§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is the time limit for the Quality of Legislation EC Working Group; and what progress it has made. [95304]
§ Marjorie MowlamI have been asked to reply.
The Group met for the last time on 3 December 1998. After adoption by the three Institutions involved, (European Parliament, Commission and Council), the 191W Inter-Institutional Agreement on the quality of drafting of Community legislation was published in the Official Journal of the European Communities on 17 March 1999. The IIA requires the Institutions to follow guidelines setting out the general principles of good quality drafting and to implement some practical measures.
The UK Government have circulated the Agreement to all Departments and published it in full in the "Guide to Better European Regulation", copies of which have been widely disseminated, including to all MPs.
I understand that good progress is being made in the Institutions on the implementation measures including:
An Inter-Institutional Group to implement the Guidelines has been established.A practical guide is due to be published in March 2000;in the Commission each Directorate General has appointed a legislative co-ordinator who will ensure that drafting rules and technical rules are complied with when texts are drafted;in the Commission and Council officials responsible for legal drafting will, after training, form specialist drafting units to train officials who draft legal texts;improvements have been made to the IT tools available to assist legal drafting in both the Council and the Commission, for example "LegisWrite", which provides models for all types of Community texts, has been recently introduced in the Commission.