Lords Sitting of 11 February 2002

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of St Edmundshury and Ipswich.

Retirement Annuities
Baroness Howe of Idlicote Baroness Howe of Idlicote asked Her Majesty's Government:
What steps they are taking to ensure that obligatory retirement annuities are provided to men and women at the same price.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Hollis of Heigham): My Lords, current legislation already requires annuity providers to provide a unisex annuity in respect of any protected rights in occupational and personal pensions. This reflects the provisions of SERPS and. for the future, the state second pension, where benefit levels are equal for men and women. For other retirement annuities, the annual rates for women are lower, reflecting their longer life expectancy.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Does she agree that the sum payable for the same price continues to discriminate against women? They get on average some 10 to 20 per cent less for the same price. As the Minister says, this continues to be based on the certainly different but significantly narrowing life expectancy rates. Does she agree that increased rates to purchase pensions further compounds the disadvantage of women whose lower hourly earnings-82 per cent of men's—and interrupted work life mean that they get a lower overall pension? Given the government commitment to action against all forms of discrimination against women, is it not high time to put an end to this injustice by requiring life expectancy risk to be shared equally now, or, at the very least, to see that the legal requirement to purchase annuity is removed'?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, it is certainly true, as the noble Baroness said, that women have lower earnings. She is right therefore to focus on the fact that having a job and a sustained pension over many years is the best protection against poverty in old age. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness on that point. But do not agree with her on the rest. It is certainly the case that annuity rates produce lower rates for women, as they do, for example, under some schemes, if so chosen, in instances of impaired life expectancy or according to types of occupation or where one lives. But over their lifetime, women, given the standard life expectancy for the same annuity rate, are likely to get £9,007 more than men from the same annuity sums of money.
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The second point is that women gain disproportionately from both the state second pension and the pension credit—two-thirds of the gainers are women—and of course from retirement pension. In all of these women are aided by the fact that because inflation under this Government is so low, women continue to protect the value of their pension for much longer than they would have done under the previous Conservative government.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, is the Minister aware—she more or less said so in her response to the previous question—that women tend to lose out at every stage in pension provision throughout their working lives? We are now moving in the direction of equal pension ages. Is it not right that the imbalance which affects women should be redressed by introducing unisex actuarial valuations?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I hope that the House will forgive me. I am a little puzzled because I thought I had answered precisely that question as raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. No, I disagree because it was confirmed by both the European Court of Justice and the Neath judgment in 1993 and by the European directive 86 that gender considerations were a proper factor to take into account under annuitisation. That we have done. I made the point—I hoped that my noble friend would take it—that overall women do better than men, given standard life expectancy, from their annuity investment, as they do from other forms of pension provision. But the key issue—I go back to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe—is that women get good jobs and contribute to pension schemes during their working lives. That is the best basis for women enjoying a decent pension in old age.
The Earl of Northesk: My Lords, the published consultation document on annuities—I am somewhat surprised that the noble Baroness did not mention it in her answer—is welcome so far as it goes. But is it not merely tinkering with the problem rather than initiating the kinds of reforms that consumers need, particularly with respect to compulsory annuitisation? Viewed more broadly, how do the Government respond to growing evidence that their policy towards annuities is a contributory factor to the low take-up of stakeholder pensions?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, the Modernising Annuities document has much to offer those people with more modest sums, including better information, the ability to take limited period annuities, and so on. I accept that the noble Earl is correct; some people will be disappointed that the report does not abolish the "75" rule. Those who will be disappointed are people with pension pots of £250,000 or more, which would be the sum of money required to float them off means tested benefits. Those people will also be disappointed because they cannot leave that money to their heirs, courtesy of the contribution from other taxpayers.

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The point about annuities is that they are an insurance against living too long. They are a retirement vehicle not an inheritance device. If one were to remove the "75" rule, as the noble Lord suggests, it would mean that poorer taxpayers who currently contribute 30 per cent of the build-up of those annuities would be subsidising the better off to leave money to their well-to-do offspring.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that death appears to discriminate against men?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I agree, and I suggest that my noble friend takes that up with the Bishops' Bench to see whether they will intercede with the Almighty.
Baroness Barker: My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that standardisation of annuities on grounds of gender leads to administrative simplicity and therefore to cheaper products for both men and women? What are the Government doing to encourage that?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Obviously, my Lords, we want cheaper products, which is why the Government are doing so well with stakeholder pensions—bringing the fees down to 1 per cent and so on. But I must repeat that it is not only legitimate under European law but proper that annuity providers should take account of such considerations as gender and, if they wish, occupation, impaired life expectancy, and the like. I repeat that over their average lifetime, women get a better deal from annuities than do men.
Lord Varley: My Lords, would my noble friend like to comment on something that applies equally to men and women annuitants, namely, the application of the Inland Revenue rules, which at present on the one hand prevent the annuity contract being honoured and on the other deny to the Treasury millions of pounds in revenue? My noble friend has a quizzical look on her face, but those are the facts. If she cannot answer the question today, will she ask her officials to consider how those capricious rules are working to deny the Treasury a great deal of revenue? I declare an interest as an annuitant who, like thousands of others, is the victim of those capricious rules.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I am at a disadvantage because my noble friend has not specified what he means by "capricious rules". Only if I knew what were the rules that he thinks capricious could I attempt to persuade him of the deep rationality that, I am confident, lies behind them.
Lord Brookman: My Lords, is my noble friend aware of a study in America which took 20 years and found that left-handed men die seven years earlier than right-handed men? I am left-handed myself. Taking
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into account that women tend to live about six or seven years longer than men, does my noble friend have any sympathy for left-handed retirees?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, being left-handed may for most men have cast a blight over their lives, but I am confident that in no sense has it impaired my noble friend's life or opportunities.
Baroness Greengross: My Lords, does the Minister agree that one is hopeful of a move towards fairness? It is still obvious that women die poorer than men but even if at present they have a few more years to live, the gap is closing. Would not a system of pooling life expectancy risk be much fairer?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I return to the point that I made in response to the Question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote. The problem is not so much that the annuity rates are not fair—they are—but that women generally have lower wages and interrupted career patterns and, for the most part, have long regarded their husband as their pension provider rather than taking out their own pension. In all decency, that is the core of the problem and that is precisely why the Government introduced the state second pension and the pension credit scheme, both of which will largely benefit women. I fully take the substance behind the point made by the noble Baroness, but it is not a question of tinkering with annuity rates. There is a deeper issue about the relation of women to the labour market.

Democratic Republic of the Congo
2.47 p.m.
Baroness Rawlings Baroness Rawlings asked—Her Majesty's Government:
What humanitarian plans they have developed for long-term recovery in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Lord Grocott: My Lords, long-term recovery in the Democratic Republic of the Congo depends on a resolution of the conflict and the establishment of a representative national government and state institutions. The Government believe that the Lusaka peace process provides the right framework for achieving long-term peace. In the meantime, we have more than doubled our humanitarian programme in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to a total of more than £10 million this year. That is channelled through the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and international nongovernmental organisations.
Baroness Rawlings: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that clear Answer. Is he aware of reports during the past few weeks that more than 15,000 people have been displaced in the north-eastern parts of the DRC, because of ethnic and political fighting? Such violence greatly hampers the humanitarian effort in the region.

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Does he believe that there is a role for Uganda, whose troops remain in the region, in bringing to it greater peace and stability?
Lord Grocott: My Lords, the noble Baroness is right to raise the particular problems in the north-east of the country, which has a long-standing record—if that is the right word—of conflict between different groups, and in which Uganda has an understandable, legitimate security interest. Any progress in that or any other area of the country depends on the Lusaka accord and all parties, including Uganda, working on that basis.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, while welcoming the Prime Minister's commitment to the New Partnership for African Development, and his undertaking while in Africa to lobby for support for it at the forthcoming G8 meeting, what will those proposals do for people who live in areas that are not under state control, such as the RCD-controlled entity in eastern DRC? Can the noble Lord say anything further to our recent debate on sub-Saharan Africa about what the Government are doing to halt the illicit exports of coltan via Kigali, which are taking up all available cargo space to the exclusion of legitimate consignments from that city?
Lord Grocott: My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord's comment about the Prime Minister's initiative. It is not exactly a news story that I—or anyone else on these Benches—think that the Prime Minister does a good job. At a time when, it is suggested, there is a fair degree of cynicism about political leaders, I hope that the whole House will commend the Prime Minister on embarking on such a campaign to deal with poverty and conflict in Africa. That campaign has been followed through since his conference speech last year. On that front, if not on others, it cannot be said that things are driven by opinion polls, focus groups or anything else; it is being done because it is the right thing to do. I shall write to the noble Lord on the specific question of cargoes and freight.
Baroness Williams of Crosby: My Lords, we also commend what the Minister just said about the Prime Minister's initiative in Africa, but I should like to pursue the question one stage further. The noble Lord will know that the Lusaka accord required the withdrawal of all the armies of the neighbouring states from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and he will recognise that that has not been completed. Will his right honourable friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary bring their influence to bear in upholding the Lusaka accord, in respect of Zimbabwe, in particular? Zimbabwe has withdrawn 10,000 troops only until after the presidential election is completed and has, so far, given no indication that those troops will not return to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to continue the plundering of that tragic state.
Lord Grocott: My Lords, I agree with the thrust of the question asked by the noble Baroness. The Lusaka accord is the absolute bedrock of the Government's
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position as far as concerns the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As the noble Baroness rightly said, that accord includes the withdrawal of foreign troops, as well as the process of reconciliation in the area.
I emphasise, in the language of the day, that the strength of the Lusaka accord comes from the fact that it was driven forward and signed within the Congo itself. There is local ownership of it, if that is the right phrase, and it is supported by the United Nations. I assure the noble Baroness that that it is at the heart of the Government's thinking that we should press forward on that basis, including on the specific point about Zimbabwe that she raised. The noble Baroness will know that the recent UN panel report said that Zimbabwe's presence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was motivated primarily by commercial concerns. It is the Government's strategy to deal with that.
Lord Eden of Winton: My Lords, can the Minister say what arrangement there is for following up or monitoring progress under the Lusaka accord? By whom is it done? Is it done within the Congo or by some of the neighbouring states, the Commonwealth or the United Nations?
Lord Grocott: My Lords, as I said, the strength of the Lusaka accord comes from the fact that all the interested parties are behind it, signed it and supported it. By its presence and by other means, the United Nations is giving it a fair wind. The situation is moving on all the time. The next meeting of the Inter-Congolese dialogue, which is an important part of the Lusaka accord, is scheduled to take place on 25th February. That is the next step along the road that, we hope, will show some success.

Church of England: Episcopal Appointments
2.53 p.m.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester Lord Faulkner of Worcester asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether there are any plans to change the arrangements for the appointment of bishops and archbishops.
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Williams of Mostyn): My Lords, currently there are not. In 1998 the Church of England set up a review to examine the working of the Crown Appointments Commission and related matters, but within the existing framework of the 1976 agreement between Church and state on the appointment of bishops and archbishops. The group's report was completed last year, and a Church steering group is now considering its recommendations.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, I thank my noble and learned friend for that Answer. I take a little comfort from the use of the word "currently" in the first sentence.

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I hope the Minister will agree that it is possible to have a sensible discussion about episcopal appointments, without necessarily getting involved in a debate about the disestablishment of the Church of England. Does he not find it extraordinary that, in 21st century Britain, we still appoint archbishops and bishops largely along the lines laid down by Henry VIII in 1533?
Would not the most satisfactory solution be for the Prime Minister to make it clear that the choice of the new archbishop—and of future bishops—should be a matter entirely for the Church and that he would welcome the introduction of a new democratic structure that would allow individual churchgoers a voice in deciding who will lead them, as happens in other Churches that are part of the Anglican communion? Those arrangements are described with great clarity in the excellent report of the committee chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, entitled Working with the faith into the workings of the Crown Appointments Commission.
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, the noble Lord spoke of the method of appointment used by Henry VIII which, he said, was generally similar to the present one. I think that the method of early retirement that was imposed by Henry VIII is not current in the Church of England.
The report was an admirable document. The best way forward is to follow the track that I mentioned in my Answer. The Church of England should come to its conclusions itself and then make further such reforms as may be deemed appropriate.
Baroness Perry of Southwark: My Lords, I declare an interest. As had been made clear, I chaired the review of the Crown Appointments Commission. Our report was issued in May last year.
I entirely support the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, about the extremely odd situation in which the leaders of our Church are still chosen in great secrecy and by a programme that often seems to involve the Prime Minister asking the Church to keep guessing until it comes up with the name that she or he first thought of. Does the Minister accept that the ordinary members of the Church—the voices from the pews—would rather like to believe that our Church leaders were free to speak according to their own conscience and faith and were not dependent for preferment or promotion on a political judgment?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I agree entirely with that. There is an admirable model to the west of the border between England and Wales, where the Church, which has been disestablished since, I think, 1923, has an entirely different method of choosing bishops and archbishops and has, at the moment, an admirable archbishop who certainly speaks his mind on every appropriate occasion.
Lord Pilkington of Oxenford: My Lords, the Minister is a reasonable man, and I shall ask him about a
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pragmatic point. I speak with a prejudice: I am an Anglican clergyman who has never been considered for a bishopric. Might it not be an idea for the appointments commission to interview the candidates? I have been interviewed many times. I gather that people say that bishops might be considered for six sees but should not be interviewed six times; one interview is enough, allowing a little for maturity. Will the Minister exercise his considerable influence on the Prime Minister to see whether an interview might help?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, the noble Lord has also been a reverend canon. He said that he had never been considered for a bishopric: what he means is that he was never successfully considered for a bishopric.
I do not know where all these things will end. We must go cautiously and carefully. Perhaps we could elect 20 per cent of the bishops in the first place.
The Lord Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich: My Lords, far be it from me to express any dissatisfaction with the present system. Does the Minister agree that the most recent debates in the General Synod have indicated a mind overwhelmingly in favour of the present relationship between Church and state in the appointment of bishops, surprising as that may seem to some?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, the right reverend Prelate is, I think, right so far. Of course, the discussion to which I referred, on the document produced by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, has not taken place. The Church steering group is considering recommendations but, as I understand it, has come to no conclusions. I also understand that the group intends to report back on an interim basis to the synod in July, in the hope that it might come to a final conclusion by the latter part of the year. It is very much the subject of discussion at the moment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, does the Minister accept that, given the deep emphasis placed on transparency by this Government, a little bit more transparency in current processes would be acceptable and that there is no reason why, for example, the Prime Minister should not make it clear publicly that political considerations will not play a role in the major appointment in the Church of England now under way?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I do not think that there is any serious question that over recent years political considerations have had anything to do with the choice either of bishops or archbishops in the Church of England.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, in considering the matter, does the noble and learned Lord believe that

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the Church as a whole has something to learn from the ultra-democratisation of political parties in recent years?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, I am not sure which political party has been subject to a great infusion of ultra-democracy. However, I repeat that there is a model not too far away which seems to work rather well. Recently the bishopric of St David's became vacant and those who have to deal with the choice of a successor to fill that vacancy are lay persons and clergy from the Church in Wales. I do not say that the Church in Wales is perfect on every occasion—necessarily.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville: My Lords, since we have a little extra time, does the noble and learned Lord recall that the Duke of Wellington nearly appointed the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh to Canterbury until someone pointed out that there was a second Archbishop of Armagh who was an Anglican?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, yes, and I hate those nit-picking points, as the Duke of Wellington actually remarked at the time.
Lord Cope of Berkeley: My Lords, the way in which the noble and learned Lord expressed his first reference to the situation in Wales could be taken to indicate that he thought that disestablishment was necessarily bound up with a change in the method of appointment of bishops and archbishops. However, does he agree that those are two separate matters which should be considered separately?
Lord Williams of Mostyn: My Lords, they are entirely separate, as was indicated by my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester, and from which proposition I did not dissent.

Business
3.2 p.m.
Lord Wiilliams of Mostyn: My Lords, your Lordships will wish to know that I propose to table tonight and to move tomorrow a Motion for an humble Address to Her Majesty the Queen conveying the sympathy of this House on the death of Her Royal Highness the Princess Margaret. That humble Address will be taken as first business tomorrow.

Second Parliamentary Chamber for Europe: EUC Report
3.3 p.m.
Lord Brabazon of Tara Lord Brabazon of Tara rose to move, That this House takes note of the report of the European Union Committee, A Second Parliamentary chamber for Europe: An unreal solution to some real problems (7th Report, HL Paper 48).
The noble Lord said: My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to introduce this report for debate. This is the first debate that I have led in my capacity as chairman of your Lordships' Select Committee on the European Union and it prompts my first remark. I wish to pay a very warm tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, since elevated to the post of Chairman of Committees, who, as my predecessor in the role of Principal Deputy Chairman and thus chairman of the European Union Committee, not only conceived the idea for this inquiry, but also got it off to a flying start. I am glad to see that the noble Lord is in his place arid I thank him for all his work, both on this matter and more generally.
I also take this opportunity to thank the other members of the Select Committee, in particular the small group—the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, and the noble Lords, Lord Tomlinson, Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Williamson of Horton—who accompanied me to Brussels where we heard the majority of the evidence. All, I am glad to see, have put down their names to speak in this debate.
Finally, I thank those noble Lords who, like the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, served on the Select Committee at the start of this inquiry but subsequently left it—the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, who, I am glad to see, is to speak, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, and the noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain.
I thank too Tom Mohan, who, as Clerk, began this inquiry. Tom and the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, worked together for many years on the committee and are now overseeing the passage of private legislation through your Lordships' House. I wish them well. Last, but not least, I thank Simon Burton, our new Clerk, for all the work he has done on the preparation of this report and congratulate him on his rapid grasp of the issues facing the committee.
The report is produced, as are most reports from your Lordships' committees, as the unanimous report of the Select Committee. No member of the Select Committee divided the committee on the report, or on any of its individual conclusions or phrasing. However, I should record that one noble Lord, the noble Lord, Lord Lamont of Lerwick, expressed himself unhappy with some of what we had produced. I am sorry that he is not able to take part in the debate today due to absence abroad, so we shall not be able to hear his objections.
Turning to the substance of the report, I should stress that while this is a report on the proposal for a second parliamentary chamber for Europe, I hope that noble Lords speaking today will not confine themselves to that topic alone. Indeed, the report itself is not so confined. Bearing in mind the weight of evidence received, a report on a second chamber alone could have been very short and might have consisted of only a single sentence, "This is a bad idea". I shall return to that theme in a moment, but I express my hope that the debate, like the report, will range more widely over some of the more significant issues which underlie the proposals for a second chamber.
I was grateful to receive last Friday the Government's response to our report. I shall make a number of references to that response during the course of my remarks. But in particular I welcome the Government's strong endorsement of the role of national parliaments in EU scrutiny.
As the report makes clear, the proposal for a second chamber is not new. But the idea was given impetus by the Prime Minister's speech in Warsaw on 6th October 2000 when he specifically argued for the creation of a second chamber of the European Parliament consisting of representatives of national parliaments. Their task would include reviewing the EU's work in the light of an agreed statement of principles concerning subsidiarity and providing democratic oversight of the common foreign and security policy. I note that the response implies in paragraphs 4 and 6 that the second chamber is just "one option" and that there are "several other ideas around".
The committee was very grateful to the Prime Minister for raising this matter as he did. Whatever the merits of the specific proposal, we all thought that raising a debate on these issues was timely, both in view of the apparent disconnection of the citizens of Europe from their institutions and at a time when a convention had been appointed to prepare for the next intergovernmental conference. However, we did not conclude that the second chamber idea itself was a good one. Our witnesses were almost unanimous in this. Many of the practical and political objections to the proposal are set out in Part 4 of the report and I do not intend to repeat them here. I do, however, look forward to hearing the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, set out the case for a second chamber, and the practicalities of how it might work, in more detail.
When we took evidence from Foreign Office officials to try to flesh out the Prime Minister's remarks, it was quite clear that at the time, in December 2000, the Government's thinking on a second chamber was, as admitted, at an early stage. I hope that, in his reply, the Minister will be able to enlighten us further. I also look forward with interest to hearing whether other noble Lords who are to speak support the second chamber idea in itself.
Part 5 of the committee's report is perhaps rather ambitiously headed "The real issues". In taking evidence on the second chamber proposal, it was clear to us that the proposal was intended to address genuine concerns about the European Union. We divided those concerns into three sections: areas where the oversight of European policy was thought to be weak; constitutional issues; and democracy issues. As far as areas of weak oversight were concerned, the committee accepts that there is a need to think further about how the common foreign and security policy is to be scrutinised. This forms the second pillar under the Treaty on European Union and accordingly is conducted mainly through diplomatic channels where fewer instruments are subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
Our conclusion was that a number of bodies already exist which could scrutinise the CFSP: national parliaments in the first instance, the WEU, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and NATO. We concluded that it would be for the next IGC to determine the future of these various bodies. I look forward in particular to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, on this matter. For the moment, I merely ask the Minister to confirm that the convention will be able to consider these issues because they do not appear to be covered specifically by the Laeken declaration, and further to confirm that they will come high up on the agenda for the next IGC.
Some suggested that the Commission's annual work programme should be scrutinised by a new second chamber. Our conclusion was that this task in itself would not merit the creation of a new body and that national parliaments should carry out this work. The government response, set out in paragraph 16, proposes an annual EU agenda to,
"allow all Europe's citizens to see what was being done in their name".
Would that be in addition to or as a replacement for the annual work programme of the Commission?
As far as underlying constitutional issues are concerned, we wholly support the Prime Minister in his attempt to clarify the competencies of the European Union. We accordingly support the statement of the principles of competencies and conclude that, in the absence of any such document, the proposal for a second chamber is premature. We also conclude that it would be impractical to involve a second chamber in revision of the treaties.
More generally, we concluded that,
"it clearly contributes to the lack of interest in the European Union that there is little understanding of how it really works".
Whatever one's views on the European question, we can all agree that you can neither support nor criticise the institutional arrangements with any degree of authority unless you have an understanding of what they are.
Perhaps the area where our report ranges widest from the starting point of a second chamber is in the paragraphs on democracy. We are, however, conscious that we were not able to do a thorough job on these issues as our evidence and our time were limited. We note, however, that our sister committee in the House of Commons—the European Scrutiny Committee—is conducting a full inquiry into democracy and accountability in Europe and we look forward to the results of its labours.
Careful reading of paragraph 62 of our report will reveal that we accept that the proposal that the Council, when acting as a legislature, should operate in a more transparent way is a proposal made in a genuine attempt to increase accountability.
We all agreed that achieving greater accountability would significantly help reconnection of citizens with the institutions of Europe but, having discussed this matter among ourselves—and some members of our committee have considerable experience of the European negotiation process—we agreed that
governments would be unlikely to agree to such increased transparency in the near future. In this regard, I note the proposals that the Convention on the Future of Europe might hold all its meetings in public. Will the institutions of the Union follow this example?
Our conclusion on the question of the accountability of Ministers was that governments should make every effort to be accountable to national parliaments both in advance of Council meetings and in reporting back. We are currently considering how we can make a contribution in this area. I look forward to hearing more from the Minister on this point.
Our report also urges those debating the future shape of Europe—and by this we mean both the convention and governments—to take account of the case for greater accountability and transparency given the pressures of enlargement; to consider the role of the presidency of the Council of Ministers; and to look closely at the role of the General Affairs Council. I am sure that various noble Lords will pursue these matters in the debate.
I draw attention to one final section of our report. This concerns the role of COSAC. As many of your Lordships speaking today will know, COSAC is the forum in which the European scrutiny committees of national parliaments get together once in every presidency. This forum was established in 1989 and gained greater authority when the Amsterdam treaty in 1997 called for COSAC to make contributions to the institutions of the European Union.
As our report indicates, many of your Lordships who have attend COSAC have been disappointed. There is no consensus among national parliaments about its role; the agenda consists usually of broad debates; there is no permanent secretariat; and, in attempting to adopt resolutions and conclusions, the output of COSAC often degenerates to the lowest common denominator needed to secure general agreement on a text in a very limited time.
We concluded that COSAC has a value in exchanging information and providing networks. We also concluded that COSAC was,
"an opportunity missed for strengthening national parliamentary scrutiny".
We would wish to see COSAC return to its original character as a forum for the exchange of views about national parliamentary approaches to the EU, and that its debates should accordingly be less general and more focused on the scrutiny role. We will be pressing, with others, to ensure that COSAC in future primarily focuses on the techniques and practical problems of parliamentary scrutiny of EU affairs. Again, I note that the government response calls for a "more operative role" for COSAC. I wonder whether the Minister, in his reply, could tell us more about what that means.
The response also, in paragraph 10, reminds us of the Government's commitment to the six-week period for parliamentary scrutiny enshrined in the Amsterdam protocol. But will they give an
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undertaking to monitor how well they deliver on this and report back to us? Will they also report regularly to Parliament on cases of scrutiny override?
In conclusion, the report's overall message is of the need for co-operation between national parliaments and between national parliaments and the European Parliament in ensuring thorough scrutiny and democratic accountability.
The perceived lack of democratic legitimacy in the Union—often referred to as a democratic deficit but which some, including our committee, prefer to see in terms of a disconnection between citizens and the institutions that have been established—is a serious worry as the European Union moves forward, both given the pressures of enlargement and given the increasing tendency for issues to be taken forward outside the normal democratic processes.
We believe that national parliaments, representing as they do their citizens, have a strong role to play in ensuring that those citizens both understand and can contribute to, and feel that they have some control over, the workings of the European institutions. This report is produced in that spirit.
I look forward to the debate and, particularly, to the Minister's reply.
Moved, That this House takes note of the report of the European Union Committee, A Second Parliamentary Chamber for Europe: An unreal solution to some real problems (7th Report, HL Paper 48).— (Lord Brabazon of Tara.)
3.16 p.m.
Lord Grenfell: My Lords, I congratulate our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, on having successfully carried to a conclusion the inquiry instituted by his predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff. I also express our thanks to our previous Clerk, Mr Tom Mohan, and to our present Clerk, Mr Simon Burton, who produced a first-class draft report.
This has proven to be a well worthwhile and timely inquiry, given the recent launching of the preparations for the 2004 Intergovernmental Conference I am sure that our representatives—one of whom, the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, I am glad to see in his place—will make good use of it.
I confess that at the outset of this inquiry, in which I had the privilege of participating, I was a supporter of the idea of a second chamber for the European Parliament, but in the course of the inquiry I changed my mind. I found the arguments made against it simply more persuasive than those made for it.
That said, it is quite clear that the real problems for which I thought a second chamber might provide workable solutions remain to be resolved. The disconnection between the individual citizen and the EU's institutions is still a serious problem. At the parliamentary level, national parliamentarians, the directly elected representatives of the people. are still denied adequate input into the agenda-setting and decision-making processes in Brussels; there is no

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collective scrutiny by the people's elected representatives of intergovernmental co-operation in second and third pillar areas; nor do national parliaments have a collective role in scrutinising the operation of the principles of subsidiarity—and that may well be the most significant deficiency of all.
What first drew me into the corner of those advocating a second chamber was an awareness of the need to create an open political class across the Union. Larry Siedentop, the lecturer in political thought at Oxford and a fellow of Keble College, in his excellent book, Democracy in Europe, proposed two prerequisites for creating that open political class and argued that a European senate could help to meet them. The first prerequisite was, as he put it,
"to provide the nation-states of the European Union with more effective guarantees against centralization, against encroachments by a Brussels bureaucracy which threaten the dispersal of power and would make the Union less sensitive than it ought to be to the variety of attitudes and habits in Europe".
The second prerequisite which he saw a European senate helping to meet was the encouragement of greater devolution of authority and power within nation states, so that regional autonomy became the vehicle for improving the democratic credentials of national political classes and brought national governments closer to the people. To that end, Siedentop would have halve the seats in a European senate taken up by elected representatives of national regions, but on the strict condition that each region seeking to be represented satisfied certain standards of autonomy. As he put it:
"A European Senate, formally charged with both protecting national autonomy and with encouraging devolution within nation-states, could play an important part in creating the kind of political class that Europe desperately needs—one that is open, suspicious of bureaucracy, and sensitive to the claims of social variety".
I found these arguments seductive, and for me they remain so. The problem lies not with the goals that Larry Siedentop's European senate would be designed to achieve, but with the fact that the creation of a second chamber as a means of achieving those goals is, on the evidence collected in this inquiry and reflected in this report, the wrong route to the right remedies.
The objections raised to the creation of a second chamber are set out with great clarity and persuasiveness in this report, and they have just been eloquently rehearsed by our chairman, Lord Brabazon, in his excellent opening speech. There is therefore no need for me to tread again over well-covered ground. The more pressing question is how the real problems to which a second chamber is an unreal solution are going to be resolved. Here the report makes some very sensible and practical suggestions. I shall mention a few that strike me as particularly important.
The first is that the monitoring of the Union institutions' observance of the subsidiarity principle is too central to the interests of national parliaments to be left exclusively to the European Parliament. Nation states are the intended beneficiaries of subsidiarity, and therefore national parliaments should also be
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monitoring it. That task would be made easier and more meaningful for both the European and the national parliaments if, as our report says, a clearer set of competences were agreed for the Union's various elements. The argument that a formal defining of competences is one more step down the road to a European superstate should be treated with the contempt that it deserves.
Monitoring subsidiarity should be a crucial component of a national parliament's overall scrutiny function, and national parliamentary scrutiny of the decisions of national governments in the European context most certainly needs strengthening. By strengthening, we mean, do we not, the spreading of best practice? Given the differing roles, powers and prerogatives of individual national parliaments across the Union, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, in his evidence, that that strengthening needs to be done by the national parliaments themselves working individually and collectively. Surely the appropriate forum for collective action is COSAC—a body still in search of a meaningful role somewhere between the unacceptable aspirations to legislative authority at the one extreme and aimless, unfocused debate at the other. The time has come to take a serious look at COSAC's role.
As the report insists, effective scrutiny assumes the full discharge by Ministers of their responsibilities in respect of Council decisions. That ought to prompt us here in this Parliament to reflect seriously on whether the flow of information from government to Parliament is adequate and timely. Successive Ministers for Europe have been very accessible and mostly informative to our European Union Select Committee, and we are grateful for that. However, on whether the overall flow of information is adequate and timely, I have to say that "could do better" would be my judgment. That is not to say that one should hold the Government exclusively responsible for all shortcomings; Brussels must bear its share of the blame.
Another factor militating against effective scrutiny is the Council's glaring lack of transparency, as our report rightly notes. However, that is something that successive governments have been prepared to tolerate and even connive in, and unless and until more daylight is let in on the Council performing its legislative function, parliamentary scrutiny will never be the efficient tool of democracy that it is meant to be. That necessity has been highlighted in the report, and I particularly welcome the call on those debating the future of the Council under enlargement to take account of the case for greater accountability and transparency in its procedures. A reform of the Council's working procedures is long overdue and now a matter of urgency. The functions of the General Affairs Council should be examined at the same time.
I heartily endorse the report's recognition of the importance of co-operation between national parliaments, with the involvement of the European Parliament where appropriate. Europe's parliamentarians really do need to meet. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe—I am delighted to see the recently

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retired President of the Assembly, the noble Lord, Lord Russell-Johnston, in his place in the Chamber—and COSAC certainly provide opportunities, but the proceedings are not particularly focused on interparliamenta ry co-operation. Bilateral contacts are also very important indeed. However, here in our Parliament, that is left largely to all-party groups whose lack of financial resources tends to make exchange visits embarrassingly one-sided. I recognise the constraints of time-scales and diaries, as noted in the report, but it should not be beyond the wisdom and ingenuity of parliaments and governments to facilitate better the all-important contacts that are the sine qua non of good parliamentary co-operation among states.
As I said at the outset, I think that this inquiry has been very worthwhile and produced a very useful and timely report. I am happy that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister was doing no more than flying a kite when he made his proposal in Warsaw. He has certainly been in interesting company. As I recall remarking in one of our early evidence sessions, when personalities as diverse as Chris Patten and Danny Cohn-Bendit are making similar noises, something must be stirring in the long grass. Well, we have cut back the grass a bit and seen what is there, but we are not terribly impressed. There is a better way, and I think that the report points us in that direction.
The Council's working practices must be reformed to make it more accountable, and scrutiny by national parliaments must be strengthened. It should not be beyond the capability of member states individually and collectively to achieve that. However, as in so many matters, it will depend on political will, and we have to hope that that political will will be there.
3.27 p.m.
Lord Jopling: My Lords, I endorse the comments just made by the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, on the admirable way in which the Select Committee has been chaired by two chairmen and advised by two Clerks. It has been an excellently run committee which has been involved in most intriguing issues. I hope that we have arrived at the right conclusions and recommendations. I also certainly endorse the committee's views, which I shall summarise. I agree, first, most strongly that there is a need for better parliamentary oversight.
Secondly, I agree that a second parliamentary chamber is not the answer and that it would not fill the democratic deficit which others have pointed out. I also think that a second chamber would put MPs who want to make a success of two parliamentary careers in danger of making a mess of them both. I believe that it is impossible for an MP to make a success of two parliamentary careers in two countries at the same time. I shall return to that point.
Thirdly, I think that there is an opportunity to use existing organisations to perform some of the roles that need to be performed in the newly evolving operations and manifestations of the European Union.
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Is there a need for parliamentary oversight? There most certainly is, as has been identified by so many people, not least the Prime Minister. A few moments ago, the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, referred to the very wide breadth of people who recognise that need, from Mr Patten and the noble Lord, Lord Hesatine, on the one side to Daniel Cohn-Bendit on the other. That deficit is widely recognised. There is a need to bring European affairs closer to the citizens of the member states. That is especially important in dealing with the problem of subsidiarity, which I do not think anyone can claim is properly covered at the moment.
A second parliamentary chamber is not a suitable vehicle if it is set up like the early version of the European Parliament in the 1970s and early 1980s. The European Parliament was made up of national parliamentarians who had a dual mandate with Westminster. They were selected on a party nomination by the Whips. I recall that at the lime many MPs, when offered the possibility of being selected for the European Parliament, said that they would not touch it as they felt that it would interfere with a Westminster career. They were quite right in that.
I think of MEPs—I refer only to members of my own party—with a dual mandate in 1979 when a change of government occurred. A number of those members were not considered for ministerial office at that time as they had become somewhat semi-detached from Westminster given their other responsibilities in the European Parliament. Some of them most strongly deserved ministerial office, but, as I say, they were not considered because they had not "caught the eye" in previous years due to their frequent and necessary absences on European Parliament duties. Therefore, whatever comes out of the IGC—I, too, am extremely glad that the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, is present—I hope that above all there is no suggestion of having a body that is anything like the European Parliament before it was directly elected. That was a great mistake and it was not, frankly, in MPs' best interests to be part of it.
That situation of semi-detachment arises through the formal constitution of a major institution such as the European Parliament. Once parliamentarians attached to a vast formal institution carry out parliamentary oversight duties, more and more and more of their time is taken up there. The only practical way that Members of Parliament could be involved without falling between two stools as I have just described would be if the institution concerned was less formal than an organisation such as the European Parliament, or a second parliamentary chamber as it would inevitably soon become.
We already have a number of interparliamentary institutions run on less formal lines than, for instance, the European Parliament. I refer to the Council of Europe which, as far as the United Kingdom delegation is concerned, also includes membership of the Western European Union. I refer also to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly-I declare an interest in that I have just returned to that body and the British delegation after a gap of five years, having previously

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been a member for 10 years—and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly where I led the British delegation for, I believe, the first seven years of its existence. The IGC could consider whether those organisations could take on an extra duty. They could be adapted to set up working groups with an additional membership of perhaps one or more Members of the European Parliament so that the Parliament had an input. Those groups could deal with a number of issues.
The Select Committee report makes that recommendation at paragraph 45. It is suggested that those interparliamentary bodies could set up working groups. That view is endorsed by Sub-Committee C, of which I have the honour to be chairman, which last week produced its report on the European security and defence policy. Paragraph 75 mirrors the recommendation we are debating this afternoon. I hope that we shall come back to the matter of CFSP at some future time. Those existing parliamentary bodies I have mentioned could be asked to take on an additional responsibility through the working groups I have suggested to deal with such matters as CFSP and defence issues in the interim between now and 2004. It might be useful to see whether they work. My view is that they could be made to work. I refer especially to defence and similar matters where the Commission and the European Parliament have only a limited input as they are intergovernmental organisations.
I am somewhat puzzled by the response which the Government have made to the Select Committee report. I regret to say that it came into my hands when I was already in the Chamber within the past hour. On this issue I am somewhat surprised to read in the Government's response at paragraph 4:
"And thirdly, the Chamber—
that is the second parliamentary chamber
"could provide oversight of areas of EU activity, which go beyond the traditional work of the Community, such as European defence, and justice and home affairs".
The Government state strangely at paragraph 12—this is what I really cannot understand—
"parliamentary accountability for CFSP decisions is most appropriately ensured at the national level and draws to the Committee's attention its commitment to ensuring that there are therefore effective arrangements for UK national Parliamentary scrutiny. The Government notes the committee's views on the value of informal contact with other national parliamentarians. While recognising that this is of course a matter for Parliament to take forward as it sees fit, the Government notes that the short time-lines for many CFSP decisions may in practice restrict the time that is available for such contacts on individual CFSP decisions".
I am puzzled by that because the recommendation that appears in the Select Committee's report, to which I referred earlier, and in the report of Sub-Committee C comes directly from a letter that I received from the Government, which said that they believe that in the mean time—between now and 2004—it would be wiser if the three parliamentary bodies carried out those duties of parliamentary oversight. That is why I suggested—I speak as chairman of Sub-Committee C
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and one who felt that the Government's line was extremely sensible—that we should include the recommendation in the report.
If the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, will forgive me for saying so, I had some part to play in the fact that a similar recommendation appeared in the Select Committee's report. I am rather dumbfounded to find that in their response to the committee's report, the Government seem to be taking a totally different line. We can no doubt explore that later. I guess that the Minister will not be aware of that strange change of emphasis during the past four or five months. He may not have time to get the advice that he will need between now and his wind up to comment on that. If he cannot do so, I should be most grateful for an explanation as soon as possible.
3.41 p.m.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, I greatly welcome this debate, as have the two previous speakers. I am not in any sense a European specialist. I know far less about the institutions of the European Union than do most of the speakers in this debate. However, I wanted to speak in this debate because I was a member of the Select Committee when it started working on the report, although I was rotated off it a few months later. I found the subject to be extremely interesting and I therefore followed it. When I left the committee, I had already come to the provisional conclusion that a second chamber consisting of Members of national Parliaments was not a workable solution, and I am glad that the report came to that view.
When discussing a second chamber for the European Parliament, we need to consider what its role would be. The roles of second chambers in different Parliaments in different countries and organisations throughout the world are very different. In a federal system, such as that in the USA, the second chamber usually represents the states within a federation and protects the rights of the states against the centre. That is the case in the USA, where the Senate in theory represents the member states of the Union. Indeed, until the early 20th century, Senators were elected by the state legislatures, not directly by individual voters. In the German Bundesrat, the Members are delegates of the Land governments. In the United Kingdom, the second Chamber—your Lordships' House—plays an entirely different role. We work mainly through detailed consideration and revision of legislation and through our specialist Select Committees.
In the European Union, a second chamber would certainly act as a second chamber on the federal model, representing the member states against the centre. However, that role is to a considerable extent already played by the Council. It is a legislative body; indeed, when a co-decision does not apply, it is the only legislative body. The Council is made up of Ministers who are delegates from national governments. They of course represent governments rather than national Parliaments, but all the member states of the union are democracies and all those national governments are accountable to the voters of their own states. All

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governments unquestionably act in what they see as their national self-interest as part of the Council. So the EU already has two chambers: it has the European Parliament, which is directly elected by the citizens of member states, and the Council, which is made up of delegates of the governments of member states. No useful purpose would be served by adding a third chamber that was made up of representatives of delegates of national Parliaments.
There are also practical difficulties. The experience of the dual mandate before 1979 was very discouraging, as the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, fully pointed out. Even a second chamber that did. not expect to meet more than three or four times a year for a few days would be likely to have attendance that was irregular, and its members would give priority to national Parliaments. We know what happens in the reverse case. Three Members of your Lordships' House are Members of the European Parliament two of them, I am glad to say, sit on these Benches—but none of them is able to be a regular attender. That is no criticism whatever of them; they certainly do attend whenever they are able to and whenever the EU is being debated. However, they are simply too busy with their job as MEPs. That is another indication of the fact that a dual mandate is not viable. A second chamber that had such limited occasion for meeting would fail to build up the cohesion and expertise that a parliamentary body needs.
I echo the words of Mr Andrew Duff, who is a Liberal Democrat MEP. In his written evidence to the Select Committee, he said, at paragraphs 9 and 11:
"The new body would be composed of national parliamentarians selected in at least 15 different ways who would be expected to devote themselves to long and difficult meetings three or four times a year regardless of the domestic agendas of their own parliaments and national electoral mandates … I am unable to gather why or how the government imagines this proposal could add to the efficiency, effectiveness, transparency or democratic legitimacy of the Union".
In their response, the Government hardly put forward what could be described as an enthusiastic case for a new European second chamber. If the Prime Minister had not floated the idea in Warsaw some 16 months ago, I wonder whether the response would even have been as favourable as that.
Does that mean that nothing needs to be done or that nothing can be done? There are things that need to be done, but the creation of a new second chamber is the wrong approach. I agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, which appea.r in paragraph 3 of his memorandum of evidence to the committee. I hope that he will excuse me if I quote his words. He said:
"I think the biggest single shortcoming of the way in which the `European Political System' has worked has been in the failure of National Parliaments to monitor properly, and sometimes thoroughly, the actions of their own Governments in the Council of Ministers".
I entirely agree with that view.
There is a serious problem with secrecy. The functions of the Council as a legislative body should certainly he much more open. I do not suggest that detailed negotiations in the Council should be
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conducted in front of television cameras or recorded verbatim in the European equivalent of Hansard. However, enough should be disclosed to enable national Parliaments to scrutinise the activities of their own governments in Council meetings.
Secondly, there should be closer co-operation between national Parliaments and the institutions of the EU. There were a number of references in the evidence to COSAC, most of which were not very favourable. COSAC, of course, is a group that is made up of Members of national Parliaments, it meets twice a year to discuss EU issues and it also has a small representation from the European Parliament. I took part in one such meeting about two years ago in Lisbon. I have to say that, apart from a pleasant weekend in Lisbon, I did not get a great deal out of that meeting, partly because it was very inadequately chaired. It is a useful place for networking, but no more.
By contrast, I also attended two meetings of ad hoc inter-parliamentary conferences in Brussels for Members of the European Parliament and the national parliaments. I found those useful, in particular one that I attended on the subject of corpus juris. From that meeting I obtained a much clearer picture of the views of the other countries on the issues behind the proposals and was able to hear the views of the chairs of the two relevant European parliamentary committees. That leads me to wonder whether COSAC would do better to meet in Brussels rather than rotate around the countries of the presidency. It would enable more contact to take place with the European Parliament and with the Commission and would not restrict contact only to each other.
I also consider there to be scope for closer links between this Parliament and the United Kingdom MEPs. I believe that there should be a more structured relationship. One proposal for reform of your Lordships' House is that we should increase our scrutiny of European Union legislation. MEPs are always extremely helpful in giving evidence to the European Union Select Committee and its subcommittees when they are invited to do so. But one idea would be to have a Joint Select Committee on which MEPs would sit as members along with Members of your Lordships' House. I believe that that would present far fewer administrative difficulties than a second chamber because Select Committee meetings can be fitted in much more easily with the timetables of the European Parliament and your Lordships' House. Perhaps there could even be a tripartite Joint Committee involving the European Parliament and Members of both Houses of this Parliament.
Measures such as those would strengthen the links between Parliament and the European Parliament and could reduce the isolation which is undoubtedly felt by members of the European Parliament. It could also give Parliament a much better idea of what is happening in the institutions of the European Union.
This has been, and will continue to be, a very useful debate. I believe that the committee was correct in criticising the proposals for a second chamber. But

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also believe that the Select Committee rightly recognised that serious communication problems exist and that it is essential to try to find ways to reduce those problems.
3.52 p.m.
Lord Tomlinson: My Lords, at the outset I identify myself totally with the remarks of praise directed at the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, for his work in starting this inquiry when he was Chairman of the European Union Select Committee and for the work carried out so admirably by the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, following his assumption of that responsibility. Of course, in that praise I include the two Clerks—Tom Mohan and Simon Burton—who also changed midstream.
Proposals for a bi-cameral European Parliament are not new. Going back into the annals of history, in 1953 the draft treaty drawn up by the Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community for a European political community encapsulated ideas of a European Parliament of two chambers. That proposal was not taken up in 1957 and was not incorporated into the Treaty of Rome, which established the original European Community institutions.
However, since then a large number of variations on the theme have been put forward from diverse sources, some of which have been quoted today. During the 1980s and 1990s, from France, Fabius, Chirac and Mitterrand all put forward different ideas for second chambers. The noble Lords, Lord Brittan and Lord Heseltine, also put forward very interesting ideas. More recently, the President of the Czech Republic, Mr Havel, entered the fray, and a diverse number of German politicians have also given different variations on the theme. We had proposals from Joschka Fischer, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, from Johannes Rau. the German President, and also from the German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroder. Therefore, the idea has been around for some time. The French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, proposed the establishment of a congress of national parliaments to monitor subsidiarity. He also proposed the holding of an annual debate on the state of the Union.
Therefore, when my right honourable friend the Prime Minister trod this ground in his speech in Warsaw on 6th October, he was not treading a particularly new turf; he was going over an area that had been well visited over the previous 50 years. His proposal for a second chamber for the European Parliament—it was that which led the Select Committee to decide to look at the idea in some detail—was for one made up of representatives of national parliaments, essentially with responsibility for two main tasks: first, the monitoring of the operation of the principles of subsidiarity on the basis of a statement of principles; and secondly, to provide the element of a democratic, European level of scrutiny of the common foreign and security policy.
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Many people have addressed the idea of a second chamber when looking at how to remedy perceived weaknesses in relations between nation states and their parliaments and the European Union. I start by agreeing strongly with the conclusion of the European Union Select Committee. At paragraph 33 of its report, it said:
"The onus is on those who are proposing a second chamber"—
when I say "second chamber", I readily accept what the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, said with regard to third chambers
"to prove its practicability, as well as its desirability, before the proposal goes forward".
In that respect, I believe that the proponents of the idea have singularly failed to create that case. They have failed to address adequately the practical problems which exist in abundance.
Some of those problems have been mentioned and I want to reiterate a few. National parliaments could not do the job effectively were a second chamber busy enough to justify its existence. But, on the other hand, were it not busy enough to justify its existence, what would be its purpose and why should either senior politicians or ambitious younger politicians choose to spend their time on it? If it were not busy enough, how would it impact upon public opinion? One objective of the second chamber is supposed to be to connect Europe better to the citizen. If it met as frequently as the Council of Europe or the Western European Union, admirable though the work that they do is, it would hardly impact dramatically upon the citizens of the 15 member states of the European Union.
There are practical problems in abundance: the location; the logistics; the languages; the size; and the cost. Also to be taken into account is how national participants in a second Chamber relate back to their national parliaments. Must they have a mandate from their national parliaments for the attitudes that they take? Are they free agents? What is the level of accountability back to them? And when should a second chamber intervene, if at all, in the legislative process, or will it deal only with non-legislative questions? Of course, that in itself would be a nonsense at a time when there is an increasing demand not only from the European Parliament but from a number of national parliamentarians that as the amount of qualified majority voting increases in Council, so there should be a parallel increase in the amount of legislation that is determined through co-decision. Therefore, there are many practical problems.
Where there are European Union activities in which democracy is not evident and accountability is insufficient—principally, as I said, in the area of common foreign and security policy—other areas also need to be addressed, such as the Commission work programme, subsidiarity, and the statement of principles. None of those justifies the somewhat ad hoc approach of proposing a change to institutional arrangements. Were such institutional changes needed, they could at any time have been on the agenda for inter-governmental conferences at Maastricht, Amsterdam or Nice. If now they are

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perceived to be necessary, they should be thoroughly discussed in the convention in preparation for a 2004 Intergovernmental Conference. However, in the meanwhile there are real problems which need resolution and on which I make the following observations.
The real problems which need attention include better parliamentary scrutiny of European Union decisions in all chambers of national parliaments. That includes our own. Although we produce some excellent reports, we tend to produce big reports on big issues. Yet the vast majority of European Union legislation does not get detailed scrutiny. Therefore, we have an obligation to improve parliamentary scrutiny. In doing so, we are controlling one side of the co-decision making process of the Council of Ministers—a Council of Ministers that, as other noble Lords have said, needs greater openness in its legislative role.
Inside the European Union, we also need a greater determination to pursue policies of critical mass—policies where the EU role will clearly add value—following the injunction that we have heard so many times to do less and do it better. Only by that shall we see clear impact upon the citizen.
I give the example of the great vision in 1992 of completing the European single market. Here we are a decade later still talking about completing the single market. We do not yet have it. Yet we should be encouraging European Union institutions to focus on precisely such policies and not be diverted into new initiatives and new ideas until they have attained the agenda that they have set themselves.
There are many other areas where that is true. We have created a European Bank for Reconstruction and Development when, by changing the articles of the European Investment Bank, we could have managed without creating yet another financial institution. The Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions were created, but without clearly visible benefits in connecting Europe and its decision-making processes to either the citizens or the regions.
The Court of Auditors is growing like Topsy. As a previous report from the European Union Committee said, the need for reform is clear. The European Parliament is already potentially too large with too many places of work. Policies within the European Union, such as the common agricultural policy, cry out for reform if we have enlargement, but we seem to be relying on external factors such as the World Trade Organisation to produce the major impetus of reform for us.
We can do many of those things. They will serve to connect Europe better to the citizen if we do them ourselves and now without getting embroiled in arguments for constitutional change. It is not enough to pretend that creating a further body will assist; it will not. Far from assisting, the proposals for a second chamber create an unreal expectation of the reconnection of Europe to the citizen, which will create only further disillusion with the processes.
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If we want better to connect Europe to the citizen we can take certain immediate actions. We should listen to the advice of Julian Priestley, the Secretary-General of the European Parliament. We should re-think the electoral system for European Parliament elections, with proportional representation, but based on constituencies and voter choice and not further recourse to closed lists, which at best deny the citizen and at worst can appear to be somewhat Stalinist in practice. In his evidence at Question 289. Julian Priestley said:
"At least at first sight it does not appear that the way in which that electoral system was changed has actually enhanced the connection between Members and the citizens".
Finally, I believe that national parliaments do not need any new powers. They certainly do not need new institutions to hold their governments to account. What they need is a greater input of political will to do so. I rmy analysis were entirely Machiavellian, I would suspect that the second chamber proposals were intended to flatter national parliaments into a belief that all that is needed is for a few real parliamentarians—that is, national parliamentarians—to discuss issues and thus produce a clarity and understanding among the 400 million European citizens; and that, while believing that, they would forget their historic role and duty of controlling governments, who by their nature are happy with their performance and know that it needs no scrutiny.
4.7 p.m.
Lord Williamson of Horton: My Lords, I am a member of the Select Committee on the European Union. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, who chaired the inquiry, and the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, who launched it. I am glad that in the response from the Government to the report the Government have stated that they are ready to look beyond the second chamber proposal to each of the ideas for strengthening the role of national Parliaments in the context of the convention to take forward the future of Europe process. That is a step forward.
It is evident that a national parliamentary Chamber, such as this House, should give particular attention to new suggestions or proposals for improving the parliamentary scrutiny and oversight of European Union legislation and to improve the relationship between national Parliaments and the European institutions. This is truly our business. In addition, an improved role for national Parliaments is one of the four areas especially highlighted in Declaration 23 annexed to the Nice Treaty for attention and, we hope. valuable recommendations from the convention which is about to start the preparations for the 2004 intergovernmental conference.
The Select Committee has concluded that there are some real problems relating to the oversight in particular of the common foreign and security policy and to respect for subsidiarity. It also concluded that a second European parliamentary chamber was not the right solution. If it had a substantial legislative role like a senate, as suggested by a number of commentators

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including Mr Daniel Cohn-Bendit, it would surely run into conflict with the European Parliament. The question of relative legitimacy would arise, depending on the method used to create the second chamber. In practical terms, it would also prove very difficult for members to serve their own Parliament and a full-time European second chamber. If, on the other hand, it were restricted to one or two areas, as has also been suggested—for example, oversight of common foreign and security policy or particular attention to subsidiarity—that might be practically possible but it would run the risk of being unsuccessful because of the speed of decision making on common foreign and security policy and because subsidiarity needs to be given attention throughout the preparation and progress of legislation. It is not a one-off. To quote a phrase that is used by the French, the proposal for the second chamber would be "a bad good idea".
Although I agree with the report, I want to develop certain points that bear on the problem rather than on the suggested second chamber solution. In any event, it is wise not to look for institutional changes before the convention has done its work and made such recommendations or choices as it wishes to put before the intergovernmental conference of 2004. For a better way forward that will satisfy our citizens more about European Union policies and legislation, we must look beyond general phrases such as "better governance" or "reducing the democratic deficit"; we need to analyse more closely who does what and how things may be done better.
First, we need to distinguish, as some noble Lords have, between those European Union proposals or actions that fall within intergovernmental areas of common foreign and security policy—pillar two—and justice and home affairs—pillar three—and those European Community proposals or actions that fall within the area of Community competence. Why is such a distinction important? It is important because, to a large degree, the specific actions under the common foreign and security policy, including any defence element, and the sensitive issues of justice and home affairs, in so far as they are intergovernmental, are not scrutinised in advance nor are they decided by the European Parliament. They are decided only by the Ministers of the member states in the Council of Ministers. As the Prime Minister said in a speech, he recognises that one of the tasks for a second chamber could be to provide,
"democratic oversight at the European level of the common foreign and security policy".
It is right to ask ourselves whether we are satisfied that, on matters so sensitive to public opinion, the traditional scrutiny that we exercise over proposals in those areas and the capacity to call a national government to account in a national parliament are sufficient. I believe that they could be, but on two conditions.
First, the traditional scrutiny by national parliaments, including this House, should be particularly attentive to those areas that are not subject to decision by the European Parliament and
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such scrutiny should be timely. I am unsure whether the fact that much European Union business is now under pillars two and three has been fully comprehended, particularly those issues affecting immigration, asylum, judicial co-operation and the fight against crime and drugs. A recent document put to the Select Committee on the European Union showed that, in a sift of the important issues, at least half fell into those areas. A few years ago, that was never the case. In this Chamber we know how thoroughly and how quickly we had to look at the matter of the European arrest warrant. Such important issues appear quickly and they need to be dealt with speedily.
The second condition is that the legislative actions of the Council of Ministers should be more transparent. That point has been made by a number of noble Lords and I support it strongly. I recognise that many issues need to be discussed by Ministers in private and in confidence. However, I refuse to be typecast as a former bureaucrat and Eurocrat. When legislating, particularly on issues such as justice and the movement of people, I believe that the Council could be open to the public.
I turn to the democratic oversight of Community affairs. In this connection I do not believe that the phrase "democratic deficit" is apt. In recent decades, the legislative role of the European Parliament has been increased substantially with the consequence that not only does the European Parliament, jointly with the Council, control finance, but most primary legislation—certainly over 80 per cent—is subject to co-decision by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers. In most cases the European Parliament can amend, improve, send back or block Community primary legislation that is presented to it.
What are the problems, if any? In my view there are three. First, at the European level, the Council of Ministers—the other half of the legislative authority—is not open to scrutiny in the same way, although individual member states can be questioned and to some degree controlled by their national parliaments.
Secondly, an important point to me is that the national parliaments can, of course, scrutinise European Commission proposals and give their views or guidance to their own governments. In this House that is the role of the Select Committee on the European Union, which carries out a fine job, but the national parliaments give little input to the European Community legislative process before formal proposals come forward. That is why I attach importance to what may be seen as rather a technical point—point 12 in the summary of the report—that there should be co-operation between national parliaments in examining the Commission's work programme.
I would like to see the European Commission required to consult all the national parliaments on its draft work programme, which would give us a chance to indicate the proposals that, from our national standpoint, we would like to see included, and those proposals to which we had some objections, whether

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on the ground of subsidiarity or any other ground. Significant requests and disagreements by a national parliament, if not accepted by the Commission, should be annexed to the final programme submitted to the European Parliament and Council. Thus, there would be a national parliamentary input, even before formal proposals were submitted.
I believe that that would make quite a difference to the role that we could play in influencing legislation. Almost all the Commission's proposals respond to needs or requests from the European Parliament, from the Council, from individual member states or from the many business, commercial or consumer interests with which the Commission is always in close contact. If we do not agree, it is important to establish a counterweight early in the process.
Thirdly, I stress that public dissatisfaction with the operation of subsidiarity often relates not to primary, but to secondary legislation—the "nooks and crannies", as referred to by a former Foreign Secretary. We need to pay great attention to ensuring that the European Community's primary legislation does not give too much latitude for such secondary legislation. At the moment we do not pay it much attention. Like the Select Committee, I look at this stage for practical rather than institutional solutions to these problems.
4.18 p.m.
Lord Desai: My Lords, I am the first noble Lord to speak in this debate who is not a member of the Select Committee. nor have I been a democratically elected Member of the European Parliament. Another difference is that I do not like this report at all. I am deeply disappointed in it. Although I believe that many competent people have spent time writing the report. I do not believe that they have considered this problem with sufficient imagination. They have looked for objections in every nook and cranny. My noble friend Lord Grenfell said that they had cut the long grass. In my view they have put agent orange on the grass and destroyed it. Nothing will ever grow there again.
On Europe I am a disappointed enthusiast. Once German reunification took place, the entire momentum in European Union affairs was lost. There has been a great deal of erosion and avoidance of crucial issues. IGC after IGC has failed to advance any positions or to tackle any problems. The Community is swimming along in inertia. Although many things have happened, they have happened due more to inertia than to anything else. I believe that my noble friend Lord Tomlinson described very well what was wrong, but his proposal was, "It's broke, but don't fix it". That seems to be summary a of what he said.
Perhaps I may take up one issue before I reach the major criticism of the report. I refer to scrutiny. I was briefly on Sub-Committee A of your Lordships' committee on European affairs. I very much enjoyed the process. But good as our committee is, it does not have sufficient time for scrutiny because information arrives too late and we are in a great hurry to send
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things back. We are really interested in the big reports which take us to Brussels or Frankfurt, which is very nice. I enjoy it myself.
Since I am on my feet I propose that we should have a separate sub-committee which carries out scrutiny and nothing else, leaving the major subjects to the other sub-committees, which can grandstand around. Some really tough people should look at scrutiny across all legislation, and the sub-committee should do only that. That is the only way in which scrutiny will be carried out, otherwise it is dealt with at the end of the interesting business in sub-committees in which I have often taken part. I do not believe that that is the way to do it. We should not congratulate ourselves that we have scrutiny: we do not have enough of it by any means.
I turn to the report itself.
Lord Marlesford: My Lords, does the noble Lord suggest one committee only which does all the scrutiny or is he suggesting that each of the sub-committees covering an area should have a shadow scrutiny committee? If it is the former, I believe that that would involve far too wide an area and there would he far too much to do.
Lord Desai: My Lords, it is the former and not the latter. My experience was that business was done after the witnesses had gone. We then had about five minutes left to carry out scrutiny. I am sure that we did our best. But very often things would arrive late and we had to send them back. We sent rude letters to Ministers and so forth. I would like one sub-committee only for scrutiny across everything. Of course, there will be a lot of work, but such work is not done as well now as I would like. Noble Lords may disagree, but that is my view. One needs an overall picture from one sub-committee which can look across different areas. It would be similar to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. It has to look at what is going on and who is taking what powers from national parliaments. Good as the sub-committees are—and I do not deny their significant contribution—scrutiny is a very important matter and cannot be left as the last item of business on subcommittee agendas.
Lord Grenfell: My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend for giving way. He has raised an extremely important point. The present structure under which we carry out scrutiny is specifically designed so that items for scrutiny, having been sifted, are sent to those committees which are specialists in a particular subject. I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, that if we were to organise matters in such a way that only one committee dealt with all matters, it would have to be very large indeed with a very wide representation of experience and expertise.
Lord Desai: My Lords, that may be so, but I am not entirely convinced. We have many versatile people in this House. People with experience of the European Parliament can speak on many subjects. That is what

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parliamentarians are for: they are generalists. Even if we need a committee of 10 or I2, or whatever the figure, we should really explore this topic because by not paying attention to scrutiny we are omitting something.
I do not want to be unfair to my noble friend, of whom I am very fond. The sort of objection he raised characterises the entire report. As soon as someone says something, the response is, "It can't be done, dear boy: far too many people would be required which would be very expensive and time-consuming. There are also not enough people to do what you want. If they were good enough they will not have the time to do what is required and therefore it cannot be done".
Reading Part 4 of the report I was reminded of many dictators in the past who pointed out why one cannot have democracy or, if one does, it cannot be any good. All those arguments are rehearsed in the report. We are told that parliamentarians cannot be in two places at once. The venues will be some distance apart. The existence of the Channel is very interesting. It makes us believe that Europe is a vast country. In India people travel to more than one legislative body. Indeed, on mainland Europe people frequently have dual and triple mandates and manage perfectly well. The Reverend Ian Paisley is a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Westminster Parliament and the European Parliament. I believe that he thrives on it. The idea that people with two jobs will not be able to carry them out effectively is superficially accepted.
The other part of the argument is that if one has senior people—I refer to paragraph 30 of the report—who who carry real political weight, whatever that is, there will not be sufficient for them to do. For the chaps in the lower divisions there is far too much to do, but for the real, high-class people there is not enough therefore, we cannot do this or that.
Another problem is a practical one. At what stage would one deal with the legislation? I believe that there is a failure of imagination. The committee accepted that the present way of doing things is entirely proper and will never change, therefore if a second chamber is introduced nothing will be changed. Everything will carry on as usual and the committee will barge around. If we do not like the way things are done let us change them and introduce a proper role for a second chamber. Whether one calls it a democratic deficit or a lack of legitimacy, it is a very serious problem for the European Union which will get worse with enlargement. Indeed, because of the way in which enlargement discussions are taking place, many governments have not told their people what is about to happen through enlargement. When people find out there will be riots on the streets particularly, for example, when they realise what it will do to the labour markets of Europe. I have said this before in this Chamber. There will be riots because people have not been told what fantastic economic consequences will result from enlargement.
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I strongly believe that if directly elected national parliamentarians were selected for a small delegation to constitute a second chamber, with perhaps no more than 10 from each parliament and perhaps even fewer after enlargement, that body would be able to reflect the citizens' concerns, not those of the governments. The Council represents only the governments and everyone regards governments with suspicion. They will always take away one's civil liberties and rights. National parliamentarians should be trusted. They should look at what is taking place in their name which at the moment neither the European Parliament nor the Council is able to do.
I believe that I have taken up too much time. I am very disappointed by the report because it freezes things as they are now. It tries to find every objection possible to a second chamber and concludes that nothing can be done to solve this very serious problem. Perhaps the Government will ignore it.
4.30 p.m.
Baroness Harris of Richmond: My Lords, I rise with trepidation following the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, having been suitably admonished. I considered throwing away my speech and saying something entirely different, but I shall not. As a member of the committee, and unlike the noble Lord, Lord Desai, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, our chairman; my noble friend Lord Tordoff, who started us off on our report; and our excellent clerks, Tom Mohan and Simon Burton, who helped us through our many deliberations and the work we did.
I must confess that at the outset of our inquiry into the proposals by the Prime Minister and others to set up a second chamber of the European Parliament, I was pretty sceptical about why it was felt to be necessary. Throughout our scrutiny sessions, that scepticism was reinforced by most of our witnesses.
What was the purpose of a second chamber? The Prime Minister seemed to indicate that he wished for a simpler and more accessible way of determining what the EU should be doing at its level of competence and how we could better scrutinise national governance in EU matters. I have no doubt that his motives for wanting us to explore that are entirely laudable, but as our report indicates, this is not perhaps the best way to achieve his aims.
The role of a second chamber would appear to be not dissimilar to the old European parliamentary way of doing things—holding a dual mandate—and, as we have heard from other noble Lords, having national parliamentarians also dealing with the thorny subjects of competence, subsidiarity and proportionality in the EU Parliament and attempting to translate that into policy at home.
A number of graphic descriptions were given to us about the lack of accountability of MEPs to their national parliaments and the enormous time constraints there would be on members. As the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, MEP—who I am delighted to see in his place today; I hope he will forgive me for

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quoting him—advised us in his evidence at page 93, paragraph 299 when addressing the idea of a second chamber or senate:
"if it is going to do anything useful—and if it does not do any thing useful there cannot be a great deal of point in having it——a considerable amount of time has got to be devoted by its Members to the task in hand and I question whether it is really possible to give the appropriate commitment at a national parliamentary level and at this Senate level".
As we have already heard, that was a recurring theme throughout our examination of witnesses. How could we get busy members of a national parliament to participate in this work? When would they attend meetings? Flow would they balance the competing political and domestic challenges at home with those expected of them in Europe? That was graphically highlighted to us by the evidence given by my noble friend Lord Russell-Johnston, who I am sorry is not in his place, when comparing similar work done by members who attend Council of Europe meetings. In his evidence, at page 34, he said:
"About a third of the membership of the Council of Europe Assembly changes every year. That does not mean to say that the whole lot is changed after three years, of course; it is simply that there is a turnover due in part to elections but also due to a reluctance to stay too long".
He continued:
"Many of them go to the Council of Europe but then keep it a deadly secret that they have actually been there; they do not make any kind of song and dance about it".
I simply ask: would a second chamber be any different'?
Having looked at the possible difficulties arising from a dual mandate, we then come to the problem of deciding just when this body of politicians might meet. Our report asks at which stage in the legislative process a second chamber might look at proposed European legislation, if that is to be one of its functions.
If it is proposed that one of its functions is to check for subsidiarity, at which point in the life cycle of the second chamber would that be achieved? It is suggested the chamber meet infrequently, but if that is the case, how can it meaningfully undertake proper scrutiny of complex policy? Done too early, without proper and thorough consideration, it would be pointless, and doing it at a later stage in the legislative cycle would run the risk of straying into the territory occupied by the Council of Ministers. I cannot imagine that the Council would be too happy with that.
We then come to the problem of costs. A second chamber would need the formal setting up of a secretariat, and possibly research facilities, which would require a significant amount of money. There are a number of European forums where participants meet to discuss common areas of interest. I question the need to add an additional body to an already extensive list.
I was keen to know whether interest was being shown in other member states about the desirability of having a second chamber. Mr Crossick from the European Policy Centre told me in his evidence, at page 42:
"I think that the Second Chamber, as constituted by the Council legislatively, is not being pushed to any great extent. The idea of national parliamentarians making it up is of course being pushed
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in the United Kingdom and finds favour in Denmark but I have to say that at this stage of the debate it has not really been the central feature".
He continues on page 43,
"I do not believe that the idea of having a Second Chamber of national parliamentarians essentially to cover subsidiarity, which is the only really firm proposal, has been given a lot of attention".
Other evidence came from Commissioner Michael Barnier. I asked him about whether the applicant countries were taking an interest in a second chamber. Again, the reply. at page 48, mirrored that of Mr Crossick:
"I see no special concerns amongst them about the existence or otherwise of a second chamber".
Nor do I. But I would prefer now to try and he rather more positive.
I have been fortunate enough to represent the European Sub-Committee F, which I have the honour to chair, at one or two meetings and presented our work on J HA issues to colleagues from both member and applicant states. I have presented some of the work done by the European committees of this House. That work has been well received. I have also attended one meeting of COSAC. We have heard a variety of comments about the usefulness of COSAC, most of which, as your Lordships will have seen, were not complimentary—at least about its business, if not its venues, as my noble friend Lord Goodhart pointed out. However, with a bit of tweaking and a good dose of common sense from all participants, it could be made to work better and would be a more acceptable model to me than a proposed second chamber.
It would certainly need restructuring, as it is an intolerable burden for whichever country holds the responsibility at any one time. That certainly needs looking at. More importantly, its work needs focusing, as we have heard. That focus should be firmly on the scrutiny role of national parliaments. It was set up originally as a forum for exchanging views about national parliamentary approaches to EU issues and should, in my view, restrict its work to overcoming some of the practical problems of parliamentary scrutiny of those issues. Of course there will be major political themes we would want also to discuss, but that can be as an addition to the real work of scrutiny, which should be better defined and attempted by all participant member states.
We learnt too of other co-operation between parliaments where views can be readily exchanged. I mention the forthcoming convention to prepare for the 2004 Intergovernmental Conference. There is also the Council of Europe; the Committee of the Regions; exchanges between officials; links between political parties; our MEPs; and our national office in Brussels, which links to the European Parliament—we heard great praise for its work. I mention also the organisations referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Jopling and Lord Tomlinson. So, there is already a plethora of contacts and exchanges of views and ideas.
The intergovernmental conference will be addressing many of the concerns about the so-called democratic deficit, and the work done between now and 2004 will be instrumental in moving towards

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greater clarity and the simplification of processes in the European Union. I wish the convention well. It has a great deal of work to do, but we must let our representatives to the convention help mould the European Union to make it more easily understood, more transparent and less bureaucratic. A second chamber at this stage would be unhelpful, unwieldy and downright unnecessary.
4.40 p.m.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, his predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, and the committee generally on its report.
I take a somewhat different view of it from that of my noble friend Lord Desai. Indeed, I found his contribution somewhat incomprehensible. If I may be kind, he said that he disagreed with the report, so I expected to hear him spell out in detail why he disagreed with it and why he wanted a second chamber, but he made only one brief reference to it. He said that in practice there is a lot wrong elsewhere, and I would agree with much of that. Of course, there is a need for Select Committees to do this, that and all kinds of things in this place and another. But my noble friend did not spell out why a second chamber in the European Parliament would be wrong, as the committee has done so forcefully and fully.
I do not know who thought of the title:
"an unreal solution to some real problems",
but it is right that there are real problems.
However, I hope that the committee will forgive a non-member for making a brief contribution. I shall be brief, because my noble friend Lord Tomlinson spelt out comprehensively the case for the report and why there is no need for a second chamber in the European Parliament. I say that as someone who is strongly pro-European Union, as some of my colleagues know. The important thing is to get the existing Chamber in the European Parliament right. We talk about transparency and accountability, with which I strongly agree, but the reason why the media do not cover what happens in the European Parliament is that much of it is not madly interesting to them. If a television company sought to televise the European Parliament, I fear that it would not have huge audience figures, so I hope that my old friends in the BBC do not have it in mind to do so at present.
There is a case for greater accountability and transparency and it is plain that the issue of a second chamber is being taken seriously by some important people. It is therefore vital that we should spell out why we disagree so strongly with those important people. That starts with the Prime Minister. We see from part of the transcript of his Warsaw speech on page 1 of the evidence that he flew a kite, which is all that I hope it was, as my noble friend Lord Grenfell said. No doubt my noble friend Lord Grocott, who will be replying to the debate, will confirm that the Prime Minster did not
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agree with the proposal, but was only flying a kite. I hope that that is the case and that he is not in favour of a second chamber in the European Parliament.
We heard that the French started the debate way back in 1953. They wanted a second chamber in the European Parliament and under their strong leadership, all agreed that there should be a second chamber. There are even some who think like that in your Lordships' House. They tend to sit on the other side and we do not see them too often, but I should like to hear their views. I am thinking of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, whose views on Europe I agree with strongly, as well the noble Lords, Lord Patten and Lord Brittan. They are all sensible noble Lords. I say that because they agree with me on European matters.
There is a danger that such proposals will be taken seriously by the convention. The arguments for a second chamber include the so-called democratic deficit, foreign and security matters, justice and home affairs. I assume that Members in the present Chamber of the European Parliament are discussing those issues now. I hope that they are doing so. We do not hear about their discussions, of course. Perhaps some of them do not take those issues as seriously as my noble friend Lord Desai, or as seriously as anyone in this House or in another place, but they are important issues.
My noble friend—if I may call him that—Lord Williamson of Horton, who is usually experienced in European Union matters, and who is much respected both over there and over here, made some good points that we might consider, but not because there is a need for a second chamber in the European Parliament. The case against that was very well made by the committee and my noble friend Lord Tomlinson, so I shall not repeat the arguments.
En passant I must say that the committee, in paragraph 83, was very kind to my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. It lauded him, although I cannot think why. I should not have thought that that was required on what he said about the need for a second chamber. No doubt someone who sits on the Select Committee—perhaps the chairman—will say why the committee thought fit to laud my right honourable friend on that issue. It may be possible to laud him on lots of other issues, although I cannot think of any for the minute.
I should have thought that our experience with our second Chamber, with all the discussions on its powers and composition, would be enough to turn anyone off from talking about second chambers. That is for only one country, let alone 15. The case for a second chamber has not been made. However, as I said, I am worried that important people are taking the matter seriously. When that happens, there is a great danger that they will want to do something about it. I hope that the committee and my noble friend Lord Grocott, who knows how fond I am of him, will tell the Prime Minister and the Government that we do not like the idea at all, even if we exclude my noble friend Lord Desai, which is not too difficult.

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That brings me to the preparations for the 2004 Intergovernmental Conference. I hope that maximum pressure will be put on the Government to make it clear that this House and the other place—I hope—are strongly opposed to even the remotest possibility of a second chamber in the European Parliament. The Chairman of the Select Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, when opening the debate, suggested that we might take our discussions a little wider. Perhaps I could do that on one issue: I hope that the convention will discuss seriously the abolition of the Strasbourg Parliament —I hope that my noble friend Lord Grocott might even agree with that proposal. I cannot think of anyone who supports the idea of Members of the European Parliament traipsing backwards and forwards between Brussels and Strasbourg on a regular monthly basis. It gives the few Euro-sceptics around a marvellous opportunity to criticise the system. I hope that strong support will be given in the convention to do just that. If it upsets the French, they might forget about the issue of a second chamber.
Most, if not all, of the functions suggested for a second chamber could and should be performed very well by the present Chamber. The idea of having members from 15 national Parliaments, with all the time that they do not have available, travelling to debate big issues is so nonsensical that I am astonished that those who advise our right honourable friend the Prime Minister were not aware of that. However, they were not, so the kite-flying can perhaps stop here.
I do not propose to go on for much longer. I hope that my noble friend Lord Grocott can confirm that this House's views will be put clearly to the Prime Minister—it is possible that he will not read this debate—as to why we do not want a second chamber in the European Parliament. I am in favour of a second chamber here, but I hope that, as a Chamber, we agree that we do not want a second chamber in the European Parliament. That is not only my view, but—I hope the view of the whole House, apart from one of my noble friends.
4.50 p.m.
Lord Inglewood: My Lords, I begin like all other noble Lords by declaring that I too believe this to be a good report, not merely for all the good reasons already alluded to, but also because its conclusions are very much in line with the evidence which I gave to the committee.
I thank those noble Lords who referred to the evidence which I gave to the committee. I confess it is gratifying to hear oneself quoted, though I began to become paranoid when I realised that it came from no one on the Benches on which I sit. However, having heard my noble constituent, the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, I am glad to say that the way in which he referred to a number of my noble friends put it into perspective. It just shows how sensibly they approach this issue.
What is interesting about my evidence is not that it is "my" evidence, but that the evidence I gave is more or less the same as the evidence that was given by my
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colleagues in the European Parliament from different political parties; in other words, the thrust of our evidence went in the same direction. Against that background it is hardly surprising that last week, in Strasbourg, we voted for the Napolitano report— the European Parliament's response to the kind of subjects we are considering today. The conclusions in that report are similar to the conclusions reached by your Lordships' Select Committee.
If we look back over the past 18 months or so, we have seen articulated in a number of different places concern that political decision-making in the European Union is somehow moving away from the citizen and causing political alienation. We saw it in the Prime Minister's speech, which the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, has been lauding. We saw it in the remarks of Chancellor Shroder of Germany, in the European Parliament, here, and in the French Senate. Of course, there is a real problem that we need to address. I believe, like other speakers, that a second chamber of national parliamentarians is not the answer, for the kind of reasons that have been given.
Having heard the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, I was minded to turn to the response of the Government to this report. Paragraph 5 says simply this on the general issue:
"We do not underestimate the complexity of the practical arrangements of meshing national Parliaments into European structures".
It continues:
"We judge that there are options that would allow this".
That is enormously Delphic; it really means that they do not know how they would proceed. Apart from any other consideration, that is a very important aspect of the debate.
If we look back over the past 20 or 30 years or so at what has been going on in the world, it is not surprising to see that a lot of important decision-making is moving away from the floor of national parliaments. After all, with increased mobility of goods, people and services, an increasingly commercially inter-dependent world is being created in which matters cannot he regulated within one single jurisdiction. Against that background, collectively, democratic politicians must find a way of working on the wider canvas. It may be that eventually we will move into a world that is globally based under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation or its successor. It may be—-I hope not and do not myself expect it—that we shall merge into a federal homogenous European superstate. I do not believe that that will happen. But it could, I suppose. What I hope will happen in the immediate future is that we see a Europe which evolves but which is firmly built around a European nation state. That is my preferred option. Or it is possible that the whole thing completely collapses—it is more likely that pigs will fly—and we all go back to the world of the 1950s with classical inter-governmental diplomacy.
Regardless of what happens, politicians in democratic countries must find ways of taking collective decisions. That will mean an increasing political importance for scrutiny and accountability.

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One of the problems we face in that regard is that once governments get into the habit of not being accountable and not being properly scrutinised, it is rather like secret drinking—it becomes addictive and spills out into all sorts of other areas. On most occasions when Ministers return from the Council of Ministers having completed some important deal or conducted some important business, no significant account is given by them of what happened. We have seen that in other areas. From time to time—rightlythe Government are criticised for not giving policy decisions first to Parliament. The problem then is that when politicians and Parliament complain, the general response is that nothing much happens and the public say, "So what?".
As well as being important in their own right, the specifics we are discussing today are part of a wider, important political issue, which is a problem for Parliament in general and our specific Parliament in particular. Unlike many previous speakers, I have not had the privilege of sitting in the other place. But as an outsider it seems to me that in recent years the House of Commons has more or less become the electoral college for the election of the Prime Minister. Thereafter it is in thrall to the Whips. So it operates much more as an arm of government than as a counterbalance in a system of checks and balances. Of course, as we have been told frequently in the context of House of Lords reform, we are subordinated to the other place.
In that set of circumstances, and in a political culture where both chambers ascribe greater primacy to legislation than to scrutiny—after all, this debate was only tabled at this prime time because the Government's legislative programme was sufficiently sparse to enable it to happen—legislation will increasingly be of the kind we see now in areas where European directives are the umbrella under which it takes place. We are finding in Parliament that the terms of reference for the legislation that we are dealing with are not set by us. At the same time, scrutiny has somehow been downgraded. It seems to have less political sex appeal. What is important is that right across the waterfront, not only in the area of European activity, it needs to be accorded greater importance and—if I can put it this way—given a dose of political Viagra.
This part of the debate is difficult in the wider political debate domestically. I do not see any great evidence that the public care particularly about these matters. Many people in the wider world probably prefer announcements to be made on television and the Minister or the person responsible to be interviewed by a professional inquisitor. If we compare that with announcements in Parliament and an ensuing debate, many people would consider the television announcement much more user friendly and more relevant to their circumstances.
Again, as I mentioned before, the other political problem we face is that when Parliament tries to pull up governments that are not giving a proper account
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of what they are doing, there is a certain amount of noise and things then seem to go on much as they did before. The effect is damaging to Parliament.
Another problem is the fact that operating within a system of more than one country, as we are in the European Union, if alienation takes root in one part of the system, that alienation, like cancer, can creep right across the whole body politic. So where we find difficulties in one member state, we find it causes uncertainty and disaffection in others. A problem clearly exists. We have seen concern articulated throughout the European Union about the underlying reasons why we are speaking today.
At the same time, we cannot expect other member states to do these things exactly as we do. They, after all, have different traditions and ways of doing things which are just as dear to them as our ways in this country are to us. It was a point that one of my Spanish European People's Party/European Democrat colleagues made very forcefully in a pre-meeting in the European Parliament about the Napolitano report. He said that it is very important that no one tells parliaments what to do; the solution to this must be based on parliaments among themselves agreeing on the way forward. If someone outside our Parliament tried to dictate to us how to scrutinise European business, we would not take it very well.
Against that background it is suggested, both by the Select Committee's report and by the Napolitano committee in the European Parliament, that COSAC could provide a suitable framework for taking these matters forward. Equally, the forthcoming convention in Laeken provides an opportunity for that. There has been considerable criticism articulated about the Laeken convention and its processes. Possibly its strongest attribute is that it is not its alternative, which is to go back to agenda setting for the IGC in the smoke-filled rooms of Council meetings of one form or another.
If we can open up the process of agenda setting for the IGC, parliamentarians are likely to become much more interested in and excited by the kind of issues that we are talking about today. Perhaps—politically far more important—it means that they are much more likely to be taken seriously in the ensuing IGC because they have been put on the agenda and the public and the parliaments of the various member states will actually want to see something done.
In conclusion, the report touches on some extremely important issues at the heart of the relationship between the European Union and the democratic process. That in itself is very significant. But it is also an important case study of a wider malaise that exists between governors and the governed which for both of our sakes we need to remedy.
5.2 p.m.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, in an important part of her speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, alluded to what she called, and what has become known as, the democratic deficit. She placed
some emphasis on it. She sought to highlight

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something that all of us really know: that the ordinary people in Europe, and more particularly in the United Kingdom, are not particularly enamoured of politics or politicians. In fact they have become disillusioned by them.
We all know in our hearts that things are not really well in our country; that the gap between the rich and the poor is still much too large; and that there is still much poverty and suffering for us to attend to. Her Majesty's Government are doing their part—-not perhaps as much as one would like, but nevertheless it is an endeavour. But there is profound unease with the political process generally.
The report of the Select Committee dealt with many of those issues. More particularly, my noble friend Lord Tomlinson—who I thank—put his finger on the matter. He questioned one of the commissioners who gave evidence before the committee. The words burnt into my mind and will remain there. On 15th October 2001 at page 47 of the evidence, he said:
"Do you believe that I am being excessively cynical if I put to you the idea that national parliaments have already got all the powers that they need, the only thing they have not got is the political will to use them in relation to their governments, and, therefore, this whole idea is being government driven, it certainly is not being citizen driven? … it has been largely government driven to give national parliaments another role to divert them from the powers and responsibilities that they have already got for better controlling national governments, something which they seem singularly to be failing to do".
That is exactly so.
The democratic deficit to which the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, referred is due precisely to the inability of Parliament—both Houses—to make the Government accountable to Parliament and to the people. That it has not done.
In this connection, as perhaps might be expected of me, I want to draw the European Commission into the matter because its policies are very largely committed to those that are put forward by the European Union. That process I shall presently describe. So far as concerns the European Union and the Commission, the democratic deficit is not due to governments at all. It is not due even to the policies that they are following out in their own countries. In the Commission's view—one finds abundant justification for it—there are some institutional defects. The moment that transparency is queried in any way—the process of communication between government and people—the Commission's immediate instinct is that there must be some other institutional problem: "We must create another organisation; we must create another committee; we must create another focus group. It is the institutions that are wrong, not the governments".
That way of looking at the ills of our country and of Europe is exactly the wrong way to go about the matter. We are the second Chamber here. Together with Members that are found in another place we constitute Members of the British Parliament. We should know quite well that our main difficulty is to get governments to operate in accordance with Parliament arid Parliament's wishes. In that we have singularly failed.
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So far as concerns Europe, perhaps I may give your Lordships a practical example. Every week or 10 days the Vote Office issues to those members who are interested in Europe a list of documents and papers to which it is inviting the attention of Members of Parliament. I have one in front of me. It is dated 1st February. So it is up-to-date. I have been through it very carefully. Apart from drawing attention to the Official Journal and various other records of parliamentary proceedings, it lists no fewer than 64 separate items of legislation—proposals, draft proposals or draft decisions—all for consideration by Members of Parliament. It is a long document. Some of the papers referred to are quite short, but some are of great importance. I defy any Member of the House to apply for all of them and be able to read them in under a week, let alone to understand them. They comprise the agenda for the European Parliament, for all the use that that may be.
Your Lordships may note that there have been some improvements; there certainly have. There was a time when the first business of the European Parliament, when it met in one of its two meeting places—or should that be three?—was to call a meeting of the College of Questors, which met before everyone else in the presence, if necessary, of parliamentary chiefs to decide whether their standard of pay and allowances for the next session was adequate. That was prime business.
But how much detailed legislation that affects the individual in the street, shop or place of work is considered there? How much of it hits the headlines? How much of it appears to be of any consequence to warrant mentioning? Of course, that suits those who want to concentrate on the necessity of reforming European—and even domestic—political institutions and claim that that will solve the trouble. But in the meantime, regulations that go over the heads or under the heels of Select Committees are going straight onto the British statute book on the mere initial of a senior civil servant, without our even knowing about it. That is happening now.
So the fault lies with us. The solution does not lie in agreeing to new institutions, by whatever grandiose name they are called, that meet in the hotels of Brussels one night and possibly devote a couple of hours to discussing incomprehensible business the next, leading to the provision of extra secretarial services, food, entertainment and everything else. That is not the way to improve our position.
Surprisingly enough, although much has been said by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister, I am glad to be able to draw attention to the often forgotten Foreign Office. In reinforcement of some of the arguments raised this afternoon, I shall cite one or two apposite quotations from the response of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to the suggestion of a second parliamentary chamber. I refer to document E/01–02/55 from Session 2001–02. What did the Foreign Office say? I trust that when my noble friend Lord Grocott replies he will do nothing to disturb the obvious amity that exists between the Foreign Office and the Prime Minister.

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The Foreign Office says:
"Our conclusion overall is that the dual mandate involving national parliamentarians in a second chamber that was busy enough to justify its existence would play so onerous a burden on an individual parliamentarian that, in reality, it would not be possible to do both jobs effectively".
The document continues, at paragraph 5:
"The main home of the national parliamentarians would continue to be in their capital. It is vital, if their role is to inject a greater sense of public priorities, that they remain fully engaged in national politics".
Paragraph 9 states:
"We wholeheartedly endorse the evidence that national parliaments must take their duty of scrutiny seriously and must insist on the full discharge by Ministers of their responsibilities in respect of Council decisions. This will involve an adequate and timely flow of information from governments to parliaments".
The fault lies with us.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Is he aware that the passages that he is reading are not the views of the Foreign Office but the conclusions in the report on which the Government are commenting by way of reply?
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, I shall simply read the heading to the noble Lord, unless the document is another example of deliberate fog. It states:
"Response of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs".
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, the passages in bold are the comments in the report; those in ordinary type are the responses of the Foreign Office.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, I am prepared to let the House judge when noble Lords have read the document. I do not propose to try to deceive the House in this matter.
The fault lies with us. We must make governments responsible to Parliament. We must have open transparency with them. We must insist on the matters that really need attention in our country being attended to, rather than obscured by a flood of directives and semi-directives emanating from the European Commission—and, indeed, to some extent originating within our own country.
5.18 p.m.
Baroness Ludford: My Lords, I warmly welcome the report. The modest input that I can make is as a practitioner rather than as a constitutional thinker. My focus in the European Parliament is the justice and home affairs committee, rather than that on constitutional affairs. Any contribution to the bigger question of how to improve the effectiveness and legitimacy of the European Union is highly welcome. But I share the view of those who believe that the "national Euro-MPs" proposal is a diversion from, not an advance towards, that goal. The practical difficulties are immense and would end up making it more difficult to understand who does what.
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Clearly, the overall conclusion of the report is absolutely right. We need co-operation between all of Europe's parliaments and parliamentarians. That means co-operation among national parliaments and between them and the European Parliament. As part of that, there must be close liaison between the national parliaments and the MEPs from the same country. Hence I hide my embarrassment at criticising a type of dual mandate while being an MEP and a Member of this House by saying that my participation in this debate is the practical expression of the desire to co-operate.
I must admit that, unlike my MEP colleague, Andrew Duff, I have not had much contact with the UK Office of the European Parliament in Brussels. Even if I had, I might still not have been aware of the inquiry on the EU democracy and accountability being carried out in the other place, as even Mr Duff says that he learnt of it only by accident, and he is our party's EU constitutional expert. Information flows could be improved.
In the United Kingdom, I rely to a considerable extent on the reports of this House's Select Committee on the European Union. Recently, I was rapporteurdraftsman—of a report approved just last week in the European Parliament on the integration of long-term resident immigrants, so-called third country nationals. I found the report of the sub-committee chaired by my noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond most helpful. As an aside, I must say that I share their view that the UK's opt-out from that directive is regrettable. It would be a good investment to find the budget to send copies of those reports to all MEPs, not just British ones. It would be good public relations and would not be seen as national presumption.
We could and should pursue various imaginative ideas for co-operation between institutions, for instance involving UK MEPs in the work of the Select Committee on the European Union. We should also have links between specialist committees, for example between my own European Parliament committee on justice and home affairs and the Home Affairs Select Committee in the other place. I also recall a useful meeting of chairmen and representatives of the justice and home affairs committees of the national parliaments that took place a year ago in Stockholm under the Swedish presidency. My noble friend Lady Harris of Richmond was there, and I was there from the European Parliament's equivalent committee.
We could do more on an individual and party level to liaise within our parties between colleagues in Brussels and Westminster, not least on joint policy positions. One problem that I find is that we in the European Parliament deal with matters that Members at Westminster—certainly those in the other place—have not begun to think about. I find myself making policy for the party, but I am nervous that either it will feel constrained by it or that it will not feel constrained by it and disown it. We must network, pursue dialogue and share best practice. We must help each other to call the executive to account. I read that COSAC has a permissive role in examining third pillar
matters—that is, justice and home affairs—and is permitted to

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address contributions to the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission. I have never seen such reports, and I would find them useful.
Dialogue and co-operation are one thing, but a new institution is another matter entirely and risks sel ting up rivalry and competition between national parliaments and the European Parliament, when we should be recognising our complementary roles and establishing a co-operative partnership. We should not argue the toss over who is the more democratically legitimate—"My democratic legitimacy is greater than yours". It is a question of horses for courses, and we should respect each other's roles.
I find it peculiar that a remedy for the lack of formal monitoring of the respect for subsidiarity should itself breach subsidiarity because national parliamentarians in a second or third chamber would be acting as an EU-level body. The idea that national parliaments should monitor the observance of subsidiarity cannot be seen as entirely free from the temptations of self-interest.
There is something of an agenda—not least, perhaps. from our own Government—that is not always pure. Sometimes, internal political struggles are behind the motivation. I recall that, in 1994, a group of Labour MEPs—now, we would call them old Labour M EPs—took a full-page advertisement in the Guardian to decry Mr Blair's campaign to abolish Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution. It would be unfortunate if memory of that political dispute were to colour any present views within the Government of the worth of the European Parliament, just as it would be unfortunate if the drive for elected mayors at local level were driven by the need to sort out problems where a particular party had run a one-party state.
As an MEP, I find it a bit rich for national governments—-including the present Government and their Conservative predecessors—who have condemned us in the European Parliament to an expensive and ridiculous travelling circus between Brussels and Strasbourg to turn round and belittle our work. I estimate that we are one third less efficient than we could be if we had one place of business. I welcome what the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, said on the matter.
The report says:
"At the root of all the proposals for a second chamber there seems to lie a perception that there is a problem with the democratic legitimacy of the EU and its institutions".
We must be careful to distinguish political legitimacy from democratic legitimacy; the two get confused. We should not forget that the problems of alienation are not unique to EU politics, politicians or institutions. The turn-out in general elections, for instance, is going down, and the turn-out in local elections is often terrible. In the London Borough of Southwark, 10 days ago, there was a turnout of 11 per cent for a referendum on an elected mayor. We should be aware that the reasons for indifference, cynicism or anger affect all of us in politics and are not unique to the European Union.
It is true that, to a considerable degree in this country, the EU lacks the popular legitimacy that my party and I would like it to have. That is a political
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problem, however, and not especially one of institutional architecture. There is not the acceptance of the scope of the EU's responsibilities that there is of the scope of the work of a local council or the Westminster Parliament. However, how many people could describe the way in which things are done at Westminster? In this Chamber, for example, we call the Chamber along the way "the other place", rather than "the Commons", as most normal people call it. We have jargon that matches any Euro-jargon.
The problem that people do not connect with the European Union or the European Parliament is not necessarily that the European Parliament is not legitimate but that we are not acknowledged on the radar in the same way. I agree with—I think—the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, who talked about the problem of being seen to be doing the right value-added things at EU-level. That, of course, is where the question of a constitution comes in.
We must not infer from the problem of popular political legitimacy that there is a problem of democratic legitimacy with the EU institutions or the European Parliament alone that will be solved by having a second chamber of national parliamentarians. Of course, there is a democratic problem, but that is chiefly about secrecy and the way in which national government representatives meet in the Council, especially in the second and third pillars. It has been said, rightly, that the proposal is not for a second chamber, but for a third chamber, so that the spotlight rightly falls on the way in which the Council lives up to the criteria of accountability and transparency proper to a second chamber representing the states or senate. It falls lamentably short.
I agree that the major need is to strengthen national parliamentary scrutiny and control. In addition, national parliaments should monitor the implementation of EU legislation in national law, to prevent the well known habit of gold plating IEU directives. The Environment Minister, Mr Meacher, recently tried in the other place to blame the Commission for the UK Government's being caught on the hop about fridge mountains. The Westminster Parliament should be well enough briefed to challenge him on the truth.
Like others, I hope that the present convention will make some proposals on the particular problem of the common foreign and security policy and how to get democratic oversight of it. There is a worrying gap. On justice and home affairs, we fall between Community competence and the inter-governmental third pillar. On the first, which includes asylum and immigration, I hope that in 2004 we will get co-decision with the Council. On police and judicial co-operation on matters such as European arrest warrants, which remain inter-governmental, we need tighter cooperation with national parliaments.
Finally, my party and my group in the European Parliament fully support the present convention to draft proposals for treaty reform. The convention model is an excellent one for constitutional matters and to shape debate on the future of the European

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Union by co-operation between all Europe's parliaments. But let us not be diverted and allow national governments to divide and rule parliamentarians through rivalry between ourselves when we should be joining together.
5.30 p.m.
Lord Lea of Crondall: My Lords, in Warsaw the Prime Minister captured Europe's attention. That was extremely important. Rarely does Britain capture Europe's attention by being on the front foot about any issues. So even if now we gloss what the Prime Minister said by saying that it was a good wheeze, I think that it was more than a wheeze because, as was pointed out by my noble friend Lord Desai, in the past we have left it to the rest of Europe to be the architects and visionaries. Sometimes I think that we do not see the point of the rhetorical level of discussion about Europe and that we prefer to leave it to the French to be those with the vision.
It is odd that we always assume that the French are the Cartesians, whereas in fact it is far more par for the course that noble Lords like my noble friend Lord Tomlinson are the Cartesians, while the French are the Romantics. The Prime Minister redressed that balance to some extent. I very much welcome that development because it means that, over the next three years, we shall become known for having good and positive ideas to put on the agenda.
This debate has come soon after our debates on Nice. Earlier I wondered why some of the contributions sounded so familiar. Of course to a certain extent many of us are making the same speeches as we made about Nice, and why not? Generally they were pretty good speeches. But it was interesting to note that this report has slightly shifted the furniture around on some of the questions raised by Nice. My noble friend Lord Williamson of Horton said that we must be careful not to introduce new bodies which might fall between two stools by being either too early in the process or too late. Happily it is the case that the convention is a new body which is coming into being early. It is an accident of history that here we have a new institution. It is a new chamber because, as Shakespeare would have said, a rose would smell as sweet by any other name. Thus the convention is a chamber—it has people in it so it is a chamber— and it is not the first chamber. Therefore it is the second chamber.
We could carry on playing games like that, but on a rather more serious note, I suggest that if this report had been written six months previously it would have been couched in the following terms: the convention has a positive job to do, but by the time it has done its job. it may well be that the convention—I refer to the input to the convention rather than its output—will have an ongoing role. It would not be the first time that pragmatism had triumphed in that way and it is in that spirit that I wish my noble friend Lord Tomlinson well in his role serving on the convention. Then we shall be able to blame him.
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The European Charter of Fundamental Rights was a good illustration of how pragmatism produced a result which surprised us. Wearing a different hat at the time, the Attorney-General made the point that there was nothing much to it, but I do not know whether an intergovernmental conference would have produced as powerful a result as that particular meeting. I suspect that the same may be true of the convention. In that respect, why do we not talk up the convention as meeting many of the agenda items that the committee prefers? Here I would say that my mindset is similar to that of my noble friend Lord Desai, but some people may abjure such ideas of vision and would prefer simply to get on with the points on the agenda one by one—and, lo and behold, we shall have the same result.
Many people create new institutions while their rhetoric declares that they are not doing so. All those serving on Sub-Committee A were rather struck by a speech made last summer by Chris Patten. I think I have it right. He said that, first, the Balkans should be an initiative-free zone. That is why he would take the initiative to revitalise the aid process to the Balkans. We all do that, do we not?
I always enjoy listening to the speeches of my noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington, so long as I have a chance to speak after him. He waved around a piece of yellow paper, saying that those were the documents coming out of the European Parliament. I have news for my noble friend. I do not know whether he has ever been a member of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments—for my sins I am a member of that committee—but if he had been he would know that each week a stack of papers around three to four inches high is placed before it. Occasionally we change a semicolon. What about the mote in our own eye? I do not speak generally here but rather when we have to deal with European legislation. We are not very good at it. I believe that there was something in the interchange between my noble friend Lord Desai and the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford. on that point.
My noble friend Lord Grenfell raised the same issues by remarking that there is no point in thinking about the institutions without thinking about the infrastructure that is needed to make them work. That is a big question. There are all the problems of language and so forth associated with the convention. Thus we have to think about the institutional architecture as well as about the more practical points, such as how people are to be in two places at once.
I am not so convinced about the democratic deficit argument per se. I think that a noble Baroness on the Liberal Democrat Benches made the distinction along the lines that there may not be a democratic deficit, but rather there may be a political deficit. Someone once remarked that they are not talking about this in the Dog and Duck in Hebden Bridge. Of course there are two answers to that. You must be pretty mad to be seen talking about this subject in the Dog and Duck in Hebden Bridge.
A noble Lord: My Lords, it was Sir Bernard Ingham.
Lord Lea of Crondall: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that information. I am a Lancastrian and so I can only at tempt the correct pronunciation. I should say that Hebden Bridge is on the wrong side of the Pennines and ought to be in Lancashire.
Parliamentary democracy experiences a deficit only if people think that they are being taken for a ride. In what sense do people think that they are being taken for a ride about Europe? I am a heretic in the sense that I think that the euro will bring us much closer to the idea of Europe than any other change we can make in this country. So it is not the fact that things take place a long way away in Brussels or Frankfurt that creates the democratic deficit. Perhaps it is the fact that we are very poor at communication. For that reason, among others, I support the Prime Minister's initiative.
Even more recently than in the debates on Nice, we had an interesting discussion in this Chamber when we agreed the appointments to the convention. It brought out an interesting point which I believe that the Front Benches on all sides got away with by not quite answering; that is, is it Parliament that is appointing these people, or is it the Government? I think that I have this right: because only the member states are the component parts of the European Union then it must be the governments appointing the Parliament's representatives. However, it is a bit bizarre.
The question has not gone away forever. Without it being that the "Chief Whip" equals "Parliament'"—I refer to the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats; there is an argument about the CrossBenchers—how can it be that we make a big thing about parliamentary accountability and Europe being a deficit, that everything is done by the Council of Ministers, when we do not mind eliding the two when it comes to appointments at Westminster?
We have enough blue sky thinking to be going on with. If we want some more, we shall have to give the job to my noble friend Lord Birt. That might complete the picture.
A new element referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Williamson—it is a new one on me—is that half of the business transacted is now under pillars two and three. I do not know how he calculated that, but if half the business is under pillars two and three, then, prima facie, we need a new way of looking at it. That makes a strong case for a new development of the convention, if only because of the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, about what that has got to do with the price of tomatoes. We do not yet know how this body would look at pillars two and three if they are not to be looked at in a parliamentary sense. That is a very good question for the convention.
Another very good question for the convention is which parts of the Council of Ministers need to be more transparent. I strongly support the idea of all papers being published, provided that they are published and circulated a week in advance, including the minutes of the meetings of the Council of
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Ministers. Some may be driven into the corridors, but it would be an enormous step forward for transparency.
There is a connection between this debate and the debate about civil society. For many years I was doing this kind of work in the TUC. There is no doubt that many bodies—from architects through to the BMA, industry federations and so on all round Europe—snow provide the secure underpinning of Europe at industrial and social levels. Many hundreds of thousands of people now know a lot about Europe and they should have a proper relationship with these debates in the convention. ECOSOC, the Economic and Social Committee, for example, has observer rights and a speaking role in the convention.
Parliamentarians should try to avoid a dichotomy between the primacy of parliamentary democracy and any other kind of involvement. After all, industry has to implement and live with the famous working time directive. We could have told them—we did tell them—that it would have been much better in Brussels if it had been done through the social dialogue procedure. This produces shorter, simpler documents such as those for part-time workers, fixed-term contracts, maternity rights, parental leave and the European works councils, which were all produced through negotiation. They are much simpler documents and easier for employers to understand because they sign agreements in the same way as everyone else. These are relevant in order to understand the variety of processes involved.
The report from the Committee is a good stimulus for debate. Looking back in 10 years' time, people will say that, far from damning the Warsaw speech with faint praise, we saw it as an opportunity and we seized it with both hands.
5.44 p.m.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, when this aspect of scrutiny was first proposed, I was a little sceptical. I felt that if we had asked the then Clerk to the House of Lords European Union Committee and his counterpart in the scrutiny committee in another place to go away for a weekend and write something, the two of them would know so much about the matter that they could have produced a first-class report not entirely different from the one we are now debating.
However, what we would have lacked—which I appreciate as a member of the working group which produced the report—was the learning process through which many of us went. I was not of a settled mind as to what I thought about the second chamber proposal when we started; by the time we had ended, like the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, I had decided that clearly it was, at the very best, a bad good idea. I was persuaded, in part, by the discussions we heard on the whole question of a dual mandate and how difficult it is to manage different heavy commitments at once.
I remind the noble Lord, Lord Desai, who rejected this, that there is a very strong sentiment in France at the present moment to get rid of the doctrine of the dual mandate on the grounds that it leads to

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corruption, inadequate attention to business and a whole host of other issues. It was possible, to some extent, before 1979 to manage a European parliament on that basis because, pre-1979, the European Community's agenda was very limited. Since 1992 certainly since the second and third pillars got under way—the sheer weight of EU business is such that, without question, being involved at that level is now a full-time job. So the dual mandate argument seems to be conclusive.
Let me raise one or two wider questions about the outcome of this debate: first, the wider context of Her Majesty's Government's approach to the 2004 Intergovernmental Conference and the preparatory convention. A very strong lesson is fairly heavily stated in paragraph 33. Although it does not say that the onus is on the Prime Minister, it does say:
"The onus is on those who are proposing a second chamber to prove its practicability, as well as its desirability, before the proposal goes forward".
With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, that means, "Do not start floating visions if there is nothing substantive behind them".
I prefer plans to visions. It is part of the French style in the European Union to love to float visions without having thought through what they mean. They then often get very irritated with the British and the Germans two or three years later when they have worked out what it might mean in practice—whereupon the French discover that they do not like the practice.
There are many temptations for local leaders to launch initiatives because they then become the "Blair proposals", the "Schroder plan", or whatever. I recall well the preparations for the Warsaw speech as I know some of the officials who were consulted. Some of us said at the time that the Prime Minister should not be allowed to float a proposal without knowing what it might mean if people took it up. I remember particularly the Labour MP who enthusiastically told me, "The Prime Minister is determined to say something about reconnecting Europe to the citizen". So he did—but it did not mean anything. As the report shows, the kite has been flown, leaving a handful of officials within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to hold the rope.
During the session in which we took evidence, we saw how difficult it was for these Foreign Office officials to continue to hold on to the rope when the wind blew against them very strongly. There are a number of lessons there for the Government. Please can Ministers attempt to hold down those in the Government who get enthusiastic about floating off half-thought-through grand ideas? There are also lessons for managing the convention.
This is a useful report which, I have no doubt, will be read by other governments in other parliaments. I suggest, with apologies to the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, that there may well be other topics and other issues at which it will be useful for the EU Committee also to look. For instance, what is the
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substance behind some of the proposals for the reform of the Council, on which again some half-thought-through ideas are floating around? There is the whole problem of the rotating presidency, which clearly does not work any longer but which is extremely delicate because the smaller countries cling to its importance. A range of ideas are being put forward on that but no one has really pinned them down. As to the question of the reform of the Commission, so far the Commission has got about half-way through what needs to be done. It has not addressed the most difficult question of all, which is that it would be helpful to have a smaller college of commissioners. It would be helpful for the EU Committee to consider whether or not it wishes to tackle some of these issues.
It would certainly be helpful for the Government themselves to produce an early Green Paper to help focus our national debate and to connect that to the progress of the convention. It is vital not to leave the convention to hold its intricate discussions elsewhere, largely unnoticed in Westminster or the British press. This Parliament needs to play an active role, and this Government need to assist this Parliament in playing an active role.
There is of course the problem of how we do connect the European citizen to this remote process in Brussels and occasionally in Strasbourg: European policy-making seems obscure and remote, and most national parliaments are only partially involved. That tends to be labelled as part of the problem of "the democratic deficit", which is very ill-defined. We should recognise that it is probably not possible to solve that problem entirely. All politics is local but, increasingly, much government has to be multinational. It is extremely difficult to bridge that gap. The gap is not very well bridged even in the United States, a highly federal state in which turn-out for national, federal elections—particularly at mid-term, when there is not a presidential candidate to vote for—is, sadly, remarkably low. So there is no magic formula for resolving all this.
There are ways of narrowing the gap, such as by providing greater authority for the European Parliament, and certainly by means of a European Parliament that is settled in Brussels. I hope that Her Majesty's Government will work extremely hard not only to get rid of the nonsense about Strasbourg which some other noble Lords have mentioned, but also to ensure greater openness for Council decision-taking, which has also been mentioned, and greater involvement of national parliaments, to which I shall return. We also need to pay greater attention to the issues of subsidiarity and proportionality. Those have to be issues with which national parliaments are primarily concerned, because it is national parliaments that are concerned to resist this drift towards the centre, which is unavoidable in the way in which the European Union operates.
The question is how best do we involve national parliaments more closely? These proposals for a second chamber carry within them several mistaken ideas. One is that what we need is more bodies at the EU level. It seems to me that that is the last thing that

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we need. I am half persuaded that the Committee of the Regions is a useful idea, and I pay tribute to the excellent work that several Members of this Chamber have put in on that committee. I am much less convinced that the Economic and Social Committee still does any useful activity. I apologise to any Members of this House who happen to be active members of that committee. We do not need more bodies. We need, if possible, a less obscure and clearer policy-making process at the EU level.
Another argument is that we need senior politicians to get together on a regular basis. Again with apologies to the noble Lord, Lord Desai, that argument does not fit with the fact that senior politicians have to he provided with an incentive to get together. If we want to have a second chamber, how shall we persuade leaders of the opposition to go on a regular basis to wherever it may be held?
There is also the Gaullist idea which is very clearly behind many of the French proposals in this direction that only national assemblies can represent the nations and peoples of Europe. The idea comes from all that old republican and French revolutionary rhetoric in which—as I have heard on occasion when attending COSAC—the European Parliament is artificial and a congress of national parliaments would be real. As the United Kingdom is itself a multinational state, we have some difficulty in saying that the UK Parliament is the only body that can represent the nations of the United Kingdom. COSAC itself, as an expression of the French desire in this regard, works extremely badly. From my own experience, I have to say that the quality of the food and the surroundings was superb, but that the quality of the debate was in inverse proportion to that.
Our objective of better, fuller and more effective scrutiny is a highly desirable one, but it is not entirely easy. One of the things that I learned while chairing one of the sub-committees of your Lordships' EU Committee was that different parliaments behave entirely differently about scrutiny but still think that they are doing it. The House of Commons scrutiny committee looks at absolutely everything and sometimes spends 10 minutes on each. We select and deal in depth with a small number of things and leave the others behind. The Danish and Finnish Parliaments think that scrutiny entails getting the Minister in for an hour on the Friday before the Council meeting and throwing questions at him. They are different sorts of scrutiny—beforehand, afterwards—but none of them is perfect.
As we have learned in this House, there are many difficulties with scrutiny: governments change their minds, proposals evolve, and Ministers think it advantageous to decide quickly. Twice while I was chair of Sub-Committee F the Government cooperated in over-riding the scrutiny reserve because Ministers thought that it was useful to have a decision, particularly on anti-discrimination in the European Union. Ministers like to propose new initiatives at all levels of government, and British Ministers are certainly no better than any others in their longing to have an initiative of which they can speak.
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I therefore agree in particular with the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, that the proper focus should be on how best to improve the engagement of national parliaments. The report clearly sets out a number of proposals. It stresses that we should make better use of offices of national parliaments in Brussels. establish better links among national committees, and establish better links between the national parliaments and the European Parliament both in Brussels and in national capitals. We all need to explore that a great deal further.
This Parliament has not yet quite got over the initial disdain for the European Parliament. We should involve Members of the European Parliament much more in our activities. I like the idea that my noble colleague Lord Goodhart suggested of a tripartite committee. That would clearly require more funding. I suggest that more funding be made available for greater party links between national parliamentarians and their equivalent in other countries.
Yes, we can reform COSAC. Perhaps reforming COSAC is the way forward. I wish that this Parliament would take a more active role in that. The French Senate's report on a second chamber effectively presented the idea that COSAC should meet four times annually rather than twice. Perhaps we should say that it should meet at least twice in Brussels rather than in national capitals and that it should focus more explicitly on how we conduct scrutiny and also outline some of the problems of scrutiny. I could be much more sceptical about an annual congress of parliaments, but I shall leave that issue to the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, who went through the assizes and came out scarred from the experience.
There is a particular problem about the scrutiny of the common foreign and security policy and the third pillar of justice and home affairs. That also needs to be a matter of co-operation between national parliaments and the European Parliament and should not prompt a move towards the creation of further ad hoc assemblies or whatever.
This should all feed into the stumbling debate about British constitutional reform as well as about European constitutional change. There is a Scottish dimension to much of this—on fisheries, for example, in which Scottish interests are much stronger than English ones, and on oil. The Scottish Parliament is already beginning to develop its own forms of European scrutiny, about which we ourselves should be rather more informed.
The links between the two chambers here ought to be improved. Ministers might usefully agree regularly to meet a Joint Committee, perhaps before Council meetings, as a way of improving scrutiny. All of that needs also to feed into the Laeken convention, which this Parliament needs to follow, and to do so throughout the life of that convention.
Meanwhile, this report and debate is a first, very useful and constructive contribution to the convention. I hope that this Chamber will provide many others.
5.58 p.m.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, although I too was not a member of this very distinguished committee, I have to say that—unlike the noble Lord, Lord Desai—I think that it has produced a most excellent report. I agree with nearly all of it, with the possible exception of one or two conclusions, to which I shall return. I know that it is the custom to praise all such reports as they are published, and that your Lordships are always very polite to each other, but in this case I really think that this is one of the highest-class efforts that we have debated in recent times. I think that the title alone will qualify it for report of the year or report of the month, if there are such competitions. For a start—this does not apply to every report—it begins, in part one, sentence one and paragraph one, with precisely the right question, which is,
"Why would the European Union need another parliamentary Chamber?"
A flood of answers are unleashed by that—I do not talk just of the committee but of the general view. At the head of those answers is the phrase "democratic deficit", to which the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, and the noble Baroness, Lady Harris, referred, or, as it is put in the report much better and more accurately, the disconnection that makes so much of the institutional activity of the European Union seem alien, obscure, remote and distant—all words that have been used this afternoon. From that there flows another set of answers in the conventional line of argument: that it is a matter of subsidiarity not working and we must make it work in some way, or that it is a matter of more scrutiny of second and third pillar decisions, which are not scrutinised enough, and we must somehow crank up the scrutiny machine to be more effective in dealing with them.
It is sometimes assumed that when we have tackled those two matters we have solved the repair problems and everything will be all right. I do not believe that. That is a wrong analysis of the problem of disconnection, which is rightly identified. It comes about only—and one gets into that way of thinking only—if one starts from a certain mindset based on a flawed perception of the way that Europe and the world now work. If one assumes that the European Union institutions are somehow the top of the tree, on high, above the nation states and nearer the sun as it were, and one is told that they are out of touch, one worries about how to rearrange the furniture at those lofty levels. That results in talk about strengthening the authority of the European Parliament, as the recent Laeken declaration did, or worries about adding a new chamber—the idea that the report rightly shoots down—or about how all the power that is said to have accumulated in those higher authorities should be delegated and decentralised or tested by the process of subsidiarity. Even the people I respect most profoundly can easily assume that up there are the institutions and down here are the nation states, with the grassroots below them and so on.
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Commissioner Patten speaks beautifully on many of these matters and I admire a great deal of what he says. However, he is quoted in the report as saying that the problem is deciding what is "left to the nations", as if it is a matter of crumbs and leftovers for the nations after it has been decided what should be done by the EU institutions. I am closer to the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, on that matter. I believe that first of all the nation states and the national parliaments should decide how they will organise their own affairs, working together or separately, and then we should decide what would have its value added to by being left to the European Union institutions. That is the right way to go about it. If one does not understand that, of course one comes out in favour of some kind of second chamber at the centre. That is why Commissioner Patten is in favour, along with many other people whom I also respect, including my noble friends Lord Heseltine and Lord Brittan, Joschka Fischer, M Jospin and Mr Danny Cohn-Bendit, as the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, mentioned. They are all listed in the report as people who say that the answer is to do something at the centre. I believe that all those viewpoints are flawed. The report helps to penetrate and illuminate that flaw effectively.
Making the centre of the European Union stronger does not make it less remote or less alien. I believe strongly that at this stage in their search for greater connection people do not want grander bodies, diets and lofty senates to be constructed, nor do they want people to talk about the need for destiny—a dreadful word—and other visions. Nor do they want—I noted the remarks of Mr Prodi at the weekend in this regard—the creation of a supra-national democracy. People want something much more down to earth that there should be a much closer involvement in the decisions of Europe by the elected national parliaments. That point has rightly been made by many noble Lords this afternoon. I repeat that the European Union is not above the nation states. The nation states gave birth to the treaties that created the Union and the servants of those institutions should watch their language and be careful. The other day Mr Solbes worried about the German stability pact and the Portuguese budget. Perhaps he is right to worry and to advise. However, it is not appropriate for him to warn. He is a servant, not a master, of the nation states and that fact should be reflected in what these people say.
The report successfully shoots down the second chamber idea conclusively. It is obviously not practical. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, mentioned that I was scarred by the attempt some years ago to have an assize of all national parliaments in Rome. That was a complete failure for all kinds of obvious reasons. The scheme is constitutionally inept because, as the report argues, as have many others, if the new body was powerless it would be useless and would not attract the best minds, but if it was powerful it would be thoroughly confusing and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, said, would merely compete in a most damaging way with the existing structures. The constitutional aspect seems to rest not just on the

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reasonable belief that the principles on which it is decided who should do what can be clarified—as paragraph 48 of the report states—but on the idea that the actual competences can also be clarified. I may disagree slightly with the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell, here. It seems to me that the report is much more cautious as regards trying to define actual competences and freeze them, let alone building some great constitutional structure thereafter which enshrines them for ever. One has to be extremely careful to proceed along those lines. Certainly, to set up a second chamber that would adjudicate on those competences seems to be a nightmare proposition. Finally, as the report states, it does not solve the democracy and disconnection problem. In short, to borrow a word from Mr Robin Cook, it is frankly a "shallow" idea. I share the surprise of others that it was ever seriously even floated.
As your Lordships have rightly divined, and as my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth indicated in his evidence to the committee, the problem is not to do with rearranging institutional structures; it is, of course, to do with the exclusion of elected parliaments from decision-making and the way in which we can overcome that. I believe that COSAC might help a little in that regard. I hope that it has improved since the clays when I served on it. It was never a very cutting edge body. All this debate really means is that we have to find ways of strengthening our national parliaments—not strengthening the centre; that is too strong already—so that they are in the accountability loop in a way that sometimes we feel we are not.
Then one comes to the practical issues of what we do about it all. The consensus on what is wrong has been wide indeed in this excellent debate. Can we strengthen the scrutiny process? I believe that the answer is "yes". I n a moment I shall trot out a list of proposals for how we can do that, some of which overlap with what has already been said by the noble Lords, Lord Tomlinson, Lord Williamson, Lord Barnett, Lord Desai, Lord Inglewood, and many others. There is a deeper question behind that: even in improving scrutiny, are we really thinking creatively or are we merely rearranging the furniture and dancing to the tune of an outmoded structure and system, which may have done well for Europe in the 20th century but which is utterly inappropriate for the modalities of Europe in the 21st century? Are we really just going to go along the kind of line that I suspect will come out of the convention, which already seems to be causing a good deal of grumbling? I wish the noble Lords, Lord Tomlinson and Lord Maclennan, well but it seems that even in Germany people are pointing out that it does not sound a very democratic body if it has a 12-person presidium that meets 10 times a month and a plenary group of 105 members that meets once a month. The noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, who I know is agile, will have to do a lot of running to catch up with what is going on in the top 12.
Lord Tomlinson: My Lords, I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Howell, will be pleased to know that
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former President Giscard d'Estaing has already started to change his mind substantially in the direction of democracy.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, I am glad to hear that. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, played his part in achieving that mind change.
I shall quickly explain a few ideas about how to beef up scrutiny. Such work is of course excellent and wonderful, but we could do much better. First, we should make the whole business mandator) and legal, which it currently is not—governments often override it. Secondly, we should seek to develop television coverage of the sittings of committees of this House. That is done with the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs in the House of Commons. Thirdly, we should require Ministers to discuss ideas for possible EC legislation with the committees before they become Commission initiatives or proposals. The noble Lord. Lord Williamson, developed that idea— he was absolutely right. We need what we might call a Second Reading debate on EU possibilities that the UK Government were minded to propose or support.
Fourthly, we should support the requirement that Commission and Directorate staffs should be obliged—I stress that—to appear before national parliamentary committees. That would be hard work and involve a busy life, but that is the price of democracy. Fifthly, we should have tighter inundating of Ministers, as is done in Denmark. They would have to consult parliamentary committees, or at least their chairmen, before conceding in "negotiations". Sixthly, we should have Joint Committee meetings between our two Houses of Parliament on big EU issues. They should have lots of television coverage and key witnesses should he available. Seven thly, we should require all EC instruments to be encased in debatable statutory instruments and, more so than is currently the case, in primary legislation, especially in relation to pillars two and three. Eighthly, we should require MEPs to attend committees more often, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, suggested, especially in relation to pillar one issues. In that regard, the European Parliament may already have amended certain developments and issues through co-decision-making, and we do not hear about them until it is too late. Finally, there is a case for having a Minister for EU affairs not only here in London but also in Brussels, who would return one day a week to report to a Joint Committee of both Houses and every three weeks to attend Foreign Office Question Time.
Those are the detailed, practical points. It could be argued that all of those points involve, as I said earlier, simply rearranging the deckchairs. It could be argued that the much deeper issue is whether that is any longer the right relationship between Brussels and national Parliaments, including ours. It could he argued that the Commission's monopoly on initiatives, which was built into the original treaties, is simply out of date and that our parliamentary committees should have the power to make proposals to the executive for onward transmission to the Council. It could also be argued

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that the doctrine of subsidiarity—which frankly is currently extremely feeble—should be given real substance by committing national Parliaments to debate not merely the case against new EU powers and competences, but also the reclamation of existing powers across a wide field. Again, I do not want to put words into the mouth of the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, but some of the ways in which he suggested that the Commission's agenda should be shaped by national parliaments seemed to be entirely appropriate.
That would require the amendment of treaties, of course, but that has been proposed by all sides. It would also require the amendment of the mantra of ever-closer union in the preamble to the Rome treaty and a step-change in the attitudes and public language of commissioners and officials—they are the servants of national legislatures, which brought them into being. National parliaments need reminding of that, too. Moreover, if the House of Lords and the House of Commons worked together and were adequately staffed, they could make huge inroads in terms of resisting the present unhealthily deferential or resigned attitudes towards the dominance of EU decisions and the EU law machine. That would be done in the cause of a stronger and more flexible union. That, more than anything else, would help to restore the present disconnection between EU affairs, national parliaments and politics at the grass roots. It would certainly do very much better than a second Chamber.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, before the noble Lord concludes, I add as a point of information that there is already provision for the televising of committees of this House. Indeed, when I was chair of a sub-committee of the European Union Committee, on several occasions Ministers attended and the proceedings were transmitted on television.
Lord Howell of Guildford: My Lords, I am very pleased to hear that. We clearly want more of it.
6.14 p.m.
Lord Grocott: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in welcoming the report and the diligence that members of the committee showed. Obviously I do not agree with all of its conclusions. As noble Lords made clear, there is no doubting the fact that tremendous work went into it. Although it was my duty to read the report, it was not an onerous duty; I enjoyed doing so.
It was not a surprise that many noble Lords were critical of the idea of a second chamber. I knew that the report was unanimous and a little research showed me that seven speakers today were members of the committee. I did a little arithmetic and worked out that a fair few noble Lords would be critical of the idea of a second chamber.
We should allow ourselves a certain amount of gentle self-deprecating humour at the notion of the second Chamber of this Parliament coming out pretty conclusively against the idea of a second chamber, not least because of the tremendous problems about the
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relationship between the two chambers, about which would deal with finance, and about sundry other matters. We have had a constructive debate, although my political antennae detected that not all noble Lords were 100 per cent behind the Government's position.
The idea of creating a second chamber of the European Parliament is not new, as my noble friend Lord Tomlinson and the report pointed out. Thoughts of having a second chamber for a European Parliament were first tabled as early as 1953 by the Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community. The idea has been proposed on various occasions throughout the decades since then and in a number of different countries. As my noble friend Lord Tomlinson elegantly put it, it is an idea that has been knocking around for some time—rather like the two of us.
One of the most recent contributions to that debate was made by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister. I was pleased by that, not least because of his general warmth, but because, as my noble friend Lord Lea of Crondall put it, it is up to people to raise such issues and debates. Why do we always leave it to other countries in the EU to raise such discussions? I remind the House of my right honourable friend's comments. He said:
"I … believe that the time has now come to involve representatives of national parliaments more … by creating a second chamber of the European Parliament".
He went on to highlight an important objective for the Government. He said that such a chamber would, among other things, enable us to,
"do what we need to do at a European level but also … devolve power downwards".
He was talking about subsidiarity.
The Prime Minister's proposal, as set out in Warsaw, was a broad proposition; it was in no way—my noble friend Lord Barnett will he pleased to hear this—a blue-print. As the Select Committee report suggested, it has certainly initiated a debate, not least in this House. We should not be having this interesting debate were it not for the fact that the proposal is on the table.
The matter has certainly evoked different responses from different sides of the European debate. I noted the comments in paragraph 39 of the report that some critics of the second chamber proposal have voiced the suspicion that this is an attempt by the Government to "disable" the EU. Other concerns, coming from the opposite side of the European debate, were that a second chamber was a step too far towards a federalist model for Europe. I am not sure what one should say when one is in the middle of such a discussion; if one's position is being attacked by both wings of the debate, perhaps it has one or two components that are well worth considering.
One or two noble Lords stressed the fact that despite differing conclusions, there is considerable agreement among many noble Lords. There is, I believe, consensus—the noble Lord, Lord Howell, made this point—on some of the problems. For example, paragraph 20 of the report provides a very useful

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summary of the problems that a second chamber would need to address. They include the widespread dissatisfaction with current institutional structures in the EU and a lack of connection with EU affairs among the electorate. It also sets out the basic thinking of what a second chamber might look like, with members being drawn from national parliamentarians, whose role might be to monitor subsidiarity and the common foreign and security policy. That point was discussed by the noble Lord, Lord Williamson.
The guiding principle underpinning the Government's proposal for a second chamber is the need to strengthen the links between national parliaments and parliamentarians, and thereby citizens, to the decision-making process of the European Union. The Government are firmly wedded to that.
No one can doubt the paramount need to make the European Union relevant and of interest to the people of the EU. One has only to look at the very disappointing figures for electoral turn-out at the last European elections in June 1999 when voter turn-out in the UK fell below 25 per cent for the first time. The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, was concerned about low turn-out figures in elections generally. The noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, expressed concern that many members of the public are not interested in governments being scrutinised by parliaments; he suggested that they are more interested in the way that governments are scrutinised by television interviewers. I agree with him that that matter needs to be addressed by all parliamentarians who are concerned about parliament.
If we are to develop a European Union in which the people of Europe feel directly involved—we must certainly do that—we cannot simply dismiss out of hand the idea of a second chamber. Therefore, although overall the Select Committee's report does not come down in favour of a second chamber, I was pleased to see in paragraph 48 a clear acceptance of that key principle; that is, the importance of addressing the problems associated with a gap between the institutions of the European Union and its citizens—a point emphasised strongly by my noble friend Lord Grenfell.
I was also very pleased to see the Select Committee's recognition of the Prime Minister's efforts to tackle that issue. I noticed that my noble friend Lord Barnett complained of the report being excessively kind to the Prime Minister. I can only say to him that, when he was a very distinguished and popular member of the Labour Cabinet in the other place between 1974 and 1979, my recollection is that he was always excessively kind to Prime Ministers. I hope that the position has not changed now that he is on the Back Benches.
No doubt we are all too keenly aware that these days speculation on European Union matters can quickly turn any sensible and coherent proposal into an extravagant flight of fancy. Therefore, although these are early stages—as I said, this is not a blueprint—I want to spell out what, in our view, a second chamber would not be.
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The Government do not envisage a second chamber being a permanent institution based in Brussels. I believe that, to some extent, many of the problems of dual mandate mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, and others, stem from the idea of such a chamber being what we generally recognise chambers to be. But we envisage it meeting perhaps three or four times a year. It need not be large or expensive. Of course, today's technology allows conversations and debates to take place without people being physically in the same place at the same time. A second chamber would not be a rival to the European Parliament, which would remain the key legislative and budgetary partner to the Council; rather, it would complement the European Parliament. It would not enter into the detail of legislation or have a right of veto.
Many very interesting contributions were made in relation to the question of dual mandate—that is, whether or not parliamentarians could serve two chambers and work at two locations. I found that particularly interesting coming from the noble Lord, Lord Jopling. He gave us insights, which we do not often receive, into the role of a Chief Whip. I should like him to develop that further when he has the opportunity.
The noble Lord rightly pointed out—I am sure that great difficulties are involved—the danger that exists for anyone who serves in the European Parliament of being detached from the national parliament. I do not doubt for a moment that there are tremendous pressures on MPs. I say gently and sincerely to the noble Lord that on a number of occasions when he was in the other place he chaired committees on reform of the procedures of the other place—perhaps one day he will work on the procedures in this House—and at the same time was an effective Member of Parliament. I view that as carrying out two jobs; MPs and Members of this House frequently find themselves being asked to do two jobs.
A number of noble Lords were concerned about that point, including the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond. But my noble friend Lord Desai came nobly and effectively to the rescue by pointing out that some countries are a little larger than the United Kingdom; that it is possible to travel and thus to represent larger areas. Perhaps the House will allow me to mention briefly an anecdote which is burned on my memory. I once attended a conference of parliamentarians in Ottawa. As we were about to depart, I discovered that the Canadian Member of the Parliament from Ottawa, who represented a constituency on the west coast of Canada, would take longer to get home to his constituency than I would to my constituency in Telford. Of course problems arise in very large countries, but the problem of people sitting simultaneously in two parliamentary bodies should not be insuperable.
We cannot ignore the fact that the European Union plays an ever-more integral part in our daily lives. Decisions taken every day in Brussels have an impact on our lives here. Therefore, it is vital—this came home time and again in the contributions to the

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debate—that national parliamentarians become more involved in the decisions taken in Brussels. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, made that point strongly.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart: My Lords, I hesitate to intervene at this stage. However, by describing the burdensome nature and daily work of the European Union, is the Minister not underlining how impossible is the suggestion that a second chamber might reconnect to the public by meeting four times a year, particularly if it is to be excluded from careful consideration of legislative proposals? Would there not be a risk of the second chamber being as disconnected from the actuality of what is happening as the public?
Lord Grocott: My Lords, I do not deny for a moment that there are difficulties, but I believe—I say this with no disrespect to either MEPs or former MEPs here—that people in the United Kingdom look first and foremost for the redress of grievances and problems to their constituency Members of Parliament. There is an additional and important link from the people to Europe, and that is the problem which the proposal for a second chamber attempts to solve. However, I do not deny that considerable problems are associated with it. Therefore, although we fully acknowledge the points made in the Select Committee report about the practical difficulties of introducing greater involvement by national parliamentarians in EU affairs, we judge that there are practical options for dealing with it.
I make no apology for noting that the Government are still listening to contributions. Although I cannot say to my noble friend Lord Barnett that I shall be rushing round with details of such debate, I can assure him that the matter will be looked at most carefully. We acknowledge that a second chamber could take many different forms, and many contributions have been made from many different sources.
Skipping through a number of issues that have already been raised, I turn now to the "Future of Europe" Convention, which has been mentioned by several noble Lords. My noble friend Lord Bruce expressed concern about the democratic deficit in Europe. I am sure that that is the type of issue that the convention will address.
As the House knows, the report of the "Future of Europe" Convention was agreed by the Heads of State and Government Meeting at Laeken in December 2001 and is to be ready in good time for the next IGC. The House will already be aware that the task of the "Future of Europe" Convention, as set out in the Laeken Declaration was to,
"consider the key issues arising for the Union's future development and to try to identify the various possible responses".
A number of noble Lords who have contributed today have made recommendations about the type of issue that the convention should consider. This House will be ably represented. I am pleased that my noble friend Lord Tomlinson contributed to the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, is also present. I am sure that Members of this House will not be shy in putting their
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views to the two members; and neither will those members be less than diligent in reporting back to us about the work they are doing in whatever form that is considered appropriate.
As the House will know, in December 2001 the European Council appointed Valery Giscard d'Estaing to be chairman of the "Future of Europe" Convention. The first meeting is due to take place in Brussels on 28th February. We expect the discussions to continue until the spring or summer of 2003. The gap between the end of the convention and the beginning of the IGC in 2004 is important so that, above all, national parliaments are able to offer a view on the various options raised at the conclusions of the convention—whatever form they may take.
In conclusion. I reiterate the importance the Government attach to strengthening the role of national parliaments in the European Union process. This belief underpins our thinking about the possible second chamber. We greatly welcome, therefore, the contribution of the report made by the European Union Committee of this House and the opportunity the report has given us today to have this useful and informed debate, the contents of which will be noted carefully by the Government.
6.31 p.m.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, we have had a good and full debate on the report. Noble Lords will be relieved to know that I do not intend to summarise the debate or any of the speeches made. I Thank all noble Lords who have taken part. It is interesting that noble Lords are divided almost evenly between those who are members of the committee and those who are not. However, with the honourable exception of the noble Lord, Lord Desai. and, of course, the Minister. the conclusions reached were more or less unanimous.
I thank the Minister for his response. He gave many reasons why a second chamber would not do. He left me rather lost as to what it might do, other than being a virtual second chamber where people would not have even to meet together. However, that issue is for another day.
I hope that the debate has been useful, particularly given that the convention is taking place in a fortnight's time. We were pleased to have the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson. The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, has been present for a considerable part of the debate. I hope that they will find the debate useful in their deliberations in the convention.
Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, said, I hope that the Prime Minister may find the time to read this debate, although I am somewhat on the noble Lord's side on that. However, if he does not find the time, I hope that the Minister for Europe, Mr Peter Hain—he is the Government's representative at the convention—will do so and that he will find some of the contributions made today useful. I commend the Motion.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Airspace in Europe: EUC Reports
6.33 p.m.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe rose to move, That this House takes note of the reports of the European Union Committee, Reducing Air Traffic Delays: Civil and Military Management of Airspace in Europe (14th Report, Session 2000–01, HL Paper 79, and Supplementary Report: 9th Report, Session 2001–02, H L Paper 63).
The noble Lord said: My Lords, first, I thank members of Sub-Committee B for the hard work that they put into the two inquiries. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, who joined us from Sub-Committee C, whose interventions have been much valued by the committee. There were some doubts as to whether we should have this debate, given the consequences for aviation of the tragic events of 11 th September. But for reasons I shall give, we have proceeded. It gives me the opportunity now to thank publicly others who have helped us greatly.
Our gratitude goes to all who gave evidence. I especially want to express our thanks and appreciation to our two specialist advisers, Air Vice Marshal John Feesey, of the RAF, and Mr Tony Goldman, CB, formerly of the Civil Aviation Authority, without whom we would have found it impossible to find our way through what seemed like a whole new world to most of us.
Our thanks also go to Siobhan Conway, our then secretary, and our invaluable clerk, Patrick Wogan. I also express my personal appreciation to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester. He chaired the session in the second inquiry when I had in the meantime become a non-executive director of the National Air Traffic Services Limited about which I now declare an interest.
When we began this inquiry a year ago there 'was severe congestion in the skies over western Europe. That was partly due to the seemingly inexorable increase in civil aviation and partly because of the complex division of airspace over Europe. We were concerned about the areas of airspace set aside exclusively for military use. In some member states, civil aviation had been permanently excluded from such areas. In others, the system known as "flexible use of air space" operated which allowed civil aviation to make occasional use of military zones. The overall effect, however, was to add another factor which produced congestion which in turn contributed to delays which were both costly to operators, damaging to the environment, and irritating (to say the least) to travellers.
Congestion and delays to air traffic in Europe first reached crisis proportions in the late 1980s. This prompted the committee to report in 1989. Despite continuous efforts to deal with the problem, serious congestion still prevailed especially in the heavily used areas of western Europe. The committee again reported on the subject in 1996 when we considered the European Commission White paper on air traffic management entitled Freeing Europe's Air Space.
In 1999 Eurocontrol, the Brussel-based Europe organisation for the safety of air navigation. estimated that delays arising from ATM problems had risen by over 30 per cent against the previous year. Undoubtedly, a large element could be attributed to NATO air activity in the Balkans. But in 2000 the Association of European Airlines claimed that such delays were still 25.5 per cent up on 1998.
The European Commission recognised that something needed to be done. In December 1999, the commissioner, Madame Loyola de Palacio, introduced proposals entitled The Creation of a Single European Sky. The Commission set up a high level group comprising senior civil and military officials 10 consider them. This group submitted its report to the Transport Council in December 2000. The Commission undertook to prepare draft legislation to implement the recommendations. Basically, those envisaged replacing the patchwork of national civil and military control over western Europe by a single area subject to regulation by the Commission. It was an interesting concept but the difficulty lay in how to graft a new system on to one which had devolved since the Second World War.
When we began the inquiry the Commission's proposals had not been published. They were blocked by the Spanish unwillingness to allow any proposals for aviation to be extended to Gibraltar. None the less, it seemed to us important to look at the principles and the way in which the Commission sought to marry its concept of regulation to the pan-European system with what was already operating under Eurocontrol.
It is important to remember, too, that Eurocontrol had been wrestling with the problems of air traffic management and had launched a series of technical and institutional programmes to improve delivery of ATM services. In January 2000 European aviation Ministers launched a new phase of these programmes entitled ATM 2000+. The first of those new measures, reduced vertical separation minima (RVSM ) came into effect only last month. When others come into effect in 2005, and if implemented by all member states, Eurocontrol calculate that it will have increased capacity over the core area of western Europe by 60 per cent.
We delayed debating our report and the Government's response because we were conscious that change was in the air (if noble Lords will forgive the pun). The United Kingdom and Spanish Governments announced a resumption of discussions about Gibraltar. This led to the UK suspending the application of single sky to Gibraltar until the issue was clarified. This, in turn, cleared the way for the Commission to work up its single sky proposals and to publish them officially on 10th October 2001.
However, a more serious event occurred on 11 th September which had a direct impact on this subject. The terrorist outrages in New York and Washington were followed by a considerable drop in civil aviation, particularly over the North Atlantic. That reduction in traffic caused us to ask whether the original purpose of our report had been overtaken. As a consequence of 11 th September, delays were reduced because,
effectively, the decrease in traffic eased congestion. Nevertheless, we decided to take evidence from the Commissioner and to report our findings.
While acknowledging that there had been a downturn in aviation, the Commissioner argued that it was only temporary and that the long-term trend would resume, so the issue still needed to be addressed. By that time we were able to examine the Commission's published single sky proposals. Essentially, those did not differ from the unpublished version that had informed our earlier report and went some way towards fleshing out some of the details for us. It went some way, but in our opinion, not far enough.
Two areas required careful examination. The relationship between the European Commission's Single Sky Committee, as regulator for EU member states, with Eurocontrol's role as a regulator for 30 European countries, including the 15 non-members of the EU, was one of the topics. We also wanted to look carefully at how to deal with the military.
On the relationship between the Commission's Single Sky Committee and Eurocontrol, the European Commission does not have the expertise to inform its regulatory competence. It has no choice but to seek that expertise from the Eurocontrol agency. In effect, the Government say that, first, the European Commission will propose the rules; secondly, Eurocontrol will work them up using its expertise; thirdly, the European Commission will implement them for EU member states only; and, fourthly, Eurocontrol will promulgate them to non-EU states and implement them there.
The flaw at the heart of that is that, whereas the European Commission will be able to require EU member states to observe regulations because it has a legal base on which to do so, the Eurocontrol regulatory function will be unable to impose such regulation on the non-EU states because Eurocontrol is an international treaty organisation. It does not operate an international legal system comparable to that which binds EU member states. How does the Minister see that conflict being resolved?
A separate issue is that Eurocontrol is both a regulating body and a service provider. We have recommended that the distinction between those two functions be widened. We wonder how the revised Eurocontrol convention will bring about such a separation of functions and how transparent it will be. We should be grateful for the Government's views on that.
A subsidiary issue is how the European Commission's Single Sky Committee and the Eurocontrol regulation function fit together with national regulatory authorities. The relationship will vary between EU member states and non-EU states. In short, we see the potential for considerable confusion. Therefore, we believe that it is essential that the European Commission and Eurocontrol focus on determining the nature of the relationship between themselves on those issues. The Commission has
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assured the committee that a document will be drawn up to demarcate competencies. That will require careful scrutiny. Can the Minister assure us that the Government will also monitor that closely?
Turning to the heart of the report, which was how to integrate the military in the management of European airspace, we have a problem with the Government's views. The Commission proposes that the Single Sky Committee, the new regulatory body for EU member states, should also be able to accommodate a routine military input related to the management of airspace. It points to the successful, high-level group study in which both military and civil participants sat together and made an equal contribution.
The Commission told the committee that each member state would have two seats on the Single Sky Committee and strongly implied that it would like to see one filled by a civilian expert and the other by a military expert. Naturally, the member states would decide how they should be represented; for example, under the first pillar of the European Union. We see value in that kind of co-operation, particularly in ensuring that concepts such as the flexible use of airspace can be imposed on member states who hitherto have strongly resisted Eurocontrol's recommendation to implement this system.
However, the Government cannot accept that any aspect of the military could be subject to the single sky and to European Community legislation and thus fall under the first pillar of the European Union. I can see strong reasons why they should adopt that position. Control of the military is at the heart of national sovereignty, but we have ceded aspects of that sovereignty in other areas. We believe that, for the common good, there is much to be said for ceding a limited amount in this area too.
However, like the Government, we accept that there will be military subjects that cannot be dealt with under the single sky proposals. The problem is to find an appropriate forum. Eurocontrol has already encountered a similar problem and has come up with a solution in the form of the Civil/Military Interface Committee. There is a big difference between what Eurocontrol does and what the Commission requires. Eurocontrol is an international treaty organisation and so all decisions must be made on the basis of agreement by all the members. The European Community has its own house rules. We have proposed that whatever organisation is set up under the second pillar of the European Union, where member states meet on a national basis to discuss certain military matters, the membership of such a group be the same as the membership of the Eurocontrol Civil/Military Interface Committee for aviation issues. In that way we believe that it will be possible to maintain a consistency of policy between member states, Eurocontrol and the Single Sky Committee.
I return to the additional problem of how to fit in with the non-EU members of Eurocontrol. They will be represented on the Civil/Military Interface Committee in Eurocontrol and that will be the only
way in which they can interact with the military members of the European Community. In our opinion, that reinforces our argument that the EU member states' representatives in the Civil/Military Interface Committee should be the same as those who meet under the aegis of the second pillar dealing with military issues. We should like to know what difficulties the Government see in that recommendation and why they cannot proceed accordingly.
In 1996, when we reported to the House, we recommended that the European Commission should not accede to the revised Eurocontrol convention in its own right. When we began the current inquiry we were broadly of the same opinion. However, as the inquiry progressed, we saw that an overwhelming majority of the witnesses argued strongly that the Commission should accede in its own right, in addition to the individual and separate membership of the member states. Only one witness argued against that, so we have been persuaded that that is the right way to go. Once the Commission begins to regulate the airspace of member states it will need to speak in Eurocontrol councils as a full member and for member states in areas that have become part of the acquis commuititaire.
We envisage a situation where both member states and the Commission sit at the same table, with the Commission leading on those areas that have already been transferred to its competence. For that reason, we urge the early ratification of the revised Eurocontrol convention, but we do not understand why, so far, only one member state has ratified. Perhaps the Minister can tell the House why and what is likely to happen.
Looking to the future, we believe that the Commissioner's evidence to the committee was correct. The current downturn in civil aviation has been severe, but since 11 th September and towards the end of 2001 the civil aviation industry has steadied and it is now beginning to regain some of its traffic. However, many of the problems that surrounded civil aviation antedated the events of llth September and the decline in the larger companies has not been mirrored in the low-cost airlines whose traffic has surged. We conclude that it is not too early to consider how to re-map the heavens over Europe. I beg to move.
Moved, That this House takes note of the reports of the European Union Committee, Reducing Air Traffic Delays: Civil and Military Management of Airspace in Europe (14th Report, Session 2000–01, HL Paper 79, and Supplementary Report: 9th Report, Session 2001–02, HL Paper 63).—(Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe.)
6.49 p.m.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I am very pleased that this debate is taking place, and the issues involved been effectively highlighted by my noble friend Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe.
My remarks are confined to the issue of civil aviation. In that regard I declare an interest as the president of the British Airline Pilots Association,
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which supports the development of harmonised air traffic management service providers throughout the Continent of Europe. But I also have to declare an interest as a former European Commissioner for transport. I had responsibility for aviation in that respect. I remember only too well how the transport Ministers sought to sideline me, not personally, but as the European Commissioner responsible for that area. I believe that they were quite wrong. I do not believe that the Ministers still adhere to that kind of policy. I hope not.
From the concept of the environment to which my noble referred, but also as regards safety and efficiency, I believe that it is vital that the idea of a single European sky should be pursued with vigour. Indeed, that was made abundantly plain in the evidence given by Captain Steve King of BALPA and by Mr Peter Quaintmere of the International Federation of Airline Pilots' Associations.
The trouble which we are now experiencing is that the system we have is unable to deliver any improved—and I emphasise the word "improved"—levels of service based on the current estimates of 5 per cent annual growth.
The report which this House is now considering stresses the need for enhanced co-operation between the national and the international regulatory authorities and for a revised Eurocorttrol convention. I unhesitatingly support the Government's recommendations that development of the proposals for the future of Eurocontrol should proceed as quickly as possible. They also have to be made binding on all the states which are members of Eurocontrol. I argue, as does the committee, that there is no real conflict between the activities of Eurocontrol and those of the European Union.
Perhaps I may say something about Swanwick. I believe that it is a technological triumph. I am concerned about the development of Prestwick in Scotland as the second major air traffic centre. As we know, post-September 11 th the Government froze work at Prestwick because of the fall in passenger numbers. Thankfully, those numbers are now recovering and the fall, while very serious, has not been quite as drastic or as prolonged as had been feared.
Hitherto, Prestwick has been part of the Government's two centres strategy for safety and efficiency through sustained growth in the 21st century. Is it now? I believe that my noble friend Lord Filkin should tell the House where the Government now stand. I believe that he will since it is very important that he should say where Prestwick stands now.
I believe that it is quite wrong to rely on French and Belgian air traffic control for full coverage in the United Kingdom. My submission is that we need two centres to compete for future air traffic contracts under the single sky when all air traffic control is integrated across Europe. We must have regard also for the erstwhile and future lucrative North Atlantic business. Without the development of the Prestwick centre, the United Kingdom could miss out on millions

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of pounds-worth of contracts. If I am wrong about that I am sure that my noble friend will put me right, but that is what I am deeply afraid of.
In that regard I speak on behalf of all the United Kingdom air pilots. I call on the National Air Traffic Service and the Government to unfreeze the development at Prestwick. Even if work starts today, it could not be fully operational for some six or seven years. The European Commission will award contracts for the future provision of integrated services to modern—I underline that word—centres which are up and running. Therefore, unless both centres are in the frame we are unlikely to be in a position to bid for this work. Any further delay is bound to prejudice our air services from expanding and providing us with badly needed revenue.
I believe that the work done by the committee is absolutely first class. I congratulate my noble friend and all his colleagues on what they have done. I make no apology if I have emphasised both Swanwick and Prestwick in my remarks. I hope that my noble friend will realise that I am deeply concerned, as I hope is also the House, about the progress we can make in both respects, and the sooner the better.
7 p.m.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Brooke and his committee on the report produced for the House and, indeed, for the whole of Parliament. It was a very high-powered committee. On reading through its proceedings I became aware of the tremendous amount of time devoted to it by each member, many of whom have considerable businesses and affairs to deal with. I am bound to tell my noble friend in advance, however much it may shock him, that I agree with almost 100 per cent of his remarks to us today.
The open skies policy, which one hopes will be brought into operation, is one of my justifications for supporting Britain's role, as I see it, within the European Community. It presents a classic example—the proceedings verify that—of how conversations between people, as distinct from diktats, can arrive at solutions on a friendly basis without any particular reference to the nations involved. The kind of cooperation which was spoken of in the report and by my noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis, whose views and expertise on this subject are well known, is most agreeable.
I was last at Eurocontrol in 1977—it does not seem all that long ago—when I had the opportunity of visiting its headquarters. Those were the days when, compared to this Chamber, its computer occupied a considerable amount of space. It was a colossal installation. I am given to understand—I do not know how authoritatively—that today it is something like a hatbox. I was there because of the matters that had to be dealt with as regards military use of airspace in Belgium, Holland and to some extent France at that time. Those matters were highly sensitive. As is well-known by all parliamentarians, military matters are
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the one thing that member states, particularly their governments, choose successfully to keep close to their chests.
As I am sure my noble friend will confirm, a way must be found to solve the military problem in this comparatively restricted amount of airspace. That is mentioned in the report. It is well known that it is of considerable inconvenience to civil aircraft to pilot that particular area. I am not taking sides in the matter, which is unusual for me. However, I can see that the military have a point. The whole trouble is that the military, and the secrecy connected with their operations, are not always readily available to the civil governments they represent. That becomes one of the principal problems.
With respect, I endorse the enthusiasm of my noble friend and of the report for open skies. However, there is still this niggling matter to be dealt with, particularly in the area occupied by the French. They have a training area which happens to be in a critical part of the air traffic routes. I do not know how one overcomes that. Military people can be obstinate. I was in the military for a long time; I have almost forgotten it. Military people tend to be obstinate in their points of view and play their cards close to their chest.
The position is now even more complicated. In addition to the normal training facilities for which countries such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands and, to some extent, ourselves require the use of this airspace, there is now another factor to be considered. As is well known, the use of military aircraft will be covered by other arrangements, which will involve defence covering the whole of Europe.
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I cast my mind back to 1988 when I was honoured with the task of being Transport Commissioner. There was not a single mention of the military question by the transport Ministers. They sought to relegate the commissioner to the sidelines. They thought that preferably he should not have been there at all. So, it is not only the military aspect which is important—I do not deny that that is very important indeed—but it was considered that the Commission should not have responsibility in the wider area of civil air transport. I think that has changed.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, I trust that nothing I have said dissents from what the noble Lord has said. However, I cite the report in justification of my remarks. The noble Lord, Lord Woolmer of Leeds, asked Mr McMillan an important question at paragraph 93. He said:
"David, I think you said that problems posed by the lack of airspace are very significant. Could I just ask about the French situation? Do the constraints upon airspace over France cause any significant difficulties for air travellers commencing or ending their journeys in the United Kingdom".
Mr McMillan replied:
"There is one French military training area which abuts the Dover sector of the United Kingdom, I think it is called CBAO I … and that is a military training area which has in the past caused some quite significant problems to aircraft leaving the United Kingdom or entering the United Kingdom. It is a military

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area that abuts one of the main air routes across to the Continent, and I have to say in the past that has been a very significant problem".
He goes on:
"There are now, I am pleased to say, better methods of communication between the French military and London controls. Nonetheless, it is still a military training area that does abut a major route and on occasion we do still encounter some delays there".
I rest my case purely upon that.
I should like to warn the House that other difficulties arise from the defence and foreign policy group within the European Union. That particular committee, as we know, carries within it an EU military responsibility towards the whole of the defence of Europe, and covers part of the air forces concerned. We know that there are difficulties precisely because of that issue.
There is a battle going on—I shall not call it an ideological or a sinister one. It is a legitimate battle about how these matters will work out when, under the mutual defence arrangements, aircraft have to be used. That impinges on an area with which Eurocontrol has been involved in the past. There are complications, which I hope will be solved. I am sure that they will be.
The report is extremely comprehensive and covers the Government's responses. It will have great influence. I keep my antennae fairly open and I have yet to see such a thorough report that focuses so precisely on these points. I wish it well, but I must warn Her Majesty's Government on the French fluid position in connection with its part in military matters generally and the Commission's insistence on being represented on the committee. We know that the Commission is never averse to poking its nose in, and not always where it is required.
I issue that warning and repeat my congratulations to the chairman and the committee as a whole.
7.11 p.m.
Lord Wilson of Tillyorn: My Lords, as I am the first speaker in this evening's debate who had the pleasure of serving on Sub-Committee B under the wise and thoughtful leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, I wish to say what a pleasant and interesting experience it was. It was doubly interesting for me because, as a newcomer to that committee, this is the first of its long reports in which I have participated.
I derived some personal lessons from that experience. The committee has plenty of expert advice. We have our own excellent expert advisers, very good expert witnesses and several members of the committee who are expert in whatever subject is being discussed. For those of us who do not feel as though we are particularly "high powered", to quote the words of the noble Lord. Lord Bruce, but who are amateurs, our experience is that we come out of the process not pontificating about what should be done but learning what should be done.
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Perhaps the only thing that someone like myself who is not an expert on this subject can contribute is a degree of looking at the matter through the lens of common sense. There are two points on which common sense should apply.
First, I refer to the report that we produced. Its cover, to make it exciting, showed air traffic routes throughout Europe as a nightmare of cobwebs. That is clearly what they are, and what they will remain even though there has been some diminution in air traffic, as the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said, following the tragic events of 11th September. The previous density of air traffic will resume very soon, so the respite. if any, is temporary.
I often travel between Scotland and London. Indeed, I flew from Edinburgh to London this morning and had the not unusual experience of being held on the ground for 20 to 25 minutes. The pilot told us very politely that the delay was an air traffic control problem. The advantage of having served on Sub-Committee B is that I now no longer believe that they are United Kingdom air traffic control problems; they come from Brussels. However, it is not the devil figure of the European Commission that is doing this; it is Eurocontrol saying that there is excessive density of air traffic coming into London at a particular time in the morning, and asking whether the air traffic from certain areas, perhaps in the periphery—and perhaps Scotland is in the periphery—will kindly hold back.
That was a great thing to learn because I need no longer blame our own air traffic controllers; I can blame Eurocontrol. The clear lesson is that even if one is flying from Scotland to London, one is intimately affected by what happens in the resit of Europe. We cannot divorce what is happening in the United Kingdom from what is happening in the whole of Europe. In other words, to have effective use of the limited number of air routes, we must have a cooperative relationship with other air traffic controllers in continental Europe.
The second lesson which came across most clearly from my involvement in the report is the one to which the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, referred. I refer to the relationship between military control and civilian control of airspace. The classic example is the squeezing of air traffic routes out of London, southeastwards to continental Europe by a particular area under the control of the French military. It came across to me most clearly that when there is a pragmatic co-operative relationship between civilian and military air traffic controllers, the system can work if there is flexible use of airspace.
We are pretty good at that in the United Kingdom. It is evident that Germany and the Scandinavian countries are good at it too. It is equally evident that there are a number of countries in continental Europe which are not good at it. The lesson is that if one is to make good use of limited airspace, there must be a cooperative relationship between the military and civilians. That must be achieved.

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The precise mechanics of how those relationships are worked out and how policy within Europe is carried forward seems to be a matter for the experts to work out in detail. There is a danger of too much bureaucracy through excessive use of the European Commission, as opposed to the expertise of Eurocontrol. The mechanics of all those issues are for the experts to work out. The general lesson that is most apparent from the report and from all the evidence that was given to us is that if we are to spend our time and resources flying effectively from one point to another rather than either sitting on the ground or flying round in circles, the attitude of mind on all these issues must be one of co-operation between nation states, and between civilians and the military.
7.18 p.m.
Lord Woolmer of Leeds: My Lords, in welcoming the report, as one of the members of the committee I pay tribute to the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, and the contributions of all other members of the committee.
The wise words of the noble Lords, Lord Clinton-Davis, Lord Bruce of Donington and Lord Wilson, all find common cause in that this is a classic case of the need for a pan-European Union common policy, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce. I totally agree with him and with the conclusions of the report.
As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, said, there has been enormous growth in air traffic in the past 20 years, leading to at least two crises in handling it. By November of last year, 15 per cent of European flights were delayed by more than 15 minutes. As someone who flies around Europe a great deal, not to mention the rest of the world, I am always mildly surprised by the modesty of those delay figures. As a frequent traveller, I am very surprised that only 15 per cent of flights are delayed by only 15 minutes. That was something I never managed to square with the statistics. There was a great deal of fudging of statistics and in my later remarks I shall be making a plea for greater transparency and openness in this market-place. It is becoming, hopefully, an increasingly liberalised market-place where the user will have more power and influence than in the past.
Most of us in this Chamber probably use scheduled flights. But the charter traffic user—the average man and woman in the street—probably experiences much longer delays. If they listened to this debate tonight they were probably greatly surprised to hear that only 15 per cent of flights experience a delay of 15 minutes. So this is a slightly refined discussion compared with the common experience of many users of airlines.
That is looking to the past. Looking to the future we are told that air traffic will increase by 25 per cent over the next four to five years, and probably up to 100 per cent over the next 15 years. What do our users want of the air traffic system? They want speed and lack of delays. That is what is attracting the attention of your Lordships' House this evening. But they also want convenient location of airports. They want a better
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quality experience in airports, and of course they are greatly concerned with safety—tragically now, safety from terrorism, but more continually the general safety of flying.
I was extremely pleased to hear, and the general public to know, that the reason why we are held on the ground so often, air traffic delays or otherwise, is to ensure that safety is paramount. Users are concerned that safety remains paramount, despite the substantial increase in traffic movements. The ways in which, for the next few years, in Europe, and I am sure globally too, various air traffic control agencies, regulatory bodies, airlines and airports, will be seeking to ensure that we cope with the growth in air traffic are outlined in the report before your Lordships tonight. Those changes appear to be getting nearer to the point where it is difficult to see how much more growth can take place. It might double over the next 15 years, but we have already seen two crises in the past few years; we are struggling to find ways of maintaining that growth.
One aspect that must concern us is how far those changes will eventually reach the point of limited further development. That is relevant because, to a great extent, air traffic movement and air travel is only scratching the surface in Europe. An enormous proportion of people do not fly at all. They want to fly, initially on holidays, increasingly on short vacations and increasingly on business. So the underlying demand for growth is substantial. As the low-cost airlines show, people want to travel at a lower cost. Those lower costs will in turn stimulate growth beyond which incomes alone would not take us.
My underlying question therefore is whether, with all those changes, runway capacities will be able to cope. Will airports cope? Will safety remain paramount? Will the environmental consequences of that amount of air travel be acceptable to the public?
I welcome the moves towards the creation of a single European sky. I learnt a great deal from the committee proceedings about the specific issue of military-civil interface and, beyond that, the wider move towards the involvement of the European Commission and the further changes in Eurocontrol. But over and above that, liberalisation of air traffic management must follow. My noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis touched on that. Liberalisation of airline operations must follow; and liberalisation of airport slots leading to increased convenience and lower fares.
I hope therefore that this report and the underlying support for it will spread over from support for seeing that a single European sky makes a great deal of sense, to seeing that liberalisation of airline operations, airport slots and the bringing down of fares follows apace, while at the same time we ensure that safety indeed remains paramount.
7.25 p.m.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, not only on the way in which he opened this debate this evening, but also on his excellent leadership as chairman of the committee which

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delivered these two unanimous reports. I thank him also for his kind words on the modest part that I played in chairing the one session on 23rd November when we had the pleasure of questioning Mme Loyola de Palacio, the Vice President of the Commission and Commissioner for Transport and Energy. I express my thanks too to our hard-working clerk, Patrick Wogan, and to our specialist advisers Tony Goldman and Air Vice Marshal John Feesey.
This was a most interesting inquiry, as other speakers who took part in it have already said. I learnt an enormous amount about air traffic management and the way in which the European Union institutions work. One of the reasons the inquiry was so interesting was because it is a subject that bears directly on the lives of millions of people, those who travel by air, those whose jobs depend on air travel, and those whose lives are affected by air traffic, aircraft noise and aircraft development.
As other speakers have said, the sub-committee inquiry concentrated mainly on the role of air traffic control in reducing delays and in helping the air transport industry to meet increased demand. In that context I shall examine the case of the so-called "Freedom to Fly Coalition", which was launched on 14th January with the specific objective of increasing capacity at British airports. In my view, which is shared by many environmental organisations, the Freedom to Fly argument is based on a false premise. To use an older transport analogy, it is a classic case of putting the cart before the horse.
The single most important cause of delays is air traffic management. There is a clear equation which says that if you add inefficiency in air traffic management to an increase in demand or capacity, greater congestion will be the outcome.
There are other unacceptable costs involved in increasing airport capacity, and I shall speak briefly about those in a moment. But if we were simply to respond to a greater demand for air travel by building more airports and runways without improving the efficiency of air traffic management, we would inevitably create greater delays and greater congestion.
During our inquiry we learnt a great deal about Eurocontrol and were told that implementing its programme, known as "ATM 2000 + " for increased capacity by 2015, would make a dramatic difference. A combination of reducing vertical distances from 2,000 to 1,000 feet, which happened across 41 countries at midnight on 24th January; increasing flow managetnen providing more radio frequencies for air traffic control; improving ground/air links and flying more directly—particularly by passing through what is currently military air space such as in north-west France, to which my noble friend Lord Bruce of Donington referred and which is no longer needed now that the Cold War is over—all those measures could increase capacity by 60 per cent by 2005 over the core area of Europe if all Eurocontrol's members implemented them.
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Resolving the dispute with Spain over Gibraltar, particularly over the isthmus on which the Gibraltar airport is sited, would also help greatly. As our report says, the dispute,
"has become a significant obstacle to the progress of EC aviation legislation".
I am sure that at least the members of the Subcommittee would wish the Foreign Secretary every good fortune as he attempts, with the Spanish Government, to resolve the sovereignty issue.
The second stage of ATM 2000+, for the years 2005 to 2010, assumes that the integration process will be accelerated; that it will produce a further increase in capacity of between 20 and 40 per cent and a reduction in the amount of fuel used of between 2 and 3 per cent. The final period, up to 2015, could see another 20 to 40 per cent increase in capacity. By then, says the ATM 2000+ plan,
"the main limitations on any future improvements will be environmental considerations and runway saturation".
This brings us back to the Freedom to Fly campaign. I want to be as fair to it as I can. A number of my friends, both in this House and outside, are involved in or are employed by it. Last week it had what was described as an "exhibition" in the Upper Waiting Hall corridor. I visited this on Thursday afternoon and found some leaflets on a desk and three boards pinned together showing blue sky with the words "Freedom to Fly" printed on them. Unfortunately, there were no staff on the stand when I visited, so I could not put any of my questions directly to them.
However, the campaign did write to me, and I imagine to most other noble Lords, at the time of its launch in January. It described its objective as:
"To promote positively the sustainable provision of capacity to satisfy rising consumer demand for air travel".
It also seeks to encourage the adoption of what it calls certain "principles" by the Government. There are seven of these. Some of these are desirable. such as maintaining high standards of safety and security in UK aviation, and a call to Government to balance the needs of passengers, the economy, society and the environment. But the underlying aim is to ensure that the Government in their aviation White Paper, expected later this year, will give the green light for expected significant growth over the next 30 years. There will be particular pressure for additional runways to be built in the South East of England. Although its literature contains words like "sustainability", and "a balanced approach", its obvious agenda is substantially to increase airport capacity.
According to the Financial Times of 15th January, it said at its launch that, without that additional capacity there would be more delays, higher prices and less choice for travellers. But, as our Select Committee report demonstrates, unless air traffic management is substantially improved, additional capacity will increase delays. Curiously, I could find no reference in the Freedom to Fly literature to Eurocontrol. to ATM, to the European single sky policy, or indeed to any of these matters which we considered would make a real difference in reducing delays.

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The campaign claims that flying is no longer the privilege of the well-off. That point was made by my noble friend Lord Woolmer. That is true for many. I certainly do not want to see working families being priced off aircraft taking them to holiday destinations in the Mediterranean or elsewhere. But we should remember that frequent air travel is not an option for the poorest people in society, and probably never will be. They are more concerned with finding the money to pay the local bus fare than scouring the page for Ryanair's latest bargain offer.
It is also the case that many of Britain's poorest people live under flight paths, and do not have the means to move away if the number of aircraft becomes intolerably great.
Limiting the growth of air travel would have environmental gains for poor people in developing countries too. It is those countries that are the big losers from global warming, to which emissions from aircraft is a growing contributor. The campaign has been careful not to say just how much growth it is looking for. But it will find that as soon as it quantifies that, it will need to spell out where that growth will take place; how many extra planes will fly; how much extra noise and pollution there will be; which airports will be expanded; and which communities will be affected. Concepts like freedom, equity, prosperity and sustainability all sound fine, but current growth rates are unsustainable and politically untenable.
The last 25 years have seen a trebling in both flight and passenger numbers. Government forecasts—last published in June 2000—show that this trend is set to continue, as growth rates of between 4 and 6 per cent per annum are maintained. To cater for this rate of growth would require the equivalent of four more "Heathrows" by 2020 and nearly six by 2030.
There is no doubt that aviation provides jobs and contributes to the country's economy. But the aviation industry generally over-states its case because it does not allow for the considerable subsidies that the industry receives.
The Freedom to Fly campaign has said little about railways, bar some disparaging remarks about Railtrack. At the launch, Richard Branson said:
"We don't want aviation falling into the same morass as the railways".
I agree with that. But there is scope for modal shift. Germany aims to have no internal flights within a decade as people transfer to high-speed rail. A recent report from the Aviation Environment Federation entitled From planes to trains, points out that nearly half of all flights in Europe are less than 500 kilometres, with 68 per cent less than 1,000 kilometres. It concludes:
"There is potential for significant environmental benefits from transferring short-haul flights to rail. By 2015, the reduction in the demand for air travel facilitated by transferring all mainland domestic passengers to rail is equivalent to the capacity of one new runway".
That is 40 million passengers per annum.
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The Freedom to Fly campaign makes much of people's freedom to take cheap holidays in the sun. What it does not talk about is aviation's tourism deficit—the difference between what British people flying out of the UK on holiday spend abroad and what foreign people flying into the UK spend here. The economic contribution of the UK aviation industry 2000—a calculation by Ecotec—put the tourism deficit at £4.5 billion in 1997.
The aviation industry often points out that planes have got cleaner and quieter over the past 20 years. That is true. But the increase in the number of planes threatens to offset any improvements. Looking to the future, any further improvements will be cancelled out if aviation grows at the predicted rate. That is according to Arthur D Little, the consultants who have been advising the Government on technical matters as they prepare for the aviation White Paper.
So there are many issues which we need to weigh up before we go down the path of encouraging the unrestricted demand for the growth of air transport. An essential first step will be to sort out the issues of Eurocontrol and air traffic management generally. Here I share the hope of other speakers in the debate that our Select Committee report will make a useful contribution.
7.38 p.m.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market: My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity of contributing to this debate today on an important piece of work by Sub-Committee B, of which I was a member at the time. I am sure that the report will be welcomed by the industry and by decision-makers in the aviation field alike. It carries on the best traditions of reports from your Lordships' House, containing thoughtful and deliberate consideration of very complex matters.
The remarkable growth of the aviation sector has had profound effects on the way in which we carry out business and enjoy our leisure activities. It is tempting to speculate on the long-term effects of September 11th, but our belief is that the long-term trend towards high levels of growth will continue. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, has referred to the reasons why we believe that to be the case.
We have heard from the noble Lord. Lord Faulkner of Worcester, that the volume of air traffic is set to grow at around 5 per cent per year. It has been interesting to note that in recent years the volume of air traffic growth has far outstripped the amount of investment in the sector. The difficulties that this was causing were reported by the committee as long ago as 1989. Without significant investment in air traffic management processes, it is estimated that a I per cent increase in the volume of air traffic will result in a 7 per cent increase in delays. With recent announcements of many new low-cost flights across Europe, that development alone should give rise to concern.
In Europe, some 70 per cent of air traffic crosses 9 per cent of airspace. It is estimated that within the EC there is a shortfall of between 800 and 1,600 air traffic controllers out of a total of 15,000.

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Given that background, like the noble Lord, Lord Woolmer of Leeds, I am somewhat surprised that the situation is not far worse than it is. The industry has generally worked extremely well to alleviate the problems; And has a good safety record. The 30 countries that co-operate under the auspices of Eurocontrol have delivered significant increases in our airspace capacity. However, it is becoming clear that the capacity of the industry to continue to make changes at the margin is now limited and the time has come to take a more radical approach.
On reflection, perhaps our report would have been better entitled "Improving the Management of European Airspace". because it address that aspect of the aviation industry, not the wider issues such as runways, passenger handling and separation criteria. Of course. there are fundamental questions to ask about the future of the aviation industry, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Woolmer. for pointing them out, and to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, for talking so passionately about the disbenefits of growth in aviation.
Is it appropriate to continue to apply the doctrine of "predict and provide" to air travel when we have abandoned it for roads and house building? How can environmental and social disbenefits be weighed against economic and personal advantages and problems alleviated? For example, should we introduce a Europe-wide fuel tax on airliners so that a contribution is made towards the costs? Had it been Sub-Committee B's task to deal with some of those issues, I suspect that we would still be meeting and that the customary good nature of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of A lverthorpe, would by now have been sorely tried. As it was, the committee concerned itself with producing a detailed and expert report on one aspect.
The overwhelming sense that I detected from the inquiry was that of fragmentation. There are an enormous number of stakeholders, to use the current phrase: air traffic service providers, airline groups, the EC, industry bodies, Eurocontrol, civil aviation organisations and, of course, the military. I am told that in total about 150 organisations are involved in the operation of airspace across Europe. As an aside, I note that the interests of passengers do not appear to be well represented, but an increasing pattern of delays may cause a rise in militancy and a demand for a more regulated approach to passenger rights.
In that regard, it is difficult to argue against the need fora more unified approach at European level to create a virtuous circle in which we can develop a common approach to air traffic management within both upper and lower airspace and the alignment of civil and military interests. The benefits of such a collaborative approach have been well outlined for us by the noble Lords, Lord Bruce of Donington, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, and Lord Woolmer of Leeds. Of course, there is already significant collaboration within Europe. for example, in the Maastricht. Transalpine, Balkan and Nordic organisations. Perhaps we should consider standardising some of those collaborative efforts, and it may be helpful to consider a common billing policy for European air traffic.
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A common thread that runs through the subcommittee's report is that efforts must he made to reduce duplication and that care must be taken not to create more duplication and confusion in any new structures, for example between Eurocontrol and the EC, as its role develops. The relationship between national air traffic management regulators and a new EC-wide regulator must be thought about further and the provider-regulator split should be safeguarded. The noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, referred to the dangers of over-bureaucracy.
The committee did not underestimate the difficulty of aligning civil and military interests in the aviation sector, and considered how second pillar procedures could be used in relation to the military. To make a more compelling case for such a change, we need much more qualitative and quantitative information and analysis of delays caused by military activity and resulting costs to the civil sector. It is worth emphasising that we do not in any way suggest that the military are somehow the villains of the piece. It is simply that the growth in air traffic means that one side cannot afford to ignore the needs of the other. Other than during crises, such as that in the Balkans, military activity does not really affect delays so much as capacity, but that is becoming increasingly important.
We heard that the balance of power between civil and military varies enormously from country to country. The evidence of the French, the Germans and the United Kingdom provided a wonderful vignette of the different approaches. The Germans abandoned their low-flying airspace training in the 1980s and now carry it out in Canada. It is fair to say that the French have been much more robust in maintaining a significant home-grown capacity. The UK military has a fair point when it says that in areas such as the North Sea it has made a significant investment in fixed location instrumentation to make training possible there. It is not easy to imagine that it will he keen to incur the costs of change to make life easier for private airlines.
I close by taking the opportunity to ask two questions. First, does the Minister agree that an early priority must be the corridor into northern France, especially the problems caused by the CBA I military area to which the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, referred? Secondly, does the investment in new equipment at Swanwick described by my noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis as a technological triumph mean that its field of influence may by agreement extend into the near Continent?
Finally, I thank Patrick Wogan and his team and the specialist advisers, Air Vice-Marshal Feesey and Mr Goldman, for their work, and pay a special tribute to the good-natured and extremely able chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of A lverthorpe.
7.46 p.m.
Lord Rotherwick: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, and his colleagues on the Select Committee reports and welcome many of their recommendations. I come to

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the debate on this complex subject with great trepidation. I am in somewhat of a spin grappling with the issues as a novice, unlike some of your Lordships who are more experienced. I ask your forgiveness in advance for any mistakes that I feel sure I am about to make.
I come from a background of general aviation. I have experienced only the enjoyable side of aviation, flying as a pilot with the privileges of an instrument rating, as a passenger on commercial airliners and as a passenger on military jets such as the Tornado and the Harrier. Only last week, my local airfield, Oxford Airport, sent out a letter explaining that due to high aircraft movements, the Civil Aviation Authority will in future start requiring all aircraft flying instrument flight rules and, eventually, visual flight rules to start using air traffic flow management, ATFM, ensuring that the traffic controllers manage aircraft and minimise delays rather than just reacting to aircraft movements. I am afraid that those carefree aviator days are going.
In Europe, air traffic management is fragmented. Generally, European skies remain the equivalent of local roads, not the super-highways needed for air travel in the 21st century. We must support maximum co-operation between all member states in developing a safe and efficient air traffic control capacity across the European continent. Eurocontrol's senior director, air traffic management programme, Wolfgang Philipp, said recently:
"We are convinced that we will overcome the post-11th September decrease in traffic and we still expect traffic to double by 2015 from 1998".
As the noble Lords, Lord Clinton-Davis and Lord Faulkner of Worcester, mentioned, on 24th January 2002, Eurocontrol introduced reduced vertical separation minima, which are predicted to result in a 20 per cent airspace traffic capacity gain by the summer. That is achieved by reducing separation from 2,000 feet to 1,000 feet for aircraft flying between 29,000 feet and 41,000 feet.
That is part of Eurocontrol's strategy comprising three capacity-raising periods. Phase I, from 2000 to 2005, is based on increasing the efficiency of airspace use, resulting in a capacity gain of 20 to 40 per cent. The other two phases will take place every five years, with similar hoped-for gains in each phase. We must be proud of the leading role that the UK has played in Eurocontrol. There are many supporters of the single European sky, including NATS, which strongly supports it in principle. However, the proposal is extraordinarily vague about the actual measures that must be taken to resolve identified problems. They should be spelt out, as the report recommends.
There are significant obstacles. For instance, the revised convention signed in 1997 has not yet been ratified, because of the Gibraltar issue. That issue has also crippled the single European sky proposals. It will be interesting to know how the single European sky can be achieved when there are 65 air traffic control centres, 31 different centres, 22 different computer operating systems, 33 different computer language
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forms and 18 different manufacturers. To add to those complications, there is the question of interoperability; Britain has third generation radar, whereas, in some cases in Europe, it is barely second generation. A rationalisation of all those will be required. The timetable must be flexible to allow for those and other challenging complications, such as separation of regulatory and executive functions.
The main question is whether the United Kingdom has signed up to the creation of a single European sky or merely to the principles. There is little evidence that airspace designers and air traffic managers support the single sky concept. They appear to favour a more practical approach, based on the flexible use of airspace—FUA. The UK approach may achieve the intention for a single European sky, but it is not likely to include the "free flight" concept.
The credibility of the reorganisation of ATM in the UK depends on the active involvement of the military. The future regulatory framework must be clear and transparent, benefiting all users. There should be concern that the EU wishes to become a member of Eurocontrol, effectively bringing it under the control of the Commission. Will the EC be any more successful in developing a common airspace policy than it was in developing a common agricultural policy or a common fisheries policy?
At present available capacity is used inefficiently. The civilian/military interface needs addressing, as the report recommends. For example, the notorious French military airspace CBA I A, which some noble Lords have already mentioned, in the north-east of Paris, causes delays in the areas in which commercial traffic makes high demands on the surrounding airspace.
Although the military must plan to meet several tasks, its use of airspace in peacetime is mainly for training or conducting exercises. Given the level of cuts in military budgets, it is easy to understand why the military would need to get as much as possible from each sortie. That will have its own set of complications, as different types of military aircraft, new and old, move across Europe. The UK military shares one thing with general aviation: a desire for as much class G airspace as possible. Were the military interest to submit to EU regulations, the UK would lose control of its airspace, and the related issues would be subject to the views and wishes of other member states, several of which are not members of NATO.
Sovereignty is one of the main issues, as far as concerns defence and capacity. If the EU were to become a member of Eurocontrol, it would have the power to override the national security interests of the United Kingdom and prejudice our transatlantic relationships within NATO, as well as our bilateral external relations. Military ATM interests should not be covered under pillar one; sovereign states should determine such matters themselves. As the reports recommend, there is a need for other institutional arrangements, outside the first pillar of the Union, to facilitate all dealings in civil/military matters. We are

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anxious that the Government make their position clear on how they intend to accommodate military interests. The report also recommended such clarity.
Finally, there is a need for a sense of urgency in the response to the recommendations. There are many irritated passengers—from the debate, it seems, there are also many irritated noble Lords, including me—upset by the increasing occurrence of delays in air journeys. My sympathy is with them—for today, along with other noble Lords, notably the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, I suffered a delay of 20 minutes when travelling home by air.
7.55 p.m.
Lord Filkin: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and his committee for their efforts in putting together the two excellent reports and for prompting an excellent debate, in which many important points have been made. The committee's reports show an admirable understanding of the complex issues; the Government recognise and welcome that. Time is short, so I hope that the House will bear with me if I am relatively rapid and staccato in responding to the important points made.
Improving co-operation between Europe's civil and military air navigation service providers is vital, if the long-term forecast demand for air travel is to be met, as the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, has emphasised. At present, responsibility for enhancing that co-operation rests with Eurocontrol. It is over 40 years since that organisation was founded, and it has played a significant part in the development of European air traffic management systems. Eurocontrol has many excellent technical staff who have recently been instrumental in the successful introduction of the reduced vertical separation minima programme throughout Europe last month. As many Members said, Eurocontrol's institutional and legal structures remain confused, for which member states must share the responsibility. Its revised constitution has yet to be ratified.
The Government believe that the full implementation of the revised constitution will provide significant benefits, such as enabling the European Community to join it and greater use of qualified majority voting, where appropriate. However, that will not, by itself, alter the fundamental problems that exist in the organisation. My noble friend Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe asked why so few states have ratified the constitution. It is essentially because of an unresolved legal argument between the Commission and Eurocontrol. Work is going on to resolve that difficulty quickly and obtain ratification.
Even with ratification, not all the problems will be solved. Eurocontrol is only beginning the process of becoming a regulatory body, as the committee noted. Having Eurocontrol acting as regulator is not consistent with its also providing air traffic services. The Government therefore agree with the committee that there should be a rigorous and clear institutional separation of Eurocontrol's regulatory and service provision functions.
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As the committee chaired by my noble friend reported, the fundamental problem for Eurocontrol in acting as a regulator is that it has limited enforcement powers, even when the revised convention has been implemented fully. As the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, recognised, a more radical approach is needed. The flexible use of airspace provides one important example of how Eurocontrol's lack of enforcement powers causes difficulties. That concept is about making better use of airspace that is largely used by the military. Eurocontrol members agreed the principles of that concept some years ago, but implementation is still a problem.
Some states have demonstrated that it is possible to fulfil military and civil objectives through closer cooperation between military and civil traffic controllers. However, some states have failed to apply that concept fully, and one way of overcoming that is by pursuing single sky. As your Lordships are aware, that is a vitally important project, aimed at significantly reducing flight delays and their financial and environmental costs. The more efficient routing of aircraft would, for example, reduce the amount of wasted fuel burn by between 10 and 15 per cent, making a massive environmental contribution. Single sky is also designed to provide the airspace capacity required by Europe's future airspace users, as the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, affirmed was necessary. It represents an excellent opportunity to improve the European air traffic management system and is supported not only by the Government and other EU member states but by Europe's airlines. The noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, clearly emphasised to the House the inter-connectedness of European states in this respect, and that therefore none of us can go it alone.
As the committee noted, there is a need to clarify the respective roles of Eurocontrol, the Commission and national air traffic management regulators. The relationship between all three must be based on clear complementary roles that avoid duplication and foster synergies between them. Now that we have the single sky legislative proposals we shall be better able to understand the proposed mechanisms. The Single Sky Committee will rely on Eurocontrol's technical expertise with the legal instruments available to the European Commission. With the three-way process that is envisaged, Eurocontrol's own rules, if they are appropriate, will be implemented within the EU using the Community's legal instruments. Single sky rules, which will be largely strategic in scope, will be reflected in Eurocontrol's rules. The national air traffic management regulator will continue to play a vital regulatory role, although further clarity is required on the precise nature of the relationship between national regulatory authorities and the Single Sky Committee. However, we believe that this three-way process can be effected only if there are significant changes to Eurocontrol's institutional structure.
It is true therefore that Eurocontrol is likely to be affected by single sky. The Government want to retain Eurocontrol's invaluable expertise in such areas as

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defining the technical solutions to air traffic problems and consulting stakeholders through the new Eurocontrol notice of proposed rule-making process.
The real problems in Europe's air traffic management systems lie in the congested airspace in north-west Europe, a point clearly signalled by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market. We understand that single sky will concentrate its initial efforts to overcome the problems that exist in this area. But as my noble friend Lord Brooke pointed out earlier, we must not forget the important contribution that non-EU member states make to the success of the overall European air traffic management system. That is why, as I mentioned earlier, the single sky rules are to be reflected in Eurocontrol rules and non-Community states can participate in the Single Sky Committee. Furthermore, we must not forget that the process of EU enlargement will gradually reduce the scale of this problem in the future, as enlargement and single sky move forward in parallel.
I shall turn now to the military aspects of single sky. The Government have noted the committee's concerns on the military dimensions of single sky. This is an issue that all EU member states are considering in detail. The Government continue to support the need for pillar one to be used for civil regulation, but we do not wish military authorities to be covered by the single sky legislation, which I am sure will be a comfort to the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick. On the other hand, we favour including the principles of the flexible use of airspace concept in the legislation, subject of course to detailed consideration of the legal aspects, as this will help to ensure its full implementation across the EU.
As noble Lords have said, bringing military authorities within the scope of single sky is difficult. Despite that, we are conscious that the proportion of delays directly attributable to military peacetime use is small. Therefore we believe that a pragmatic solution using inter-governmental treaty arrangements is more appropriate than a pillar one or pillar two option, with all the attendant difficulties. Moreover, we do not consider that military matters such as the location of military training areas and bases fall within the scope of the European Community. The negotiations of the single sky proposals are under way, but at present there is no consensus view on the appropriate way forward on military matters. We have noted the committee's recommendation on the military dimension of the single sky proposal, and we shall keep that in mind in our efforts to achieve a consensus view.
The noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, mentioned that with regard to the military training area, CBA I, in northern France, the two governments and the two air traffic service providers have ensured a greater degree of co-operation and has reduced delays. But the Government appreciate that CBA I is a good example of the problems that exist with the present European air traffic management system which, I am sure noble Lords will agree, need to be overcome.
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I wish my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester well in his endeavour to persuade the French that CBA I is no longer needed by them.
There are other means to secure military and civil co-operation. As the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, has shown, this can be done. There are several mechanisms to improve co-operation and the Government are keen to ensure that bodies such as Eurocontrol's Civil/Military Interface Committee and Military Harmonisation Group are further developed. We believe that through such mechanisms and via the inter-governmental treaty arrangements we favour, we can secure more effective civil and military cooperation quickly and bring to an early conclusion the discussion on the single sky text. However, we do not dismiss out of hand the Select Committee's suggestion of common membership of CMIC and the Single Sky Committee.
The noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, raised a question about Swanwick and inter-operability. In principle Swanwick could provide services to the near Continent. Indeed, the whole of Europe probably could be serviced by five or six such centres, in comparison with the 40-plus centres that we have currently. As the noble Baroness pointed out, the will to co-operate would have to be in place, and this is the kind of future envisaged by the European Commission in putting forward the single sky proposals.
My noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis raised questions about the Government's stance on Prestwick. Prestwick remains a key element in our strategy for air traffic services. We maintain unequivocally the two-centre strategy and work will proceed as soon as it is required.
My noble friends Lord Faulkner of Worcester and Lord Woolmer of Leeds helpfully reminded us of the wider context within which this discussion sits. The demand for increased air traffic also has implications and raises questions about runway capacity, airport capacity and the significant environmental and social costs consequent on air travel and its acceleration. I thought in particular that the point about the importance of seeing transport inter-connectedly, and the linkages with railways, was well made by my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester. However, at this point I shall not answer those points, or the helpful point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, about fuel taxes, because noble Lords are well aware that these are the kinds of issues being considered in the Government's air transport White Paper which we hope to publish towards the end of the year. Prior to that we shall be consulting widely on many aspects of it.
The noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, was right to mention the wider context of the objectives of single sky. Our discussions tended to focus on the tough and hard issue of civil/military co-operation, but single sky and the committee set up with the task of overseeing it is concerned also with the authorisation of air navigation service providers, the licensing of controllers, the decisions on what technical equipment

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is to be used and when, the new charging mechanisms for commercial air transport users, the new and more efficient airspace arrangements in Europe and the improved co-operation between civil and military authorities. as we have concentrated on in this discussion. All of those six goals are important and are necessary to put in place the appropriate air traffic system and air transport services in Europe. As was signalled, one can see how we have got to the point where there is a plethora of systems, equipment arid air traffic controllers, but it is clear that we cannot stay at this point in the future. None of us would see that as sane.
I do not pretend at this point that the Government can or even should give specific and detailed answers to every single point that has been raised in our debate. There is an active process of consultation, development and negotiation under way at present. These issues have not been frozen with the publication last October of the four regulations. There is an active working group under way which since January has met four times already. We would expect that some of these issues have to be addressed within that working group and I am confident that this debate will provide useful input to aid their considerations. Without doubt the Government will emphasise those and other points to it.
However, we should not forget that there is a considerable strength of political support, both within this country and elsewhere, for the concept and goal of single sky. The Prime Minister has expressed clearly his very strong support for it—that is important for making progress —while the Spanish presidency of the European Commission has made this issue one of its prime goals for its tenure of the presidency, which we very much welcome. The airline industry in all its multiple facets in Britain has largely supported the objectives of single sky, while hoping to see how these can be realised in practice. Therefore, we are now seeking to do detailed work within Europe and the UK to try to bring to light and to life the important vision shared across the House for single sky and for the better military/civil co-operation which has been signalled.
I again thank my noble friend Lord Brooke and his excellent committee for producing these reports. They have been most useful in developing the Government's policy with regard to Eurocontrol and single sky. This has been an excellent debate in which many valuable points have been made.
8.10 p.m.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe: My Lords, as ever, our reports have produced an interesting and illuminating debate. As ever, they have provided an opportunity for noble Lords to raise wider issues and concerns than one might have expected. In a sense, if I can tweak my noble friend Lord Faulkner of Worcester, they provide the freedom to fly at any subject under the head of "aviation".
The reports have also provided a surprise for me, as the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, indicated was likely to be the case. I welcome his contribution.
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I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Rotherwick, to his brief. Although I did not agree with everything he said, he is none the less welcome. I thank all who have contributed to the debate. I welcome, particularly. the Minister's comments. I detect that in a number of areas where hitherto we felt the door had been closed on some of the ideas we tried to get accepted, there is now a willingness to reconsider. That is also welcome.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Healthcare for Ethnic Minorities
8.11 p.m.
Baroness Uddin Baroness Uddin rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the effect of the policies outlined in the Plan (Cm 4818) on healthcare for ethnic minority communities.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the Government are committed to reducing the inequalities within healthcare provision for all its citizens, and the NHS Plan points to the "inverse care law", whereby those most vulnerable are least likely to receive the healthcare they need. For the first time there is institutional recognition that inequalities and poor health are linked to socio-economic factors such as poverty, poor housing, low income and unemployment.
I am deeply hesitant to rise in this debate in case I am accused of a reversal of racism by raising the issue of the needs of minority citizens, given that we are currently in hot pursuit of challenging the status quo of assumptions on who is a citizen worthy of equality. Equally, I hesitate to follow in the Prime Minister's footsteps in saying that I am a great fan and admirer of the health service. Therefore your Lordships will appreciate that discussing equality issues within the health and social sectors is a complex scenario.
None the less, it has to be mentioned that, to date. many reports have highlighted an institutional weakness in relation to service delivery, employment and relationships with the voluntary sector. There is almost unanimous agreement that issues of equality in services and access to services have yet to become embedded into the management delivery mechanism and have not yet integrated into the performance measurement indicators. Recent CRE research backs up claims by individuals and groups that in many NHS trusts there is a disturbing gap between equal opportunities policy and practices and the experience of consumers.
I have been involved for more than 20 years in my local area, actively trying to change the way in which our local health authority provides care. In doing so, we pushed to the limit for the very little changes achieved in the early 1980s. It meant setting up advocacy projects, ensuring "paper" equal opportunity policies and campaigning on recruitment. The campaign for choice in maternity care came directly out of our own campaign for better provision for minority citizens. The impact was that choice
became possible for all women who used maternity care. Those gains were possible only because of individuals committed to bringing in those temporary changes. What was then fact, and is now evident, is that the needs of minority women remain beyond the reach of the mainstream planning agenda of our maternity services.
Some of our experiences were subsequently endorsed, some 10 years later, by a report of which my noble friend will be aware, Action Not Words, which is applicable to today's strategic health planners and commissioners. The current service users and minority staff within the healthcare sector say that there is significant evidence to support the allegation that racial discrimination, direct and indirect, is embedded in the healthcare sector, predetermining and impacting on the health and social care services provided to minority citizens. It has to be said that this discrimination is evident in access to services, within the strategic framework of planning for services and, of course, in employment practices.
It is also worth drawing to your Lordships' attention—although I cannot go into details—a survey commissioned by the World Health Organisation, which found that certain groups in the UK, including minority citizens, do not enjoy fair access to the healthcare system. It also stated that there is a significant body of evidence suggesting that health services do not reach people from minority groups, and that lack of information and inappropriateness of care often deprive minority communities of access to a wide range of health and social care.
So the question is how the Department of Health can assist positively the impact of the modernisation agenda on minority citizens. While many of us welcome the new structure of localised healthcare provision, the reality for minority patients seems to be business as before. From what has been said by groups such as Social Action for Health in the East End and the King's Fund, the lack of strategic planning of health authorities and primary care groups continues to fail local minority populations.
Although recently data collecting has improved, the analysis does not appear to filter into integrating local minority populations into the planning of service delivery. In this way, one can conclude that the modernisation agenda has continued further to disadvantage the local community.
There is certainly a deep sense of unease and confusion among service users and staff about the new decision-making process. They feel that it is more unaccountable and unable to influence service delivery. What is the response of the Department of Health to the suggestion that very little has changed for minority citizens and that those services are hampered by institutional racism and by insufficient account being taken of demographic considerations in the planning of healthcare services? What strategy is being progressed for recruiting locally? How is the local minority voluntary sector being assisted and empowered to rival some of the external private sector competitors for contracting services? Not least of all,
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what specific systems are in place for consulting local communities and ensuring and encouraging their full participation in shaping their local healthcare service?
Last week I attended a conference organised by Young Mind and the Trust for the Study of Adolescence. The objectives were to highlight the specific mental health issues of south Asian young people and their families. It concluded that there are massive gaps in services. The health workers present reported that the existing training ill equipped them to deal with specific needs.
Perhaps I may share with the House a telling tale. Twenty years ago, as an unqualified social worker in a hospital crisis intervention team, I heard the same call for consistent responses to the needs of minority communities within the mental healthcare system. It is totally unacceptable that this situation should continue. One dare not think about the number of individuals and families who have suffered while we have been contemplating how to define "appropriate care".
The danger is that information about the needs of minority communities will remain poor and that we will become besotted with researching only culturally oppressed Asian women and aggressive African-Caribbean men. Many professionals are stuck with their 18th century views of minority citizens. The most illustrious of institutions cannot seem to equate the rise in mental health problems of African-Caribbean and Muslim men and women with the link between poverty, lack of opportunity, racism, Islamophobia and improper diagnosis.
One has to recognise that NHS prejudice, misunderstanding, racism and Islamophobia can be at their most oppressive in this area and that the NHS remains excessively unaccountable for its practices. There is too much research to ignore the conclusion that there is disproportionate discrimination in the operation of Britain's mental health system, especially as it is applied to African-Caribbean men and Asian women. I beg for urgent action on this issue. The National Health Service framework suggests everything that requires to be done. It needs only for us to ensure that it is implemented with urgency.
However we approach the reality of the health agenda and its impact on the ethnic minority community, we have to agree that, even post-Lawrence. the experience of minority consumers has changed very little in the past two decades. Given that the Lawrence report was commissioned by the Government, I believe that we cannot afford to lose face by failing to translate words into action.
I was recently involved in a discussion with the Macmillan cancer group organised by my noble friend Lady Howells, and I was again forced to conclude that services are accessible only to those who are articulate in seeking them out. There is a great need not only for training and awareness, but for a campaign aimed at the large number of patients for whom diagnosis and treatment come too late because they are unable to access services. I have no doubt that there is a similar pattern in relation to every disease. The only
conclusion that one can draw is that although we are up to date in our theory and our paper policies, our performance is nothing short of dismal.
The most important point is that, although the NHS is Britain's biggest employer, and despite more than 20 years of race and equality legislation, the NHS has been slow to ensure racial equality in its workforce. Time does not permit me to deal with the CRE's investigation into that matter. However, the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 may be our newest tool to argue for change in health and social care provision. 'The CRE's draft guidelines demonstrate what public bodies will need to do to make immediate progress on the four guiding principles.
There is good practice and projects in the health service, often led without adequate resources by individual champions and a vanguard. How will the Government build confidence among minority health service users? To the world, Britain rightly retains the reputation of a free and fair health service provider. With hand on heart, I can say that it is true that the NHS is second to none when care is provided regardless of race, religion or class. However, from all that I have heard, that assertion no longer applies to a significant minority of our citizens.
8.22 p.m.
Lord Parekh: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Uddin for initiating this extremely important debate. When I first read the NHS national Plan I was both most impressed and a little disappointed. I was impressed because it is a determined and imaginative attempt to revitalise our health service and raise it to the highest European standards. I was disappointed because of its virtual silence on the great contribution that more than 20,000 ethnic minority doctors have made to our National Health Service and to the ethnic dimension of the health service itself.
The NHS national Plan says nothing, or very little, about the problems of ethnic minority doctors, the low morale of those confined to the cul-de-sac of non-consultant career-grade doctor posts, the differential incidence of certain diseases among the ethnic minorities and the different needs of those communities. Those are important issues because they affect the NHS's ability to sustain high morale among its staff and guarantee equal access to our people. I should like to highlight four or five important issues.
The incidence of diabetes, hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke and vascular disease is much higher among ethnic minorities than among the population as a whole. The rate of diabetes is 2.2 per cent in the population as a whole, 5.9 per cent among Afro-Caribbeans, and 7.6 per cent among South Asians. The reasons have to do with genetic factors, dietary factors and lifestyle. However, if diabetes is identified in advance, as it can be, the state can be saved a lot of money and people can be saved a lot of suffering. We therefore need more screening and educational campaigns as well as warning and advising those at risk. I wonder whether such screening is carried out on a sufficiently large scale in areas with a high concentration of minorities.
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The next issue is the sickle cell diseases, which are most prevalent among the ethnic minorities arid can be found increasingly among mixed-race children. Umbilical cord blood tests are vital because they can identify those diseases well in advance. Take-up rates, however, seem to be no higher than 30 to 45 per cent. It is about time that the Government did something about that.
The incidence of high blood pressure among AfroCaribbeans is very high: one in four women and one in six men are affected by it. Those communities need to be educated and advised to have regular check-ups, but I am not entirely sure that that is being done.
Afro-Caribbeans are diagnosed as psychotic out of all proportion to their presence in the population. Although the incidence of psychosis in that group is twice that in the white population, the rate of compulsory detention is about five times as, high. The percentage of people receiving electro-convulsive therapy and drug treatment is also much higher in those communities than in the white population. By contrast, the amount of counselling provided to them is much lower. I should like to know what action is being taken to address those and the other special health needs of ethnic minorities and to redress the apparent inequality in the services provided to them.
Waiting lists are the next issue. We monitor waiting lists, thanks to the Government's initiative, but that is not done in relation to ethnicity and religion. That should be done so that we can have a clear idea of who is having to suffer more. Such monitoring should also be extended to accident and emergency wards, both before assessment and between assessment and the provision of treatment. We could then have a clear picture of whether all our people are receiving equal access to service delivery.
The cultural dimension of ethnic health is the next issue. Significant cultural issues relating to the treatment and care of the ill, the elderly and the dying have gone unnoticed. Attitudes to death vary, as do mourning practices and rituals relating to burial and cremation. Those employed in the health and social welfare services should be trained in cultural awareness and sensitivity.
Ethnically unrepresentative senior administrative staff is the next issue. Every organisation's culture and ethos are established by its senior staff; they set goals, allocate money, discipline staff, interview and process patients and deal with staff complaints. It is therefore of the utmost importance that the staff should he broadly representative of the community whom they serve. I am afraid that that is not the case in the NHS. Although the proportion of ethnic minorities in the national health trusts and health authorities has certainly increased since Labour came to power—-I congratulate the Government on that—the number still falls far short of adequate representation. Barely 2 per cent of chief executives and senior directors in NHS trusts come from the ethnic minorities.
The NHS Appointments Commission, which is in charge of appointing 3,000 non-executive directors of NHS trusts and health authorities, is to be welcomed.

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I assume that there are ethnic minority commissioners on that commission. I also assume that the commission will ensure that there is a significant ethnic minority presence in the 3,000-odd appointments that it will make.
The lay and professional representation of ethnic minorities on the General Medical Council falls far below the desired level. That issue needs to be examined, as does the issue of ethnic minority representation in the Royal Colleges and specialist training agencies.
A particular concern to many of us is the category of non-consultant career-grade doctors. That category was created a few years ago to accommodate senior doctors who could not move up because of the limited number of consultant posts. Over time, it has become a dead-end and cul-de-sac. Most NCCGDs—between 75 and 85 per cent—are from the ethnic minorities. Some of them are as qualified as the consultants and in fact do their job in their absence. However, they are barred from becoming consultants, partly because the CCST—certificate of completion of specialist training—is not available to them and partly because their experience in current jobs is not taken into account.
Happily, we have amended the specialist medical qualification order to take account of training and qualifications obtained abroad. It is about time that we amended it to take full account of the experience of these doctors in their current jobs for promotional purposes. Many of these doctors—mostly, as I say, from the ethnic minorities—feel terribly demoralised, discriminated against and exploited. Unless something is done soon, their and the NHS's capacity to realise the goals set out by the Government will remain largely weakened.
Thanks to the decentralisation of decision-making, NHS trusts up and down the country are devising all kinds of short-term arrangements to meet their difficulties. Many have created trust doctors, but these doctors are provided with no mentoring and no training. Their working conditions are arbitrary and vary from one part of the country to another. They are in danger, I am afraid, of being turned into cheap casual labourers without stable career prospects. They naturally feel that their skills are inadequately utilised by the NHS.
NHS bureaucracy, although mercifully rationalised in recent years, still remains a nightmare for many ethnic minority doctors. Its decision-making procedures are arcane and depend on networking and informal arrangements. Ethnic minority doctors are generally not terribly good at this, partly because they are not in senior managerial positions. They, therefore, feel marginalised and remain unable to sensitise decision makers to the ethnic minority dimensions of their decisions. That is particularly acute in relation to recently recruited overseas doctors whose navigational skills through the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the NHS are not yet fully developed.
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To conclude, I know that the Government are determined to achieve the goals of the NHS Plan. They can do so only if the morale of the ethnic minority staff remains high and they are fully involved in determining the quality of service delivery to all our people, including the ethnic minorities. We can raise their morale and ensure their full participation in decision-making only if we rationalise career structures, ensure non-discriminatory systems of promotion, merit awards and discretionary salary rises and make senior administrative staff ethnically more representative than they are today.
8.32 p.m.
Lord Chan: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, for introducing this important and timely debate. I declare an interest as Ethnic Health Adviser to the North West Regional Office of the NHS and to the Commission for Health Improvement.
The NHS Plan published in July 2000 makes only five direct references to ethnic minority communities. Paragraph 2.11 states:
"We now live in a diverse, multi-cultural society".
Three references in chapter 13, Improving health and reducing inequality, all concentrate on access to NHS services and do not mention quality of healthcare. For example, paragraph 13.8 states that,
"people in minority ethnic communities are less likely to receive the services they need".
Chapter 14 describes clinical priorities for the NHS: cancer, coronary heart disease and mental health. Disappointingly, ethnic minority people are mentioned only in mental health in paragraph 14.31 in the context of crisis resolution,
"by 2004, all people in contact with specialist mental health services will be able to access crisis resolution services at any time. The teams will treat around 100,000 people a year who would otherwise have to be admitted to hospital, including black and South Asian service users for whom this type of service has been shown to be particularly beneficial".
No reference is made in the NHS Plan of increased risk of cardiovascular disease among South Asians, especially in Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.
The health of minority ethnic groups was investigated in 1999 in a health survey for England published last year. The following findings are significant. First, South Asian and black Caribbean men used GP services between 1.5 and three times more than men in the general population. Age-adjusted contact rates with GPs were significantly higher in South Asian and Irish women.
Secondly, Pakistani and Bangladeshi men had rates of cardiovascular disease about 60 to 70 per cent higher than men in the general population, while Chinese men had lower rates. The picture was similar for women. Prevalence of cardiovascular disease in black Caribbean women was 33 per cent higher than in white women.
Thirdly, rates of stroke among black Caribbean men were two-thirds higher than in the general population. Indian men had stroke rates 40 per cent higher than the general population.

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Fourthly, black Caribbean and Pakistani women were over 20 per cent more likely to have high blood pressure. Bangladeshi and Chinese men were 25 per cent less likely than men in the general population to have high blood pressure. Ethnic minority people with high blood pressure were more likely than those in the general population to receive treatment.
Fifthly, I shall not elaborate on diabetes as that was covered by the noble Lord, Lord Parekh.
Sixthly, obesity is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and premature death. All men in ethnic minority groups had lower rates of obesity than in the general population. But among women, Pakistanis and black Caribbeans had significantly higher rates of obesity than in the general population. Women from all ethnic minority groups, including the Chinese and Irish, had higher levels of central obesity than in the general population, making them at higher risk of type 2 diabetes.
Seventhly, in regard to lifestyle activities, Bangladeshi, Irish and black Caribbean men had higher rates of cigarette smoking than the general population. High fat and low fibre consumption was greatest among Irish and Bangladeshi people.
This national survey shows that the health needs of ethnic minority groups are not identical but vary with specific groups. These at-risk groups and individuals have to be identified in order to address the ethnicity factor in health inequalities. The Government have to their credit published policies promoting social inclusion, racial equality, tackling harassment and setting high standards of healthcare. They include Vital Connections, a National Service Framework for Equalities published in April 2000 and the Race Relations (Amendment) Act of November 2000. Although these policies are most welcome, their benefits can be seen only when policy implementation occurs in NI-IS trusts. But because of the plethora of health policies demanding the attention of management and staff in the NHS, black and minority ethnic patients and carers have so far experienced little evidence of improvement in healthcare. What needs to he clone to improve healthcare for ethnic minority communities? The NHS Plan 2000 indicated the changes necessary for this improvement.
The basis of these changes depends on a cultural change in the attitude of NHS staff working with patients. All must accept that we live and work in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic Britain. The reality of this is obvious in our metropolitan areas. But ethnic minorities live in all districts of Britain. In more than 80 per cent of districts served by the NHS, ethnic minorities form less than 5.5 per cent of the local population according to the 1991 national census.
A written strategy for improving ethnic minority health is necessary in all parts and organisations in the NHS and in local authorities. This strategy is as important for the welfare of' the smaller number of black and minority ethnic people spread thinly in 80 per cent of Britain as it is for the greater proportion who live in metropolitan areas. Components of such a strategy would comprise training staff in cultural
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awareness and competence, the provision of trained interpreters for people whose first language is not English, and a policy of equality of treatment for ethnic minority staff.
All NHS staff everywhere, particularly front-line workers in contact with patients, need training in cultural awareness and competence. Ideally, that should take place in our medical and nursing schools. Training should focus on issues including clinical diseases and mental health, health beliefs and the support required by local ethnic minorit) users and their communities. Listening to the experience of patients from local ethnic minority communities would be essential. Cultural awareness training will help NHS staff to avoid stereotypical discrimination such as assuming that ethnic minority patients have a low pain threshold and complain unnecessarily. It will help to overcome prejudice against people who wear traditional clothes or who are not fluent in the English language.
It will also help to overcome intolerance of ethnic minority older people who have not acquired fluency in English and need trained interpreters to use services. In that context, relatives of the patient are not appropriate interpreters because that would breach confidentiality and lead to embarrassment and stress if, for example, a child is the interpreter. People of all backgrounds tend to revert to their mother tongue as they grow older and during periods of ill health. Therefore, the need for interpreters and bilingual staff in the NHS will rise as ethnic minority first-generation migrants grow old in this decade.
Finally, the NHS Plan wants to retain and increase the number of doctors, nurses and other staff who are needed for a first-class service. Ethnic minority people working in the NHS still feel that they are being discriminated against on grounds of their ethnic origin rather than their clinical competence. I hope that the Minister will he as concerned as I am about the excess of ethnic minority doctors—about 40 per cent—who are being asked to stay at home without an official note of suspension while allegations about their clinical competence are being investigated. One could understand that if complaints came from patients, but a significant number are being investigated only because white colleagues have complained about them. I speak from my experience in the North West region.
In conclusion, I ask the Minister to focus on the implementation of policies and to promote an ethnic health strategy for all NHS trusts. The Commission for Health Improvement should be given the task of monitoring the performance of NHS trusts along those lines to improve ethnic health and healthcare.
8.41 p.m.
Baroness Pitkeathley: My Lords, I, too. wish to thank my noble friend Lady Uddin for giving us We opportunity to debate this important issue.
I shall concentrate my remarks on patient involvement—that is, on aim three of the NHS Plan, which is about shaping services around the needs and

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preferences of patients and giving patients and citizens a greater say in the NHS—and on the implications of that for making the voices of patients from ethnic minorities heard in the new-look health service to which we are all so committed.
It cannot be denied that the NHS Plan is aspirational rather than definitive in some of the plans that it lays out, but one thing about which it is very firm is the central place of the patient's voice within the health service. No one could pretend that when the NHS was established patients were seen as its most important focus, strange as that may seem to us nowadays. Lip service has been paid to the importance of the patient over many years but it is only now that it is beginning—I emphasise that word—to become a reality.
I take every possible opportunity to tell noble Lords that my own recent prolonged stay in hospital was made as comfortable as was possible in the circumstances by the concern of all staff—from cleaner to consultant—to put me, as the patient, at the centre of their concerns. They never did anything to me without explaining the procedure and its possible effects and discussing my feelings about that. I am aware that that was perhaps easier to do in my case, as an articulate, well-informed patient who would, frankly, have shouted pretty loudly if they had not done so. But it certainly was not dependent on that. I saw the same care exercised with all patients, and there was particular sensitivity to cultural differences. Problems did arise, though, in the matter of language for patients whose first language was not English, where translators were not available—say, at a weekend or in the middle of the night—especially when family members were unable to accompany the patient. Clearly, more focus and more resources are necessary there, as the noble Lord, Lord Chan, reminded us.
Other issues that must be tackled as a matter of priority have been set before us by my noble friend and other noble Lords. However, the area in relation to which I am most concerned about the needs of ethnic minority patients involves ensuring that their input into policy development will be as influential as possible. The proposed changes to the structure of the NHS, especially those placing responsibility and budgets as near as possible to local communities—that is, at the primary care level—should facilitate that, but only if people from ethnic minorities have the opportunity to be part of the new structures. Membership of primary care trusts must be representative, as must patients forums and patients advocacy and liaison services. Strenuous efforts must be made to ensure that. It may not be enough simply to advertise in the ethnic minority press or broadcast media. Searches must be done in local communities, people from ethnic backgrounds must be appointed as chairs or senior officials so as to provide an example and, above all, training must be provided so that appropriate skills can be developed.
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I do not myself subscribe to the view that was expressed forcefully in your Lordships' House at Second Reading during the passage of the Health Act; that is, that there are not enough people about who are willing to undertake the onerous tasks of participating in the management of the NHS. However, there may not be enough people available in the traditional places in which we have sought them. That is why the responsibility that will be placed on the commission for patient and public involvement in health, which will be established, to seek adequate representation in lay membership from all sections of the community, will be crucial. It is particularly important that that new body has a responsibility placed on it for training patient representatives. We must never forget how forbidding and mysterious newly established bodies can be to those who are not familiar with committee structures and procedures. If we do not take the time to inform and train people and, more importantly, to change our practices to accommodate the skills and experiences they bring, rather than expect them to fit a prescribed view of how lay members should operate, we will lose the benefits that lay members, no matter what background they come from, can bring. There is more to making processes open than simply advertising in the local paper. I hope that we shall never forget that.
Further, we must ensure that the council for the regulation of healthcare professionals, which is to have a majority of lay members—I am aware that that is another controversial issue—must similarly seek to ensure that the lay membership includes adequate membership from minority ethnic communities.
Finally, I would like to give an example or two of innovative approaches to healthcare for ethnic minorities, which are being put in place. We should not forget the positive action being taken. I refer to the approaches being put in place by the New Opportunities Fund, the lottery distributor of which I am chair, under our £300 million "Healthy Living Centre" programme. For example, almost £1 million goes to a South London health initiative that is led by a partnership of 11 key African organisations. The project will provide health promotion, cultural activities and volunteering opportunities for African communities in South London. Schemes will include health promotion for African men, after-school clubs, a children-and-families project and a health project for African women. There will be training opportunities and information on seeking work. In East London, thanks to a £1 million grant from the New Opportunities Fund, a healthy living centre without walls will benefit the most vulnerable people in Tower Hamlets and surrounding boroughs, including asylum seekers and those from minority ethnic backgrounds. Activities will include a pharmacy programme, mental health work and regeneration and resettlement projects. Information in people's mother tongues will address the language and cultural barriers.
In Sheffield, I recently opened a most inspiring project in one of the deprived areas of the city, where money from the New Opportunities Fund is being used to refurbish a huge Victorian building that houses

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a library and swimming baths, to create a healthy living centre that will provide, for the mostly Bangladeshi community, not only space for exercise, opportunities for woman-only health sessions and before and after-school activities for children, but also a credit union, careers advice and even a co-operative for growing healthy food. Those projects remind us, as does the NHS Plan, that our NHS should be as much about establishing and maintaining good health as it is about sickness. We must ensure that that aim is fulfilled and that it is inclusive of all members of our society.
8.49 p.m.
Lord Desai: My Lords, 1, too, thank my noble friend Lady Uddin for initiating the debate. Last week my noble friend Lord Hunt met a group of us in order to discuss this problem. I was very grateful to him.
I have little to add to what other noble Lords have said. I have no experience of serving on an NHS body, and my experience as a patient is rather limited to the past two years or so. But I want to reiterate what my noble friend Lord Parekh and the noble Lord, Lord Chan, said; that is, that, so far as I know, the cluster of coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and renal failure disproportionately affects the Asian population. especially younger men in their 30s and 40s who are not normally aware of such problems.
I had the salutary experience of attending a presentation held by the National Kidney Foundation. The event was sponsored by my noble friend Lord Chandos, who is a patron of the charity. I was very impressed because it was explained that a problem concerning blood pressure and diabetes especially type 2 diabetes—is that patients do not feel discomfort kn the course of their daily lives. Therefore, they say, "What is going on? I am all right and can get about". However, when one sees what happens at the other extreme, with renal failure or stroke being a possibility, it brings home that these are serious problems.
I want to urge, as did the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, a blanket screening of the section of the population likely to be affected by such illnesses. That may enable us to find out where the problems lie. I also urge the need for a good educational programme—perhaps through advertising on various ethnic television channels, such as Zee TV and so on. That would bring home dramatically to people who believe that they are healthy or that there are no problems how serious such illnesses can be.
I end with a somewhat sceptical note. I believe that we should do everything that we can to improve the NHS so that it provides an equitable health service. But it is not easy. We know that, after 50 years, health inequalities persist among the general population. The influence of class is very strong, and the problem becomes much worse when class and ethnicity coincide. We should be aware that the type of problems which we have discussed come from the confluence of class, ethnicity and gender. Therefore, there is much to learn.
8.53 p.m.
Baroness Bendel! of Babergh: My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lady Uddin for asking this Question and for bringing the subject to the notice of your Lordships.
In December 2001 my right honourable friend the Home Secretary said:
"And just as we need to defeat racism, so we must protect the rights and duties of all citizens and confront practices and beliefs which hold them back, particularly women".
The NHS Plan, presented in July 2000, very much predates that speech. It, too, stresses in many places the varied needs and customs of different populations—"particularly women". In Part 1, section 5, the plan states what the NHS should—or rather, will—do to help,
"people adopt healthier lifestyles",
and,
"tackle the underlying causes of ill health".
In Part 2, under the heading of the "Top ten things the public wanted to see", it lists,
"more prevention—better help and information on healthy living".
Listed under the things that NHS staff wanted to see appears,
"more action to help prevent ill health".
The Government's new rules for immigrants, revealed last week, suggest that newcomers to the United Kingdom should pass a test on. British customs before receiving a passport. They would also be required to promise to respect and uphold British rights, freedoms, values and laws. Surely those must include the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985. Noble Lords know well by now—if only because I persist in raising the matter in your Lordships' House so often—that in the 17 years that have elapsed since then, no prosecutions have been brought. However, that is not because there have been no offences. The law has certainly not been respected by the many who have compelled their daughters to submit to female genital mutilation.
Ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom whose origins are in Somalia, Ethiopia and the Sudan are those principally affected. If there is any difficulty in this country in having them "cut", as the expression is, the practice is to take female children back to their home country, ostensibly for a "holiday". As the NHS Plan stresses that there should be more action to prevent ill-health and more help and information on healthy living, I want to ask my noble friend the Minister whether these measures will extend specifically to female genital mutilation. Will more efforts be made to reach ethnic minority women, particularly older women, who see genital mutilation not only as the norm but as desirable, proper and hygienic? Will they be specifically targeted? And will communities be told of the health risks affecting women in their daily lives, in sexual relations and in childbirth?
Another step forward in this area would be the provision of more clinics, of which at present there are very few, undertaking reversal and repair procedures

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to mutilated women. Contrary to popular belief, such reversals are very successful. Too few women know of their existence or are aware that, in ideal cases, women may attend them without referral letters from their GP.
The NHS Plan will, as stated on page 13, bring health improvements across the board for patients,
"but for the first time there will also be a national inequalities target".
In order to help to achieve that, says the plan, screening programmes will be introduced for women and children. The plan does not specifically suggest what they will be screened for. However, if, for example, such screening includes pre-natal investigation, that should reveal evidence of mutilation, which causes so much difficulty and suffering in childbirth and severe post-natal complications. Will new mothers who have been genitally mutilated be told clearly in their language of origin of the benefits and availability of reversal? And will the modesty, inhibition and shyness of many young women raised in communities which maintain a traditional Victorian reserve on such subjects be understood?
Can a health service which boasts, on page 4 of the NHS Plan, of shaping,
"the needs and preferences of individual patients",
responding to,
"different needs of different populations",
and reducing "health inequalities" call itself modernised, as the plan aims to do, while that continues? Meanwhile, hundreds and possibly thousands of women living among us have been deliberately and grossly damaged in their essential femaleness and have had their sexual identity virtually destroyed by a cruel and quite useless process.
8.58 p.m.
Lord Clement-Jones: My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, on initiating today's debate and, in particular, on her broad-ranging and trenchant speech. I was especially interested in the fact that in contributions from the Government Benches noble Lords have more than simply asked the Government for a progress report on the NHS Plan; there have been some extremely positive suggestions which go much further than the NHS Plan itself.
I believe that there has been a very strong symmetry. It has not only been a question of the access of ethnic minority patients to treatment and the quality of that treatment; it has also been a question of the treatment and recruitment of staff and of patient and community involvement in that treatment. I believe that that tripartite approach has very much informed the debate today. Clearly a great many health issues concern ethnic minority communities.
I shall not rehearse again the issues raised in the health survey for England, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Chan, and the Acheson report. However,
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a great number of issues affect different forms of ethnic community, whether heart disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity, TB—it has not been mentioned today—hypertension and so on. I feel strongly about mental health. If anything, that causes greater hardship where there are inequalities, particularly inequalities in diagnosis. I do not think that that has yet been grappled with properly.
Clearly, the issue is wide-ranging. It goes further than simply health. The Acheson report, which was a great milestone, made that clear. It is to the credit of this Government that they commissioned the Acheson report, which in a sense laid down a marker that there was such a thing as society, that this was a new era, and that one was looking for joined-up government. The Government should take the credit for that. The Acheson report highlighted some of the socioeconomic factors which significantly disadvantage ethnic minority communities—unemployment and the proportion living in poverty in different communities.
The report recommended a wide range of policies well beyond the health area: to reduce income inequalities and improve the living standards of households in receipt of social security benefits; and to improve the opportunities for work and ameliorate the health consequences of unemployment. In particular, it recommended improving the availability of social housing for the less well off and improving the quality of housing. The Minister will reply in the context of health. However, it is important that steps to improve health are measured in relation to those areas.
The Acheson report also outlined real problems of access for members of ethnic minority groups—for instance, in finding access to a GP. Longer waiting times are experienced in the surgery. The time spent with the GP was felt to be inadequate. They were less likely to be referred to secondary or tertiary care from the GP.
In another survey, 87 per cent of ethnic minority mental health patients believe that services are "institutionally racist" and have higher admission rates to psychiatric hospitals. The National Surveys of NHS Patients Coronary Heart Disease 1999 published in March 2001 demonstrates higher levels of criticism of treatment in the area of coronary heart disease. In a recent survey, even NHS Direct is underused by ethnic minorities, as the recent NAO report shows. What are the underlying causes for that? That is the large backdrop. This huge issue requires energy and cross-departmental working to overcome the problems.
Although to some degree unambitious, it is difficult to fault the aims of the NHS Plan. It recognised the specific health needs of different groups including people with disabilities and minority ethnic groups. The key initiatives in the plan are specific. When the health Minister replies, we need to know precisely whether those carefully timed commitments have been met. Those targets are that by 2002 a new health poverty index will combine data about health status. Local targets for reducing health inequalities will be reinforced with new national targets. By 2003—we need to know that work is in progress—after the

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review of the weighted capitation formula, reducing inequalities will be a key criterion for allocating NHS resources to different parts of the country. Personal medical services schemes will be created by 2004. By 2001 local NHS action on tackling health inequalities and ensuring equitable access to healthcare will for the first time be measured and managed through the NHS performance assessment framework. We have the change of management through CHI. The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, referred to the new Bill. We look forward to seeing whether that measure will be incorporated in CHI'S terms of references.
Where have the Government reached on all those issues? There has been a number of welcome initiatives. I could add to those mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley. It was fair to mention them. The Sure Start project—an early set of projects—continues. I hope that my tobacco Bill will add to the smoking cessation strategy. We have the national school fruit scheme. We have the national service framework for coronary heart disease. There are and have been good and valuable initiatives. However, until the Department of Health can track health inequalities and the outcome of initiatives taken, and undertakes regular surveys of patient satisfaction among the ethnic minority communities, there will still be an inadequate evidence base for effective action.
Furthermore, in areas such as mental health the position is not adequate. In December last year, Jacqui Smith stated that high security hospitals have undertaken a range of initiatives to improve the situation of black and ethnic minority patients and that there will be a national strategy in the future. But the pledge is that the mental health taskforce will produce consultation papers in the spring of 2002. If there were no historical context to that, that might sound very reasonable. But it is long overdue. It was promised in October 2000 by the Minister's colleague, John Hutton. Why has there been such an inordinate delay on a matter of such importance?
There are a huge number of issues. We could debate the matter for a much longer period. Monitoring under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000—it has not been mentioned today—is surely important. The department has published a race equality agenda for health authorities, PCGs and PCTs. What consistency is there? How binding is the guidance given? What involvement of local communities will there be, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, pointed out? In a survey published recently in the health service journal, Mohammed Memon showed that the reports from health authorities and primary care groups were very patchy in demonstrating an appreciation of ethnic minority health issues and the actions that need to be taken in response to them. Will there be the resources to ensure that that race equality agenda can be put into effect?
In conclusion, there are many administrative and language barriers which make access to healthcare more difficult Many noble Lords have mentioned the cultural issues as well. The setting up of new translation and interpretation services is of great
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importance. Increasingly, it is becoming clear, as the King's Fund has pointed out, that health advocacy is an important route to improved access for minority ethnic groups. The Acheson report suggested that health workers should be trained in "cultural competency". Many noble Lords referred to that.
Almost exactly three years ago the Minister, in reply to a Starred Question of mine, accepted the importance of all the above. He pledged implementation of the White Paper, The Nov NHS: Modern and Dependable, so that there would be staff training on cultural issues, interpreter services, advocacy services, translation services and so on. It is important that those early pledges given by the Government are implemented. If they are not implemented, further pledges will have little credibility. I hope that implementation has not been dismal, as the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, said, but we await with interest the Minister's reply.
9.8 p.m.
Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, for initiating this debate. The NHS Plan is certainly a very long list of wishes. I hope that the Government will concentrate on those areas where there is clearly a great deal of work to do.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Desai, that Asians in this country are facing a great danger of developing diabetes. Fifteen to 20 per cent of adults are already diabetic and another 20 per cent already have a technical impairment in the way in which their bodies deal with sugar, which means that they are in danger of developing full-blown diabetes with all its attendant heart complications.
With a problem of that magnitude, we need to screen all those at risk. That was done before in the famous Bedford survey, with which the late Lord Butterfield was associated in the 1970s. Government funding is urgently required to find out the best and the most economic method of screening all those at risk. There is no shortage of enthusiastic medical experts who could start such work almost immediately. At St Mary's Hospital, for example, a detailed survey has been planned which would investigate 2,000 AfroCaribbeans, 2,000 Asians and 6,000 white Caucasians. All they need to start that work are the funds. Will the Government help?
As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, hinted, there has been quite a lot of controversy in relation to schizophrenia in Afro-Caribbeans and quite a lot of discussion about whether it was being diagnosed too frequently, especially in young Afro-Caribbeans. However, recent research has shown that, by and large, the diagnosis has been correct in most cases. Some useful research was carried out by Dr Mackenzie at the Whittington Hospital, in conjunction with Robin Murray at the Maudsley Hospital, who rechecked the diagnoses. He brought over from the West Indies a West Indian psychiatrist who confirmed almost all the diagnoses.
There was no problem with diagnoses. However, they discovered that abnormalities in the genetic make-up and in the brain scans were present in a large

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number of white schizophrenics, but the genetic element did not appear to be present in the black schizophrenics. Therefore, we assume that the development of schizophrenia in Afro-Caribbeans has much more to do with their environment, which includes large extended families, poverty, stress, and racism, which may be the kind of stress that would make such matters worse.
The Nile Centre in Hackney has provided an alternative to hospital treatment for Afro-Caribbeans and the centre gives them help without compulsion, which has great advantages. Of course, the problem of these people is aggravated by not having a home, a job or confidence in people. There is no doubt that underfunding is a great problem in London. There is a shortage of key staff, especially community psychiatric nurses who work under very stressful circumstances and find it difficult to afford housing. The London health authorities appear to rely far too much on agency nursing staff which means that schizophrenic patients will see a different person at every appointment, which does not exactly inspire confidence.
However, there is some good news. A number of new NHS medium-secure units in London have been opened. For that we are grateful. Compliance among schizophrenics is actually better than it is in the general population as a whole. It is 60 per cent among the Afro-Caribbeans. The compliance in schizophrenia is better than it is in diabetes. But the problem in schizophrenia is that the result of not taking the pills is of course much more severe. Compliance depends on what sort of medication is being given. The more old-fashioned, the more unpleasant and the more side-effects, the less the compliance.
The treatment of schizophrenia presents problems. During the first episode, on the whole things are for the Afro-Caribbeans as they are for most schizophrenics, but it is with the subsequent attacks of schizophrenia that the problems arise. They then tend to be put on high doses of old drugs. There has been plenty of research into the extent of the problem, but not nearly enough on developing solutions.
I should also like to echo the remarks of the noble Lord. Lord Parekh, about the great debt that we owe to the hundreds of ethnic minority doctors, particularly those who work as GPs in inner city areas. We ought to remember that a very large number of them will be retiring soon. That will leave a huge gap. I wonder what plans the Government have for dealing with this enormous problem.
Perhaps we ought also to remember that it is not just ethnic minorities who have difficulties in the NHS. Often it is the elderly who unfortunately have been described as "crumble", "dross", and "wrinklies". But the good news is that there is a more pleasant name to apply to them. They are now called the "twearlies" because as they wait to board the bus just before nine a.m. when transport is free for them, they say to the driver, "Too early?" At least, "twearly" is better than "dross" and "crumble".
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Finally, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, has already stressed, surely the emphasis must be on treating every person with respect irrespective of their age, colour or sex. Whoever they are they should be treated with respect, wherever they come from, whatever they believe and however they behave. It is that last part which presents the most difficult variable of all.
A conscientious GP aged 40 sleeps one night a week away from home on the floor of his surgery so he can be near to his patients when any emergency arises. At three a.m. he is rung up by a mother who says, "Can you come to the house and see my son who has ear ache?" The GP quite rightly says, "It would be better if you brought your son here where we have all the equipment so that we can see into the ear and put matters right". "No", she says, "neither my husband nor I can possibly bring the child because we are both completely drunk". The GP goes 10 miles out into the country in the middle of winter and provides the correct treatment. He actually takes the antibiotics. He goes home, goes to sleep and half-an-hour later he is woken up by the same woman who says, "My husband and I are not satisfied with your treatment. We are going to put in a formal complaint tomorrow". From time to time some of the one million people employed in the NHS do need the patience of Job.
9.17 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath): My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Uddin for the opportunity of debating such an important issue tonight. I should like to place on record my thanks to her and to the many other noble Lords who have spoken in this debate and who have made such a contribution to the health of many people from black minority and ethnic populations in this country. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, many positive suggestions have been made tonight about the way in which the Government should take forward their programmes and policies in this area. That is something which I am very happy to consider in the light of our discussions.
It is certainly clear from the Acheson report and other studies that there are very significant health inequalities among people from black and minority ethnic communities. But it is also equally clear that if the NHS is to win the battle to tackle these inequalities, not only must it be determined and focused in its health policies and programmes, but it must ensure that as an employer it invests in improving diversity, tackling discrimination and harassment and takes a holistic view towards the implementation of the policies which have already been clearly set out and which many noble Lords have mentioned.
My noble friend Lady Uddin spoke about institutional weakness in both service and employment and about the need to ensure that action is firmly rooted in performance management. I have no doubt that she is right. One can have all the policies in the world, but unless they are implemented they do not amount to very much.

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Let us first consider the issue of service. As my noble friends Lord Parekh and Lord Desai suggested in relation to the clutch of diseases affecting many people from black and minority ethnic populations, the statistics are absolutely striking. The death rates from coronary heart disease among first-generation south Asians aged 20 to 69 are about 50 per cent higher than the England and Wales average. The death rate from strokes among those aged 20 to 69 years and born in the Caribbean is more than 50 per cent higher than the England and Wales average. Perinatal mortality among Pakistani-born mothers is nearly twice the UK national average. It has already been mentioned that diagnosis of schizophrenia is three to six times higher among African-Caribbean groups than in the white population. Women born in India and East Africa have a 40 per cent higher suicide rate than those born in England and Wales.
I could quote many other examples. They provide the background and the reason why it is important that we tackle such issues effectively. I believe that we have the right policies. We have the NHS Plan which signals to the service the need to become more responsive to black and minority ethnic communities and to provide services which take account of their religious, cultural and linguistic requirements.
The noble Lord, Lord Chan, was disappointed by the number of references in the plan to black and minority ethnic populations. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Desai, suggested, making the reduction of health inequalities a priority in the NHS Plan, and the promise of national targets for the first time ever, sets the really important foundation on which we address these problems in future.
Alongside that, as again the noble Lord, Lord Chan, suggested, the Race Relations (Amendment) Act is a piece of landmark legislation with practical underpinning to test our commitment to ensuring that our services meet the needs of black and minority ethnic communities, and that the NHS is a good employer. For the first time, public authorities such as the department will be subject to a positive statutory duty to promote race equality. As I have said, it is one thing to have the plans and targets; it is another to ensure that they are implemented.
In relation to service improvement, I believe that the National Service Frameworks present us with the ideal method andl opportunity to target some of these striking and worrying divergences in the illnesses among many black and minority ethnic people in this country.
National Service Frameworks, for the first time, allow us to set national standards for the provisions of services and to ensure that, in setting those standards, we target the people who are the most vulnerable. That applies as much to coronary heart disease as to diabetes. My noble friend Lord Desai raised a number of questions in relation to diabetes. He is right to say that type 2 diabetes is up to six times more common in people of south Asian descent and up to three times more common in those of African and African Caribbean descent. We have published the first part of
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the National Service Framework. We shall be publishing the second part later. I believe that that will give clear guidance to the health service in relation to diabetes.
As regards screening, we are seeking advice from the National Screening Committee on that very matter. Once we receive that, we shall carefully consider it in relation to the implementation of the National Service Framework. The noble Lord, Lord McColl, made a subtle bid for funds for a particular project. I shall certainly look into that matter and respond to him.
Strokes are another area of great concern. At present we fund stroke awareness through the Section 64 grant scheme for a project to raise awareness of strokes and the associated risk factors among African Caribbeans. There is an information pack which will have fact sheets on high blood pressure, the effects of diet, the risks from smoking and alcohol, and the importance of exercise. But we need to do more than that, just as we need to do more in the area of mental health.
The high rates of diagnosis and over-use of the mental health system were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and my noble friend Lady Uddin. I was interested in the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord McColl. We recognise those high rates in the targets that have been laid down in the national service framework for mental health services. We have set targets to improve that situation. As the noble Lord, Lord McColl, suggested, part of that is the extra investment in the provision of secure beds—24-hour staffed beds and access to services 24 hours a day.
We have also made progress in creating assertive outreach teams to reduce the possibility of people with severe mental illness opting out of services and having services provided largely in their own homes. My noble friend Lady Uddin made particular mention of the needs of African Caribbean men and Asian women. I should expect the national service framework, as it is implemented, to take account of that.
We have also established a mental health task force which is preparing strategies that are specially designed to meet the needs of black and minority ethnic groups. Professor Sashi Sashidaran, a task force member, chairs that group which has been charged with drafting a strategy. It is in the process of finalising content and aims to ensure that the range of issues across the mental health national service framework and the NHS Plan are addressed in the hope that it will go out for consultation later this year.
A number of comments were made on ethnic monitoring. Information is vital in addressing health inequalities and improvements in health. As a matter of policy, the department introduced the 2001 census categories in its data collections, which provide an opportunity to address broader issues such as quality and use of race information. That is not simply a matter for action at national level. At local level the strategic health authorities and the primary care trusts have to pay close attention to the users of their services

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and the illnesses from which their users are suffering to ensure that their health promotion and service delivery programmes are targeted on the riskiest areas.
I listened once again to the moving remarks of my noble friend Lady Rendell concerning female genital mutilation. The Government condemn FGM totally and unequivocally. My noble friend is right to mention the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985 and she is right that no prosecutions have been brought. I understand that that is because of the shortage of complaints and the difficulty in obtaining evidence and finding witnesses. The Government's main approach in this area has been to gain access to the communities involved to help educate them into accepting that FGM is a totally unacceptable practice that must be abandoned.
In answer to my noble friend's specific points, our responsibility is to treat victims of this brutal practice, and we shall do that sympathetically. She raised a number of points concerning the degree of services available to women who have been so mutilated, and I shall explore that within the Department of Health.
I listened with great interest to the noble Lord, Lord Chan, in relation to improvements in interpreting and language support. A number of very important points were made by my noble friend Lady Uddin, the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, and other noble Lords about work force issues. Those issues are vital not only to ensure that we tackle service provision but are important in their own right. The NHS Plan introduced an improved working life standard, which made it clear that every member of staff in the NHS is entitled to work in an organisation that can prove it is investing in improving diversity and tackling discrimination and harassment.
My noble friend Lord Parekh asked particularly about the issue of doctors and race inequality in medicine. The Chief Medical Officer commissioned MORI to run focus groups and one-to-one interviews with black and ethnic minority doctors to seek their views regarding racism, inequality and unfairness affecting their career or career progression. Those results will be incorporated into a report on race inequality in medicine later this year.
I accept also the points the noble Lord raised in relation to the number of black and minority ethnic people in senior positions in the NHS. We have set a national numerical target of 7 per cent to improve representation in executive director posts at board level. We are keen to see that that happens. Through the "Tackling Harassment" programme, the extension of the "Zero Tolerance" campaign and the various other initiatives we have taken, we are determined to ensure that the NHS is a model employer and tackles racism and discrimination in every way it can.
The noble Lord, Lord Chan, raised the issue of suspended doctors. My understanding is that there are currently 29 hospital doctors who have been
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suspended by their employers for more than six months. We wish and expect NHS employers to treat all staff equally and not to discriminate on grounds of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion or age. It is right that we look at the procedures by which doctors are suspended to ensure that those principles are fully enacted. It is also worth making the point that we established the National Clinical Assessment Authority to improve the handling of doctors who, for one reason or another, run into difficulties within their employing authority. That should reduce the number of long-term suspensions of doctors, but also deal with the issue of whether discrimination exists against doctors from minority ethnic or black groups. We expect the new clinical assessment authority to give expert advice to employers and to help them avoid overreaction in some cases.
An important issue was raised in relation to the involvement of local communities in the development of services and policy. That is vital. My noble friend Lady Uddin referred to local community groups and women's health issues. My noble friend Lady Pitkeathley, in paying a tribute to staff, said that the NHS had to do much more to involve local people in decisions about their future health. That is the context in which the new proposals contained in the NHS Bill, which we shall shortly be debating, to improve public and patient involvement, very much come to the fore.
My noble friend asked whether, within patient forums, advocacy or the national commission, we would ensure that there were sufficient members from black and minority ethnic communities. We will very much seek to do that. Indeed, it will surely be a test of the proposals that we are putting forward, which are much stronger than the present ones, that they cater for the needs of everyone in our community. I certainly agree with my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley that the role of the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in providing training and support for those involved in patient and public involvement will need to reflect the needs of the whole of our society and will have an important role in supporting and monitoring the performance of many of those local public involvement bodies.
The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, asked about health inequality targets. He will recall that we announced the first ever health inequality targets in February 2001 and gave a commitment that they would build on the local targets for reducing health inequalities. We continue to work hard in that area to make sure that they happen.
At the end of this important debate, no one should he in any doubt that we are determined to ensure that services for the National Health Service are as first rate for members of the black and minority ethnic communities as they are for anyone else in our society. No one can deny that the NHS Plan, National Health Service frameworks and various other policies that we have laid down make it clear that we expect services to be provided in that area.

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It is worth recognising that many important developments and local projects have taken place, but that there is a long way to go. We must make sure that current pockets of good practice become systematic and mainstream throughout the NHS and in social care. The challenge to the department and to the National Health Service is to ensure that those policies and programmes are implemented in a firm and satisfactory way.
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The Government are committed to working with all those who want to see full equality in health and social care and to making sure that that happens. My noble friend has done a great service to the House in bringing this important matter to our attention. I assure her that the Government want to proceed and to study carefully the points raised in the debate today.
House adjourned at twenty-four minutes before ten o'clock.