Hefyd, dwi'n gael fy mod i'n gweithio gyd fel yr oedd ymwneud a chael gweithio'r dda'r ddaf o'r ffasciol gweithio'r ddaf o'r relasiad ar y Union Unig, dwi'n bwysig o'r unig eich parlymyd, I'm told to emphasise that this is not a political debate about Europe, but very much a debate about understanding the institutions involved in relationships, and it's part of very much a project by the Houses of Parliament outreach service to develop an understanding of processes and institutions. Anyway, I'm looking forward as a business and economics correspondent at BBC News, looking forward very much to improving my understanding of the workings of the EU and the British Parliament. I'd just like to introduce our guests, Lord Boswell, formerly Tim Boswell MP, Conservative MP. Now, Crossbench Member of the House of Lords, Chairman of the EU Select Committee. I've got Professor on my left here, Professor Andrea Biondi, Professor of European Law here at King's College London. Bill Cash MP, MP for Stafford, and at the far left, my left, Sarah Davies, Clerk of the European Scrutiny Committee, House of Commons, and on my far right, Jake Vaughan, Clerk of the EU Select Committee, House of Lords. Now, I'm going to ask each speaker, the main speakers, to stick to five minutes, and I will be rather tough if they go much beyond five minutes, and that gives plenty of time for everyone to ask their own questions and chip in. So, I'd like to start with Lord Boswell to give us the opening five minute presentation. Thank you very much, Lord Boswell. Well, thank you very much, Chairman, and good evening. Not many people know as much as they should about the House of Lords. Having moved from one house to the other, I suspect I used to be one of them, but I just want to give you an outline about how we handle EU affairs. It's very much core business, as far as the Lords is concerned, which goes back to some rather far-sighted decisions at the time of British entry 40 years ago, when we established a committee and a committee structure to look at, in broad terms, European Union documents and matters relating to the European Union. How this works in practice is roughly like this. Every document which has relevance to the European Union, commission working papers, for example, are deposited by the various, they're received by the British government departments, and they're deposited with us with an explanatory memorandum tabled by Majesty's government, which is meant to explain what they say. As far as I'm concerned, the cardinal's sin is an explanatory memorandum which fails to explain, and if you do, I'm afraid, then goes into a number of checklist items. Does it apply to Gibraltar, for example? Some do, some don't. Is there a subsidiarity concern? Sometimes is, sometimes there is not. What the policy implications are? It will become obvious from that that we are looking at the documents received, which are current business for the European Union at one level or another, or reports on activities of the Union. And we're looking at the British government's interface with that. The bit we don't actually do is legislation in the UK Parliament about British affairs, because that is domestic and we've got our own machinery for that. But in order to look at this very substantial volume of work, that is a little short of a thousand documents a year, we have a structure which is surprisingly large. We have one overarching European Union select committee with just under 20 members, which I chair, and then we have all those and other members form part of six subcommittees which look at specific subject areas. Finance, economics on the one hand, internal market and a number of other issues, labour and transport issues, that's number two. External affairs of the European Union is three. Energy, environment and agriculture, justice and institutions and then home affairs and justice matters, that's six committees. And the way it is operated is on Monday. Rather like some superannuated Stalinist, I sit there with a complete box of European Union papers, or if I'm really lucky, two boxes, with a set of explanatory memoranda with covering notes from the legal team we have. And I, as it were, triaged them and I will either mark them as items which are suitable or appropriate to be held under scrutiny by the European Union committee to be cleared or in some intermediate category to be sent to a subcommittee for their information or possibly for something called super information, which is when you tell them to all take note of it particularly. And while those documents are held under scrutiny, there is a reserve, British ministers are not meant to make decisions until they are cleared from scrutiny. Now in practice we have, and that triggers a continuing dialogue, and some departments, and I know at least one coordinator is here, do better than others or are more alert to our interests than others. Occasionally you have to put the boot in, and I have written more root letters in my current capacity than I ever did in nearly 25 years as an MP. That makes me feel better. Now how it works, I couldn't possibly do it on my own. We have these six committees. The number of peers engaged is nearly 10% of the total number, it's 75 roughly, and rounding the terms we have a staff of about 25 including the legal advisers and the clerks I mentioned, the policy analyst. And as these go out to the various committees it is their job to do detailed scrutiny and to consider them further and see whether the scrutiny reserve can then be lifted and to undertake a dialogue with ministers. Now what this means in practice is I think the dialogue in various forms and if not the clearance, the continuing correspondence, all of which is in the public domain unless and until it is finally dispatched. It also generates a capacity for inquiries on the back of those scrutiny requirements and self-generated inquiries by the committee. I'll give you an example. Our overall committee is currently about time to take one into the role of national parliaments in the European Union. It's a huge volume of work. The way the law is structured makes it particularly appropriate for the detailed subcommittees to give detailed scrutiny to the individual items and we do produce some very detailed reports. Occasionally I think government departments are a little bit put out that we ask such detailed questions but I'll give you an example of two things we've done recently. The financial transactions tax where we produced an extremely critical report and said to the government you've got to do something about this which they've now done and another one was on women in boards and genuinely I think across the political divide there was no dissent from the principle of getting more women onto boards but there was a considerable dissent about whether or not this required to be done at European level. Which brings me neatly to the issue of subsidiarity which is whether or not action should be taken at European level or could be better discharged to the level of the member states and also proportionality which is a somewhat fuzzier concept. And we have now under the Lisbon Treaty the opportunity of playing the yellow card together with other national parliaments. We have to get I think it's 18 houses, some have one parliament, one house in parliament, some have two to raise a formal objection but we are not only in dialogue with our own government but of course with the commission and otherwise. I just don't want to prolong this now so let me just pick up some themes. I think the first one is there's a clear interest in engaging national parliaments more closely and perhaps doing it on a slightly less literal basis simply on subsidiarity issues. It's about saying look we're worried about this, we don't think it's the right thing to do, we don't think you've thought out the details and let's have a discussion either with the commission or through Her Majesty's Government. There's a strong interest in what we would call outreach events like this to explain what we're doing because it can often sound very technical but it's still very necessary. There's a quite strong interest in what we call in-reach which is making sure that our colleagues in other parts of the House of Lords are aware of what we're doing and its importance and above all, and I'll conclude on that at this stage, there is a very strong interest in getting a closer citizens understanding of what we're all about in this very complicated process. Thank you. Thanks very much Tim Boswell. I'd now like to ask Bill Cash, long standing expert on European affairs, chairman of the House of Commons Scrutiny Committee on European Affairs to speak now. Bill. Thank you very much indeed. Can I just say first of all that one small thing which has changed in the last 40 years since we joined the European Union or war is that I'm the first elected chairman of the European Union. Having said that however, we have a very harmonious committee and I'm very grateful to you, Tim, for giving such a good explanation of the process from the House of Lords point of view because there are very considerable similarities with ours with one exception or two exceptions and that is that we don't go into debates on the theme basis, we go through every document so of all the thousand documents that Tim referred to, we go through every one religiously every Wednesday and then we decide under our standing orders, it's on a whim, it's laid down by parliament, that we have to decide in the committee which has about, what is it, 14 members all told, the decision as to whether or not we want to recommend it for debate, so if we want to recommend it for debate it's on the basis of whether it is political or legal and this is all laid down by our standing orders so we make the decision on that footing and the same provision relating to Scrutiny Reserve applies to what we say as in the House of Lords and we're tied in a minister except in exceptional circumstances who goes ahead and makes a decision in the council of ministers if we've said it should be debated and they just simply willfully ignore it. There are exceptional circumstances and we do exercise a degree of discretion but we are pretty tough on it and if they do it in a manner which we regard as unacceptable then we haul them in front of the committee and there we are, we will then expect them to explain themselves. The debates take place in two main forums. The European Standing Committees, of which there are three, do not have at the moment a permanent membership but what that means is that they're appointed by the whips to turn up on a particular day and then the minister has to respond after there's been about an hour and a half's examination of the issue in question where people who are in the committee on either side of the chamber, that is in committee not on the floor of the house, ask questions about the issue in question to the minister and as one recent minister who gave evidence to an inquiry I'll mention in a minute said this is quite a grueling experience because they really have to know their stuff. My committee at the moment is proposing what we're holding an inquiry into European scrutiny because as chairman I wanted to sort out two things in my new capacity and having been on the committee since 1985 right so that's quite a long time therefore I have quite a lot of knowledge of what's been going on over all those years and having been elected two and a half years ago my first step was to set up an inquiry into the relationship between British sovereignty and the European Union and we managed to dispense with a number of well established myths about sovereignty because our sovereignty remains in the United Kingdom Parliament and it will stay there. The second thing is with respect to the question of the whole business of the scrutiny process itself and I decided and my committee agreed that we should have an inquiry into the nature of scrutiny because and that's not with regard to what goes on in the House of Lords this has to do with us we want to improve it because I personally have long believed that there is something of a disconnection and we are improving it we've had a report in fact the draft report is going to be given to me this evening because we've completed our inquiry to a great extent and we're now moving into the next phase of publication etc. Now that is the process and I'm very happy to answer questions and Sarah Davis my distinguished clerk of the committee is here and she will answer other questions as well but I want to come on to another matter because I'm not going to take up more than my lot in time. But I'm going to say this on the piece of paper that you've got right which is the method of getting as many of you here as possible I suppose not just to hear about process but to hear about issues has the UK membership benefited the UK question mark. What does the future hold for the UK and Europe question mark? How does Parliament debate EU issues? Well the second the third point about the debating issues I've covered to some extent in the five minutes allotted to me I'm not going to deal with that but I am going to deal with the first two very quickly and I'm going to say what I think and I'm going to step back from my position as chairman of the committee and I'm going to say what I think as a Member of Parliament who is one of the signatures to the referendum bill which has been deposited and on which questions can be taken later if you want. And the bottom line is I don't think that EU membership has always benefited the UK although I do think there are certain elements within the framework of cooperation in Europe where we can benefit. In a nutshell and of interest no doubt to our distinguished chairman just to take one statistic we've been told the single market is absolutely fantastic it's the jewel in the crown. The trade deficit between ourselves and the other 26 Member States and I'm now talking about has the EU membership benefited the UK. We can go into other questions about peace stability and all the other issues relating to the question of institutional democracy I don't think it's democratic I'll get that one out of the way for a start. In respect to the trade deficit in 2011 our trade deficit this is counter count transactions goods and services imports exports for those who regard this is a fundamental question which it is it was 47 billion deficit in 2011. Now you might think that's a lot of money by the same token by 2012 it had gone up to 70 billion. Now these are UNS statistics they're not just your skeptic views this is from the Office of National Statistics and the House of Commons Library. In terms of the surplus that we have with the rest of the world we're running at about 13 billion and it could be much expanded and then the other side of the equation is what does the future hold for the UK and Europe. I should say look at the dysfunctional nature of riots unemployment the whole question of democratic legitimacy which is more general and I can deal with at this moment that will be very happy to deal with later. I'm going to be debating this on behalf of the House of Commons in Dublin next week with all the other national chairman of all the other Member States and in a nutshell the future for the UK and Europe is that if it transforms itself into a workable non dysfunctional system it can help by cooperation between Member States but European government is not a good idea and you can't have two governments and two parliaments dealing with the same subject matter. I'm a constitutional lawyer and I'm telling you as a matter of my personal judgment that it is not possible to continue with two governments and two parliaments. We can discuss that later with Professor Bondi I've no doubt but in a nutshell there are very serious problems in the present nature of the European Union and the relationship with the UK is on the edge. Thank you very much. Thanks very much Bill and I'd like to introduce Professor Andrea Biondi, director of the Centre for European Law here at King's College London. Andrea. Thank you gentlemen and I'm going to use just 15 seconds of my time just to thank you on behalf of the Centre of European Law at King's College London, the House of Parliament and in particular the outreach service. We were extremely happy to be associated in organizing this event. I actually think that this is one of the main functions of universities to try to get as much as involved as possible in public life. Wether academics can have any kind of impact, well that's a different point. Anyway Europe, there are some advantages about coming last because you could simply say everything has been said so eloquently from the previous speakers. So I could actually just train myself and just simply defer to the experts but I'll try to add a couple of comments. I think it's been mentioned the word already. I think that the theme that we are discussing tonight is really democratic legitimacy in an extremely complex organization such as the European Union. And we've been discussing this theme for the last 50 years. 2013 actually marks the anniversary of one of the most important judgments of the European Court of Justice. You might actually say that's really what the problem began. In that judgment the Court established that the treaty is not just in those days was European economic community, was not just another international agreement but was something different because it did create individual rights. And the Court in trying to justify what was actually a rather revolutionary statement referred to the preamble of that treaty which says we're doing this for the people of Europe. Now in 1953 there were no people, diplomats, ambassadors, bureaucrats, prime ministers, perhaps judges but not a lot of people. So the question for now is 50 years down the line, is it still the same case? Are we actually still dealing with a European Union without people? Well, I would say that there's been some kind of improvements. First, from the European Union side we have now a European Parliament which is a college later together with the European Council. We have a binding charter of fundamental rights which is usually mentioned when it does actually protect social rights that's dangerous. But in reality as many human rights instruments it works as a check on public authorities actions including the EU institutions. So for instance the charter can be used, is actually used as to make EU institutions actions more accountable and more transparent. There are even other instruments which I found rather intriguing. For instance the Treaty of Lisbon for the very first time allows European citizens to propose legislation. One million citizens can actually propose legislation that have to be discussed by the European institutions. Which I think is quite an encouraging sign. Anyway, if instead you prefer to discuss democratic legitimacy from a national perspective I think that once again there are quite encouraging signs that things have changed quite a lot. For instance the Treaty of Lisbon for the very first time recognised within its fundamental principles the need to respect the constitutional and political identity of member states for the very first time. And national parliaments. National parliaments they receive quite a lot of attention by the treaty. For instance they have a dedicated article which lists a lot of functions for national parliaments. And I've mentioned one. They need to be associated with any kind of revision of the treaty. General revision or simplified version they have to be associated with the process. And obviously as mentioned by the previous speakers the role about scrutinising EU legislation. I'd just like to add a couple of points about this role for national parliaments. The first. The House of Lords and the House of Commons have been fantastic in this role. I mean we academics we just always wait for reports from those houses because we can copy a lot. But even other national parliaments are doing quite well. And I'd just like to mention one recent example. The Commission proposed new regulations on the right to strike. 12 parliaments across Europe creating a sort of a hub between national parliaments. They all express serious concerns about this new proposal. And then the Commission after two months simply withdrew it. So it looks like it's working. Second comment is if a national parliament still dislike a piece of EU legislation because it might be against subsidiarity disproportionate. But anyway let's say it's unlawful. The national parliament can ask its own government to bring a specific judicial action before the European Court of Justice. The European Court of Justice has always been extremely reluctant to get involved in any kind of discussion about our locational powers between member states in the union. And then because we're friends we could actually say that usually when involved he tended to side it on the EU side. But this new form of action I think would require the Court of Justice to take a much more robust approach to the question of checking the limits of EU competence. Obviously there are so many other problems that can be discussed. And I think that one of the big point is really the coexistence between national parliaments and European parliaments. Also the fact that EU legislation is most of the time extremely detailed and technical so sometimes even checking high works is complex. Or for instance the fact that lawmaking procedures at European level are so long and so convoluted that again it makes more difficult to follow exactly what's going on in Brussels and in Strasbourg. But hey nobody's perfect so hopefully we can still improve things in the next 50 years. Thank you. Thank you very much indeed Andrea. Now I've had indications of questions which have been submitted prior to this evening and so I'm going to begin with one or two of those equally. I know Bill's got to be offered about half past six for some parliamentary business possibly and you may well want to ask questions to Bill and the rest of the panel so I'll throw it open as soon as I possibly can. But first of all I mean this is very much a process one rather than a political one. It's the question is about what preparations will Parliament and the government be making to inform the public about the benefits of logging into the EU in the run up to the referendum. In other words how is this going to be handled this education process. I'm very happy if Sarah and Jake want to chip in as well. But Tim Poswell do you have any views on that? Well I suppose and it's not often a good idea to say it on a platform my honest answer is I don't know. You need to know that of course at the moment this is the Prime Minister's undertaking speaking as leader of the Conservative Party rather than as the Prime Minister of a coalition government. And he said contingent on the return of a Conservative government at the next schedule date for a general election in 2015. Then he would undertake a process of negotiation or renegotiation leading to an in out referendum. And in parallel as Bill has reminded us there is consideration of a private members bill this week which actually reflects the substance of that and has been initiated by a Conservative member. All I can do really is refer you to what happened last time we had a referendum in 1975 under as it happened in a Labour government which had carried out a process of renegotiation and then gave options and indeed paid for the distribution of literature on behalf of the pro and anti campaign. And also issued its own statement as the government and some people in turn felt that that was not particularly balanced as a view. But we are a very long way away from there. The only other point I make at the moment is that we are into renegotiation if these first contingent conditions are fulfilled. We have no idea what that will bring or what the government would then say in terms of recommending to a referendum. And if we were to vote in a referendum that we no longer wish to be members of the European Union which is the substantial question in the draft bill we would then move into clause 50 of the Lisbon Treaty which is about the withdrawal procedure and that would be carried out under our own national constitution but we would be required to notify the European authorities. There would then be a debating council and a consultation with the European Parliament suggested that it would lead to some kind of de-session arrangements but if those weren't operational after two years we could withdraw anyway. So I mean to be honest the message is it's very uncharted territory because it's premature to ask the question at the moment. Bill what role do you see for education in the run up to a debate? I mean is it very much going to be the pros and anties? I suppose it depends what the government of the day what their position is. Well the arrangements under the present bill which I helped to draft actually contain arrangements to ensure that the Electoral Commission which will have the last say on the question and also on the rules that will apply and generally speaking this matter has been looked at quite extensively for a period of time and there are such things as ensuring that one side doesn't have a disproportionate amount of money say from the European Commission through the back door as is certainly the case alleged in the case of the Irish referendum where people were extremely upset about the disproportionate amount of money for the yes vote compared to the no vote. However there are also questions of impartiality and there is a question in some notices that have been put round saying given the ranker surrounding the EU will the British people ever actually receive this passionate fully factual information about the EU etc. Well the short answer is that it can be done and it could be agreed actually within the aegis of the Electoral Commission that the paperwork that went out and the amount of time and the extent to which the debate was conducted in public largely have to say through the BBC because that's what's going to happen and we actually called in the BBC into our scrutiny inquiry about what was it two months ago and we asked them a lot of questions about their attitude towards the whole question of dealing with the European issue which is sometimes very heavily criticised because of the nature of the people who get put on, the manner in which the questions get asked and the framework of it all because there is a lingering near certain suspicion if I can use that expression that there is a cultural attitude within the BBC which is not entirely helpful to the Eurosceptic argument which has been winning by proof of fact. However the fact is just to answer your question shortly that the nature of the enquiry will have to be properly impartial and I would certainly be pressing during the course of the debate and so many of our friends to ensure that the rules guarantee that and one last thing to reply, not to reply but to comment on Tim's point about what the nature of the renegotiation would be as John Major, as David Cameron put it, the fact is that it is not certain as to what the nature of his idea of renegotiation will be by any means and for the reasons I gave you before which is that this is the wording in the present bill is about our membership of the European Union. That raises the fundamental question I raised when I said two governments, two parliaments, democratic legitimacy, cost benefit, all these things and I'm afraid that at the moment there is no clear definition of what is fundamental except in the minds of those like myself and a very, very large proportion of the electorate and of the House of Commons on our side of the equation who say we need fundamental renegotiation and that is a constitutional change in the relationship and not merely tinkering with the treaties. Thanks for that Bill, I can't possibly comment on the BBC's position in all this but that's for far more important people than me nearer the time. We'll discuss that in due course. Dude Jacob and Sarah want to chip in on this process at this time. Definitive note of that. Very quickly and I'm going to ask Andrea this and then throw it open. There's an interesting point made by somebody prior to the meeting. What EU laws directly affect everyday life? Well actually it does affect every aspect of everyday life from the food that we're eating because obviously the kind of controls on adjectives or the kind of labelling that has to be put from the right to go to another member state to receive medical treatment if it cannot be available in a member state. From maternity rights, from the kind of in a way and how you're going to recycle your old fridge. So in reality that's actually also your quality of life. Think about prices on wine. I mean that's actually it's a result a little bit of European law because in the old days the UK used to tax wine 30 times more than beer but that cannot be done on the European law. So it's a striking fact that European law does affect seriously everyday life and that's why I always found it difficult. There's another question about what's going to happen with all these laws if the UK leaves. I think that it would be extremely complicated to start disentangling the UK from the very wide effect of EU regulation on many aspects of everyday life. Thank you very much. Well given the timetable and bills availability for a short time longer I'm going to throw it open now. I would urge you we haven't got roving microphones but if you could basically ask your question as clearly as possible we do have a roving microphone. So if you could wait till that arrives and then maybe identify yourself and go ahead and ask the question. How does the microphone look? Sounds good to me. Lady here thank you. Hello my name is Helen Jeffries and I work in a central government department. So I'd like to ask the members of the panel what is the most helpful thing that a government department can do to help you with EU scrutiny and conversely what is the least helpful thing that we could do. What would really annoy you? Tim Boswell. I think the short answer is the most helpful thing you can do is keep in dialogue. If you have a problem like your minister is going to a council meeting and needs to get cover to make an agreement we can if necessary and I think the commons have a different procedure but substantially we can give you a scrutiny waiver to do that. We can still keep our gloves on the table and say we're holding the item under reserve. The least helpful thing you can do is to try and bluff and hope we'll go away because we won't. Yes we had John Cunliff who is the UK ambassador to the European Union on two occasions in the last eight weeks. One to give formal evidence which is on the record the transcript which is available for anyone who wants to read it. And the other was an informal meeting that we had with him in Brussels about two weeks ago. This is very important because the interface between the committee and the consideration of the directives is very much conducted through the aegis of our debating procedure and our analysis. But what we get is an explanatory memorandum from the government but it's been broken effectively by the United Kingdom representatives in Brussels who speak as diplomats to the other member states. And their equivalents it's called COREPLA, the committee of permanent representatives but each member state has its own. Well for reasons that are pretty obvious 27 member states talking to one another about these complex questions is a very difficult process. And the most helpful thing that can be done is actually something which Simon Hicks, who you will know of course, who comes from which is its universe, a long school of economics. And he came... We don't mention that word here. Oh I beg your father. Well Simon Hicks came and gave evidence to us last week and he says, and I think this is a very interesting piece of evidence, that the people who are doing UCCREP work, that's the civil servants through the various departments funneled through UCCREP is actually not a diplomatic service entirely. It is a legislative process. Now this could have quite a significant bearing on the way we start looking at this because on the basis that that is the case, then it is really important that we have a completely transparent arrangement. And he's run, and I'm going to leave it at this, a project called Vote Watch which for those of you who are here to be educated on the subject, and I'm very educated by reading their reports. They've been through a very very large number of regulations and decisions and the manner in which they were arrived at. And I'll leave you with one statistic and Sarah will put me right if I've got it wrong. Of all the regulations and decisions that have been taken on which it was possible to arrive at the decision, I think that's the way to put it, which was a possible outcome with the words, France and Lithuania agreed to 100% of everything that went through the system. However, you may suddenly think to yourself, oh well in that case the belligerent awkward squad in Westminster and in the United Kingdom probably only allowed 30 through. No, we allowed through 90 and I think Simon said last week that in fact the figure had gone up to 96. So in practice what is happening is something which really has to be evaluated because it's not everything the European Commission puts forward, it gets more complicated than that, but there is an inbuilt bias to consensus and that raises questions, I'm sure you'd agree as a constitutional lawyer about questions of legitimacy, because people go into ballot boxes in polling booths to put their cross against the decision as to what kind of government they want and qualify majority voting which takes place in the council of ministers is not a given, but it is definitely overriding in many cases decisions that might otherwise have been extremely controversial within a given Member States Parliament. David Conway from Civitas. Is it not the case that Parliament passed an act I think in 2011 to the effect that if there is a proposed treaty change then there will be a referendum on that and that therefore even if David Cameron is not returned as Prime Minister with the Tories after the next general election should through the Euro crisis there be a new proposed treaty indicating fiscal union for example we would have an in out referendum but more importantly the question I want to ask you last time round in 75 and I think I may be the only person in the audience old enough to have voted in the audience anyway but the British public were at the start of the campaign equally as you're a skeptic as they are now and yet in a matter of only a few months it was turned around and the BBC was very instrumental in bringing that about and it has come to light many years down the line later that there was a lot of foreign funding in particular American funding that wasn't a deliberate attempt to bring your question to an end or I think could I just ask you to quickly wind your question up, thank you. There seem to be two questions there, one about the parliamentary consequences of 2011. I don't know who wants to go first of our parliamentary bill. I think perhaps basically there are generally speaking the European Union amendment act 2011 laid down rules for better endings regarding what I think I can generally describe as what were regarded as significant treaty changes actually under section 4 and I may tell you I oppose this bill from beginning to end with many colleagues for a very good reason because we regarded this as really only scratching at the surface. The real problem is that the exemption for example on the question that you raised the fiscal and monetary union actually was exempted by virtue of section 4 because section 4 I'm paraphrasing says there would only need to be a referendum if it were not only significant but actually applied to the United Kingdom as well as all the other member states and the policy of the government has been to say let them go ahead with the core monetary union proposals which include a lot of the fiscal package and the net result of that is that we are excluded from an automatic right to a referendum. However from those of us of that mind that's been overtaken actually by David Cameron's decision that as far as his government is concerned or as Tim put it his party is concerned this in or out referendum which is included in this bill if it were to be enacted would actually completely override all the other stuff in the act you referred to so we're actually at the present moment in quite a good place and that's why I'm putting my name to that bill. I mean first of all on the points the bill has made I wouldn't disagree with his general analysis I just make two comments the first is it's open to member states to use an enhanced cooperation procedure and they can then go ahead with certain things and that is the basis for the financial transaction tax. Now it wouldn't be difficult to see that it has a huge impact on the city of London and has raises issues in connection with the integrity of the single market and obviously the sorts of assurance that are around there are absolutely central. Equally and we saw this with the so-called fiscal compact of course other member states can write a new treaty at any time they like but they just can't call it a European treaty unless and until it's brought into the European Union. So that's that side of it. Second point I rather wanted to pick up because I think Bill has pointed to something you should be reassured about if you come from that vein of opinion. I think the big change from the 1975 referendum is we now have got the electoral commission and that should act as an independent filter against what I might call any attempt to distort it. Now things can always go wrong and people will often question the decision particularly if it's not the one they wanted but on the whole I hope that at least when we get to referendum if we do it will express the will of the British people and then we'll all know where we are. Andrea? No actually just to reiterate exactly what Lord Boswell said is that we already have two treaties with the eurozone rules that apply to eurozone members and then the others. So in reality we have a de facto two Europe's and I think that is really a matter of great concern because in the past when you negotiate the monetary union and you had the ecofin meeting the British chancellor was there. What you get now is just a short briefing of the meeting of the eurozone member states at the very beginning and at the very end. So there are some serious constitutional problems that need to be addressed because you have really two sets of rules. Can I just say I agree with that and actually I don't regard this and I've said it repeatedly in the House of Commons as a eurozone crisis.  That's my personal opinion and I think it will break up for practical reasons to do with unemployment and all sorts of things that we haven't got time to go into but basically at the constitutional level and a matter of constitutional priority not only do you have the government of the United Kingdom which has the right because it's a voluntary engagement through the 1972 Act of Section 2. We could repeal that if we wanted to. In addition to that we have this accretion of decision making powers which have been conferred by treaties under that Section 2 which have enabled more and more growth of the other kind of government because it's imposed on us through qualified majority vote which creates the conflict or at any rate the dissonance between having a government in the United Kingdom or any other national parliament and the government of Europe if I can use that general expression. In addition to that what Professor Bondi has said is absolutely right which is that actually there is in addition to that two other governments in the field of monetary union which is the eurozone and the non eurozone. I regard all this as completely unnecessary by the way and I think we should have a convention of all the member states rather like the Philadelphia Convention and I put this to David Cameron in an open public televised meeting the other day or a year ago and I said really we need to have such a discussion with all the member states present as in terms of leadership so the prime ministers are there with their foreign secretaries and all the national parliamentarians and let's have it out because actually we could in maybe two weeks maybe a bit longer I believe that with a properly constructed agenda it would be possible to actually make sense of something which could still work which is association between member states but at the moment it just isn't working and I think there are constitutional, political and economic issues at stake. Okay I think we'll leave the issue about whether the CIA funded any aspect of the campaign but I'd love to continue that maybe another time but there's a gentleman at the very back there. Thank you very much, my name is Peter Culler, I'm in industry. It's a question about the institutions firstly for the professor. It was mentioned that recently under Lisbon various people got the idea to propose legislation other than the commission. My question is a historical one what took them so long because to us this is fundamental in that civil servants don't propose legislation ordinary people do, parliamentarians do etc. The second point is the European Court of Justice. As I understand it when a judge takes his oath or her oath they do so to preserve the union. Does this automatically create a conflict because surely there are wider philosophical implications about a vote by a judge in terms of justice and democracy and all the rest of it. In other words you know I'm sure judges in the Soviet Union were there to preserve the system but that's not their purpose. Thank you. The role of the European Parliament well. Clearly the European Parliament has been the successive winner of all the changes of the treaty. I mean every time they did extremely well and what is usually happening now especially with a rather weak commission. The commission keeps on proposing legislation but now the parliament has such an extensive power to draft it to modify that in reality is becoming a de facto legislation. So obviously there are still problems about the length of proceedings, the fact that obviously still had to agree with the council but if you look at some of the recent examples of directors that have been passed most of them are the product of the European Parliament in my view. Concerning the European Court of Justice that's an interesting question. First of all the court has changed a lot over the years because it used to be a small unit with the rule that every member state has the right to point a judge when there were six, nine, eleven there was a different body. Now there are 27 soon 28 judges. First of all we had already some problems about consistency of decisions between the different chambers because very rarely now the court decided its full composition so there is a problem of organisation. What you refer to is the kind of sort of role of the court. Well I think that again the Treaty of Lisbon in my view has introduced a technical point but a very important one. You know we never had any kind of checks on appointments of judges. The Treaty of Lisbon instead set up a new committee which now has to vet candidates and this committee which is actually chaired by our Supreme Court judge Lord Manx has been extremely robust and we had some candidates being rejected on the grounds that they did not have the expertise, they were not qualified enough so in my view the main point about the Court of Justice is that it has to be subject as all the other European institutions to control transparency in particular on the quality of appointments. Can I just come in on that and say I'm very glad to hear what Professor Bodney said. We keep on agreeing here. But it is extraordinary actually there is far less to disagree about once we've got past the fundamentals because anybody who sees the potentiality for co-operation between member states in this global contracting world would realise that it's very important to have dialogue and discussion. Actually on the question of the European Court, of course each member state has signed a treaty which gives precedence to the European Court of Justice over its own legal system and indeed of course that is represented by section 3 of the European Community Act 972 which says that every decision that is taken by the Court is in fact binding on our Parliament and indeed on us. The case in question which raised the very important issue which was fact attained did also and this is the bit that sometimes gets overlooked say that in fact this is Lord Bridges judgement the word voluntary which I mentioned earlier which I don't think has been given quite enough emphasis not today but in general and that is that we are abiding by all these laws by the as it were umbilical cord of that provision which is that we agreed to do it voluntarily and the assumption that has been made and if I made any contribution to these debates over the last 25 years it's been to try to draw attention to the fact that our sovereignty in our Parliament or indeed in any other Parliament has not been wiped away despite the assertions of the European Court of Justice who actually continue to claim that they have primacy over the constitutional law of all the member states. Now we've never accepted that and by the way Norma is Italy has it and several other countries but we are quite emphatic about it that's the point I want to make. I can't claim to be a lawyer which Bill is but I can tell you and I dare say I'm the only person in the room I've actually elected judges in a completely different capacity because I used to be a member of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly and I think a distinction we may need to return to later in the questioning that is of course in relation to the European Court of Human Rights and is a completely separate structure and separate convention from anything bounding the European Union. I personally would like to give an endorsement to the need for judicial appraisal and competence and I think we are improving that as we should do in the European Convention. I would like on the other hand slightly to warn people and it's up to them, they make their own judgement of whether or not this is right but I don't think that the justices of the European Court of Justice or indeed sometimes argued ex-commissioners who have sworn an oath to the lawities of the European Union and are receiving a pension there from are necessarily morally inhibited or skewed in their judgements because they are members of an institution. I mean no more so than if I've taken an oath as a member of the House of Lords this sort of prevents me from doing what I think is right in relation to anything. I don't believe that but some people may wish to. I think there's one point on what Bill has said where I'd actually say the news is rather better than in 1972 because we took this very clinical view that we should enshrine but in our own legislation the primacy of the European Court of Justice judgement and of European law over British law but we retained the notional capacity to withdraw if we found that arrangement intolerable. It's often not noticed but the Treaty of Lisbon actually now provides for the first time a vehicle under which that can be done. If you look back to the debates in the 70s people said that we're joining an eternal union and people then said yes but it's like the United Nations Charter, there's no get-out clause. There is a get-out clause which I think reinforces the point that there is a fundamental retention of sovereignty if that is what we choose to use. That's article 58 but there's a gentleman just along there. Thank you. My name's Edward Tynan and I just wanted to just probe a bit more on what Mr Cash said. I think he was referring to really the democratic deficit in the EU when he was referring to the Council of Ministers and how some of the decisions are reached there. I was just wondering like can you just maybe comment further. I say like on European Council's summit level about how important policy decisions are taken and basically how that's fed through into basically scrutiny at national parliament level. Like is there a lack of information available at national parliament level like in select committees etc. on how important decisions are reached at that level like are minutes taken at those summit meetings that are distributed afterwards at national parliament level that you can sort of probe and see why a certain course was taken or not taken. Well there were many reasons why I opposed the Maastricht Treaty. I led the rebellion against it against John Major's government hence the slip of the tongue a few minutes ago but actually one of the reasons was the notion of co-decision and that was at that point in its infancy. It is now endemic and for practical purposes when decisions are taken in a huge range of matters the decisions are taken by co-decision with the European Parliament and that raises to me a question of democratic legitimacy not because I'm going to claim despite the low turnout and all sorts of other things like that and the lack of knowledge about it and all sorts of tangential questions but the fundamental issue which I came to mention at the beginning which is this business of voting in a ballot box for a national government, national parliament and basically I just can't despite the fact that I have perfectly good working relations with members of the European Parliament I had a meeting, we had a meeting yesterday as did Tim with the constitutional committee of the European Parliament the chairman of which is Mr Cassini from Italy and so on and the bottom line is that we have very amicable discussions but there is a real difference so when we're talking about democratic legitimacy there are massive question marks over the extent to which we should be bound by decisions that are taken by co-decision by the increasing use of a qualified majority vote and also by the, and I have to say the relative relationship of European international parliaments we had a debate in the House of Commons this is my final point here last week I very much insisted against quite a lot of governmental opposition as chairman of the committee which they eventually gave in on to have a debate on the question of primacy my committee examined the multi union issues which have been developing over the last 18 months and we said we've reached a point, I'm paraphrasing the report now we've reached a point where we think now the Barroso commission put out a document called the blueprint for a new Europe in which they alleged a number of things it's 52 pages long and amongst it it said the European Parliament and only it is the Parliament for the European Union and they refer to primacy and the making of votes in that then the Van Rompuy working in parallel conclusions in December the summit said that the European Parliament and again I'm slightly paraphrasing in the conclusion said the European Parliament and the national parliaments are commensurate now that is equivalent to saying that both have equal legitimacy and for the reasons I've given don't need to repeat that is just simply not accepted by the national parliament and when we had this debate last week Labour Party put down an amendment on the financial transaction tax and they said they were in favour of it but what they did not do and that's something which the commentary have not picked up if I may say so is that they did not suggest that the United Kingdom Parliament did not have primacy which is what we were saying in the motion and we said it applies to every voter in every constituency through our national parliament and that is actually a very important moment because that is the background against which this referendum goes coming in okay I'll get up for five minutes Excellent I'm sorry just come back and allow me to be political but not party political for a moment the first point I'd make is we're not the only set of institutions with problems with democratic legitimacy I think some of us have been quite shocked and certainly have no pleasure in what we've seen from both Turkey and Brazil in countries which do have functioning democracies at the moment and I think it would lead me to the general speculation that a lot of our present difficulties are a function of the current recession and difficult times and I'm not going into the necessary prescription for dealing with it but I'm just reflecting the fact that that has strained any democratic system at the current time now I think as regards the relations between the different bits of this debate and where the democratic legitimacy can be inserted I am a pragmatist I don't think we should necessarily advance with a preconception I think the European parliament has got a job to do it would typically be done on specific areas where they are dealing with European commission proposals or initiating their own dialogue with the commission often at a fairly technical level matters like services directive where some British MEPs were very influential current discussions on the common agricultural policy where there are literally hundreds of amendments lucky and I wish them well with those amendments I think though what has been missing is a really effective role for the national parliament this is one reason we are going to look at that and this is not confined to Britain but the European Parliament and the European Parliament are also very much interested in beefing this up and I think we need to make sure that the as it were the executive be at the commission or council doesn't divide and rule we allow the European parliament to work as partners to hold this whole thing more to account formally you are right at the moment the council is in a sense not directly accountable through the fact that it is comprised of national governments and their representatives and if somebody comes back with a rotten deal or issues an explanatory memorandum to us which is not satisfactory we should be the first to say so Could I just make one last comment because I am going now just to say bear in mind strip out all the procedures all the processes the whole question ultimately has now reached a point where the institutions of the European Union so far and at the moment are insisting on political union that is the direction of travel and it's not just the direction of travel it's actually got there so we are at a fork in the road and the real question to my mind and that's why the referendum issue is now on the agenda is we do not want political union a lot of other people do On your behalf I'd just like to thank Bill who's got to go Bill Cash he has a commons and biographer of John Brighton Bill and I share a common link with John Brighton with various sort of relations we are distant cousins thanks very much ok there's a gentleman here and do feel free anybody on questions of procedure to ask questions to Sarah and Jake about the commons and laws respectively my name is Michael McCarthy I want to follow up on what Mr Cash said about you can't have two parliaments it doesn't work and I used to work for the Department for International Development and I've seen where we're paying for the EU we're paying for the DFID's budget and we're doing opposite things they just do not sit comfortably together and then you add to that the United Nations which you're also paying for and I just wonder I'm instinctively pro-European but 25,000 people working in the EU austerity we're trying to cut our budgets cut our staff down yet the EU and the European Commission seem to be just going along in their own sweet way and when you meet them overseas working in developing countries with the aid program they just push you aside they got more money than we have because we've given them that much all the member states and often the EU is standing on its own to what the member states are trying to do in a particular country to help with development so for me I think the big question is can the EU trim itself down a bit is there any prospect of that because it makes a lot of British people fed up I think a lot of my friends anyway just fed up with the size of it 25,000 staff as a football crowd and for what I'd read it I mean generally if you think that we're dealing with 500 million people I mean if you look at the general the whole number of staff of the commission is not that staggering but apart from that point I mean again generally you touch upon development aid which is a very good example but on the whole we're talking about a system which is sort of 50 years old right it's very young system and for instance development aid is just you know it's been done right now for instance you know we actually have now more rules how to coordinate commercial policies and development aid I mean you know we are working on these things and certainly in my view just more a question of transparency coordination with different policies that simply say well it doesn't work because for instance again on development aid lots of other member states ask for some changes in giving more power to the European Union as to coordinate better policies obviously the UK has been extremely active in this area and the member states less so once again I think I found one of the most intriguing development at the level of the European Union is this idea the common commercial policy which everybody has agreed that should be done by the European Union should now include also development aid respect to fundamental human rights really interesting idea easy to do it? No so sure but again it's just a question of time Tim Boswell On the specific question issues about different resourcing contrary policies in relation to development aid which I'm glad you stress the importance of are very much meet and drink to our subcommittee that deals with that subject and we will look at things like whether an EU mission is appropriate whether it's properly resourced over salaried or whatever can I just answer the general point you raised initially about parliaments I don't think I want to say personally that it is impossible to have two parliaments coexisting what I think is unfortunate if there isn't a clear understanding of their powers and responsibility and of course that is if you like and it's a word that's not always proper in Britain the task of federal constitutions or otherwise you have to decide at what level you're operating at I mean perhaps pre 1865 you could have said the United States has not resolved this in relation to its own arrangements but you have legislatures at the state level which coexists with the federal level and I think what is the British government is currently undertaking with its balance of competences review which will play into this European debate is trying to look objective at how these competences should be articulated how they're controlled and whether or not they overlap and I think we will all look with some interest to see what comes out of that but I think we have two upswelling tensions here one is rightly you don't want to have a lot of overlapping bodies wasting money and as I frequently say we don't want people jetting around Europe at the taxpayer's expense it is absolutely necessary for example on the other hand you do want to sense a common purpose in which the executive at whatever level we choose to have it represented is accountable to somebody and the ordinary citizen and their concerns and the taxes they pay are properly accountable OK we've got about 10 more minutes it seems I think there was somebody just in this row here very generous of you to give up your slot sorry just ask my name is Laura Olau and I work in legal services and the thing is that I didn't really understand why this other gentleman was objecting to the nature of two parliaments because the two parliaments even if they are legislators they protect different interests you as a UK parliament is in charge of protecting your citizens but the EU parliament is in charge of protecting the 500 millions EU citizens so I do not see why the debate is such incompatible that I don't understand maybe if you want to elaborate that and clarify a bit I don't know Can we ask you to clarify Bill Cash's views Tim do you think? I'm not so sure I want to speak for Bill Cash although we do have a very good working relationship in our capacity I think he is pointing to the potential dilemma of one man, two masters you may have seen the play which is been playing around here recently it is difficult I think it's possible to articulate different levels but I would agree with him on one thing which we have not found the perfect balance yet as Andreas said it's a comparatively modern experiment it's one which we keep making more difficult in one sense by expanding the numbers which I personally and our committee is supportive of we have glad promotions coming in we'd like the western borders coming when they're ready but all of it makes it a little bit more complicated all the time and we have to have I think a more informed debate as I hope we've given you tonight and again it's an experiment which is based on the assumption that there are different levels of governments I don't believe in a European Union which takes decisions on everything it's not about passing rules which are the same for everybody it's just about trying to have multi different levels of governments and obviously the coexistence between national and European parliaments is one of the biggest challenges but that's exactly what the European Union is about it was one in the front row here just here lady here just before I left today so my name is Angela Bennes and I'm an LLB law student at Birkbeck I did read that the United Kingdom has not signed up for a collective complaint procedure so that the non-government organisations can bring a collective complaint under the European social charter when I consider such issues and that you know we have fundamental rights and freedoms that is surely a good reason not to come out of the EU so that we're allowed to express our opinions and our concerns about the way that we're governed I'm conferring but I think I am right in saying this is Council of Europe Convention the European Social Charter and it has been the British and not uniquely the British position that for reasons maybe we think our arrangements are superior maybe we think and I suspect this is often in the minds of government we may think we don't want to make that commitment but we have not signed up to that particular convention now I mean that in a sense raises a wider issue and I don't want to divert you from it and Andrew may want to comment on the substance but within a lot and I noticed one of the questions which had been sort of drafted and came to us there is a sort of assumption that everything works exactly the same for everyone now it is within one body of law but I mean there are a whole series of different overlapping qualifications and member states may issue reservations about particular things for example you take the whole business of justice and home affairs now the British position is generally we can opt into those that's a formal procedure the Danish government has decided to keep completely out of it full stop and they've been permitted to do that under the treaties now of course it is under the treaties and I think the case you cited is in relation to the Council of Europe Convention rather than the European Union legislation but and you have to be you have to keep the law and ministers have a duty to comply with national and international law I think but there is more flexibility than we think and I think sometimes this argument gets too much polarized but as regards the merits of the issue I'd rather pass from giving judgement on that If I may actually debate to the European Union side I think that's a good example of the fact that you can do things better for instance one of the greatest problem about accountability access to justice is the fact that NGOs association they have very limited right under you law it's very difficult to bring a challenge against the directive the courts are extremely reluctant to allow despite the fact that now we have a chart other international obligations to do so so that's exactly one example that the system is not working properly and then most of the member states are much more advanced than the European Union but once again it's just a question of trying and trying so in my view one of the next step is really to make sure that you guarantee for instance in the proceedings before the European Court of Justice is impossible now either to bring a case or even to present a memoir just to try to have it on the ME to screw this example which I think would actually make the whole process of judicial adjudication at the European level much more accountable more transparent and closer to citizens I think there's another one coming just from that side thank you do you remember Jake and Sarah here to take questions on procedure if you're free to throw it anything difficult will throw it my question is to do with the fact that if we were to have a referendum how long does the panel think the public would need to be educated that we would be able to make a legitimate decision on what should happen because it's so controversial and people have their different opinions that I know, I mean I wasn't born for the 1975 election referendum but I don't know if I'd feel comfortable voting on it so I just wonder if they have an idea of the time frame that you'd have to have a run up to the referendum very interesting point going back to where we started the discussion actually I mean the formal position is that we would have about two years from an election in 2015 to conclude a referendum by the end of 2017 if that's the government we elect and that's the negotiation we take part in in parallel with that at some stage there would need to be a public education process we discussed earlier how that would be seen to be fair and authentic I would just say that I think something much worse than not having a referendum would be to have one without a properly informed public now the difficulty is that you have a very difficult balance in what is relevant because it can either be highly complex and technical or it can be on general perhaps some people call it rather woolly issues and I mean I don't envy the BBC you in trying to draw this out I don't envy the BBC either like general elections we have a bit of one and a bit of another and somebody comes along and says but you're being unkind to duckweed or do something about tapwashers and if you're a constituency candidate you find yourself in some difficulty on those detailed issues can I just raise it's a speculation but you may like to think about it the type of issue which will be discussed in a referendum campaign if we go to that do you think and I don't have a definite view it will be about economic issues do you think it will be about are we better off in or out or do you think it will be about political issues is this the right kind of enterprise to be a member of is it a worthwhile thing or not being very careful not to load that because I think I have a obligation to be that somehow the referendum debate would be wrong if we didn't at least draw out those two major issues I mean in Scotland they've got they've had two years it will be or maybe just under for the referendum we just had sort of the end of the drinks with the students and they organised the referendum and 89% yes and the rest no so you see with a well informed debate you can have good results okay maybe time for one more gentlemen over here thank you very much my name is Anthony it was a long shot to ask I wanted Bill Cash to be here really for this question because he's a very renowned euroskeptic and from what I can gather is that we're in the EU for the permanently we're not going to go out are we we're we're actually there I did some research before I came here today and apparently the US did more for the EU to be established than the UK did after the Second World War when originally the EU it was a steel and coal community wasn't it that site was founded yeah do you mind in the interest of time just phrase your question I see which way you're you're interested in okay these so called referendums that's how he's talking about that we're going to go into the EU we are in the EU and that's it aren't we there's no going is there that's my question okay well that's an interesting final question I'd like the UK to stay in Europe otherwise we won't need a professor of European law any longer so for a certain reason I mean I think that I hope that you will stay in however if you want to leave yes as you mentioned before there's now a specific article in the treaty which lays down a very detailed procedure that member states can follow if they want to leave so technically or legally it can be done once again then we go back to your points whether we need to start to engage in a discussion about whether this is good for economic reasons whether there are really some values or some other issue that actually will mean that the UK needs to stay but can I also just add an extra point we should not also forget the contribution that the UK had on European Union there are certain kind of things that all these emphasis on respect for remedies the rule of law transparency that comes from the UK there's certain kind of piece of legislation which are successful because of the contribution of the UK and once again the internal market is a UK invention a 1992 programme has been carried out by English officials of the commission so once again I think I hope that we stay first of all on the point Andreas just made the director general of DG Mark is of course Jonathan Paul is a Brit and I mean he has absolutely the lead position in relation to the internal market and as has been said Britain is influential I think the referendum gives an opportunity for what you might call a contestable decision I mean if people really want to leave and that is their considered judgment they have an opportunity to do so and I would respect their position whatever they want to do I would just say one thing in conclusion and this is not a threat and it isn't designed as it were to load the referendum whatever decision is made there will be a need for Britain to come to an accommodation with its neighbours it may not be a formal constitutional arrangement but we do have countries close to us who are trading who are active and one assumes even if we've left the European Union and Andreas has lost his job and I've lost mine both arise from that that we will have to find some way of dealing with them and that is perhaps a consideration but I think we rest on events, thank you that's a good thought to end with resting on events and an awful lot to think about been a fascinating discussion debate and very good questions a lot to think about between now and 2017 but on behalf of the Houses of Parliament Outreach Service and Kings College London I'd like to thank all of you for coming along contributing there are refreshments to follow and you are very welcome to stay on for that and on your behalf I'd like to thank Sarah Davies and Jake Vaughan I'm sure they'll be staying on and can maybe chat a bit more about some of the aspects of what we've been discussing but particularly thank Professor Andrea Biondi and Lord Boswell as two of our main speakers this evening thank you very much for being here