North Africa and the Middle East
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Rory Stewart
I disagree very strongly and I think that in 10 to 20 years’ time, the right hon. Gentleman will have been proved wrong. I think the situation is equivalent to 1989 and that is the direction in which those countries are heading. It is patronising and mistaken of him to believe that this is simply a repeat of the 1950s and 1960s.
Let us look at Libya specifically. Gaddafi is going to be a very peculiar, eccentric and isolated figure even within his own country. Everything is shifting against that man. When he came to power, the population was rural and there was an anti-colonial movement. He now faces a situation in which 80% of Libyans live in cities in which he is perceived as a colonial oppressor. He has gone from the bloodless revolution that brought him to power four decades ago to a bloody attack on his own people. What we are hearing in Egypt and Tunisia is not some accidental, sporadic pop-up that will be constrained by inevitable forces of tyranny or Arabic culture. It is probably something closer to what we have seen in central and eastern Europe and in Latin America in the past 20 to 30 years. Furthermore, it is in our political and moral interests to support it. Even if I am wrong and it is not an inevitability but only a probability that things are going in that direction, it is the direction in which we should be pushing. This is Britain’s opportunity and Europe’s moment, and that is the direction we need to go in.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
I take absolutely no issue with the hon. Gentleman’s comment that it is our political and moral duty to do that. However, at the risk of rehearsing European history, the 10 countries that joined the European Union in 2004 were democracies before the iron curtain fell, so we were restoring democracy and we did it within the framework of membership of the European Union. It is different.
Rory Stewart
I thank the hon. Lady for those comments. The last thing that I, or any of us, want is to be starry-eyed about this. The differences that she has raised are incredibly important and have to be considered in relation to how we speak to the middle east. The whole movement in central and eastern Europe and the ability to speak about democracy, liberty and joining NATO and the European Union was driven by the history of the 1930s and by the cold war. The language on the streets in the middle east today is very different. I am afraid that George Bush has done a great disservice to words such as liberty, equality and democracy—words that were on the lips of Vaclav Havel—which do not sit so easily today when we talk to those countries. We need new words and I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) talk instead about dignity and justice. We need a whole new language and it needs to be driven by them, not us. Freedom is not something that is given but something that is taken.
All those words of caution need to be considered, but we can, nevertheless, have a constructive role over the next 20 to 30 years in helping the middle east and north Africa be more stable, more prosperous and more humane than today. That is our mission. That is what we have to put our weight behind and is where we need to invest, which means a number of things for our foreign policy. Rhetorically and financially we have been stuck in Asia. Financially, if we include debts and veterans’ costs, we are spending more than £7 billion a year in Afghanistan. Rhetorically, we have been in China and Brazil for good reasons—they are big emerging countries—but this is a wake-up call about what is going on at the other end of the Mediterranean, which, in demographic, energy, religious and security terms will prove to be more important to our institutions and future than we have acknowledged in the past five to 10 years. We therefore need to invest in institutions.
I absolutely celebrate what the Foreign Office is doing in recruiting more Arabists. We need people who can focus on Azeri and people who speak different languages. There are not enough British ambassadors in the middle east who speak fluent Arabic. We need to make sure that Tunisia is no longer seen as some French extension and we also need to take into account the lessons from European enlargement. We need to look at the way in which the Commission approached Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia and we need to give the prestige and investment to our energies in north Africa and the middle east that was given to those countries.
If we get those things right and we keep to the principles on Libya that the Government have put in play—first, clarity; secondly, a coalition; thirdly, a recognition that we can set strategic direction without having to rush in with our troops; and finally, institutional investment over the next 10 to 20 years in our relationships with these countries—I think we will find that although we can do much less than we pretend, we can do much more than we fear.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys), who put her finger on the main issue that I want to address—no-fly zones. There has been a confusion between military and humanitarian aims and outcomes, and if we are not clear when we are taking military action and do it under the guise of humanitarian action, we might end up doing neither properly.
The hon. Lady also mentioned the move towards a duty to protect—a concept that the United Nations has started to develop. The question of the stage at which the United Kingdom feels that it should step into the breach in a duty to protect is a very live one. The Foreign Secretary said in his evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee that it depended on circumstances. Of course, that is right, but this place, at some stage—probably not now—needs to think through what the duty to protect would mean in practice. If there was one mistake that the Blair Administration made in the run-up to the Iraq invasion it was that the debate should have been about “Why now?” rather than weapons of mass destruction. That should have been the logic of his Chicago speech and the subsequent actions.
However, today’s debate is about north Africa and the middle east. I should like to make a technical and narrow contribution about no-fly zones, which many people have talked about. Even when the Prime Minister raised the issue, I was not entirely convinced that he really knew what he was asking for. I thought it might be useful to look back at the experiences of previous no-fly zones and the lessons that we should have learned from them regarding where they worked and where they did not.
The no-fly zone in northern Iraq from 1991 to 2003 is, by and large, seen as a successful one. The reason is that the northern no-fly zone linked western air operations with Kurdish political parties and militias. In combination, they deterred Iraqi military action against the Kurds, which enabled a stable and sophisticated political and economically prosperous autonomous Kurdish cell. That success endured, even after the 2003 chaos. The northern Iraqi no-fly zone is arguably the most successful single engagement of the entire UK military engagement in Iraq since 1991. We ought to hold on to that point, because I do not think that the subsequent two no-fly zones were successful and we must consider why.
The southern Iraqi no-fly zone lasted from 1992 to 2003, and was imposed after the brutal repression of the Shi’as was effectively complete. In other words, we stepped in after the disaster had happened. No coherent Shi’ite political structure was accessible to the west and there was no appetite for direct action to prevent Iraq draining the southern marshes, on which the Shi’as depended for survival. From a humanitarian standpoint, the no-fly zone achieved little. As a coercive policy instrument, it achieved more. In 1994, it was extended from latitude 32° north to 33° north. To prevent a re-attack on Kuwait, its terms were widened to make it a no-drive zone for Iraqi armoured and mechanised divisions. In 1998, Operation Desert Fox was launched through the southern no-fly zone against sites associated with the development of weapons of mass destruction in central Iraq. The capture of Iraq’s senior commanders in 2003 revealed that Operation Desert Fox persuaded Iraq to abandon its manufacture of WMD.
The third no-fly zone I will discuss was in Bosnia from 1993 to 1995, and I am glad that there is somebody in the Chamber who knows much more about it than I. The assessment is that it was neither a practical nor a political success. Its effectiveness was limited by restricted rules of engagement that prevented action against helicopters, and by poor co-ordination between NATO and the UN. Its coercive impact was seriously undermined by a bitter political dispute between European capitals and the Clinton Administration over America’s preference to lift the arms embargo on the Bosnian Muslims and to strike the Bosnian Serbs directly.
I come now to the practicalities and what we should do in Libya. The conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yugoslavia indicate that air forces equipped with 1970s and 1980s Soviet and French aircraft are comprehensively outmatched by air forces equipped with modern western aircraft and training. Technically and tactically, the US and NATO have consistently proved their ability sufficiently to suppress 1980s vintage integrated air defence systems, and thus enable air operations at an acceptable level of risk. That does not necessitate the complete destruction of the IADS. Indeed, that was never achieved in Iraq or the Balkans. In Iraq, between 1998 and 2000, there were 470 separate engagements of American and RAF aircraft by Iraqi surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft artillery. They were defeated by a combination of tactics, self-protection counter-measures carried by all participating aircraft, aircraft equipped with anti-radiation missiles designed to attack air defence radars, and airborne stand-off jammers. Importantly, the US remains the only nation with the electronic warfare and ARM capabilities needed to support sustained operations against a functioning IADS.
Clear command and control to prevent the destruction of friendly military or civil aircraft is a prerequisite for any air operations, as are legal and unambiguous rules of engagement. Ambiguities that might allow transport aircraft and helicopters to fly or for civilian aircraft to be used for combat operations provide obvious points of challenge. The southern Iraqi no-fly zone was undermined by Iraqi Airways flights between Baghdad and Basra, and Baghdad and Mecca. The Bosnian no-fly zone was rendered ineffective by the consistent use of helicopters, particularly by the Bosnian Serbs. The success of the US special forces and air power and the Northern Alliance’s forces in Afghanistan 2001 reinforces the experience of the northern Iraqi no-fly zone. To be effective, air operations must be designed to affect the surface of the earth and influence protagonists.
Mr Ellwood
The hon. Lady is making a powerful case about something that we are only starting to understand—the strength of the armed forces involved. She is absolutely right to say that second-generation bits of kit are involved in the current situation, some of which have fallen into the rebels’ hands and are being used. However, it is dangerous to compare Libya with Bosnia, Iraq and other places, because the terrain is very different. A 750-mile stretch of land, 5 miles wide, is the area that needs to be controlled, so we are comparing apples and pears. I urge caution in suggesting that because something did not work in Iraq or Bosnia, it could not work in Libya, which is a very different ball game.
Ms Stuart
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because he allows me to correct the impression I might be giving that I am against no-fly zones. I believe that we need to consider this carefully and positively and work out how to make it happen. In a sense the Libyan terrain is much easier, not least because, to state the obvious, it is much flatter than Bosnia in particular.
However, I do not believe that we yet have the local engagement with the political parties and groups on the ground that made the northern Iraq no-fly zone successful. We have not yet achieved that in Libya, and we need to establish it. I suggest that the Libyan air force capabilities are probably pretty much comparable with what Yugoslavia and the Iraqis had in the 1990s.
I think it was the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) who cautioned us to try to learn from history. As A. J. P. Taylor said, it is perfectly possible not to learn lessons from history and to make entirely new mistakes. There are some things that we can learn from no-fly zones. We need absolutely clear and unambiguous rules of engagement and absolute clarity about when the purpose is humanitarian and when it is military, and unless the no-fly zone supports something that is happening on the ground, it will not help. We had better be aware of that.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard). Of course, if he goes to Tunis, he will see the ruins of Carthage, where our dear Roman friends sought to ensure that the Carthaginians were destroyed and not permitted a future. We do not want to revert to that kind of parallel.
There are a couple of interesting anniversaries for us to consider today. One is dear to me: it is 30 years since the suppression of the Polish union Solidarnosc at the end of 1981. That great hopeful moment of liberation for the Polish people was then crushed by a cruel dictatorship, and we did not know how to respond. I hope that we can think constructively about what is happening in north Africa, which indeed is a revolutionary moment and a hopeful moment for the world. We have heard good speeches from both sides of the House in what is a most enjoyable debate to listen to.
Today is also an anniversary of a different sort, because exactly one month ago, on 17 February, the Foreign Secretary came to the House to make a statement on Bahrain, in response to an urgent question granted by Mr Speaker. The Foreign Secretary had just been there, and immediately following his visit there were the first demonstrations, repressions and killings; however, he did not seem to know that this was about erupt. It is that lack of what I would call intuitive imagination about world affairs that is the problem in our handling of foreign policy. I am not making a strictly party political point, because the same applies just as much to the previous Administration. I asked the Foreign Secretary to come to the House and, as the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) pointed out in his excellent speech, I asked him:
“Does he agree that a wind of change is blowing through the Arab world”?
I also put it to him that he should
“agree to a wide review of UK foreign policy in the region before it is too late”.—[Official Report, 17 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 1136.]
I wish that such a review had taken place earlier, but as so often in our country, it is now taking place under the force of events. There have been some unhappy reactions, but there is no point going over who made a mistake, who went on an arms sales trip, which planes could not leave the tarmac and the rest of it. Rather, we should work out how we need to go forward.
I will not talk about making any sort of military intervention in Libya, because there are others who are experts. However, if, as the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) pointed out, the intervention in Iraq helped to increase al-Qaeda’s standing and status, then perhaps non-intervention in Libya will have exactly the same impact. In the non-intervention philosophy of the 1930s—if I could take my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) a little before her birth date—the line was “Do not intervene”, and as a result the most horrible dictatorships and repressions were given the green light.
What do we have as a foreign policy? There are perhaps three components to our foreign policy: hard power, soft power and political influence. Sadly, because of cuts in the military our hard power is, frankly, decreasing. We have two aircraft carriers that are now Britain’s no-fly zones because we do not have planes that can fly off them. We are also heavily engaged in Afghanistan. However, just as America’s international influence was drained by its presence in Vietnam year after year—the Americans stayed for many years after they could serve any useful purpose, allowing Brezhnev and other horrible dictators to roam freely round the world—we need to look at reducing our profile in Afghanistan faster.
We need to look at the fact that we are cutting back our diplomatic service, including our diplomatic foreign language training schools. The hon. Member for Penrith and The Border appealed for more Arab-speakers. “Ditto,” say I, but we are not just cutting Arab-speaking diplomats; we are cutting our entire diplomatic presence.
Moving to soft power, the last time the Foreign Secretary came to the House to answer an urgent question, it was to defend the cuts to the BBC World Service. Two weeks ago the Secretary of State for International Development announced that he was cutting support for the International Labour Organisation’s core funding. However, there are trade unions in Egypt and Tunis; indeed, I have been meeting them on and off for 20 years, including the Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail, the one Tunisian trade union that has some independence. That union wants help from the ILO and the TUC, but we are cutting such aid at the very moment that it could be most useful in building civil society.
We are also reducing the number of students from those areas coming to study in Britain. We have fewer Chevening scholarships, but more importantly, we are saying to those students around the world, “You’re no longer welcome to come and study in mainstream British universities,” because of the anti-immigration nostrums of the Conservatives, in thrall to an unpleasant press. That is the decline in our soft power. I put it to the House that every Tunisian, Libyan or Egyptian who comes and gets a degree in Britain leaves a friend of Britain.
Ms Gisela Stuart
Does my right hon. Friend also recognise the work of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy? Its funding has been increased, but it has also been working in Lebanon and Egypt on strengthening parliamentary democracy.
Mr MacShane
I am a fan of the WFD, but its total income is less than half the going rate for a banker’s bonus—[Interruption.] For once, that was not my phone. Madam Deputy Speaker and I have a relationship over my mobile phone—over it sounding in the Chamber, I hasten to add.
We are saying to the students of the region, “You are not welcome in Britain any more.” We are losing it on the soft power front. We are even withdrawing the pitiful amount of funding that we give to the Quilliam Foundation, whose director was imprisoned in Cairo and who knows the leaders of the Cairene opposition. It is preposterous that the Home Office should be shutting down that outfit at a time when it needs more help, not less.
I understand from replies to my parliamentary questions that the Department for International Development will spend more than £1 billion in the next four years on aid to India, a country with more billionaires and millionaires than we have, with a space programme—almost a man-on-the-moon programme—and with its own aid programme. We are giving £1 billion to India, yet we are not finding any money at all for Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco because they were not on any United Kingdom aid programme. Tunisia was not even a target country for our trade promotion activities.
That is what I mean about the Government’s utter lack of intuitive, emotional understanding of the changes that are about to take place. I know that there has been a crisis at the Foreign Office and that that has been uncomfortable for Ministers, and I do not blame officials, although perhaps I am not so sure about all the strategic top grip. I wrote an article in May last year saying that the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) should become the Foreign Secretary and that the right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague) should become the Deputy Prime Minister. I still think that that is a job swap that the Prime Minister should consider. The foreign policy announced after the change of Government was very simple. It consisted of trade, trade and more trade—hence the embarrassment of the arms sales to which hon. Members have referred, which continued for two more days after 17 February when the Foreign Secretary came to the House to make his statement.
We also need to find ways of making our Parliament more involved and engaged in these extraordinary events, not only in the region that we are discussing but elsewhere around the world. Since November last year, I have made 11 requests at business questions for a debate in Government time on international and foreign affairs. We are now having such a debate, but only thanks to the Backbench Business Committee. Yes, we have debates on specific issues relating to the middle east or to a particular country or cause of concern, but we do not discuss synoptically what we want from our foreign policy. Of course we can all do the party political knockabout, but there should be much more that unites us than divides us. For that to be achieved, however, we need more parliamentary involvement. When hon. Members go abroad, the event should not be pilloried in the press as a “junket”, and the Whips have to understand that travel not only broadens the mind but makes for a better House of Commons.
Finally, I repeat the appeal that I made to the Prime Minister, to which I have received a sympathetic response, that we need to create a British foundation for democracy development. This would in part incorporate the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and transform it from a £4 million or £5 million a year outfit to an £80 million or £100 million a year organisation. Even that amount would still not be remotely close to the annual allocation that we will give to India and other countries that benefit from DFID aid. Let that be what we will learn from this whole crisis, which will continue, albeit unevenly. I learn from Le Monde today that there is a lot of repression in Morocco, for example, and I am worried about Prince Charles going there later this week. Tunisia is also far from stable, and Egypt still effectively has military power. Britain needs to think differently, and this House should be at the heart of making that happen.
European Union Bill
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Clappison
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because he has done the House a service. It was entirely due to him that the contents of the Van Rompuy report, as they affected this country, which they clearly did, were revealed to this House. We look forward to having a fuller debate on those in due course. We want a fuller debate on many other issues, but when a treaty change comes before this House and is the subject of a statement under clause 5 we need to have all the information. We need to have everything out in the open so that we can have a full and well-informed debate.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
By way of explanation, Mr Speaker, I think I have fallen victim to my usual habit of reading newspapers from back to front. I apologise for not having been here at the start of the debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) for introducing the new clause.
I need to explain the antecedents of the thinking behind the new clause. When I was a Minister I attended meetings of the Council of Ministers, and I knew that it was perfectly impossible for any national Parliament to find out even whether their Minister was there to vote, let alone whether they had made any particular representations. I am sure that I am not the only Minister—people on both sides of the House must have done this—who performed the most amazing U-turns on policy when doing a Council of Ministers stint. I am talking about little notes along the lines of, “The United Kingdom no longer supports amendment 58”—and that was all that was ever said about the matter. There is nothing wrong with that; we do that in politics. But in this House, if the Government perform a U-turn, someone at some stage has to stand at that Dispatch Box and say, “We’ve changed our minds.” They have to give reasons for doing so, and on occasions those are perfectly acceptable. This is the one thing that is completely missing in our dealings with the European Union.
Post-Lisbon, we have made some advances in the information provided for the European Parliament. Although I welcome those provisions, I would challenge even hon. Members to close their eyes and tell me, hand on heart, that they can name all the MEPs who represent their region. I bet that they could not do that; I could not name them all myself. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) says that he does not even know all the MPs for Birmingham. Fortunately, I could tell him all their names, even in alphabetical order.
Mr Redwood
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I can remember visiting EU Councils as a Minister and discovering that the Council of Ministers often met as a legislature. It was about to enact extremely important laws affecting all our countries, and all that the others and I said was entirely secret and did not have to be shared with the public. That is an absolute disgrace: we need much more transparency.
Ms Stuart
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I negotiated the opt-out for the junior doctors working time directive back in 1999, and in a sense we knew on the negotiating basis all the problems that would happen in the NHS that the UK Government saw coming. We also knew that the directive would not actually hit us until about 2008-09. Now it is here, and everyone here is entitled to say, “We didn’t see it coming.” In fact, on one level we did see it coming.
It is also important for the House to consider the fact that, during the discussions on the Convention on the Future of Europe, I was in the very unusual position of being a negotiating partner at Government level, and also representing the House. Therefore, provided that I used a legal adviser from the House, I could be given the legal advice that was given to the previous Administration.
We should consider the nature and length of debates in the European Union. I deliberately chose the working time directive for junior doctors as an example, because it started in 1992 and started to have legislative impact on this country 10 years later, and only now are we beginning to find out its full effect.
We have now moved from Conservative to Labour to Conservative, and within our Government machinery—[Hon. Members: “Coalition.”] It is okay—the Liberal Democrats came sixth in Barnsley, so there is a ray of hope. Given the veil that falls between one Administration and the next, which hides the accumulated knowledge that could allow parliamentary scrutiny, there must be a mechanism that transcends individual Administrations, which would give the House access to the information that has been given to Ministers. Although new clause 1 is limited, it is nevertheless an important wedge representing that principle.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
I understand that the hon. Lady is suggesting not necessarily publishing everything for everyone on this country’s negotiating position, but perhaps listening to Parliament. Am I right in thinking that a similar system exists in Denmark?
Ms Stuart
Yes and no. I would caution against using the Danish principle, because it mandates Ministers bindingly. No one needs to talk to them when they are sitting round the negotiating table in Brussels, because they know what they will say. They do a head count and say, “The Danes say x.” The hon. Gentleman is right to refer to not publishing all the information, because too much information is also a weapon: people can be drowned in information, and they cannot see the wood for the trees.
The advice given to Ministers should be made public to Parliament, so that Parliament can decide whether it wishes to pursue something. More importantly, that would allow information to move from one Administration to the next, and Parliament could develop the collective memory of responsibility and decision making that is essential in our dealings with the European Union.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
We are having an important debate, and the first thing to do is find our national interest in the context of that debate. Otherwise, we will head into treacherous waters. For me, the national interest is to ensure that the Government are able to promote our interests in the best possible way in dealings with our EU partners. Anything less would risk undermining our prospects of promoting the best solutions for Britain in the EU.
I understand some of the reasons why the new clause has been introduced. For example, I see why Members of the European Parliament might be interested in hearing more about the position of the British Government—under the co-determination procedure, they have an interest in knowing more—but we are not Members of the European Parliament; we are Members of this Parliament, and we should be concerned about the accountability of the Government to this Parliament. We have no real interest in giving information to a Parliament that happens to have representation from all the nation states that we would be negotiating with. That is a bad reason for promoting the new clause, and if it was to be further advanced in the House, I would repeat that argument.
There might well be another reason, and I have thought about this myself. The previous speaker, the hon. Member for—
Neil Carmichael
Excellent, a beautiful place. The hon. Lady might well think that the transparency of the Commission is important—indeed, the transparency of the Council of Ministers—and I have certainly thought about this long and hard. I understand why people would wish there to be more transparency in both those organisations. After all, they make decisions that are important to us, but the new clause tackles the issue in the wrong way because it would undermine the Government’s capacity to negotiate. That is what we have to underline.
When the Government enter negotiations with other nation states about the future of Europe, they must do so with the knowledge that they may or may not enter into alliances with various Governments, and that those alliances may change during the negotiations.
Neil Carmichael
Because it is important to bear in mind the next negotiation and not think only about the one we have just had. That is obvious, because alliances can fluctuate and relationships are important. I do not think my right hon. Friend would say the same thing about any negotiation on a treaty outside Europe, and certainly not, for example, about NATO.
Ms Gisela Stuart
The hon. Gentleman is fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of the negotiations. One thing that British Ministers are famous for is the fact that, by the time they go into negotiations, they have reached agreement across Whitehall. Quite often that does not allow us to play a poker game. There is a formed body of opinion that represents the British view, and, after the negotiations, we, as a House, have the right to know.
Neil Carmichael
I would prefer to take the line that it is much more important to consider the outcome. Certainly, the House should be testing the Minister on that outcome and should be able to hold that Minister fully to account for it, but explaining how we got there would be a dangerous route to take.
Neil Carmichael
No, I do not. The real way of holding Ministers to account is to examine the quality of the decision that has been made and the impact that that decision will have on this country. It would be far better to look at the decision and its implications and understand the reasons for it than to worry too much about why it was made and by whom. That is the key. Too often in this country, we tend to examine the entrails rather than the direction of travel and the implications of the decision that we are supposed to be implementing.
Ms Gisela Stuart
I have one concrete example for the hon. Gentleman: the way we deal with the art market and the extra tax on it. Britain currently has an opt-out, but it is coming up for renewal, which could completely undermine Christie’s and the art market in this country. At what level in this House does he think he will debate the ministerial decision on that?
Charlie Elphicke
I completely agree, and I was about to turn to that argument.
The new clause is important in prompting a debate that should be had—and might previously have been had—about the relationship between this House and the Executive in respect of our negotiations in Europe. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) nods from a sedentary position. This is a very important point, which goes to the heart of things, and it is why I asked about the situation in Denmark. I did so not in order to trip her up but because I was genuinely interested and knew that, as she is an expert on European matters, including the Council of Ministers, she would have experience to share on that subject.
The phrase “relevant documentation” in the new clause is not, of course, defined; it could mean anything or nothing. That is a technical deficiency, therefore. I also think that there is a technical deficiency in the phrase, “amendments sponsored”. I asked the former Europe Minister, the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), how amendments are dealt with in Europe: is an amendment tabled and moved, or is there a nice bit of Euro chit-chat and then everyone comes to an agreement at the end? The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston can correct me if I am wrong, but my impression is that it is a bit of a mishmash of everything, and out of the sausage machine of discussion comes a new piece of Euro-legislation, freshly approved with the mark of Europe stamped on it.
Ms Gisela Stuart
I fear the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The Austro-Hungarian empire would have called the process “durchwurschteln” as it is a sort of sausage machine. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having such a good grasp of what goes on even though he has never been inside any of those negotiating rooms in Europe. The key problem is that the practice and the theory are so far from what we think they are. That is why I thought it was so important to try to open the door on what goes on, and it also highlights why it is important to keep asking questions about how these things work.
Charlie Elphicke
I thank the hon. Lady, and I am humbled by her kind words and great generosity. An important issue of transparency is involved here. We want negotiations to go on; we do not want to have everything picked over later, to risk our negotiating position in future and to risk our relationship with other member states. They might not want some of their information put into the public domain.
I want discussion to be full and frank. Why is that? I do not know how anybody else feels, but I remember that this country went through a phase of “sofa government”, when there were no minutes, no notes and no discussion. Not everybody thinks that that was a high point of our national life. Some people think that it was a particular low point because little deals got cut on sofas, in corridors and far away from anyone taking any minutes. That is the risk when we say, “Let us know what goes on behind closed doors.” Funnily enough, this sort of thing will not go on behind closed doors; it will go on in closed corridors and on sofas. I worry about that, because it is a real concern.
Charlie Elphicke
That is exactly the argument that I seek to put. There is massive distrust of the European Union in this House, and massive suspicion that Ministers—of all parties—go to Brussels and sell us down the river without our knowing what goes on. Meanwhile, our electors give us a good kicking about why this, that and the other happened, and we cannot really explain why it happened and what our role in it was. So there is an accountability deficit.
Denmark has an open process, whereby its Folketing’s European affairs committee meets in public and agrees a mandate system, as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston told us. It says, “This is your up line and this is your down line. Go off to Europe and negotiate.” The process is public so, as she beautifully put it, people do not need to worry about Denmark because they know where it stands. People count it in or count it out, and negotiate with everyone else. I suspect that Denmark is left out of negotiations because people say, “We don’t need to cut a deal with those guys.”
Ms Stuart
The difference is that although Finland mandates, the mandate can still be negotiated with its Parliament, whereas the Danes are mandated and the Ministers cannot change their minds. They are therefore at the meeting simply to say what their Parliament has told them. The Finnish system is better because it still allows for mandating movement.
Charlie Elphicke
Beautifully put, as ever, by the hon. Lady, who describes the problem exactly. The Danes’ mandate becomes an open negotiating position and they lose their ability to be flexible and to push other member states in the give and take that sits at the heart of true business or governmental negotiations.
Finland, like Denmark, does involve its national legislature, but the difference is that in Finland this is done in private. The Finnish grand committee meets in private, away from the cameras and the spotlight, so it can have that important discussion.
I do not know what other Members think, but I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) has some good points to make. He makes them with great passion and often at great length, and he is well informed. He passes the Linlithgow test, because he reads all those boring papers, whereas all the rest of us put our heads in our hands and then flip through them quickly to pick out the main points. My hon. Friend actually reads this stuff—I do not know how he does it, but he does—so he is able to have a substantial and serious discussion about the issues. I put it to the Minister—I hope that he will respond in due course—that we need a mechanism, perhaps a Committee system, whereby those hon. Members who are interested, even obsessed, with the European Union can represent the House’s interests and hold discussions in private, as the Finnish grand committee does, before a negotiation happens.
The Intelligence and Security Committee knows what goes on, and therefore builds in some democratic accountability, but it does not blab to everyone exactly what our spies are up to around the world and what our security interests are. If it were possible to have a mechanism similar to the grand committee system in Finland, so that Parliament could be involved, perhaps there would be a greater sense of trust and a greater sense not only that we have the essential transparency, but that we do not send our Ministers in to bat in Brussels with—as I think a former Prime Minister put it—one arm tied behind their backs, so that they cannot negotiate in this country’s fullest interests.
Ben Gummer
My right hon. Friend has expressed that with much greater concision than I have managed, and embarrassed me in the process.
There is so much concision in the new clause that it is difficult to understand precisely what the proposers are getting at. It says that the papers relating to the negotiations should be released
“during negotiation of the treaty or decision.”
One of the proposers, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), related the negotiation of the European working time directive and the fact that it took from 1992 to 1999 to make that decision. At which point during that long negotiation would the papers relating to it be released to the House? If released after the negotiation had been concluded in 1999, would they have helped to understand the Government’s position in 1992?
Ms Gisela Stuart
The release of the papers would indeed have helped. The subsequent interpretation of the working time directive and the detail of how it should operate by the Court of Justice would have made it clear that none of the Governments involved in the original negotiations had intended certain interpretations to be made. That would have strengthened the House’s hand in saying, “No, that’s not what was intended, even by our Ministers.”
Ben Gummer
The hon. Lady has clarified that beautifully. It argues for wider consideration of such issues in the kind of structure anticipated by my hon. Friends and the process in Finland that she described.
There is a broader transparency that the House enjoys, which is to put to the electorate a manifesto at the time of elections. In the past 10 years a party has put forward a manifesto proposing a referendum on the European constitution, lately called the Lisbon treaty, yet that referendum was never granted. The purpose of this Bill is to ensure that such mendacity cannot be repeated. I therefore propose that the new clause be advanced at a later stage and on a wider basis, but I support the broader purposes of the Bill.
Mr Lidington
That would be a matter for debate. I have heard dissatisfaction with the current scrutiny arrangements and a wish to explore the alternatives from several Members from all parts of the House this afternoon. At the moment, we have a model in the House of Commons and a model in the House of Lords. This business is done in various ways in other member states. Such a debate would take all those approaches into account.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) and my hon. Friends the Members for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) and for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) talked more generally about how we could improve our scrutiny arrangements. It seems to me that we need to keep the distinction between Parliament and Executive clearly in mind. Parliament’s role is to hold Ministers to account for their decisions, not to take on the role of the Minister. There is a strong case for saying to Parliament—perhaps I should be more cautious and say suggesting to Parliament—that rather than drowning parliamentarians in paperwork, about which the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk made a good point, Parliament and its Scrutiny Committees could seek to call Ministers before them, including in advance of Council decisions rather than necessarily waiting for the final version.
Ms Gisela Stuart
Will the Minister say how he thinks the House can overcome the problem of collective memory? In Whitehall, there is collective memory within the Administration, and if there is a change of Government, it is handed from one Administration to the next. Parliament has overcome the problem through successive Select Committees. However, if the knowledge is not in Parliament, once an Administration are gone it has no access.
Mr Lidington
When speaking on behalf of the Government, I must be careful not to presume to represent a collective Government position that does not yet exist, nor to pre-empt the views of parliamentarians from all parts of the House on the most appropriate method of scrutiny.
Mr Hague
It is already very clear, from our discussions on that treaty, that it will not have the effect on the United Kingdom which my right hon. Friend fears. There is no provision for it to do so; indeed, it is very clear that it should not do so. If any change were to be made to the arrangements of the European Union which imposed significant new sanctions or obligations on the United Kingdom, then of course a referendum would arise under the provisions of the Bill. That again will have to be remembered when all such provisions and changes are discussed within the European Union in the future.
It is one of our core beliefs in this coalition Government that power should not be hoarded by Ministers and officials in Whitehall, but be shared more widely with Parliament and people. That is wholly at one with the development of modern society. People increasingly want and expect to make decisions for themselves, not to have them taken for them by the Government. This Government believe that that desire and expectation are shaping our society for the better, so we are opening up public services to more choice, giving professionals more responsibility and devolving power in the Localism Bill.
The Bill before us is driven by our belief in giving power to people. Indeed, the lack of referendums on transfers of areas of power from Britain to the EU has become glaringly illogical, given the many issues on which the previous Government did institute referendums. We have had referendums on devolution and, locally, on whether towns and cities, from London to Hartlepool, should have directly elected mayors. The logic of all those referendums is the same: they are decisions on whether to change who holds power and how that power may be used. No decision can be more eminently qualified than one that could move an area of policy from the responsibility of this House to the responsibility to the European Union.
Ms Gisela Stuart
I want to take the Foreign Secretary back to when he said that he wished to share power. Does he also wish to share power in the European Union with UK citizens who apply for high-level jobs in it? The latest statistics show that British applicants make up less than 5%, because they are not competent in a second language. The Germans and French take something like 20% of the jobs, so could we share that power also with our workers and upwards?
Mr Hague
Yes, very much indeed. In fact, there was quite a lot of criticism of the External Action Service from other countries, because so many British people have gone into its senior ranks recently, but the hon. Lady makes an important point, which my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe and I have been addressing since the new Government took office—that far fewer British people have gone into the European institutions in recent years.
The previous Government ended the European fast stream programme for civil servants, and it has now been started again. We hold events in the Foreign Office for universities, to point out that there are careers in the European institutions, so that in future a bigger intake of people working in those institutions will come from the United Kingdom and understand the culture and issues here. This Government are addressing that point, whereas the Government whom she supported rather dismally failed. I am therefore very grateful to her for raising that issue.
This Bill rightly gives Parliament far more control over decisions that had previously been a matter for Ministers alone or that Parliament had only limited ability to scrutinise and deliberate on. By directing Ministers when a referendum must be held and by setting such conditions in law, the Bill also transfers power directly to the people. I am a passionate supporter of the rights and role of Parliament, but there are issues where it is right that power should be exercised directly by the people.
We can all recall manifesto promises that have been broken, and we all know that new circumstances can arise that are not covered by a manifesto. That was the very thin excuse that the Labour party came up with for not holding a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. Indeed, when voters must exercise their judgment on the whole of a manifesto, crucial questions of who should hold power can be lost in the broader argument. Although in most matters future Governments and Parliament can reverse the decisions of their predecessors, in the case of the European Union that can be very difficult indeed. The British people want the right to decide whether the European Union should be given new powers over areas of policy. They deserve that right, and our democracy will be healthier and the European Union more legitimate if they get it. That is the democratic case for this Bill.
Indeed, the case for the Bill is so strong that the House did not divide on Second Reading, and the Opposition, in their amendment to that Second Reading, accepted the soundness of the principle of referendums on significant constitutional changes. It is good that there is consensus on the extension of our democracy. Unfortunately, the Opposition Front-Bench team also took the position of willing the end but not the means, by proposing a rather nebulous committee to decide whether any treaty change was significant. According to that position, it would be debatable not only whether the preservation of our national veto or the retention of national vetoes over foreign policy were significant enough for a referendum, but whether joining the euro was significant enough for a referendum. That of course became a rather risible argument.
The fact that the Bill sets down in detail the criteria for when a referendum should be held was also objected to, but we make no apology for its detail. It ensures that the referendum lock that the Bill gives the voters is real. The complexity of the European treaties themselves makes any other approach ineffective. The alternative—some kind of broad test of whether there should be a referendum—would create legal uncertainty and leave far too much to ministerial discretion. Our purpose in drafting the Bill was to reduce ministerial discretion to the barest minimum. The answer to the distrust from which the European Union now suffers in this country is not to leave power in the hands of the Government, but to give it to the people.
A third objection was that the Bill will make it harder to negotiate in the EU, or that it sends the wrong signals. I argue, as I just have, that it will make it easier to negotiate in the EU. It is usually best to be wary of vague arguments invoking signals, and that is certainly true in this case. The signal that the Bill sends is that, in future, Britain’s conduct of EU business will be placed on a surer democratic foundation, and that is a good one. The Bill makes it no harder to negotiate, but it does mean that on all kinds of treaty changes the Government must be able to convince Parliament of the merits of their case, and, in the case of treaty changes that transfer power, convince the British people themselves.
That brings me to the fourth objection that I have heard to the Bill—that the referendum lock will make many kinds of desirable changes impossible because the British people will vote them down. That is surely the weakest argument of all—that the British people cannot and should not be trusted, and that arguments for increasing the EU’s powers are so unconvincing that the British people can never be persuaded of them. Although I believe that we have come to the point where the problem is not that the EU has too little say over too few areas of policy but quite the reverse, I say to those who have such concerns, “Have the courage of your convictions.” If a future Government thought it right to abolish national vetoes over foreign policy, for example, let them convince the voters of the merits of doing so. If that cannot be done, that is democracy at work.
The Bill sets out the process for handling any future treaty changes. The coalition Government have made a firm commitment that we will not agree to any transfer of powers from Westminster to Brussels for the duration of this Parliament, but, as experience has shown, voters should not simply have to rely on politicians’ promises on such matters. If Parliament approves the Bill, any future treaty change that transfers powers from Britain to the EU will be agreed to only with the consent of the British people.
Many other matters have been gone over in detail, including important debates on the sovereignty clause, so I will not go through everything again. Some of my hon. Friends were concerned that references to the common law in the explanatory notes implied that the Government were forming a judgment on the origins of parliamentary sovereignty. That is not the case. For the avoidance of doubt, I reiterate that the purpose of clause 18 is to make clear and to put beyond speculation the basis on which directly effective and applicable EU law takes effect in the domestic legal order of the United Kingdom, and to negate the risk that EU law could be held to have an autonomous status independent of the will of Parliament through its Acts.
A number of Government amendments have been made to the Bill in Committee and on Report to ensure that it comprehensively fulfils its overall original intent and that the law on parliamentary ratification of treaties is wholly consistent and coherent. Hon. Members’ detailed consideration of the Bill exposed some areas where improvements could be made, and we are grateful to them for that work. First, the amendments make it absolutely clear that a referendum would be required in all cases before the UK could join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office or extend its powers, whether the decision was taken before or after that office had been set up by other member states or before or after the powers had been extended.
Secondly, the amendments ensure that any proposed treaty change that sought to give up any national veto in respect of the common foreign and security policy provisions in the treaty on the European Union, whether under the ordinary revision procedure, under the simplified revision procedure or through the use of an existing ratchet clause, would require the consent of the British people in a referendum. Thirdly, they ensure, with the passing of the relevant amendment a few moments ago, that Parliament will have to vote in favour of any move from the special legislative procedure to the ordinary legislative procedure in relation to eight articles of the treaty that are already subject to qualified majority voting.
The first Government amendment tabled on the second day in Committee amends clause 5 to ensure that the proposed eurozone treaty change is subject to the full rigours of this Bill for its ratification. That treaty change is due to be agreed later this month. Because the Bill is unlikely to be law by the end of May, we have amended it so that the clock starts ticking for the two-month period for the Government statement upon Royal Assent to the Bill rather than on the day when the treaty change is signed.
Libya and the Middle East
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hague
For a no-fly zone to be implemented, it would clearly have to be effective, as well as to have the demonstrable need that I spoke about earlier. My hon. Friend is getting me into matters that are properly for the contingency planning that is now being done in NATO. Those are matters to be scoped out in any planning for a no-fly zone, and in consultation with other countries beyond NATO as well.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
It is useful to follow the previous question, because my question is about hitherto unsuccessful no-fly zones, where the confusion between military and humanitarian aid caused undue problems. In his contingency planning, is the Foreign Secretary planning to distinguish strictly between those areas still controlled by Colonel Gaddafi, which would therefore not receive humanitarian aid, and those controlled by the rebellion, which would receive it, or is he not prepared to make such a distinction?
Mr Hague
There is a range of options to be considered, and the hon. Lady draws attention to how many different ways one can look at the issue. Those different options need to be examined. NATO Defence Ministers will be able to discuss the matter later in the week, so I cannot give a specific answer now to her question. All those considerations will be taken into account.
Middle East
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
The Foreign Secretary is right when he says that democracy is about more than elections. There are two things that he could do in a concrete way. One he has already done—increase the funding for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. The second is to increase the funding of the World Service, rather than cutting it.
Mr Hague
Of course, it would be nice to have the budget to do everything that everybody demanded. As the hon. Lady knows, we do not have the budget to do that. On the World Service and the Arab world, I stress that satellite television is watched almost ubiquitously through the Arab world and was of course much resented by the Egyptian authorities during recent events. That includes the BBC. BBC Arabic is continuing on medium wave, and the shortwave service is being continued for the most sensitive areas in Sudan and the Arabian peninsula, so the BBC will continue to have a very strong representation in the Arab world.
European Union Bill
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
This may be one of the rare occasions when those on my Front Bench do not object to my intervention. I really do not know what the hon. Gentleman is going on about. I have tried to read clause 7 again. Let us go back. The fundamental charter of rights was introduced because of the judgment against the European Union as an institution over Gibraltar. Rather than signing up to the ECHR, which would have been the logical and consistent thing to do once we had given it legal personality, we now have two systems. In the UK, we are signed up to the ECHR. I would have preferred it if the EU had signed up to the ECHR. The charter of fundamental rights gives additional rights. I singularly fail to understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making because the situation is no different.
Mr Cash
I am expressing the view of academics who have studied this matter, perhaps more than the hon. Lady. [Interruption.] I am not making any personal assertions. I am just saying that the evidence that we have is that the charter will lead to legal uncertainty over how human rights are applied in Europe by introducing the additional standard of fundamental rights. I am not criticising the hon. Lady, but simply replying to her question by expressing the view that is taken in academic circles.
Ms Gisela Stuart
I accept that there is a potential conflict, but given that we are already a signatory to the ECHR and that the EU is already a signatory to the charter, none of this adds to the complexity—the complexity already exists.
Mr Cash
I accept that. That complexity does exist, and part of the difficulty with the whole issue of human rights, whether in relation to accession, the charter or the jurisdiction of the Courts, is shown in the comments of the Lord Chief Justice in his Judicial Studies Board lecture. He said to the entire judiciary, “Brothers and sisters”, referring to the other judges—[Interruption.] Well, that is their language. He said, “Brother and sister judges, will you please take note that our first obligation is to have regard to the manner in which we come to our decisions in the light of common law precedent?” He warned them against adopting Strasbourg’s precedents as a means of arriving at decisions in our own courts. He actually used the words, “We must beware”. I therefore entirely agree with the hon. Lady and with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham, and with the views expressed in the European Scrutiny Committee’s report that has come out only this afternoon.
Ms Gisela Stuart
I apologise if I have missed something that the Minister has already said, but are the lists setting out what requires a referendum and what requires other procedures indicative or exhaustive?
Mr Lidington
What is clear in the Bill is that anything under article 48(7) relating to the giving up of a UK veto or a move to qualified majority voting would require primary legislation here. My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry questioned me on those areas of policy, defined in various parts of the treaty, where article 48(7) could be applied to move from the special to the ordinary legislative procedure, but where QMV still applies now and would apply in the new circumstances. If it would help the hon. Lady, I will happily copy the letter I write to my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry to her as well.
We took the opportunity in working on this Bill to take a fresh look at this issue. We concluded that a general principle could be applied—that articles already in the treaties that provided a “one-way” option should also be considered to be passerelle clauses. These one-way options add to or reduce what could be done within existing areas of EU competence, but without changes to either voting rules or legislative procedures. We felt that they should be subject to primary legislation.
We also looked hard at articles that modify the composition or rules of procedure of existing EU institutions and bodies. We will come on to most of those when we debate clause 10. However, we felt that the article allowing for the amendment of the number of Commissioners was a highly significant article as it could be used to negotiate a reduction in the current requirement that every member state should nominate one Commissioner. We therefore proposed, because of the importance of that matter, that any such decision should require approval by primary legislation.
Mr Lidington
The hon. Gentleman, my predecessor in office, puts a strongly held view with characteristic cogency. Whatever the merits of his argument, it seems to me that departing from the principle that each country should be entitled to nominate a Commissioner would be a change of major significance to the way in which the European Union is organised and run. As such, it would seem appropriate, whatever the merits or demerits of the proposal, that this should be subject to primary legislation rather than any less demanding form of parliamentary scrutiny.
Chris Bryant
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, then to my hon. Friend, and then please release me.
Chris Bryant
No, because one requires treaty change and the other does not. If we have already locked ourselves down by saying that any element of change would have to be submitted to a referendum, when we effectively know that most referendums on many of these issues would be lost in the UK—that is the whole tenor of the argument made by the hon. Gentleman and others on the Government Benches—it will be impossible for us to negotiate with a free hand. In the end, that will be bad for the British interest.
Ms Gisela Stuart
I want to make an offer to Members of running classes on how the EU works. Anybody who has ever worked in the EU would turn in their grave if we were to rerun the past 10 minutes—except those who are not there yet. The comments have shown a complete and utter lack of understanding of how the EU works and how treaty changes work. What is most amazing about the Bill is that I find myself for the first time in years agreeing with those on my Front Bench—that shows how wrong the Government are. Negotiations are different; none of this has anything to do with clause 7 and hon. Members are utterly wrong. I am happy to run a workshop on that afterwards.
Mr Clappison
We come to a new subject area, that of freedom, security and justice, which used to be known as the judicial and home affairs pillar of the EU. As the clause stands, it would require parliamentary approval for a UK decision to opt in to certain provisions in the area of freedom, security and justice. At the moment, as I am sure the Committee knows, the UK enjoys an opt-out in that area. Were a decision to be taken to opt in to one of the matters specified in clause 9, parliamentary approval would therefore be needed.
Three such matters are specified in clause 9(2). Generally, they seem to cover further developments in the field that are not specifically set out in the freedom, security and justice chapter, which is chapter 5 of the treaty of Lisbon. I should say that that is a lengthy chapter containing many matters. I think I can see the Government’s thinking, which is to cover further developments in European law and new ideas in the field of family law, criminal procedure and serious crime. I agree with that thinking, as far as it goes, because it means that opt-ins on those matters will require parliamentary approval.
It should be said straight away that that is an improvement on the current situation, in which there is no requirement for approval of any of the important matters specified in the clause. There will therefore be additional protection, if one wants to look at it that way, and there will certainly be an additional role for the House, which will be required to give its approval before the UK can opt in.
My amendment 14 would take matters further in a logical way, by making any chapter 5 opt-in subject to the same parliamentary approval that is required for the three matters specified in the Bill.
Mr Clappison
I certainly give way to the hon. Lady, who I know has an interest in these matters.
Ms Stuart
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for tabling the amendment. Does he share my sadness that since May 2010, the Government have opted in to eight such provisions, including on such matters as the European investigation order, a new IT agency and a new crime and immigration database that will cost €113 million to set up, without the House having had any say in the decision?
Mr Clappison
The hon. Lady has updated my information, which goes only as far as 30 November, by which point there had been six opt-ins. There have therefore been another two since, and they are coming along all the time. We heard evidence in the European Scrutiny Committee that 30 or 40 such opt-ins were due to take place. The EU has an ambitious programme in that regard—that is not an expression of opinion; it has admitted it. I shall deal with that later.
The hon. Lady is absolutely right that some of the opt-ins are on important points, and I shall come to one or two of them that I experienced under the previous procedure. I should like to ask the Minister how many of the provisions that we have opted in to since the present Government came to power would have been covered by the procedures in clause 9. I fully accept that those procedures are an improvement on the current situation, but I should like to know how well they cover the ground.
As the hon. Lady said, some of the opt-ins have been significant. I wish to mention two in particular—they were debated a little yesterday, so I will not take the Committee over the same ground. They are the European investigation order, which received practically no scrutiny in the House and on which we had no opportunity for a vote, and the draft directive on the right to information, which was also very important. We had a little more scrutiny of it, but no real opportunity for a vote unless one was prepared to trigger a deferred Division.
Under successive Governments, the UK has been very careful and vigilant about permitting the EU to deal with the so-called area of freedom, security and justice, which is dealt with in clause 9. That goes back to pre-Maastricht days, when such matters were dealt with on the basis first of informal co-operation, and then of slightly more formal co-operation, between Home Affairs Ministers. They were not dealt with as part of the treaties or Community institutions—Home Affairs Ministers simply met to co-operate as such.
The Maastricht treaty put that on a more formal basis with what was described as the justice and home affairs pillar, which was the third pillar of the treaty. The first pillar was the old matters within the treaty—the single market, fisheries and agricultural policy, and all the rest of it—and the second was common foreign security policy.
One or two hon. Members who are in the Chamber now were in the House at the time of that treaty, and there was much debate on the justice and home affairs pillar. We were assured—I remember being given a solemn assurance by an authoritative figure in the Government of the time—that the treaty settled the problem as far as justice and home affairs were concerned, that we need not worry about home affairs coming within the purview of the Community method and Community institutions, and that they were being kept separate. The same applied to the common foreign security policy. The implication was that the pillars in the treaty would stand for ever, and that they were all the protection and assurance we needed. I am reluctant to say this but I have heard similar claims in respect of many other so-called safeguards since then, including in the course of this debate.
Mr Clappison
My constituency does not have a fishing port, but my understanding is that there are no demonstrations in favour of the CFP in fishing ports.
Ms Gisela Stuart
I confirm that people in Edgbaston also do not talk much about fishing policy.
The reason why the hon. Gentleman’s amendment is so important is that it goes to the heart of the contradiction. We are told that the EU is a political construct in which the Union has only those powers that member states have decided to give it, but when we raise questions we are told that there are safeguards, which actually shows that that is not quite how it works. Proportionality and subsidiarity have not worked—only the opt-out contains the powers, and that is why it is so important.
Mr Clappison
That is why the opt-out is so very important, and that point brings me to the subject of this amendment.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I shall speak mainly to the amendments I have tabled, talk about the general opt-ins and ask a couple of questions about the written ministerial statement that was issued last Thursday, particularly on how aspects of it might work in the future. I always have questions about the who and when of decision taking.
My amendment 27 deals with something that is missing from the Bill—the body known as Eurojust. Eurojust is not the European public prosecutor, but it represents a massive step towards a European public prosecutor. Under article 85 of TFEU, its remit falls under ordinary legislative procedure, so a proposal comes from the Commission, qualified majority voting applies in the Council and co-decision applies within the European Parliament. It already has a huge amount of power—or it will have, when it is set up.
In April 2010, the European Commission published a document delivering
“an area of freedom, security and justice for Europe’s citizens”,
which was an action plan implementing the Stockholm programme. The Stockholm programme is the five-year European Union plan for justice and home affairs measures, which was adopted by the European Council in December 2009. On page 18 of the document, the European Commission states that in 2012, it will make a proposal for an EU regulation
“giving Eurojust powers to directly initiate investigations.”
Even if the current Government do not opt into the proposal, there is nothing in the Bill to require them to seek Parliament’s or the people’s approval to opt in once the regulation is adopted, allowing Eurojust to initiate investigations in the UK, for example. This is a massive step towards the European public prosecutor. I hope the Minister will reassure me that he will address that point at some stage, if not today.
It may be useful if I provide some examples of significant justice and home affairs matters that the last Government opted into. I could have picked any issue in that category, but I chose the issue of asylum because I know that it always gets the blood flowing.
Among other things, directive 2004/83-EC
“on minimum standards for the qualification and status of third country nationals or stateless persons as refugees or as persons who otherwise need international protection and the content of the protection granted”
sets out the rights enjoyed by those who have been granted refugee status. Some of them go beyond the rights approved for the 1951 Geneva convention on refugees, such as those relating to access to the employment market and social security.
Directive 2003/9/EC,
“laying down minimum standards for the reception of asylum seekers”,
includes provisions on the rights of asylum seekers to access the jobs market in certain circumstances, and on the accommodation that must be offered to them. Directive 2005/85/EC
“on minimum standards on procedures in Member States for the granting and withdrawing of refugee status”
lays down various restrictions and requirements regarding the procedures that member states can follow in processing asylum claims and withdrawing refugee status. They include specific requirements for the possibility of legal challenge by asylum seekers to various decisions taken as part of the process.
Those pieces of legislation were part of the first wave of the construction of the common European asylum system that was first called for in the Tampere European Council of October 1999. The Commission has been pressing on with further legislation to build that common system since then, and over the past two years it has presented three proposals for directives to replace those that I have cited. The general thrust of the proposals is a desire to further “harmonise” asylum policy and processes across the EU and, as a consequence, to limit national discretion yet further. As it happens, the last Government decided not to opt into those later proposals; but what would happen if this Government, or a future Government, chose to opt into them? It is realistic to assume that, under the Bill, Parliament would have no legal control.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) that the Bill constitutes a step forward in one respect, and I congratulate the Minister on advancing so far. The written ministerial statement on justice and home affairs scrutiny laid before the House last Thursday contains a great deal of common sense, but I think that there is a need for further discussion of the consequences that will flow from it with the European Scrutiny Committee and other interested parliamentarians. Let me quote the key passage. It states that
“in circumstances where there is particularly strong parliamentary interest in the Government's decision on whether or not to opt in to such a measure, the Government express their willingness to set aside Government time for a debate in both Houses on the basis of a motion on the Government's recommended approach on the opt-in. The precise details of these arrangements to allow such debates and the circumstances in which Government time would be set aside will be the subject of further consultation with the European Scrutiny Committees, business managers”
—otherwise known as the wonderful Whips who are so kind and gentle to us all in this place—
“and the Commons and Lords Home Affairs and Justice Select Committees. These discussions will also need to determine how arrangements would operate during periods of parliamentary recess and dissolution of Parliament.”
That is all pretty good.
“However, the Government believe that as a general rule, it would be appropriate to do so in circumstances where they propose to opt in to a measure which would have a substantial impact on the United Kingdom's criminal or civil law, our national security, civil liberties or immigration policy. The Government will also put in place analogous arrangements for parliamentary scrutiny of decisions to opt-out of measures under the Schengen protocol.”—[Official Report, 20 January 2011; Vol. 521, c. 52WS.]
The written ministerial statement raises a number of questions. I shall talk about a couple of them now, but I would like to think that discussions can be ongoing and we can flesh out the detail. What would constitute “particularly strong parliamentary interest”? How, therefore, is a debate in Government time triggered? Would it be triggered by a referral by the European Scrutiny Committee? That could be complemented by an additional right whereby a certain number of MPs could trigger such a debate. Does the commitment to a debate and vote cover the opt-in to a justice and home affairs law already adopted by the other member states? The written ministerial statement seemed to indicate otherwise. Similarly, does the commitment cover the opt-in to new aspects of the existing Schengen acquis, such as common visa rules, where this opt-in is not covered by clause 6 of the Bill? Would it cover the opt-in to a pre-Lisbon police and criminal justice law that has ceased to apply to the UK because it exercised the bloc opt-out before June 2014? If it does cover that, how would Parliament be made aware that such an opt-in was being considered by the Government, given that this could happen at any time?
Ms Gisela Stuart
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will tell me if I say something that is incorrect, because I have not had sight of that written ministerial statement. We know that whenever we negotiate an opt-out in Brussels we spend political capital so, by definition, anything that we negotiate to opt out of is significant and an opt-in is a significant step. So any opt-in ought to be debated in Parliament and subject to a substantive vote because it must have been so important that we expended political capital securing it.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I tend to agree with the hon. Lady. When she reads the written ministerial statement, she will see that it represents a huge step forward in our scrutiny of these things in this place and she may see what measures the Government might want to opt into. I wished to raise this question of the opt-in now, because I think that the Bill is a step forward, as is this clause.
Mr Cash
Except the BBC, as my hon. Friend says, because it has not given any attention to the legislation.
The process has received a great deal of enthusiastic support, except when it comes to the votes. For all the flattering remarks made periodically about the members of the Committee and dedication and determination that they have applied, nothing happens. We do not get any of our amendments through and the Chamber is virtually empty. There is one assiduous Member on the Opposition Back Benches. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart). She has the seat which, I think, used to be Birmingham, Central in the 1880s. She was not around at the time, but she is carrying forward a fine tradition of ensuring proper scrutiny. Her predecessors in that seat were assiduous in ensuring that the interests of the people of Birmingham were well looked after. I pay tribute to her not only for the fact that she is here today on her own on the Opposition Back Benches, but that she is taking an active part.
Ms Gisela Stuart
I have no idea who held the seat in the 19th century, but I am encouraged, on matters European, that someone born near Munich now has Neville Chamberlain’s old seat.
Mr Cash
That is an interesting insight. However, I shall not follow the hon. Lady down that route as it would take me into area in which I have a great deal of interest. The hon. Lady tempts me, but she will not succeed on this occasion.
I return to my concerns. I do not mean this as personal criticism of the Whips. They have a job to do. They are told what to do. It is part of a policy, and the question is whether we want this set of provisions on family law, criminal procedure, serious crime with cross-border dimensions and so on to be implemented at all. The problem we have relates to a decision whether to opt in. We should not be contemplating it. That is the problem. With great respect to my hon. Friends, I am not criticising; I am simply making a point.
Ms Stuart
At the risk of being accused of encouraging the hon. Gentleman, I must say that when Ministers are terribly courteous it is usually an indication that we are not getting anywhere. The first rule of politics is that until they are rude, we are not getting anywhere. The real problem is that the UK Permanent Representative to the EU is politically unaccountable. My ultimate plea is to have the UKRep stand here once a week, as the Deputy Prime Minister does, and be politically accountable for the negotiations and deals that are done at Brussels. Until we have that, all this is—
The First Deputy Chairman
Order. The hon. Lady’s comments are going much wider than the amendments currently before us. I believe that there is sufficient meat in the amendments.
Mr Lidington
It is a bit rich for the hon. Gentleman to intervene in that fashion. He and I know that, in regard to policy on Europe or on any other matter, Governments of a single party in recent history—Conservative and Labour—have had to compromise a great deal, given the different points of view in the broad churches that those parties represent.
Mr Lidington
The hon. Lady says that the Labour Government never sought to compromise. That might explain their result at the last general election.
The answer to the hon. Member for Caerphilly is that there is a collective discussion, and it is a matter of public record that every decision about European policy is routed through the European Affairs Committee of the Cabinet. The membership of that Cabinet Committee is published: it comprises two thirds Conservative Ministers and one third Liberal Democrat Ministers. That is the balance of all the Cabinet Committees. There are discussions and exchanges of points of view, and there is an outcome to which everyone collectively is willing to sign up and support. That seems to be a sensible, constructive way in which to do the business of government.
Mr Jenkin
I fully agree with my hon. Friend, but I will try to avoid being drawn into that. The great skill in Committee debates is to avoid making the same speech over and over again. However, I will be guilty of repeating something that I have said before, which is that the EU is made up of democracies, but it is not itself a democracy. It is anything but a democracy; it is a bureaucracy. It has some institutions that purport to be democratic, but they have only the most tenuous link with the real aspirations of the peoples they seek to serve. The unaccountability of the most powerful institutions of the EU, namely the Commission and the European Court of Justice, is legendary. They spend money like water and they have yet to have their accounts formally approved by the Court of Auditors for the last 14 years. That is how unaccountable the institutions are to which we are handing over the jurisdiction of our criminal law.
That is why I am mystified by the Government’s complacency, except, as the Minister has now admitted, for that fact that we traded away our principles for power. Moreover, we did that not just in the national interest for a short period, but for five years. I am pretty certain that before five years have passed this country will be crying out for a general election. When a country finishes up with a Government who have no mandate, except an agreement that was invented between two political parties, we are in a dangerous situation. It was not for nothing that Benjamin Disraeli said that England does not love coalitions; if a party is an organised hypocrisy, I dread to think what the correct term for a coalition should be, except as an expedient in an emergency.
Ms Gisela Stuart
The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful speech and his amendments are sensible. If his colleagues on the Conservative Front Bench do not accept any of them, will it be his view that that will have been entirely due to power brokering with the Lib Dems, or might it just be a frolic of their own?
Mr Jenkin
I am not sure how to answer that question. If the hon. Lady does not mind, I will continue my remarks, because I intend to sit down shortly so that other Members can take part. All I will say is that those decisions should be reserved not only for Parliament, but for an Act of Parliament. They are of such significance that I would prefer the Government to accept amendment 82 so that a decision on those matters is made by referendum.
I remind the Minister that we originally stood on a manifesto commitment to have a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. Indeed, the Liberal Democrats, with whom we sit in coalition, wanted a referendum on the EU as well. Given that common ground, I cannot for the life of me understand why we should not have a referendum on at least this aspect of the Lisbon treaty. If the Liberal Democrats want to call it an “in or out” referendum, they may do so, but the question on the ballot paper should simply be: “Do you want the criminal justice system of this country to be controlled by the European Union?” I know what the answer would be. If the Government were to hold that referendum, I think that they would be very popular. In fact, it might even make the coalition popular. I recommend it to the Minister.
A few moments ago I checked to see whether there is a copy of the document that I am holding on the Table. There are all sorts of things on the Table, including “Vacher’s”, the Standing Orders, “Erskine May” and documents relating to the proceedings of the House. There is the guide to standards of conduct in public life and all sorts of things that direct the behaviour and conduct of Members and what we do in the House. However, this document is not there. It, of course, is “Consolidated Texts of the EU Treaties as Amended by the Treaty of Lisbon”, as published by the Government. I have to say that the index is a little thin, which makes it difficult to find one’s way through it. This is the document that now governs this country. Unless we change our relationship with the EU, this will be the constitution of the United Kingdom, as we have no written constitution of our own. These are the laws by which we are governed, but it is not even on the Table. That underlines how this House, 20 years after we signed the Maastricht treaty, which began to establish European governance, is still sleepwalking into a European federation.
There are those who wishfully believe that the argument has somehow been won by the Eurosceptics. It is an argument that they do not want to have. They want to avoid it because in order to resolve the democratic government of this country, we will have to confront the EU. There will have to be a disagreement with our European partners, because there is so much pride invested in the document, and other member states have so much pride in having drawn the United Kingdom into those arrangements. They will have to be confronted with the humiliation that they were wrong. As the euro collapses around our ears and the peoples of Europe rise up in the streets of their capitals, there could be no better time to do that; and there could be no better time to do it than when the EU itself is asking for new powers and asking us to agree to things for which they need our consent. That is the time we should be asking for our powers and our governance back on a mutually agreed basis. It is lamentable that the Government have not even the willpower to ask for those things.
BBC World Service
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Hague
As I said, a good deal of the expenditure is already ODA-able. I do not know what scope that leaves for additional ODA-able funding, but DFID is already in the process of setting its own priorities, which do not normally include supporting the operations of the BBC World Service. Overall, these changes are necessary. I said that I am considering whether additional money can be provided to help the World Service through the restructuring—I am talking about only up to a few million pounds, but it may be of assistance. I cannot promise a large part of the DFID budget for this cause.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
I used to be accused of having a typical foreigner’s emotional attachment to the World Service, and I plead guilty to that. The Foreign Secretary has a sense of history and knows that the World Service’s reputation is based on not just its independence but its exceptional quality. The latest round of more than 600 redundancies will cut into its core and undermine it, because it will not have enough journalists. As a historian, he cannot be proud to be the Foreign Secretary who will oversee the final death of the World Service.
Mr Hague
None of us who are conscious of history can preside over a Government heading towards the bankruptcy of this country, and that is why we have to have spending restraint across the public sector. I stress that, as I said in my initial answer to the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), there is a viable and strong future for the BBC World Service. The right place for it is with the BBC itself, which has taken it on with enthusiasm. It is wrong to pretend that there should never be any changes or reductions, and of course we have to ensure that we live within our means in this country. These changes are part of doing that.
European Union Bill
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
I am sorry, but having written the constitution and having read the Lisbon treaty, I think that it is sheer sophistry to go on like this. May I just—
The Chairman
Order. We are not dealing with the Lisbon treaty. Can we please stick to the amendments before us?
Mr David
I will stick to the point. It is really important that Members recognise that there is a fundamental difference between the constitution and the treaty of Lisbon. I am more than happy to explain those differences, with your permission, Mr Hoyle, but I know that you want us to pursue the issue under discussion.
Mr David
I do not think that is the case at all. There are certain principles at issue that it is important we consider. One of the things that has marred the debate about Europe is the fact that too much expediency has been demonstrated. We need to talk about principles, and I would argue that an important one is at stake here. We have to make it clear that we are talking about political consistency, of which there is little among Government Members. Only in January last year, an hon. Gentleman said:
“The Conservatives want a referendum on the bulk purchasing of paper clips. That is nonsense. It does not stand up to any serious scrutiny, and I do not believe that if they were in government, they would put forward this proposal.”—[Official Report, 19 January 2010; Vol. 504, c. 238.]
I am tempted to have a competition to see whether anyone knows who might have said that, but I will just tell the Committee instead: yes, it was a Liberal Democrat, and yes it was the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey)—so much for consistency; so much for principles.
One of our main concerns about the Bill is the proposal that referendums could be held on highly technical issues that are not of constitutional significance. I am not suggesting that a future Labour Government would want to change the European treaty, but are the Government seriously suggesting that we should have a referendum on changing the voting system in the Council of Ministers on the environment from the special legislative procedure to the ordinary legislative procedure ?
Mr David
That is completely untrue. My argument is that there is a clear distinction between important constitutional issues and detailed minutiae. We can argue about the constitutional issues, but there is a big difference between them and a referendum on a raft of detailed minutiae. That is the big difference, which the Bill fails to acknowledge. The Bill is about having referendums on not the big issues, but the small, relatively unimportant ones.
Ms Gisela Stuart
It might come as a great relief to my hon. Friend to learn that I totally agree with him on this occasion. The Bill would weaken Parliament. Does he not find it extraordinary that a Bill that is meant to strengthen Parliament has in clause 5 a provision whereby, if in doubt, the matter will be given to the courts, which we cannot even remove in the way we can a Government, so it is an abdication?
Mr David
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention; she makes a good point. However, the matter might not be quite as she has said. I will address that point later in my contribution, if I may.
Amendment 85 seeks to reaffirm the role of Parliament by giving it the power to consider and decide whether a proposed European change is significant enough to hold a referendum on. A special committee of both Houses—we call it the referendum committee—would be established, and it would consider the fine detail of the Government’s proposal. A recommendation would then go to both Houses, and if both Houses agreed that the change was important enough to warrant a referendum, a referendum would be held.
Mr David
What I am saying is that it depends on how “significance” is defined. I propose that, rather than our accepting a formula stating what is and what is not significant—which, as the Government themselves recognise, would fall at the first hurdle—responsibility for deciding what is important should be in the hands of parliamentarians. That would mean a transfer of decision-making power from the Executive to Parliament, of which we are in favour.
Ms Gisela Stuart
In our system the Government are drawn from the largest party in Parliament, and our Committees have a tendency to reflect the composition of Parliament. Would my hon. Friend’s committee also have an inbuilt Government majority?
Chris Heaton-Harris
I concur with my hon. Friend. Although I completely trust the Minister, I am slightly concerned that, in future, the role might be played by a Minister who was not so interested in those matters.
Ms Gisela Stuart
As a former Member of the European Parliament, the hon. Gentleman knows that the decision-making process on those minor amendments is infinitely longer in the European Parliament than in the House. I cannot remember how many Ministers for Europe there were in the 13 years of Labour government, but although I hate to say it, collective memory in this place is vested not in the Minister for Europe, but in the civil service. It is not even a Minister who makes the decision, but the civil service.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I concur with the hon. Lady. Several manoeuvres have taken place under previous Governments to determine who is Minister for Europe. The incumbents do not often stay in the role for long. Either they are, like the current incumbent, sufficiently ambitious to move up the ministerial pay scale, or they could easily be a journeyman on the way out. There is a historical context to some decisions about conferring a competence on an EU agency, and one needs to know what the agency was formed to do in the first place. I perceive such conferral as part of the mission creep in Europe. The European Commission, in establishing so many new agencies on such a regular basis, creates its own quangocracy.
When I was a Member of the European Parliament, it was difficult to police the spending and powers of an agency that the European Commission set up. Indeed, it was more difficult than policing some of the agencies and quangos that Governments of different complexions established in this country. If those agencies grab power and take more competences—even for a valid reason at the time—it is important that the Minister of the day understands the historical reasons for setting up the agencies and the intended limits on the powers. I was present when Eurojust and Euro-magistrate were set up—all part of the European public prosecutor, which I look forward to debating tomorrow, and all part of a significant salami-slicing approach of taking powers away from individual member states, and building something that nobody particularly wanted.
I understand that any ministerial decision on the significance test has a kind of double lock. It has been drawn as narrowly as possible, and I would therefore like the Minister to answer a couple of questions. First, I want to check whether any treaty change will require an Act of Parliament. I should like to think that Parliament will have every opportunity to vote for a referendum on such a change. That is why I support amendment 11. Secondly, the decision on significance is subject to judicial review to ensure that decisions not to hold a referendum only on genuinely insignificant matters are backed.
Those matters are important because, as I said, they are about getting the British people to trust the decisions that we make on Europe again. No member of the public wants decisions to be made behind closed doors, without reasonable explanation. I emphasise strongly to the Minister that the amendments are not about trust in him, his ability to undertake the role or his decisions. I would like clarification that Parliament will have a say because that is what we were sent here to do.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) has tabled some tempting amendments to which the Minister and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston alluded. In amendment 1, my hon. Friend manages to do a fantastic decapitation job on the Bill that would basically put all changes up for referendum. Although there is validity in my hon. Friend’s reasoning—he has seen through the years a lot more of what goes on in this place than I have—I do not want everything to be decided by a referendum. The British people will not take that. They want Parliament to say, “These are important decisions and there will be a referendum, a debate in both Houses, or an Act and a vote,” and the Bill makes such provisions. We can then choose whether to amend a measure so that it is subject to a referendum because we believe it to be so important. If we think that a subject is insufficiently important, we can decide not to have one. I am tempted by amendment 1, but I am simply unable to support it for those reasons.
I was tempted by amendment 1 because of the accession exemption, which the hon. Member for Caerphilly and a number of hon. Members mentioned. I tabled an amendment on accession to the EU that we will not decide on today, just as we will not decide on many amendments that have been tabled. Amendment 21 is exactly as the hon. Gentleman described it. It would mean that a 3.5% dilution of our voting powers on the European Council triggered a referendum. That is a catch-all—it is completely designed as such—so that we would have a referendum on the accession of big countries.
Given that, amendment 1 all of a sudden comes back into play and I am once again tempted. I would much rather have had a comprehensive and sensible debate on clauses 4 and 5 today or tomorrow or in extra time.
Mr Cash
I think that my hon. Friend can wait, if he does not mind.
I want to give an example that deals explicitly with a matter of immense importance that is coming up in the lift. In fact, it is not merely in the lift; the lift has come up and the doors are opening. Monsieur Fillon, the French Prime Minister, came over to see the Prime Minister specifically about this issue, and I have here the exclusive interview in The Times with Monsieur Fillon. I also had the opportunity to meet the French Minister for Europe and discuss the matter with him personally and privately.
There is no doubt about what they want or what they intend, which is effectively a twin-track treaty, which is a treaty entered into by us and the rest of the European Union—that is, with all 27 member states, in order to legitimise it within the framework of the treaty arrangements—so that they get their treaty and, within that treaty, an arrangement specifically designed to exclude the United Kingdom, even though we would be gravely affected by it. It would apply only to those other member states.
Clause 4(4) refers to
“the making of any provision that applies only to member States other than the United Kingdom”.
They look like innocuous words, but what do they actually mean? That exemption condition—in other words, no referendum, to put it bluntly and simply—means that there would be no opportunity for a referendum if the other member states agreed to go down that route. They may well do that, despite all the protestations to the contrary, some of which were rather subtly indicated by the Prime Minister in his press conference, albeit without excluding the idea of any such treaty; rather, it was merely on the supposition that that might not affect us as much as we believe, or as I believe the British people would believe if they saw it in black and white. What do those provisions include? In particular, they include arrangements of that kind relating to fiscal, political, social and employment measures, not to mention other matters that would affect the relationship between us and the rest of the European Union. A massive juggernaut would be created, through a form of extremely enhanced co-operation between those member states, that would have an enormous impact on the United Kingdom.
I have been looking at the balance of payments between us and the other member states. The figures, which I got from the Library, only bring us up to 2009, before the catastrophe that hit Europe occurred, and they are alarming. The imbalance in the balance of payments between us and the other member states has been moving critically in the wrong direction. I could give the precise figures—I may do so later—but we only have to consider the following example, which was on the “Today” programme this morning. If one had listened to the programme, one would have heard about Belgium, which is in massive crisis, with protests and people on the streets, and no Government for 22 months. Greece is in absolute chaos, with protests and implosion, while Ireland, with its political crisis, is totally imploding. Spain has 4 million unemployed, with 40% youth unemployment and people on the streets on a massive scale today. Similar problems are also occurring in Italy, and there have been riots and serious unrest in France, too.
The bottom line is that Europe is not working according to the economic governance that has been prescribed. Yet under what is proposed, the opportunity to address the very kind of treaty that would enhance the ability to confront us with a massive juggernaut of policies that have been going wrong—policies that would undermine the opportunity to grow from our 45% to 50% investment in Europe—would be severely depleted. That would be the most damaging kind of treaty that could be entered into. Indeed, as I said in The Times on the day that the French Prime Minister came over, it would be the kind of treaty that I would expect our Prime Minister to veto on behalf of the British people. However, we cannot have confidence that that would happen, because of the argument being presented. This Bill was introduced on 11 November, when we know that treaties of the kind that I have just described were already being anticipated, however damaging and disastrous they would be for the very people of this country who, if they knew the facts, would say, “I insist on a referendum on any treaty relating to arrangements of this kind.”
It would be an abomination for us to be confronted with the kind of arrangements that are being put into place—arrangements that would be so damaging to our growth and our relations with the European Union. That is why I say that this exemption provision has to be taken out of the Bill, for precisely the reasons that I have given. I do not need to enlarge on that point, but I absolutely insist that these provisions should be taken out. I look to the Minister, if he thinks that I am wrong, to give me a reasoned answer as to why.
Ms Gisela Stuart
I rise to speak to amendment 11, on which I hope the Committee will have time to vote. The amendment goes to the heart of what is wrong with the Bill. There are plenty of other things wrong with it: it is inconsistent, and all kinds of other things, but let us leave that aside for the moment. The hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) made an important point when he said that there was not a particularly clear party political divide on Europe, and that there were pros and cons on both sides. Very few people vote for their Member of Parliament because of the candidate’s view on Europe. They do, however, have a sense that, in a parliamentary democracy involving the Crown in Parliament, the House will ultimately have to decide on these matters.
What worries me about the whole construct of the Bill, which purports to strengthen Parliament, is that it will actually do no such thing. There is a sense of “Oh God, make me virtuous, but not in this Parliament”, and, because one Parliament cannot bind another, God knows what will happen in the next one. However, the default position will introduce the judiciary into the proceedings. It was bad enough that, when we were discussing parliamentary sovereignty, we were seriously asking whether it was a common law concept that would be open to judicial interpretation. It is not. The default position is that there must be a substantive vote in the Commons, and that that must be the ultimate decider if there is any doubt. There are manifold reasons why people have lost trust in the political process, but it is true to say that all parties have a tendency to behave differently once they are in government. They are much less inclined to ask the people than they were when they were out of government.
I am fundamentally in favour of the accession of Turkey to the European Union, but I would not like to go out and campaign in a referendum on that question. The Bill calls for referendums on significant changes. At the time when Turkey might accede to the European Union, its population will be larger than that of Germany. It will be the largest country in the EU by population, and its voting weight would therefore be larger than that of any other country. Anyone who argued that Turkey’s accession did not represent a significant change would be living in cloud cuckoo land.
Kwasi Kwarteng
My issue with a referendum on Turkish accession is that it would not really be within the jurisdiction of the House. Yes, we can hold a referendum on any transfer of powers from this country to the EU, and potentially veto that transfer. However, if the rest of Europe wanted Turkey to join the EU, we would have very little recourse to any action such as holding a referendum. That is my objection to the point about a referendum on Turkish accession.
Ms Stuart
I genuinely do not want to be patronising, but I might be about to sound patronising. An accession treaty would still have to be decided on by this House. We would have a say on whether Turkey would join. We might also go further and ask the people whether it should happen. Also, on the question of the transfer of new powers, there are very few areas—apart from the questions of a European standing army and joining the euro—in which the European Union does not already have powers in some shape or form. So this is not just a question of new powers; it is also a question of the strength of powers. If there were a question on the accession of Macedonia, I could argue that that was so insignificant that it would not affect our powers. However, the accession of a country such as Turkey is massive. So, to respond to the hon. Gentleman’s question: this House—or perhaps the people—will decide whether Turkey joins the European Union, because the accession of a member state that would be larger than any of the others represents a significant change.
I shall return to amendment 11. There is so much wrong with this place, and my lungs are still full of dust, so my voice will go at any moment. I am sure that that will be a great relief to quite a number of people, not least those on my own Front Bench.
Amendment 11 states:
“If the Minister’s opinion is that the effect of that provision in relation to the United Kingdom is not significant the Minister must seek Parliamentary approval for his opinion”,
and the approval must be on the basis of a substantive vote. If we make this open to judicial review—I am fully aware that some argue that judicial review is never on the substance, but only on whether the Government misled themselves in the process or incorrectly applied the law—we need to be aware that if this House allows decisions to be taken outside, it will weaken itself.
Martin Horwood
Is not the logic of the hon. Lady’s position that the significance condition in clause 3, talking about the simplified original procedure, should have been in clause 2 and then applied to all issues relating to referendums? Why, then, was that not a Labour amendment instead of the rather strange committee-based structure that Labour Front-Bench Members have proposed?
Ms Stuart
There are plenty of inherent inconsistencies both in the original Bill and in the amendments. I was involved in the tabling of amendment 11, which makes it clear that if there is any doubt, it should be resolved by this House.
As a final observation, in our Parliament, the Executive always has a permanent majority. We can rely on the strength of this House only if there are sufficient Back-Bench Members who defy their Front-Bench Members. I see the Conservative Benches full of Members, so let me point out frankly that tonight provides them with a chance to show whether they have the guts and the courage of their convictions. They said all sorts of things in the process of their election and now they have an opportunity to defy their Front-Bench team, support an amendment tabled by a majority of Members of their own side and restore faith to this place.
Mr Clappison
What a great pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart). As to the generality of her comments, I found nothing in what she expressed to the Committee to contradict my experience over five years of the European Scrutiny Committee. I intend to be as brief as possible, because I know that other Members wish to speak and that important amendments on other issues are due for debate later. I am sure that my hon. Friends share my wish to debate those important issues, particularly accession.
Let me say a few words in support of amendment 11, on which I shall seek a separate vote and hope I am lucky enough to achieve it. By way of introduction I should say that, in seeking to establish that a referendum is required before certain steps are taken, the Bill is a great improvement on the existing position. The Bill is also a significant improvement in requiring other steps, such as an Act of Parliament or a vote of this House where a referendum is not required.
I am genuinely concerned, however, that there remain some very significant gaps in the scheme of the Bill, and I believe that it is at this point in our detailed scrutiny that we should try to fill those gaps. It will be very disillusioning for all those whom we have promised and have led to expect that there will be a referendum on great transfers of power or great decisions in the European Union if that referendum does not take place. We want to do all that we can to avoid that sense of disillusionment. It is against that background that I seek to deal with the problem of the significance condition, to which hon. Members have referred.
Simply, amendment 11 would give Parliament a vote on whether certain transfers of power to the European Union are significant enough to warrant a referendum. As the Bill stands, the decision on whether matters are significant enough is in the hands of the Minister alone, subject to a challenge in the courts. Parliament does not get a say, however, at least on the question of whether there should be referendum.
Mr Lidington
In those conversations about parliamentary scrutiny, which I intend should begin as soon as possible, I hope that I can find complete agreement with my hon. Friend. However, he will know that if we are talking about arrangements that will govern how both Houses of Parliament deal with European business and the process of scrutiny, we ought to be striving towards a measure that can command broad support in both Houses, and across all the political parties represented therein.
The Bill is a radical piece of legislation to improve how we handle European business. As my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Mr Swayne) pointed out, in a characteristically vigorous intervention, had the legislation been in force at the time, the treaties of Lisbon, Amsterdam, Nice and Maastricht would all have required a referendum before they could have been finally ratified.
The powers in the Bill include a referendum lock on treaty changes or decisions that transfer powers from the United Kingdom to the European Union. That is the case even if the measures used to transfer those competences or powers are the extensive self-amending provisions introduced by the treaty of Lisbon. The powers include requiring that important decisions—even if they do not transfer power or competence—are still in every case approved by an Act of Parliament. I want to put this beyond any doubt: the Bill will mean that any treaty change at all, whether using the ordinary procedure for amending a treaty or the simplified revision procedure, will have to be approved by primary legislation.
This is a vitally needed improvement. Under the European Union (Amendment) Act 2008, Parliament’s control over the simplified revision procedure and other key ratchets is limited to a vote on a Government motion. That is the case even if the simplified treaty changes or ratchet clauses are proposed to abolish something as important as a national veto over foreign policy.
Ms Gisela Stuart
There is something that I genuinely do not understand after reading through the notes. When the Government list all the things that will be covered by the ratchet clauses, is that an exhaustive list? What is the logic behind the list?
Mr Lidington
We shall have a debate on the ratchet clauses later this week when we deal with amendments to those parts of the Bill. I will be happy to go into more detail then, and I hope the hon. Lady will forgive me if I do not answer her question now.
We are giving Parliament and the public the opportunity to hold Ministers to account by spelling out the criteria needed to make a decision on whether the power or competence is transferred, and requiring Ministers to make a statement giving the reasons for their decision. Parliament can challenge this, and, if it so wishes during the legislative process, add further conditions of its own. If the public are dissatisfied with the Minister’s judgment—I stress it will be the Minister’s judgment, not Parliament’s—they will be able to use judicial review to check it further.
Mr Lidington
My hon. Friend is jumping several bridges in assuming that what might be proposed in those hypothetical circumstances would be an amendment of the European Union treaties rather than a separate intergovernmental treaty involving the member countries of the eurozone—and perhaps some others—who wished to participate in the sort of closer economic union that my hon. Friend described and fears.
I hope to say more about this later, but the Bill is based on a very clear principle agreed within the coalition —that the referendum lock should apply where there is a transfer of competence or of power from the United Kingdom to the institutions of the European Union. That is the defining criterion. The different categories of exemption apply where powers and competences are not being transferred from this country. That is the reason for the distinction set out in the Bill. It is not an arbitrary decision, but one based on a very clear principle.
Ms Stuart
I am still trying to understand what the Minister regards as significant. The monetary union is not a debt union at the moment, but it is about to become a debt union. We have an opt-out for monetary union. If the monetary union becomes a debt union, and thus far more significant, surely that is important to us—even though we have an opt-out.
Mr Lidington
If the measures in respect of greater economic union or perhaps fiscal union or shared responsibility for debts were to take the form of a European Union amendment treaty and involved the transfer of competences or powers from this country to the EU, the referendum lock would be triggered. If the eurozone countries choose to do their own thing and have their own intergovernmental treaty, which they can do quite distinct from any move to amend either the treaty on European Union or the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, we would not have a say—not if they chose to go down that route.
Mr Lidington
I was going to make the qualification that the amendment applies to measures within the simplified, not the ordinary, revision procedure. I think that that denies the public the chance to have their say on what are, ultimately, important decisions.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham asked a couple of detailed questions. He asked, for example, whether a technical change to allow for emergency flood relief, agreed to by means of the simplified revision procedure, would be subject to a referendum. As he will know, the so-called enabling clause, article 352, would be available in the event of a need to take urgent action within the European Union’s existing competences if that action were taken to attain the EU’s objectives and if there were no explicit provision to authorise that in the EU treaties, and emergency relief and international development are indeed competences that the European Union shares with member states. Clause 8 of the Bill provides for enhanced parliamentary controls prior to any agreement on the use of article 352.
I disagree with the hon. Gentleman on some of what he termed technical changes. I firmly believe that a referendum should be held on any change that would transfer competence or substantive power from this country to the EU permanently.
The hon. Gentleman also asked how many article 48(6) changes were currently being considered. Only one is being considered at present, the one that was promoted by the German Government and agreed at the December European Council. It affects only the eurozone, and as it does not transfer power or competence from this country to the European Union, there would be no need for a referendum.
Amendments 1 to 5 and amendment 7 would ensure that every treaty change required the consent of the British people in a referendum, even if it transferred no further competence or power from this country to Brussels. I suspect that this was not the authors’ intention, but even a treaty change that would repatriate power from the European Union to the United Kingdom would require a referendum in this country before it could be accepted. A treaty change to remove the United Kingdom’s veto over decisions to amend the number of advocates-general working in the European Court of Justice would require a referendum, as would a treaty change to allow Denmark to participate in justice and home affairs measures. The addition of 18 new MEPs before 2014—when they take their seats automatically anyway—for which the Bill provides would also require a referendum.
The issue is this: what is a suitable matter for a referendum? I believe that decisions that change who decides—decisions that move control over an area of policy from the United Kingdom to the EU—should require the consent of the British people; but not every treaty does that. Should a technical change such as the temporary alteration in the number of MEPs require a referendum? If Iceland decided to join the EU, should that require a national referendum? I think that that argument is very hard to justify, and might well discredit the principle of referendums from the point of view of voters. I also see no justification for referendums on treaty changes that do not apply to the United Kingdom. As I said earlier, in democratic terms, those are ultimately decisions for the countries to which the treaties apply, and not for us. No transfer of competence or of power from this country to the EU is associated with such changes.
Ms Stuart
The Minister is simply wrong. If Lisbon caps the total number of MEPs, if the number of MEPs is based on the population, if there is a minimum number of MEPs with “bookends”, and if a country such as Turkey makes a change, the number of MEPs in this country will be significantly lower and our voice will be lower. That constitutes a change of power, and it is no good denying it.
Mr Lidington
If we followed the hon. Lady’s logic, a referendum would be required in this country for any change whatsoever in the distribution of seats in either the European Parliament or the Council of Ministers.
By definition, a referendum in this country would also be required on any accession to the European Union, not just that of Turkey, because every time a new member state joined the European Union they would have a certain weighted share of votes in the Council of Ministers and a certain number of MEPs. I do not think that she is seriously arguing that.
European Union Bill (Programme)(No. 2)
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
The accession of new member states can be fairly insignificant numerically, but there could be an extremely large new member state, with a population probably larger than Germany’s. For the House to pass a Bill such as this without having reached the point of discussing the matter would be an abdication of duty. Will the Minister undertake that, should we not reach that point today, he will find time for the House to return to the matter for however long it takes?
European Union Bill
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Hague
That is something for the Opposition to consider and they will have some time to do so before the next election. The position set out in their amendment appears to be at best uncertain in that they agree with the principle of doing such a thing but not with doing it in practice. That is rather like the position they often occupied in government of being in favour of referendums but never actually holding one on any European matter for which they were responsible.
Ms Gisela Stuart
How would the Secretary of State describe a party that promised a referendum and then, in order to avoid one, simply changed the question, as the Members who are now in coalition with his party did in the last election?
Mr Hague
I am not here to answer for the party policies of other members of the coalition but for the coalition Government as a whole. The hon. Lady can rest assured that both parties in the coalition join strongly in their support for the Bill. It is sponsored by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister, and it is therefore easy for people in a third party to join us in supporting it, as the hon. Lady will no doubt want to consider doing.
Ms Gisela Stuart
Accession treaties are exempt from the referendum requirement. Will the Foreign Secretary explain how the accession of Turkey, which by that stage would probably have a larger population than Germany, would not amount to a considerable loss of influence for the United Kingdom, given the system of qualified majority voting? Why is it therefore exempt from a referendum? I just do not get it.
Mr Hague
That is a different argument about referendums on accession treaties. Such treaties do not extend the powers and competences of the European Union, and so are not within the terms of the Bill. If the hon. Lady wants to advocate a referendum on the accession of Turkey, there will, sadly, be time for her to do so because the process will take a while. However, that is a separate argument from the extension of powers and competences.
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Gentleman needs to recognise that Britain will not grow without sufficient growth in our exports, especially given the sheer scale of the cuts that his Government are introducing. Without a sufficient increase in domestic demand, we are reliant on increasing our exports. Where does he want those exports to go, if he also wants us to turn our backs on Europe and allow the Irish economy to face serious problems? That would put a drag on our own economy and prospects as well.
Ms Gisela Stuart
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the use of article 352 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union will not require an Act of Parliament, and that the current bail-out of Ireland, which is a pretty significant activity to which we are contributing as part of our EU obligations, is being done under that article?
Afghanistan
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Mr Hague
Yes, absolutely. That is critical for the security of the region and for the prosperity and stability of Pakistan, which is a prime national interest of this country. One thing that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I have been busy doing over the past few weeks is trying to ensure that it is commonly agreed across Europe that the future prosperity and development of Pakistan, and our working closely and strategically with the Government of Pakistan, are absolutely essential and in the vital interests of the whole of Europe and the western world, not just of the United Kingdom. For instance, our achievement recently of trade concessions for Pakistan, which we secured at the last European Council last month, is a good illustration of that work.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
The Foreign Secretary mentioned the success of the criminal justice taskforce and the 440 convictions in the past year. Is he satisfied that those convicted actually served their sentences, and will he also update us on the progress made on the number of secure prison places in Afghanistan?
Mr Hague
We will have to satisfy ourselves about those things as we go along. The hon. Lady is quite right to draw attention to that. Where people are sentenced, we will want them to serve their sentences. We want more prosecutions to take place under the same procedures. We do not yet have enough secure prison places in Afghanistan and we are very careful about the terms under which we transfer prisoners to Afghan control. There is a need for more secure places and we will keep the House updated about that, too.