Government must schedule debate amidst concerns from industry and unions
4 September 2014
In its report on the Ports Regulation, the European Scrutiny Committee says the Government must schedule a debate on the floor of the House next week.
Significant impacts
At the beginning of July the Committee recommended this Regulation for debate on the floor of the House. It is a measure which could have highly significant impacts on the companies and workers involved with the UK ports sector.
The Government did not accept this request, and instead scheduled a debate in European Committee. That Committee, highly unusually, adjourned without debating the document yesterday morning following points of order from Members about the Government’s decision and lack of availability of up-to-date documents (the published version of the proposal dates back to May 2013).
During the European Committee debate Members reported concerns expressed by both the ports industry and trade unions about how the proposals are developing.
Failure to schedule
The Scrutiny Committee takes the Government to task on its failure to schedule the debate in the Chamber, and reiterates the recommendation that the document be debated on the floor of the House – before the House rises for the Conference recess.
We are also concerned that certain documents which have been made available informally, and which carry a Council marking of "limité", have not been made available to the Scrutiny Committee, contrary to an undertaking in the recent Government’s response to the Committee’s report on Scrutiny Reform that it is “committed to sending significant limité documents to the Committees where they relate to documents held under scrutiny.” This was not done on this occasion.
Chair's comments
Chairman of the Committee, Sir William Cash, said:
“The Government must now back down and schedule a debate on the floor of the House about this legislation. There appears to be a rush to an agreement at the beginning of October, and we are not yet confident that the Government realises the depth and force of concern among Members of the House, the industry, and trade unions. I ask the newly appointed
Minister to think again and respond to concerns expressed across the House, and schedule the debate as we originally recommended.”