House of Commons
Prayers
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
European Union (Referendum) Bill
(10 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
13:21 - The House divided: - Ayes: 0 / Noes: 0 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This Bill is about choice. It is about giving the British people a choice on something that is fundamental to our constitutional arrangements and fundamental to our future. It is a straightforward and simple Bill, because the proposition of choice and democratic fairness for our people is a simple one that everyone here should be able to grasp. It is not a Bill about the future of our relationship with the European Union, and it is not a Bill about whether we should, in the long term, stay or leave the European Union. As I say, it is about giving the people of this country a choice, which is no laughing matter. That choice is important because the future of our arrangements with our neighbours require legitimacy and consent. It is some 40 years since that consent was last sought. Much has changed since, and it is fair and reasonable for people to be given that choice again.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this important Bill to the House. Does he agree that for my Harlow constituents and people across the country, this referendum Bill is all about trust? If we get this Bill through, the country will know that we mean business on the European Union and on an in/out referendum, just as people knew we meant business when we cut the EU budget, got out of the EU bail-out mechanism and vetoed an EU treaty?
Robert Neill
It is about trust—trust in this House and trust in our democratic institutions. It is also, I suggest, a time to put up or shut up. If there are people here who do not believe that the British people should be given that choice, now is the time for them to say so and to vote against the Bill.
James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)
I commend my hon. Friend’s excellent Bill and look forward to its smooth passage through the House. Does he agree that it is not just about the trust we should show in the British people by letting them decide, but about restoring trust in this place? For too long, politicians of whatever colour have come here and talked about Europe, and refused to let Britain decide. This party and my hon. Friend’s Bill will do that: it is the right thing. I wish him every success. I hope we can make progress and get it through this time, having not been able to do so last time.
Robert Neill
I am immensely grateful to my hon. Friend for those comments and for the kindness and generosity he has shown to me. It is no accident that my Bill exactly replicates the Bill he took through this House in the last Session, which was frustrated elsewhere. I am doing that deliberately so that we can return to the issue and make sure that others here and elsewhere put up or shut up, which is how trust comes about.
Trust is critical. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) and I have a further link to the EU. Both our constituencies were, at different times, represented by Harold Macmillan, the late Earl of Stockton, the person who, of course, initiated our negotiation with the European Union’s predecessor body. He described that negotiation as a
“purely economic and trading negotiation and not a political and foreign policy negotiation”.
The change to that provides yet another important reason why the British people need a fresh say.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I am puzzled by the hon. Gentleman’s assertion that this debate is not about our future relationship with the European Union. It seems to me that it certainly is. Does he accept what John Cridland said recently—that it is the settled view of British businesses that the EU
“remains fundamental to our economic future. Our membership supports jobs, drives growth and boosts our international competitiveness.”
Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that that is the settled view of British businesses on this point?
Robert Neill
No, I do not accept that proposition. What the issue is about is giving people a choice, 40 years on.
Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that those who do not wish to give the British public the vote they rightly deserve do not deserve to be honoured by the British public?
Robert Neill
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have no doubt that if there were those—either present today, or not present today—who were tempted, having not put up or shut up at today’s Second Reading, to use various Westminster village procedural games and devices to frustrate the giving of a say to the British people—[Interruption]—they would incur the opprobrium of their voters, and would do great damage—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I want to hear the hon. Gentleman, but I cannot hear him for those who are either shouting him down or cheering him on. Whichever it be, I want to hear the hon. Gentleman.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
May I support my hon. Friend’s excellent point by asking whether he has noticed that there is only one Liberal Democrat in the Chamber? I presume that the Liberal Democrats are ashamed of trying to stop the British people having a vote on this issue, and ashamed of the U-turn they have performed. They once believed in an in/out referendum, but now that there is a chance of our having one, they will not support it.
Robert Neill
I did, I must confess, find a leaflet that was issued by the leader of the Liberal Democrats before the last election. It is headed “It’s time for a real referendum on Europe”, and it begins:
“It's been over thirty years since the British people last had a vote on Britain's membership of the European Union.”
It is a bit out of date, but it is a Liberal Democrat leaflet, so we should make all due allowance for that. It ends:
“But whether you agree with Europe or not, it is vital that you and the British people have a say in a real EU referendum.”
Robert Neill
I will give way in a moment, but let me make this point first. I actually agree with that last proposition. It is time that the British people had a say, and—I say this in response to the point made by the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms)—my Bill is about giving the British people the mechanism that will enable them to have that say. It is not about the detail of what should or should not be in a negotiation; it is about providing a mechanism whereby the British people are guaranteed, in primary legislation, an opportunity to have their say.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
Will my hon. Friend give way, on that point?
John Hemming
Although, as my hon. Friend will recognise, I did back the earlier Bill—[Interruption]—I must admit that I have not been present on every single occasion, and my hon. Friend should not necessarily read into my colleagues’ absence the nature of their views.
Does my hon. Friend agree that, given that the 1688 Bill of Rights, our fundamental constitutional law, was established by popular consent and not by being imposed on people, a substantial change to that, which is implied by the use of regulation rather than directive, is something that also requires popular consent?
Robert Neill
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I would be the first to recognise his consistency on his point, and I am delighted to see him here.
At the end of the day—
Robert Neill
I will give way shortly, but I want to develop my point a little first, at least to the extent of being able to finish a sentence.
At the end of the day, government requires the consent of the people. That is the fundamental point that the hon. Gentleman has made. When there has been a step change in our relationship with the European Union, as there has been since those days of Harold Macmillan, it is right and proper to give the British people the chance to reflect and think again.
Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his Bill, and am proud to be a sponsor of it. He has mentioned Harold Macmillan. Harold Macmillan, of course, negotiated our membership of something called the European Economic Community, and that is what people voted on at the time. They thought that it was a trading arrangement, but it has morphed into the European Union, which has become a vehicle to create a United States of Europe, and that is what the people of Britain do not want.
Robert Neill
I agree with my hon. Friend. I voted in that 1975 referendum. I would like to say that I lied about my age in order to vote, but I did not. I had just started out as a young lawyer, and had just been elected a young councillor in Havering. I was at the beginning of my working life. Virtually the whole of some people’s working lives—virtually a whole generation—has gone by without anyone’s having had a say. The nature of the EU has indeed changed from that economic community—that
“purely economic and trading negotiation and not a political and foreign policy negotiation”,
as the late Lord Stockton described it—into an entirely different animal, altogether more complex and demanding in its relations with both this country and the rest of the world. That is why it is right for us to have the chance to engage in a sensible renegotiation and put the new offer that is available to the British people, so that they can decide.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman does not accept the point made earlier by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), but does he not accept that the last thing business needs at this time is a prolonged period of uncertainty? Will he explain how his proposal will help to support and create jobs in the areas such as the north-east, and, indeed, throughout the United Kingdom?
Robert Neill
The greatest threat to British business would be the return to government of the hon. Lady’s party. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] My constituency contains many business people and many people who work in the City. I would not always take the voices of the big battalions as being representative of the people who are running the firms out there in the country and the people who are on the trading floors of the City of London—the people who are bringing the wealth into this country. That is what really matters.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his Bill. His entire argument is predicated on putting trust in the great British people, and this party is willing to do that. Is it not telling that the Labour party could probably have turned up in a taxi this morning, given that so few of its members are present? Is it not obvious that they do not trust the British people to decide?
Robert Neill
It has been observed by wiser people than I that it is sometimes best not to try to fathom the unfathomable workings of providence, and the same applies to the mind of the Labour party.
It is precisely because of that step change that has taken place in our relationship with the European Union, which affects all aspects of our economic and social life, that the renewal of consent is required. My Bill has exactly the same format as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South: it proposes that the British people should be given a simple and straightforward choice in the form of an entirely comprehensible question. The one exception, which was accepted by my hon. Friend, is that my Bill includes the people of Gibraltar, because of Gibraltar’s particular status as an overseas territory which, effectively, is physically within the current European Union.
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Robert Neill
I will give way to my fellow West Ham supporter first, in a spirit of fraternal generosity.
Mike Gapes
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I look forward to both of us celebrating victory over Burnley tomorrow.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the question that would be put to the people. Will he explain why both this and last year’s Bill rejected the wording that was originally proposed by the Conservative party, and the wording that was agreed to and supported by the Electoral Commission, in favour of a different wording?
Robert Neill
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right on all matters concerning football, and—with respect—absolutely wrong about pretty much everything else. [Laughter.]
This is a straightforward and comprehensible question: should Britain be a member of the European Union? I noted what was said by the Electoral Commission. I had great respect for the commission when I was the local government Minister—it was kind enough then to give me some very useful advice, which I do not think I took, on the exact working of the council tax referendum—and it has a legitimate point of view, but the House passed the wording of my hon. Friend’s Bill overwhelmingly during the last Session. The wording is very clear, and, indeed, is remarkably similar to the wording of the Scottish referendum, which was very successful in terms of being clear and comprehensible and attracting a record turnout. I would suggest that the argument for that type of wording, and for a straight yes/no decision, has been strengthened rather than weakened by the events that have taken place since the last Session.
Sir Oliver Heald
I strongly support my hon. Friend’s Bill. It is a straightforward, simple measure which involves a simple question. Is it not the demand of the people that there should be a referendum on this issue? If this place denies people their say, we shall be seen as remote and isolated. We shall be a class apart, and that is not what this place should be. We must listen to the people.
Robert Neill
Like my hon. and learned Friend, I was first elected to Parliament after a career at the bar—the legal bar—and a career in local government, at the coalface of dealing with people’s everyday problems, and one of the things that struck me was that the risk we all have to avoid is precisely becoming part of that village mentality. It is never something we seek to do when we arrive, but, almost institutionally, that can happen. If we believe in representative democracy—as I trust everybody in this Chamber does—then one of the great challenges is to make sure there is a reality in the discussions we have here and the way we approach our decisions and a trust in the people who send us here. We do not sit here possessed of some greater wisdom—to use the French, some trahison des clercs—that enables us to ignore the views of our voters, who make the wealth that pays for us and for all Government spending. My hon. and learned Friend is entirely right in that. Legitimacy requires connection, and sometimes a bit of humility on the part of elected representatives to say, “This is an issue so fundamental that it is a matter for the British people.”
We have given referendums in a number of cases, and they are now an established fact of our constitutional scene. My constituents have had a vote on whether they should have a Mayor of London and whether there should be a different form of voting system for electing this House—I am glad to say they came to the right decision on that—and it would be pretty bizarre if they were not able to have a vote on what powers should reside in this House as opposed to residing elsewhere. I suggest this is the most obvious case for a referendum one could imagine.
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the majority of Labour voters in the country want a referendum?
Robert Neill
The hon. Lady, whom I have known for many years as a fellow London MP, is infinitely better in touch with her voters than the leadership of her party. I have to say—and I do not mean any discourtesy here—that I am rather glad she is not part of the leadership of her party, because she would be a much greater threat to us than the current leadership is. She is absolutely right. What I find, representing a London constituency, is that people often forget that Londoners, who are part of a cosmopolitan, diverse and open city, none the less believe it is time for us to look again at our relationship with our European neighbours. The hon. Lady is absolutely right; her analysis is spot-on.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree—he said this earlier—that many people say, “I might have voted for the EC, but I would not vote for this”? I think that people are entitled to say that they would like to have a vote again, because they may well have changed their opinions. They may not, but we should at least offer them the choice because what is now on the table is a very different animal.
Robert Neill
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When I voted previously, I had campaigned to stay in what was then the European Community. I think that many people who voted for membership then would say that the world is very different now, the consequences are very different, and the pressures that have been placed on British business and a raft of our institutions are entirely different, and it is fair and legitimate to ask again. The greatest danger to our long-term relationship with the EU and to long-term business investment would be if we were in a construct that did not preserve our fundamental interests—the fundamental interests of our businesses and, for example, of London as the great world financial pole—and that did not preserve our right to develop our trade links with developing markets in China, India and Brazil, areas where, interestingly, the EU has singularly failed, as yet, to establish proper free-trading agreements. If we did not have a situation recognising the particular circumstances of the UK—rather than pretending all is happy and well in the garden—that would damage long-term legitimacy and would damage business investment and confidence over the long term.
Robert Neill
I will take a couple more interventions, but I will not be able to accommodate everybody wishing to intervene. I give way to the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex).
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Gentleman spoke about the way he voted in the previous referendum. Judging from what he has just said to the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), is he now saying he would vote against the UK being a member of the EU were this referendum to happen?
Robert Neill
The hon. Gentleman was not listening to what I said. This is not about the outcome of the negotiations. The point I am making has been well echoed on the Conservative Benches: because the nature of the organisation and our relationship with it has changed, it is right that we look afresh and the British people have the opportunity to vote on that. That is why the Prime Minister is absolutely right to say—
Robert Neill
I am not going to take a vast number of further interventions, because if I do we will have a long, disjointed conversation, and other Members may wish to get in and make their own speeches.
I just wanted to make this point. If we do not recognise the reality of change on the ground, we lose credibility and we do not do any good. I am prepared to trust the Prime Minister to do his level best for the United Kingdom in the renegotiation. That is the place at which we address the details of what may have changed and what we need to take our relationship forward, but ultimately it is not, and should not be, the Prime Minister’s decision, my decision, or the House’s decision; it should ultimately be the decision of the British people.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
My hon. Friend has spoken about how people may have changed their minds since the last referendum, but does he agree that there are literally tens of millions of Britons like myself who were too young to vote in 1975 and who have never been able to cast their vote on this issue?
Robert Neill
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding me of my advanced age; he has worn much better than I have in any event. He is entirely right: there is a whole raft of people out there, who may have raised families and who have to live with the consequences of where we currently are, and who have never had a say. That is ludicrous. I was talking to some of my step-nieces and nephews. They have got kids of their own now. They never had a chance to have a say. That is not sustainable. There are businesses and firms that are up and running now and are major components of the UK economy, yet their founders and the people who lead those companies never had a say. It is time to look afresh.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
My hon. Friend is correctly reminding everyone that only the Conservatives are willing and able to deliver a referendum. May I bring him back to the central issue of choice? What does it say about the leadership of the Labour and Liberal parties that they are unwilling to trust the British electorate on this point of seminal importance?
Robert Neill
A lesson I have learned, not just from my time in this House but also from my professional and earlier political life, is that if we treat people with contempt, they will treat us with contempt, and that is the risk that the Opposition run with their attitude. That is why the playing of Westminster games brings this House into disrepute.
As this is a straightforward Bill which has been rehearsed before and debated by this House before, let me just say that I believe we need to restate that we do have faith in the British people and that we should give them, entrenched in law, a piece of primary legislation that says, “In 2017 there will be a referendum.”
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Robert Neill
I am sorry, but I am not going to take any more interventions.
That is also why we should say to those who do not have the courage to stand up and say no today, “Don’t seek to frustrate this by devious procedural means, and instead see if you have the courage to go to the British electorate and say, ‘If by mishap or some fluke of mathematical calculation we come into government, we will take away from you this choice that this House has given you,’” because that is the logical position the Labour party has put itself in.
That is why it is important that this House passes this Bill today and sets in law the opportunity for the British people to have that choice, and that is why I commend the Bill to the House.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I ask Members to bear in mind that many Members wish to catch the eye of the Chair. I call Kate Hoey.
Kate Hoey
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. That was unexpected. I do not usually get called first, but of course not many of my party colleagues are present today, which is unfortunate.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) on bringing this Bill forward. It is a pity that we have had to introduce it again, because it went through this House very clearly before and I am afraid that the public do not understand the intricacies of parliamentary procedure that allowed it not to complete its passage. I hope that this time, whatever the views in all parts of the House on the issue, we will allow the Bill to reach its final stages, because this is a question of trust and of the public, who are already alienated from politics and politicians, seeing how we behave in this House today.
I looked back over what I said in the previous referendum debate and I do not have a huge amount to add. I do not understand how anyone can make a reasoned case for not supporting the Bill, including on Second Reading today.
Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)
Interestingly, the Deputy Speaker gave the hon. Lady the honour of making the second speech today, which just shows the high esteem in which she is held in this Chamber and outside. Does she agree that the fundamental issue is that we should trust the people? It is beyond me why certain political parties just do not grasp that fact.
Kate Hoey
I, too, think it is a question of trust. We know how all the parties have let the public down on promises made in the past about referendums on Europe. I always feel confident that when I am in a minority among my Labour colleagues on this referendum Bill, although some are here supporting it, I am not in a minority among Labour voters in the country. I am very confident that my party will have a change of mind on this issue, even between now and the general election. I think that the Liberal Democrats, who usually change back and forward—[Interruption.] I have the greatest respect for the Liberal Democrat Member who is here, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), although I do not think he is formally representing them. If he is, I am sure he will have a different view on this. It is important that the public feel we are really listening to them.
John Hemming
I just make the point that I have been very consistent on this issue.
Kate Hoey
I was about to say that I do not want my party to be the only one going into a general election not supporting a referendum, and I feel that the Liberal Democrats will definitely have this measure in their manifesto, too. I am not a friend of the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) as such, but I imagine that it will be in their manifesto. The Labour party could be the only party going into the election not supporting it, and that would be very wrong indeed.
I wish briefly to discuss some of the issues that will arise if the negotiation happens. I am a bit of a cynic about these negotiations, because I do not feel we will be able to negotiate very much, as the establishment within the European Union does not want the changes that we wish to see. If we end up still part of the agricultural policy and the fisheries policy, and if we still pay billions of pounds into the European Union and get a small amount back, I cannot see that the negotiations will have succeeded in doing anything other than tinker around in a few places, so that somebody can come back from Europe and say that this has been a success.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is far too young to remember the 1975 referendum, but I recall it well. We did have a negotiation then, but can anyone in this Chamber remind me of what the difference was after the referendum, following those negotiations?
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady agree that the lesson from Scotland is that the threat of a referendum can result in you getting quite a lot of what you want?
Kate Hoey
Yes, indeed. I was going to mention that, because I feel strongly that if we go in to negotiate, we have to be clear what the ultimate end is. By that, I mean what we will do if we do not get what we want. We cannot go into negotiations without it being very clear that if we do not get what we want, we will be prepared to leave the European Union; that is the right approach to take.
As the hon. Gentleman mentioned it, I should like to discuss Scotland a little further. Some people say that it is not the right time for a referendum, that a referendum is a diversion, it is not going to be good for business, and it will create anxiety and too much hassle, but I say let us just look at what happened in Scotland. Whatever someone thought about the final decision and whether they supported it—I was delighted that Scotland voted to stay part of the United Kingdom, but this applies even to those people who were on the other side—everyone accepts that there was a huge uprising in public interest in an issue. Real debate and discussion took place, and there was a feeling that, at last, ordinary men and women were able to come out and talk at public meetings and discuss things, even out in markets and on the streets. That had a hugely galvanising effect, and I think it will have a galvanising effect in the general election in May in Scotland and there will be an even bigger turnout than usual.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Is not one of the differences that in Scotland the issue was absolutely clear-cut and people had a lot of time to work out what they were voting on, whereas here the issue is not clear-cut? Some of the Labour voters to whom my hon. Friend referred may want a simple in/out referendum, others may want a referendum depending on the outcome of the negotiations, and some may not know what the negotiations are for. Surely this is much more complicated.
Kate Hoey
I thank my hon. Friend for that, but I think the people of this country have had 40 years to think about how they see the European Union. Let us remember that this Bill is not about whether we are for or against the EU; it is about giving the people the choice. This is the point that the Labour Front-Bench team needs to answer. If this Bill goes through Parliament, the referendum would not happen until 2017; I think it should come a lot earlier. I am concerned that Labour Front-Benchers are not able to say that we will support a referendum.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
I thank the hon. Lady for her remarks, and I think Conservative Members agree with everything she is saying. We are pleased that Gibraltar is going to be given the right to vote, but does she agree that those in the armed services, who are scattered around the world, should be given the right to vote in a special way? They cannot vote if they are not in the United Kingdom, so it is important that they get a direct way of voting. Does she also agree that EU citizens who are not British should not be voting?
Kate Hoey
A lot of technicalities have to be worked out, which is why it would be important to start planning as soon as possible for a referendum and why it is important that the Bill goes through. I would probably agree on both of the points the hon. Gentleman raised, but they can be further discussed.
Kate Hoey
I had better get on, because I know that a lot of people wish to speak. I might give way once or twice more, but I have not got a lot more to say.
I have just received a letter, dated 13 October, from the Minister of State, Department for Transport, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) about the proposed ports services regulation. This measure has emerged since the last vote we had on the referendum and it is a classic example of how the European Union creeps further and further into all parts of our life; when people voted 40 years ago nobody thought they were going to be voting for this to happen. I am sure that he and our officials have done their best in negotiating to try to get the regulation changed as much as possible. Indeed, the letter says:
“The Government has therefore worked hard to ensure that the text of the draft Regulation was crafted to protect UK interests.”
That follows on from saying that we were against it. I believe there was unanimity on that; among a lot of trade unions and across all parties it was seen that this was not in our interest. The letter states that we did not see any merit in regulation but we knew that
“legislation was sure to proceed in some form with majority support.”
So here we are, sitting in the British Parliament, supposedly making our own laws, yet time after time we find that things come through that we have no say in changing. We might alter one or two words, and we might be able to come back saying, “This is a little better than it was,” but fundamentally if we want to regulate our ports, we should be deciding it, not the European Union and the Commission.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
As a Member of Parliament who represents a port, I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. This is an example of how the single market is used as an all-enveloping pretext for Community action at Community level, whatever is the case, even though it is very difficult to argue that there is a single market between the ports of Harwich and Felixstowe and those of Marseilles or Piraeus, which is the basic premise of the argument behind the directive.
Kate Hoey
I am sure that all hon. Members could come up with different scenarios, but the fundamental principle is that we are losing control of our own country and of what we want to do in our own country. It is very simple and I genuinely cannot understand why people cannot see that we are losing control of what we want to do here. Of course, we want to co-operate with other European countries. I want to co-operate with all sorts of countries. I would like to see our Commonwealth countries much more involved in what we are doing, as we have treated them scandalously over the years. That is why, if there were a referendum and if we chose to leave the European Union, I would feel quite confident about this country. I want to get our confidence back. I do not want this doom-ridden approach that suggests we have to be part of the European Union because we are only a country and we need it desperately. It needs us, too, and I have confidence that if we were to leave the European Union we would be quite capable of having a prosperous future.
Kelvin Hopkins
My hon. Friend makes a good point. The European Union needs us much more than we need it. Our trade balance shows a gigantic trade deficit with the European Union. We effectively export 1 million jobs because of the £1 billion a week deficit we have with the rest of the European Union. That is the reality.
Kate Hoey
Yes, that is the reality and that is what we need to get across. The media must be much more unbiased in their reaction to the European Union. Some of us have spent some time meeting up with the BBC to try to get it to have a much better attitude towards the European Union, because it seems to take the attitude that anyone who speaks out in any way that is critical of the European Union is somehow swivel-eyed—I think that is the word that is usually used. If we have this referendum, the BBC must be clear that it is completely unbiased and will give fair representation to both sides.
I find it very strange that Labour has a policy that if anything extra goes to Europe we would have a referendum. That seems to me to be a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Of course, I supported the policy when it went through and it is good that we got it. At least something changed about our relationship with the European Union, but there are still things happening at this minute. It comes in little bits—drip, drip, drip—and there is no one big thing that can lead us to say, “Ah, we need a referendum on that.” It is a slippery slope, and the process is getting faster every week.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
That is the million dollar question. We all admire the hon. Lady for her courage and her clear exposition of why we need a referendum, but the question that I think many people will be asking is why, in her opinion, her leadership is not doing the obvious, logical, clear and democratic thing and offering a referendum to the British people by a set date. Is it because they fear the result? What is the reason?
Kate Hoey
I generally do not know the answer. Perhaps we will hear it from those on the Front Bench today, but the reality is that if we had that referendum I would not fear the result. I have confidence in the British people and would accept the result, whichever way it went. What is not acceptable to me is that we have had so many changes to what people originally voted for in which none of us have had a say—we can go through the list. The people of this country did not vote to have unlimited access for those from every European Union country to come to our country. They did not vote for many of the things that are happening, and that is why it is such a basic point that we need a referendum.
On the subject of the European Court of Justice, I was once a Home Office Minister and I went to Europe many times for work in that area. We had a say then and were able to stop things. Now we cannot, because of how it works and the majority position that has to be taken. I would be very concerned, given that we had the chance to opt out of the 35 EU police and criminal justice measures, if the current Government opted back in. That would be a retrograde step. I do not accept the argument about the arrest warrant. In one or two cases, it has been very helpful, but I see no reason why, living as we do with our neighbours, we could not have agreements with individual countries to get people back when we need to. Some of the terrible cases that have happened show the power of the European arrest warrant and once the process has started, no one can really stop it. We saw that recently in the terrible case involving the young baby. It would be shocking, given that this is a Government who are meant to be Eurosceptic or Euro-realist, if they were to opt back in in a few weeks. Our criminal justice system would then for ever be part of this European way of doing things, which is not the British way of doing things.
I want to end by appealing to my own party, though there are not many of them in the Chamber to appeal to—[Interruption.] It is about quality, of course, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) says from the Front Bench. I have great respect for him. I assume that the position today will be that my party will abstain. Abstaining is not to me a good way of dealing with controversial issues and I am disappointed that the official line will be to abstain. Of course, a few of us will vote for the Bill, as we have before, but I want to put out a warning that although when we talk to people this issue might not immediately rear its head, when we talk to them about the European Union the one thing they will say is that they have not been listened to and that they have never been listened to. They want to be listened to and that is why this referendum Bill is crucial if we are serious about bringing about a bit more trust between the public and politicians. I hope that it will get the support of the House.
Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I want to raise that rare thing, a genuine point of order. In his opening remarks, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) suggested that there might be attempts to frustrate the progress of the Bill through the House. One of those ways would be to prolong the debate on the Bill that is currently at the front of the queue in Committee. Will you confirm to me, as a member of the Speaker’s Panel of Chairs—I suspect that a nod from the Clerks will help—that it is in fact perfectly possible, should we choose to do so, for this House to set up a second Committee to consider the Bill?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
As the hon. Gentleman knows, as a long-standing Member of this House, the answer is yes.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Philip Hammond)
It is a genuine pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), who gave a rare but most welcome dose of common sense from the Opposition Benches on the subject. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) on his speech, on the powerful argument he has made for the Bill and, in particular, on his principled defence of the British people’s right to decide on their future in Europe. We are all grateful to him for taking up the noble cause of getting a referendum on Europe in the next Parliament on to the statute book before the general election.
The hon. Lady speculated in the closing moments of her speech on the Labour party’s tactics on this Bill. Perhaps the Opposition do not know, or perhaps she is just not on the mailing list for such sensitive information. I hope that later the shadow Foreign Secretary will enlighten the House on the Opposition’s precise position. I should make it clear that in making the case for this Bill I am doing so not on behalf of the coalition but as a Conservative. I shall say something about the position of my Liberal Democrat colleagues—although not of the one Liberal Democrat who is in the chamber.
Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Can you guide me on this? Is it not the procedure of this House that whoever speaks from the Government Dispatch Box speaks on behalf of the Government?
Mr Deputy Speaker
The Foreign Secretary is speaking as Foreign Secretary today, and is at the Dispatch Box doing so.
Mr Hammond
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I shall say something in a moment about the position of my Liberal Democrat colleagues.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I am grateful that the Foreign Secretary is speaking as a Conservative today, as he always does, but is not the problem that all hon. Members know that this is a very good Bill but that it has no chance of getting on to the statute book because of the parliamentary timetable? Surely the Government should introduce this as a Government Bill, and if the Liberal Democrats want to walk out of the Government, let them do so.
Mr Hammond
I do not accept my hon. Friend’s premise. We have to give the Bill everything we have to get it through Parliament and on to the statute book, using all the devices and wisdom available to us to make sure that we do so, and as the British people would expect us to do. My hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) has already suggested a technique to us this morning.
The case for the Bill is simple. It is right that the British people should make the decision on whether the United Kingdom stays in the European Union or leaves altogether, just as it was right that the Scottish people made the decision about their future in the UK. Every poll shows that whatever their view on the answer to that question, the overwhelming majority want the right to decide. In the 41 years since the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community, and in the 39 years since we last had a referendum on Europe, the EU has changed profoundly. It has grown enormously in its power and its reach. It has grown in its competences, its legislation has spread, and the role of the European Parliament has increased almost beyond recognition at the expense of the other European institutions. It has morphed from a common market into a putative superstate. Put plainly, Europe today is very different from the Europe that people voted for in 1975, yet the British people have never been asked whether they agreed with any of these changes. So it should be no surprise to us that democratic support for the EU is fragile, to put it diplomatically. Ever-closer union has led to ever-greater disillusion.
Mark Lazarowicz
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Scottish referendum. The difference there of course was that the Scottish Government, the majority party, came to power on a manifesto promise of a referendum. I have just checked the Conservative party manifesto for the last general election and the Conservative party policy was not for an in/out referendum; it was for a referendum if further powers were transferred. So apart from some of his colleagues who may have made individual promises, he has no mandate for this policy. He should put it to the public at the next election, but he has no mandate to bring this forward based on his manifesto.
Mr Hammond
The House of Commons will deliver a mandate for a referendum that empowers the people of this country to have their say.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is ironic that already under this Government we have had a referendum in Wales about further powers, as well as the referendum in Scotland, but when it comes to these international matters that affect the whole of the United Kingdom and British citizens beyond our shores, we have yet to give the people the choice? Is it not absolutely right that we should press on with this? If the House had a sense of fairness it would pass the Bill in short order.
Mr Hammond
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. The future of our relationship with the European Union is surely the most important strategic question facing this country today, and it is a question on which we should trust the instincts of the British people.
We should never forget, nor allow the public to forget, the particular responsibilities of the Labour party in all this. The treaties of Amsterdam and Nice had at least appeared in its manifestos before they were ratified without a referendum, but the Lisbon treaty appeared in no manifesto and was pushed through without the British public ever being allowed to have any say on it at all. Under the Labour Government’s 13 years of misgovernment, as well as letting spending, borrowing and immigration rip, their incompetent mishandling of Britain’s relationship with Europe decisively alienated the British people from the European project that they so cherish. Who, uniquely, among the large countries of Europe, failed to apply any kind of control over migration from the accession countries? Labour. Who signed Britain up for eurozone bail-outs? Labour. Who gave away £7 billion of our rebate with nothing in return? Labour. And who was the Europe Minister responsible at the time? The shadow Foreign Secretary.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
The last Foreign Secretary would not publish a detailed agenda for EU reform. Will this Foreign Secretary do so?
Mr Hammond
The Prime Minister has set out clearly our agenda for EU reform. I am now touring the capitals of Europe, talking to colleagues across the European Union, explaining Britain’s position, hearing their positions, understanding how the ground lies ahead of what will be a great negotiation, starting next summer.
Mr Hammond
I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman, who defeated me in my first ever attempt at public office.
Stephen Timms
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for reminding the House of that occasion. Does he accept, as the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) in moving the Bill did not, that the director-general of the CBI is speaking for British business as a whole when he says that membership of the European Union is fundamental to our economic future?
Mr Hammond
What business needs more than anything is certainty. So long as we do not allow the British people to have their say, we face continued uncertainty around this question. We need to settle this once and for all for the sake of Britain. Once it is settled, we can get on with our business.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
Businesses in Rossendale and Darwen say to me that the Scottish referendum showed us that having a decisive choice, where the people are able to speak, will put the question of our membership of the European Union to bed for a generation. Because of the result of that referendum, no business in Scotland is now concerned about leaving that country.
Mr Hammond
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw the analogy with Scotland. Settling the issue is good for business and it needs to be done by letting the British people have their say.
Mike Gapes
The right hon. Gentleman’s Government, not just the Conservative party, but also the Liberal Democrats, agreed to allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote in the referendum in Scotland. Why does the Bill not give the same democratic right to 16 and 17-year-olds in an EU referendum?
Mr Hammond
It is very clear what the Bill provides. It will be the general election franchise that applies. That is the right franchise to use for a referendum of the whole of the United Kingdom.
There are some, on both sides of the House, who may want Britain to leave the European Union come what may. They are entitled to that view, but it is not one that I share. There are others, mainly on the Opposition Benches and the Liberal Democrat party, who want to stay in the EU come what may. They are entitled to their view, but it is also not one that I share. No change is not an option. The status quo in Europe is not in Britain’s interests, or in the interests of anyone in Europe. So what most of us want to see is a radically reformed Europe; a Europe where powers flow from Brussels back to the nations, not the other way round; a Europe of co-operating nations, not a European superstate; a Europe of open markets and free trade arrangements with the world beyond; a Europe that can out-compete the best in the world, without red tape and regulation weighing it down. But most of all we want to see a Europe on which the British people have had their say. Whether we think that the European Union is perfection beyond improvement, like Labour, or irredeemably flawed, like a few of my hon. Friends, or, indeed, capable of the substantive reform that most of us on the Conservative Benches seek, we should all be able to agree that, after all the reform and renegotiation, after everyone has had their say, the ultimate decision on whether to go or whether to stay should rest with the British people.
Sir Edward Leigh
I agree with everything that the Foreign Secretary is saying on this point of renegotiation. Surely in Europe, particularly in Germany, they are so desperate that we stay in—quite rightly—that we can have a substantial renegotiation, and in particular we can reclaim control of our borders.
Mr Hammond
That is exactly the message I get as I travel around Europe. Germans, Dutch, Swedes and others understand Britain’s critical role as a balancing weight in the complex structure that is the European Union. They understand that, without Britain, the European Union would change fundamentally, and in a way that would be fundamentally inimical to their national interests. So we can have this negotiation. I am confident that we will be able to have a serious and proper discussion with our European colleagues.
The key point is that, on the basis of my hon. Friend’s Bill, when we have completed the negotiations and brought back the result, the question will not be whether Parliament thinks that the outcome is good enough, but whether the British people do. That will be good not only for our democracy, but for our negotiating position, because our partners in Europe will know that they cannot do deals with politicians in smoke-filled rooms; they will have to come up with something meaty and substantial that will work for the British people.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is being generous with his time. Does he agree that my generation has never had a say on whether we should be in the EU? My constituents would wholeheartedly endorse what the Government are trying to do.
Mr Hammond
I absolutely agree. I am only just old enough to have voted in the last referendum on the European Union—my first ever vote. There is a whole generation of people who have never been consulted on this question and who are entitled to have their say.
We should all be able to agree on this question, not least because that is the agreed position of this House in this Parliament, because the Bill we are debating today is, of course, the same as the one introduced in the previous Session by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) and passed unopposed on Third Reading. We are left wondering why it enjoyed such apparent acquiescence from Labour and the Liberal Democrats in this House, only for them to block it in the other place by denying it time for debate. The question is why Labour and the Lib Dems do not trust the British people to have their say on Europe. If Labour and the Lib Dems do not trust the voters, the voters should not trust them.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
I understand what the right hon. Gentleman is saying about listening to the British people, but does he understand that if the British people are to speak with clarity of voice, they need the clarity of choice of the Prime Minister’s red lines, and those have not been revealed? Until they are, how can that possibly be the case?
Mr Hammond
The clarity of choice they will have in 2017 is a clear body of reform on the table. They will know what the future European Union will look like and will decide whether or not they wish to be in it.
Mrs Gillan
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for being so generous in giving way. Unlike some of the younger Members of the House, I am old enough to have voted in the last European referendum—[Interruption.] Unbelievable, I know. For me, the European Union has changed fundamentally since I voted for us to join that institution. However, my constituents in Chesham and Amersham often ask me whether I am confident that the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Government will have completed those renegotiations by 2017. Would he like to confirm that now so that we know that when we go into the referendum we will definitely have a full agenda for reform on which to vote?
Mr Hammond
My right hon. Friend is exactly right to ask that question. Of course, the fact of the referendum—the fact of this Bill—will drive the timetable of that agenda in Europe. We are lighting a fire under the European Union by this piece of legislation. We are setting off a process that politicians and Governments do not have the power to stop, and that will give us a very powerful weapon in our armoury.
Mr Hammond
I will make a little progress before giving way again.
Every time we have this debate, Labour and Lib Dem Front Benchers simply prove our point, as they are doing today: the one party that can and will deliver a referendum on Europe is the Conservative party. I have to tell them that, as a Conservative, I am very happy to go to the country next year with that message, but I would still prefer, in the national interest and in the interests of our democracy, to move to a referendum as a matter of national consensus.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that this morning we have heard a series of obfuscatory remarks from Opposition Members that have nothing to do with the Bill under discussion? That poses the very simple question of whether we should have a referendum and let the people of this country decide. Why does he think Labour Members are so frightened of letting the British people decide?
Mr Hammond
I have to say, in all candour, that I do not know why Labour Members are so frightened, but I think that my hon. Friend is absolutely right. The reason they are talking about everything else they can think of is that it is deeply embarrassing for the people’s party to have to acknowledge publicly that it does not trust the people. That is the essence of what we are hearing today.
Robert Halfon
Further to that last intervention, the Labour party claims to represent the workers, yet the EU has had a hugely negative impact on the jobs and wages of British workers. Why will the Labour party not give workers a say in an in/out referendum on the EU?
Mr Hammond
That is a question that the shadow Foreign Secretary is infinitely better qualified to answer than I am, and no doubt he will deal with it when he gives the House the benefit of his remarks.
Mr Hammond
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, who has been incredibly patient.
Richard Burden
The Foreign Secretary said that he has been going around Europe, talking with other partners and setting out his objectives for reform, but he has not yet told the House what criteria he would use to judge whether the resulting package of reforms will be enough for him to recommend yes or no. Will he please now clarify that point?
Mr Hammond
The hon. Gentleman is wilfully missing the point. I do not have to make that judgment, and neither does this House; it is the British people who will decide once they have looked at what is on offer on the table.
I would rather move forward to a referendum as a matter of national consensus, because I think that would be good for our democracy, so I have to say to my absent Liberal Democrat colleagues—I exclude my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), who is present—that they need to be consistent in their policy on Europe. They wanted an in/out referendum on the transfer of powers in the Lisbon treaty, and that is what we are offering, so they should vote for it. For the sake of our democracy and their own reputation with the British public, they should support the Bill, give it coalition backing and get it on to the statute book before the general election.
To the Labour party, I say that if ever we wanted a perfect illustration of the Leader of the Opposition’s utter inability to make up his mind one way or another, his European policy is it. It has not been easy for him, because he has been advised that he should hold a referendum, that he should not hold one, that he should make up his mind, and then that it would be better if he did not make up his mind, so he dithered. Now, 14 months after he responded to the Prime Minister’s Bloomberg speech by telling the House emphatically that
“we do not want an in/out referendum”—[Official Report, 23 January 2013; Vol. 557, c. 305.],
he unveils Labour’s new position—perhaps he got a phone call from someone—which is, as I understand it, that they would have an in/out referendum only if new powers were transferred from Britain to Brussels, a situation that the shadow Foreign Secretary has described as “frankly unlikely”, and one that could arise only if the Government agreed to a transfer of powers. In short, he is saying that he would be willing to agree to an in/out referendum in principle, so long as it would never happen in practice.
Just to make sure that people heard what the Leader of the Opposition wanted them to hear, his team spun the message, so readers of the Daily Mirror read that Labour was going to have a referendum, and on the same day readers of The Independent read that it was not. No amount of spin can conceal the reality of his position: no say on Europe under Labour.
Mr Hammond
The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly legitimate point. Many countries in the European Union are concerned about treaty change because of the implications for their domestic politics, but the EU may have to embrace treaty change anyway. The EU has to deal with the ongoing crisis in the eurozone, which will require structural change to resolve it. He wants to believe that there cannot be treaty change, but given the structural flaws in the eurozone and what will be needed to resolve them, the European Union may get treaty change sooner than it thinks and whether it likes it or not.
Mr Jenkin
My right hon. Friend is being very generous to Her Majesty’s official Opposition in saying that they do not believe that treaty change is obtainable. I think he is misinterpreting their motives. I think they like the European Union the way it is and the way it is going. Funnily enough, that is creating high unemployment and global financial instability, but they have no intention of changing it because they do not want to change it.
Mr Hammond
My hon. Friend is exactly right. They think there is nothing wrong with the status quo. Three years ago, the Leader of the Opposition told the BBC’s “Politics Show”:
“no, I don’t think Brussels has got too much power”.
That is his position. By contrast, the Conservative party has a simple plan for Europe: reform, renegotiation, referendum. It is a plan that we are pursuing with the same single-minded determination as our long-term economic plan. After Labour’s 13 years of failure, it is a plan that is already delivering results. Where Labour signed us up to eurozone bail-outs, we got Britain out. Where Labour gave away £7 billion of the rebate, we cut the EU budget for the first time ever. We have agreed new free trade deals and made a start on cutting EU red tape. We have won fundamental reform of the common fisheries policy, for which I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson), my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), and the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice). We have even got every country in the EU to accept not only that we are no longer in a one-speed Europe but that we are no longer all committed to going to the same destination. The June 2014 European Council conclusions were the beginning of the end of ever-closer union for the United Kingdom. Those are important achievements, but there is much more to do. The world is changing around the EU, and the status quo is no longer an option. Maintaining competitiveness demands reform. Fixing the eurozone demands reform. Restoring accountability to a disillusioned electorate demands reform. The penny is finally beginning to drop across Europe. Reform and change there will be.
The Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst says that when that process is completed, it will be the British people who judge whether the reforms represent the substantial and irreversible change that I judge they will need to see if they are to decide that Britain’s future lies inside the European Union. The Bill will ensure that that decision is made not by eurocrats in expense account Brussels restaurants, not by Ministers in late-night Council sessions, and not even by parliamentarians in this Chamber, but by the common sense of the British people. That is how it should be, that is what the Bill will ensure, that is what this House agreed to when it passed the same Bill last year undivided, and that is why this Bill merits the support of the whole House today.
Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) on achieving third place in the ballot and on introducing this Bill to the Chamber again.
Labour believes that any judgment about a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union has to be based on what is in the national interest. We do not believe that a Bill calling for an in/out referendum in 2017 on an arbitrary date unrelated to the likely timetable of major treaty change, putting jobs and investment in Britain at risk, is in our national interest. That is why Labour does not support this Bill. Instead, Labour will legislate in government for a lock that guarantees that there cannot be any transfer of powers from Britain to the European Union without an in/out referendum.
The promoter of the Bill answered the question from the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) by saying that the Bill is about trust. Let us deal with that issue directly. This Bill has not been brought before the House because the Prime Minister suddenly woke up with a democratic impulse or because Conservative Back Benchers trust the public; it is being debated because Conservative Back Benchers do not trust the Prime Minister.
Mrs Main
If the right hon. Gentleman does not support the Bill, and given that with some Liberal Democrat colleagues Labour Members could defeat it, why are they abstaining and allowing their cronies in the House of Lords to do their dirty work? Why do they not put their vote where their mouth is on this question?
Mr Alexander
With the greatest respect to the hon. Lady, she has never been my lodestar of political judgment, and I therefore think that Labour Members shall make the judgments in relation to the legislative passage of any Bill.
This Bill is being presented for a second time.
Robert Halfon
Whatever the right hon. Gentleman says are the reasons for bringing this Bill to the House, surely, as a party of principle, Labour should support workers’ rights, given, as I said, the negative impact that the EU has had on workers’ wages and its impact on jobs. Labour should take a position of principle and say, “We trust the people and we support an in/out referendum on the EU.”
Mr Alexander
The hon. Gentleman speaks with great eloquence about workers’ rights. I am sure that he is familiar with the Beecroft report, commissioned by this Government, which really let the cat out of the bag. The rationale for repatriation being supported by so many of his colleagues is that it would bring powers home in order to take away workers’ rights. We know that, and Conservative Back Benchers know that, yet it is significant that the Prime Minister chose not to—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I would like to hear the shadow Foreign Secretary in the same way as I wanted to hear the Foreign Secretary, but I cannot hear him if people keep shouting.
Mr Alexander
It is significant in terms of the credibility of the Prime Minister’s word on these matters that, if I recollect correctly, the word “repatriation” did not appear in the Bloomberg speech of which the Foreign Secretary spoke so eloquently a few moments ago.
Mr Alexander
I will make a little progress and then I will be happy to give way again.
As I stand here again, a year on, after yet another Friday morning meeting in Downing street to rally the beleaguered troops—I venture to suggest that never have so many bacon rolls died in vain—looking at Conservative Members, or at least what is left of them, gathered to talk about their favourite subject of Europe, I have to say that I feel a certain sense of déjà vu. The only thing that seems different this morning is the absence of the Chief Whip and the Prime Minister.
Even if the Bill has not changed, some things have changed since we last gathered a year ago. Back in January 2013, when the Prime Minister gave at Bloomberg what his aides rather optimistically, as it turns out, briefed would be
“his last speech on Europe in the parliament”,
I was, on balance, prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, even if some of his own Back Benchers, even at that time, were undoubtedly not willing to do so. I believe that when he committed to holding a referendum in 2017, he assumed sincerely that, given the push at the time towards closer eurozone integration, there would be a major EU treaty change within the time frame that he set out. Since that speech at Bloomberg last year, however, the prospect of extensive treaty changes by 2017 has receded rather than grown. He knows that, we know that, Conservative Members know that, and, most worryingly for the Prime Minister, the Back Benchers who are concerned about whether he can deliver on his promise know that.
Only this month, the French Prime Minister—perhaps one of the individuals that the Foreign Secretary has had those obscure and rather elliptical conversations with—said that EU treaty change would be “perilous” and ruled out a “shake-up of its treaties” any time soon. In January, the French President said during a visit to London that treaty change was “not urgent” and “not a priority”. After the signing of the German coalition agreement in November last year—without, I point out, a single reference to treaty change—Chancellor Merkel said in February this year that the Conservatives’ hopes would end in “disappointment”. For full measure, her Foreign Minister then said that it would be “an exaggeration” to assert that Germany and the United Kingdom were on the same page when it came to treaty reform in the EU. We have heard a little more exaggeration from the Foreign Secretary this morning.
Nearly two years on from the Prime Minister’s announcement of a 2017 referendum, the ground beneath his feet has shifted. It has left him asserting, ever less convincingly, that he can initiate, negotiate and secure the unanimous support of 27 European Heads of Government for a fundamental redesign of the European Union within 19 months of May 2015.
How likely a prospect is that for our Prime Minister, given his recent track record of negotiations in Europe? This boast is made by a Prime Minister who just this year managed to turn a Europe divided over Jean-Claude Juncker into a Europe virtually united against the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister was certainly not the first British Prime Minister to take a tough negotiating stance in Brussels, but he will go down in history as the first British Prime Minister ever to lose a vote in the European Council. He went to Brussels with, incidentally, a cross-party mandate—the Liberals and, indeed, the Labour party were behind him—to secure consensus on the best candidate for Commission President, but he failed to build alliances.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman says that our Prime Minister lost a vote in Europe, but does he not realise that the rest of the country takes that as a sign that our Prime Minister is standing up for this country?
Mr Alexander
I do not want to intrude on private grief, but the Prime Minister lost, and lost badly. If the hon. Gentleman would like to have it on his leaflets that 27-0—actually, to be fair, it was 26-2—in the European Council is a sign of success and effectiveness and of statesmanship by a British Prime Minister, good luck to him.
Mr Alexander
It’s called losing, actually, and I do not think that Britain wants a Prime Minister who keeps losing.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The right hon. Gentleman has expressed the utter supineness of the socialists, who give in to everything Europe wants when our Prime Minister is willing to put the British case, even when sometimes that does not succeed. It was courageous and it was the right, firm approach for dealing with renegotiation.
Mr Alexander
There speaks the authentic voice of the 18th century! Our dispute seems to be about the efficacy of principle and the effectiveness of statesmanship. The hon. Gentleman argues that the Prime Minister was efficacious in upholding a principle, but I maintain that he was hopelessly ineffective at securing statesmanship on the international stage. Let us remember that the Prime Minister failed to use the weeks following the European elections to work to build a coalition that could have been built with countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Hungary and Italy.
Let us treat that as a textbook example of what the Foreign Secretary has just asserted can be achieved in the months after 2015. If the Prime Minister failed to prevent a not universally popular candidate from becoming Commission President, what hope is there that he could secure unanimous support for a fundamental redesign of Europe on an arbitrary timetable that other European Governments simply do not accept?
Sir Oliver Heald
Does the shadow Foreign Secretary agree that it is always possible to win a vote if we give in? For example, on the Thatcher rebate, under Tony Blair £6 billion a year was given away with nothing in return, and guess what? Yeah, he won the vote.
Mr Alexander
I am not sure that was worth taking as an intervention. First, it is a matter of record that the A10 accession—the significant enlargement of the European Union—that preceded those discussions was a matter of cross-party consensus. I am sure the hon. and learned Gentleman would not dispute that.
Mr Alexander
Well, any reasonable judgment of the budgetary settlement recognised that the budget was going to change as a consequence of 10 new members coming into the European Union. I hope there is common ground on that.
Secondly, if I recollect accurately, as a consequence of those budgetary negotiations undertaken by the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, there is now, for the first time, parity between the contributions of France and the United Kingdom. I would have thought that the hon. and learned Gentleman supported that.
Mr Philip Hammond
Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify whether he is one of those who believe that the crisis in the eurozone has passed, or does he recognise that there will need to be fundamental structural reform in Europe in order to ensure the success of the euro currency?
Mr Alexander
Of course there needs to be continuing fundamental and serious change in the eurozone, not least given the challenges that the peripheral countries face in relation to productivity and the frankly worrying current levels of growth across the eurozone. [Interruption.] The Foreign Secretary says it is a fundamental point in relation to treaty change, so I offer him the opportunity to step back up to the Dispatch Box and name one member of the eurozone that is publicly advocating treaty change between now and 2017. [Interruption.] The Foreign Secretary says, “Not publicly.” If it is accepted that there is a need for fundamental reform of the eurozone, what, at this point in the discussions, would be to the disadvantage of any one member of the eurozone—just one, not even two or three—to say that there is going to have to be fundamental treaty change in order to make the eurozone work effectively by 2017? I would be very happy to give way if the Foreign Secretary would like to intervene and name a country. His silence speaks volumes and that explains why, with every passing month, the credibility of Conservative Front Benchers diminishes with that of its Back Benchers.
Mr Alexander
I want to make some progress and then I will be happy to give way.
On the eurozone and the economy, the Foreign Secretary complacently dismissed powerful interventions by my hon. Friends on the very real concerns of British business. One aspect of the debate that has not changed since the Bill was last debated is the view of British business. It continues to speak out and speak up, warning against the risks of stumbling or sleepwalking out of Europe, which is a real prospect, given the abject failure both of the Prime Minister to set out a reform agenda and of the Foreign Secretary to offer a credible negotiating strategy to deliver that fundamental redesign with unanimity by 2017.
Mr Alexander
I want to make some progress.
Earlier this year, Sir Richard Branson said, in no uncertain terms, that
“the last thing the UK should do is leave”
the EU,
“as it would then have no say on how to improve it and make it more productive for all countries involved.”
Mrs Main
I hope so, too: I will take your guidance on that, Mr Deputy Speaker. We are talking about whether we should have a choice, not about the nuances of what businesses think would happen if we were to leave the EU. Nobody is proposing to leave today. Is it in order for the shadow Foreign Secretary to major on the debate in that way?
Mr Deputy Speaker
It is for the Chair, as you, as a member of the Panel of Chairs well know, to make that decision. That is not a point of order.
Mr Alexander
I know that this debate is proving uncomfortable for Conservative Members.
Catherine McKinnell
Conservative Members do not seem to want to listen to my right hon. Friend’s arguments, but he is making a powerful speech. Perhaps they will listen to their own Lord Heseltine, who has said:
“To commit to a referendum about a negotiation that hasn’t begun, on a timescale you cannot predict, on an outcome that’s unknown, where Britain’s appeal as an inward investment market would be the centre of the debate, seems to me like an unnecessary gamble”.
Mr Alexander
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, which points to two truths. The first is the importance of economic stability and certainty in relation to investment and the opportunities that British business needs not just to invest and employ, but to export in the future. The second is that it shows just how far the Conservative party has travelled.
Mr Alexander
Who better to describe the journey the modern Conservative party is taking than the hon. Gentleman? I am happy to give way.
Mr Bone
I congratulate the shadow Foreign Secretary on his excellent and powerful speech, and I look forward to his putting his name forward in the next few weeks to become the next leader of the Labour party. I think we agree on the major point that the Labour party is clearly against an in/out referendum, and I am grateful to him for clarifying that. We also agree that it is very unlikely that the European Union will give the reforms that the Prime Minister wants. The difference is that, finally, at the end of the journey, it will be the British people who decide. That is the right way forward. Why will the Labour party not agree to that?
Mr Alexander
Flattering though the hon. Gentleman’s introduction to his question was, I fear that we diverge on at least two substantive points. First, Labour takes a conditions-based approach to an EU referendum. We think that the right point to have a referendum would be that which the Conservative party used to favour—indeed, it was in the Conservative manifesto. The party that has shifted its position is not the Labour party, but the Conservative party. The second point on which we take a different position is that we continue to believe that it is in Britain’s strategic, long-term interest to remain part of a changed and reformed European Union. It is not that the character of Europe is incapable of reform; it is that the competence of this Prime Minister means that he has failed abjectly to deliver reform. He has spent four years burning bridges rather than building alliances. That is why we have ended up with the paltry list of so-called reforms that were suggested by the Foreign Secretary today, against a backdrop in which he is literally incapable of articulating what the reform agenda would be.
The common ground between the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and I is that both of us would like more clarity from Conservative Front Benchers on what the reform proposals are, what the red lines are and even how the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary would vote in a referendum. Indeed, if the Foreign Secretary would like to step up to the Dispatch Box and tell us something that he omitted to mention during his speech, he might answer this question: is he prepared, if he does not get the changes that he is hoping for in the reform discussions, to recommend a no vote? Once again, the silence speaks volumes. That might be a judgment based on loyalty to the Prime Minister that costs him many votes in a future leadership contest.
Sir Oliver Heald
I am grateful to the shadow Foreign Secretary, who is showing his customary generosity. Does he agree that his comment that there is no support among our partner countries in Europe for treaty change is simply wrong? The German coalition agreement includes that provision. Does he have it there? Has he read it?
Mr Alexander
I have read the German coalition agreement. I simply invite the hon. and learned Gentleman to name a member of the German Government who supports treaty change before 2017 and which specific change they recommend.
Sir Oliver Heald
It is in the document. The German coalition agreement includes a provision that calls for treaty change, so it is signed up to by all of them.
Mr Alexander
With the greatest of respect to the hon. and learned Gentleman, if I had a choice between the words of the German Chancellor and his view on what the German coalition is likely to do, I would, on balance, put more weight on the views of Chancellor Merkel. When she came to this place during an important state visit last year, I expected her to offer perhaps just a single line in her remarks that would give a ledge on which the Prime Minister could stand and say to his Back Benchers, “See, we have made some progress. The Germans are going to be with us and we will get what we need.” It was hugely significant that she did not feel the obligation to give even a carapace of cover to the Prime Minister. She left having given absolutely no credence to the rather desperate assertion, which we have heard again today, that the Germans will somehow rescue the Prime Minister from his negotiating inadequacies. There is simply no foundation for that.
Sir Edward Leigh
This is all terribly interesting, but it is slightly irrelevant to what we are talking about today. Even if the Prime Minister fails to get anything substantial, the British people will make their choice. What I cannot understand about the actions of the Labour party—I am scratching my head about this—is that surely it wants to win the general election. Is it not quite a popular thing to do to offer a referendum by a certain date? Would it not be a good idea to shoot the Government’s foxes if it is trying to win the next general election?
Mr Alexander
I am happy, if it is what the hon. Gentleman wants, to move on to advice on electoral politics. It is the Conservative party, not this party, that has just lost two Members of Parliament to UKIP. It is the Conservative party that has not won a majority in a UK general election for 20 years. When the Prime Minister gave his speech at the Tory party conference nine years ago, it was back in the days when people believed that the Conservatives could win a majority. That was a long time ago. The Conservative strategy of first insulting UKIP, then ignoring UKIP and then imitating UKIP has proved to be an abject electoral failure. That is why there is rising panic among so many Conservative Back Benchers that, far from being able to secure a minority Government after the general election, they will be faced with an existential threat posed by their colleagues in UKIP.
Richard Graham
There is surely some reward for persistence in this House. I am grateful to the shadow Foreign Secretary. He has talked about the effectiveness of statesmanship. Earlier, he said that the referendum would not be in the national interest. Will he therefore confirm two things for the record, for all those who might be thinking of voting Labour: first, that his party does not think that the Bill is in the national interest and that it does not want a referendum, and secondly, that his party will not vote against the Bill?
Mr Alexander
That was a valiant effort, but let us be clear that there is a difference between taking a conditions-based approach to a referendum by saying that when there is a transfer of sovereignty from Britain to Brussels, there should be an in/out referendum—
Mr Alexander
The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but that is what it said in the manifesto on which he was elected. Indeed, he walked through the Division Lobby in favour of that exact policy, with the caveat that the referendum would take place at that point. We have said that that should be strengthened, because we recognise that there would be a question over Britain’s relationship with Europe at the point at which the sovereignty lock was initiated. We would therefore strengthen the position by saying that there would be a clear legal lock, so that when there was a transfer of sovereignty from Britain to Brussels, a referendum would take place. It is therefore wholly wrong to suggest that the Opposition are opposed to a referendum on Europe.
If I recollect correctly—I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) will confirm this—the only party ever to give a referendum on European membership was Labour. We will go into the coming general election committed to providing an in/out referendum if there is a transfer of sovereignty from Britain to Brussels. That used to be the policy of the Conservative party. The party that has shifted under the weight of both internal political pressure and external electoral pressure is the Conservative party.
Mr Alexander
I have been generous in giving way, so let me make a little progress.
Since we debated the last version of this Bill, the European context has altered. First, the prospect that the Prime Minister hoped for rather forlornly at the time of his speech to Bloomberg—that major treaty change by 2017 would be inevitable—has receded. That is an uncomfortable truth. Secondly, the economic concerns that have been expressed by John Cridland, Sir Richard Branson and many others across the British business community have endured. Thirdly, we have to have the humility to recognise, as was pointed out in an earlier intervention, that there is politics at work in the Bill, and the politics has moved on since the Bill was last debated as well.
Since we last debated the Bill, the Prime Minister has lost a Foreign Secretary who was apparently deemed by his Back Benchers to have gone native in the Foreign Office, to be replaced by a Foreign Secretary—I welcome him to his position on the Front Bench—who, on hearing the news that the then Secretary of State for Education, the current Chief Whip, had suggested that he would vote to leave the EU today, rushed to the television studios to match that Eurosceptic pledge. One would almost think that they were worrying about an election beyond the general election in May 2015. The truth is that one of the reasons why we are once again debating the Bill is that the centre of gravity of the Conservative party has shifted and continues to shift. The Bill is all about internal leadership challenges and external electoral challenges.
I do not want to intrude too much on private grief, although I could probably be tempted, but what has also changed is that the Conservative party has lost two Members of Parliament to UKIP in just the last two months. Who knows how many more will follow? Who knows how many more are now saying, “Never say never.”? That is the real reason for the Bill.
Simon Kirby (Brighton, Kemptown) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Alexander
I am happy to give way. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will confirm that he intends to stand as a Conservative candidate.
Simon Kirby
I am still very confused. I thought that we were debating giving people the chance to have their say. I still do not understand what I should say to voters in Brighton, Kemptown about what the Labour party’s policy is. Why should their voices not be heard?
Mr Alexander
The confusion of the hon. Gentleman is a much longer topic of conversation, which extends beyond the parameters of this debate. Let us take a step back and recollect how far the Conservative party, of which he is a member, has journeyed. However, I note that he did not confirm that he will take the Conservative Whip, so he might be somebody else the Chief Whip needs to speak to in the coming days, along with so many others.
Back in the days when the Conservative party still believed that it could win a majority, the Prime Minister said that, “for too long”,
“Instead of talking about the things that most people care about, we talked about what we cared about most. While parents worried about childcare, getting the kids to school, balancing work and family life, we were banging on about Europe.”
Let us take this week as an example. On Wednesday at Prime Minister’s questions, Conservative Back Benchers asked more questions about Europe than any other subject, and here we are on Friday morning, once again witnessing the Conservative party banging on about Europe. It is talking to itself and not to the country all over again. It did not have to be like this. The tragedy for the country—this brings me back to my substantive point about statesmanship—is that the Prime Minister is trying to use a referendum Bill to cover over the cracks in the Conservative party, when he should be seizing the moment for reform in Europe.
In his speech in January last year the Prime Minister set out principles for EU reform, but 22 months later what more have we heard? There was a valiant attempt by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) to elicit more information from the Foreign Secretary on that issue, but we heard only the sound of silence. Yesterday, what started as a screaming headline about free movement, became the squeak of “speculation” by the mid-morning Downing street briefing. Old spin techniques in place of new policy—exactly the kind of approach that leads to distrust in politics today.
Two years ago—let us be honest—the Prime Minister set out five principles of reform of such staggering blandness and generality that there was not really anything for any of us to oppose. Since then, however, we have heard absolutely nothing specific. That silence on the specifics—which we have heard again this morning—is not coincidental but utterly calculated, because the Prime Minister understands that the gap between what Europe will deliver and what his Back Benchers will demand remains unbridgeable 22 months on. He is hoping to sustain party unity through the device of obscurity. We are now in a position where, with months to go until the general election, the Opposition have a far more detailed agenda for reform on Europe than the Government.
Mr Hammond
Given that the right hon. Gentleman was the Europe Minister whose brilliant negotiating tactics lost £7 billion of our rebate, if he does not mind we will take no advice from him on how to negotiate the best deal for Britain in Europe.
Mr Alexander
It is always revealing when those on the Government Front Benches give up an argument and simply go for abuse. If that is the best the Foreign Secretary can do—[Interruption.] I am happy to give way again to hear a single specific example of powers that he will repatriate. Is he prepared to take to the Dispatch Box and tell the House which social, economic or employment rights he is seeking to repatriate? It is unconvincing for Labour Members, but—this is much more worrying for the Foreign Secretary—it is deeply unconvincing for Conservative Members when he pretends that he is having conversations in Europe that he is not willing to tell any of us about. That will not convince the British public, and I do not believe it will convince the House.
Barry Gardiner
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the obscurity that we have just seen displayed is deeply concerning given the time scale set out in the Bill? If within 19 months after May next year the British public are to have an in/out vote on this issue, there are not 19 months to negotiate but a much shorter time, if the matter is to be debated realistically among the British people.
Mr Alexander
What honestly worries me about the Government’s approach to Europe is not that it is clever, wily and strategic, but that they are making it up as they go along. Many months after the Bloomberg speech we have absolutely no detail. I see the Europe Minister is in his place, so perhaps he would like to advise the incoming Foreign Secretary about those detailed proposals for reform. Would he like to set out repatriation proposals for us today? I would happily give way.
Mike Gapes
My right hon. Friend will be aware that in 2017 there is supposed to be a six-month British presidency of the European Union, which begins on 1 July until 31 December. Does he think it wise for the middle of that British presidency to be disrupted by a referendum, or will the referendum have to be held in the first six months of 2017, before July?
Mr Alexander
My hon. Friend makes an important point, but—let us be honest—this policy has been framed not in reference to European or foreign policy, but in terms of domestic politics. It is not because the Conservative party trusts the British public, but because the Back Benchers do not trust the Prime Minister. That is why they have given up any pretence of a credible reform agenda. We have had five principles and then many months of silence, and the Conservative party has given up any pretence that there is widespread support for the reform agenda it describes. The Foreign Secretary—his Back Benchers will have noted this—today failed to name a single country with which he has had discussions in recent months and which accepts that there will be a fundamental redesign of the European Union, by unanimity, by 2017.
We have a track record—we do not need to look in a crystal ball because we can look in the history books. This is the only British Prime Minister in history who lost in the European Council on a vote that he did not need to lose. Not only did he have support from the Liberal party and the Labour party, but there was significant support among other European countries. However, if someone spends their time driving and looking through the rear view mirror, they tend to crash the car. That is exactly what the Prime Minister is doing when he spends more time negotiating with his Back Benchers than with other European parties. That is disastrous for the Conservative party but bad for Britain as well, and it is about time we had a reform agenda that spoke to the country’s needs on immigration, institutional reform and UK scrutiny.
Steve McCabe
Let me pursue the point about what the Foreign Secretary or Prime Minister will be negotiating on. I think there have been something like 14 reports from the balance of competences review. Is it time that Back Benchers knew exactly what that was leading to?
Mr Alexander
My hon. Friend makes a fair point. Let us take the specific example—again, if the Foreign Secretary wishes to come to the Dispatch Box he can add some clarity—of what has happened to the balance of competences review on free movement? Where has it gone? Is it still locked in the Home Office? Why has it been locked there? Why have Conservative Back Benchers not been entitled to see that report? It is because it is judged too politically dangerous to publish. That is the state that the modern Conservative party has fallen into despite the best interests of the country—the Government are frightened to implement even the policies that they advocate because of their own Back Benchers. The balance of competences report on free movement is an example not of leadership but of followership. That is what we are seeing on Europe month after month from the Conservatives. The Opposition are clear that membership of the EU is both a strategic and an economic asset to Britain.
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
It appears that not only did the right hon. Gentleman not read the German coalition agreement, but that he has not read Hansard either. Had he done so, he would have seen that the balance of competences report on the free movement of persons was published a couple of months ago.
Mr Alexander
I am grateful to the Minister. Given that he is in an educative and co-operative mood, would he like to enlighten the House as to what the report recommends in terms of what the Prime Minister anticipated yesterday?
Mr Alexander
Forgive me; let me finish the point. It is not what the Prime Minister promised his Back Benchers, which is a ramp for change, but instead a rather dry, factual series of reports that has left unabated the appetite of Conservative Back Benchers.
Mr Lidington
As with all balance of competences reports, it sets out in detail a number of arguments for specific reforms to how the EU currently does business. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to do justice to the report and the many people who contributed to it, he might at least have the grace to read it before he comments on it.
Mr Alexander
If the report contains a whole number of substantive and serious reforms, perhaps the Minister will explain why yesterday we had headlines promising change on the free movement of labour, but by the briefing from the No. 10 spokesman in the afternoon that had been dismissed as “speculation”. Will the right hon. Gentleman share some of the specific proposals he is advocating? Will he suggest some of the proposals that his Conservative Back Benchers are keen to hear before the Rochester by-election? I assure him that Labour Members are all ears.
Labour does not support this Bill because its real aim is not to empower the public, as we have heard, but to pacify the party, and it is not focused on the interests of hard-working families, British business, or the needs of our country. That is why when today’s spectacle—once again—of the Conservative party talking to itself about Europe is long forgotten, it will fall to Labour to continue making the case for Britain’s place in Europe, and for reform and change within Europe.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. At least 13 Back Benchers—perhaps a few more—wish to speak. I appeal to hon. Members to try to shorten their speeches so as to accommodate everybody.
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)
I will seek to be brief, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a privilege to follow the shadow Foreign Secretary, and I am grateful to him for confirming that the Labour party does not trust the British people to express a view on this important matter. I say in all friendship to him that the Labour party’s commitment to referendums on every major treaty would be slightly more convincing if in the 13 years it was in power it had ever held a referendum on any of the various treaties that were agreed.
I support very strongly the Bill presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), as I supported the Bill last year when it was presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton). I should say at the outset that I do so from an explicitly pro-European perspective. I believe this country has benefited from EU membership, benefits from it today and will continue to benefit from it in the future. It will do so even more with the various reforms that not just this Prime Minister but many enlightened leaders across Europe already agree are necessary for the future and better working of the European Union. There is a genuine consensus around Europe that a reformed European Union is necessary. I look forward to a re-elected Conservative Government leading that reform not just, although principally, in the interests of the British people, but in the interests of people in other member states. The programme set out, of renegotiation followed by a referendum, will be good for Britain and good for Europe as well.
It is time to take this decision. The point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst that he, shockingly, was old enough to vote in the 1975 referendum—as was I, just about. Like many of us—I think for the Foreign Secretary as well—it was the first political act I took. I joined the Conservative party in 1975, and then campaigned for a yes vote as an idealistic young student in the middle of 1975 under the new Conservative leadership of Margaret Thatcher. Sadly, I am not quite as young as I was then, but I am still as idealistic. I still think that great things can be achieved within Europe by European countries acting together.
This is an historic decision—one that we perhaps ought to take as a country every generation or two, and it is 40 years since we last did so—and we need to put it in the historical perspective. If somebody had told any of us, particularly any of the young people voting for the first time in 1975, that within 20 years countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic would be democracies co-operating with us in an international organisation, with their people becoming more prosperous and having the freedom to express political views, we would have thought that that was the most enormous historic achievement—and it was the most enormous historic achievement. I think even those who are most hostile, on either side of the House, to the European Union, and particularly to European idealism, should recognise that the existence of the European Union as a beacon of prosperity and peace was one of the things that drove on those reforms in the former Soviet states that had been dominated by Soviet communism. We should not forget that, because that is the single most beneficial historic change that has happened in our continent in any of our lifetimes. A lot of that is due to the European Union. Absolutely, 1975 was a long time ago. There will be many people contributing to this debate who did not have the chance to vote, and it is time that we have another vote when we have renegotiated the terms.
This debate has been debilitating and sometimes poisonous, and it has gone on for too long. As I say, I not only approach this debate from an explicitly pro-European perspective, I go into it confident that, just as the public did in Scotland, the verdict will go the right and sensible way: to stay in a reformed Europe. If I may speak not entirely across the Chamber, it is important that the very many Conservatives who think as I do, that it is in Britain’s interests to stay in a reformed European Union, make the Conservative case for our membership. We heard from the shadow Foreign Secretary the distorted view that there is a view inside the Conservative party that is anti-European, and presumably, by implication, a view inside the Labour party that is pro-European. Neither half of those propositions are true, as I suspect the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) is about to illustrate.
Kelvin Hopkins
May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to make once again the distinction between Europe and the European Union? Europe is a fabulous subcontinent that we all love. The European Union is a political construct imposed on part of Europe.
Damian Green
It is true that it covers part of Europe, but I would gently make the point that at the time of the previous referendum there were six members and there are now 28. A considerably larger proportion of the European continent is covered by the European Union now. That is hugely to the benefit of the people living in those countries that were not in the European Union in 1975, and who will be living in the European Union when the referendum happens, as I hope it does, in 2017. The slightly crude characterisation of the Conservative party by the shadow Foreign Secretary was wrong. It is clearly, from his point of view, designed to damage the party, and I think it would damage the Conservative party if that canard was allowed to go unchallenged.
One of the interests that my party has represented very strongly is the business interest in this country. It has been one of the observable facts of the current leadership of the Labour party that, after years of Tony Blair attempting to make Labour a more business-friendly party, all of that has been thrown away. It seems perverse of it to do that, but in partisan terms I am quite happy for it to do it. It is very important that the Conservative party maintains close relations with business interests, both for its own sake and for the wider prosperity of the country. I agree with the point made by the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) that the serious voices in British business want us to stay in a reformed Europe. It is not just the CBI, as he quoted, but the Engineering Employers Federation and many big companies. Ford, BAE Systems, Unilever, Citibank and Siemens have all warned of the damage that will be caused to their businesses if we pull out. Of course, that would affect not just their businesses but tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of their workers. We all need to listen to that voice, because it is a very important one.
Damian Green
I absolutely agree. As I said at the outset, I am strongly in favour of the Bill and will be voting for it for the second time in two years. Given my general stance on European issues, one reason I am in favour of it is because I am in favour of democracy and this is an important historic decision that ought to be put to the British people. At the same time, I am confident that the view that we should stay in a reformed Europe will appeal to the British people, and that those who think as I do will win the referendum vote. So from that point of view, bring it on! There are a number of economic reasons for that: the capacity to negotiate on trade benefits that millions of people in this country get from the single market, and the seriousness with which we are taken in other parts of the world. This debate is not the time to rehearse those arguments—the referendum campaign may well be the time to do that—but there are other arguments as well, arguments of idealism.
The other point I would put, in particular to my own right hon. and hon. Friends who may well believe that Britain would be “better off out”, to coin a phrase, relates to Britain’s voice in the world. It seems to me unarguable that if we pulled out, the rest of the world would, first of all, be completely bemused that here was an advanced prosperous democracy telling 27 friendly democratic neighbour countries that we no longer want to act or be in an organisation with them. Not only would that have a damaging effect on our relationship with those 27 other friendly democracies, it would have a seriously damaging effect on our relationship with the other great powers of the world. It is not credible that an American President, a Chinese leader or an Indian business person would take Britain as seriously if we pulled out of the European Union as they would if we stayed in and played a leading and constructive role in it. Britain’s ability to have a strong voice and, in the words of our former Foreign Secretary, Lord Hurd, to punch above our weight in the world depends partly on our playing a leading role in the European Union and in Europe more widely. That is one more reason why our staying in the EU should appeal to Conservatives.
Many people have mentioned the lessons that we should learn from the Scottish referendum. One lesson I learned is that, although it is vital to win the economic argument, as the Better Together campaign did, it is also important to win the emotional arguments. In a referendum campaign, we will need to engage heads and hearts. For all the current travails of the eurozone, which desperately need sorting out, I believe that an idealistic vision remains.
We live in a continent that has spent centuries tearing itself apart with wars that destroyed communities and whole countries, leading up to the terrible slaughter in the first half of the 20th century. In the past 70 years, that continent has become a haven of peace and prosperity in an increasingly dangerous world, and it has built that peace and prosperity in countries that had previously known nothing but occupation and oppression. Go to Cracow, to Bucharest and to Vilnius and see what people there think. They are proud to be members of a democratic European Union, and we in Britain should be proud of our part in building this peaceful and prosperous continent.
I am very much in favour of letting the British people hear these arguments and of putting them to them in a referendum. I am also proud to be a member of the only party in this House that is wholeheartedly in favour of that—[Interruption.] I am being heckled from a sedentary position by the hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell), whom I sort of welcome to his new place. Shockingly, I have had private conversations with senior people in UKIP over the past few days. Before the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), falls off her chair, I should explain that those conversations were held entirely on the basis of policy. I was assured that UKIP’s position was that it would prefer the House of Commons to vote to pull Britain out of Europe without consulting the British people in a referendum. To be fair, that conversation took place last Monday and today is Friday, so UKIP could well have held several positions since then. I very much look forward to the hon. Gentleman catching your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, so that he can clarify exactly what UKIP’s position on a referendum is this morning.
I want to end by quoting some wise words from the 1975 referendum campaign:
“The choice is clear. We can play a role in developing Europe or we can turn our backs on the Community. By turning our backs we forfeit our right to influence what happens in the Community. But what happens in the Community will inevitably affect us.”
That was right when Margaret Thatcher first said it in 1975, and it is still right today. For Britain’s sake, we need to make that argument and to trust the people to listen to it. Most of all, we need to pass this Bill with all speed.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to speak in the debate and to support the Bill that has been introduced by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). I am pleased that he has done this. I also had the pleasure of supporting the previous Bill, introduced by the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), and of serving on that Bill’s Committee. The right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) talked about prosperity in the European Union. I hope that he will go and tell that to all the unemployed Greeks and Spaniards, and ask them if they think the EU is prosperous. The economy of the European Union, and particularly of the eurozone, is diving into a black hole at the moment.
I rise to support the Bill because I believe that people want a choice. I was an active member of a multi-party organisation called People’s Choice. Interestingly, its chair and president were both members of my party, although members of other parties were also active in it. A big majority of the British people want a referendum. In my constituency, we held a mini-referendum just before the last election on whether to have a referendum, and there was a 2:1 majority in favour of doing so. I therefore feel that I can legitimately express my view here today, as it is also the view of the majority of my constituents.
I have some experience of referendums. In the 1975 referendum, I was the chair of the Vote No campaign in Luton. Subsequently, I was the agent for the no vote in Bedfordshire. Interestingly, the agent for the yes vote was Sir Trevor Skeet, the then Conservative Member of Parliament for Bedford. Some years ago, when I met him again and reminded him of our previous encounter, he was horribly embarrassed because he had changed his view. That was an interesting conversation.
The Labour party held a special conference at that time. It was my first ever Labour party conference, and a massive majority—myself included—voted in favour of supporting a no vote in the referendum. At that conference, I saw one of the greatest pieces of oratory of my political career. It was a speech by Michael Foot, calling for a no vote. In it, he referred to Joseph Conrad’s novel “Typhoon”, saying that if someone was in a storm, they should always face into the storm to save themselves and not run away from it. Sometimes we have to do that in politics as well. I have always remembered that speech. I am often in the minority, but I remember what Michael Foot said: if you believe you are making the right point, stick with it. I have certainly taken that on board.
At that time, a great majority of Labour MPs wanted to come out of the then Common Market, but the majority of Conservative MPs wanted to stay in. There has been much reference to Labour’s support for the European Union, but even fairly recently it was the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), who kept us out of the eurozone. Had we gone into it, it would have been a complete disaster.
It has also been suggested that there have been great changes since 1975. We have certainly moved much further towards an integrated Europe, but there were early signs of where we were going. In 1979, there was a proposal to form an embryonic single currency called the European monetary system—the “snake”—but Denis Healey wisely kept us out of it. At the time, I wrote a brief for the general secretary of the union I then worked for, who then banged the drum at the TUC saying that we should not go into the snake. I like to think that I had some small influence on the Labour leadership at that time.
Now, my devout wish is to convince my Labour colleagues to support a referendum. They might not necessarily listen to my voice, but there are significant voices in and around our leadership that privately support a referendum. However, they have not won the argument inside the leadership yet. Their views are private, but I hope that my party will have acquiesced and decided to support a referendum by the time of the general election, even if it does not agree with my view on the European Union.
Barry Gardiner
I understand that my hon. Friend is a passionate and insistent voice on these matters. Does he believe that the timing that has been set out in the Bill is sensible? Will it allow the people of this country to have the necessary debate with full information about what any renegotiation might involve?
Kelvin Hopkins
Personally, I would like a referendum sooner rather than later. Most people in Britain have a pretty good idea of what the European Union is about.
We will renegotiate terms, and no doubt there will be some loose improvements in minor areas that will make no difference to our membership. A sticking point for me is that we should withdraw from the common fisheries policy. We need to restore Britain’s historic fishing waters so that we can start to restock our seas to ensure that we have fish for the long-term future. I put that case in private to a former UK representative in the European Union who immediately said that, in that case, we would have to get out of the EU because we could not possibly withdraw from the common fisheries policy. So there we are: we have a problem. If we are going to renegotiate, it should be about real things that matter.
Barry Gardiner
Is my hon. Friend aware of the work that Commissioner Damanaki has done for the renegotiation of the EU fisheries policy, and of the benefit that that is bringing to small fishermen in the UK? The UK quota can now be divided up, bringing greater advantage to the under-10 metre fleets.
Kelvin Hopkins
I appreciate that improvements have been made to the common fisheries policy, and for that I give some credit to the previous Conservative Minister, but the pressure on him to renegotiate came partly from other hon. Members, including me—
Sheryll Murray
On quotas, does the hon. Gentleman agree, given that, in area 7, the UK gets 10% of cod and 8% of haddock stocks, despite owning 80% of the waters, that the CFP could never be renegotiated in favour of UK fishermen?
Kelvin Hopkins
I defer to the wisdom and knowledge of the hon. Lady, whom we know has a fishing background; she is absolutely right, and I agree strongly with her—not for the first time.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we only have one thing to gain, and that is sovereignty?
Kelvin Hopkins
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, although I am not yet a Privy Counsellor, and am unlikely ever to be so—but there we are.
Not just Labour voters, but leading figures in the party have historically taken the Eurosceptic view. Hugh Gaitskell, the former leader of the Labour party, opposed Britain’s membership of the Common Market, and I was pleased he did so. Subsequently, we had magnificent leaders who took the same view. My great friend the late Baroness Barbara Castle remained a strong Eurosceptic to the end of her life, as did the late Tony Benn, a great personal friend as well as a great politician. So there have been many Eurosceptic socialists—including, even, Lord Healey, the Labour Chancellor until 1979. I attended a Eurosceptic dinner in the City with figures from various parties, and that was the only time I ever met Lord Healey. So significant figures of great intellect, political judgment and commitment to democratic socialism have taken a similar view to mine.
I have not changed my view since 1975, because our relationship with the EU has become worse, rather than better. We only have to look at the economic catastrophe that is the eurozone to realise how bad it is now. We have to shake up the EU; there is nothing to be gained economically from our remaining members, but then that is a matter for the British people, as and when they have their referendum—hon. Members will guess which way I shall be voting. In previous referendums, political leaders across Europe have sought to persuade their people to vote in a particular way, and they have refused to do so—for example, the French people on the proposed constitution. The Socialist party in France supported the constitution, and it had a referendum among the party membership, which also supported the constitution; but the socialist voters voted the other way, and they lost the referendum. The same happened in Holland, and of course the EU had to withdraw the constitution and replace it with the Lisbon treaty, which was similar, but called a treaty, rather than a constitution.
We have seen others referendums—for example, in Norway and Sweden—on various aspects of the EU, and each time the political leaders have tried to drive their voters in a particular way, but they have refused to be so driven. Now, about 11% of the population in Sweden want to join the euro, and the same proportion in Norway want to join the EU. When the people are asked, they often take a view that upsets the political classes, but in the end, we are democrats and have to accept that view. Regrettably, I had to accept the 1975 view, even though the resources put into a yes vote were massive. The common market threw bucket-loads of money into a massive advertising campaign; every corner shop had a picture of Harold Wilson with his pipe and Gannex mac saying, “Vote yes”. I was part of the no campaign, and we had pathetic resources—a few bob from the trade union movement and not much else.
Kate Hoey
Does my hon. Friend share my concern that already the EU, in the form of its establishment Commission, is putting huge amounts of money into supposedly educational publicity that actually promotes the EU, and that if we have a referendum, it is important that the EU not be allowed to use our money to campaign in that referendum?
Kelvin Hopkins
Of course, the EU propaganda machine knows no bounds. We see little blue-and-yellow stickers on almost everything, saying we have had lots of money from the EU and glossing over the fact that we are massive net contributors.
More worryingly, the European Scrutiny Committee, of which I am pleased to be a member, has looked at the BBC and is seriously concerned about its bias. I am a passionate believer in the BBC and public service broadcasting, but the Committee has produced two eminent reports demonstrating the BBC’s pro-EU bias. It must be neutral in the referendum campaign. It must give an equal voice to all sides and ensure the debate is fair. We cannot just have a tiny minority of sceptics, with the enthusiast view put very strongly.
I have said it many times, but I am a lover of Europe. I go there for my holidays every year, I try to speak one or two European foreign languages, I love European culture, European literature and, above all, European people—I am a Eurocentric person in every sense—but the EU is a political organisation with a particular political view. I have spent my life campaigning for democratic socialism, and I think that the EU is not just anti-democratic, but anti-socialist, which might encourage some Conservative Members to vote for it, rather than against it. Nevertheless, I think it is actively anti-socialist, and has been so for a long time, which is why I oppose it. I want to see countries in Europe free to develop their own economies as they see fit, and if that happens to be a socialist view, or a neo-liberal free market view, so be it; the peoples of those countries should be able to choose how to govern themselves.
My view on the EU has got stronger over the years, as we have seen the disaster of the eurozone. Thank goodness my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath kept us out of the euro. Had we pinioned ourselves inside the euro, with the parity operating at the time—€1.60 to the pound—by now we would have seen a catastrophe in our economy of the likes of that in Greece or Spain, although I think we would have got out by now, perhaps because we are more sensible, and possibly other countries would have done the same. I think that the euro will eventually unravel, and when countries can adjust their currencies to appropriate parities and run their economies properly, we will see some recovery, but not before.
We have evidence of a triple-dip recession and that the eurozone is dragging down the rest of the world economy, including our own. However, we have done better than others because our currency has been able to depreciate substantially since the creation of the euro, and particularly since 2008, which has protected us from the ravages affecting the EU. If our unemployment figures were equivalent to those in Spain, we would have 7.5 million unemployed. Imagine that! I do not understand why Spain has not seen a bigger revolt. Nearly 500,000 people have left Spain to go and work in south America and elsewhere because their own country cannot sustain them. It is even worse in Ireland. It has allegedly recovered—I am pleased about that, for the Irish—but it has overcome its unemployment problem by exporting 300,000 people. The equivalent number in Britain would be 4.5 million. Imagine if our economy had failed so badly that 4.5 million Britons had to go and live abroad to get work. That would be a travesty and utterly shameful. I look forward to the time when we establish sensible economics across Europe and that sort of thing does not happen any more.
Most seriously, Germany is now in real trouble. It has long benefited from an open market for its motor cars and other manufactures and from the consequent substantial trade surplus with us and other EU member states. It has squeezed the life out of the economies of other parts of the EU, and now it cannot sell its cars any more, so it is affecting the German economy too. We need a completely different approach to organising the economies of Europe—not the EU, but Europe.
We once had a model that worked. Between 1945 and the 1970s, we had a world, designed at Bretton Woods, that actually worked. Working-class living standards rose at a rate unprecedented in modern history. We saw the creation of welfare states and growing equality. The world I grew up in was wonderful, although it could have been more socialist and more left wing, but we have gone backwards since then across the whole of Europe. It is only because of the vestiges of what was created in the immediate post-war world, sustaining people through welfare states, that the Governments of Europe are getting away with what they are getting away with. We need to see a world in which we start to recreate those things that we have lost. We need to re-establish a more sensible world in which we all have jobs, we create growing equality across Europe and indeed across the world and we have good international relations on bilateral and multilateral arrangements, without being governed by an anti-democratic, non-democratic and bureaucratic organisation called the European Commission, which runs our lives. I support the referendum, and as and when it comes, it is likely that I shall vote no. I will, however, accept the decision of the British people because I am a democrat.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. Before I call the next Member, I would like to remind the House that brevity is the soul of wit.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
Article 9 of the Bill of Rights states:
“That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament.”
Believe it or not, Brussels is a place. If we have a regulation rather than a directive, the regulation automatically overrides domestic law. Because the Bill of Rights was established as part of the Glorious Revolution, which was a popular revolution, certain changes to our constitution should inherently warrant a referendum. Hence I was pleased to support the previous version of this Bill, which is the same as this version, and having a referendum on our continued membership of the EU.
A particular strength is that the Bill puts a timetable on changes. Some changes need to happen. For instance, when this was all initially brought together, nobody would have thought that we would be encouraging people to come here to sell The Big Issue, yet by selling that paper or running a nonsensical or otherwise unprofitable scrap metal deal, people qualify for tax credits and get a lot more money from them than they do from The Big Issue or whatever it may be. People migrate here to be officially poor. Nobody would ever have thought that was sensible, and that sort of thing needs to change.
Having seen the difficulties caused by the previous Labour Government’s not maintaining interim rules on migration from eastern Europe, I doubt whether anyone here would accept that if we added Turkey and Ukraine to the EU, we should add them with the same rules on freedom of movement that apply elsewhere. I do not think anyone argues for that, so changes are obviously needed in the operation of the EU.
My personal view is that if we are going to have a Common Market that is really a common market, we need systems for determining the rules. When Margaret Thatcher introduced a federal Europe by introducing qualified majority voting as a result of the Single European Act, it was in many ways a rational process because we needed a system for working out the rules. I personally support having a more democratic process through the European Parliament, but I do not support an ever-closer union, because I do not believe that is what we want. We do not want to homogenise the European area.
There are debates and problems that arise from the way in which structures have been set up. One relates to human rights, for instance. I am a supporter of civil liberties and human rights, but I think the judicial activism in the Council of Europe—a different body, of course, from the EU—has been quite problematic. The solution, however, is democracy: using the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to control the interpretation of the European Court of Human Rights. It is not just to try to find some way out of a system that, apart from in some limited circumstances—prisoner votes, for instance—worked reasonably well. There are cases where it clearly does not work, but there are ways of dealing with them.
A referendum is definitely a very good way forward because it will enable us to have that debate. UKIP has recommended being in the European economic area, but the difficulty with that is that control on membership of the EU is completely lost because members of the EU have the right to veto additional members, but members of the EEA have to live with whatever comes out of the EU. At the end of the day, if we were not in the EU, we would be part of some other structure. It is unlikely to be invented as a new exercise; it is more likely that it would be based on the EEA. I do not necessarily believe that we always have to remain within the EU, but I am inclined to support the EU and its structures, while wanting definite changes to their operation.
John Hemming
It is a question of buyers and sellers. Normally, selling something is a bit harder than buying it. People will sell things quite happily, but it is one thing to sell to Germans in German and another to buy them in English. There is some difficulty with the idea that our exports would simply be taken as read. I do not accept that people so want to purchase our exports that they would do exactly what we wanted. If we look at the EEA, we find that Norway contributes a lot of money to the EU through its EEA membership. The argument that not being in the EU would save us money is not necessarily a valid one. I do not take the view that suddenly everybody would bend over backwards to do exactly what we want, but that does not necessarily mean that we should go into the negotiations saying that we will swallow whatever comes out of this. The Opposition’s view that we should never stand up for anything because we might lose is not mine.
I was very pleased when the Government pulled us out of supporting the eurozone financial arrangements beyond supporting the International Monetary Fund. That was a sensible decision. In the dying days of the last Government, when Labour lost the election, they underwrote things, but doing so is actually taking on a big risk.
Kelvin Hopkins
The hon. Gentleman mentions Norway. People make a lot of the fact that Norway collaborates substantially with the EU, but is it not more that its political classes are trying to get round the fact that they are not members of the EU by going along as far as they can with it? They have three very good reasons for not being in the EU: fishing, because they have their own fishing rights; oil, which they understandably want to keep and sell themselves; and agriculture, which they still protect for their own benefit.
John Hemming
Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland are members of the EEA but not of the EU. If we look at the pattern of different memberships, we find that some countries are members of the Council of Europe, but others are not. It is quite complex. The Vatican, for example, is a member of nothing, yet it can print euros. [Interruption.] Strange, isn’t it? But for whatever reason, Norway happens to be a member of the EEA, and we need to think about what the alternative would be if we had a choice about being or not being in the EU. That would be an important decision, but if we want to remain in it, it does not mean that no changes to how it works should be made.
Perhaps the error among some in my party has been not to drive for change. As I said, we cannot have a situation whereby people are encouraged to migrate here to be poor. That just cannot be rational; we cannot have that. When people started work on the treaty of Rome and other arrangements, nobody thought that that would be a sensible outcome. It involves using taxpayers’ resources to achieve a negative rather than a positive. Rather than rescuing people who have been marginalised, we create more marginalised people.
The Opposition raised concerns about the wording of the question. I am very supportive of it. I campaigned against having a directly elected dictator in Birmingham when such a role was proposed. About 5,000 people found that their votes had been disqualified because they wrote the word “No” on their ballot papers. I think that it is quite a good idea for there to be questions that allow the answers “Yes” and “No”, because these campaigns are always fought on a “yes or no” basis. I have not looked into how many ballot papers were spoiled at the time of the Scottish referendum, but there was a big problem in Birmingham. People were writing “No” on their ballot papers because they understood how they wanted to answer the question, but there were two boxes to be ticked, and it was not entirely clear which box they should tick in order to express their view. I think that the Electoral Commission got things wrong in that regard.
We are where we are today. We are exerting some pressure for the adoption of a time scale, and we are moving towards change and towards trusting the British people.
Mr Nuttall
The hon. Gentleman says that we are where we are today. I seem to recall that when, three years ago, standing probably on this very spot, I moved a motion that there be a national referendum on whether we should stay in the European Union, his hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Mr Sanders) voted for the motion, but he voted against it. Perhaps he will enlighten the House on what has caused him to change his mind.
John Hemming
This is my record of voting on the issue of referendums concerning the European Union. I rebelled in the vote on the Lisbon treaty: I voted for a referendum on that. I voted against the hon. Gentleman’s motion. I voted for the amendment to the Queen’s Speech calling for a referendum. I voted for the private Member’s Bill that was presented during the last Session, and I shall be voting for this Bill. That is because I think we need to secure some changes and then vote on them. I do not think that we should just vote today; I think that we should negotiate some changes and see what we can get, because I think that change is needed. If we have a vote today, we shall have to have another vote later, and I do not think that we need to have too many votes.
Mr Nuttall
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if, after we have tried to negotiate, it turns out that no one will agree to any changes, there should still be a referendum?
John Hemming
Yes. That is the whole point. The Bill—which I am going to support, just as I supported the last Bill—says that there should be a referendum by a certain date, which puts pressure on the system to deliver change. The reason I voted against the hon. Gentleman’s motion is that I think we need to negotiate for change, because the system needs to change. I do not take the view of the hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell), who believes that the structures are so appalling that they could never be modified or improved; I take the view that the structures need modification and improvement, but that we shall then need the authority of the British people. I shall not commit myself as to exactly what my view would be in that process, but I have already explained that I am sympathetic to the adoption of a democratic structure for the handling of trade agreements, which is essentially what we are talking about.
There are questions to be asked about, for instance, how the transatlantic trade and investment partnership should be managed. All trade agreements involve the same difficulties in relation to management. If we are talking about how straight a banana is, that is a trade issue. If we are talking about what names should be used for Cornish pasties, or about how types of food can be localised, that is a trade issue as well. There needs to be a democratic structure of some kind, and there must be an accountable system for management purposes, but what we need to do is secure change, and then have a vote.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I want to set out the settled view of British businesses that we should remain in membership of the European Union. I find it puzzling that so few Conservative Members are willing to set out those arguments today, and why it falls to Labour Members to do so. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), who started to set out the case a moment ago, but his is a very rare voice on his side of the House.
Mrs Main
With great respect to the right hon. Gentleman, I think that he is completely missing the point. That is not what the Bill is about. When the Bill is passed and the decision is made to have a referendum, we will listen to the voices of everyone, not just business, and an informed choice will be made. It could be “in” or it could be “out”, but the choice will be with the people. It will not be a case of listening beforehand to businesses which say “Do not give them a choice.”
Stephen Timms
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention.
“Do I want an in/out referendum? No, I don’t, because I don’t think we should leave.”
That is my position, but, in fact, all that I am doing is quoting to the hon. Lady what the leader of her party said on 5 January 2010, when he was Leader of the Opposition. When he was setting out his case for becoming Prime Minister he rightly identified the question of whether we should remain in membership of the European Union as being central to the determination of whether we should have an in/out referendum. He was speaking at an event called “Cameron Direct” in Hammersmith. Voters were given an opportunity to see what sort of person he was, and to put questions to him. He drew attention to the central connection between question A, “Should we remain in membership of the European Union?” and question B, “Should we have an in/out referendum?” , and he made his view absolutely clear: because he did not think that we should leave the EU, he did not think that we should have an in/out referendum. I am simply setting out the view that he took then. Of course his view has since changed, and we may well want to discuss in this debate why the Prime Minister’s position has changed so radically, as it undoubtedly has. Perhaps the lack of trust among his Back Benchers has led to that change.
Mrs Main
We do not know whether Labour Members are in favour of an in/out referendum, because they are not going to vote on it today—they have said they are not—but those of us on the Government Benches would like to give the people the choice. We do not care if there are different views—and there are different views on the right hon. Gentleman’s side, too—because we all have one vote, and the public will decide.
Stephen Timms
Well, I want to defend the view set out by the leader of the hon. Lady’s party. On 5 January 2010 in Hammersmith, shortly before he became Prime Minister and when he was leading the efforts of her and her hon. and right hon. Friends to be elected in the general election. He said:
“Do I want an in/out referendum? No, I don’t, because I don’t think we should leave”.
I think he was absolutely right.
Robert Neill
I have not intervened before because I have made my speech and I do not want to take up time, but may I say gently to the right hon. Gentleman that the reason why everything has changed is that his Government welched upon signing up to the Lisbon treaty without having a referendum, and from that point on the bets were off and trust was destroyed? That is why we need the referendum now.
Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman may have missed the date of the comment I have just read out. It was 5 January 2010, when he and his hon. and right hon. Friends were campaigning for election. The leader of the Conservative party, at an event that was called “Cameron Direct”, which was an opportunity for voters to find out exactly what sort of person was seeking to be elected Prime Minister and to understand what made him tick, said:
“Do I want an in/out referendum? No, I don’t, because I don’t think we should leave.”
That was in January 2010, long after the debate about the Lisbon treaty, and I happen to agree with the view set out then by the current leader of the Conservative party, and one of the things we should be discussing in this debate is why the leader of the Conservative party has changed his position so dramatically.
The Scottish referendum has been referred to several times in this debate, and that is appropriate because there are some telling lessons for us to learn from it. That also illustrates how dramatically the Conservative party has changed in recent years. It was called the Conservative and Unionist party; I do not know if it is still called that, but that certainly was its name in the past, and it was a defender of the Union. It was absolutely clear in the Scottish referendum debate, however, that the only influence of the Conservative party was on the side of the yes campaign. I spent some time canvassing in Glasgow and a voter said to me, “Who wants to be part of a country where the next Prime Minister might be Boris Johnson?” One can understand that view. The Conservative party is no longer, in effect, a defender of the Union. Only my party is a national party; it is the only party that is able to stand successfully for election in every part of the United Kingdom. The Conservative party is no longer the defender of the Union.
Equally, the Conservative party is no longer the defender of the views of British business, and I personally regret that that is the case. The views of British businesses are extremely important in this debate, and we ignore them at our peril. When the Government were elected they said they would eradicate the deficit in this Parliament, but the Prime Minister acknowledged in the Chamber this week that the deficit has only been reduced by one third. We have seen the fall in markets around the world this week. The Chancellor himself has warned about the prospects for the recovery over the coming months. The chief economist of the Bank of England this morning has been pointing out that people in the UK on moderate incomes are continuing to see their incomes fall in real terms. The average wage is down over £1,600 per year in real terms since 2010. Surely that should be the central preoccupation for the Government elected next year. We should not have two years of paralysis, which is what would happen if we were to go down the road envisaged in the Bill. Surely the economic interest of the country should be the focus of our attention, and we need businesses to be successful in order for the deficit to be eradicated. This Government have fallen so far short of the goal they set out for doing that.
The views of British businesses are clear. In response to an intervention from me the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) was unwilling to accept that the view set out by the director-general of the CBI was the view of British businesses. If I heard him correctly, he said that we should be cautious about listening to the big battalions.
Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman has confirmed that that is his view and I imagine it is the view of most Government Members in the Chamber today. They feel that we should not be listening to the views of the CBI, but I believe we should. Its director general has said that the EU
“remains fundamental to our economic future”.
He continued:
“Our membership supports jobs, drives growth and boosts our international competitiveness.”
That should be a central concern for this House and for the Government elected next May.
I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Ashford for a number of the points he made, and he drew attention also to the views of the Engineering Employers Federation. Its chief executive said just last month that
“manufacturers remain overwhelmingly of the view that our economic wellbeing is inextricably linked to the EU and we must stay in membership.”
In a poll of its members, it found that 85% of member companies indicated that they would like to stay in, rising to 90% of those with more than 250 employees.
Sheryll Murray
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the Bill is not about whether or not we are members of the European Union, but about trusting the British people to make that decision?
Stephen Timms
I say again to the hon. Lady that the question of whether we remain members of the EU is a central one in determining whether we should have a referendum. That was the view set out by the current Prime Minister—the leader of her party—when speaking in Hammersmith on 5 January 2010, while he was campaigning for election and she was supporting him. He said:
“Do I want an in/out referendum? No, I don’t, because I don’t think we should leave.”
That was his view then and I think he is right to link, as he did so explicitly in those remarks, the question of whether or not there should be a referendum with that of whether we should remain a member of the EU. I am saying that instead of two years of political paralysis with the kind of navel-gazing debate envisaged and supported by Government Members, we should be focusing on addressing the economic challenges that face the UK, tackling the cost of living crisis that millions of people across the country are suffering. They have seen their wages fall in real terms since 2010. That should be the focus for the Government elected next May.
Mr Bone
The right hon. Gentleman normally makes sensible comments in this Chamber, although I do not agree with the point he is making. Putting party politics to one side, does he not agree that what business wants is certainty and that until a referendum is held there will be a debate about whether we stay in or come out of the EU? Is it not better for business to have that referendum and so have that matter finally decided?
Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that what business needs is certainty, a point that was made by the Foreign Secretary just a few minutes ago. If we were to embark on a referendum campaign, however, that would unleash two years of total uncertainty. Investment projects would not go forward and economic improvements would not take place. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to highlight the dangers of uncertainty, as his right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary did, but this Bill will create more uncertainty than any other measure currently being proposed.
Mr Bone
The right hon. Gentleman makes the fair point that the further away we are from the referendum, the more uncertainty there is. Of course, there has been a lot of misunderstanding in the Chamber today. The Bill says that there will be a referendum by the end of 2017; it does not say that it will not be earlier.
Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I think that he would probably agree with the views of Sir Martin Sorrell, a supporter, as I understand it, of his party, who said:
“Having a referendum creates more uncertainty and we don’t need that…You added another reason why people will postpone investment decisions.”
Surely what we should be doing in this House is encouraging investment decisions and encouraging people to bring them forward rather than putting them back. I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that there is an enormous danger in creating unnecessary and unwanted uncertainty, which would lead to serious economic risk for the UK.
Mr Thomas
Further to the intervention made by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), in which he suggested that a referendum on this question would somehow deliver certainty, I wonder whether he has seen the remarks made by the Prime Minister at Hammersmith on 5 January 2010. The Prime Minister said:
“I don’t think it would put an end to the argument, I think you would just—you’d have a neverendum not a referendum. You’d just get one answer then you would have another one…The pressure wouldn’t go away.”
The Prime Minister went on to say that, secondly, he did not think we ought to leave the European Union. He thought that it was not a good idea and that it would be bad for Britain.
Stephen Timms
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point. The idea of the neverendum that the Prime Minister introduced to the debate is very telling. If a referendum were announced in 2017, that certainly would not end the uncertainty. Quite the reverse. It would unleash at least two years of grave uncertainty with serious risks to the UK economy as a result. In my view, we should not be going down that road as we cannot afford it at a time when the Government, in five years, have reduced the deficit by only one third having promised to eradicate it over the lifetime of the Parliament.
I agree with what was said by Stephen Odell, the European chief executive of Ford:
“don't discuss leaving a trading partner where 50% of your exports go”.
That is what the Conservative party is proposing.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman has already told us that he rates his constituents less than he rates Scottish constituents and that he would give them fewer powers. Which industries is he trying to pick? He is cherry-picking. Would he have followed the lead of those industries that said in the past that we should join the euro? If it was easier for big business to join the euro, would he go down that route? Surely the biggest threat to business is the uncertainty that any Labour Government would bring; businesses would certainly be leaving in droves if Labour were elected in May.
Stephen Timms
I simply think that the hon. Gentleman should listen to people such as the CBI and the EEF, who are very clear. He wants me to refer to a different industry, so let me quote Willie Walsh, the chief executive of British Airways, who said earlier this month that
“Britain pulling out of the EU would be a blow to business, without question.”
Conservative Members should listen to what businesses say, not insult them, not deprecate them and not ignore the views they express, particularly at a time of such grave difficulty in our economic circumstances, when people’s wages are going down, and millions of people across the country are facing a cost of living crisis.
I wanted to set down in a little more detail the concerns I see, representing as I do a constituency on the east side of London that shares a lot of interests with the constituency of the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst who introduced this Bill. Given the extent of the debate during my speech, I will not be able to do so. I also want to apologise to the House that because of commitments in my constituency later today, I shall have to depart before the winding-up speeches.
I make no apology for setting out in the debate what is the settled view of Britain’s businesses—that we should remain in membership of the European Union. Members on the Government Benches should listen to those views, not ignore them. It is surprising that it is necessary for Opposition Members to present them here because Government Members are so unwilling to do so, but that is where we are. I have taken a consistent view in supporting our membership of the European Union. I have done that in my constituency as well as in the House, and on the basis of the views that I have set out in my constituency I currently have the largest majority in the House. I therefore have great confidence in setting out those views again today, and confidence about the view that my constituents will express about my endeavours when the election comes next year.
I want to end on this point: those who support UK business should not be supporting this Bill.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I shall be brief. The merits of the Bill are so sound that they do not need to be laboured. That the British people deserve a say on our relationship with the EU of today is clear. No one can deny that the EU of 2014 bears no resemblance to the European Economic Community of 1975, and the UK’s position in the EU today clearly lacks democratic legitimacy. As hon. Members have frequently pointed out, no one under 57 had a vote in the 1975 referendum on whether we wanted to be part of the Common Market. No one at all in this country, whether under or over 57 years old, has ever been asked if we want to be part of what is the increasingly federal European Union of today.
A constituent of mine said only the other day, “We were conned in that referendum. We voted for a Common Market and now we have something completely different, which we never voted for.” Irrespective of whether those who put forward those proposals in 1975 foresaw where we would be today in our relationship with the EU, the fact that my constituent feels conned is a very serious aspersion to cast in a democratic country and we must put that right. We must give people in this country a say. It is not just my constituent who feels like that; it is the British people, who have made it clear that they want this referendum. They want a say. In the European elections in May more than half the electorate voted for parties which are committed to a referendum. The Liberal Democrats, who put themselves forward as the “party of in”, received only 7% of the vote.
The British people want their chance to decide and we as Conservatives are the party that will ensure that they have it. That is the simple and straightforward message of the Bill—no more, no less. Despite Labour blocking a referendum last year, I want to thank the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) for her words when she said that
“it is important to recognise that the majority of Labour voters in the country want to see a referendum.”—[Official Report, 5 July 2013; Vol. 565, c. 1175.]
I hope those on the Opposition Benches who stood against a referendum last year will now reconsider and give the Bill their full support, because the will of the British people on the matter has been made clear.
Members who truly believe in Britain’s continuing membership of the EU of today should seek a proper mandate for it by putting that to the people and persuading them that they are right. If they are confident of their stance, they should not fear this Bill; they should welcome it. Primarily, the Bill is not about whether we believe in the European Union. This debate is about whether or not we believe in democracy. Members can be pro-Europe and vote for the Bill, but they cannot be pro-democracy and oppose it.
Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)
I applaud my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) for bringing forward the Bill, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), whose first draft of the Bill paved the way. Having spent years calling for a referendum on our EU membership, I have little more to say than what I have already said and what has been said here today. The case in favour of an in/out referendum is overwhelming. The party of Keir Hardie ought to see that. As UKIP’s first elected Member of Parliament I can say that UKIP MPs can always be counted on to support an EU referendum. UKIP MPs are both willing and able to vote for an in/out referendum.
We should also acknowledge the role played in all of this by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall). I note that almost three years ago to the day, 111 MPs on both sides of the House defied their Whips and voted for an in/out referendum. It was a Division that he masterfully oversaw. Those 111 MPs did so in defiance of their own party Whip; in defiance of their Front Benches. They did so despite the advice of the pet pundits. I am delighted to see that the Whips, and even the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), have changed their tune and now back what my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North pioneered. Those on one Front Bench are now on side.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
On the issue of sides and changing them, several months ago the hon. Gentleman said that the only way to secure a referendum was to vote Conservative. Why has he changed his mind? Was he telling an untruth then, or is he telling an untruth now?
Douglas Carswell
The reason I changed my mind was because I came to realise that the promises on Europe of the Administration that the hon. Gentleman defends have all the credibility of a Greek Government bond, and like a Greek Government bond they can be redeemed only on the say so of a German Chancellor. Because I now see that, and many of my former colleagues now see that too, I recognise that the promises are literally incredible. Now that I have realised that, I have done something about it. I leave it to the hon. Gentleman to resolve that dilemma for himself.
Mrs Main
I wonder when the damascene conversion came about, because in The Daily Telegraph in April 2014 the hon. Gentleman said:
“In order to exit the EU, we need David Cameron to be Prime Minister in 2017—the year when we will get the In/Out referendum, our chance to vote to leave the EU.”
So obviously it was between April and sometime recently.
Douglas Carswell
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for once again pointing out that when the facts change, I change my mind. I wonder what she does. When the leader of my party announced at Bloomberg that he was serious and wanted change, no one cheered more loudly or tweeted more joyously than I did. But I came to realise, as many of my former colleagues and those sitting next to the hon. Lady on those Government Benches now realise, it was merely smoke and mirrors. He was not serious about change. The game plan was to secure the illusion of a new deal in the hope that voters would vote to stay in. It is all about not changing. Once I realised that, I did something about it.
Douglas Carswell
I would like to make a little progress. I intended making a two-minute speech and I have given way twice.
Parliament needs to assert itself over the Executive and is doing so. The sort of mandarins who advise the Prime Minister on the sofas in Downing street might not fancy an EU referendum. This House must assert itself over and above them. I am delighted to back the Bill.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
As the hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) just said, next Friday it will be three years since I moved a motion in this House to hold a referendum on our membership of the European Union. At that time, there was a three-line Whip from all the major parties against my motion. I am pleased that the Prime Minister has listened to the overwhelming view of the majority of the British people that they want their say on this issue—that it should not be decided by a political elite, but by the hard-working British people.
There are two main reasons why the Bill is necessary and why there should be a referendum. First, as has been mentioned, it is four decades since the British people last had their say on our membership of what was then the European Economic Community, which people referred to at the time as a common market. But the organisation we belong to today is a completely different animal. It is vastly bigger and has vastly more control over the United Kingdom.
Secondly, as has already been evidenced in the debate, this issue crosses party political boundaries. There are supporters of all parties who want us to stay in the European Union, and there are supporters of all parties who want us to leave. In those circumstances, because it cannot be decided at a general election, and because it is a constitutional matter, it is right that it should be determined by the British people.
As chair of the Better Off Out group of MPs and peers, my view is clearly that we would, as a nation, be better off out of the European Union. On far too many issues this Parliament has no choice but to simply carry out the instructions sent to us from the European Union, whether we like it or not. This House of Commons should not simply be the lapdog of Brussels. Why should we have to pay billions of pounds each year just for the privilege of trading with our own European neighbours, even though, as has been pointed out, they would trade with us anyway? It just does not make sense.
Mr Bone
I was delighted to have the opportunity to wind up the debate that my hon. Friend initiated three years ago. Does he agree that this mother of Parliaments should decide today by having a Division? As someone who passionately believes that we should come out of the European Union, I do not think that we should allow this to go through on the nod.
Mr Nuttall
I recall that my hon. Friend summed up that debate eloquently and—this was the crucial point—just in the nick of time. The House divided then, and if we divide today I of course will have no hesitation in supporting the Bill.
As a nation, we need to export to the whole world. Having to comply with red tape from Brussels makes the job that much harder and more difficult for British companies that are having to compete on the world stage with companies that do not have to comply with such a regulatory burden.
I hope that the Bill will pass through its stages in this House quickly, and if it is held up again in the other place, I hope that the Parliament Act will be used so that my constituents in Bury, Ramsbottom and Tottington, and indeed constituents in the whole country, can have their say. It is long overdue.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
I will be suitably brief, because I know that many colleagues wish to speak in this important debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) on introducing the Bill. I got to know him quite well when he was a Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government and always found him to be a thoughtful and considerate fellow. I thought that he set out his arguments extremely well this morning, but I am afraid that I disagree with him on three points. I will touch on them briefly.
First, on the need for the Bill and, more importantly, for the referendum, if we listen carefully to the party on the Government Benches, and it is now a party—I think that all the Lib Dems are in Rochester and Strood trying to hold on to their deposit in the by-election—we hear that it somehow takes no responsibility for the changing nature of the European Union over the past 40 years. Let us be clear that the two Prime Ministers who transferred more powers than any other from the United Kingdom to Brussels were Lady Thatcher and John Major. Government Members act as if they had no role at all in that, and that somehow there is a need today that was not there 20 years ago. I think that with the exception of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, none of the Conservatives who were Members of Parliament in the early ’90s argued against the Maastricht changes. None of them thinks that Lady Thatcher was wrong to have ceded so much power to our European neighbours.
Kelvin Hopkins
My hon. Friend is reminding the Conservatives that they did indeed commit many sins in relation to our membership of the European Union, not least of which was joining the exchange rate mechanism, which proved to be an economic disaster. Many of them now regret that because it led to Labour’s victory in 1997.
Thomas Docherty
I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. He has reminded us of the key role that the current Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer were playing in the early ’90s in forming the economic policies of John Major and Lord Lamont which led us so disastrously to Black Wednesday. I am not sure that they have had a chance to apologise for the mistakes that they made.
Kelvin Hopkins
I have to remind my hon. Friend that the Labour leadership at that time also supported the ERM strategy, which I did not.
Thomas Docherty
I am most grateful for my hon. Friend’s incredibly helpful intervention.
As far as I am aware, very few Conservative Members stood on a platform at the last general election calling for an in/out referendum. I suspect that the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) did, and I know that the hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) did, but in the Conservative party manifesto the Prime Minister explicitly ruled out having a referendum. So what is the reason for doing this now?
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
Twenty-one years ago, I was elected national chairman of the Conservative students. That decision was overruled by central office, and the person who lost was appointed. The reason was that I was leading student opposition to the Maastricht treaty, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) and Dan Hannan. Some of us have been absolutely consistent on this and predicted at the time that the European Community would change beyond recognition. That is why the British public need to have a say on this totally changed construct from what they were promised and offered in 1975.
Thomas Docherty
I am most grateful to Lady Thatcher’s metatron for joining us today. I was not aware that there were many mature students in the Conservative party 20-odd years ago, but it turns out that there were obviously some.
The reality is that the institution that Conservative Members rail against today was constructed by Conservative Foreign Secretaries and Prime Ministers, yet they take no responsibility and now pretend that it is somebody else’s fault.
There is no mandate from the country for a referendum, because the vast majority of Members of this House were elected in opposition to having a referendum at this time. Many hon. Members have referred to Scotland. The Scottish referendum came about because two parties, the Green party and the Scottish National party, stood on a clear and unambiguous platform in saying, “Vote for us and we will have a referendum.” They won a majority in the Scottish Parliament elections in 2011, and they had a democratic right to call for that referendum. Labour Members did not oppose that because we could see a clear mandate. Despite what some Conservative Members have said, I do not think that many of them came to Scotland, which, to be fair, is probably why we got quite a good result.
Thomas Docherty
I know that one or two of them did come up for a few days to help out.
Scotland went on “pause” for three years. Its economy suffered because we were having a referendum. The poison and the nastiness in that debate was something I had never previously encountered in my 20 years of political activism. Business and industry deferred investment decisions because of the uncertainty that having a referendum was going to create. It is a fantasy to think that if we decide now that we are going to have a referendum in three years’ time, we will not see companies such as Nissan and those cited by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) putting off investment decisions. It will cause nothing but uncertainty, put the fragile recovery at risk and lead to a three-year obsession with the single issue of Europe.
Thomas Docherty
I have already given way twice to my hon. Friend, who has spoken at some length. I want to make some progress because other Members want to get in.
Another problem with the timetable is that it assumes that the Prime Minister will be able to renegotiate by the end of 2017. My right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) spoke eloquently about the Prime Minister’s track record of not being the strongest at winning friends and influencing people, not just in his own party, but in 27 countries. [Interruption.] I appreciate that it is difficult for the hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) to stand up sometimes, but he should just get up and say it rather than sledge from a sedentary position. He just wants to chunter away and that is fine.
The Prime Minister has failed repeatedly to win in Europe. Do we really think that the other 27 nations are going to allow the United Kingdom unilaterally to have a series of opt-outs from Europe?
Mrs Main
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I do not want to infer anything from what the hon. Gentleman has just said, but would he like to explain why my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) has trouble getting up occasionally? I think that was an unfortunate and ill-judged remark.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
The hon. Lady will appreciate that that is not a point of order. We will not take time in this debate discussing the hon. Gentleman’s athleticism or otherwise.
Thomas Docherty
I am moving towards my conclusion and am conscious that others want to speak.
Let me be absolutely clear: the idea that the Prime Minister can unilaterally secure significant renegotiation is unrealistic, to say the least. The only way we are going to have significant renegotiation is through an intergovernmental conference, which will require Chancellor Merkel, the French President and others to agree to the process. What will happen if we get to the end of 2017 and the Prime Minister of the day has failed to secure those renegotiations? Will we have a referendum or not?
Thomas Docherty
My hon. Friend says yes, which is a reasonable position if she simply wants out of the European Union. I disagree with her, but it is a legitimate position. What we should not have is the duplicitous behaviour of some Conservative Members. They claim that they want to put this to the will of the people, but the reality is that they just want to leave the European Union. This has nothing to do with trusting the British people; it is all because the Conservative parliamentary party cannot trust its own Prime Minister.
Finally, there is no clear reason for having a referendum in 2017. It will simply cause economic instability and constitutional chaos, and distract us from the important work that needs to be done on rebuilding our economy. I do not support this Bill and do not wish it a good wind.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I am sorry to hear that your voice is suffering, Madam Deputy Speaker; I hope you did not catch it from the Leader of the Opposition.
The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) is a really well-liked parliamentarian, but I think he will reflect later that some of his comments were unfortunate. He made clear his position in favour of the European Union, which is a perfectly legitimate view to take. I tried to find something on which I could agree with him. It is possible that he has misunderstood the Bill. It says that there will be a referendum by the end of 2017, so it may well take place earlier, which would remove some of the uncertainty the hon. Gentleman is worried about. Perhaps that is the little bit of common ground I share with him.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) on an absolutely splendid and passionate speech. If the progress of the Bill were based on that, it would be law by next week.
I want to make two points. First, I fear, because of the parliamentary timetable and because Members of both Houses will, quite legitimately, use parliamentary tactics to delay the Bill, we will not get it on to the statute book. I think that the way forward is for the Government to introduce the Bill. The Conservatives dominate the Government and lead the Government, so we should not be scared to put the Bill forward. If the Liberal Democrats want to vote against the Bill, let them vote against it. If they want to leave the Government, let them leave the Government. I do not think that they will. If we were to introduce it as a Government Bill, a Conservative Bill, on the Floor of the House and it was voted down, the public would know that the Conservatives were in favour of a referendum and that the Liberal Democrats and Labour were against it. That is the only way in which we will get a clear-cut vote on this matter. I hope that the House divides today. I hope to add some weight to the attempts to get that Division.
Secondly, I want to raise a much more local matter. The rest of the country will have to wait for an in/out referendum, but north Northamptonshire is already having an in/out referendum. It is being led in Kettering by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), in my constituency by myself and in the Corby constituency by Thomas Pursglove, the excellent Conservative candidate, who, I am pleased to tell the Prime Minister, is as Eurosceptic as myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering. We are delivering a quarter of a million ballot papers with the simple question of whether the people of north Northamptonshire want to remain in or come out of the EU. We will finish the referendum by the end of the year and deliver the result to Downing street. I do not think that I am wrong in saying that, at this stage, 85% of the ballots that have been returned are for coming out of the EU.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
May I draw it to my hon. Friend’s attention that the good people of Cleethorpes are also receiving those in/out referendum leaflets, and that 89% of them have voted for out?
Mr Bone
I am really grateful that that is happening. In north Northamptonshire, this is the biggest test of public opinion on whether we should be in or out of the EU since the Wilson referendum.
Our work in the Corby constituency might be of interest to Opposition Front Benchers. At the moment, it is a Labour seat. As I have gone around the doors delivering the ballot papers, it has been amazing how many people who have voted Labour are very keen to vote in the referendum. As the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) said, they want to come out. That is a warning. I am trying to help the Opposition by saying that if they do not adopt the position that there should be a referendum, a lot of their voters will go off and vote UKIP. I do not think that UKIP will make any gains, but it might let the Conservatives win.
Mr Thomas
I have always had an extremely high opinion of the hon. Gentleman and have long thought that he should be elevated to the Front Bench. I wonder whether he will turn his attention to the question of the date and tell us why it should be 2017. Why should it not be 2018, 2016 or 2019? Why has the arbitrary slot of 2017 been picked?
Mr Bone
I am grateful for that intervention, although it has killed off any chance of my getting into government, and I was looking forward to it happening soon. I will deal with that point, but I first want to go back to the local issue of the ballot in north Northamptonshire.
If anyone in north Northamptonshire wants to vote, they can do so at nneureferendum.com or by postal ballot. The interesting thing is the movement of traditional Labour supporters towards our position as the only party that can deliver a referendum. That is a most interesting change and it has happened over the past few weeks. It is good news for Tom Pursglove, our candidate, and rather bad news for the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford).
The last point—I tried to deal with this at the beginning of my speech—is the date of the referendum. Everyone is making the mistake of saying that it will be at the end of 2017, but the Bill and the Prime Minister’s position are clear that it could be earlier. The end of 2017 is a backstop—that is the end date. I hope that explanation will allow the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) to vote for the Bill today.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate the promoter of the Bill, the hon. Member for Bromley, Chislehurst and the Boleyn Ground (Robert Neill)—I think that would be the correct designation. It is a great pleasure for me to speak, given the sense of groundhog day and coming back again a year on, so I decided to dust off my speeches and found them on the shelf, although I then decided not to repeat them because I wanted to say other things.
Today is a good news day in one respect, and it is a shame that the hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) is not present to hear this—[Hon. Members: “He was!”] Yes, but where is he now? Perhaps he has gone to Rochester. There was an important development in the European Parliament yesterday: the Latvian member of the bizarre grouping that UKIP is part of has walked out. As a result, it is estimated that £1.5 million that was to be paid to UKIP—a party that is against the European Union—by the European Union will no longer be available to UKIP in the European Parliament. That is excellent news. I understand that the Conservatives and the European People’s Party were somehow behind that, and if that is the case I congratulate them on what they have done to reduce the amount of money going to UKIP.
We are debating a Bill that has exactly the same wording as the Bill promoted last year by the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), whom I am pleased to see is in his place—[Interruption.] Not for long, I guess, but at least he is here now. I want to get back to the point that I made in an intervention. This Bill is not the same as the previous Bill once amended by the other place. The other place amended the hon. Gentleman’s Bill to insert wording that had been determined and recommended by the Electoral Commission, regarding the question to be voted on in any putative referendum.
Conservative Members have decided not to heed that warning, and instead they have resubmitted the Bill as originally presented to the House last year. They are doing that because they hope to invoke the Parliament Act and force through a Bill in the five or six months before the end of this Parliament, without giving us time properly to debate, consider and amend the legislation. They are hoping to get the Bill through today on Second Reading, rush it through Committee and its remaining stages, and then invoke the Parliament Act so that the other place cannot scrutinise it and bring forward sensible proposals for amendment, as it did last year. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) wishes to intervene, I am happy to give way.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I was not meaning to intervene; I was “bobbing”—that is a pun—simply to say that the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) is not present. I know all Tories look alike, but he is not here.
Mike Gapes
In which case I must get a new pair of glasses. I apologise profusely.
The position put forward in the Bill has a number of serious flaws. There is a problem, which other hon. Members have already commented on, with regard to the date of the referendum. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) referred to the possibility that the referendum might be held not by the end of 2017 but somehow much earlier. Presumably, that is because he hopes and perhaps even expects the Prime Minister to be unable to have a successful negotiation and make an early decision, having tried his one last chance, to pull out of any negotiation to have an early referendum. If the hon. Member for Wellingborough wishes to intervene to clarify that, I am happy to give way.
Mike Gapes
That would be very interesting, when none of the 27 other EU countries seems to be on the same page at the British Conservatives. Nevertheless, we shall wait and see because that is, of course, hypothetical.
The UK presidency begins on 1 July 2017, so Ministers in any British Government in 2017 will have to attend and chair a series of meetings every week on various topics. In addition, there will have to be another Minister present to represent UK interests during the six-month period. Is it really sensible to envisage a referendum during that time when, instead of focusing on reform and progress in the EU, British Ministers, who are also Members of this House, will have to be involved in trying to deal with the politics of the referendum? [Interruption.] Yes, maybe they will not be here. That is an interesting point. It is foolish to consider holding the referendum during the six months of the British presidency of the EU. In those circumstances, it makes no sense whatever to talk about “by the end of 2017”. It would be better, if we are going to have a referendum, to have it in 2016 or before 1 July 2017, so that when British Ministers go to those meetings we can say whether we will be staying or leaving the EU, while we are chairing those meetings.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
That will affect the perception of Britain’s leadership. Having the presidency means that we are supposed to be holding the chair.
Mike Gapes
Absolutely. Can we imagine the circumstances where, in the middle of an important negotiation on proposals for the future, the British Government have to say, “Sorry, we are going to vacate the chair and leave the meeting, because we’ve all got to head back home to take part in the referendum campaign?” That is absolutely absurd. If the outcome, God forbid, was a vote to leave halfway through this process, it would cause enormous damage to our standing and respect among other people in Europe, not least in the form of the uncertainties it could cause for the exchange rate and to business confidence, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) referred.
Seema Malhotra
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again; he is being very generous. This afternoon I shall be speaking at the Rastriya Pravasi Bharatiya Divas conference with the Indian diaspora, which looks at how Britain and India support a mutual strategic relationship. A big part of that is investment in both nations. Does my hon. Friend agree that all the uncertainty will also affect the perception of Britain as a place to invest in, when what—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Lady’s intervention should be short, especially as she has already made one. I am sure that the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) will not be repetitive in his answer.
Mike Gapes
I shall not be repetitive at all, Madam Deputy Speaker. I agree with my hon. Friend.
Many companies in Korea, China, the United States and elsewhere around the world wish to invest in Europe. They will be looking closely at whether to invest in this country when there is uncertainty over our staying in the single market. This is a vital issue, and it is time the Conservatives understood that their proposal poses a threat to inward investment, jobs and prosperity. Millions of people in this country work for foreign companies that have come here to invest and to gain access to the European single market. This country is outward looking and global; it has a stable society and the rule of law. It is also involved in the largest single market in the world, on a continent of 500 million people. Half our trade is with the European Union. The Bill represents a threat to that and to the jobs and prosperity of our people. That is a flaw in the Bill.
I have talked about the proposed date, and I will say more about that another time.
Mike Gapes
The hon. Lady will have to wait and see whether there is a vote. I am waiting to see what happens. She will not have long to wait.
There are many flaws in the Bill, and it needs to be significantly improved if it is to be in the interests of our people and our country. I have already mentioned the House of Lords vote earlier this year to change the wording of the question that will be asked in the referendum back to the original wording proposed by the Electoral Commission. I was going to mention the original Government proposal put forward by the Conservative party, but of course it was not a Government proposal; it was a Conservative proposal. I have to keep reminding myself that we are in the bizarre position of having a private Member’s Bill being used as a device for introducing what ought to be a Government Bill. I agree that it should be a Government Bill. We should not be abusing the private Members’ Bill procedure by doing things like this. Many Conservative MPs have been forced to come here today. They have been whipped to come here on a Friday morning and eat bacon butties when they should be out campaigning in Rochester and Strood. Instead, they have to be here because they have been whipped to come and vote on a private Member’s Bill. That is absurd.
Sheryll Murray
The hon. Gentleman might be interested to learn that I am here because I choose to be. I believe in giving my constituents a say, and I trust them to make this decision. Does he not trust his constituents to do that?
Mike Gapes
Yes, and I choose to be here today. I choose to speak in the debate, as I did last year. I am delighted to be speaking up for the European Union and for Britain’s membership of it. My constituents are quite content with the position I am taking on this, and I look forward to being resoundingly re-elected next year. I have to tell the hon. Lady that the Conservative party in my constituency has not even got round to choosing a candidate to stand against me yet. It must be really confident.
I shall return to the Bill. I apologise; I was sidetracked by the hon. Lady’s intervention.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I do not think the hon. Gentleman will get sidetracked again. I am tempted to believe that he is coming to the end of his speech in order to allow another Member in.
Mike Gapes
I have a few more points to make, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I will be as brief as I can.
Unfortunately, the Bill does not take account of the resounding success in the turnout among young people in the Scottish referendum. It was an opportunity to build on the decision in Scotland to give 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote. After the Bill gets its Second Reading, as it no doubt will today, I hope there will be the chance to table an amendment giving 16 and 17-year-olds a vote in the referendum, as happened in Scotland.
The Bill has huge implications for the 2 million British people living—working or retired—in other EU countries. If we leave the EU, their livelihoods, and possibly their residence and legal status, will be jeopardised. We might see a huge increase in demand on our NHS from elderly people coming back to this country. Why should they not have the right to vote, as British citizens, on a decision that could greatly affect their position?
Similarly, although Gibraltarians have been given the vote, there are other British citizens affected by the EU’s relationships with member states’ outer and overseas territories. For example, why are the Falkland Islanders not being given a vote? The relationship between the EU and the outlying and overseas territories of member states is important both economically and politically, but the Bill takes no account of that.
We need to consider the arrangements for the conduct of the poll. Should we have voting on more than one day to increase turnout? Should it be possible for people to vote electronically? We examined these kinds of issues in the last Bill, and I hope we can do the same with this Bill.
The local paper in my constituency, the Ilford Recorder, today reports that the Barking, Havering and Redbridge hospital trust has recruited nurses from Portugal to fill the gap in our local NHS and to end our reliance on agency staff. The recruitment is necessary because of the failings of the Government’s health policy, which we can discuss another day, and because EU migration is vital to the provision of health care for my constituents. If the Government get their way and cut off our relationship with the EU, the many immigrants providing vital services in our economy and health service will no longer be able to do that.
The nasty party is back. The Bill is another example of the Conservative party chasing the UKIP vote. UKIP is dragging the party way to the right, and it will cost it at the next election, as it is costing it now in political support. I urge my hon. Friends and others to stand firm against this nasty element coming into our society through the nasty party.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
I shall be as brief as possible.
As a Member who has consistently supported an early referendum, I am delighted to support the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill). For 20 years before we joined the then Common Market, we argued but could not decide, and in the 40 years since, our EU membership has remained a sore on our body politic. The reason is simple: the people were mis-sold membership; it has turned out to be something other than was promised. We now have more and more integration, with more and more power being passed to an unaccountable Euro-elite. What should have happened, of course, is that we had a series of votes after each of the major treaties. It might well be that we would still be in the same position—that is, a member—but it would have clearly been the settled will of the British people.
In 1975, I was the self-appointed chairman of the Grimsby and Cleethorpes Young Conservatives against the Common Market. The reason I was self-appointed is that I was the only member! The party was going through one of its phases of Euro-enthusiasm at that stage and the Young Conservatives were pounding the streets in favour of a yes vote. I was a lone canvasser for the no campaign.
Referendums are the purest form of democracy: everyone has a vote. There is my vote; the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister vote; it all counts for one. As we have seen with the recent Scottish vote, referendums stimulate interest and enthusiasm for the political process.
Last night, I re-read my speech in the October 2011 debate. I referred then to the previous day when I had attended a civic service in Barton-upon-Humber. On that occasion, everyone I spoke to was in favour of my supporting the referendum vote. As it happens, the same event comes up this Sunday, so I will be able to go back and report that yet again I have supported the will of my constituents to have a referendum.
Finally, Euroscepticism runs deep in my constituency and in neighbouring Grimsby. At the time of the original negotiations, the fishing industry was literally sold out and was wiped out as a result. It is in the local DNA for people to be Eurosceptic. As I mentioned in an intervention, in common with other Members I am conducting a referendum of my own in my constituency. At the moment, 89% are showing a no vote. I am very confident that I am speaking on behalf of my constituents.
We live in a troubled world and I recognise that we need to co-operate with and work in partnership with our neighbours, but we do not need the bureaucratic monolith we have created. I hope that, when the referendum comes, as it surely will, my constituents and the country will vote to withdraw.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
I have in the past been a great supporter of Friday morning debates on private Members’ business. We often get some very straight talking on a Friday morning, and I gained that impression this morning. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), who has had a tradition of opposition to the European Union going back many years, as have many Conservative Members. I do think, however, that it would have been better if this motion had been made more clearly one about getting out of Europe, rather than hiding behind the pretence that it was a motion about giving choice to the British people.
We should beware of politicians calling for common sense without telling us what that common sense actually is. What we have not had from the Conservative party or the Prime Minister is clarity about what a renegotiated Europe would look like or about the red lines as we go into the negotiations. Neither have we had clarity about a time scale within which to enable the British people to make the informed and common-sense judgments—I certainly trust the British people are able to do so, as many Conservative Members have claimed they do—that are needed. A common-sense judgment demands having some real questions on the table to look at, examine and then to decide on.
Because the Prime Minister has been unwilling to provide clarity over the red lines and because the Conservative party has been unwilling to set out what a revised European Union would look like after a renegotiation, within 19 months of next May, there would have to be clarity on those issues. I do not think that that is a reasonable time scale. The hon. Gentleman who often speaks for his wife and whose constituency I have forgotten—
Barry Gardiner
Wellingborough: of course it is. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) said that the end of 2017 was a backstop, but, as he knows full well, in the last six months of 2017 Britain will be chairing the European Union, and it is inconceivable that we could hold the referendum within those six months. The hon. Gentleman drew the date forward, saying that there could be a referendum during the first six months of the year, but that would shorten the time that the British people would have in which to look at what was on offer.
I do not think that the Bill is lacking in disingenuity. It is disingenuous because it claims to rely on the good wisdom of the British people to make a judgment without giving them the basis on which to make that judgment, and without giving them a time scale that will allow them to exercise it.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
As the only Government Member who had not yet been elected when my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton) heroically introduced the previous Bill, I can say that the deeply disappointing obstruction of that Bill at least enabled new Members such as me—and from 20 November onwards, I hope, my future Conservative colleague in Rochester and Strood—to give my support to this Bill.
It will come as no surprise to the House that I did not vote in 1975. I was not born in 1975—I was not even a glint in the eyes of my parents, who had not met in 1975—and I am not alone. There is a generation of people out there who need to have their say, and the Bill gives the British public an important opportunity to have their say on how this country has been governed over the past 40 years. It is clear that, during that time, more powers and far too much public money have been surrendered to Brussels. Parliament’s sovereignty has been eroded and degraded by the dogma of ever-closer union. Our families and businesses have been subjected to far too much regulation and red tape. The remote and undemocratic leadership of the EU has contributed to the erosion of trust in the House of Commons and in politics, and to the erosion of our national identity and self-confidence.
Successive Governments have contributed to that as well. The Labour Party promised a referendum on the European constitution, won an election on that promise, and then denied us a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. That seems to me to be a scandalous breach of trust, and our inability to correct it thus far has contributed to the culture of mistrust and cynicism that pervades our politics and enables the essentially destructive politics of protest and pessimism to take hold in the country. Now is the time to right that wrong and to use the mechanism of the Bill as an essential guarantor, given that previous promises have been made and then ignored.
I believe that there will be a referendum. I believe that this is an idea whose time has come—whose time, indeed, came a long time ago. The choice for those who have opposed it in the past, and may choose to do so again today, is whether to accept that inevitability with dignity and embrace it for the opportunities that it brings.
We have nothing to fear in this Bill, nothing to fear in trusting the public, and much to gain. As has been said in the past by many Members and today, notably, by the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), this is not merely a matter of the House trusting the public with a decision on the central question of our national future. It is a matter of our providing the public with a reason to trust the House, and our political process a little more, and using this moment to engage and inspire the public in respect of what we want this country to be and where we want it to go in the future.
This has been the dominant issue of the past 30 or 40 years. It has been the subject of constant debates in the House, the press and the country. It has seized the consciousness of much of the British public. At some stage we must put it to the British public, and at some stage we must answer the questions that lie behind it and get on with the life of this country. Let me point out, with apologies to the Leader of the House, that some of you will not be here in 30 or 40 years’ time—[Laughter]—but for the sake of those who will, I do not want us still to be debating and discussing this issue without resolution, without settlement, and without the voice of the public finally being heard. I want us to settle this matter, and then to turn outward as a nation and look to the future. I want us to devote the energies of the House and our politics to the challenges of the 21st century, securing our prosperity and our place in the world. Now is the time for us to throw this question open to the nation, to spark a debate, and to empower the British people at long last.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
If every single Opposition Member who spoke about the awfulness of this Bill does not reinforce that with their vote today, the public can conclude that they are prepared to let the unelected House at the other end of this Building do their dirty work for them. I have heard from them today nothing good about this small Bill, which simply reinforces the public’s ability to make up their own mind when they have heard all the arguments, whether from business or politicians. Therefore, if those Opposition Members who desperately oppose this Bill do not vote today, they will show the hypocrisy of the Opposition, who prefer to let the other end do their dirty work for them.
Robert Neill
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Question put accordingly: That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The House divided: Ayes 283, Noes 0.
Transparency and Accountability Bill
(10 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This is in a sense the Bill’s second outing. I had the impression from its previous outing that it would be allowed to get its Second Reading, but now I know that it will be talked out. That is rather sad, because in the long term the Government will regret not having adopted a number of the measures in the Bill at an earlier stage because of the wider impact throughout the world.
There are greater tensions in today’s society. One of the failures of society rests in the tension between the Executive and the legislature. The issues in the Bill are not party political, but they are political in the sense of the tension between the Executive and the legislature. I find sympathy for my concerns across the House in all parties, but there is a blockage when it comes to the Executive responding. It tends to be very difficult to get anything out of the Executive.
For example, in the Ashya King case, the father talked of himself as being a refugee from the UK because he was threatened with care proceedings, and we know that there was a wardship application against the family. It was clear that the hospital would have had an emergency protection order had they not left the country. When I raised that with the Prime Minister, he did not understand that I was asking Parliament to have a collective investigation into what is going on.
There are many issues in the Bill that I will come to, but the difficulty is that, because of the secrecy surrounding such issues, it is easier for this to be debated in other countries. For instance, English family law has been the subject of television programmes in Brazil and Belgium, and there was a three-hour debate on Slovak television, but there is very little discussion in the UK, mainly as a result of the constraints on debate.
I will look first and foremost at some of the matters that were not in my previous Bill and then deal with the others. I aim to finish by 2.10 or 2.15 pm to allow for two other speeches before the 2.30 deadline. Sadly, when the Procedure Committee on which I sat put forward proposals to make private Members’ Bills more effective and to strengthen the legislature, the Executive decided that they did not like it.
The context of the Bill is to improve transparency and accountability in the public sector, and within that I have included a number of different elements. With regard to the super-complaints proposal from Which?, the idea is basically to give a designated representative body the power to make a super-complaint to regulators of public services to address systemic issues. That sort of thing does go on. There can be difficulties within the health service. It is far better to enable challenge from outside the system. We saw with the Commission for Social Care Inspection and the Care Quality Commission the tendency for even the regulators to cover things up.
We have too many cover-ups in Britain, and the Bill seeks to reduce their number. If we try to challenge the state, we tend to be hit by costs, which is another aspect dealt with in the Bill. Basically, a super-complaint allows the representative body to bring forward evidence that a feature of a market is harming the interests of service users and ensures that the relevant regulator considers the response to the issue. Under the Enterprise Act 2002, designated representative bodies can make super-complaints to the Competition and Markets Authority about detrimental features of private markets. This power does not currently extend to markets for public services where detrimental features can also arise. We know all about that.
My Bill would address that gap in the super-complaint regime, and in the protection of consumers, by giving designated bodies the power to make super-complaints to regulators of public services to address systemic issues on behalf of consumers. Public services are vital to millions of people across the UK, but people’s voices are not always heard when they experience a problem.
Also, people do not always speak up when they have a problem. Which? has found that a third of people who have experienced a problem with public services in the past 12 months did not complain. That is potentially a huge number of people whose experience, if shared, could help improve public services for everyone. Which? also found that people would be more likely to complain if they felt that it would make a difference to other people’s experience and result in a change. More needs to be done to ensure that people’s voices are heard in our public services.
Those clauses have obviously been written by Which?, and of course it will be progressing the issue outwith the Bill. I scheduled my Bill for the same day as the European Union (Referendum) Bill because I thought that nobody else would, and I think that my judgment was right—ordinarily, I would not have had an opportunity to say anything, so I am pleased to have such an opportunity today. The advantage of a private Member’s Bill is that we get a response from the Government and the Opposition and the issue gets an outing in front of colleagues. It is a way of progressing an idea. It would be nice if we had greater powers for the legislature, but we do not—that is life.
Another organisation that contributed to aspects of the Bill is the Campaign for Freedom of Information. This relates to closing a loophole in the Freedom of Information Act 2000 that allows contractors providing public services to escape scrutiny. They are not subject to FOI requests in their own right and so provide only the information that they are considered to hold on behalf of the authority.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
Does the provision also deal with the issue of limited companies being created to provide public services? The most egregious example was the Association of Chief Police Officers, which, as a limited company, could refuse to answer FOI requests, even though it did serious and sensitive public work.
John Hemming
I am not 100% certain that this Bill legally traps it, but that was the intention. I do not think that it is perfectly drafted, so we do not know—that is one of the difficulties with these Bills.
Let us take some examples given by the Campaign for Freedom of Information. The information that the Information Commissioner has said does not have to be made available under FOI includes the number of parking tickets issued, and then cancelled on appeal, by traffic wardens employed by a council contractor and who are offered Argos points as an incentive to issue tickets. That example is similar to what the right hon. Gentleman is talking about. We effectively have the exercise of a public power of enforcement but no proper accountability for it. That is a good example.
Other examples include: how often a contractor-managed swimming pool had been needlessly closed to the public because it had been booked by schools that did not use their slots, which again relates to public resources; the arrangements made by a subcontractor to restore the Leyton marsh after its use as a temporary basketball court during the Olympics; the qualifications of assessors used to verify that incapacity benefit claims have been properly dealt with by Atos, the Department for Work and Pensions contractor; and the cost of providing Sky television to prisoners and the number of cells with their own telephones at HM Prison Dovegate, which is privately managed. As the director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, Maurice Frankel, said,
“each new outsourcing contract reduces the public’s access to information because of a loophole in the FOI Act. Information that is vital to the public may be kept secret simply because the contract doesn’t provide for access. The Bill would restore the public’s right to know.”
That is another point that shows that this is unfinished business. This cannot just be allowed to drift. We need action from the Government, whoever is in government and at whatever stage, to deal with those exemptions, because what are clearly public functions are escaping accountability.
I will come to the family courts and justice matters later, but the Bill also contains provisions that relate to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.. Again, this is a privatisation issue, because the Forensic Science Service is now a private contractor, rather than one controlled by the state. It no longer has access to information to check whether or not somebody has been subject to a miscarriage of justice. When it was in the public sector, it did have that access, but in the private sector it does not. I believe that the equivalent body in Scotland does have that access.
To me, this is a no-brainer. It is a shame that the Bill will not go to Committee, where those relatively straightforward issues could be resolved. Potentially, they could go through the regulatory reform process, because it could be argued that that would reduce a burden on the Criminal Cases Review Commission. I serve on the Regulatory Reform Committee, and, if I may say so, we are not that busy—not that overwhelmed with things going on. It would be good to free up the Criminal Cases Review Commission to monitor and access information and to reduce the number of miscarriages of justice.
The Bill has another aspect to do with miscarriages of justice. There is the difficulty of people who do not admit their guilt being kept in jail beyond their tariff, and the question of whether their numbers should be counted. If people do not accept their guilt and they are guilty, they are potentially unsafe to release because they do not accept that they have done anything wrong. If they are not guilty and do not admit their guilt, they are stuck. My concern is that the Government do not even count these situations, so we have no knowledge of how many of those cases there are.
Those are the matters that were not covered so much in my previous private Member’s Bill. I will now come to the family court issues and talk more widely about where we stand. I think I mentioned the Brazilian television case. North Tyneside council threatened an injunction against Brazilian television, and there have been attempts to injunct Czech TV as well. The system does not really work. To be fair, I have a lot of time for the current president of the family division, who is making gradual but sustained progress in dealing with the situation. However, there is a long way to go.
Earlier this week, a gentleman from German radio came to see me. He was concerned about the situation in Rotherham, which he had been investigating. Not only did the local authority take children into care, where they were found to be less well protected, but if they became pregnant it put them up for adoption on the basis that there was a future risk of emotional harm. There is always a challenge when medical evidence—medical opinion—is provided as part of judicial processes, and that exists whether it is in the family courts on a balance of probabilities or in the criminal courts on the basis of beyond reasonable doubt. To some extent, when an expert goes around saying that people are guilty, they are treated as guilty. However, a lot of people come to see me saying, “We just took our child to hospital because we thought they were ill and suddenly we find that we are being prosecuted for all sorts of things.”
To be fair, the triad of symptoms of shaken baby syndrome has now been recognised to be flawed. It was always known that this happened spontaneously for cases of butyric aciduria, so we know that in certain circumstances the triad occurs spontaneously. What we do not know is all the circumstances in which that has occurred. However, the symptoms have been used to convict and imprison people and to remove their children and put them up for adoption.
One of the clauses that I am particularly interested in would allow for academic scrutiny of court proceedings. I am talking about academic social workers, medical challenge and psychological challenge. At the moment, in essence, the only really effective audit on family court proceedings, particularly for public family law, is the example of international cases. The advantage of international cases is that two different jurisdictions are looking at the same case. Earlier I cited the King case, where the family went off to Spain and are now in the Czech Republic. Obviously that case was considered by the Spaniards. The family were lucky because they managed to get their story out on YouTube and were not injuncted.
There are similar cases. The Paccheri case is well known—it concerns the lady who was forced to have a caesarean when she visited the UK whose child was then adopted. When we investigate the medical evidence put to the Court of Protection, we find, looking at the considerations by experts on the internet—there are experts on the internet and some people do that work very well, but not everything on the internet is true: do not believe everything you read on the internet—that there was a good, detailed critique of the judgment, but it was published only because we found out about what had gone on; it was not published as part of an ordinary process.
The judge was in a very difficult situation. The court was presented with one piece of medical evidence by the hospital. The medics from the hospital came and said, “You’ve got to force this lady to have a caesarean.” There was no medical challenge to that. There was somebody representing the hospital trust and somebody representing the official solicitor, who is in theory representing the protected person, although I do not think they had spoken to the protected person. The decision, however, was based on medical evidence, but there was no challenge or second opinion. I have been going on about this issue for some time: there is no right to a second opinion. Had detailed consideration been given to a second opinion in this case, it would have said, “Actually, this isn’t necessary.” The traumatic way in which the lady was treated did not help her in the long term.
Last Monday’s “Inside Out” was about refugees from the UK and the issue was also covered in “Panorama” earlier this year. I understand that there are more than 100 families in Ireland who left the UK to escape the system. That is a lot of people. I have been dealing with cases such as that of Angela Wileman for about seven years, so this has been going on for some time. My own personal recommendation is not to go to Ireland, because its authorities will tend to act on behalf of the English authorities, whereas those in Spain or France will not and will treat the case properly.
There are two types of international cases: those whereby people leave the UK to escape the system, and those whereby a foreign citizen’s case is decided on by the UK jurisdiction. The advantage of the Paccheri case is that the Rome family court gave a judgment that is publicly available and basically says that it does not understand what is going on in England.
Another judgment has been issued this week—I think it was last night—in respect of a Czech case. Under The Hague convention, each country has a central authority that deals with international family law issues, be they public or private. The Czech central authority—which, about two years ago, refused to do anything on any case—said, “We can’t understand this case. There is a Czech family living in the Czech Republic with a baby and you won’t let them have their two-year-old.” How is that in accordance with article 8 of the European convention on human rights? If we are going to talk about critiques of the convention, it has been the dog that has not barked in the night about public family law. Marica Pirosikova, who is one of the Slovak Government’s two representatives at the European Court of Human Rights, has expressed concern about that particular aspect. In fact, she was one of the organisers of a conference in Prague about a week and a half ago on public family law, with a particular focus on the UK.
Interestingly, the Council of Europe carried out an investigation on public family law and it was headed by a Russian politician who came to visit me here. Sadly, because the Russians have withdrawn from the Council of Europe, that particular inquiry has got stuck. My understanding is that it managed to get a lot of useful comparative information from different jurisdictions about how they deal with public family law. The inquiry found it odd that more complaints were made about England and Wales than about other countries combined. There was a real hubbub of complaint with regard to the UK. In fact, petitions were presented to the European Parliament either earlier this year or late last year, and a lot of things have been going on at the Council of Europe: this is its second inquiry, but it is much bigger than the first one. When I was asked why the volume was so low, I said it was because people do not do the maths right. My critique has often been that the Government are not adequately scientific.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
May I correct the hon. Gentleman on one thing? The Russians have not withdrawn from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Many members of the Parliamentary Assembly wish that they would until they allow Crimea to be part of Ukraine again and take their troops off Ukrainian soil, but they have not withdrawn. There is no reason for there to be any delay at the Council of Europe.
John Hemming
I thank the hon. Gentleman for correcting me. As the previous inquiry’s rapporteur, he will obviously have better knowledge than me. I have been told that there is a problem, so I will need to chase that up. I might visit his office for some assistance. That would be good.
The Government have always got themselves confused on the flows and quantity of children in care. On compulsory care, if we look at emergency protection orders, police decisions, interim care orders and care orders, we will see that about 12,000 children a year are removed from their families compulsorily, leaving about 65,000 in care. When calculating the proportion of children who were adopted, the Government always made the error of comparing it with the total number in care and concluded that 6% or 7% is not very many. However, given that 5,000 children left care in the year to 31 March 2014 and 12,000 a year are going into care, that is quite a high proportion. When one drills into the figures for children under five years old, one sees that the majority of them are in care. One can see where the criticism is coming from. I have always argued that the Department has got the formula wrong.
We know what happens. The managerial priorities of local authorities determine what their staff do. If they do not do those things, we see what happens. There is the case of Joanna Quick, who wanted to recommend the return of a baby to its parents. She would not do what she was told by the management, so they fired her. One cannot blame social workers who are in that environment for doing what their management tell them to do.
The difficulty is that the system makes the assumption that the evidence is independent. That relates to the issue in Lashin v. Russia, which is that if a serious decision is to be made on expert evidence, that evidence should be independent of the bodies that have an interest in the decision. That is obviously the case when it comes to public family law, because the system is being driven to do the wrong thing so much that people do not even notice. Relatively poor people, people with learning difficulties and people who are on the margins of society, such as immigrants, are complaining, but their voice is not heard and they get injuncted.
People are still going to jail for what they put on Facebook. I am tracking the number of people who do not have public judgments in accordance with the practice direction that was issued in May last year. Clause 8 states that there should always be a published judgment if somebody is imprisoned for contempt of court. One of the good things about the previous version of the Bill is that things are gradually happening, although things are not going as far as the provisions in the Bill. The Government are counting the number of people who are in prison for contempt of court. Six, seven or eight people a month are imprisoned for contempt of court, but there are perhaps one or two published judgments, which means that about five people each month are imprisoned in secret. As the Minister said, I talked to judges in the Court of Appeal about one particular case earlier this week.
Let us look at the effect that the clauses in the Bill would have. There are issues with litigation capacity. I am aware of only one case in which there was an attempt to remove a lady’s litigation capacity and it failed. That was the subject of a parliamentary petition. In that case, it failed because she contacted me and I found a McKenzie friend who could assist her in representing herself against her own solicitor. Someone’s capacity is removed when their solicitor does not think that they have the capacity to make decisions on their own behalf and so asks the court to appoint the Official Solicitor or some other litigation friend, rather than a McKenzie friend, on their behalf. In this case, the lady worked in compliance in financial services, so she was very bright, but she was deemed not to have capacity because she had querulous paranoia as she did not trust the system. If they did the same to me, I would not trust the system, so it is rather a self-fulfilling prophecy.
A couple of the clauses deal with the issues of litigation capacity. It is a difficult position, conceptually, if one’s lawyer says, “Next week, I am going to apply to the court to remove your capacity to instruct me because I do not like your instructions and think that they are stupid.” That is what happened in the situation that I am describing. How can one challenge that? It is difficult to do so. There are issues with legal aid in such circumstances. How can someone fight an overweening state that says, “I’m sorry, but you’re stupid,” when they are not?
I have met a number of people whose litigation capacity has been removed. In some of those cases, it clearly was not valid. There are cases in which the power is needed. If somebody is in a coma, it has to be possible to remove their litigation capacity, because they cannot make decisions. However, there are clearly cases in which people’s litigation capacity has been removed wrongfully. They are then stuck. They are a non-person as far as the system is concerned. If they want to appeal to the court, the application cannot be accepted because they have no capacity. People go down to the courts, but get turned away on that basis.
Clause 7 is about the right to report wrongdoing. Some interesting progress has been made on that. There was a privilege case in Victoria in Australia, in which the owner of a caravan site threatened litigation against a citizen if an MP spoke about the site. That was rightly found to be a breach of privilege. I think that privilege is involved when it people prevent MPs from finding out about things.
The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills did some work on ensuring that reports to Members of Parliament are treated as protected disclosures for employment purposes. That was excellent work. I asked local schools that were subject to the Trojan horse inquiries—a long saga—to put out copies of the library research document that claimed that talking to an MP about issues is a protected disclosure, to ensure that people had the comfort of knowing that they could come and talk to me about things—and people do, which is important. The issue does not always get into the public domain, of course, but it gives people a way of challenging the system.
I saw one case in which the police would not investigate something because of an injunction, and that is dangerous. The police have the right to ignore somebody—that is fair enough—but an injunction to stop people reporting things to the police is fundamentally wrong yet it still goes on from time to time. If somebody is vexatious, there is an issue about phoning 999 all the time, because people can be obsessive, but they should not receive an injunction to bar them from reporting to the police what they see as wrongdoing. The police should have the option—as they do—to say, “That’s rubbish” and ignore it or potentially prosecute that person for wasting police time, but for the information not to get to the police is fundamentally wrong. This is about the right to report wrongdoing, which has clearly been a particular problem.
As I said, the president of the family division has done a lot of good work and there has been gradual progress in dealing with issues in the family courts. The recent work on expert witnesses is also good—there is no question about that. Clause 2(1) would allow people to have observers with them to provide them with a little support. When I go to the courts, I find that my constituents get treated with a bit more respect than they do if I am not there, and they have told me that when I disappear they get treated completely differently from when I am present, which is wrong. To have other observers is a useful process—I always refer to the social science equivalent of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which is that the observer interferes with what is observed, and people behave better in circumstances under which they can be observed. Even if people expect somebody to observe them, they behave in a better way than if they know they are not being observed and there is no accountability.
Clause 2(2) is about providing information for academic research. The Department says, “Well, we can instruct people to make inquiries”, but it does not. It does one or two inquiries every so often—the Ireland report found that two thirds of the psychological reports in the family courts were rubbish, or sufficiently bad not be relied on, but that still goes on. The problem is that the system always protects itself, and as we have seen in many circumstances—Hillsborough is a good example, or the Savile case—the system is good at covering up.
Having mechanisms for an external challenge would be better, and the academic challenge is actually the best challenge because we are trying to do what is best for children and families. My view is that what we are doing is awful for children and families and, as time goes on, we are finding out more and more that that is the case. The situation first seen in A and S (Children) v. Lancashire county council showed that an independent reviewing officer challenging the local authority was a waste of time, because that officer was an employee of the local authority. We saw the same situation in Rotherham, because children were taken into care and treated worse there, and accountability was all to the same management structure. There was no independence in terms of accountability.
On the maltreatment of grandparents—I went to a Grandparents Plus event, and grandparents are not treated with respect by the system. There is evidence that each change of placement for a child taken into care, including the first change of placement, is psychologically damaging, but obviously at times we need to do that because leaving a child where it is can be worse—although the Rotherham case showed that at times that does more damage than in other circumstances. Going and staying with granny, however, is generally not that much of a problem because it is the sort of thing that has happened and the child is used to it. We should be a little more focused on families and the wider family—aunties, uncles and so on—than the current system, which is very much driven by the system. Contact with grandparents is an issue. There are circumstances where people fall out with each other. The courts cannot solve everything and we cannot make everything perfect in this world, but we can try to do some things to be more supportive of the family.
Children in care is an issue that Ivor Frank, a barrister who was brought up in care, drives quite strongly. A remedy for children in care is crucial. Clause 3 comes down to the issue, as we saw in Rotherham and in the case of A and S v. Lancashire county council, that children can be maltreated in care and have nowhere to go, because at the end of the day it all comes back to the head of children’s services in the local authority. We have checks and balances and we try to maintain a separation of powers, but there is no separation of powers in a local authority. If somebody thinks a child in care is suffering as a result of an authority’s treatment, there is nothing much that can be done, as the system is effectively unaccountable. Clause 3 would deal with this issue.
We are making some progress on the matters raised by clause 4, which seeks to get an explanation of why parental consent needs to be dispensed with. This is where the international dispute rests in particular, although the idea that all the cases where consent is not dispensed with in the statistics are ones where people have not been pressurised is not one that I think is actually true.
The rights of children to have access to their records is important, too. There are a number of other issues in the Bill. For instance, the Official Solicitor deals with protected parties, but he is not accountable to Parliament. If I write to him and say, “What is going on in, say, the Paccheri case?” he can say, “Nothing to do with you, guv. I am not accountable to Parliament; I am accountable to the court.” Well, that is great—it is a secret court. So he pops along to the secret court and, unless there is a published judgment, there is no accountability at all. There needs to be some mechanism of scrutinising how litigation friends are performing. These are not McKenzie friends, and a lot of issues to do with McKenzie friends are not covered in this particular process.
Clause 12 relates to reasonableness in capacity and is based on Canadian principles that if a protected person is deemed not to generally have capacity, one generally does what they want anyway unless it will do them some harm. One of the saddest parts of mental capacity issues is that when somebody is deemed to have lost their capacity, they have lost it and they are not allowed to make decisions for themselves. The decisions are all taken for them and, very often, are done for the convenience of the state. Clause 12 is therefore very important and would make a big difference.
To be fair there are people, such as Allan Norman in Birmingham, who is both a solicitor and a social worker, so he has the double training, which is quite helpful. When he deals with people who have lost capacity, he does try to work with them. That is much better than a situation where people say, “Well, basically, you’ve lost your capacity, so you might as well be in a coma, because we’re not going to treat you with respect.” That is how it comes across a lot of the time.
Obviously, the system does not always go wrong and we need a system. But the system in the jurisdiction of England and Wales does go wrong a lot of the time. Scotland has its problems, but they are nothing like as bad as those in England. The number of complaints in Scotland is much less, I think partly because of the system of children’s hearings. The difficulty, particularly with regard to section 38 of the Children Act 1989, which basically requires “reasonable grounds” to get an interim care order, is that one does not really have to prove a case to get a child into care. Although the Human Rights Act 1998 would require, in a sense, a continual review of whether it is in the child’s interests to be in care and of the evidence base for that, that does not really happen. There is a great tendency for a child to be taken into care and held there for ages while the local authority tries to find something to stick.
I am moving towards the end of my speech, so we have enough time for the Opposition to respond and for the Minister to talk the Bill out, as is the case with private Members’ Bills. It would be nice for the legislature to have more ability to challenge the Executive than we do at the moment, so I will continue to work towards that end on the Procedure Committee.
The Government should recognise that considerable concern has been expressed in a number of countries. I shall cite an example relating to Latvia. An excellent piece of work was done by the Latvian embassy and the Latvian central authority to challenge the proposed adoption of a Latvian citizen in London. The case was very well argued, but whether it will get anywhere is another question. That brings us back to this week’s judgment. I hope that my Bill will receive its Second Reading, although I am not under the misapprehension that it will actually do so.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) on his wide-ranging Bill, which focuses on the important principles of openness, transparency and freedom of information. I will briefly comment on some aspects of the Bill, starting with part 1, which deals with family justice.
A sensitive balance needs to be struck between the support given to children and families in the courts and the maintenance of confidentiality where that is needed, and preventing any undue influence on proceedings by family members. The Bill makes the sensible proposal to establish a norm whereby families are offered family group conferences. It seems only fair and right that when families suffer discord, there should be an attempt to reconcile those differences and to build a family plan, agreed with the family and the Child Support Agency, that will offer a more inclusive service.
I am pleased that the Bill appreciates that child protection conferences might be necessary at times with experts only, and I welcome the requirement that families, in advance of any conferences regarding their circumstances, would be given a publication explaining the system and how it might affect them in the future. There seems to be a strong case for allowing parties to have two “friends” with them for support, advice or even advocacy purposes. Actions in the family courts can be traumatic, and we must do everything possible to ensure that people who go through the experience are given all the necessary support, while at the same time ensuring that the confidentiality of proceedings is maintained.
I particularly welcome the hon. Gentleman’s proposals to give grandparents a greater role in proceedings. He mentioned the fantastic organisation Grandparents Plus. In my constituency, I have a local group of kinship carers, based in Norris Green, which works hard to support family members other than parents who are bringing up children. These are often grandparents, and typically grandmothers. The proposals will help to give more rights and support to caring grandparents, and that is a welcome development. The broad principle that families are not simply nuclear but involve members of the extended family should be reflected in the proceedings of the family justice system, although I of course accept the need for a judge to have discretion to have the final say about a grandparent’s presence.
Let me say something about children in care. It is sensible that when children in the care of their local authority make complaints, those complaints should be considered by an independent body, and also that it should be an offence to discriminate against children in care. We must be careful to avoid unintended consequences, however. For example, in the education system, schools are now obliged to give preference to children in care—that is, to positively discriminate in their favour. That is a change that has been welcomed on both sides of the House, and we would not want to see any unintended consequences as a result of moves to outlaw discrimination against children in care.
I welcome clause 4. Taking a child away from a family for adoption is a serious matter, and it is right that when judges make that judgment—as they will sometimes have to—they set out their considered points as to why they came to such a conclusion.
Part 2 of the Bill deals with wrongdoing in court. This is a controversial and important area, for the reasons the hon. Gentleman set out. There is a case to be made for the proposals to discourage people from intimidating whistleblowers, and to publish the names of people imprisoned for contempt of court. However, the proposals need to be considered in greater detail. They require further consideration and scrutiny.
Parts 3 and 4 are especially welcome, and I shall end my speech with an observation on each. As the hon. Gentleman said, the proposals in part 3 relating to consumer complaints were developed by Which?, and I welcome the proposals giving consumers more powers as regards public services. In improving and reforming public services, it is vital that service users are at the heart of the debate.
Finally, on part 4, one of the most significant legal changes pursued by the previous Labour Government was the passage of the Freedom of Information Act, and measures that strengthen FOI legislation are very welcome. In our 2015 manifesto, we have committed ourselves to extending freedom of information to cover the delivery of public services by private companies. If taxpayers’ money is being spent, I see no reason why the same standards should not apply, whether the service is delivered publicly or under contract by the private or voluntary sectors. That is a very important principle of openness and transparency.
I have taken my five minutes so I shall conclude by once again congratulating the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley on his private Member’s Bill and thanking him for the opportunity to consider, albeit briefly, some very important issues.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I shall be brief, because I do not want to deprive the Minister of the opportunity of talking out his own colleague’s Bill.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) on bringing forward this Christmas tree of a Bill. I liked what he said about the tensions between the Executive and legislature and how unsatisfactory it is that so often we see them writ large on a Friday. By way of illustration, I point out that my Bill, the EU Membership (Audit of Costs and Benefits) Bill, which was next on the list, will be objected to by the Government, notwithstanding the amazing vote earlier. Everyone is clearly in favour of a referendum, but the Government are going to prevent the information necessary to inform the referendum from being made available, despite the fact that when the Conservative party was in opposition, both the Conservative spokesman and the Liberal Democrats supported the Bill. That is just an example of the problem the hon. Gentleman rightly addresses in his Bill.
I support many parts of the Bill, particularly clause 13, which would clarify the position of people deprived of parole because they deny the offence for which they have been convicted. However, I feel that clause 16, on freedom of information, is rather unbalanced. If we are to extend FOI legislation, first we need to ensure that the person seeking the information discloses their identity. At the moment, there is a great imbalance. It is at odds with the principles of English equity in law that somebody who submits an FOI request does not have to disclose their identity, and that problem would be made worse if we extended FOI legislation to private sector contracts with the Government.
In clause 8(4), the hon. Gentleman refers to extradition orders and the need for the children of a person being extradited to be consulted about the impact on them of the extradition. However, the Bill does not deal with the much more fraught issue of the European arrest warrant. I am pleased that from today’s press it looks like the Prime Minister might no longer be insisting that we opt back into the EAW. Let us hope that those reports are correct. If there is a problem with extradition proceedings involving children, there is an even greater problem with the EAW and its impact on individuals, because no one has the chance to argue anything. If a warrant is issued, the EU member state is obliged to implement it, irrespective of how unjust it might be and without the courts having the opportunity to examine it.
I hope the Bill gets a Second Reading, but I share the hon. Gentleman’s pessimism. I hope in due course, however, because of his valuable work on the Procedure Committee, that we can give private Members’ Bills more prominence and ensure that the Executive interfere less.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Simon Hughes)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) for putting his name into the ballot, and I congratulate him on doing well in it and on bringing forward a Bill to address many issues that are of considerable importance to our country. I am very grateful for that and for the constructive comments from the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), speaking from the Opposition Front Bench. I am grateful, too, for the contributions of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), to which I shall return, and the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope).
I have only a short time to respond, so I will not be able to do justice to all the issues in the Bill. As I said to my hon. and good Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley, I would be happy to sit down with him to ensure that the issues he raises do not die and are pursued generally in the Department, and I extend the same invitation to the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby, too, if he or his colleagues would like to pursue the matters for which he indicated support.
For the benefit of those who follow our proceedings, and given that everyone agrees that this is something of a portmanteau Bill in five parts, covering family justice, the administration of justice, consumer complaints in markets for public services and freedom of information as well as a general part at the end, it might help our later consideration to point out that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley did not take us through the Bill in the order of the parts. Rather, he started with clause 15, which relates to consumer complaints. He referred to Which?, an organisation that we all greatly respect, to which I shall return. He then dealt with freedom of information in clauses 16 and 17, raising issues that are very much on the Government’s agenda. He then went back to the Criminal Cases Review Commission proposal in clause 14, followed by his views and proposals on clause 13. He then went back to part of clause 2, then clauses 8, 11 and 12. Then he covered the rest of clause 2 along with clauses 3, 4, 6, 9 and 12 in that order. I am not setting this out to be mischievous, but if people are to follow important issues, it is helpful to align what he said with the Bill’s proposals so that we all know where we are.
John Hemming
Anyone reading this debate may wish to refer to the speech I gave when I first put forward most of these proposals. I had more time to speak to them, so I spoke at greater length. I hope that that will inform people better,
Simon Hughes
As my hon. Friend said, this is the second time that he has had the opportunity to address some of these issues through a private Member’s Bill.
Let me briefly put the Government’s commitment on the record. The coalition agreement drew from the manifestos of both the Liberal Democrat and the Conservative parties and made a commitment to extend the scope of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to provide greater transparency, as well as to reform family law, reduce delays in care proceedings and reinforce the principle that a child benefits from the involvement of both parents provided that is safe and in the best interests of the child. We also made a commitment to make it easier for loving parents to adopt children.
We have made progress on extending the Freedom of Information Act. My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden gave a specific example of the illogicality of the Association of Chief Police Officers, which had turned itself into a company. Its exemption was corrected in the early part of this Parliament and is now covered by the Freedom of Information Act.
Simon Hughes
There are other examples, but that one has been remedied by this Administration.
Let me summarise what we have done in response to these important issues. About 250,000 people go into our family courts every year in connection with care proceedings, children’s proceedings, adoptions or family divorce and separation. We are not talking about insignificant numbers, and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley reminded us that this was the context of the Ashya King case, the Rotherham scandal and many other issues. The Ministry of Justice is not the only Department involved; the Department for Education plays a lead role, and I know that my hon. Friend has talked to the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), who is responsible for children’s issues.
On family justice, we have introduced wide-ranging reform of the family justice system so that cases do not drag on for long periods. We have thus provided greater certainty for the children and families involved, which is positive and a plus. I pay tribute, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley, to the president of the family division for how he has led on this and other issues. We have also reformed the way in which cases are managed before and during the court process so that children are placed firmly at the heart of the system. This very weekend, we are going to confirm that next week the law comes into operation that will mean that the presumption thereafter will be that children will benefit from both parents continuing to be involved in their lives. That is a hugely important principle. It may not always be possible, but that will be the legal presumption from next week onwards.
We have also taken steps to shine a light on the activities of the family court and the Court of Protection by encouraging the provision of more media access to hearings, and by publishing judgments to show how decisions are reached. That is still work in progress, and I spoke to the president of the family division only this week about the need for us to do better.
John Hemming
As I have said on a number of occasions, the media cannot afford to have someone in every family court. Does the Minister accept that media access to hearings is not, in itself, that big a thing?
Simon Hughes
It is, in fact, quite a big thing. What has always been of concern is how to protect the confidentiality of the proceedings, which will involve all sorts of sensitive issues, and now that judgments are being made public, a delicate balance must be struck. In some cases in which publicity has been given only to the judgment, the identities of the parties have none the less been revealed, because in a small community it may be quite easy to put the pieces of the jigsaw together. The position is not as uncomplicated as my hon. Friend suggests. As he knows, there are tensions and difficulties, not because we do not want to be more transparent, but because the protection, safeguarding and interests of children and families must be weighed in the balance.
We have also taken steps relating to the workings of the wider justice system. It is no longer an offence to scandalise the court, so clause 8(1) is not necessary. There are already many provisions in legislation, rules and guidance that provide for access to the courts and their information and enable concerns to be raised about process, appeals to be lodged against decisions, and information to be shared. In respect of protected cost orders for judicial review proceedings, the Government have announced their intention to pursue a different approach from that proposed in this Bill in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, which is currently before the House of Lords.
In respect of freedom of information, we have extended the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to more than 100 additional bodies during this Parliament. Information about contracts between public authorities and private companies is already available from public authorities, and—this is important, and is relevant to the points made by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch—we will be publishing a revised code of practice later in the year. The code will ensure that all those in the private sector who are contracted to do work for the public sector, involving central or local government, must, by contract, observe the same standards of openness that they would observe if they were in the public sector. That does not mean that the same law applies to them, because they are private sector organisations. If that does not work, we shall need to come back to it, but I hope everyone accepts that it is a move in the right direction.
Simon Hughes
That is certainly on our agenda. Whether we can secure cross-Government agreement to deal with matters other than the code of practice during the current Session has not yet been established, but it is on the list of matters that I want to consider. I am happy to talk to my hon. Friend about how we can make freedom of information work. I have already listened to the views of Members on both sides of the House.
We have also improved the way in which complaints can be made about public bodies. I have only a couple of minutes left, but let me briefly say something about that, and something about clause 14. Under the Enterprise Act 2002, a number of consumer bodies are able to make complaints to industry regulators. The Bill proposes that that should be extended to public as well as private services. Mechanisms already exist for the making of complaints about public services, and various ombudsmen are able to consider individual complaints. We do not think that a “super-complaint mechanism” is necessary.
The concept of a single-portal mechanism for complaints has been raised several times. The single gov.uk platform is now largely satisfying that need, because it is easy to find out how and where to submit a complaint. I advise people to refer to that website, which should help them. In addition, the Minister for Government Policy and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster recently asked officials in the Cabinet Office to pilot a new digital channel enabling the public to register complaints about public services. I think that that will be regarded as progress.
There is one clause with which the Government have absolutely no problem, in principle. Having said that the others pose varying degrees of difficulty, I can say that clause 14, entitled “Criminal Cases Review Commission: extension of powers to obtain documents and other material”, has merit on its own terms. The Government do not think this is the right place to do it, but I am absolutely willing to negotiate with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley to see whether we can include it in legislation in this Session or have it ready for legislation in the next. Private Members’ Bills do not have enough time to make progress—I have not changed the view I held before I became a Minister—and I hope the ideas in this one will make progress.
Business without Debate
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am very grateful for the opportunity to ask your advice on the issue of the objection raised by the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) to the Wild Animals in Circuses Bill. The Prime Minister is on the record as supporting this Bill, which was published by the Government and which I have adopted. At my meeting with the relevant Minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on Wednesday night, the Minister told me the Government were supporting my Bill. However, the Deputy Chief Whip, I am advised, has asked the hon. Member for Romford to object to the Bill. So with the Government and the Prime Minister saying one thing officially and the Deputy Chief Whip, on behalf of the Government on the Treasury Bench, saying and doing something completely to the contrary, how can I clarify what the Government’s position is on a Bill that has all-party support—not just cross-party support—in time for next Friday’s opportunity for it to progress further?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
I appreciate the point the hon. Gentleman has made, and he has put it on the record. The only matter for the Chair is the right of the hon. Member for Romford to say whatever he likes in this Chamber. I am here to protect the hon. Member’s right to do so, and he has every right to say what he has said this afternoon. The other points the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) has very passionately made will, I am sure, be noted by those whom he wishes to note them.
North Cotswold Line
(10 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I am very grateful for this opportunity to raise an issue of huge concern to my constituents and to speak before a Minister who I know is passionate about delivering investment and growth in our railways. Worcestershire has a world-class economy, and I was very pleased at the recent Conservative party conference to hear our Transport Secretary committing to world-class infrastructure for the UK. It is vital to the success of our country that this is delivered fast and that it reaches the great cities of England.
Given its romantic name, once could be forgiven for thinking that the North Cotswold line was one of those scenic routes that meander through the countryside serving beautiful villages and keeping alive the rural idyll with steam trains and fine views. In fact, it is the main line to an economy in Worcestershire alone of half a million people, and many more beyond in Herefordshire. Worcester is a county town with a population of nearly 100,000 and a work footprint of many more. The line is already a vital commuter link for Oxfordshire and should be a vital business link between the growing industrial, cyber-security and services sectors in our part of the west midlands and the capital.
I am grateful for the strong support and campaigning for this line from my neighbours, my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Worcestershire (Sir Peter Luff) and for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), and from my hon. Friends the Members for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) and for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), all of whom have spoken up for a better service for their constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire has been a tireless champion of redoubling for decades. I know that in asking for these improvements I have the full support of Worcestershire county council and Worcester city council, and our local enterprise partnership and chamber of commerce. Further down the line there is a great deal of interest, including from the Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) who, as well as backing previous investments in the line, has recently written to the Chancellor in support of further redoubling. However, despite all that support, our line, particularly its western end, has been neglected compared with other areas. After it was saved from total destruction in the 1970s it was for a long time single track and too much of it remains so. Line speeds have decreased and journey times have lengthened, particularly under the last Labour Government. More stops and little new rolling stock compounded the problem, and so even since the welcome redoubling of much of the track, delivered in 2011, the journey time to and from Worcester has improved by only about 10 minutes.
I remember travelling as a schoolboy, when there were three high-speed two-hour services per day, and I could leave London after school on Friday evening and easily be home in Worcestershire in time for dinner. That was on a line that was single track all the way from Oxford to Worcester, yet even today, with much more double track available, that same level of service is unavailable. I have also been told that the steam-powered cathedrals express ran from Worcester to London in less than two hours even in 1910. It is profoundly shocking that in the 21st century it should now take about two and a quarter hours, and often longer.
Mike Ashton, the chief executive of Herefordshire & Worcestershire chamber of commerce has said
“Time and time again local businesses tell us that the rail connectivity from Worcester is simply not good enough. Journey times that are longer now than they were at the start of the 20th century is just not good enough to meet the demands of modern businesses, to whom quick and easy travel is essential.”
The service compares very poorly with those to equivalent county towns a similar distance from London; Worcester’s current 135 minutes compares to Warwick’s 78 minutes and Rugby’s less than an hour. Even Exeter, York, Norwich and Northampton, all of which are further away, get faster trains and shorter journeys. The train line to Norwich is a good example of a line that has seen significant improvement in recent years, and we all know of the journey time improvements on offer to Birmingham and the north from HS2.
For my constituents and those west of Worcester on the line, our poor service means that huge substitution is going on, either directly to the roads or through road journeys to other lines and other stations. First Great Western knows that it is losing passengers from Worcester to both the Chiltern and the west coast main lines, and has said:
“A factor influencing behaviours has been the greater frequency of services on the alternative routes and journey times. Passengers from Birmingham International typically have 3 trains per hour to London, taking 75 minutes to the capital. Passengers from Warwick Parkway typically have 2 trains per hour to London, taking 78 minutes to the capital. By contrast from Worcester journey times on the North Cotswolds route can take about 135 minutes, with a lesser service frequency.”
Anecdotally I have heard from hundreds of constituents that they travel to those stations to get the faster and more reliable trains. Most travellers from Herefordshire catch trains from south Wales to avoid the long journey via Worcester. Overcrowded trains and poor reliability compound the situation, and so long as this remains the case the North Cotswold line will never reach its full potential.
Jim McBride, the chief executive of Lesk Engineers and director of Henley Business Group, has recently said:
“I am forced to either travel to Warwick Parkway or into the centre of Birmingham to get a train that leaves at times that are convenient without being forced to stand for the entirety of a two and a half hour journey.”
I can tell the Minister that traffic is an enormous problem in and around Worcester, and that anything that encourages road users on to the trains would be welcomed by my constituents, even those who do not use the trains themselves. I have been alerted by those constituents who do use the trains to particular problems with wi-fi not being available on all services and, having welcomed First Great Western’s decision to include free wi-fi in its offer for the franchise, I think it needs to be made universal.
The Cotswold line promotion group, of which I am proud to be a vice-president along with many of my colleagues, has been a great campaigner for the line, but as it represents communities all along it it has always been keen to keep every stop and to have as many trains as possible stopping at each. I do not want anyone to miss out, but I do want to see more trains running so that we can have both fast and stopping services. Only by having an express service from Worcester to London via at least Charlbury and Oxford can we maximise the opportunity to our economy and such a service, which has been run in the past, would again be achievable if we could secure two trains an hour along the line. I believe that that should be a strategic objective for the Government and a requirement of future franchises.
I welcome the £70 million redoubling project that added so much capacity to the line, but I am deeply concerned that it has not yet delivered the improvement in line speed or regularity that we would expect. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire has asked a number of written questions on the subject and the answers he has received so far suggest it has reduced the journey time by only 10 minutes and has resulted in merely a slight improvement in their regularity. That does not suggest it is yet being used to the full.
Sir Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for the kind things he says about me. I congratulate him on how he is speaking in this important debate and associate myself with everything he has said. On the question of regularity, does he understand my gratitude to the House of Commons for not having a Division at 2.30 pm, which means that I can catch the 15.52 home rather than waiting an hour and a half for the 17.22?
Mr Walker
I congratulate my hon. Friend on how he has brought his great knowledge of the timetable into the debate and absolutely agree with him. I will be travelling up to Worcester straight after this to welcome Sir John Major on a visit to the county. That will be a wonderful occasion, but sadly neither he nor I will be able to take the train to ensure that we arrive in time for our dinner.
My hon. Friend’s written questions bring me to the question of how we can achieve a two-hour service and the opportunities for the Minister and the train companies to deliver. I know that First Great Western is working on timetable improvements and will be introducing some incremental change in 2015, including some faster services and slightly better regularity but also sacrifices, including fewer trains stopping at Pershore and Malvern. The current proposals offer Worcester a two hour seven minute journey time, but not at the most important times of day.
I welcome the small improvements on offer but they are not sufficient and I am very concerned that, according to the drafts I have seen, one of the most important services for business, the 8.30 am from Paddington, is being run on an old turbo. I want Network Rail to work more closely with First Great Western on the newly redoubled line and to ensure that every possible minute of line speed is being delivered. It needs to squeeze more minutes out of the timetable by reducing stopping times, maximising line speed and ensuring all the signalling is up to date. I also want First Great Western to look again at why so many trains have long stopovers at Shrub Hill station so that, while the 7.33 am departure spends only two minutes there the 6.30 am train before and the 8.41 am after it sit waiting at the station for more than 12. That is a major concern for anyone travelling from Foregate Street, Malvern or beyond.
The second opportunity is to consider what chance there is to use the passenger journey time improvement fund to deliver further incremental gains as soon as possible. Resignalling, further electrification from Oxford and further redoubling are all opportunities in that space. I note that no less a Member than my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney is a supporter of further investment in redoubling and I hope his support as well as mine and that of all my neighbours will be heard loud and clear by the Chancellor ahead of the autumn statement. First Great Western must work with Network Rail to determine the costs and benefits of full redoubling and also what further partial redoubling could make the biggest difference.
The third opportunity is to do with rolling stock. I cannot claim to be anything like as expert on this as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire or the noble Lord Faulkner of Worcester, but I do know we have been poorly served on this front for far too long, and the fact that turbos are still being programmed into draft timetables is not a good sign. We should be looking at high speed trains as well as greater use of electric/diesel trains, and as passenger demand grows that will continue to be more and more pressing.
I know that there has been some investment in converting first class carriages to standard to add seating capacity, but there is also a constant need to look at carriage and seat numbers. In 2018 there is both a major risk and an opportunity to ensure that the line is fully served by modern trains when the existing fleet of 180s will be handed over to Grand Central for its cross-country services. The Department must ensure that there are sufficient high quality intercity express programme trains for an hourly service and to begin the much-needed expansion towards a twice hourly one.
The fourth and perhaps biggest opportunity is Worcestershire Parkway station. I do not have time today to rehearse all the arguments for it, but our local enterprise partnership has estimated that it could add £47 million to revenues over 20 years. It provides better connectivity, faster journey times for Worcester commuters and a vital link between road and rail. It is what the noble Lord Prescott might have described as an integrated transport system.
Wherever there are car parks along the line they have been filling up. The welcome expansion of Charlbury has already been filled to capacity and the Worcestershire LEP recently showed that the Worcestershire stations on the line currently offer a total of just 418 parking spaces versus more than 1,200 in the same sized stretch of the Chiltern line in Warwickshire. Worcestershire Parkway has the potential to transform this situation. It also creates the opportunity, in conjunction with very welcome road investments, such as the dualling of the A4440 southern link, for people from across south Worcestershire to drive to Parkway and catch the line. Better connectivity with the M5 widens this catchment still further and, as the lesson of Warwick Parkway's spectacular growth trajectory shows, a massive increase in the number of people using the train is possible when good parking facilities and fast reliable journeys are available. It is enormously to the credit of this Government that they have funded Worcestershire Parkway with £7.5 million through the local growth fund. Something that has been debated and campaigned for over decades is now just a few years away. Now we need to ensure that it can be used to the full to deliver for Worcestershire's economy with faster journey times.
The train companies are making supportive noises, but I have never been too sure that they have really woken up to the full scale of the opportunity. Only last week I was pleased to see First Great Western standing alongside Parkway campaigners at the Worcestershire LEP conference, but the effect was slightly spoiled when I was staggered to see that they had a poster of their Building a Greater West campaign, which showed line improvements across six counties but failed to mention Worcestershire. Their poster even managed to hide Worcester itself behind a label talking about line improvements in Gloucestershire. If they want to build a greater west, the main line to Worcester needs to be part of it. I have been more reassured by my meetings with them in recent days and I am very grateful to the Minister for arranging a productive conference call with the company and MPs along the line earlier this week. First Great Western tells me that it believes a journey time of less than two hours to the centre of Worcester is deliverable even with an added stop at Worcestershire Parkway. I want to see this happen as soon as possible. I want to see the Minister hold its feet to the fire in terms of the service my constituents receive. Awarding it a renewal of the franchise is acceptable only if it can deliver a real improvement to the service, both in reliability and speed. This Government have invested already in the North Cotswold line and substantial redoubling has taken place, but faster journey times and greater regularity are urgently needed.
There is a huge economic opportunity for our county in securing a connection of less than two hours to and from London, which is why I am pleased that it now features prominently in the strategic economic plan of our LEP. I recall taking evidence from Admiral Insurance when I served on the Welsh Affairs Committee as to why it had based its headquarters in Cardiff. The No. 1 factor was a two-hour journey time from the capital. Worcester wants to attract more corporate headquarters and more investment from overseas and securing better connectivity is vital. Some have suggested that this could come only at the cost of higher ticket prices. I disagree, as there is a huge loss of passengers and revenues as a result of substitution. I believe that ticket prices could be driven down by the enormous growth in usage that would be achieved from two trains per hour and a fast and stopping service.
In a few weeks I will be visiting southern China with a delegation of Worcestershire businesses in order to drum up investment in our world-class county. The cities we will be visiting have high-speed rail connections that have been built in just a few years, connecting them to the major centres of population hundreds of miles away. I want to be able to hold my head up high and show the world that Worcestershire, which already has a world-class economy and a world-class skills base has world-class rail connections too. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for listening so patiently to this request. I invite her to visit Worcester, preferably by train, and very much look forward to hearing her response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Claire Perry)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) on securing this important debate on journey times between London and Worcester on the North Cotswold line, and for his superb, highly factual and very eloquent speech. He is part of an honourable and select tribe of Members served by the Great Western franchise area, including the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Wales, my hon. Friend the recently knighted Member for Mid Worcestershire (Sir Peter Luff), and indeed the Minister with responsibility for railways. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), who in her wonderful role as a Lords Commissioner cannot speak in public on this matter, although she speaks fully in private whenever she can. As we are all conscious of the importance of good rail connections for the businesses and communities that we represent, and the economic vibrancy that is at stake, this debate is of keen interest to many.
My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester has set out with great clarity the importance of the Great Western rail network to his constituency. Let me address his concerns head on. First Great Western, Network Rail and my Department completely recognise the case for a sub two-hour service between London and the points that he makes in relation to his constituency. Work is ongoing to look at additional track redoubling on these routes that, along with the planned introduction of new rolling stock, could deliver the additional speeds that he and many other hon. Members seek on behalf of their constituents. We need to assess possible route options and the money required to deliver this and balance that against competing priorities on the route. I am fully aware of the strong local feelings and the strong local case being made about the importance of this work, and I will be seeking to complete this work as soon as possible.
My hon. Friend will be aware that there have already been substantial improvements on the lines in that franchise area. In 2011, the long-awaited partial redoubling of the North Cotswold line was completed. The Great Western main line between London, Oxford, Newbury, Bristol and Swansea, together with the Thames valley branches, will be electrified by 2019, delivering faster and more reliable services. Those routes will be equipped with brand-new intercity express trains—I was pleased to visit the mock-up in Warwick only this week—and with other electric trains for the local and regional services. Combined diesel and electric bimodal intercity express trains will be introduced to serve routes such as the North Cotswold line, allowing electric operation as far as Oxford from London Paddington.
As my hon. Friend mentioned, a new Worcestershire Parkway station will be built. I could not have made the case better than he did for providing funding for that station. He explained the compelling economic benefits and what it will mean for commuters. He will be pleased to know that new car parking capacity has already been provided at Charlbury and Hanborough stations and will be provided at Kingham—that commitment has been made.
Further down the line, the £895 million project to deliver an entirely new station at Reading, including a substantial untangling of the lines there, which we all rely on, will deliver faster journey times to London for all our commuting passengers. I am pleased to say that that work is almost complete.
That is all part of the record £38 billion that will be invested in Britain’s railways over the next five years—the biggest programme of investment since Victorian times and, in our region’s case, the biggest set of changes since Brunel. It is a huge transformation of Britain’s railways.
However, as well as capacity we have to talk about passengers. We have seen a doubling of passenger numbers across the railway network since privatisation, and sadly investment has not kept up. Indeed, can hon. Members guess how many miles of track were electrified under the previous Government? The answer is nine. We will deliver 850 miles of electrified track by 2019, because this Government believe that we cannot grow without transport infrastructure. It is not surprising that the Opposition Benches are completely empty, given their pitiful record on investing in the nation’s infrastructure.
The growth in passenger numbers explains in part why journey times have slowed, as my hon. Friend pointed out. The networks are more crowded and we are running more trains, and that means things have to go a little slower, as counter-intuitive as that seems, unless we invest. It is no wonder that some of the top 10 most crowded lines in the country, which I am currently “mystery riding”, are on the North Cotswold line.
To try to alleviate some of that pressure in the short term, we are working hard with franchise operators to boost capacity. As my hon. Friend knows, my Department is funding the conversion of one and a half first-class carriages per First Great Western train to standard class, creating 3,000 more standard-class seats a day across the network—nearly 16% more standard-class seats on services into London. I have sat in the 2,000th seat to be delivered under that programme, and the full roll-out will happen by September 2015. First Great Western is also fitting free wi-fi to its high-speed trains by the end of this year, complementing the free wi-fi already fitted to the class 180 trains used on the North Cotswold line and the Cornish Riviera sleeper trains.
We are getting there, but there are concerns, which my hon. Friend eloquently raised. All that investment creates disruption on the line, and one of the reasons I announced an anticipated new direct award to First Great Western for the next three and a half years was to ensure the stability of operators in charge of our passenger journeys through a difficult and complicated time of engineering works on our lines. However, we all need to do better to minimise avoidable disruption.
Many hon. Members have expressed concern about problems with the punctuality of train services in that area, particularly given the problems we had between London and Reading last week, which were caused by issues with Network Rail works. It is not good enough. In a recent meeting with senior directors of Network Rail, I took the opportunity to give strong emphasis to that message, as I will continue to do on behalf of those we represent who use these vital networks.
I want to touch on two further matters. First, I acknowledge the huge amount of great work done by the Cotswold Line Promotion Group. The group was formed in 1987 to protect and promote this vital route at a time when these services were arguably at their most vulnerable following an incomprehensible programme of track part-singling by British Rail; there was even doubt about the continued operation of through services to London. It is impossible to imagine the rationale behind those decisions today, when all those in this Government and in this party, and across British businesses, see the vital role that our railways play in local and national economic growth. Thank goodness for the campaigning work of this group, whose vice-presidents include my hon. Friends the Members for Worcester and for Mid Worcestershire, and several other hon. Members. It is a tribute to the achievements of the group in pursuit of this aim that this debate on journey times between London and Worcester on the North Cotswold line is possible at all. Things are very different from how they were in 1978, not least because the lights are being kept on in Britain.
Secondly, I should like to focus on the train services currently operating on the route. Hon. Members and other stakeholders have made it very clear to First Great Western their concerns about the relatively slow overall journey times on the route and about gaps in the timetable. In response, FGW carried out a review of the timetable with the aim of identifying how far it might be able to address these issues before all the new investment starts to come on stream. I commend the company for its initiative in doing so. Key improvements will be introduced by next May, including a big acceleration of a very important commuting service—the 05:28 service from Hereford, which will now reach London at 08:30, a much better time to start one’s working day. Remaining gaps in the timetable are being filled. For example, there are new journey opportunities from Worcester to London at 11:23 and 15:20, and other journey time improvements across the network. Concerns about the loss of some off-peak station calls have also been partially alleviated.
While I know that satisfaction about these changes is not universal, I think that a sensible balance has been struck. Moreover, a further review of the timetable will become possible with the arrival of the bimodal intercity express trains following electrification to Oxford.
Sir Peter Luff
I thank the Minister for the encouraging tone of her remarks in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker). Could the passenger journey time improvement fund be used for minor infrastructure works to further enhance journey times now, ahead of the major changes?
Claire Perry
My hon. Friend is right to raise that. Indeed, I jotted a note to my team while I was listening to my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester to ask what is happening with the journey time improvement fund. If I may, I will revert back to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire with more information. This is clearly another opportunity to make some improvements.
On the basis of the new timetable that has been presented, I have given my agreement to the interim changes that First Great Western has sought. I will ensure that the valid points that my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester has made regarding other improvements are reflected on at the highest possible levels of First Great Western.
This is a really exciting time for the railways. I am very proud of the fact that my Government’s ambition for this investment in these vital services is unprecedented. I think that all of us in this House are passionate about our railways. The great news is that improvements are being delivered now—it is not a case of jam tomorrow—and there are more to come. My hon. Friend and his colleagues have made their ambitions for their constituents regarding improved journey times and better connectivity abundantly clear, and I look forward to working with him and others in future to develop those ambitions still further.
I thank all my hon. Friends for their passionate advocacy of the better train links for their constituents that are so important to the economies in their areas. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester, who has made such a powerful case today. I wish him well on his visit to China to drum up business for Worcestershire, and hope that at least some of my words will help him to hold his head up high. I hold my head up high every day because I am so proud to be part of a Government delivering record levels of investment in the railways so that this great country can grow. Without this investment, we cannot grow and we cannot keep Britain moving.
Question put and agreed to.