European Union Bill

Austin Mitchell Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Kate Hoey]

I would accept that, except that even since the new coalition Government took office, this country has given away some more powers and given up things. We are already going to support directives that we should not possibly be supporting. It is the drip-drip-drip nature of the European Union that really gets me.

[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is really closing the stable door after not only the horse has bolted, but the stable has caught fire?

[Kate Hoey]

That is my point, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right. We will never get the issue that is big enough for a Minister to say, “We are going to have a referendum on this.” Ministers will find some excuse not to do so, which is why the only honest thing is to work towards having a debate in the country and a referendum on whether we want to stay in the European Union. We hear all those Members, Ministers and shadow Ministers continually saying, “Ah, but it would be desperate. We could not possibly leave. We couldn’t even think about it.” They should put their arguments to the people. Let the people decide. Let them say what they really think and let us see what that decision would be.

There is one little book that every Member in this House should buy. If the Foreign Secretary, the shadow Foreign Secretary and the shadow Ministers have not read it, I will give them a copy. It is called “Ten Years On: Britain Without The European Union”. I wish it had said “the United Kingdom”, rather than “Britain”, as that would not have left out Northern Ireland. This brilliant book actually says, “If we were to leave the European Union, this is what this country would look like 10 years on.” Let us have the confidence to say to the people that it is time that we have that real debate. Let those people who are confident that the European Union is the right thing for this country put it to the people and give them the say.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

We have had a menagerie-type debate: Pandora’s boxes have been opening, Trojan horses have been jumping out of them and there have been mice of different sizes to contemplate. But there is a broad division—between Labour Members, along with the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), and most of the speakers on the Government Benches. They have a rather Hobbesian view of Europe, in which there is an undeclared war of all against all.

I take the view that Immanuel Kant—or, as it should be pronounced properly in German, “Immanuel Kunt”—put forward in his perpetual peace argument. He argued that Europe needs a construct of rule of law, a Lockean Europe, in which we can live together in perpetual peace, as he thought. It has taken perhaps 200 years to get that far, but that is my version of Europe rather than the permanently negative one where it is Britain contra mundum, about which we hear so much from the Government Benches.

[Austin Mitchell]

As my right hon. Friend is representing his views as those on the Opposition Benches,—I do not think that they are—may I ask whether his own constituents are Kantians or Lockeans?

[Mr MacShane]

Perhaps I shall leave the reply to my old friend, Jim Naughtie.

We have also seen again today what surely must be an iron law of British politics—people can campaign in opposition as Eurosceptics, but they have to govern as Euro-realists. The outbreak of Euro-realism in the coalition Government was not brought about simply by the presence of the Liberal Democrats; it has happened because no Government of Britain could remotely sustain themselves in a relationship—not just to their European partners, but to partners around the world—on the basis of the hyped-up rhetoric that we heard from the Foreign Secretary when he was shadow Foreign Secretary. From that most powerful and amusing orator of the current Commons, we heard a very workaday speech. My right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary made a powerful and witty speech that reminded me of the late John Smith. But there we are—I have described what happens when people become Foreign Secretary. Realism has to break in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I am enthusiastic about speaking on this Bill, because I would not want the views of Labour Members to be taken to be the extrusion of Euro-cant that has poured in from Rotherham and the Rhondda. The views of some Labour Members are much more in tune with what our voters think. My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) has given us a clear indication of those views.

The problem is whether the Bill is worth supporting. It is a sad little Bill that should really be called the “Closing of the stable doors after every horse has bolted across the countryside” Bill. I am sure that the nation wants a referendum on this issue. It wants to be consulted and wants its say on Europe, but it has not been allowed it since 1975, when it was consulted on something totally different called the Common Market—a harmless, fun place that was going to make the weather better and make everybody happy. That is the last time that people were consulted, and they now want to be consulted on the shape of the current monster that is taking more and more powers.

This Bill does not provide for that consultation. The Conservatives told us in opposition, and I think in their manifesto too, although I do not have it here to check, that they were going to repatriate criminal justice and the laws on social and employment issues, but that has all gone. The stable is empty, for practical purposes, and I see the pathetic spectacle of the Foreign Secretary stood at the stable door after he has closed it singing “Will Ye No Come Back Again?” to the horses from Europe galloping all over the United Kingdom’s countryside.

The Liberal Democrats’ approach was even more comic. They promised us a referendum on the treaty and then suddenly became aware of the fact that it would be defeated if it were put to a referendum. They therefore changed what they were asking for from a referendum on the treaty, which they said was no longer a treaty, to a referendum on “in or out”, with which they thought they might stand a better chance. However, they knew that nobody would give them such a referendum; they were trying to get a referendum that was an impossibility.

I cannot be over-critical because my own party’s position was, at best, ambiguous. We said, “Yes, we shall have a referendum”, and then we said, “Well, this isn’t really a treaty—it’s something else.” Perhaps it was a German sausage or something; I am not quite sure what it was supposed to be. Anyway, we said, “It’s not a treaty worth having a referendum on; it’s something else, and therefore we won’t give you a referendum.”

This is a history of betrayal by all three parties, and we have to make good to the people, who want a referendum. There is a need for a referendum, but this Bill does not provide for it. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) said, it will be a lawyer’s charter, and one that ignores much of what is going on in Europe. What is going on is the steady process of accretion of power, money and control over this country.

We should look at the increasing costs of Europe. The annual budget contribution is now £7 billion, and rising because of devaluation—it will rise to £10 billion fairly shortly. There is £2 billion for projects such as Galileo, which will build, at enormous expense, a satellite guidance system that the Americans already provide for free. There is £8 billion for the costs of the common agricultural policy, which comes from buying food on a dearer market when it is available more cheaply elsewhere. There is £2.8 billion for the costs of the common fisheries policy, with our fish being caught by foreign vessels and taken to Europe to provide jobs there. There is the cost of regulation, which has been calculated at £20 billion. Then we can add the cost of the monstrous machinery of the new foreign service, the European External Action Service, which will be more expensive than our own Foreign Office. All its ambassadors will have, at enormous cost that we are paying for, bullet-proof cars and bomb-proof embassies. If we add that lot together, we get to £40 billion—perhaps more. If we were not paying this Eurogeld every year, across the exchanges, we would not need the diet of cuts that the Chancellor and the Liberal Democrats are proposing for us.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend has omitted to mention—I know that he knows this to be true—that we have had slower growth in the European Union than we would have had had it not existed. We had faster growth when we had stable but separate currencies, and that led to the prosperity that we knew in the post-war era. Slower growth in the European Union, which has been compounded over many years, means that we are now less well-off than we would have been had there not been a European arrangement.

[Austin Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. We have suffered from slower growth, and now we have a 25% devaluation. We cannot generate the exports that we want because of the deflation in Europe that is necessary to heal the problems of the euro.

That brings me to the second problem that I want to deal with. Not only have the horses bolted from the stable, but it is on fire as the crisis of the euro continues. We warned Europe that it would not work and it has not worked. One exchange rate and one interest rate cannot cover the varied circumstances of Europe. A central Government is needed to redistribute to areas that suffer from the single currency and the single interest rate. Countries all have different rates of inflation. It is impossible for the weaker economies to get down to Germany’s low rate of inflation. The result is that their trade suffers, because they cannot get export prices down to a competitive level. Gaps have therefore emerged and those gaps have led to a crisis, and Europe’s way of dealing with that is to dole out more funds from a big bucket—a bucket to which we have contributed in the case of Ireland.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is a critic of the European Union, and he is listing many differences that he would like to see in the European arrangements. Does he not think that changes that the British Government want and that are in the national interest might be harder to achieve if this legislation is passed here and is copied across the EU?

[Austin Mitchell]

My argument is that the Bill does not help us to deal with, or give us a veto over, the problems of Europe as they are. Those problems are the real threat to this country. Let us say that we are doling out £100 billion to Greece and £100 billion to Ireland and if Spain is the next to collapse, the figure could be about £400 billion, so the whole fund of £750 billion could be gone in one fell swoop. Germany will not let that go on. At some point, the system must collapse.

The Bill has nothing to say on that process and the Government will not tell us what they are doing in the European negotiations. What is our point of view? Are we prepared to support that process and to commit money? The Bill will not give us a veto over any such commitments and the Government will not even tell us what those commitments are. That is a disastrous situation. There will have to be a big bail-out. This situation cannot be dealt with by Elastoplast, with a bit here and a bit there. It must be dealt with by a fundamental reorganisation of the euro. In my view, a default is the only way in which to save the situation.

The Bill does nothing about that issue and nothing about one of the other major issues facing Europe—the entry of Turkey. The Foreign Secretary said that that matter is excluded from the Bill, but it would be a fundamental change to Europe. We should think of the immigration problems—to say the least—that would occur if Turkey, which has a much bigger population than most existing member states, were allowed into the European Union.

[Thomas Docherty]

I struggle to understand what makes Turkey so different from Romania, Hungary or any other eastern European nation. Is there not a danger that we will be perceived, wrongly, to be singling it out because of its Muslim nature?

[Austin Mitchell]

That may be true, but the British Government want Turkey in. I am not unfavourable; I am just saying that its admission will be a fundamental change in Europe and that the Bill will not give the British people a say over any of these matters. [Interruption.] I am not sure whether my right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) is making a Gallic gesture or whether it is a sign for me to sit down and shut up.

[Mr MacShane]

On the contrary, I am completely in agreement with my hon. Friend, which is rare in a European debate. It is a preposterous Bill that does not include the question of Turkish accession. That is the fundamental change that will come about in the nature of the EU and in our relationship with it. I support Turkish accession, but not to put it in the Bill just shows what a—what is smaller than a shrew?—worm of a Bill we are debating tonight.

[Austin Mitchell]

The mountains will labour and a ridiculous mouse has been born. That is certainly true. I am sorry that I mistook my right hon. Friend’s gesture—he is so European that I thought he was going, “Je m’en fous.” I gather that he was not.

I agree with my right hon. Friend’s point. The Bill does not give the British people a say; it gives them a tiny squeak, and on things in which they are not particularly interested. To give them a squeak is better than to give them nothing at all. I have to consider whether I shall support the Bill on that basis, which frankly I am loth to do. Is it worth the effort? I am certainly not enthusiastic about the Opposition amendment, which really says nothing at all. Faced with that dilemma and being somewhat jetlagged, the best solution that I can think of for tonight’s vote is to go home and read a little Keynes—I wish that the Chancellor had done the same.