European Affairs

Debate between Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston and David Miliband

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[David Miliband]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I want to refer back to the exchange between my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) and the Foreign Secretary. It is not often that he is stalled in his stride, but my hon. Friend managed to stall him by pointing out that his new-found enthusiasm for referendums on any transfer of competence, however small, stands in stark contrast to his loyal vote for the Maastricht treaty under his then Government. It also stands in stark contrast to all those Conservative Members who were in the House during the passage of the Single European Act and who loyally stuck to British parliamentary convention. That is, that we are a parliamentary democracy and that when there are fundamental transfers of power around the euro, for example, there should, of course, be a referendum, as all parties have agreed. It is the job of this Parliament, however, to scrutinise, debate and to vote on any other matters.

Although I shall not devote a long section of my speech to this subject today, we look forward to long debates about how the Foreign Secretary will justify spending £80 million to £100 million on referendums, for example, on a change in the organisation of the pension committee of the European Parliament, which is one consequence of the new-found policy adopted by the Government. We will have particular fun in asking the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who has long stood for a high degree of European integration, to explain why that is a good use of taxpayers’ money.

[Ms Gisela Stuart]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[David Miliband]

My comrade friend from Birmingham, Edgbaston is always too tempting for me not to give way to her.

[Ms Stuart]

Although this grieves me, let me put on the record that when it comes to referendums, all three parties have nothing to be proud of. We all went into the 2005 election promising one: Conservative Members kept saying “Oh, well, if it is passed, we cannot have one”, but they could perfectly well have had one; the Lib-Dems said, “Oh, we change the question; it should be in or out”; while we said that the document was different from the treaty. None of us came out of this with glory, and I think that we should recognise it.

[David Miliband]

I want to put on record the fact that my hon. Friend did cover herself with glory in respect of the consistency of the positions she took on European issues and—[Interruption.] I have to say to the Foreign Secretary that we have been working on that through separate channels. My hon. Friend achieved a remarkable result in the general election and her result was testimony to what independent-minded and strong constituency MPs can achieve in this country. I am very pleased that she will be applying her independent mind not only to everything that I say, but to everything that the Government say on European issues as well, pointing out the inconsistencies as they develop.

Many of our European partners will be looking forward to the appearance of the Prime Minister at the new European Council. They will be scratching their heads about some of the policies that the new Government will develop. It is not that they find coalition Governments alien—there are, of course, coalition Governments all over Europe—but they often assume that members of the Government will agree with each other on key foreign policy issues. The other leaders will know that the Conservative party has spent a large part of the last decade campaigning to “save the pound”, as they would put it, and that the Liberal Democrats have been campaigning for the last 10 years to ditch the pound. That is why the Foreign Secretary said that there was no more “fanatically federalist party” in Britain than the Liberal Democrats. That was before his new-found enthusiasm for their support on the Government Benches.