eurealist.co.uk

Why do I say the EU is anti-democratic, it is worrying that so many do not know or do not care about basic democratic principals that the question could even be posed - Abraham Lincoln defined the fundamental characteristic of democratic government in his Gettysburg address;

it must be - of the people,- by the people, -for the people

The EU claims to be the last of those i.e. “for the people”, But the EU fails miserable on the first two. Even then, it is only “for the people” in a dictatorial fashion, it is for the people to fall into line with its own central socialist, secular beliefs, and if they refuse, it is for the people to be forced by the use of law to fall into line. If the EU considered the first two then there would be no choice but to accept that the third principal “for the people” would mean that the people themselves decided on the socialist or secular make up of their state. Which is a more democratic a state where the people are forced to bend the knee to secularism, or one where the people are forced to bend the knee to Christianity.

The EU is forever proclaiming it must do this for its citizens or it citizens want it to do that. It even claims it has not just a democratic mandate, but rather like those M&S adverts, it has freshly dew picked, double democratic mandate! through a Parliament representing EU citizens and a Council representing the elected governments of the Member States.

But in fact is has no democratic mandate, because in neither of these institution can the people actually change their EU government, and an election that cannot at least theoretically replace the government is not a true election. We elect our government but they do not stand on any platform that allows us dictate our wishes in relation to EU legalisation. If we vote to change our national government that does not change the government of the EU, we are only changing a constituent part of the EU Government not its policies and not its direction. The Council of the EU as a body in not accountably to anyone, the EU institution body which has the sole power to introduce legalisation and oversee the treaties is not elected. We do elect MEPs but not on any published raft of policies that they promise to fulfil, and the EU parliament although the only directly elected body has the least power of any EU intuitions.

The increasing use of international bodies and the institutionalising of decision-making of formerly domestic issues across national frontiers is inherently incompatible with the traditional framework of democratic control.

As authority is increasingly transferred from our government to the EU, the power of our executive is enhanced at the expense of our local democratic representation in the British parliament.

It has been argued in our own domestic politics that the natural position of our parliament is to be subordinate to an executive, because it is the executive which is the dominate legislator. So by extension the parliament is not loosing much by becoming subordinate to the EU, although it might be acceptable for our parliament to be subordinate to the British executive, that does not dictate that it should also be subordinate to the French or German executive, ie. replacing our executive with an EU executive is a totally different concept, for one thing our executive is a product of our parliament the French or German executive is not.

Thus increased policy making within EU institutions has allowed our national government to evade parliamentary control, at least to some extent, by claiming the collectiveness of the decisions made and costs for the country if the parliament rejects the agreement negotiated. This can be seen in some of the arguments advance for not rejecting the latest EU Treaty or the previous EU Constitution.

We will have to agree to this treaty because it is the product of several years of hard negotiations between member states, it is the best we can achieve at this time and if we reject it we will be forced out of the union into the arms of uncontrolled corporate America and costing us three million jobs.

The fact that over 200 areas our government said were unacceptability to this country when they were negotiating in the convention which produced the Constitution which is now the Lisbon Treaty, have all been included against our wishes seem no longer to be important.

We have already seen a considerable amount of the power of our nation state transferred to the EU by means of opaque and complicated legal treaties that are not easily understood, and as the House of Lords reported the relationship between the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) is of “first class constitutional importance” but the Lisbon Treaty is written in such as dense manner at to be almost impossible to decipher. The Lords also reported that the Treaty would not have any constitutional implications for UK citizenship. The fact that they also said the ECJ would be the final arbiter of the meanings of the treaty, seems not have been considered important when deciding how much it will affect us or our constitution. In reality the Lords have made a claim they cannot substantiate because they will not be the ones who will make the final decision.

What the EU fondly likes to call the democratic deficit is not merely a by-product of the transfer of powers to the EU level, but is also one of the purposes of this transfer.

When governments pool their authority in the EU arena they also increase their power in their own parliament, because they weaken the domestic political constraints.

So we have situation where our elected governments are working with others to undermine the domestic controls over themselves by creating binding intergovernmental arrangements. Which are then forced through our parliamentary system using every trick and power at the disposal of the government, aided and abetted by the EU intuitions:.

When you consider that the House of Lords expressed a wish that once the Lisbon treaty had been ratified the EU would publish the full treaty in a legal form, it puts into perspective exactly what is happening. Our Prime Minister has signed and is now forcing though our parliament a legally binding treaty that no one can judge correctly because it is written in such oblique language, and in any case the final treaty has not even been published and the even when it is, its true meaning will only become clear after it has been tested in the European Court of Justice. I would not buy a washing machine under those circumstances let alone a constitution.

The EU has no mandate from the people, but in order to integrate the impression that it has, the EU had decided that it will create a greater understanding of the EU and towards this aim it has created its own publicly accessible knowledge base, now most of the EU papers are converted into several different languages and posted on the internet.

The EU says, proudly, that democracy depends on people being able to take part in public debate. To do this, they must have access to reliable information on European issues and be able to scrutinise the policy process in its various stages.

That, one is supposed to believe is a step toward democratising the EU, in fact the EU leaders are very proud of their openness and try to equate it with the democratic process. Well in part they are right, knowledge is a requisite for democracy, it is not however, much as the EU would like us to believe, a fundamental issue. True a citizen cannot make informed political decisions without at least a vague comprehension of the way in which the political system works. And it true to say it is far harder for a system of government that hides its mechanisms of decision-making to be democratic than one that is open.

But the slight of hand being perpetrated by the EU leaders is although the EU allows for a great deal of openness, there is no mechanism for the people to express their duly informed political decisions, thus there is no democratic accountability. The EU has created one part of the equation but ignored the reason for creating the openness in the first place.

Thus the EU is showing that it is more concerned with the superficial aspects of democracy, with the impression of democracy. Such issues as openness, and discussion are important. They do not, however, address the fundamentally flawed and undemocratic structure inbuilt into the EU current system.

Technorati Tags:
EU, anti-democratic, secularism, democratic mandate, EU citizens
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

The short answer is because the Labour party would loose influence over England because they would never gain a majority in an English Parliament. And it would make Westminster even more redundant that it already is, if that were possible.

But Helen Goodman decided to opt for the longer answer in her reply to a letter posted on Little Man in a Toque

The Government does not believe that it is necessary to establish a separate ‘English’ Parliament to balance the current devolution settlements in the United Kingdom as England is already the dominant partner and English interests are fully represented.

I believe this is somewhat evading the point the UK government speaks for the people of Britain the Welsh Parliament for the Welsh, the Scottish Parliament for the Scots, and the NI Parliament for the NI, no one speaks for the English.

Of course if English interests are fully represented in the British parliament then so too are the others, but they also have totally devolved matters which they decide in their own parliaments, whereas in England those matters are not devolved. The conclusion of that argument would be to dissolve the other regional parliaments, because those interests are represented in the British Parliament.

The Government accepts that the current devolution settlement is ‘asymmetrical’, in that it provides for separate and distinct representative bodies for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but not for England. However, constitutions throughout the democratic world are similarly asymmetric, as the protections needed for minorities are not the same as those for a majority. The result of this arrangement is that there is greater ability for local decision-making and policy formulation at a localised level, hence the divergence in policy delivery across the countries.

I rather think that other constitutions are not relevant, that is a matter for them, we are interested in Britain and our constitution. Which used not to be unbalanced until the devolution process was stalled. Sorry the protections needed for minorities are not the same as for majorities? We are all British our protections are for the British. How does it protect the Scottish minority to separate their medical care from the rest of Britain? The result of this formulation is there is greater ability for local decision making except in England.

A fundamental principle of our constitution is that all MPs have equal rights in Parliament whether they represent English, Scottish or Welsh constituencies. The Government does not accept the proposal for English votes for English laws. To do so would be to create two distinct classes of MPs - those who could vote on all matters before the House, and those whose voting rights would be curtailed by virtue of constituency location. MPs play a representative role in considering legislation, considering the welfare of the UK as a whole, rather than narrow geographical interests, and it is right that all MPs continue to have equal voting rights on all matters before the UK Parliament.

But the devolution process has already broken the fundamental principal by creating two distinct classes of MPs – those that are accountable to their constituents and those who are not - in all devolved matters Scottish, Welsh and NI, MPs are not accountable to the English voters, yet they are voting on matters which do not affect their own constituents and only affect the English.

Well the last is not strictly true is it, on all devolved matter MPs are not considering the welfare of all the British but only the narrow geographical interests of the English.

The Government is also of the view that even matters which may appear confined too England may have an impact on the United Kingdom as a whole. For instance, the funding settlement with the nations and regions of the United Kingdom, means that what is decided on public funding in England affects Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We believe these are national issues for the United Kingdom and should be debated at the national Parliament by all MPs representing the United Kingdom, not by subsets depending on the location of their constituency.

But Helen Goodman also believes that subsets depending on the location of their constituency can and should debate regional issues except England.

Helen Goodman ends with - I hope this has been helpful - it certainly has Helen it helped me to understand that you are playing with words.

The Scottish dominated Labour executive has created a fission in our community.

One which it seems quite happy to accept as a basis for a constitution, an imbalance in our system that will drive a deep wedge between our countrymen, whilst at the same time creating the impetus and vehicle for further erosion of our nation state, as the Scots and the Welsh use their devolved parliaments to further the cause of their nationalism and their independence and separation.

And what of the Government’s Green Paper, The Governance of Britain - the first step in a national debate on further constitutional reform!

Oh good even further constitutional reform, as if they had not already done enough damage.

What has this Scottish dominated government got to offer England - well nothing really - a strengthening of the regionalisation process that has already been rejected as being unacceptable to the English, and further dismantling England into 9 separate regions, now where have we heard that one before.

Technorati Tags:
England. English Parliment, regionalisation, Scottish Parliment, devolution,
Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

Phillip Johnston Home Affairs Editor of the Telegraph has an article in Mondays edition on how measures of constitutional significance are handled in the British Parliament. One might wonder exactly what Mr Johnston has been doing with his time if he has only just realised the impact our membership of the EU and the way we handle its legislation in our own parliament has undermined the basic controls the MPs we elect can exert on the Government, and has freed the Executive of any accountability to Parliament, thus allowing a minister to agree to something in the EU forum which must be passed into British Law without any debate in either houses of Parliament.

Mr Johnston tells us that he is surprised to find that the only control our Parliament has over EU legislation comes from the European scrutiny committees in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and the only weapon those committees have in their armoury to stop the executive simply agreeing to anything in this country’s name is something known as a scrutiny reserve. The theory being when they are unhappy with a proposal they can require it to be debated in Parliament, even then not in the full parliament but usually in a committee. Once they have issued a scrutiny reserve the proposed directive cannot be agreed by a minister at the European Council until the reserve is lifted.

The theory in this instance Mr Johnston mentions has not worked because the House of Commons European scrutiny committee placed a scrutiny reserve on a new EU scheme under which prisoners would be transferred, without their consent, to their country of origin, and wrote to Joan Ryan, the Home Office minister responsible for European matters expressing their concern. However when the opportunity arose of a quick deal at the EU justice and home affairs council the scrutiny reserve was simply ignored and Britain signed up. A very similar thing happened when the European arrest warrant, stripped of its dual criminality protection, was agreed by Tony Blair at an EU summit despite a scrutiny reserve placed on it by the Lords.

This rather puts the argument I have been having on another forum about the power of the British Parliament into perspective. The contention is one which is often promulgated by Europhiles “Anything that is agreed in the EU (by the national government themselves) must be ratified by the national parliament,” and the very idea that “the British parliament is powerless is just another conspiracy theory” This needless to say is a an inversion of the truth as the only time our Parliament has the power of veto is on treaty change, this is the time when Primary legislation is agreed which gives the EU authority to pass secondary legislation. But once that treaty is agreed, usually on a three line whip which forces the troops into line, there is only the European scrutiny committee and their scrutiny reserve to prevent a government minister signing up to any extension in a given area.

According to an Open Europe report “the Government makes a mockery of this system by its heavy use of a loophole which allows it to “override” the scrutiny reserve. Since figures were first collected in 2001 the “override” has been used 346 times – i.e. to pass 346 pieces of key EU legislation without proper scrutiny in Parliament. 2005 saw one of the greatest ever uses of the override.

Some of the most controversial pieces of recent legislation have been exempted from any proper scrutiny in this way – including the creation of the controversial EU Arrest Warrant, and the setting up of the European Defence Agency.

While in the past the Government has claimed that the timing of legislation by other member states has made it necessary to use the override to avoid undue delay in the Council, this argument has been undermined by the Government’s extensive use of the override during its own presidency of the EU – when it itself controlled the timing of meetings and decisions. The Government used the override 22 times during its own EU Presidency in the second half of 2005.” – when it itself controlled the timing of meetings and decisions. The Government used the override 22 times during its own EU Presidency in the second half of 2005.”

Helen at Eureferndum also posts on this subject with perhaps more insight !

On this day when the Euro enthusiast are gathering to celebrate the 50th birthday of the European Project by patting themselves on the back for a job well done, whilst in the real world the real people of the European nation states have indicated in recent polls that they are not as enthused with the project as they are supposed to be. And in response to the silly 50 reasons to love the EU in the Independent this week, it occurred to me that now would be as good a time as any to post a few reasons why I oppose the EU.

1. It is undemocratic

http://www.teameurope.info/FSno1-whyundemocratic-FINAL.pdf

2. It has created a political elitist class which is increasingly insulating itself and its policies from public accountability.

3. It has removed the sovereignty of our Parliament in most areas of government power and has therefore reduced our national political debate to the few areas that are still within the remit of the people we elect, which is why the main political parties are so close on so many areas of public concern.

4. It has removed the sovereignty of British Citizens to elect and dismiss their own law makers, by passing so much power to the EU we the votes cannot choose between different policies because the political parties simply do not offer us the choice as they are bound by the EU.

5. Reduced consumer choice- with its bureaucratic mania for controlling everything it has removed choice by insisting that all products conform to it own rules. Instead of equal recognition of products to allow each state to sell into every other state the EU has defined what they may sell.

http://www.google.com/search?q=illegal+tomatoes+&hl=en&start=10&sa=N

6 Harmonisation: Reduces the available produce on the shelf- by listing only those products which may be sold and the cost of having a product enterd on the list is prohibitive. Thus we loose the richness of historic fruit and vegetable diversity and miss out on new products.

http://www.cen.eu/catweb/cwen.htm

7. Mass immigration: uncontrolled mass immigration has a detrimental effect on wages and increases the pressure on our housing transport hospitals etc.

8. REGIONALISATION: The regionalization of Britain has only taken the course it has because of EU influence trough its funding.

9. Take over of Higher education system:

SOCRATES, DELTA, REMTEX, TEMPUS and EUROCIS European Commission’s Human Capital and Mobility (HCM) programme, and funding from the Training and Mobility of Researchers (TMR) and NECTAR programmes CEMP (Creation of European Management Practice) The Jean Monnet Project CORDIS, EU-funded Academic Associations and Organisations

10. Propaganda: The EU using our money to promote its-self trying to convince us that the EU is a wonderful project to us when we do not have the choice in the first place

11. European Document Centres and high street shops in order to “promote and develop the idea of the EU as our nation state and study in the field of European Integration

12. No demos There does not exist a single group of people in respect of whom the EU could be a democracy there is not an EU wide political party, there is not an EU wide press.

13. No mandate: Even if there were or is a European demos, what is done by the Commission is not in response to any expressed or felt need of the citizens. In normal democratic politics you have occasional elections, during which time certain issues are publicly discussed. Whoever wins power has some justification for carrying out whatever programme they were proposing while trying to get elected.

14.Accounts: The EU’s accounts have not been signed off for several years by the EU s own accountants.

15. Lack of Transparency

16. ECJ partiality

The Court of Justice of the European Communities (ECJ) is not an independent court but owes a duty of loyalty to the EU Commission and has been used ion the past to extend the power of the EU beyond the agreed treaties.

17. CAP Common Agricultural Policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Agricultural_Policy

18. CFP Common Fisheries Policy and the destruction of our fishing industry http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/cfp_en.htm

19. “new approach” to technical harmonisation. I see the affect of this as totally ridiculous, My electricitian is about 55 years old has been to college to learn his trade and has kept himself up to date by studying the latest proposals yet he is forced to pay an inspector to check hi work for a period of six months so that he can continue in business, my previous electricitian decided he had enough and looked for another job.

http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2004/11/more-hidden-integration.html

20. EU Arrest Warrant; now we can be arrested in our own home by our own police at the request of a foreign court and extradited to that courts jurisdiction without any protection from our own government even for crimes which are not recognised in Britian.

21. The Euro, although we are not a member of the euro region there is an ongoing attempt to create the Euro as the currency of the whole EU, if we remain in the EU at some stage we will have to convert to the Euro.

22. The EU Constitution, Voted down by the French and Dutch yet still in the background many EU based moves to represent it, either in is its entirety or piecemeal so that we do not get the chance of referendum. The Constitution refounds the EU as an international actor in its own right with its Constitution superior to member states Constitutions and for the first time recognises in a treaty that EU Law is superior to state law. The Berlin Declaration acknowledges the intention to refund the Union and has set a deadline goal of achieving a renewed common foundation for the European Union before the 2009 elections to the European Parliament. For we know that Europe is our common future. If we do then It would be very nice to actually have a voice!

23. Its anti Christian values : There is something fundamentally wrong with an organisation purporting to be democratic, when the view of the EU Parliament is that there is no place for the basic values of millions of its citizens.

24. Socialism; Nothing wrong with socialism but it should be recognised as only one form of political thought to place it at the heart of the constitutional settlement denies other political thought.

25. The cost of membership: The E U will cost every man, woman and child in Britain £873 this year the combined direct and indirect costs in 2007 will amount to £100,000 a minute, or £52.4 billion. Britain has given nearly £200 billion to the EU since joining what was then the EEC in 1973. Even the European Commission has admitted that excessive regulation could be costing up to 12 per cent of GDP. Put it into perspective, just £1 billion will pay for 222,000 hip replacements, or 46,893 nurses, or 38,782 teachers, or 34,585 police officers.

26. ID Cards

27. EU Passports

28. Forced Citizenship of the EU

29. Trade Deficit Before joining the EU the UK had a trading surplus with other EU countries. Today we have a visible trading loss of £100,000 million. Between 1973 - 1993 EU trade registered a £70,000 million loss.

30. Directives: It took 1368 EU Directives to create the Single Market. One directive can cost Industry £1,000,000,000 (e.g. Waste Monitoring. 94/62 - official estimate!). Such EU law is uniquely, and savagely, enforced by huge new armies of UK bureaucrats. Costs and threats of criminal sanctions ruin many small to medium sized firms. For example, 400 abattoirs (half the industry total) only serving local areas, never exporting, were forced to close! In 1973 there were 343 Regulations, 143 Directives and 194 ‘Other’ EU laws. By 1996 these figures were 3070 Regulations, 2964 Directives and 8037 ‘Others’. They bypass UK Parliamentary control using Statutory Instruments and Ministerial Orders. UK Civil Servants, “translating” EU law, always make things far worse.

31. EU Law corpus Juris

32. it can’t last

http://eureferendum2.blogspot.com/2007/03/success-of-eu.html

33. It is attempting to create an armed force I do not believe such an anti democratic organisation should control military force.

34. Massive overregulation, of just about every area of life

35. There is a distinct feeling of alienation between the people and the political leaders.

36. Federalism:

37. The break up of Great Britian as a political entity and the destruction of Britian as our nation state.

38. Lies and misdirection.

39. Fundamental Rights, I do not want the EU to gift me the right to life or the right to freedom of speech etc. Which I already have, only to retain the right to remove it in the interest of the Union.

40. Life has got much worse since we joined the Union.

41. The working time directive: I do not want a Eurocrat in Brussels to dictate how many hours I choose to work.

42. Border control immigration, it is our nation state we pay the bills and we should decide who comes to live and work in our country.

43. Turning our back on our Commonwealth friends when Britian was in dire straits in the last two world wars it was people from our Commonwealth who chose to fight for us, we traded across the globe with these countries.

44. EU Embassies and diplomatic service: The EU is not a nation state it is not my nation state and I do not want it to represent me or my country abroad, I do not want to be forced to use an EU embassy and I certainly do not want to see one in London. There is no legal power for the EU to even set up this service it was one of the proposals in the Constitution which has not been ratified.

45. EU waste management:

46. Road Pricing the Galileo space programme:

47. Rapid Reaction Force: we are spending so much on preparation for this futuristic battlefield force that we have little left to correctly supply our troops for the actions they are being asked to undertake now.

48. Pushing the secular adgenda: Conflicting values, the right to religious freedoms and the right to abortion or gay marriage are contradictory principles. By choosing to promote the secular view the EU denies its own fundamental rights.

49: No perceived limits to the power of the EU: The EU continually extends its power, cooperation in one area is deemed to require cooperation in others the Monnet Method. So an open border policy will eventually lead cooperation in criminal law because we cannot prevent even know criminals from entering the country. This is calculated to eventually lead to the creation of one nation state with one central government.

50: Treason: The crime that dare not speak its name; out ministers swear allegiance to the British state not to the EU, after all we elect them and we pay them and they could not hold their positions of power without taking the oath of allegiance. They should therefore work only for the benefit of the British state and the British people. Instead they agree to proposals in the EU forum which do not benefit the British people and they agree to pass powers away from the British parliament, and allow those we have not elected and cannot dismiss to influence our nation state.

Is the SNP offering something to Scottish electors that is not within the powers of the Scottish parliament.

Rodney Brazier Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Manchester in the Times

Sir, How could the SNP, if it had power in the Scottish Parliament, legally hold a referendum on independence? Under the Scotland Act “the Union of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England” remains a matter over which the Westminster Parliament retains complete control. New legislation at Westminster would be needed to permit any such referendum. Is the SNP assuming that the Government would initiate such legislation?

RODNEY BRAZIER
Professor of Constitutional
Law, University of Manchester

Professor Brazier highlights one of the major problems with our politicians, they ignore reality when making their claims for our vote. In this case the SNP are promising something which is simply not within their remit to deliver, because in order to call a referendum they would require primary legislation in the Westminster Parliament.

As Professor Brazier has stated elsewhere “there is no formal, legal mechanism in the United Kingdom constitution which prescribes how changes may be made to the constitution.” “Ministers have the final say about whether there will be a referendum: the Government decides purely at its own discretion whether a poll should take place.” It goes without saying that British ministers are very unlikely to agree to a referendum that would put them or their party at a disadvantage.

All the SNP can legally and honestly offer the Scottish voters is if they win the election to the Scottish Parliament they will then ask the British government to arrange to pass legislation through the Westminster parliament for consent to call a referendum.

If as expected Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister he will know for certain that such a move by the Scottish Parliament would put him in a very difficult position, as he is elected to a Scottish constituency he would have no mandate in the British parliament should Scotland leave the Union. Even the negotiations leading up to independence would be problematic, because in effect he would negotiating himself and all other Scottish MPs out of a job and destroying any chance that Labour could ever rule Britian again.

The presiding officer of the Welsh assembly has said that devolution in England would help deliver a “United Kingdom in a united Europe.”

Lord Elis-Thomas said giving people in England a similar say in their domestic affairs would help achieve a more secure constitutional settlement.

“There should be a proper English parliament, and that could be arranged very easily if the Commons sat on a Tuesday or Wednesday as an English parliament.”

So we are to be allowed a proper English parliament which would sit for one day a week with dual MPs, that is English members of the British parliament also sitting as members of an English Parliament.

Lord Elis-Thomas is in line with the thinking of John Redwood who also favours a part time English parliament this from Mr Redwoods new Blog

“My view is that all of us elected to the Westminster Parliament for English constituencies should perform a dual role. We should work with colleagues from Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland on Union matters for part of the week, and for the rest of the week, the Westminster Parliament itself should be the English Parliament, where we, English representatives, settle all the matters that are devolved Scotland ourselves at Westminster, without the help or interference of our colleagues from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. The English Parliament at Westminster would therefore create a much more fair and balanced United Kingdom.”

I do not see how it can be considered in any way balanced for Scotland and Wales to each have a separate parliament with separately elected members sitting full time, yet England would only be allowed one day a week where British MP could decide on English matters.

If they want to make it balanced then both the Scottish parliament and the Welsh assembly should be dissolved and then we could all have dual role MPs and separate days for Scottish Welsh English and British business it would also have the added benefit of saving vast sums of money.

Richard Corbett up to his usual histrionic verbalistic form in his post about the affect of the new EU driving licence, which must be renewed every 10 years. nb.I do not link to Corbett because he is far to grand to  allow comments,

He complains of the Express and Mail’s predilection for publishing at face value any old garbage sent out in a press release by Europhobic Tories.

Considering these papers would probably print “Brussels bureaucrats eat babies” given the slightest chance, it came as no surprise to see them indulge Conservative MEP Philip Bradbourn by running his claims that the EU intends to force thousands of people to retake their driving tests

According to Corbett “This is of course utter rubbish.”

“The draft directive on EU driving licences provides for Member States to keep their own rules for testing drivers. There is no requirement for people to be retake their test every 10 years, only for them to update the picture on their licence once a decade (as is already a requirement in Britain now for the new plastic cards). There is a proposal that drivers with certain medical conditions (such as serious neurological diseases and some angina sufferers) should be tested every 10 years for their suitability to drive, which is something quite different from retaking their test.”

The Mail article reads “Thousands of motorists could be forced to retake their driving test and undergo medical checks to stay on the road under plans being prepared in Brussels.

The EU is proposing to tear up the rules on British driving licences so that they have to be renewed every ten years.

And drivers with common conditions from diabetes to angina could be subject to compulsory medical tests, according to a Tory analysis of the EU draft directive.”

Which seems to be the same thing Corbett is saying.

Corbett goes on

Bradbourn, the Tory transport spokesman, said: “The EU is trying to dictate to Member States what they need to do in terms of driving tests and licences.”

More nonsense - and he knows it.

Legislation that is actually wanted by every country - and has been approved by the EU Council of Ministers with ministers from every Member State - hardly amounts to “dictation”!

This is just EU spin; Corbett is not denying the truth that the EU will dictate what they need to do in terms of driving tests and licences but is claiming that we want the legislation. In Britian we already have the driving licence system which we want, if we wished to change it we could and would do so, without having to ask the EU or the ministers of 28 other countries for permission, after all that is what we elect Members of the British parliament to do. What this is about is the EU taking control of our rights to drive on our roads.

Something else that is removed from the authority of our government and the power of the voters.

I have recived a copy of an email sent to Corbett by Josephine White who said;

Copy of email just sent to the contemptible Richard Corbett MEP.

Mr Corbett,

I refer to one of your latest blog entries on the EU Driving licence directive which now means that British drivers will have to renew their licences every 10 years.
The following is taken from the Europa web site.

“In future, the validity of driving licenses will be limited. The new rules foresee a 10 year validity period for licenses, which Member States may raise to 15 years. Member States are free to organise medical examinations at the time of administrative renewal.
Following the political agreement of today, the formal adoption of the Directive by the European Parliament will be effective later this year in a second reading. Thus the Directive will enter into force by the end of 2006 and therefore be applicable at the latest at the end of 2012.”

If its not about re-taking regular driving tests to ensure our roads are free of bad drivers, ( which you say it is) then what is the point of it?

Ah…could it have something to do with little gem in the small print?

“With the specific written agreement of the holder, information which is not related to the administration of the driving licence or road safety may also be added in this space.

There could be large advantages from providing some limited flexibility in the content of the chip. Biometric information (such as fingerprint or iris recognition) on the chip would increase driving licence security. The restrictions proposed by the Commission would make it difficult to develop a business case on the basis of driving licence use only. This would not allow the full potential of the technology to be exploited; it would restrict interoperability with other smart card applications; and it would require the public to pay for several cards….

Now why would that be do you think? And who would decide what constitutes a “health problem” or what does or doesn’t constitute a risk to road safety? Ah.. that would be the EU too I expect.

Furthermore, if the re-testing of those who have a medical condition is to become mandatory, then Mr Bradbourne is perfectly correct when he says that “thousands” will have to re-take their test every decade.

I think we both know that this more to do with the forced implementation of a common EU ID card, than road safety.

Its your continual deceit I cannot abide.

JO

EUOBSERVER reports 

EU parliament MEPs have reacted furiously to a UK parliament report which questions the right of the European Parliament to make laws on criminal and police matters due to the fact that most of its members are non-British.

Which is not quite the point made by the report but this slight myth is used by Andrew Duff to introduce a xenophobic line of attack on the “European Scrutiny Committee” Duff says the report is “fairly scandalous.”

“This challenges directly and explicitly the legitimacy of the European Parliament to legislate. It is an absurd idea that the parliament would have no right to legislate because it has ‘foreigners’ in it,”

The same line is used by Richard Corbett, UK Labour MEP, called upon like-minded pro-EU members of his party to “protest” against the report by writing to the chair of the House of Commons’ European Scrutiny Committee who is also a Labour member.

“If a matter is to be decided at EU level, then the European Parliament will be involved- and of course it contains non-Brits. Similarly the British Parliament contains non-Scots,”.

The Select Committee on European Scrutiny Forty-First Report; Actually did not mention foreigners or non-British they were quite specific- the problem is that European Parliament Members do not represent and are not answerable to the electorate of the UK.

In our view, the proposal for the use of the passerelle is of constitutional importance. Decisions on, for example, what constitutes a crime, what sanctions there should be for offences, procedural rights and other matters covered by Title VI of the EU Treaty concern national sovereignty. We share the Government’s concerns about the implications of the proposal for external competence and national security and about the need for safeguards. We note with alarm that, for example, the UK might not be able to make bi-lateral agreements with third countries for the extradition of terrorists.

50. Moreover, there is the question whether it would be acceptable for the European Parliament to have the right of co-decision on measures about police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters when the most of its Members do not represent and are not answerable to the electorate of the UK.

Passerelle clause Under this, the European Council would be able to agree to abolish all that remains subject to the national veto, decreeing that it be subject instead to qualified majority voting. Neither the House of Commons nor the British people would have any say in the matter.

But Mr Duff argues that if there is a problem in resisting change to QMV in fields where, under the protocol, we anyway have the right to opt-in or out of the decisions taken.

In other words he is suggesting that we would still have a veto for Britian. He is however ignoring the report which makes it clear that the right to opt-in must be made at the start of the negotiations and there is no possibility of opting out if we are not satisfied with the directions of the negotiations.

51. We have considered whether the “opt in”, described in paragraph 7 above, might provide a sufficient safeguard if the passerelle were used. We understand that the UK would not be bound by any measure on police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters unless it expressly opted into it. There could be cases where it appeared to be in the national interest to opt into a proposal soon after the opening of negotiations on it. Subsequently, however, amendments to the proposal might be agreed by QMV which radically changed the measure and were unacceptable to the Government. There is no provision for the UK to rescind an opt-in. So, once the Government had opted-in to a measure, the UK would be bound by it as it emerged from the negotiations.

This all about the proposal by The EU Commission to transfer criminal justice and policing into the first pillar of the EU’s treaties. This would abolish the national veto and would also greatly increase the powers of both the European Commission, European Court of Justice (ECJ) and allow the European Parliament to have a voice over the UK’s criminal justice system.

“The proposal that is being discussed would give the European Commission even more power than it would have gained under the rejected EU Constitution, and would also sweep away some of the safeguards contained in the Constitution such as restrictions to act only in a limited number of serious cross border fields – not the entire sphere of criminal justice as is proposed. The ECJ would become the highest court in the UK’s criminal law system and would begin to determine the substantive criminal law for EU nations.

As the EU legislates in particular areas it gains external competence over them. This means that it begins to represent member states in international negotiations on these issues. Which would mean the UK will lose its right to negotiate bilateral extradition treaties with foreign countries as well as deportation agreements. This could make it even harder for the UK to deport or gain custody of foreign suspects in the future.

In 1997 Tony Blair promised that he would not give up the veto on crime and justice. He said: “we have agreed better arrangements for co-operation on police matters, crime and drugs. However, such co-operation will remain intergovernmental and subject to unanimity” (Hansard, 18 June 1997).

In 2003 Peter Hain repeated the same promise: “Criminal procedures go the heart of our legal systems, and this is one area where we have got to keep unanimity” (European Convention, 3 April 2003).

The Report

And the Gangplank this is an alternative name used by the Select Committee for the description of the passerelle as a “gangplank” rather than as a “bridge” - the usual EU translation.

The term “gangplank” usually refers to a temporary bridge for getting on and off a ship, but in pirate legends, the plank would be used to force victims to walk into the sea. Corbett and Duff, said “I hope this is unfortunate drafting,” noting that a gangplank “is a thing you fall off to your demise – through suicide or murder. You will die after the fall.”

The president of the Commons’ EU Scrutiny Committee, however defended the word as “quite appropriate,” saying “once you go off the end of the passerelle, you give away the power to the commission…so it is like a gangplank more than a bridge. Once you plunge off it, it is difficult to get back onto.”

Very strange polling results in the Telegraph,

“an ICM opinion poll for The Sunday Telegraph has found. Independence is backed by 52 per cent of Scots while an astonishing 59 per cent of English voters want Scotland to go it alone.”

68 percent of English voters and 58 per cent of Scottish voters support for the establishment of an English parliament with similar powers to the Scottish Parliament.

48 percent of English voters – also want complete independence for England, divorcing itself from Wales and Northern Ireland as well.

The reasons given for the support for an English parliament

60 per cent of English voters complained of higher levels of public spending per head of the population in Scotland

The West Lothian Question, 62 percent of English and 46 per cent of Scots voters are concerned about the affects of Scottish devolution on the British Parliament. “Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, said: “In England, people quite rightly resent Scottish Labour MPs bossing them about on English domestic legislation. England has as much right to self government as Scotland does.”

“In the sporting arena, 70 per cent of English people said they would support a Scottish team playing football or rugby against a nation other than England. But, when the question was put to Scots, only 48 per cent said they would back England with 34 per cent supporting their opponents, no matter which country it was.”

That last, points to what I see as strange about the results, if 48 percent of English want complete independence for England the final figures do not make sense because

“The poll showed that the English are more likely to think of themselves as British than the Scots are. Only 16 per cent of English people said they were “English, not British“, compared to 26 per cent of Scots who said they were “Scottish, not British.”

Like all polling much depends on who asks the questions, who they choose to ask, what choices are offered, and how the raw results are manipulated For instance what other constitutional arrangements were offered to the respondents. What is clear from this polling is that many people are now very concerned about the constitutional settlement of the United Kingdom after Mr Blair and his colleagues have created the problems in the first place.

A further point about polling is how the results are interpreted; the headline could have been 84 percent of English people think of themselves as British instead of England wants its independence that would put a totally different spin on the results and indicate a different preference for a constitutional settlement.

The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill completed its committee stages in the Commons last Thursday and, despite a spirited counter-offensive by Opposition MPs, remains largely intact as one of the most pernicious measures to have come before a British parliament.

The Bill would empower any minister by order to make provisions amending, repealing or replacing any legislation, primary or secondary, for any purpose, and to reform the common law to implement Law Commission recommendations.

Why is such a measure needed? The Government says a “fast-track” method of repealing laws is essential for its war on red tape. Armed with such a weapon, it can scythe through the forests of regulations, many of them planted by the very same government, and relieve the £50 billion annual burden on hundreds of thousands of hard-pressed small businesses.

The essence of the Government’s position is this. “Trust us. We may be taking extraordinary powers that could, in the wrong hands, be misused. But we wouldn’t dream of doing any such thing. This is Britain, for goodness sake.”

Indeed, the continued promulgation of Bills such as these will irrevocably change the sort of country we are because we have been defined over the centuries by the possession of parliaments that would never have countenanced such a grotesque proposal.

Technorati Tags: english-legislation, labour-party, undemocratic

The English Question
Thanks to the Blog Great Britian not Little England for the link to this report from Publius: The Journal of Federalism by Robert Hazell.

Devolution to Scotland and Wales throws up related questions about the government of
England. Does England need to find its own separate political voice? Does England too need devolution? There is little demand for an English parliament. ‘‘English votes on English laws’’ commands more support but would be impossible to implement in practice. Despite the setback of the Northeast referendum defeat, the future will see further development of regionalism in England. Regional government is the only institutional solution that could help to give England a louder voice and also help to decentralize the government of England. But it is not inevitable. There is no logic in the process of devolution that requires the English to have devolution too.

England is the gaping hole in the devolution settlement. Some argue that devolution will not be complete, and the settlement will not stabilize, until the English Question has been solved. Others believe that England can be left out indefinitely and devolution confined to the Celtic fringe. This article aims to explain the different formulations of the question and to analyse one by one the range of different answers.

The English Question can be divided into the following groups of subquestions:

1. Strengthening England’s place in the Union:
_ Does England need to find its own separate political voice, to rebalance the louder
10 political voice accorded to Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland?
_ Could this be supplied by an English parliament, ‘‘English votes on English laws,’’
independence for England?

2. Decentralizing the government of England:
_ Does England too need devolution, to break from the excessive domination of the
15 central government in London?
_ Can this best be supplied by elected regional assemblies, administrative regionalism,
city regions, stronger local government, elected mayors?

3. Continuation of the status quo:
_ Or do the English want none of the above, with no separate representation or
20 political voice, and no share in devolution either?

These questions have come onto the political agenda as a result of devolution to
Scotland and Wales. They are big issues, issues that will determine the future shape
and nature of the United Kingdom as much as the future government of England.

Devolution has already profoundly changed the United Kingdom’s system of
government, but it extends to only 15 percent of the population. England, with
85 percent of the population, for the moment is left out. If the English ever choose to opt in, the choice they make will have huge consequences not only for the government of England but for the whole future of the Union.

As devolution was a top down exercise imposed and assisted by central government, it is wrong to now look for a grass roots movement calling for the English to opt in, the English preferred the status quo that was as part of one union, this union has now been partially dismantled.

This erroneous argument is followed through into the rest of the report; Hazell, it seems is quite happy to accept the results of the governments top down forcing of the issue in Scotland and Wales, but now asks the English people to start a grass roots movement in order for the English people to exhibit a desire for devolution.

Different Versions of the English Question

Improving the Government of England or Strengthening England’s
Place in the Union? The ‘‘purely English’’ version of the English Question asks: How can we improve the government of England? Interest in regionalism as a possible solution goes back to Fawcett (1919) and Cole (1947) (Tomaney, forthcoming). It springs from long- standing concerns about the poor performance of many of England’s regions,especially in the North, and the difficulties faced by central government in finding effective policy instruments and institutions to drive up regional economic
performance. Successive governments, Labour in the 1970s and Conservative in the1980s, had given up on local government as providing the solution because of its lack of political will and lack of effective capacity. More and more functions were
transferred from local government to centrally controlled public bodies, many
operating on a larger scale at regional rather than local level. In 1994 the Conservative government led by John Major took regionalism a step further by bringing together the regional outposts of four central government departments into new government offices for the regions, with common boundaries based on the Treasury’s eight standard regions of the Northeast, Northwest, Yorkshire and Humberside, West
Midlands, East Midlands, East Anglia, Southeast, and Southwest.

English masses show little concern about devolution in Scotland and Wales and no demand for devolution for themselves (Curtice 2001, 2006, forthcoming). In November 2004 that was dramatically confirmed by the ‘‘No’’ vote in the Northeast regional referendum, when the voters in the Northeast region rejected the government’s proposals for an elected regional assembly by four to one, despite strong campaigning by the deputy prime minister in this solidly Labour region.

The rejection of the government’s proposals is not evidence that that there is little concern about the devolution process, rather it is evidence that the governments proposals for regionalisation were unacceptable.

Prof. Hazell offers us some alternative roads forward and looks at the support both in elite circles and in the general public and the likelihood that any of them may be adopted.

An English Parliament which has low support and an English parliament would risk being as overburdened as Westminster and equally remote. More on this later

English votes on English laws which has good support 60% in England and 50% in Scotland which might be because it was Conservative party policy

English independence which has negligible support. Hard to envisage England unilaterally declaring independence from rest of the United Kingdom

Decentralize government of England regional assemblies

Hazell claims this has a 25% support with the public, considering the only area that was allowed a referendum; the NE rejected the proposals by a 4/1 margin I cannot see how this figure can be supported, opinion polling perhaps, but that ignores the NE result which showed the polling to be totally out of touch with the real answer at the referendum. And a point Hazell makes later on the issue of Local mayors.

Administrative regionalism
This is regionalisation by the back door ie. Regional chambers exist, and powers and functions slowly growing and of course is Labour party policy with little public knowledge.

City regions
this has minimal support and apparently need not cover whole of England

Revive local government
Politicians all pay lip service; no party has strong proposals Public seem to share some of national politicians’ mistrust of local government competence

Elected mayors
Low. Very little support among local councillors High in opinion polls, less when tested in local referenda Might also be linked to city regions.

Having posed his questions the professor now attempts to answer them;

An English Parliament
An English parliament would appear to be a neat solution to the fundamental asymmetry in the devolution arrangements. It would create a federation of the four historic nations of the United Kingdom, each with its parliament enjoying significant devolved powers.

But it is one thing to create such a federation, quite another to make it work. The fundamental difficulty is the sheer size of England by comparison with the rest of the United Kingdom. England, with four-fifths of the population, would be hugely dominant.

On most domestic matters the English parliament would be more important than the Westminster parliament. No federation has operated successfully where one of the units is so dominant.

I find these arguments to be less than compelling, of course the English parliament would be more important on domestic issues than Westminster, that is the idea behind devolution in the first place. Is the Scottish parliament not more important than Westminster on domestic issues.

If the size issue is important and means the new federation would not work then how are we to understand the EU were Germany with 82.5 million and France with 59.9 million massively outnumber Malta with 398,534 or Cyprus with 780,133. So how is it that an English parliament would unbalance a proposed UK federation when this does not seem to matter at the EU level.

Professor Hazell does make one good point about an English Parliament here that he seems to dismiss on other points and that is; “Perhaps because of this lack of elite support, mass support for the idea of an English parliament remains low and shows no sign of increasing.” Not only is there no elite political support, but this follows through into the main stream media, there is also no coverage for an English parliament, in fact the only real coverage is for regionalisation regional assemblies.

English Votes on English Laws: Westminster as a Proxy for an English Parliament
In contrast, English votes on English laws is a proposition that does command some
elite support and considerable mass support. Polling data consistently show that
between 50 and 60 percent of people in England agree that Scottish MPs should no
longer be allowed to vote on English laws now that Scotland has its own parliament
It seems only logical and fair, since English MPs can no longer vote on matters devolved to Scotland. Even a majority of Scots support restricting the voting rights of Scottish MPs in this way (Curtice 2001, 234). But the difficulties of implementing such a policy seem insuperable, at both a technical and a political level.

Proffor Hazell says; The technical difficulty is identifying those English laws on which only English MPs would be allowed to vote Strictly speaking there is no such thing as an English law, in the sense of a Westminster statute that applies only to England.

That is a point, however it would be quite feasible to note which particular laws did not apply to Scotland because that power had been devolved to the Scotish parliament.

On the political front Hazell sees even more problems;

“Proponents of English votes on English laws tend to underestimate just what a huge change would be involved. It would create two classes of MP, ending the traditional reciprocity whereby all members can vote on all matters. It would effectively create a parliament within a parliament”

Well yes of course it would be a huge change, but then the problem has been brought about by the devolution process itself a huge change, which has created a problem in that Scottish MPs can vote on proposals which have no affect on their own constituents. So we already have two classes of MP`s those that are accountable and those that are not.

The U.K. government might not be able to command a majority for its English business, leading to great political instability.

I do not see this as a great problem if not enough English MP`s are prepared to vote for a policy that only affects England then that policy fails.

English votes on English laws would suddenly become a critical issue if (as
may happen) after a future election Labour formed a government with a narrow
majority and depended on Scottish and Welsh MPs to get its legislation through.

Well this is exactly the point is it not, if the Labour party has to rely on Scots and Welsh MP`s voting for something that does not affect them then that is also wrong.

Hazlle says that :
The Conservatives have fought two elections on a platform of English votes on English laws (in 2001 and 2005) and have tried to arouse the English. The English have failed to respond