Last Wednesday I was invited by the Danish Parliament to Copenhagen to give advice to their European Affairs Committee.

The Danish Folketing's EU Committee is one of the oldest and most respected of national Parliamentary committees set up to scrutinise EU business. In my view, they are in many ways a model: Danish ministers have to appear before the Committee before they go to Brussels and outline the positions they intend to take, receiving a sort of negotiating brief from the Committee. They also have to account for their actions afterwards.

This close scrutiny and dialogue with the ministers goes beyond the largely documentary based scrutiny that some other national Parliaments use for their EU work. Not that the Danish Parliament shirks from its share of paperwork: all EU documents are sent to it for examination.

The Committee also has regular public hearings with experts and others. My own session lasted a whole morning and I was interested to see that, once the MPs had finished asking their questions, members of the public present in the gallery are invited to pose questions as well - a practice that would be inconceivable in our own dear Westminster!