Issues in Law Making - Briefing Paper 8: Parliamentary Scrutiny of European Union Business (Mar 2006)

Alex Brazier with Declan McHugh, Ragnhild Handagard, David Bloom and Alice Casey.
available free via download

Scrutiny of European Union Business is the eighth paper in the series of briefing papers that reviewed key elements of the legislative process in the United Kingdom. It examines how Westminster considers the activities of the EU and holds UK ministers to account and analyses the strengths and weaknesses of current scrutiny arrangements. It is produced with the generous support of the Regulatory Group at the international legal services organisation DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary

This paper contrasts the UK scrutiny system with that used by other EU member States and concludes that while Westminster has a more effective system of scrutiny than exists in the national Parliaments of many other Member States, a major weakness is the failure of many parliamentarians, and particularly MPs, to engage with the process.

Some of the issues considered in the paper include the Commons and Lords European Union Select Committees; the operation of European Standing Committees; weaknesses in the scrutiny system; high profile pieces of EU legislation; European Scrutiny in the Scottish Parliament and lessons to be learned from Nordic countries.

In conjunction with this, several proposals for reform are suggested and discussed in the course of the paper:

• The European scrutiny system should be brought more obviously into the mainstream of parliamentary life - in particular by tackling the present disconnection between parliamentary committees and the Commons Chamber;
• Parliamentary Committees should engage more closely with outside interest groups and widen their evidence-base.

The issue of parliamentary scrutiny of European Union business is regarded as particularly important and is gaining increasing prominence, given the increasing impact of the European Union, which is said to now account for 50 per cent of all ‘significant' legislation enacted in the UK every year.