he has given 23 years' service to the Committee, I will certainly do as he instructs and give further thought to the matter. However, one of the amendments would give the Committee the option to sit in private if necessary. That covers the question of striking the right balance between private and public.

I shall move on to, as it happens, the contribution of my hon. Friend Mr. Cash, which was typically learned. He was right to point out that European scrutiny in the House is at the heart of all that we do. We are right to give it the attention that we do.

This is a vital subject that recurs constantly in public debate and in the House. We, as servants of the people who have elected us, do them a great disservice if we do not give the subject the attention that it deserves. If the public out there are to be obligated by Brussels for at least 60 per cent. of the legislation of this country, they have a right to expect us to give proper scrutiny to all that comes from Brussels.

We have had a thorough debate on European scrutiny this afternoon, and I am pleased to be responding to it. Mrs. May spoke on a whole range of issues, and I want first to address the question of overrides. I understand her concern about the level of overrides, but when looking—perhaps with envy—across the North sea at the mandate system that the Scandinavians have chosen, we have to take account of the fact that such a system fits their politics and their system of government, which involves coalitions and in which all positions have to be negotiated. That is simply not the position that we find ourselves in, and such a system would be too inflexible for us.

During the right hon. Lady's speech, other hon. Members raised the issue of the new rights that Parliament will get under the Lisbon treaty. These are that Parliament should receive documents first and that if 30 per cent. of countries wish to play the orange card, the Commission will have to hold back on its proposals. It is our intention, when the Bill has been through Parliament, to enact the Lisbon treaty and come back— [Interruption.] When? When the Act has been passed, we will look more precisely into how these matters should be operated and what resources will be necessary to do so.

Now might be an appropriate moment for me to ask whether the Deputy Leader of the House has an answer to the question I posed earlier—how much of our legislation comes from EU institutions?

Despite the fact that, unlike Conservative Members, the Government are supported by the Rolls-Royce machine of the British civil service, I am afraid that I will have to write to the hon. Gentleman about that.

Amendment (c) was proposed by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead. I understood her to say that she was prepared to work with us and withdraw the amendment. I was not sure whether Mr. Vara was quite as positive about that as the right hon. Lady, but as I said, I understood her to be happy about working together and waiting to see how things operate in practice.

I know that at a certain point in my speech, my pages got into disorder, so in order to be absolutely clear—and particularly for the benefit of Simon Hughes—let me repeat what I said. We will seek to proceed so that where a Standing Committee has agreed a resolution in different terms from the one proposed by the Government, the motion tabled for agreement in the House will be the one agreed by the Committee. There should be the possibility of having a debate if the Government subsequently seek to amend the motion.

The right hon. Member for Maidenhead and many other hon. Members raised the issue of how membership of European Standing Committees is decided. It may help hon. Members if I provided a little more detail. Our proposal is for European Standing Committees to include people from the European Scrutiny Committee, from the Select Committee and other hon. Members who volunteer, which will provide both more expertise and more continuity—not just continuity between the scrutiny process and the European Committee process, but more continuity with respect to subject. As I tried to explain earlier, when we asked the Vote Office to provide hon. Members with papers on a continuing and ongoing basis by subject, we found that there were 12 such subjects. I believe that going for an ad hoc approach will, in fact, enable more continuity through the ad hoc Committees than was possible under the old permanent system where Committees were covering three, four or five different Departments. Our objective is to involve as many Members as possible so that, whatever their political interests, they can pursue them in respect of decisions taken at the European level, as well as at the national level. We need to get away from the situation where Europe is regarded as another country and where some Members specialise in it to the exclusion of the vast Majority of other Members.

The right hon. Member for Maidenhead also spoke to amendment (e), which relates to the European Scrutiny Committee having the power to conduct its work in public. As other hon. Members suggested in the debate, there are some genuine issues about how best to give effect to that proposal. The hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire set out the position in principle, but my hon. Friend Michael Connarty spoke from experience about how that could or should operate in practice.

The Government are committed to enabling the arrangements to work in the way proposed by the Modernisation Committee in 2005. If the right hon. Member for Maidenhead is content to withdraw her amendment, we will discuss with the Opposition spokesmen and my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk how best to proceed. We will then present the House with a precise proposal to allow the European Scrutiny Committee to meet in public when discussing which documents are important and should be debated further, which will allow that important process to take place—when appropriate—with the transparency that hon. Members seek.

The right hon. Lady's amendment does not require the motion tabled in the House to be the one agreed by the Committee, which was her intention. It also makes a debate mandatory. I understood that she wanted it merely to be an option.

I understand the point about the openness of the debate on which documents should be subjected to one process rather than the other, but will the hon. Lady address the wider question of whether the Committee should be presumed to meet in public unless it decides to meet in secret to discuss any matter before it?

The point that I was trying to make, obviously without success, is that there are issues of principle on which there is cross-party agreement that, whenever possible, things should be done in a way that is transparent to the public. However, a number of practical issues have been raised this afternoon. We are not satisfied that the Amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead deals with all the practical difficulties that we face, and we would therefore be pleased if she withdrew it. We would then be prepared to enter into discussions on how best to proceed, so that we can come up with a resolution that can be agreed throughout the House.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk—

I may be crucified, but I doubt that I shall be Right Honourable.

I was about to embark on a paean of praise. Obviously I got ahead of myself. My hon. Friend does an excellent job, as does the whole European Scrutiny Committee—in an extremely thorough way, and on extremely difficult territory—and we are all very grateful to him. As I said earlier, we are prepared to accept his Amendment (a) to ensure that our proposals are reviewed again at the end of the year.

The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey made a typically thoughtful speech. I hope he accepts that some of the seeds that he planted have flowered. He asked why the Government had not considered in more detail the possibility of a Joint Committee with the House of Lords. Obviously we have thought about that, and obviously the system in the House of Lords is very well respected, but the truth is that the Lords and Commons systems complement each other extremely well. Although Members of the House of Commons are often criticised for their inadequacies in relation to European matters, the Government believe that if we organise the work properly, that unfavourable comparison will be seen to be totally unfair.

My hon. Friend Kelvin Hopkins spoke from long experience as a member of a European Standing Committee as well as the European Scrutiny Committee. I hope that what I have said about the composition of the Committees will deal with his concerns.

Mr. Cash spoke from his deep interest in this matter. He suggested that the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee should be a Member of Her Majesty's Opposition. We can rule that out absolutely at present because the Committee is in the safe hands of my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk. The hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire also gave a principled exposition of his views.

We have had a thorough debate. I hope that we can come to an agreement and that the motion will be supported. I commend it to the House.

Amendment made: (a), in line 1, leave out

'for the remainder of the current Parliament' and insert

'until 1st January 2009'. — [Michael Connarty.]

Amendment made (e): in line 63, at end add—

"(9A) The Committee, and every such sub-committee, shall sit in public unless it determines otherwise in relation to a particular meeting or part thereof.".'.— [Mrs. May.]

Main Question, as amended, agreed to.