Immigration

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, the answer to the noble Lord’s last question is yes. On his first question, I handled business on that particular report. I cannot remember the precise details, but I broadly agree with the noble Lord’s thrust.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

Can the noble Earl confirm my recollection that all three main parties supported the seven-year transition period that expired last week for Romanians and Bulgarians, and gave it wholehearted support when this House and the other place ratified their accession treaties?

[Earl Attlee]

Again, the noble Lord is right. This is what we signed up to in the accession treaties for these two states. However, we need to stimulate a debate within the community about how best to manage transition in the future.

European Council

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I think I agree with every single point that my noble friend Lord Tugendhat has made. He has underlined the importance of alliances, which is clearly right, and he has drawn particular attention to the strength of the relationship that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has worked hard to develop with a number of allies, including Chancellor Merkel. It is also true that in domestic politics the level of commitment is not related solely to the size of a budget. Given his experience, I have listened with particular care to my noble friend and I endorse his conclusions.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I hope the Minister will get some pleasure from somebody who is normally a critic of the Government’s European policy saying that I thought an extremely good deal was sealed last week. I am also delighted that the Prime Minister, in his Statement, drew the right conclusion from it, which was that you can get a good deal if you work carefully with your partners.

Was the noble Lord the Leader of the House not slightly surprised that one thing that no one has commented on so far is that the Prime Minister has committed himself to a budget that goes three years beyond the date of the referendum which he has said he is going to call? On this vexed question of the rebate, will the noble Lord the Leader of the House perhaps confirm that the change in the British rebate that took place in 2005 was simply Britain agreeing to pay its fair share of the structural fund spending in the new member states? Does he think that we should not have paid that fair share? We were the primary protagonists of those member states joining.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

First, I very much welcome the noble Lord’s welcome for my right honourable friend the Prime Minister’s achievement, from a different perspective from that of the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch. I am obviously very aware of his background and experience in these matters, so am glad to receive it.

On the noble Lord’s point about the rebate in 2005, my understanding is that the other side of that deal, as it were, was supposed to be reform of the CAP, which, sadly, has not been forthcoming. That will cost the taxpayer in the region of, I think, €8.5 billion. From the point of view of wanting to defend the interests of the British taxpayer, I am extremely glad that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has taken a robust line on Britain’s abatement. He was pushed to surrender more of it but felt that to do so would be wrong. I am glad that he resisted that pressure.

Business of the House

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I wonder if I can put a couple of questions to the Leader of the House about these time limits that he is proposing to have today. I know it is early days in his tenure of his present post, but does he not recognise that the business managers are imposing limits today which are severely testing the sense of humour of Back-Benchers to a point of destruction? Does he not also recognise that he is moving these time limits pretty close to the time limits imposed in the European Parliament—not an example normally thought good for emulating by this House? Finally, does he not recognise that there could be occasions when the national interest—and I think the two items on the Order Paper today are genuinely of national importance—does not require the House to rise at a fixed time on a Thursday evening?

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, the House has taken the decision over time as to how long it wants to set aside for debates. I take the point about the importance of some of the issues being discussed this afternoon, and the number of speakers who have signed up to discuss Europe is an indication of the great deal of interest that there is in that subject. If there is appetite for a debate of that nature, my noble friend the Chief Whip is always available to discuss that, and one could have a discussion through the usual channels as to whether we could make more time available.

Algeria

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

Does the Minister accept the endorsement of what the Prime Minister said: it really is shameful that, at a moment like this, after these horrific events, so many attempts are made to look for people who are responsible other than the terrorists themselves? The events that took place were not provoked by the invasion of Mali. They were not provoked by any behaviour that could possibly be regarded as justifying it; it is right to say that.

Will the Minister also address the need to mount a really successful international operation to restore the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Mali and, hopefully, a properly functioning governance system there? This will not be easy or short. Is any thought being given to a recommendation made by two UN panels that, where the UN asks a sub-regional organisation, such as ECOWAS, to undertake a very tough business like this and where keeping the regional powers in the fore must surely be the right thing to do, the costs should be met under the UN assessed contributions and not simply through having to rely on carrying a hat around, invariably, to the European Union? Why should countries such as Japan, Russia or China not contribute?

That proposal has been made on a number of occasions. I do not think that it has ever yet born fruit. Surely, an operation such as this demonstrates the need to provide ECOWAS, which has no any financial resources of its own, with a proper underpinning for the task we are asking it to undertake.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, first, I very much associate myself with the first comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, about who was responsible for this attack and with his point about those attempting to say that it is the sensible and appropriate action being taken as regards Mali that has driven this. He is clearly right that there is not that linkage. As far as we can tell, the attack, which was extremely well planned, must have been some time in the making. The idea that it was triggered by recent events in Mali does not seem to make sense.

On his broader point about Mali and how we can take it forward, I listened with great care to what he said. I know that discussions are going on at the UN on precisely those issues. I will follow those points up subsequently.

European Council

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I am not quite sure what I am supposed to confirm or deny. I can confirm that there was a story on the front of the Financial Times, but I cannot confirm that it was right that Mrs Merkel has issued a threat. She may have done—I have absolutely no idea. But it must be in everybody’s interest to seek an agreement on the EU budget, and the Prime Minister is quite rightly standing up for British interests and has explained what his position is—and I think that it is a very sensible position.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

Will the Leader of the House accept a warm welcome for the recognition in the Statement that he has just repeated that it is better to be there at the negotiating table in the European Union than to wield vetoes that are not really vetoes and absent yourself from the subsequent negotiations? It is a distinct improvement on what happened in December last year that the Prime Minister is working at the table and will continue to do so to make sure that the interests that he is quite rightly seeking to protect of the single market, and the way in which the banking union will interact with the single market, are defended by being at the table.

Secondly, on the budget in the Statement and in what he has subsequently said, the Leader has reiterated again and again that the British position, which incidentally is supported by your Lordships’ European Union Committee, is that there should be no increase in real terms. But those words never manage to get past the lips of the Downing Street spokesmen; they just talk about no increase. The Leader knows quite enough about these matters to know that between 2013 and 2020 no increase in real terms will mean considerably higher figures in nominal terms—that is, by the amount of inflation. It is really not sensible to give the impression that we are trying to keep the budget steady at nominal terms, when that is not what we are trying to do. All that does is to distance ourselves from the other members of the European Union that take very similar views to our own.

My own view is that we are heading towards a very satisfactory outcome to the budget negotiations if we play our cards right. There is a solid body of support for a very low outcome, way below what the Commission proposed, and I just hope that we are not going to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

[Lord Strathclyde]

I have two points on that question from the noble Lord. First, we have every intention of continuing to work at the table and to be part of the negotiation. There are some very important and crucial issues that need to be resolved over the next few weeks, and I will be back at this Dispatch Box discussing and debating them, as I have done over the past two and a half years. But it is important to get some sense of the economic reality, which is very different to when the last EU budget was negotiated. For example, the level of public debt across the 27 EU member states in 2012 will be 50% more than it was in 2007. Across the EU on average, countries are expected to see expenditure as a percentage of GDP fall by about 8% between 2010 and 2014, and more than 16% of Commission officials earn more than €100,000. At a time when we are trying to boost growth, it is hard to justify a budget in which 45% is spent on the common agricultural policy.

Let me deal head-on with noble Lord’s concern that when we talk about a nil increase we mean a nil nominal increase. We do not. We mean that we do not see the case for increases in spending that are above the rate of inflation.

EU Council

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, my noble friend’s last point is crucial. There was real concern at the European Council and suggestions from other countries that a European banking supervisory system would be precisely that—for all the banks in Europe, including those in the United Kingdom. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister and others said that that should not and could not be the case, and we ensured that the final terms of the agreement ensured that British banks would not be a part of that but would continue to be regulated by the Bank of England. Within the eurozone area, it is of course entirely appropriate that they look at ways to improve banking supervision, ensuring deposits and working more closely together. That, too, should be welcomed.

As for growth, we are all pointing in the same direction. We want deregulation. We want a clearer completion of the single market, particularly in digital and energy. That will have an important impact on the European economy and, in particular, on the United Kingdom economy.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, does the Leader of the House accept my welcome that the lessons of last December seem to have been learnt on this occasion and that the Prime Minister has recognised that the right way to protect British interests is to stay at the negotiating table, not to reject any participation in negotiations? In my view, that is highly welcome.

As the Prime Minister begins to dance with wolves on referendum issues, does the noble Lord agree that it does not make much sense to parody the situation and the choice before us by talking about more Europe or less Europe? If we read the European Council conclusions, which I am glad the Prime Minister subscribed to, we see a great deal of more Europe in them in relation to the single market. There are references to patents, to the digital single market and to the single market in services, all of which require more Europe. It makes no sense at all to say that the British position is in favour of less Europe.

On Syria, does the Minister recognise that the Russian situation may not be one that we can work our way around? I am not criticising for one minute the attempt made in Geneva to achieve common ground, but it is doubtful whether that achievement is real or just apparent. If it is not real, it will surely be necessary to go to the Security Council to table a resolution imposing measures on the Syrian regime if it does not observe and honour the provisions of the Annan plan and put it to a vote, come what may. The only way you can find things out in the Security Council is by eventually putting it to a vote. If the Russians wish to veto it, they will do so, and that will be their responsibility.

[Lord Strathclyde]

I shall take those points in order. The noble Lord welcomed the fact that the Prime Minister wants to work together with his European partners. Of course, that has always been the case, including last December, when my right honourable friend was ready to support treaty change for the 27 in return for specific and practical proposals, which we put forward to safeguard the integrity of the single market. These proposals were not an opt-out for the UK, as some have suggested; they would have applied to the EU as a whole. However, other countries blocked them, and without those protections it was entirely correct that my right honourable friend used his veto.

Of course, there are some vital parts of the EU that have a positive impact upon the United Kingdom, and we should seek to preserve these. Equally, it is right for the Government to conduct a national audit of what the EU does and what the implications are for this country. Extensive preparatory work is progressing, and when that is complete we shall make a further announcement to Parliament.

As for Syria, I see entirely the force of what the noble Lord has said about putting down a UN Security Council resolution. It is, of course, a delicate matter. I do not think that the issue has advanced as far as that, but the option must be open to the Security Council to put forward a resolution.

G20 Summit

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I do not agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, has said. Neither do I accept his characterisation of what we are doing in the United Kingdom and what we are exhorting our colleagues in the eurozone to do. I take his point about a national investment bank in order to try to encourage growth, but our solution has always been to try to encourage the private sector—and private sector banks—to have the confidence to invest in British business.

The UK economy is recovering from the deepest recession in living memory. It was even deeper than was previously thought: over 7% was wiped off the economy. Inevitably, recovery will be choppy, and by historical standards subdued, because household business and government debt rose unsustainably. Naturally, the eurozone crisis is making the recovery even more difficult.

The main point is that we have managed to maintain the lowest interest rates that this country has seen in modern times; a one percentage point rise in our interest rates today would add £10 billion to family mortgage bills alone. You only have to look at the interest rates in Spain, Italy and of course in Greece, to see just how much better off we are today than those nations. Despite having a deficit similar in size to that of Greece, the UK has interest rates at historic lows, similar to those in Germany; France’s interest rates are more than 50% higher, and Italy’s interest rates more than three and a half times higher. We can have a philosophical debate—even an economic debate—as to whether or not austerity and growth go together, but our firm view is that they can.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, will the Minister accept my thanks for that Statement? I must say that I found it a trifle Panglossian, but I do not wish to take issue with what was in it.

Are the Government not concerned that these G20 meetings are becoming of rather waning relevance, and that as each meeting succeeds each other the hopes that the world placed in the G20 when it was set up at the height of the crisis are not really being realised? Are they not, increasingly, simply photo opportunities and things of threads and patches that make no overall effort to get to terms with the challenges that confront us? If the Government are concerned about that, do they have any thoughts about how the G20 machinery could be made to work a little bit better?

Perhaps as an illustration of that, the distinctly disappointing outcome of the Rio meeting on the environment, which was held only shortly after the G20 meeting, was perhaps highlighted by the fact that the G20—the economies that are responsible for between 80% and 90% of the world’s emissions, because they are responsible for 80% or 90% of the world’s economic activity—did not even find time to talk about this subject. No effort was made to prepare a position that might have provided the 193 countries that went to Rio—which could not possibly have produced, in one or two weeks, a very meaningful outcome—with some guidance and momentum. That, too, seems to be lacking from the G20’s present agenda.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes an interesting point, particularly with his background and experience, on the role of the G20 and, indeed, of the G8. The role of these organisations has changed, particularly over the course of the last five or six years, given the economic situation. However, there is a very important role in their meeting—both G8 and G20—to work through an agenda and come forward with conclusions. The important thing in those conclusions is that they make sure that there is a vibrant system that can check back to see who committed to doing what and to make them accountable. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has views on how to streamline the secretariat, or indeed to make it more strategic, and I would encourage him to put those down on paper.

Do we believe that the G20 has made no difference at all on climate change? No; all G20 countries were committed to implementing the outcomes of the COP 17 in Durban, and we made it clear that we wanted a successful outcome to the COP 18 in Qatar later on this year. As far as Rio is concerned, the deal delivers much of what the UK wanted and worked hard to achieve, and it puts the sustainable development agenda very firmly back on the map.

Procedure of the House

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I wrote to many of the participants and all those to whom I wrote without exception said how well they thought that it had gone. Allowances were made by the House authorities to make the Committee Room more acceptable to those Members in wheelchairs. The point about the presumption is that it would give us the flexibility to make that sort of judgment again in future.

If the report is agreed to, the House would remain the arbiter of which Bills and what proportion of the Bills were sent to Grand Committee. In my view, the House is the best judge of which Bill should be sent where, and that decision should be made case by case.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord and I thank him for the good humour with which he has handled the debate, in which he has found himself without a huge amount of support. However, could he perhaps skate a little less rapidly over the point that the proposal in the Procedure Committee actually enhances the power of the Government? The two parts of the sentence in question—the presumption, and the fact that if there is no agreement between the usual channels, the matter will be taken in Grand Committee—give the Government a complete lock, apart from the nuclear option of coming to the House at the end of Second Reading and asking for a vote. That is a substantial increase in the power of the Executive, because the Government can always instruct their Chief Whip to refuse to agree to the matter being taken in the House. I would be grateful if he could address a little bit more that enhancement of the power of the Executive, which I hope was not his intention—and, if it was not, either of the two amendments that have been moved would be preferable.

Liaison Committee: Third Report

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I understand that the decision of the European Commission to review the common fisheries policy is due more to the series on television by Mr Fearnley-Whittingstall than to your Lordships’ Select Committee. And anyway, we await reform of the common fisheries policy, as we have for the past 30 years.

I do not want to turn this into a debate on the pluses and minuses of the European Union, but I want to explain to your Lordships why seven European committees is still far too many. I referred to the series of Questions from the noble Lords, Lord Tebbit and Lord Vinson, the answers to which show that the Select Committee has had virtually no influence on legislation coming to us from Brussels. That is not surprising. Your Lordships may be aware of the process of European legislation, which is proposed in secret by the Commission, negotiated in secret in COREPER and passed in secret in the Council. There is nothing that your Lordships’ House or the other place can do when it has gone through that process.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I hesitate to interrupt the noble Lord when he is in full flight on one of his well chosen paths, but I wonder how on earth he thinks that a government reply to another Member of this House can demonstrate that the influence of the committee and its sub-committees is nil. Of course, the noble Lord wants that to be the answer; of course, he wants there to be a reduction in the sub-committees and the committee to ensure that we do not scrutinise the European Union properly, because he wants to strengthen the argument to leave the European Union. However, it would be quite nice if we could address the subject before the House, which is the matter of the Liaison Committee’s report, and could above all face the fact that the European Committee deals with a core function that is not dealt with by any other committee or by the House as a whole. If you reduce that core function, you reduce the effectiveness of how we scrutinise this work. I wish that the noble Lord would take account of that instead of arguing the contrary.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I was about to explain to your Lordships why that core function is pointless compared to the work that the other Select Committees do in this House—and we have heard of powerful examples from the Science and Technology Committee. All the other committees are taken very seriously in this country and worldwide, whereas the debates of the European Committee in your Lordships’ House are ill attended and do nothing to inform public opinion about how the European Union works—and its membership, as I have said again and again, is solidly Europhile. We have just had two interventions to prove that.

The noble Lord, Lord Roper, has told us that the committee scrutinises very effectively European legislation. It writes to Ministers. But your Lordships will be aware of the scrutiny reserve, an agreement whereby successive Governments have given an assurance, although it is not a legal assurance, to both Houses of Parliament that if a piece of legislation is under scrutiny the Government of the day will not sign up to it in Brussels unless that committee agrees. Written Answers from the Government show that that has been overridden hundreds of times in the past 10 years—I think it is 343 times in the past five years.

I mention all this only to show that we put all this effort into the European Union committees and get very little out of them. I am sorry to offend noble and Europhile Lords, and I hope that the House does not think that I am banging on again about Europe. But hearing the comments about the eminent scientists in this Room who have spoken only for the Science and Technology Committee, and looking at the other committees, which are full of expertise and widely respected in the country and internationally, I fear that we have the balance wrong. Two or three European committees, including the main one, would be quite enough. We should redirect those energies into committees that will serve the House and the country well.

EU Council

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clinton-Davis]

My Lords—

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

Shall we hear from the Cross Benches and then Labour? We have not yet heard from the Liberal Democrats. We may go around the Benches and there is plenty of time.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I join the noble Lord, Lord Brittan, in saying that the Prime Minister was extremely well advised not to contest the use of the institutions in the context of this intergovernmental agreement. I would only add, gently, that you cannot reserve your position on a decision that you are not a party to.

Can the Minister now answer a question that I have been asking with a certain persistence without getting any answers: what provisions in the intergovernmental agreement are objectionable to the British Government? He has just spoken warmly about Article 2, and I imagine that he could speak quite warmly about most of the other articles, so why are we not joining the agreement? It is a little difficult to understand. Perhaps the Prime Minister let the cat out of the bag when, with a look of some relief on his face—at least it looked like that on my television set—he said, “Nothing to sign. Nothing to ratify”—and, he might have added, “Nothing to make me run the gauntlet of my Back-Benchers”.

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, if those were his motivations, there would be nothing wrong in that. In fact, the Prime Minister made it entirely clear in response to questions and in his Statement on the December Council that his only aim was to preserve British interests. At the December Council, he asked for certain safeguards and those safeguards were not offered. Hence, we have got to the current position.

As the noble Lord knows extremely well, we have a number of legal concerns about the treaty, particularly on the use of the EU institutions, but, as I said, it is in our national interest for the eurozone to solve its problems. That is why we are reserving our position. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, asks my noble friend Lord Howell questions from time to time. He will have an opportunity to have another go in a couple of weeks’ time, when we are having an all-day debate on the European Union.

We will be watching developments very carefully over the next few weeks and months, and if there is any sign that they will encroach, particularly on the single market, we will seek to take appropriate action.