Draft European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2018

Debate between Andrew Percy and Chris Heaton-Harris

Thursday 25th October 2018 General Committees

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I can be quite brief in my answer to the three specific questions about schedule 1, withdrawal agreements and the purpose of schedule 2. The answer to all three questions is yes.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about the statutory instruments needed so that we are ready for exit day. Hon. Members will have seen that the Fisheries Bill has been introduced today, which is a big piece of exit legislation. The Agriculture Bill has also been introduced, and more Bills will come forward. The SI programme flows from legislation, so it was always going to be the case that there would be more SIs at this stage of proceedings than there have been in the previous two years. We have a manageable programme of SIs. It does mean that parliamentarians will be sat in Committees like this scrutinising them, but that is our role—

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

Ugh!

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole has volunteered to sit on pretty much every Delegated Legislation Committee available. There is a programme, and my Department is co-ordinating an overview.

Draft European Union Budget

Debate between Andrew Percy and Chris Heaton-Harris

Thursday 12th July 2012 Commons Chamber

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

This subject has been omnipresent throughout my political career. For 10 years, I served on the European Parliament’s Budgets Committee and Budgetary Control Committee.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

You get less for murder.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Yes, indeed.

I am very keen that the Government get their principles in line and their priorities straight. I want to explain why the amendment tabled by the Opposition is complete rubbish and to give the Minister a feel for why many Conservative Members think that we need to be doing slightly more, in a slightly stronger way, to achieve the aims that I think we all agree on, given that the European budget is way too high.

This year is important in budgetary terms because 2013 is the last year of the current multi-annual financial framework. The work that is done now on the 2013 budget will hold firm for next multi-annual financial framework, within which the Commission is bidding for a lot more money. That is significant for the United Kingdom.

The Commission raises this money in a number of ways: direct payments from national Governments based on each country’s gross national income, a levy on each national Government that takes a slice of their VAT income, customs duties on various imports from outside the EU, and levies on sugar production. That accounts for about 99% of the budgeted income of the European Commission. To put that into scale, in 2010 the UK’s gross contribution to the EU budget was €14.66 billion and we received back €6.75 billion, equating to a net contribution of €7.91 billion.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

That is a correct assumption. A number of those projects would not have been financed by this Government or by previous Governments, so the money is being diverted into different things. That is why the last Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, mooted the idea of repatriating those moneys.

[Andrew Percy]

I agree that the Labour amendment is total nonsense. Is it not true that a lot of money is being spent on infrastructure projects in parts of the European Union that are wealthier than the area that I represent, where a great deal of Government funding is being cut? That is completely unacceptable to my constituents.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I agree with my hon. Friend that it is a difficult ask for us to explain to our constituents why no money is forthcoming for reasonable projects in our areas, when we are giving money to richer areas across the European Union through the regional structural funds. That is an aberration that we should look at seriously.

We were the second largest net contributor to the European Union in 2010. Germany was ahead of us with €11.95 billion. Behind us were France with €6.48 billion and Italy with €5.84 billion. Obviously, Italy is not the richest country in the world at the moment, so it, too, is trying to do something about its net contribution. The largest net recipients in 2010 were Poland with €8.17 billion, Greece with €3.44 billion and Spain with €3.1 billion. So there are lots of fiscal transfers across the 27 member states.

Many other costs are hidden in the European Union budget.

Onshore Wind Energy

Debate between Andrew Percy and Chris Heaton-Harris

Thursday 10th February 2011 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on securing the debate. She might call me windy—maybe I am occasionally full of hot air —but she has done very well to secure the debate. I impress upon hon. Members the importance of signing up to her excellent amendments to the Localism Bill.

It is a shame that the debate is taking place in here and not the main Chamber. We are not in the main Chamber because an important debate on votes for prisoners is going on, but how many more people would be present if another important debate were not taking place? I emphasise to the Minister that there is a very big political push behind the matter. Many hon. Members were present when I introduced my Adjournment debate in this place on the subject and they sponsored my ten-minute rule Bill on the matter. I would like to think that there is a growing level of support for people who are rightly questioning the value of onshore wind.

The Minister will know that I consider onshore wind to be about as useful as a cat-flap on a submarine when it comes to fulfilling renewable objectives. What it does for the economy can only be described as bad. My constituency is pretty much flooded with proposals for wind farms. I managed to get them rejected in Kelmarsh and Harrington. I mentioned Yelvertoft, which was passed by the Planning Inspectorate. Other proposals include: Watford Lodge, Watford Gap, Lilbourne Fields, Winwick Warren, Boddington and Hanging Houghton, the proposal for which has fortunately gone away. There are loads and loads of these blooming proposals coming out of the woodwork because people are basically subsidy farming. They are taking the cash that the Government are offering, which is way in excess of what it should be.

A number of hon. Members have mentioned campaigns in their own areas. They will all know that, in every campaign, there are people who are genuinely worried about what is going to happen to their property if it is near any proposal, so they turn themselves into fantastic experts on the subject. Such people have helped me with my contribution today. In my constituency, Trevor Sherman, Richard Cox, Adrian Snook, David Unwin and Richard Humphries have all become absolutely brilliant experts in this field. They noticed that the Department has issued a consultation on the revised draft policy statement EN-3 on renewable energy infrastructure. I wanted to pick up a couple of things on that because they are directly related to what we are talking about.

First, a number of hon. Members have alluded to the problem of noise. The Minister and I have been in correspondence because I wanted to recommend an expert to peer-review the ETSU-R-97 noise guidance. I am troubled by the Hayes McKenzie proposals. ETSU-R-97 contains fundamental errors, which means much time and money is wasted by public inquiries and in debating how to remedy those flaws. The Government’s current response is:

“There is no substantive evidence to demonstrate that the fundamental guidelines are unsound and the Government therefore has no plans to revise them.”

Actually, I think that it is very easy to demonstrate that ETSU-R-97 is incorrect. For example, the guidelines are predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of how wind speeds vary with height and weather conditions, and thus the guidelines underestimate noise impacts. The evidence for that is covered in a series of peer-reviewed scientific papers by van den Berg dating from 2003, and the point has been widely accepted in the scientific world and by planning inspectors.

The ETSU-R-97 guidance on noise conditions is deficient at the most fundamental level. For example, the guidance fails to specify that noise compliance measures be taken with the wind blowing towards a complainant’s property; that they should be taken at the appropriate time of day and in similar meteorological conditions to those which triggered the complaint; or that they be taken with the turbines working, or working in a normal mode. The absence of those requirements renders the guidance at best vacuous or at worst harmful to the public interest.

On the issue of peat, there can be no reason why wind farms should be built on, or in close proximity to, peat. To do so releases so much carbon dioxide that any good that might be done by installing wind turbines is reduced.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire talked about shadow flicker. Yet again, the Department’s revised draft national policy statement for renewable energy infrastructure, EN-3, repeats the unsubstantiated claim that shadow flicker only occurs within 10 rotor diameters of a turbine. In correspondence with the Department of Energy and Climate Change last year, the Renewable Energy Foundation requested the source from which this statement was derived and was informed that it was a paper written by A. D. Clarke in 1991 for the Open university, entitled “A Case of Shadow Flicker/Flashing: Assessment and Solution”. However, on examination the REF found that that paper does not prove the 10-rotor-diameter claim. In fact, its recommendation was that

“turbines should be sited at least ten diameters distance from habitations, and more if sited to the East/Southeast or West/Southwest, and the shadow path identified”

On a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), I wondered, because there is so much angst on the issue, whether the Minister would kindly explain, in the simplest of terms, the reasons behind and the meaning of today’s article in The Daily Telegraph about localism and incentives. I think I welcome that, but I am not entirely sure. If the Localism Bill becomes law as it stands, will the Minister confirm that it would be down to neighbourhoods, in conjunction with the districts and boroughs in which they reside, to choose to have wind farms of up to 50 MW, whether they are incentivised or not? That would solve a huge number of problems for all of us in the Chamber.

[Andrew Percy]

My hon. Friend is on entirely the right point, but we also need clarification on what exactly the appeal process will be. We have not had that in previous debates with local government Ministers. We are not yet clear what the appeals process will be and we need to know that residents will have the final say and that they are not going to risk getting it peeled off to somewhere down in Bristol again.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I completely agree. I was actually about to come on to that in the next couple of sentences, so I will not talk about that in order to give hon. Members more time to speak.

It would be very helpful if the Minister could outline both what the Localism Bill means for onshore wind farms of less than 50 MW, and any appeal process after that.

Finally, the Minister, the shadow Minister and I enjoyed a couple of hours together, a couple of Wednesday mornings ago in European Committee A, talking about energy. The Minister, in answer to one of my questions, said:

“We have expressed concern that feed-in tariffs were not intended to be used to convert farms, which could produce crops, into large solar farms”,—[Official Report, European Committee A, 2 February 2011; c. 17.]

and that things were being adjusted to stop that happening. If an excessive subsidy in one area of renewables leads to unforeseen consequences and it is of detriment to the local environment, it would be wise and sensible to apply that same logic to onshore wind, where excessive subsidy is causing even more concern across the whole country.

European Union Bill

Debate between Andrew Percy and Chris Heaton-Harris

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

It is a pleasure to come back for a third day of excitement this week, talking about Europe. I thought that when I left the European Parliament, I might be able to ditch that part of my life and move on to something interesting. It seems to wear one down, like a terrible weight around one’s neck.

I want to see whether I can tidy up a few parts of the Bill which, I believe, could be helped. Currently the European Union is not party to the European convention for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the ECHR. The Lisbon treaty, however, introduced what is now article 6(2) of the treaty on the European Union, which provides that the EU will accede to the ECHR. This accession agreement—in effect a treaty between the EU and the states party to the ECHR—is being negotiated.

Article 218(8) of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union provides that once negotiated, the accession agreement must be concluded, for the EU’s part, by unanimity in the Council. The same article states that after adoption by the Council, the EU decision concluding the agreement must also be

“approved by the Member States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements”

before it can come into force.

Under current UK law, this approval may require an Act of Parliament. Clause 10, however, where this matter currently resides, requires only a resolution of approval in each House. Indeed, the definition of parliamentary approval in clause 10(3) does not seem well suited to the approval of a decision adopted by the Council under article 218(8), because the resolution of approval specified concerns approval of a draft decision.

Until the article 218(8) TFEU conclusion has come into force, the EU cannot accede to the ECHR. This is a complicated treaty between the EU and the ECHR and warrants a great deal of scrutiny. It will have a number of indirect effects on the United Kingdom.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I, too, wish we could be free of the European Union, but that is a debate for another day. Does my hon. Friend agree that, given where we are on prisoners’ voting rights, as well as the growth of rights under the ECHR and the controversy surrounding that, we need to ensure maximum parliamentary scrutiny of decisions such as the one that he is describing?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Indeed. I know that there is to be a Backbench Business Committee debate on the matter in the not-too-distant future, in which I hope that Members across the House can voice their concerns about that ruling.

I return to the proposal to move one part of the Bill from clause 10 to clause 7. I was speaking about the indirect effects on the United Kingdom that the accession of the EU to the EHCR might have. When the accession takes place, the EU will be able to be taken to the European Court of Human Rights, which will undoubtedly lead to more cases, more cost and impact and, most importantly, more jurisprudence on EU law.

I am seeking not to upgrade the requirement for scrutiny, but to maintain the present level. Furthermore, I am concerned that in clauses 6 and 7, a few article 48(7) ratchet decisions are not caught by the Bill. Such decisions would be those applying to the EU’s ordinary legislative procedure where the EU treaties currently require a special legislative procedure, and the existing special legislative procedure does not require unanimity in the Council. In other words, while a switch in EU legislative procedure would be taking place, it would not involve abolition of a veto because a veto did not exist in the first place. However, the EU’s ordinary legislative procedure entails the European Parliament having co-decision rights with the Council. It can table amendments to a proposed law and veto the Council’s desired law. In general, a switch to the ordinary legislative procedure would take EU decision making further out of the hands of national Governments and give greater power to a supranational institution.

The article 48(7) ratchet clauses not covered by the Bill would confer new co-decision rights on the European Parliament in a few areas of EU law that I shall list now, and many more. Article 23 provides that every EU citizen has the right to diplomatic protection. We had a debate on what that might mean to the individual. I am speaking now about our power to scrutinise such decisions. Article 182(4) allows the Council to adopt, through qualified majority voting, but only after consultation of the European Parliament, specific EU research and development programmes. These must accord with the multi-year EU framework programme for research and development that is decided through the ordinary legislative procedure, but the decision on specific programmes sets their duration, the precise financial contribution by the EU—essentially by us—and the detailed rules for implementation. Furthermore, article 349 provides that the Council can adopt legislative measures on how EU treaties apply to areas known in wonderful EU parlance as the outermost regions. The way in which such specific decisions are dealt with in the Bill would be a retrograde step for democratic control, hence my amendment.