Europe

Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and Paul Blomfield

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds). I was canvassing on Saturday in a village called Crick, in my constituency. I told one of my constituents there that I had applied to speak in this debate, and he said, “It’ll be a bit like a conversation between the man from Del Monte and the Churchill insurance dog, with one side saying ‘Yes’ all the time the other saying ‘No’”. It is a bit like that, but there are some common themes. A number of Members on both sides of the House do want to see some fundamental reform of the European Union, and the hon. Gentleman identified a couple of those areas.

One thing that no hon. Member can dispute is that the ongoing eurozone crisis means that Europe and the European Union is changing. We therefore have challenges that we must look out for and find solutions to. Currently, there are 17 countries within the eurozone, and there could soon be more. Many of the countries that signed the acquis when they joined the EU signed up to the euro, but at the moment, 10 EU countries are outside the eurozone. There is fear among those 10 of the caucusing of the 17. That is writ large in the United Kingdom.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Can the hon. Gentleman explain the logic of the position that takes us from the eurozone nations needing to assess how they can underpin the currency to wanting to repatriate powers over policing?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I think that I will be able to do that during my speech, in the next few minutes. It was a pleasure to take an intervention from the hon. Gentleman, whose wife I enjoyed working with as an MEP. I believe that he was working for her at the time and so was obviously feeding her some good lines, but it was a pleasure working with her none the less.

The fear of caucusing could cause the UK and others outside the eurozone to be outvoted in the Council in the very near future—the voting weightings are just about to change—possibly affecting our access to the single market. Most Members from all parts of the House are keen to ensure that that access remains, so we need to have, at the very least, what the Prime Minister called “new legal safeguards” to protect us from that problem.

I am not as defeatist as many Opposition Members have been. I was getting concerned about the idea of a European banking regulator, which came out of the blue last year as a new thing that Europe desperately needed to correct problems in the eurozone. I was worried about how it might affect our banking system, but Europe, as ever, managed to find a reasonable fix—one well negotiated on our behalf by the Chancellor of the Exchequer—in the double-majority mechanism. Such a mechanism had not existed before, but it made sure that the UK position was fundamentally safeguarded. I am a great believer in the fact that these things that I and other Conservative Members might be calling for are achievable and that Europe will find solutions to problems if we enter the negotiation with a broad mind.

I am a founder of the Fresh Start group of Conservative MPs. Some Opposition Members are keen on detail, and we have detailed some of the areas where we think it would be worth while negotiating. In a way, we are making the Conservative political pitch, so I expect disagreement from Opposition Members, but I will try to explain why it is important at least to look at these areas, which include justice and home affairs. We highlighted a number of areas, and some Opposition Members might agree on some of them.

The first such area relates to a new legal safeguard to maintain access to the single market—I am sure hon. Members on both sides will agree that we need to ensure that the eurozone cannot prevent our accessing that. Secondly, we need an emergency brake that any member state can use on future EU legislation affecting the financial services market. That market is important to the United Kingdom, as a huge amount of our GDP is created in financial services. The single market has been important to that, by always providing an opportunity, but it is beginning to look a bit more like a threat, because of the 48 directives and regulations coming down the track at the moment.

Thirdly, we need the repatriation of competences in social and employment law. That is a controversial area for many Labour Members, but I was in the European Parliament when Labour Ministers appeared before its employment committee and were begging people to understand the different, liberal nature of the UK work force and were asking them not to put in extra measures on the working time directive and the temporary workers directive that would directly affect the number of people getting into employment in the UK.

Fourthly, we need to opt out from existing policing and criminal justice measures, as some of them are not working, some of them are defunct and some of them are based on mechanisms that no longer exist. Europe does not repeal things and it really should; there should be sunset clauses in some of the legislation.