Aide to Europe minister calls for Parliament to beef up its engagement with EU

Another day, another paper by a Tory MP about Britain’s relationship with Europe. Except the latest paper, by Tobias Ellwood for think tank Open Europe, is actually not so much about what’s wrong with Europe, but about what’s wrong with how our Parliament in Westminster deals with the whole issue. Ellwood, who is PPS to Europe Minister David Lidington, doesn’t believe Westminster politicians are actually very good at engaging with European Union policymaking, preferring instead a ‘complain-but-don’t-change’ approach. He paints a discomfiting picture of the way MPs relate to Brussels, describing an alienation which leads to ‘little appetite amongst MPs to understand fully how the EU actually works – and how to use Parliamentary power to change it or its policies’. Ellwood even suspects that many MPs don’t understand what power Parliament still holds over EU legislation. His report, which you can read in full here, says:

‘We must get away from reducing every debate on EU legislation to the broken record of wrangling about our fundamental relationship with the EU – important though that debate is – and focus on the policy in question.