Political Commentary
Questioning Question Time
Patrick Cosgrave
Mr John Davies is Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Apart from being responsible for the administration of the Duchy and obliged to answer questions on that subject in the House of Commons he is also, as the Speaker said last week, charged with "the co-ordination of Government policies in relation to the European Communities and acts m behalf of the Foreign Secretary who is the Government representative in the Council of Ministers." In his capacity as Minister for Europe' Mr Davies, though a Cabinet Minister with his own department (he actually works in the Cabinet Office), has no Question Time of his own. Questions about his discharge of his duties are addressed to the Foreign Secretary, and may or may not be answered by Mr Davies. It is also Passible, under the rules of the House, in certain circumstances to ask the Prime Minister whether, say,a speech made by Mr ' Davies (or any other minister) represents Government policy. The matter has been raised, and the SPeaker compelled to rule upon it, because Mr George Cunningham, the Labour Member for Islington South-West, recently tried to ask the Prime Minister Whether a speech made by Mr Davies to the Strasbourg Assembly represented Government policy. The Table Office, Which carries out the initial sifting of Members questions, rejected his offering as being out of order. Mr Cunningham was perturbed, not so much by the sPecific content of Mr Davies's speech, as by the subsequent confession of the Chancellor of the Duchy that he was uncertain in his own mind about whether he was speaking at Strasbourg as a representative of the British Government, or as a representative of the Council of Ministers; and that he had constructed his address with this ambiguity in mind. ie asked the Speaker, whose responsibility it was, to tell him how much of Mr • Davies's speech represented Government Policy, and Mr Lloyd told him that "If he is speaking as a Minister, the aPpropriate person to ask is the Prime Minister. If he is speaking as a member of the Council of Ministers, then the appropriate person to ask is the head of the Department" — in this case, since the Chancellor of the Duchy appears to act abroad as a Foreign Office minister. ir Alec Douglas-Home. In logic, thereLore, both Mr Heath and Sir Alec should, separately, answer Mr Cunningham's question, the first explaining what bits of Mr Davies's speech were British policy; and the latter what bits were the policy of the Council of Ministers. But, in spite Of the Speaker's ruling, it seems clear 'hat Mr Heath will not answer Mr Sunningliam. We are therefore placed in _the extraordinary position where our Prime Minister — whose private office negotiates on these matters with the Table Office — declines to say, and will in similar future cases presumably continue to decline to say, whether statements and speeches made by the British representative on the Council of Ministers are, or are not, expressive of the policy of his Government. It is not difficult to see how convenient a method of evasion of embarrassing parliamentary scrutiny this would be. Even if patient examination of the Foreign Secretary revealed, which parts of a given speech stated the policy of the Council, it would still be -impossible to cross-examine Sir Alec on those which were not.
There is another difficulty to which the Speaker's ruling gives rise. Mr Lloyd denied that the problem presented by Mr Davies's speech was novel, and observed that, over the years, Ministers of the Crown frequently addressed both the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Asembly of the Western European Union without the House finding questioning of their departmental heads in any way an unsatisfactory method of monitoring their activities. But there is no comparison between the Council of Ministers and either the Consultant Assembly or WEU.
Neither of the last two is a decisionmaking body. But article 145 of the Treaty of Rome lays it down that the Council shall "ensure the coordination of the general economic policies of the Member States" and "dispose of a power of decision." In this latter phrase in particular there is clearly given to the Council powers which, in British consitutional practice, have been possessed only by Parliament itself, or by some similar legislative assembly. In effect the -Common Market system operates through decisions arrived at by deliberation in the Council and handed to the Brussels Commission to implement continuously through EEC regulations. The Commission is the executive of a European parliament consisting of ministers from the member governments.
As a legislative assembly the Council has certain advantages and certain disadvantages. Its principal disadvantage is that its identity is shifting, and determined by the executives of the nine member states of the EEC. Thus, though it controls an executive in the Brussels Commission — an executive which, of course, is frequently rebellious, and has its own views about how the Market should develop — it can itself be the creature of the affiliated states. As such, and serving their interests, it has the advantage, in addition to the services of the Commission, that its deliberations take place in secret; a minister may say afterwards what he said at the Council, but not what any of his colleagues said. Such a practice may be proper when ministers are negotiating on behalf of their governments, but it is quite wrong when they possess as a group a collective identity and powers of decision.
It is still possible for a national parliament — say that at Westminster to overturn an EEC regulation, or compel its national government not to implement one. But by the time a decision of the Council has issued in a regulation the original matter of the debate may well be lost in the past, and the regulation itself may plausibly be presented as one part of a package so complex that it cannot by itself be overturned. Anyway, there is still no likelihood of a satisfactory method of scrutinising at Westminster the torrential flow of EEC regulations emerging from Brussels. It follows that, apart from printing the Council's debates, as one prints the debates of any assembly, outside dictatorships, there is only one principle which a national parliament can use to control what its representative at the Council of Ministers and, indeed, the Council itself, do.
The principle is to act at source on Community decisions, long before they issue in regulations. The method of operating that principle is to instruct British ministers on what they are allowed to do before they attend the Council. In effect this is what happened to Mr Peyton before he went to Brussels to debate the issue of heavy lorries: his own personal predisposition against them aside, his hands were tied by the House of Commons, acting under the stimulus of public outcry in this country. It is necessary to create such outcries before ministers depart for Europe; force them to explain to Parliament precisely , what they intend to do there and why; and use cross-examination of them in the Commons as, in effect, the second reading stage of a European Bill. By thus clearly placing the public spOtlight where it matters in the EEC — on the Council — Parliament can demonstrate to the people where responsibility within the Community lies, and exercise effective scrutiny over ministers.
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