Recommendation 80

It is not clear to us that expecting Departmental Select Committees to fulfil this task would be workable, and nor can they provide the House with a cross-cutting overview of how alignment with EU rules, and limitations on the UK’s regulatory autonomy, are developing across different areas of policy. We do not consider that the scrutiny mechanisms that exist in the House of Lords, valuable as they are, can substitute for scrutiny of EU matters, and Ministers’ decisions on alignment, by the democratically elected House of Commons. It is also clear that any scrutiny mechanism for EU matters, however operationalised, will require the Government’s cooperation to be effective. (Conclusion, Paragraph 225)