The Sketch: Let's agree to disagree over the lack of agreement

European Scrutiny Committee. Joan Ryan. It's never a disappointment.

In summary: the Home Secretary has considered it a matter of urgency to get certain foreign prisoner-related proposals through the EU machine. They were summarised by Bill Cash. He said it could now happen that a British national might be sentenced abroad, imprisoned and transferred to Britain to serve a sentence for something that was not a crime in this country.

There is much to say on this subject. And the European Scrutiny Committee ("jealous of its scrutiny powers", as Jim Dobbin put it) wants to hear it.

But the Home Secretary, working assiduously for agreement in the councils of Europe, has avoided presenting the matter for inspection at any time in the past three months. That's why there was sniggering when Joan Ryan said: "The Home Secretary has the highest respect for this committee and its scrutiny role."

She expressed regret, but it wasn't clear why. Lindsay Hoyle told her: "According to you, the Chief Whip's wrong, the committee's wrong, everyone's wrong except you. Why can't you just admit it, say you're sorry and we can all get on?"

But no, neither Joan nor her department had made any mistakes. Her staff needed more training, essentially. It was a time-tabling thing. Lessons would be learnt. "But if no mistakes have been made, what lessons are there to learn?" Hoyle asked.

Her defence was that no agreement had been reached even while ministers were trumpeting that agreement had been reached. "That's agreement in the normal usage of the word, not the political usage of the word," she explained. It's rarely so frankly put.

When the pressure is on it becomes clear what people are. Joan Ryan may not be stupid, but she emits stupor. She talks so drearily and at such length about the difference between "general agreement" and "general approach" that you can see people dropping off as they realise they've lost the thread. This is a very important part of political discourse. It exhausts an audience. And the person who talks the most, wins.

But actually, Michael Connarty won. He told her he had written her three letters warning her that the committee was being ignored and that its privileges were being breached: that the Chief Whip had offered the Home Office three dates in a week on the floor of the House and had turned down two of them; that the Home Office had been promoting and agreeing and driving forward these proposals without any reference to the Lords or the Commons committees who fundamentally opposed them; and that the Home Office had denied Parliament its role in this significant piece of legislation.

Ryan made one convincing point: the Cabinet Office had declared there had been no breach of the committee's scrutiny. Connarty riposted with great speed: "That's the problem: you want the executive to make rulings on an executive decision. You haven't found time to debate it and it will come back to haunt us."

I'm looking forward to it.

simoncarr@sketch.sc

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