I circulated a description of the comitology procedure to members. The nearest example in national legislation is the statutory instrument in respect of which there is a gap in terms of parliamentary scrutiny. The first page of my report provided a description of some of the background. I will take the decision on genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, as an example without giving its details. The decision followed all appropriate procedures. A series of decisions was taken and legislation was put in place outlining how GMOs should be handled and how decisions should be taken on a case by case basis for each organism as to the way in which it could be released for general use. There is a GMO procedure and what one might call the comitology procedure, according to which the GMO case was sent to a regulatory committee. The procedure is laid down in detail in another Council decision.
It is clear that in every case the appropriate legislation was followed but that does not solve the problem of how to track a particular decision. I researched whether any other parliament had a system in place to track comitology decisions and found that none did. A senior civil servant at principal officer level is given instructions based on a Government decision on how to deal with an issue as it arises. The officer takes the issue through meeting after meeting of the regulatory committee but at no stage is it possible to know when it will arise on an agenda. Very often, it is not possible to know what the particular instructions given to the civil servant were as the general legislative framework within which the decision was made was already agreed. Therefore, there is no process whereby the issue comes back to Parliament or even Cabinet.
This has been a matter of considerable concern for many years. During the last restructuring of the comitology procedure which, interestingly, was intended to make it more transparent, a role was built in for the European Parliament. A structure was put in place whereby the meetings of regulatory committees could be reported on an ongoing basis to the European Parliament. As an outsider to the European Parliament system, I could not access or track this system and it is unclear whether in the instance of GMOs that procedure was followed. I was able to track the procedure of the regulatory committee. As it could not make a decision, the matter was referred to the Agriculture and Fisheries Council in April. It is quite clear in the Council minutes that while the matter came before it, a decision was not reached. The matter returned to the Commission which made a decision according to the procedures laid down under the GMO procedure.
It would probably not be a good idea to provide for a parliamentary scrutiny role in this particular process. Where a matter is returning to the Council, six to 12 months discussion and debate will already have taken place. For national parliamentary scrutiny to take place at that stage would only be to begin the process all over again. We should consider a more sophisticated system of scrutiny which cannot be overloaded to a greater degree than it already is and which does not delay normal administrative business which must proceed. The description I have provided does not constitute in any sense a solution to the committee's problem.
