State Pension Age

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a number of important points. We want a fair pension system, and her points about life expectancy, particularly in some of the poorer areas of the country, are valid. On the review, I know that my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe will want input from Members of this House who are concerned and who have expertise, and I encourage the noble Baroness to make sure that those points are made to my noble friend when she carries out her review.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

Has my noble friend considered the conclusion of the Office for National Statistics that:

“Over a 20-year period the estimated change in deaths associated with warm or cold temperature was a net decrease of 555,103 … A decrease in deaths from outcomes associated with cold temperature greatly outnumbers deaths associated with warm temperature”?


Is it not good news that climate change has prolonged or saved the lives of more than half a million of our fellow citizens—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

—a laughable matter to the Liberal Benches over there—and how long does she expect this beneficial effect to continue?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My noble friend has again given us some interesting facts and data. I am afraid that the impact of climate change is way outside my brief, but I am sure everybody notes the points made.

Environment Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lilley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interest as the owner of a smallholding with a few sheep and poultry, albeit in France and outside the purview of this Bill.

This Bill is profoundly conservative in two senses of the word. First, it is Conservative with a large “C”, because the Conservative Party is, and always has been, about conserving all that is best in our country that we have inherited from our forefathers and wish to hand on to our successors. But secondly, it is conservative with a small “c” in its desire to resist any change, which is very widespread in this country, going way beyond the Conservative Party. The Bill, to some extent, enshrines that desire to keep the environment unchanged, as it is. But the environment in this country is largely manmade. Before man set to work, it was covered with dense and impenetrable forest. No one proposes we go back to that, apart from a few extreme rewilders.

The environment has changed considerably over our lifetimes. I was brought up in the outer suburbs of London, a few hundred yards from the first farm. I used to enjoy watching the horse-drawn ploughs ploughing the small fields. The landscape at that time was a patchwork of small fields surrounded by hedges, which changed over time, partly as a result of mechanisation and partly as a result of EU subsidies encouraging farmers to dig up their hedges and have larger fields. We need to be conscious that we cannot freeze time. Had we tried to do so, food production would be lower and the cost of living higher, and we would have to import a far higher proportion of our food than we do.

There is a paradox at the heart of the Bill: the environment is largely the result of human action, not human design. It is the spontaneous creation of the actions of thousands of farmers, foresters and landowners serving millions of consumers. Yet, we assume in the Bill that it needs a centralised, guiding bureaucracy, a 25-year plan, vast apparatus of law and regulation and subsidies diverted from promoting food production to providing environmental goods. Is all this necessary? We certainly need to prevent the environment being despoiled by plastic, waste, litter, industrial waste and unregulated pollution. But, quite possibly, those problems would be better dealt with by individual measures relating to each, rather than by setting up some central, guiding, Soviet-style planning apparatus to preserve what was never the creation of human planning.

But we are where we are, and where we are is outside the European Union, so we have to decide what our own environmental rules, policies and principles should be. Fears were expressed during the referendum campaign, and subsequently, that we would set lower standards than those enshrined in the laws we have inherited from the EU. We certainly do not want to see lower standards, less clean air or less pure water. But there are many dimensions of regulations apart from higher and lower. We should aim to make our regulations simpler to comply with and outcome-based rather than process-based, creating as few barriers as possible to entry into agriculture and elsewhere and as few barriers as possible for small operators, rather than privileging the large landowners and industrial farmers.

We can now relate our regulations to our national circumstances. In doing so, we should be able to apply the precautionary principle in a more rational and pragmatic way than has been the case in the European Union. Someone described the way the European Union approaches the precautionary principle as “You should never do anything for the first time”. Of course, if there are real reasons to fear harm from some new process or innovation, we should take precautions. We should, perhaps, allow pilot projects before licensing more widely. Certainly, we should take into account experience elsewhere. But we should not rule out anything and everything from which anyone can imagine a threat, particularly when those threats are invented by those who are fundamentally anti-science, anti-industry and anti-prosperity.

I hope we will be open to using GM crops. I declare an interest here as Rothamsted was in my constituency when I was an MP. Wonderful research is done there into GM, CRISPR and conventional development of new species, always with due concern for risks. As a result, new varieties are created that require fewer pesticides and herbicides and produce more output with less fertiliser. I hope we can take advantage of the research and adopt an approach based on measuring costs against benefits in our regulations. I recall that some EU directives did not do so. We must all take a more balanced and proportionate approach. I support the Bill but with grave reservations.

Food: Chicken and Beef

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Lilley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what advice they give to British travellers to the United States of America on the risks of eating (1) chicken which has been subject to a pathogen reduction treatment, and (2) hormone-fed beef.

[The Minister of State, Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Department for International Development (Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park) (Con) [V]]

My Lords, the Government do not offer advice on this specific matter to British travellers. The Foreign Office keeps our travel advice under constant review and ensures that it reflects the most relevant risks to British nationals travelling overseas. All travel advice pages signpost to expert travel health advice from UK health bodies.

[Lord Lilley (Con) [V]]

Is not the real reason for not issuing a health warning that American chicken and beef pose no health risks? Indeed, there are fewer salmonella and campylobacter cases in America than in Europe. Has this scare not been concocted by anti-Americans who want to sabotage a potential UK-US trade deal? They will not succeed because 90% of US chicken is not washed with chlorine, which anyway poses no health risks, and American animal welfare standards are no lower than in eastern Europe, Thailand and Brazil, from which we currently import chicken and beef. Should we not focus on the opportunities a US deal could offer British farmers, manufacturers and financial services?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park [V]]

Each country must make its own decision on a range of issues based on its own individual circumstances and attitude to risk. As my noble friend will know, we have legislated by the withdrawal Act 2018 against the use of artificial growth hormones in domestic production and imported meat products. Our legislation also prohibits the use of anything other than potable water to decontaminate poultry carcasses. Any changes would require new legislation. It is important to note that the approach we follow in this country, which I believe consumers want, is one where animals are reared in a way that does not necessitate chlorine treatment to be made safe.

EU Membership: Economic Benefits

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure—a nostalgic pleasure—to follow the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg). He reiterated the fears he first enunciated in relation to our leaving the exchange rate mechanism, and those fears proved to be wrong. He next enunciated those fears in relation to our not joining the euro, and they proved the reverse of the truth. It is nostalgic to hear him recycling his damaged goods again today.

It is even more of a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood). He and I worked together at the Department of Trade and Industry. I think I am the only serving Member of Parliament, apart possibly from the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam, who has experience of successfully negotiating an international trade deal and of introducing, with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham, the single market programme into this country.

We have that experience, and I want to apply it to some of the arguments because on this issue, as on most issues, I find that when we in politics do not have that experience, we simply adopt the most plausible argument that supports our case. By and large, that is what happens on matters of trade and economics in this House, because there is so little experience of them. In a way, I am a member of an endangered species as one of the few Members who has such experience.

Let me first take the very idea that trade agreements are necessary and essential for trade. I hate to say this, because I have a vested interest in claiming to have experience of these things, but trade agreements are less important than people imagine. That is particularly the case for agreements between developed countries, largely because of the success of the Uruguay round, which brought down tariffs between developed countries to negligible levels. The average WTO tariff that would apply to British exports to the EU, in the almost inconceivable circumstance of our having no free trade agreement with it, would be 2.4%. It is better not to have it and I would rather not have it, but compared with the movements in the exchange rate, it is negligible or much less important than it is made out to be. The only important trade deals are those with fast-growing markets in Asia, Latin America and Europe that still have high tariff levels, and we ought to be looking to negotiate trade deals with those markets.

[Bob Stewart]

I entirely agree with everything my right hon. Friend has said. We have not so far discussed the fact that people want our market just as much as much as we want their market. It takes two to tango in any trade deal, and trade deals will go on regardless.

[Mr Lilley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Trade deals take place because they are in the mutual interests of both parties; they are not military conflicts. They take place between two parties, like trade itself.

A very plausible but incorrect argument is that trade agreements always take a long time. When the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs was asked whether Ministers had done any study of trade agreements, he sidestepped the question. A freedom of information request has actually revealed that neither the Treasury nor the Government have done any study of the trade agreements about which they talk so knowledgeably. However, such studies have been done. I refer to the study by Professor Moser of the Centre of European Union Studies in Salzburg of every single trade agreement in the past 20 years. There are 88 of them. They took an average of 28 months, but the time for each varied greatly. The deals that took a long time were those that involved lots of countries, which certainly concurs with my experience. Of course, by definition any EU treaty involves 28 countries and takes a long time, because all 28 have vetoes. A lot of EU treaties are being held up now, but bilateral treaties take less than that average of 28 months. We should not start deluding people into thinking that it will take a long time to negotiate bilateral deals with countries that already have bilateral deals with Switzerland, for example.

The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam asked rhetorically whether anyone was queueing up for trade deals with us. Well, look not for what they say but what they do. Switzerland has trade deals with countries whose total GDP is four times that of the countries with which the EU has trade deals. Chile has trade deals with countries whose collective GDP is even bigger. Switzerland has a trade deal with China. We are told that it is a bad deal for Switzerland, but clearly the Swiss did not think so. The Swiss published the details of the deal online; Members can look at it themselves. By the time the EU even gets around to negotiating a trade deal with China—which by the way will never succeed because the EU will always insist on human rights terms the Chinese will not accept—the Swiss will have zero tariffs on the vast majority of their exports to China.

[Mark Pritchard]

My right hon. Friend is a distinguished former Trade Secretary so knows what he is on about. We come from different sides of the debate on this issue, but does he—with all his experience and wisdom, and all his contacts both in the Commonwealth and the European Union—accept this point? Brexiteers invoke the Commonwealth leaders as wanting to do business with Britain whether we are in or out of Europe. Is it not the case that Commonwealth leaders want a trade deal with the whole of Europe, not just with the United Kingdom?

[Mr Lilley]

They probably want trade deals with whoever they can negotiate sensible ones with, if they are sensible. They will not say that it is either/or; they will want a trade deal with us, because we are the fifth biggest economy in the world, and they will probably also want a trade deal with the EU. They will find, however, that that deal takes a very long time because all 28 countries will have to agree to it first.

It is often suggested that the EU will get better deals because it is bigger. Actually, not only is it more complicated to do those deals with lots of countries, and so takes longer, but the result is worse and less comprehensive, because there are 28 times as many exceptions and exclusions. They are even less likely to be in the UK’s interests, as we can see from what has happened so far. A third of the trade deals that the EU has negotiated with other countries do not include services. As has been repeatedly stated, services are very important to this country, but they are less important to the rest of the EU, so it does not bother to include them in the deals. Switzerland also attaches great importance to exporting services, so more than 90% of its trade deals include them—as of course would ours if we were independent and making our own deals.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has mentioned Switzerland quite often. Switzerland is part of the European economic area, but still locates its banking services in London so as to access the rest of the European Union through passporting agreements. Does he have a solution to that difficulty?

[Mr Lilley]

Switzerland moved its banking centres to London post big bang and before the single market. I negotiated the second banking directive, which introduced passporting for banks. I was very proud of it, and subsequently wanted to make a speech saying what a wonderful thing it was, and how wonderful the single market programme was, so I asked my officials to find examples of banks and other businesses that were doing things that were made possible by the single market programme and that sort of passporting. They could not find a single one. Nearly all banks trade through subsidiaries, so do not take advantage of passporting, which allows operation through a branch rather than a subsidiary, regulated by the British financial authorities rather than those in the country in which they operate. I will perhaps come on to other aspects of the passporting issue if time permits.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I always listen very carefully to the right hon. Gentleman. He has made a very strong point about the difficulties in negotiating with a large trading bloc of 27 nations, including the time it would take. Why then does he feel that it would be possible, in short measure, for the UK to re-establish its trading relations with an EU of which we were no longer a part? He has made a very compelling case for why it would not be.

[Mr Lilley]

That is a very good point that I was going to come on to. It takes quite a long time for the EU to negotiate a trade deal with Canada, for example, because each country has tariffs against the other, and different product specifications and so on. Each has to trade off, say, a cut in tariffs on steel against one in tariffs on leather goods. We can see how that could take a long time, particularly if there is not much enthusiasm for it. We would start negotiating with the rest of the EU with zero tariffs on both sides and with common product standards. Zero to zero can be negotiated in a fairly short space of time, I would have thought, compared with the time needed when 10,000 different tariff lines are involved, as in other tariff agreements. It should not take long to negotiate a continuing free trade deal, with good will on both sides.

[Barry Gardiner]

rose—

[Mr Lilley]

I am afraid the hon. Gentleman has burned his boats.

Another myth, which I am afraid has been proffered by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, is that we will need to renegotiate trade agreements with all the countries with which the EU currently has trade agreements. That is not the case. There is an accepted principle in international law called the principle of continuity: if a political unit splits into parts—as the Soviet Union or Czechoslovakia did, for example—the component parts continue with the same agreement unless one party objects to it. There is absolutely no reason to suppose that the countries with which we are currently party to free trade agreements will want to end those agreements when we leave. For example, when the Soviet Union broke up it was not a member of the WTO, so had traded under separate trade agreements with other countries. Those trade agreements migrated by agreement, so that within weeks even America had migrated its agreement to Russia and other successor states. There is absolutely no reason—

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lilley]

I am sorry, but I am under pressure to finish.

I will say one final word, on the single market. It is often talked about as some arcane inner sanctum. It is simply the European market. It is like the American single market. We have no agreement with the American single market, and are not members of it; none the less, America is our biggest trading partner nationally in the world. The introduction of the single market consisted simply of standardising the product specification, so that instead of having to have 28 different ranges of refrigerator, lawn mower or whatever, we have one.

That is very sensible. It is also just as much of an advantage to an exporter from outside the EU exporting refrigerators or lawn mowers to it as it is to member states within it. In fact, others outside the EU have taken more advantage of it than we have, and their exports have gone up more than ours, perhaps because they have to bear the burden of EU regulations only on those aspects of their activities carried out within the EU, not on 100% of their firms. That is another aspect of the benefits we would get from leaving, along with our ability to negotiate free trade agreements with the fast growing but protected markets of the world on which our children’s futures will depend.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Flint]

I will not speculate, but we need a future where work in social care is not poorly paid, because we are doing a disservice to social care workers, and to the elderly people and other independent adults who rely on them. That is the challenge, and we as a country must take ownership of that and not blame the EU for all the problems on our doorstep.

There is fraud and people who are paid off the books, but that happens with British people who work illegally too, sometimes with bad employers or organised criminal networks behind them calling the shots. Many more people come here because of the work available and because English is the international language. Change is not as easy for some as for others, and leaving the EU will not solve that. The coalition Government were wrong to abolish the migration impacts fund, and it is right that freedom of movement should mean freedom to work, with people putting in before they take out. It is good news that the much maligned European Court of Justice has ruled that it is right for EU member states to be able to withhold benefits.

Let us be honest. Young Brits today do not queue up to pick crops or work in social care. The greatest deceit by the leave campaign is that the UK can keep all the access to the EU single market, but not allow EU workers to work here. If we restrict EU workers who are allowed to work here, why would the 1.6 million Brits who work or live in Europe not face similar restrictions?

[Mr Lilley]

rose—

[Caroline Flint]

I will not give way because I have already done so twice.

Non-members of the EU do not get better deals. Why would the EU offer Britain a deal that is better than that of any of the other 27 members? That would be a recipe for every country to leave. Most of all, we must not let members of the leave campaign claim that they are more patriotic than those who want to remain in the EU. I love Britain, and we will continue to be a strong, proud nation, but we are stronger and better-off as members of the European Union.

Middle East

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee) on securing the debate, and on his very thoughtful introduction to it.

I share the outrage that has been aroused by the atrocities in Paris, Tunisia, Beirut, Sinai and elsewhere. Any action that is necessary to protect Britain from similar horrors will have my full support, especially if we can simultaneously deliver fellow Christians and other minorities from the barbarity of the ISIL regime. However, I still need to be persuaded that the Government’s policy is likely to be effective and realistic, although I want to be persuaded. Let me spell out my concerns and doubts.

Above all, we must learn the lessons of experience from Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, all of which continue to haunt us. Albert Einstein said that the definition of insanity was to keep on doing the same thing and expect a different outcome. My colleagues are eminently sane, so I hope that they have learnt what I believe to be the three key lessons of recent history. First, it is comparatively easy to destroy a regime. Secondly, it is next to impossible to install a new regime or defeat an insurgency by air power alone, without boots on the ground: troops who are prepared to stay for the long term, preferably because they are in their own country. Thirdly, the only thing worse than a tyrannical regime is the chaos and anarchy that may replace it.

I need persuading first that if we join the bombing campaign, it will be in support of forces that are capable of retaining ground that air power may help to clear. In Iraq, we are supporting the Iraqi and Kurdish forces, and if it is militarily necessary to take action across border in their defence, that is fine by me. However, I must say this about Syria. The Prime Minister referred to

“70,000 Syrian opposition fighters, principally of the Free Syrian Army, who do not belong to extremist groups”.—[Official Report, 26 November 2015; Vol. 602, c. 1491.]

[Mrs Moon]

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that when the Select Committee was in Iraq, we were told that 1 million Shia fighters alone were willing to combat Daesh. Do we not have a greater chance in Iraq than in Syria?

[Mr Lilley]

The hon. Lady has made a very good point, and she made an extremely good speech.

I would like to believe that the Free Syrian Army is more than a label attached to a ragbag of tribal troops, factional militias and personal armies with no coherent command structure. I would like to believe that they are moderates. However, when I was carrying out a study of the conflict in Ulster many years ago, I examined similar situations, and concluded that

“it is nearly a law of human nature that where people fear the disintegration of the state they rally to the most forceful and extreme advocate of their group.”

In those circumstances there are no moderates, so at best we will have to rely on some pretty violent and unpleasant forces.

I would like to believe that there will be an effective fighting force. However, in October, the commander of the US central command, General Lloyd Austin, reported to the Senate that the programme to train some 5,400 moderate Syrians each year at a cost of $500 million had so far produced only four or five fighters. The number could be counted on the fingers of one hand. I would also like to be convinced that, if those moderate fighting forces existed, they could be persuaded to fight the Islamists rather than Assad, whom they have mostly considered to be their main enemy up to now.

[John Redwood]

But is not the issue for any Government contemplating air strikes the question of who they would get in touch with and co-ordinate with on the ground?

[Mr Lilley]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have signally failed to train any forces, and it is far from clear that we could achieve our aim without any.

My second area of concern is whether this aerial bombardment in Syria will actually help to prevent terror on our streets in Britain. I should make it clear that I am not one of those who believe that we should hold back from bombing ISIL for fear of provoking more terrorism. Even if there were such a risk, to allow a handful of terrorists to determine British policy would be cowardly in the extreme. But in any case, the truth is that these extreme Islamists attack us not because of what we do but because of what we are.

The preamble to the Prime Minister’s memorandum to the Select Committee states that

“it is from Raqqa that some of the main threats against this country are planned and orchestrated.”

I would like to believe that this was a simple matter of taking out the command and control system to prevent the main threats of terrorism in this country, yet even in that document, when detailing the seven plots foiled by our security forces in the past 12 months, that claim is watered down to say the plots were merely “linked to ISIL” or “inspired by ISIL’s propaganda”.

The truth is that the atrocities we have seen in Britain and France were almost invariably carried out by home-grown terrorists. Many of them were probably inspired by ISIL propaganda or emulating previous suicide bombers and terrorists, but I have seen no evidence that any of them were controlled by, let alone dispatched from, Raqqa. Those plots were hatched in Brussels, not in Syria, and if the French and Belgian security forces on the ground could not identify and stop them, it is pretty unlikely that any plans being hatched in Syria could be prevented by precision bombing from 30,000 feet. In any case, the fact that one horrifying atrocity follows another does not mean that they are directed and controlled by a single organisation. We have seen horrifying school bombings in America, with one following another and one example leading to another, but that does not mean that there was a single controlling mind behind them.

My third concern is that we are led to believe that degrading and disrupting ISIL will reduce the flood of refugees. As I understand it—I am open to correction on this—scarcely any of the refugees coming to us or going over the border into Turkey are coming from the ISIL-controlled areas. My fear is that if we disrupt and reduce that area through bombing, we will add to the flow of migrants into Europe.

The real reason that the Government wish to join the operations in Syria is that we want to join our US allies. It is Britain’s default position that we should support America unless there is good reason not to, and that is a position that I hold to, but when there are doubts and reasons not to go ahead, we should reason and argue and try to persuade our colleagues to change their strategy before we join in.

We are celebrating this year the centenary of the birth of Harold Wilson, whose great achievement was to remain the closest ally of the United States while not being drawn into the Vietnam war. I believe we should learn from that example and, if my doubts cannot be cleared up, hold back rather than join in with our friends and allies in their endeavours, which possibly are doomed to failure unless they have boots on the ground to support the bombs from the air.

Europe: Renegotiation

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

If there is one thing that does not change, it is the nature of the hon. Gentleman’s interventions on this subject. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Business Secretary and I have spoken frequently on the agenda on competitiveness, and I would be happy to send the hon. Gentleman a sheaf of speeches if he would like me to. Broadly, this is about three things. It is about cutting the cost of unnecessary red tape and regulation on all businesses, particularly on small and medium-sized enterprises. It is about deepening the single market, particularly in digital and in services, where it is underdeveloped at the moment. And it is about forging ambitious new trade agreements with other countries and other regions of the world, for their benefit and ours. These are the opportunities that British business has urged us to take, and this Government are determined not to follow but to lead on these matters in the European debate.

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend avoid using up his limited bargaining power to obtain purely symbolic changes such as removing the words “ever closer union”, given that they have never been invoked by the European Court against Britain or used to require any other member state to move in an integrationist direction? They have even been dropped from the constitutional treaty. Will he instead focus on getting back any powers that are not required to run a common trading area, so that we in this Parliament can make more of our own laws and hold our lawmakers to account?

[Mr Lidington]

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has always said that he is seeking a deal on reform that is substantive. That will be challenging to negotiate, and I do not want any Member to think that these reforms will somehow fall easily into our lap. There will be some tough negotiations ahead.

The importance of the words on “ever closer union” is that they encapsulate the fact that the EU at the moment is insufficiently flexible, still thinking of a single destination on integration for all its member states. As the Prime Minister said in his speech this morning, we need to see a much greater acceptance of the diversity of Europe at the moment. We need to see a readiness to live and let live, accepting that some countries will want to integrate more closely but others will wish to stand apart from that and that the decisions of each group should be properly respected.

European Union Referendum Bill

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn]

My view is that the question is perfectly clear and very simple. I do not think that anyone who goes into the polling station on the day, whenever it is, will not understand the consequence of voting either way.

As well the negotiations taking place in Europe, it is clear that an equally important set of negotiations is taking place within the Conservative party on this subject, and they are not going terribly well, are they? We have been asking the Prime Minister for his list of negotiating demands and we are still waiting. We are still not clear whether there will be treaty change or not. This week, the Prime Minister apparently told journalists at the G7 that he had decided that he would succeed in the negotiations and therefore all Ministers would be expected to support the line. We know that that did not go down too well with certain Ministers, who came face to face with the prospect of having to choose between their jobs and their Euroscepticism.

Then, lo and behold, faced with a choice between backing the national interest or the Conservative interest, the Prime Minister did what he always does—give in to his party. The explanation was that his remarks had been “over-interpreted”. I do not know whether this was a case of lost in translation, but the newspapers today were pretty disobliging about the Prime Minister’s decision, with references to “Downing St chaos” in The Daily Telegraph, “weak and uncertain” in The Times, and “great EU-turn” in the Daily Mail.

We are none the wiser as to where the Government stand or what the answers are to those questions, so for the benefit of the House let me try to summarise where it seems the Government have got to on our membership of the EU. The Prime Minister is probably for in, but he cannot say definitely that he is in or out because a lot of his MPs are for out, unless they can be persuaded to be in. Meanwhile, the Foreign Secretary, who used to be leaning out, now appears to be leaning in, while other members of the Cabinet who are for out read yesterday that they would be out unless they campaigned for in. Now it seems they might be in even though, after all, they are probably for out. In, out, in, out—it is the EU Tory hokey-cokey, a complete mess.

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

It is perhaps an ill-chosen day to talk about the history of parties changing views on the matter, as 32 years ago to the day Gordon Brown and Tony Blair were elected to this House, as was I. They were elected on a manifesto of leaving the European Union. They subsequently changed their views, as the right hon. Gentleman has changed his view on the need for a referendum and the need for a renegotiation. Can he explain the reasons for his change of view and what changes he wants to see in Europe prior to the referendum?

[Hilary Benn]

First, I set out earlier the changes we would wish to see, but change is not just a function of one particular moment in time. Secondly, there has been a general election and there is now going to be a referendum. As we argued consistently, uncertainty about Britain’s place in Europe is not good for the British economy, so we should get on and make this decision so that the British people can have their say, and I hope they will reach a decision to remain in the European Union.

Palestine and Israel

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

I will not discuss the rights and wrongs of the Palestinian and Israeli causes, about which hon. Members have spoken with such passion and eloquence, because I want to focus on the narrow issue of recognition: when it is appropriate and what its consequences are.

Some countries grant recognition as a mark of approval of a regime and withhold it as a mark of disapproval. Others grant recognition only on condition of receiving reciprocal favours from the country concerned. Neither approach has traditionally been that of the British Government. We have always granted recognition to a regime, however abhorrent, once it has established effective control of the state apparatus on the bulk of its territory. Likewise, we withhold or withdraw recognition from any regime, however congenial, if it lacks, or loses, control over the bulk of the state apparatus in its territory. Thus, whereas the United States refused to recognise the communist regime in China for many years and continued to recognise Taiwan as the legitimate Government, Britain speedily recognised the People’s Republic of China once its power was clearly established. I believe that we should stick to that pragmatic approach, subject to qualifications. We should recognise the Palestinian state, not as a mark of approval of its policies or disapproval of Israeli policies, but simply as a recognition of the reality, just as we would do anywhere else in the world.

There are two possible objections to our doing this. The first is that this is a question of recognising a state as well as a regime. Normally, we recognise a state as any duly constituted territory established as a state with a long history or more recently by agreement with the previous authorities exercising sovereignty in that territory. We did not recognise Katanga or Biafra even though the breakaway regime had established control, but Palestine is not a breakaway regime. It was recognised as a separate entity by the inheritor of the previous sovereign authority, the League of Nations and then the General Assembly of the United Nations.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I am interested that the right hon. Gentleman is drawing a conclusion in favour of recognition. Does he think it significant that he and the right hon. Members for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), for Rutland and Melton (Sir Alan Duncan) and for Croydon South (Sir Richard Ottaway)—distinguished senior Conservative Back Benchers and former Ministers—have arrived at the conclusion that recognition is the way forward? Is not this a significant step?

[Mr Lilley]

I am sure that it is extremely significant, as is any contribution that I make. [Laughter.]

The second objection is the one that has been raised by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind)—namely, that the Palestinian state is not in de facto control of its territory because of Israeli occupation. However, Britain has never accepted that military occupation extinguishes a country’s statehood. We did not do so during the second world war, when we continued to recognise the occupied countries in western Europe. For that reason, we should go ahead with recognition.

What effect would recognition have? Here, I fear that I must disappoint Members on both sides of the debate: it would have very little impact indeed. The proponents and opponents of recognition exaggerate the impact that it would have. Already, 134 countries have recognised Palestine and it has had no discernible effect on either advancing or hindering the peace process. Sadly, we in this House cling to the delusion that the world hangs on our every word, but it is absurd to imagine that the people who are prepared to fire rockets at civilian areas from Palestine, or the people in Israel who are prepared to incur international odium by the brutal way in which they respond, will be moved one way or the other by what we in this House say today. It is time we as a Parliament grew up and recognised that we have very little control over what happens there. Ultimately, it will be the people on both sides who will recognise the need to reach an accommodation. In that important programme the other night, we saw six former heads of Shin Bet—Israel’s state security apparatus—acknowledging the need to reach such an accommodation.

In line with our traditional policy, we should recognise the Palestinian state as a reality. We would not be granting it anything; we would simply be recognising a fact. We should make it clear that, in doing so, we were not expressing support for its policies or repudiating the right of Israel to exist. We must also accept that change will come about only as a result of those on the ground in Israel and Palestine realising that they need—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order.

Europe

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alexander]

I will make a little more progress.

Far from resolving the issue of Europe, the Prime Minister’s speech ended up prompting more questions than it answered. Those questions, alas, were singularly avoided by the Foreign Secretary in his speech today. Instead of setting out red lines for the negotiations or detailing the powers he wants to repatriate, the Prime Minister instead described five principles, about which we have heard more today, with which few hon. Members could disagree. I am happy to confirm for the Foreign Secretary—this might discombobulate Conservative Back Benchers—that the Opposition are happy to endorse the five principles. Foreign Secretaries have been advocating them for many years.

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Which powers would the right hon. Gentleman like to be returned from Europe to this country?

EU-UK Relationship (Reform)

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

I join in the congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) for all she has done to bring reason and detailed consideration of the facts to the debate on Europe. In doing so, she has contributed to the growing recognition, not just in the Conservative party but in other parties and in the country as a whole, that we need a better relationship with Europe. The question now is not whether we want or need a better relationship, but what the relationship should be and how we should get it. I will focus on how.

Some of my colleagues think the answer is an in/out referendum, which they see as a “get out of jail free card”. It is not. It is wrong in principle to pose abstract questions to the electorate, but it is also unwise in practice. A detailed study of every referendum since the second world war, where there are opinion poll data, shows that on average there is a 17% swing back in favour of the status quo. I remind my hon. Friends that that means one has to start with a 34% lead for change to have a 50% chance of winning. If we start from the present position, with roughly half of people being in favour of leaving and a third in favour of staying, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire said, the idea that we would automatically win a referendum and that a majority would vote for “out” is probably a mistake. What we should do and what we ought to do in constitutional principle is negotiate a new deal. That is why we elect Parliaments and elect Governments, and we should elect a Parliament committed to doing that.

Because a new deal will require unanimity among our partners, that will be possible only if our partners are the demandeurs: if they are going to be coming to us saying, “We want a new treaty, we want to change the existing treaties,” and they are probably going to be doing that on several occasions. The question that we ought to be confronting, and it would be proof that we are considering these matters seriously if we do, is whether we should go for a big bang solution and put forward everything that we want to change in one negotiation, or instead emulate the Euro-federalists and employ salami-slicing tactics—a slice here and another slice for the next treaty, and so on.

We should record that the first change will be the most difficult, because Europe has the doctrine of acquis communautaire, under which no power once ceded to Europe can be referred back to individual nation states. The EU will put up the most almighty opposition if we merely want to repatriate powers over regulating birdwatching. If we want more serious things, the opposition will be even greater, but we have to establish first the precedent that powers can come back to member states; then, we can get ever more. Personally, I think salami slicing is probably the approach to use, but we should be discussing these issues. When we do, we will prove that we are serious about getting the new relationship that this country wants.