The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat a Statement made a short while ago in another place by my right honourable friend David Lidington. The Statement is as follows:
“Mr Speaker, at about 11:35 this morning the President of the European Council, Mr Donald Tusk, published a set of draft texts about the United Kingdom’s renegotiation. He has sent these to all EU Governments for them to consider ahead of the February European Council. This is a complex and detailed set of documents that MPs will understandably wish to read and study in detail. With that in mind, subject to your agreement, the Prime Minister will offer an Oral Statement tomorrow following PMQs to allow MPs to question him, having first had a chance to digest the detail on the papers that have been issued in the last hour.
The Government have been clear that the EU needs to be reformed if it is to meet the challenges of the 21st century. The British people have very reasonable concerns about the UK’s membership of the EU and the Prime Minister is determined to address those. He believes that reforms that Britain is seeking will not just benefit Britain but the EU as a whole. So our approach in government has been one of reform, renegotiation and then a referendum. We are working together with other countries to discuss and agree reforms, many of which will benefit the entire EU, before holding a referendum to ensure British people have a final and decisive say about our membership.
The House will recall that the Prime Minister made a Statement after the December Council. At that meeting, leaders agreed to work together to find mutually satisfactory solutions in all four areas at the European Council in February. The Prime Minister’s meetings in Brussels on 29 January and his dinner with President Tusk on 31 January were steps in that negotiation process.
We are in the middle of a live negotiation and are now entering a particularly crucial phase. The Government have been clear throughout that they cannot provide a running commentary on the renegotiations, but I am able to say that much progress has been made in recent days, and it appears that a deal is within sight. The publication of the text is another step in that process, but I would stress to the House that there is still a lot of work to be done. If the text tabled today is agreed by all member states, it will deliver significant reforms in each of the four areas of greatest concern to the British people.
On sovereignty, the text shows significant advances towards securing a UK carve-out from ever closer union. On relations between the euro-ins and euro-outs, the document offers steps towards significant safeguards for countries outside the eurozone as euro members integrate further. On competitiveness, we are seeking a greater commitment by the entire Union for completing single market trade and cutting job-destroying regulations on business. On free movement, there are important ideas in President Tusk’s drafts for reducing the pull factor of our welfare system and on action to address the abuse of freedom of movement of persons. We believe that real progress has been made, but I would stress that more work still needs to be done and more detail to be nailed down before we can say that a satisfactory deal has been secured”.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating the Answer to the Urgent Question and for her diligence in keeping your Lordships’ House informed. We understand that it must be embarrassing that this was not a Statement from the Government to Parliament. The Prime Minister is today making his statement to journalists and Ministers had to be summoned to the Dispatch Box through an Urgent Question in the other place to ensure that Parliament is properly informed. I realise that the Minister says that there will be an Oral Statement tomorrow, but she also said that this is a complex set of documents that MPs will understandably wish to read and study in detail. I hope they are able to do that overnight, because most of them will not be able to look at and absorb such a complex and detailed set of documents in order to hold a full debate tomorrow. It would have been helpful if the Government could have made a process Statement today.
Perhaps I may ask the Minister a few questions. First, given that the Prime Minister has himself emphasised in all his negotiations the role and power of national Parliaments, why have the Government sought to bypass Parliament today? Secondly, I know that the noble Baroness understands the importance of this issue to your Lordships’ House, so when will we have a proper opportunity—not just tomorrow, but a proper opportunity, having considered all the evidence—to debate and discuss the Prime Minister’s deal and the case to enlist widespread EU support?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, the Government do not bypass Parliament. In one breath the noble Baroness berates the Prime Minister for not being here to deliver a Statement, but with the next she berates him, it seems, for wanting to make a Statement tomorrow on what is a complex issue, and therefore it is too soon. I sympathise with all Members of the House, in that I know they pay a great deal of attention to the renegotiations, as we should as parliamentarians. They have done so throughout the process and I will continue to do my very best to update them. Of course, it is as ever for the usual channels to determine when there are debates, and I know they are listening carefully to me because the need for Parliament to be closely involved in discussions on these matters is as dear to them as it is to me. However, the papers refer to a work in progress.
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
My Lords, it is welcome to note that progress appears to have been made in all four of the important areas for reform that the Prime Minister has identified. Would the Minister reflect for a moment on one aspect of the sovereignty basket and the role of national Parliaments? As someone who hopes very much to campaign to remain in the European Union, and that the Prime Minister will be leading that campaign, I ask whether the Minister can explain how a red card system that requires 55% of Parliaments to make a case is really an improvement on the current yellow card system, which requires a third of Parliaments to do so. Might not an inter-institutional agreement that deals with and strengthens the current system be somewhat better?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I appreciate that the noble Baroness has done a lot of work on the academic detailed background to this, which is an advantage that many of us do not have. The 55% figure, which the BBC has reported, is not in the text released by Mr Donald Tusk, so the proposal for a majority depends on how that is defined. This is a working document, not a final agreement. The noble Baroness asks a very reasonable question about how a red card system is more effective. Those on a football pitch know what happens when they have a red card.
Baroness O’Cathain (Con)
My Lords, first, I want to thank my noble friend for making these papers available to us. I recommend that everybody in the House get a copy of them and read them. They should read them in a spirit of tolerance—
Baroness O’Cathain
Well, because tolerance should be our reaction. The whole issue has been so hyped up that we do not know where we are. The letter by President Donald Tusk is the most generous and accommodating letter I ever expected to see from the EU. Not only that, he pays tribute to us. He says:
“To be, or not to be … that is the question”.
And:
“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”.
The whole tenor of this letter is good. Will the Government use this to try to lower the tension between those who want to stay in and those who want to go? Let us have a period of calm.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My noble friend is absolutely right. The British public will be facing the greatest decision they have had to make in a generation, and it is right that Parliament retains its approach of careful scrutiny, which is a model in this House, through the European Union Scrutiny Committee. My right honourable friend David Lidington said that he has written to the chairs of the European Union Select Committees of each House, and he will provide them with that letter before Friday. I understand he is also offering to send a memorandum of explanation so that they can better reach their own decisions. All papers have been deposited for scrutiny—not just partially but all of them—so that we may have the measured debate my noble friend calls for.
Lord Grocott (Lab)
As these negotiations continue seemingly interminably towards a conclusion we all know—the Prime Minister declaring that he has achieved a triumph in his renegotiations and will be recommending a “remain” vote—is not one thing obvious to any neutral observer? It really is bizarre that the leader of a sovereign state—our Prime Minister—in order to make a relatively minor change in our social security system, should require the agreement of 27 other leaders of sovereign states. It sounds a bit like a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, as the noble Lord knows—for some years, he was Chief Whip in this House—the European Union has rules to which we all adhere if we are to enjoy the benefits of membership. When we discuss the details of the proposals, I have no doubt that noble Lords will take different views about the benefits. Clearly, great steps forward have been made. We will have the opportunity to discuss that.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, obviously the main debate on the detail of these arrangements will take place tomorrow, and indeed in the coming days and weeks, in profusion. Will the Minister accept that what many people are also waiting for is evidence of the profound rethink in the EU’s methods and aims, which an increasing number of voices from all quarters—Eurosceptics and Europhiles—are calling for? I am referring to the reform of the European Union that people are hoping for and want to see evidence of.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My noble friend is right. Of course, in the renegotiation talks that have been carried on by my noble and right honourable friends, we have concentrated very much on economic governance, competitiveness, sovereignty, social benefits and free movement—the very reforms that I think the British people want to see.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Ind Lab)
My Lords, I have to confess that I have not read the document yet, but I had understood that there was to be a fundamental reform of the European Union, with significant powers returned to the United Kingdom. Would the noble Baroness tell me what those powers are?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I should first say that the documents have been deposited in the Library and, I understand, in the Printed Paper Office. Although they were published only a short time ago by the President of the European Council, we have made them available.
It would be wrong of me to try to summarise the document here. All I can say to the noble Lord is that we will have an opportunity to discuss in detail those advances set out here. It has been made clear—not only by the President, Mr Donald Tusk—that this is still a work in progress, but clearly it is important that all other members of the European Union have a chance to consider this before we get to the February Council and, possibly but not definitely, a decision at that stage.
Lord Garel-Jones (Con)
Does my noble friend agree that perhaps one of the reasons why we have seen a number of extremist parties, of both the left and the right, across Europe is that there has been too much centralising of decision-making in Brussels in recent years? If the Prime Minister can return through the red-card system a certain amount of real sovereignty to national parliaments, that will be one of the most important achievements of the last decade.