Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-04-23-Speech-4-219"
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"en.20090423.58.4-219"2
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"Mr President, we have just voted through the funding for a vast array of Euro-agencies and quangos – the Medicines Agency, the External Borders Agency, the Aviation Safety Agency, and so on – and it seems to me that these are objectionable on three grounds. There is the Euro-sceptic argument against them, there is the legal argument against them and there is the democratic argument.
The Euro-sceptic argument I do not expect will have much traction in this House. It is the very obvious point that these things do not need to be done at Brussels level. The legal argument again I do not expect to have much traction: it is that a lot of these agencies, although they would have been given legal force by the Lisbon Treaty or European Constitution, have no proper legal base at the moment. But the democratic argument I think might have some echo of authenticity even with federalist colleagues and it is this. When a parliament like this contracts out the day-to-day administration of its policies to organisations that we barely visit, that we almost never see – we get the odd committee visit maybe once a year – and we expect them to be carrying out the policy with our signing the cheques obligingly every year, we have diminished our democracy.
Hayek said that the devolution of power to external agencies, while a regular feature, is nonetheless the first step by which a democracy surrenders its powers. Colleagues here, federalist or Euro-sceptic, should all be aware of the danger."@en1
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