Parliamentary scrutiny is a mess

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): Parliamentary scrutiny of draft European legislation and affairs in the House of Commons has always been disfigured by the partisan squabbling between 'pros' and 'antis' (let us not call them 'sceptics', that is to demean an honourable way of thinking) that has made deliberative debate and analysis all but impossible. The whole process of scrutiny in the Commons is anyway a procedural mess which makes accountability even less real than in domestic affairs. (The House of Lords performs better.) Ideally ministers should come before Commons committees in advance of going off to Europe or into intergovernmental negotiations to report to MPs and to take soundings on the position the UK should adopt - a Scandinavian process known as 'soft mandating' - rather than just reporting back retrospectively as David Miliband did yesterday in front of the European Scrutiny Committee. But after the MPs' witless and trivial display, what would be the point? The fact is that the new treaty is not a mere re-run of the Constitutional Committee, but actually builds in constructive proposals that the UK has previously suggested. It would be an abuse to subject its ratification to a referendum conducted in the near total absence of informed political debate and strident amd dishonest press hostility that is designed not to give the people a democratic choice but to wreck Britain's place in Europe.