EU: Balance of Competences Review

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I begin with the statutory declarations as a vice-president of the European Parliament Former Members Association, chairman of its pension fund, a lifelong member of the European Movement and a member of the Conservative Europe Group—a flourishing group within the Conservative Party, let me say. Let me also say how much I appreciate the contribution that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has made to this House and the debate on Europe over many years.

This is of course a very traditional debate on Europe in that the party that makes them most noise—UKIP—has failed to appear. That is par for the course.

The balance of competences review is a mighty document, and we can deal only with selected parts of it. I want to deal with one or two issues within it—perhaps some of the more controversial ones. The first is the European Parliament itself. There are some fantastic suggestions in the document. Among them is one from a gentleman called Straw who lives down the corridor—or used to; well, he does for another 10 days. He suggests that the democratic legitimacy of the European Parliament could be increased by abolishing European elections. I am not sure that that is correct. I do not think that you increase the democratic legitimacy of anything by abolishing elections to it. I do recall that he has a bit of form. He was the one who opposed open lists for the European Parliament in 1999. I would say that we need more democracy in the Parliament; we need more knowledge about it. If we wish to reform, perhaps we should move towards open lists for the Parliament. This would of course reduce the terrible power of the parties but increase the democratic legitimacy of the list; it would also increase the ability of the electorate to choose who they want to represent them in the Parliament.

I feel also that we should build on the mechanism that we have through COSAC and other arrangements by which this House participates in relations with the other Parliaments of the EU. The trouble with talking about how you legitimise or increase the legitimacy of the European Parliament is that that is not the problem. Developments are needed to develop the COSAC system and the system of interlinking our different countries. I am not particularly campaigning against the Commission, but the fact that the yellow card procedure has hardly been used and the orange card not at all is a weakness in the procedure. We need to look at things much more thoroughly, because the Commission needs to be pulled up by its national Parliaments, not just by the EU.

I move on from there, in the democratic tradition, to look at the issue of voting in elections. The competences review is very interesting on that, because that is where we really get to grips with what matters in countries. My view is that the voting system in the United Kingdom is a complete and utter mess. If you come from Bangladesh, you can be on the electoral register as soon as it is produced after you land. I have nothing against people from Bangladesh or any other Commonwealth country, but it seems to me ridiculous that citizens of France who come to London, work in London and pay taxes in London have no say. I am in a minority in this House—certainly in my present party and in my previous party.

I do not think that Brits who go abroad should be given the vote at all. I think that the essence of democracy is control over the state that you live in. The essence of democracy should be that we extend to all taxpaying citizens who live in this country a vote. If you pay tax into the British Exchequer, I am not really bothered whether you come from France, Denmark, Bangladesh or Nigeria, you should be given a vote in return for the money you pay for the society that you live in.

We have got part of the way with local councils and European elections, but I completely reject the notion in the competences review on voting, because I think we are going the wrong way. Surely it is ridiculous that if you are a Cypriot or Maltese citizen of the European Union you can vote here in the elections. So there are citizens of two countries in the European Union who can vote—but for the wrong reasons, you might say.

My third point concerns migration. A huge amount is said in all parties about migration. One party apologises for it, the other party wants to stop it and I think the third party may be half right in its policy. Look, we have a problem with migration because in 2004 Britain decided that anyone anywhere in the joining countries could come and live in Britain, so a lot of people in eastern and central Europe who looked at the future said, “Oh, we can go and work in Britain. We can’t go and work anywhere else, but let’s go and work in Britain”. So they came here and they have contributed enormously to the economy of this country. One of the reasons, I believe, that Britain is an expanding and booming economy–in the European sense, which is not much of a sense—is because of the people who have come to work here in Britain and are contributing to our economy. We should celebrate that.

We all know that patterns of migration tend to follow chosen paths. If people come here from, let us say, Poland, which has been a big contributor, more people will come from Poland, because they will know people here. So let us not start grumbling about a problem—if it is a problem, and I deny that it is—or about a situation that we ourselves brought about. We opened the borders. We said, “Come to Britain”. I would love to see the papers, because I do not believe that it was an accident. I like to believe that there were people in the previous Government who had the intellectual capacity to sit down and analyse the problem. They worked it out, probably correctly. There is probably something buried, which we will see under the 30 year rule, in which someone—it was probably the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, because he was one of the brighter members of the previous Government—sat down and said, “There are a lot of bright people in eastern Europe, how can we get all those people with degrees and PhDs and skills and drive to come and work in Britain? I know, we’ll open the borders”. I would love to see those papers, because I am sure that they exist. I do not think that this could have happened by accident and I do not think that we should be consistently condemning it.

My final point is on enlargement. Those who have known me for a long time will not be surprised that I wish to mention Turkey, a country I have had a lot to do with in the last 30 years, and a country which the European Union has consistently deceived. As long ago as 1961 we signed a treaty—or rather, the European Union did, before we joined—saying there was a prospect of membership for Turkey. We signed up to the common acquis when we joined in 1974. Ever since then we have been holding the carrot in one hand and the stick in the other. In the mean time, the European Union has enlarged and enlarged and enlarged again. It was six countries when that promise was made. It is now 28 and there is still no sign. I believe that we have to stop playing around with Turkey.

It is possible, as the EU develops, that we could actually have a three-circle union. We talk about a two- speed Europe, but there is a third Europe, the Europe of the Council of Europe, of countries that are neither considered nor probably will ever be considered for membership of the European Union. Then there are countries on the penumbra. There are the western Balkans. There is Turkey. If we have objections to a Muslim state, do we have objections to Albania? I do not believe that we do have objections to a Muslim state; I think we have objections to a big state. I do not think that big countries want another big country around, but I do think that we need to clarify our views on Turkey. Certainly, if we need and wish to influence it, we need to open the chapters on accession. Having opened the negotiations, to leave the chapters closed that we need to talk about to get the community acquis agreed on both sides is a dereliction of duty.

I hope that the Minister can assure us that the Government will be putting all their efforts into this. Do not bring Cyprus up: we knew what we were doing when we let Cyprus into the EU. Everybody said, “If you let Cyprus in as a divided island, it will block all progress”—so let us not say that we did not know. We knew what we were doing and it is now up to us to get ourselves out of this jam.