Eswatini

Lord Monks Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, there is a lot we have achieved in our role as chair-in-office. The noble Lord will know from his experience in Eswatini that it is right that there is a level of discretion and confidentiality when it comes to discussions within the CMAG group, which he will know well. In this regard, the Commonwealth Secretariat has engaged directly. When you profile issues, such as the abuse of human rights, on an international stage and have representatives of multilateral organisations, such as the Commonwealth, visiting and making the case, it makes a difference. We will continue to act in unison with our Commonwealth partners.

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, are the Government considering getting in touch with the International Labour Organization to see what it can do to help in this unsatisfactory situation? Eswatini is a blot on southern Africa in the way that it treats workers’ rights.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I can assure the noble Lord that the ILO itself, because of its interests, is already involved in discussions in this respect. I will certainly follow up to see whether it can play a further role when it comes to the issues currently in Eswatini.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Lord Monks Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I join all those who have congratulated the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford on a tremendous maiden speech, which moved everyone in the Chamber. We all look forward to her many future contributions, and I congratulate her.

Nazanin has been a prisoner of the Iranian regime for over five long years. Depressingly, there seems to be no end in sight. So far, successive Foreign Secretaries have failed in their efforts to secure her release, with one of them—the present Prime Minister—making a delicate situation rather worse by wrongly describing Nazanin as a journalist and apparently confirming one of the Iranian regime’s trumped-up charges. That moment of British carelessness is of course no excuse for the Iranian regime’s treatment of Nazanin, but it has been used to justify that treatment in the eyes of supporters of the Iranian regime, and it was a costly error.

As many others have said in this debate, another error has been the continued delay in paying Iran our debt of £400 million for the undelivered tanks. I am under no illusions about the nature of the Iranian Government, who remain very hostile to the West in a number of ways. They are under severe sanction for, inter alia, their alleged actions in breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but there is no question that we owe Iran the money, and we should urgently find a way to pay up, as others have done and as President Obama did in 2016, as others have said. We cannot keep hiding behind the need to observe sanctions, thereby conceding the moral high ground to Iran.

I am not naive; I can see why many would not like to provide a large amount of money to this Iranian regime. Nor do I assume that if we paid our debt, the Iranian regime would necessarily release Nazanin and the other UK nationals who are arbitrarily detained. The regime is always ready to invent some new pretext or other to extend the detentions, but while we do not pay our debt, we continue to find it particularly difficult to avoid being labelled by Iran and its allies as feckless. To pay up would not be responding to a ransom demand, as others have said; it would be discharging an obligation.

The UK Government have insisted that there is no link between Nazanin’s detention and the debt. It is certainly the case that if we were to discharge our debt and negotiate with Iran, there could be no guarantees about Nazanin and the other British hostages being released, but not paying the debt is a clear barrier, and other western nations have settled their debts with Tehran and secured the release of citizens. Linkages and trade-offs, by the way, will be central to the success or otherwise of the resumed talks in Austria at the moment between Iran and the western powers, including the UK, on nuclear non-proliferation issues. The Iranians are not strangers to these diplomatic processes, and every opportunity should be taken to negotiate a way forward for Nazanin and the others. So, I join just about everybody who has spoken today to ask the Minister: when will this debt be cleared? What diplomatic processes are under way to negotiate for Nazanin and others who want and deserve a long- overdue release?

Colombia

Lord Monks Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness’s work in this area. The United Kingdom has provided, and continues to provide, support to help Colombia tackle, in particular, the legacy of sexual violence from its long conflict. The UK continues to support survivors and has now helped document 1,200 new cases that are now before the transitional justice system. Let me assure the noble Baroness, that in my visit to Colombia I made it absolutely clear that, while this is an independent judicial body, it should not be interfered with. We continue to stand up for the rights of all survivors of sexual violence during the period of conflict.

[Lord Monks (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I declare an interest as vice-president of Justice for Colombia. The transitional justice court, which was created in Colombia by the peace agreement, has been hailed by the International Criminal Court as a benchmark for the world. Is our Government aware that the Colombian Government are undermining the court’s mandate? Of course, this is in a country where there is still widespread violence. Does the Minister agree that ending the court’s ability to function fairly rather contradicts HMG’s funding to support the peace process? What steps can the UK take to protect the court’s autonomy?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I assure the noble Lord that during my visit, and indeed in all engagements through our ambassador, we raise the importance of the very matters that he refers to. In terms of our commitment to the peace process, I think the UK can be proud of the fact that it has contributed to the importance of an inclusive peace process, and we will continue to do so.

Brexit: UK-EU Relationship

Lord Monks Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I think I speak for all noble Lords when I say that the House very much appreciates the benefit of speeches and advice from distinguished former diplomats. The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, shows that he will be a worthy addition to the ex-diplomats Bench and to the House more generally. He has, as he hinted, filled most of the top jobs in the FCO. His last three jobs have been Permanent Secretary, National Security Adviser and our man in Paris, making for an enviable and attractive CV and a stellar record of achievement. Originally from the West Midlands, he now sits as Lord Ricketts, of Shortlands, which is in Bromley, for those who do not know. Coincidentally, that is just up the road from where I live, so we are not far off being neighbours. His speech today will have whetted your Lordships’ appetite for more, much more, and his advice will be invaluable as we go into the difficult waters we are debating today: our relationship in future with the European Union.

That is what I turn to now. I want to deal briefly with two things. First, I shall take on some fantasies which are around in the current debates and secondly I shall talk a little about the responsibility of the Government to combat them. First, the cake-and-eat-it approach still seems to be alive, judging by the photograph in the press this week. Of course, it is ridiculous. This is a divorce. We are divorcing the rest of the European Union. I know there can be amicable divorces, but from my experience with friends, acquaintances and family, there are not many, and most have a considerable degree of bitterness. As the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, said, the sense among the Governments in the rest of the European Union is that we are inflicting damage on a great and noble project which they have invested a tremendous amount of their lives in. That feeling is very powerful, and they are not going to roll over easily and give us the deal we would like. This is a two-way process, and what exactly do we have to offer? What exactly are we saying that we will do for them when we are asking them to do things for us?

That brings me to the next fantasy: that we have a choice between a hard and a soft Brexit, and that somehow it is in our gift which particular route we take. In fact, we are unlikely to obtain a soft Brexit, which I very much regret. Unless we are prepared to succumb to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and to accept free movement of labour, I do not believe that we will get it. The stance of some of the Ministers concerned on this side of the Channel is not conducive to building the kind of sensitive, close relationships that would be needed to get a deal like that. By the way, it will be very difficult to get a transitional deal, too, unless you are clear what you want to transition to and people can see the steps on the way. Unless you have the end destination clear, you are not going to get the transition very clear either.

The other fantasy I want to touch on, which I think has been mentioned by others, is that somehow, if we are out of the European Union, we are free and will trade with the rest of the world. There is nothing in the European Union holding us back from trading with the rest of the world. Belgium does more trade with India than we do, last time I looked. Nobody in Germany is complaining about being held back from being one of the world’s premier exporters. Our problems are self-inflicted, and if our balance of trade is not good, it is down to us to fix it rather than blaming others for it.

My final remark is that as the options of what is open to Britain post-Brexit become apparent, the Prime Minister should keep open the option of changing course. There is a chance that when all the other things have proven too difficult, too expensive and too complicated, we will find that this is not a good thing and that the best deal we can get is membership of the European Union. Perhaps the Minister might comment on whether we will keep that option open as well as the others that are on the table.

Qatar: Football World Cup

Lord Monks Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Monks]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the treatment of workers in Qatar during the construction of World Cup 2022 venues.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)]

My Lords, we welcome the serious steps taken by the Qatari authorities towards improving regulations governing the treatment of migrant workers. We continue to encourage the Government of Qatar to set out a clear timescale for implementing these reforms, and we stand ready to support these efforts where we can.

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that reply. However, given that the death rate on Qatari World Cup sites is running at 40 a month—contrast that with no fatalities on the Olympic sites in the UK —and given, too, that the promised end to the medieval kafala bonded labour scheme has been further postponed, is it not time for the Government to step up their efforts to stop those sites being more killing fields than playing fields, and prepare to call on FIFA to show a red card to Qatar and move the World Cup to somewhere that deserves it?

[Baroness Anelay of St Johns]

My Lords, there were several important questions within that. To summarise, there is certainly going to be an end to the kafala system: the Government there have made it clear that they will make the changes to remove the bonded system and move towards a more appropriate one, where we would expect the health and safety of the workers to be more properly respected. As for the position of FIFA, and whether the World Cup should be moved, that is a matter for the sporting authority itself. Clearly, our view is that every major sporting authority should be responsible and transparent in its dealings.

The Bilateral Agreement for the Promotion and Protection of Investments between the United Kingdom and Colombia

Lord Monks Excerpts

Wednesday 30th July 2014 Grand Committee

Colombia is listed as one of the countries of concern in the annual FCO human rights report. Instead of promoting policy changes to improve human rights, the bilateral agreement could obstruct Colombia’s ability to promote policies that achieve improvements in human rights. Given the record levels of UK investments in Colombia, there was simply no need for this treaty in the first place. Ministers should give further thought to the consequences of its ratification, along with the ethical implications of its promotion.

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest. I am vice-president of Justice for Colombia and play an active role and take an active interest in that country. I also thank my noble friend Lord Stevenson for having the wit to initiate this debate on something that should not go through Parliament quietly in a way that has hitherto been the case. I share the concerns about this treaty expressed by all previous speakers. I am first rather puzzled about why it is so necessary, especially in view of the EU-Colombia trade talks which have been going on. In a previous life, when I was general-secretary of the European trade unions in Brussels, I was involved in making sure that social and environmental concerns were properly covered in that arrangement.

This rather more liberal agreement—liberal in the economic sense—sits oddly with the EU trade treaty. As has been said, Colombia remains a dangerous place for many of its citizens, including many from the trade union world. Until recently, it was the most dangerous place in the world to be an active trade unionist, at risk from one or other groups of paramilitaries. In 2013, 78 human rights activists were killed, an increase over the previous years. The Colombian Government are active in saying that things are getting better—we hope they are—but the past year has seen a lot of trouble, with mass unrest and big strikes across the country. These have been particularly in the agricultural sector, where there have been serious clashes with the police, with 27 dead just last summer.

I want to see the Colombian peace talks do well in Havana. The peace process there draws some useful lessons from our experiences in Northern Ireland. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, Colombia has the largest number of displaced people in the world, according to the UNHCR, largely the result of land-grabbing by various paramilitary-backed forces. This brings me to the new treaty protecting foreign firms which invest from the danger of expropriation or other changes which might damage their investment. What could sound more benign than that? Except that Colombia is not a benign place—it is still in turmoil and this need, in terms of the peace process, to restore at least 2.5 million hectares of land to people from whom it has wrongly been taken seems to sit awkwardly with the provisions of this treaty. The treaty could make it a lot harder to restore land to those who originally owned it: for example, where stolen land has been sold to a Western company. What does the treaty have to say about that? Where is the balance of advantage and whose interests will predominate in those circumstances? I would be very interested to hear the Minister’s views on that problem.

The risk that this could limit the application of the peace agreements is considerable. Everyone needs to remember that paramilitaries continue to operate, even though the peace talks are under way. The implication in this of putting British investment interests above human rights and possibly even above that peace process sends a very serious message. I hope that the Government will find ways, as has been suggested by my noble friend Lord Stevenson and others, to reflect on the application of this agreement, even if it is too late to change it.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Monks Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by adding my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Bamford, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham on what I regarded as really excellent maiden speeches.

The gracious Speech has been criticised from the Opposition Benches as something of a fag-end speech, a lowest common denominator programme from a riven Government, a zombie effort with minimal content—in fact, one could say we are competing on this side of the House to find the right compliments to pay. I will content myself with saying that it is somewhat thin gruel given the scale of the problems the nation faces, as my noble friends Lord Tugendhat and Lord Liddle and others spelt out earlier. However, it is not a total non-event and there are important points which will need the close attention of this House.

On pensions, I confess to some confusion in my mind about the direction that the Government are taking. On the one hand, pensioners in DC schemes will be able to extract the cash value of their savings; on the other, collective defined-contribution schemes will be promoted. Are there not two different philosophies at work here—freedom to blow one’s pension savings on a jazzy Italian sports car or whatever, ranged against the collectivism inherent in those Danish and Dutch pension schemes with all their rules and mutual obligations?

I declare an interest. I am a trustee of NOW: Pensions which is part of ATP of Denmark. ATP provides four out of five occupational pensions in Denmark and is a much respected non-profit-making institution. Denmark has lessons for us to learn in terms of low charges, simplicity and generally excellent investment returns. I hope that we now can turn that experience to benefit British pensioners.

I accept that the annuity market has been unsatisfactory in the UK, but we are entering unknown territory when we encourage pension pots to be blown on property, sports cars and the rest. I hope that pensioners will not come to lament as the late great George Best did. When asked about what he had done with his money, he replied, “I spent it on gambling, women and drink. The rest I wasted”—probably on a Lamborghini. We all know in this House what the consequences for the public finances could be of people not having occupational pensions who actually were in a position to have them and the cost that will fall on the taxpayer for that.

Collective defined-contribution schemes are a good idea and a step in the right direction, but perhaps the Minister can bring us up to date on why there is some Dutch pressure to modify its system probably more towards our individualistic direction. There seems to have been a revolt among some pensioners there against what we could call intergenerational solidarity—benefiting one age group against another.

As a champion of auto-enrolment and how that has been developed in the UK, I would not like to see it hampered by too many extra complications and requirements added on to it. We are signing up employers as quickly as we can and there will be an awful lot of employers who are late or would probably never get round to doing it without significant pressure. We have a mountain to climb to build up a strong pensions culture in this country among employers and employees —a mountain made higher and steeper by the fact that, regrettably, we are less inclined as a country to go for mandatory or quasi-mandatory pension savings than, for example, the Dutch or the Danes.

Let us not try to run before we can walk. Can the confusion between more individualism, on the one hand, and a more collective approach, on the other, be cleared up? Can we do this in a consensual way? One of the successes of auto-enrolment has been that generally it has all-party support and all the key players in the country have supported it. Therefore, it feels rather firmly embedded as an approach. I feel these other points, too, should be subjected to a big effort to find consent.

I turn to the proposed small business, enterprise and employment Bill. The Bill certainly needs to recognise that casualised work, offering low pay and poor working conditions, was certainly expanded quickly during the recession we have just been through. It is continuing to grow even as the economy has started to recover. The proposals on zero-hours contracts are rather weak and will not end most of the abuses. There is a thin, sometimes invisible line between the UK’s deregulated labour market and exploitation—and zero-hours contracts often cross it. They are the dark side of the flexible labour market. There are other dark sides, by the way, including low pay, low skills and low productivity. When we are talking about the undoubted successes in job creation, we should remember that if this country is to earn its living properly in the world and not rely on deficit funding, we are going to have to deal with those quickly.

The tougher penalties for employers caught dodging the minimum wage are welcome, but the key question is what resources will be deployed to catch the offenders. At the moment we know the inspectorate arrangements are wholly inadequate.

I note the TUC supports moves to strengthen regulation on the disqualification of directors and to improve transparency on company ownership. However, the Government's proposals as yet do not really scratch the surface of this big subject and do not address the need for others to have a view on corporate governance—voices for long-termism, for investment and for responsibility. That seems to be an important area that is very much underdeveloped at the moment.

My final point is to warn the Government not to use the social action, responsibility and heroism Bill to water down UK safety law. Yet again, we are tending to hear the tired refrain about stripping out unnecessary red tape. Careless employers should not be let off the safety hook, encouraged to loosely hurl charges of a jobsworth culture without being contradicted by people in government. Our laws stand up well to those in other countries; our record on health and safety is good. Very often the people with the best health and safety have the best productivity and the best quality outputs from their businesses. These laws build good practice and are essential protection for the UK’s 30 million people at work.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Lord Monks Excerpts

Friday 10th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, there is much mention of people being told the truth in the European debate. I ask supporters of this Bill to reflect for a moment on the following truths, which seem self-evident to me as a former general-secretary of the TUC and the European TUC. An important truth is that, once the business world—or certainly those parts of it concerned with exports—considers that Britain may well leave the EU, thousands of British jobs will be at grave risk. If the Bill is enacted, the prospect of that exit will become rather more real and tangible.

Europhobes and Eurosceptics often say that the British people are not being told the truth about the EU—there was an echo of that from the previous speaker—but let us have a go at some of those truths. The first is that the British economy is closely integrated with the economies of other countries, not just in Europe but perhaps particularly in Europe. The 40% share of our trade with the EU is easily the biggest component of our business. Before nostalgics get too keen on the Commonwealth connection, they might just bear in mind that the level of our trade with North Rhine-Westphalia is larger than that with Australia and India combined. Our trade with China has only recently exceeded our trade with the Republic of Ireland.

So get real. The booming motor industry—all foreign owned—exports the bulk of its vehicles to European destinations. We certainly import a lot but the import side is not going to change in a way that threatens the export side. However, there is a threat because many UK manufacturing firms are foreign owned, including a huge slice of the City of London. There has been a big change since 1975 and inward investment would certainly be affected. There have been several references to Nissan and its importance to the north-east economy but its importance goes much wider than that. Siemens has also been mentioned, and Goldman Sachs was referred to by my noble friend Lord Liddle. We have to start believing what some of these chief executives say. Others who are not saying it publicly are saying it privately.

The fact is that, like it or not—I address this particularly to the nationalist tendency here today who are dreaming of a Britain that was perhaps relevant 30 or 40 years ago but is not relevant today—many of the levers of power are in foreign hands. They are the sources of much of the investment, technology, know-how and jobs that help Britain to pay its way in the world. Mr Farage may not care if an EU exit makes us all poorer; the rest of us just do not have that luxury.

Remember this: foreign firms will not have a vote in a referendum but they can surely vote with their feet if they become worried about the future of this country. By the way, no Europhobe or Eurosceptic ever seems to complain about the selling of Britain to foreign owners. That is a much great constraint on our sovereignty than any Europhile ever dreamt of. That is the reality and the truth which people on the other side of this House, particularly those in the Conservative Party, should face up to.

Another truth is that if many of the better foreign firms started to wind down their activities in this country—it would not happen overnight—new product lines would go to other countries and outside the EU we would become a sub-contractor to the world, with zero economic sovereignty and a disappearing tax base. We would become a bits-and-pieces economy, offering low-paid, transient work to our people. People knock the Social Chapter and the working time directive, but do we really want junior hospital doctors to go back to working 100 hours a week? Do we really want to get rid of the four-week minimum holiday entitlement that workers have been given? That is what the Social Chapter is about. If those on the other side of the House want to get rid of things, I hope that they will tell us specifically what those things are.

EU: Prime Minister’s Speech

Lord Monks Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks]

My Lords, it is pretty clear that European Union social and employment laws are being lined up in the Prime Minister’s gun sight. He has made no secret of his wish to push the single market much more into a free trade zone, probably on NAFTA lines. If that line is pursued, trade unions in Europe and many Governments, of whatever political persuasion, will take the contrary view and will be determined to preserve a single market that has some employment and social standards within it.

Mrs Thatcher recognised the need for some social standards when she agreed that health and safety would be included in the Single Market Act—from which, by the way, comes the much derided working time directive. I wish that people would look at this in a bit more detail. Britain has an opt-out from the 48-hour rule. Fourteen other countries have opt-outs from specific parts of that directive. The one bit that really matters is the entitlement to four weeks’ paid holiday, from which 6 million British workers benefit. Is the Prime Minister perhaps proposing to take that back? I do not think that he will. You could go on into Social Chapter territory on equality and equal pay. Should the single market not have equal pay provisions for the new countries, and so on? Should it not have a voice in European works councils and through the information and consultation arrangements? Are we saying that, if we can do what we want, others can too, so undercutting our interests?

The Government can take away the rights of British workers that come from British law. They have done so recently. Three million British workers have been removed from the scope of unfair dismissal legislation. However, these European-based rights are a bulwark for workers in this single market. I warn noble Lords: if the Government are successful in an adventure of this kind, the response will be protectionism, just as it is in NAFTA, with American unions influencing the Democratic Party—the major obstacle to an EU/US free trade agreement. So be careful what you wish for. In the mean time, Europe’s unions are already on notice that they will have to fight with their Governments against any renationalisation of employment and social policy.

European Union (Croatian Access and Irish Protocol) Bill

Lord Monks Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Moynihan]

My Lords, before proceeding, I would like to place on record the respect of the whole Committee, I am sure, for, Zlatko Mateša, Prime Minister of Croatia between 1995 and 2000. I was with him in Andorra only a couple of months ago when he suffered a very severe heart attack. I am glad to say that he is on the mend.

The reason why I mention him is because as Prime Minister in 1995, he provided the leadership, the inspiration and the commitment to the European project through signing the first agreement between the European Union and Croatia. As Prime Minister, he also established the office for European integration in his country and appointed a Deputy Prime Minister, Ljerka Mintas-Hodak, as Minister for European integration.

Zlatko Mateša is a great European who has been a good friend of this country, not least through matters Olympic. He has led the Croatian national Olympic committee for many years. I am sure the whole Committee will wish him well and hope that he makes a speedy and full recovery, recognising the remarkable and important contribution that he has made. His work and the work of his successors have been good news for British relations with Croatia and good news for Croatia. This is an important year for Croatia, which will go down in its history. We will all celebrate and support that country on its road to full integration within the European Union.

[Lord Monks]

My Lords, is it in order for me to say something about the Irish protocol? I apologise for not having given notice that I intended to do so.

There is a bit missing from the Irish protocol, for which the UK bears some responsibility. The story starts with the rejection of the EU constitution by French and Dutch voters, which prompted Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy to propose a social clause to be incorporated into European treaties to reflect the fact that the single market is a vehicle for social progress and that economic freedoms and competition in the market should not have priority over fundamental social rights and not be used to evade or circumvent national laws and practices.

The idea was dropped as the constitutional treaty was minimised; certain things were concentrated on—some things were withdrawn, not added, to the process. Then came along two legal cases turning on the relationship of the free movement principles with national employment law systems. I refer to the Laval case and the Viking case. In both cases, the European Court of Justice ruled that the free movement principles would prevail.

There has been a series of other cases, some of which noble Lords will probably be familiar with because they are closer to home. One involved British and Irish Ferries where the predominantly Irish workforce was replaced by an eastern European workforce. This caused a lot of consternation in Ireland at about the time that the Irish voters rejected the EU constitutional treaty. This protocol is designed to permit the Irish Government to put the issue again to the Irish people, which they have done. But at that time the initial rejection was put down in a major way to the Irish Ferries case, employment issues and workers’ rights.

There are other cases. The British Airline Pilots Association—I declare an interest as the unremunerated president—in a dispute with British Airways, which was establishing subsidiaries in Paris and Brussels, was seeking clarification on whether the British collective agreement, which covers Hong Kong, Australia and other places, would also cover Paris and Brussels.

There was also a dispute at Immingham in 2009 in a petrochemical plant that attracted a lot of attention under the heading of “British jobs for British workers”, a phrase that the previous Prime Minister had used. In each case, employers were seeking to take advantage of the ECJ rulings in the Laval and Viking cases. Let me make it clear that unions are not objecting to the employment of foreign labour—absolutely not. We are trying to protect collective agreements and to be able to enforce those agreements in the country where the dispute arises. We are looking to protect the collective agreement to ensure equality between migrants and indigenous workers, particularly where there is a loophole in the posting of workers directive where a migrant employer brings in his or her own workforce.

This is when the idea of a social protocol re-emerged to be attached to the Irish protocol. It was based on a clause on the free movement of goods originally drafted by Mario Monti when he was European Commissioner. He said then that in relation to the movement of goods, the single market would not interfere with fundamental rights. We have been seeking to get that phraseology shoved into the provisions on the free movement of services.

We have the support of the Taoiseach, the Irish Government and most Governments. It all went through the diplomatic channels and COREPER in Brussels, but it was blocked at the eleventh hour by the UK Government, who were worried about red lines in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and feared that it would strengthen calls for a referendum in the UK on Britain’s EU membership.

Interestingly, for those who think that powers should be repatriated, if we had been then in the Norway position, this particular measure could never have been blocked; the rest would have agreed it. The British influence worked against my interests in that case, but it showed Britain’s influence in the EU through participation.

The response of the European authorities was to establish another exercise, also under Mario Monti, who proposed a regulation rather similar to the one he had proposed 10 years earlier in the free movement of goods legislation. The Commission drafted a regulation based on his report but, interestingly and importantly, said that they could not go further than the ECJ decisions because it was important simply to recognise that free movement is a European competence and labour law is a national competence. They were going to respect that as no doubt the British Government wished.

That has produced a lot of disillusion. I am certainly not holding my breath for any prospect of change, but the campaign for a change goes on. As Brendan Barber, my successor at the TUC, has said, we managed to get Monti 1, we did not manage to get Monti 2, but now we would really like the full Monti. The full Monti is a social protocol which we came close to achieving in the Irish protocol that is before us today.

I emphasise that the campaign for the trade union principle of when in Rome, do as the Romans do—advice given many centuries ago to St Augustine—is very important.

I will not go into the broader implications of social Europe. I am presuming a little on the Committee’s time at the moment, and I am grateful for its patience. However, it is important to recognise that social Europe is a crucial part of Europe’s future. That concept made Europe popular, certainly on the left of British politics. Ever since, it has been chopped and cut back, and this is an example. Funnily enough, the number of supporters decreases. If we pro-Europeans are going to fight for the European Union in future, do not be careless with the concept of a social Europe. Do not be careless with the rights that have been established, or how social Europe can be used to move us in the direction of the more successful European countries such as the Nordics, Germany, the Netherlands and the eastern side of our North Sea.

I thank the Committee for its attention and for this opportunity.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, before we receive any more contributions, I remind the Committee that the Question before it is to do with the reporting of the Bill back to the House. It is not really debatable. With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Monks, I do not think that he can expect any further contributions on the observations that he has made.