(11 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberAs Members of Parliament, we expect to be lobbied by people who are lobbying in their own interests. In that respect, a company is a person. In legal terms it is just another person. We expect to be lobbied by our constituents and by other people who are not constituents in respect of matters of national interest. Will the hon. Gentleman explain why such lobbying is corrupt? What would be corrupt—[Interruption.] Excuse me. What would be corrupt is Members of Parliament receiving payment or being influenced by anything other than argument. Otherwise, I cannot see why he wants to capture so many people in a lobbying register. Will he explain that?
I will briefly make several points. First, there is a Government amendment before the Committee this afternoon that excludes companies from having to register, yet the hon. Gentleman points out that in law companies are individuals—they are legal persons. On corruption, I have not made the case that the lobbying industry is wholly corrupt. Not at all, but there is a huge gap between the population and the political and commercial elite in our country.
Too many people believe that decisions are made in secret, in the quiet rooms around here—smoke-filled rooms, perhaps. Nobody knows how those decisions are made or on whose behalf. It would be better if the general public understood how decisions were made, who was pressing for those decisions and in whose interests they were made. The Prime Minister himself said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. We should introduce legislation that would make sure that all lobbying activity was registered and properly accounted for. People would then know how decisions were made.
(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberMay I tell my hon. Friend how much I agreed with my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General when he said in opposition that we should end the practice of pre-release—the release of statistics to Ministers and officials hours or even days before they are released to the public, so that they can be spun? Would it not increase trust in statistics if the Government adopted the views of the UK Statistics Authority and the Public Administration Committee and ended this practice, as they have in many other jurisdictions?
I know that my hon. Friend feels strongly about this, as does the Committee he chairs. He will know that we inherited a regime that had, rightly, been tightened up, with arrangements embedded in legislation. He will also know that we reviewed the arrangements when we came into power and took the view that the right balance had been struck. The arguments are well rehearsed and although I know that he does not like the message, we are not going to change the arrangements and I do not think that that message is going to change.
(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberI am delighted to have the extra minute, especially as that was the next point I was going to make, given that a large proportion of members of my family were among those victims who were gassed. Hitler used poison gas against those innocent victims because he did not give a fig for the gas protocol; he cared about whether or not people could hit back. Those victims could not hit back whereas the allies could, and that is why he did not use gas against them.
I do not want to divert too far into that, but it is important to understand the realities of what makes countries use poison gas and what deters them from using it. In my mind, the questions we must consider resolve themselves into two, rather than the four elegantly put forward by the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. My two questions are: first, is it proven beyond reasonable doubt that Assad did it; and secondly, even if Assad or his regime did it, is a military strike sensible?
On the first question, the UN inspectors will not tell us anything about whether or not Assad did it, as I understand it. All they will do is tell us whether or not a sarin gas attack took place, so we cannot look to them to point the finger as to who did it. The Joint Intelligence Committee has been cited and we can all read the summary. That summary is not conclusive and in fact states that the JIC is baffled to find a motive for Assad having done this, as well it might be. If Assad did it—and perhaps he did—it was the height of irrationality for him to do the one thing that might get the west intervening against him.
There is a clear motive for Assad to have done this. He has used chemical weapons on five previous occasions, testing the west to see if it was going to respond. He has lost control of Aleppo airport, Homs is still under rebel control and rebels are fighting in the suburbs of Damascus. Assad is getting desperate and that is why he used chemical weapons. There is no question of any circumstantial evidence that points to anyone else.
When the Prime Minister wanted to take military action in Libya, most of us supported him because there was a clear moral imperative: if we had not acted, tens of thousands of lives would quickly have been lost. That clear moral imperative does not stand in the action we are countenancing.
There is no doubt that the Assad regime is evil, but that is not our casus belli: our casus belli is the monstrous crime of killing hundreds, perhaps more, of civilians with nerve gas. The use of chemical weapons is not the first monstrous crime of this regime: at least 100,000 people have been killed in the civil war, most of whom were civilians. Death by dismemberment, burning, being crushed under falling buildings, gangrene or all the other outcomes of the use of conventional weapons is no better than death by nerve gas—these are monstrosities, however they are delivered. In moral, as against legal, terms many people will rightly, as they have in this debate, ask: why intervene now?
To press their case, this Government and the American Government, now supported by the JIC, have asserted, in effect, that the gassing of a large number of Syrian civilians could have been carried out only by the Assad regime. Perhaps. There are three possibilities. The first, and probably the most likely, is that nerve gas was deployed by Assad, but even the JIC says that this is an irrational and incomprehensible act. My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) pinned that perfectly. Another possibility is that it could have been done by a rogue or panicky military unit in the Syrian army without Assad’s knowledge—that may be the most likely explanation—or it could have been done by the Syrian rebels with the direct aim of dragging the west into the war. These are the only people who have a clear motive that fits the crime. The JIC discounted that last possibility, but there are many reasons for us to worry about this concern. We do not want to be conned into a war, in effect, by actions designed to do just that.
There are plenty of facts around, or at least reported facts. It is reported that the UN representative for human rights for Syria thought there was concrete evidence of rebels having sarin gas. There were reports that the Turkish authorities arrested 12 al- Nusra fighters with 2 kg of sarin gas, and other reports that Hezbollah fighters are in Beirut hospitals suffering from the effects of sarin gas.
A number of people, most notably my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, have said that we must have clear evidence to show the House that, if there is a casus belli, it is real, not confected or constructed. That may mean more aggressive disclosure of intelligence than we would normally have. Given where we have been before in this House, we must consider that our intelligence as it stands might just be wrong. It was before, and we must test it rigorously.
It is impossible to imagine how the rebels would have the capacity to shell a single location from seven different locations, which is what occurred on that occasion. Do we honestly think our own security services have not learned the lesson from Iraq or that they are not extremely cautious about the advice they make public on which decisions are going to be made? Should we not have faith in these devoted and courageous public servants, instead of joining the post-Iraq panic that is paralysing this country?
If I had 10 minutes to take my hon. Friend through the forensics, I probably could. There is plenty of forensic evidence that will come out of the UN investigation and out of other data that we can obtain by other methods. It is not a question of panic; it is a question of getting the facts right before we act. It is very simple: when we are going to do things which will lead to the death of people, civilians in particular, we should get our facts right first.
That brings me to the Deputy Prime Minister on the “Today” programme this morning, talking about chemical weapons and saying—let me quote him exactly—that it is
“the first time in close to a century”
that we have seen—in Syria, he means—
“the ever more frequent use of chemical weapons.”
I recommend that he speaks to our American allies. The CIA has recently declassified and published its information on Iraq’s use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war, in which the west provided intelligence data in order for the Iraqis to be able to target their activities more effectively, killing 50,000 Iranians. How will our stance now be seen on the Iranian street? What will the pressures be on the Iranian Government when we make our holier-than-thou arguments about chemical warfare now?
I do not have time to conclude the arguments that I want to put. I will make one last point. Putin has said that the reason he provided anti-aircraft missiles to the Syrians was, in his words, to balance the war and prevent external intervention. What will his response be if we attack Syria? His response will be to feed this war more weapons, more deaths—
My view, which I do not think is far removed from that of other Members, is that mission creep is inevitable in any such situation. Whatever justification is put forward today, the mission would creep and change in the light of changing circumstances next week and next month. As such, it would lead to all sorts of consequences that we have not perceived at this point.
To put it more precisely, I do not think anybody in this country, in Europe or around the world wants to see another Afghanistan or Iraq. I have heard little here today to convince me of the merit of any proposed military action. We have been given no clear indication of what success might look like or how it would be measured. We are told that this action might persuade Assad to consider not using chemical weapons in the future, but I have little faith that such a course of action will not make his position better rather than worse. There is a clear risk that even more lives will be lost and even more harm done than we are trying to prevent. I can only see that cruise missile attacks will take lives—hundreds, if not thousands, of lives—of combatants and civilians alike. There is little evidence that any lives would be saved in the long run.
I can only refer the hon. Gentleman to Iraq and its consequences. We have all been left scarred by Iraq.
Many in this House and in Government will have convinced themselves of the courses of action that should be taken, but they have not convinced the public. I think the public know better. The public have long and bitter memories of Iraq and Afghanistan. All the promises and assurances issued then were not worth the paper they were written on. The public remember the contrived situation, the misleading of this House and the needless deaths of so many soldiers and countless civilians. While I would find it difficult, if not impossible, ever to tolerate or support military intervention, I believe that this House should contemplate such action against Syria only if it were UN approved and if we were convinced that it would improve the situation.
As I have clearly said, I believe that Assad should be held accountable for his actions and should be brought before the international courts.
The regime has the full patronage of Russia, which can veto resolutions in the Security Council. Syria has some of the most sophisticated weaponry around, supplied by Russia and Iran, and it has total control over the skies in Syria. It has helicopter gun ships, and also a surrogate army fighting with Syrian Government forces in the shape of Hezbollah. As my good friend the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) rightly said, what is in this for Assad? Why should he deliberately participate in an atrocity guaranteed to bring an international response—the one thing that he does not want, and the one thing that all the disparate organisations fighting against him do want?
The American intelligence services believe that Assad did this; the British intelligence services believe Assad did it; the French and even the German intelligence services believe it; and the whole Arab League thinks Assad did it. Is this debate to be conducted on the basis that we in this House know better than all these experts? Can the hon. Gentleman name one expert on Syria who does not believe that President Assad is responsible for this attack? Name one.
Let me answer the hon. Gentleman in this way. I said earlier that what happened over Iraq had poisoned British politics, but more to the point, many Members vowed privately at the time—the hon. Gentleman was here—that they would never again believe one single solitary assurance given by any Prime Minister who came to the Dispatch Box to say, “Trust me; I’m taking this country into a military adventure.”
Let me return to this point: why would Assad do this? What is in it for him? Dictators have one unifying thing in common: they want to remain in power; they want the spoils of being a dictator and all that goes with it. Why on earth, then, would the Assad regime wish to bring on itself cruise or Tomahawk missiles? Why on earth would it want western countries to get involved in the Syrian civil war? Why on earth would it want to lose power?
The House has been recalled not to sanction military strikes in Syria, but to deplore the use of chemical weapons. I think we can all agree on that. I hope we can agree, too, that there must be a second vote in this House before any direct British military response: no vote, no strike.
Certain of our traditionalists will no doubt delight in pointing out that under the rules of Crown prerogative, no Commons approval is actually technically required for a Prime Minister to take us to war, and historically they are correct, but Parliament is waking up and asserting itself. As the Prime Minister himself pointed out as Leader of the Opposition, the Crown prerogative, that constitutional quirk that has handed 10 Downing street the powers of a mediaeval monarch, needs changing. No Prime Minister should embark on a non-defensive war without the consent of this House. In recognising that, the Prime Minister has been wise, not weak. Having a sovereign Parliament means that sometimes, yes, a Prime Minister will be told to pause and think again. Good. Democracy works.
Not unreasonably, the Leader of the Opposition, like most on the Government side of the House, would like to see more evidence—evidence from UN inspectors— before voting on military action. If the casus belli is the use of chemical weapons, let us be certain who used them. If the UN is going to help provide us with the evidence, though, we must not make the mistake of believing that the UN can confer legitimacy on military action. Legitimacy to go to war comes not from the UN, nor from international law or international lawyers, nor even from our own National Security Council. That sort of legitimacy comes only from below, not from above. It comes from the demos and those they elect. When the time comes for that second, crunch, vote, there can be no buck-passing, no deferring to a higher authority, no delegating. It will be our responsibility alone, and all the more weighty for that. If I am certain that this House needs the final say on our policy towards Syria, I am far less certain as to what that policy should be. There are, I think, no good outcomes.
Has my hon. Friend just demonstrated the shortcomings of this system of decision making and giving Executive decisions to a legislative body? That is contributing to the paralysis of our nation. If we do not trust our Prime Minister to take decisions of this nature, we should not have trusted him with the office of Prime Minister.
If the alternative to rushing into a conflict that may have significant implications is that we pause, I would not describe that as paralysis but as good governance. It is vital to recognise that the Executive do not control the legislature; the legislature must control the Executive. Sending our young men and women to war is a decision of massive consequence, and it is right and proper that the House should exert its authority and give legitimacy to that decision. I understand and respect the case for intervention, and I think no one in this House or anywhere else is calling for a land invasion. What is envisaged is an aerial bombardment to punish and deter those behind the chemical weapons outrage.
I very much welcome the decision to delay the vote on whether we should take military action until the UN inspectors have had their chance to report. It makes no sense whatever for the west to make great play of getting the UN weapons inspectors in to inspect the site only to have a vote in the House without getting their report and without determining the evidence on the ground.
Perhaps the rationale for the debate has moved on. Welcome though that is, the debate gives hon. Members the opportunity to ask questions of the Government. I remain unconvinced by the arguments for military action that I have heard this evening. It is important that the House lays down markers, so that, when we have the next debate, the Government hopefully come to the House with better answers.
Let us begin with the evidence. There is no doubt that foreign policy should be based on firm evidence and grounded in legitimacy. We know there are no easy answers on Syria, but we must acknowledge that atrocities have been committed by both sides in this vicious civil war. There have been claims and counter-claims on both sides in relation to chemical weapons, and yet nothing has been verified. Even the JIC document, brief though it is, is in terms of probabilities and possibilities, but not of certainty. At the end, the JIC admits that it has no idea as to Assad’s motivation in committing to chemical weapons when he was gaining ground and winning the battle. We must therefore have careful consideration of the evidence.
The JIC concludes that it is highly probably that the Assad regime is responsible for the attack. That is the consensus among all reputable intelligence services, including the Arab League intelligence service. I put it to my hon. Friend that the only people who contest the evidence probably do not want to believe the certainty that Assad did it. I include my hon. Friend among those people. He does not want us to get involved, and is therefore reluctant to believe in the certainty that Assad did it.
My hon. Friend is attributing motives to me, which does not do him justice. The bottom line is that we have asked the UN inspectors to go in and inspect the site. We should at least wait and see what they say when they return—[Interruption.] If my hon. Friend wants to intervene again, he is welcome to do so. We are talking only of a couple more days before we get the report. One hundred thousand people are already dead. We need only a couple of days to ensure we have a calm assessment of the evidence. That is not asking too much, yet the motion reads that the
“House…Deplores the use of chemical weapons in Syria…by the Assad regime”.
That is a statement of fact, but it is not correct until we at least have the UN inspectors’ report.
The JIC document states clearly that it cannot understand the “precise motivation”. The document is in terms of probability. I put this question to the House, and particularly to those who want to intervene militarily: what is the harm in waiting for the UN inspectors to come back and present their evidence? We should not forget that the west did its utmost to get those weapons inspectors to the site. At the very least we can wait a couple of days to see what they say after their due inspections. Otherwise, what was the logic of sending them there in the first place? Sending them there and not waiting for the report would not make sense.
The second question is of legitimacy. Is military intervention without a UN resolution legitimate?
International law is terribly subjective—there are no hard and fast rules, but the best we have is the UN. Is such action legal? Many have suggested that we should look to the concept of the responsibility to protect, which was introduced in 2005, but that is not linked to chemical weapons. R2P could have been invoked 100,000 lives ago. Therefore, the idea that it becomes relevant because chemical weapons have been used is a non-starter.
We must also ask questions about the military objectives—there are many questions on, for example, the scope of the operation and the potential for mission creep. What happens if Assad uses chemical weapons again or if the rebels use them? There are very few answers, and we need more. The decision to commit to military intervention and potentially to commit soldiers to war is one of the most serious the House can make, if the not the most serious. We need to base such a decision on firm evidence and not on speculation.
Many accuse those of us who question the idea of military intervention by saying, “You believe that nothing should be done. You’re in that camp that says, ‘We should wash our hands of it and let them get on with it.’” Utter tosh! So much more could be done on the humanitarian front. The refugee camps are desperately short of basic amenities. Britain has a good record—we have done a lot of the heavy lifting—but we could do a lot more, as could the international community. Tens of thousands of women and children are living in extremely poor conditions, and yet the west is saying, “There’s very little more we can do to help the humanitarian situation,” which is utter nonsense.
The west could also do a lot more on the diplomatic front. It makes no sense whatever to exclude Iran from the forthcoming peace talks, but that is what we currently intend to do. Iran is a key regional player and a participant in this conflict. Excluding Iran from the talks is utter nonsense. We need to go that extra diplomatic mile. This is a cliché, but it is true: you make peace with your enemies, not with your friends. We need to talk to the Iranians if we hope for a diplomatic solution. A political and diplomatic solution, and not a military one, is the only long-term solution to this vicious civil war. The Syrian people have suffered enough. We must have answers to those questions.
(11 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberI commend my right hon. Friend for encouraging a lively debate on the leadership of the senior civil service, not least because senior appointments have led to a great deal of churn and discontinuity at the top of Government Departments in recent years. May I also congratulate him on publishing the IPPR report? We look forward to him coming before the Public Administration Committee to discuss it.
I look forward to one of my regular attendances at my hon. Friend’s Committee with barely concealed impatience. I am grateful for the interest he and his Committee take in this important area. I would like to take the opportunity, while answering this question, to pay tribute to so many hard working civil servants who do a fantastic job, and to the support that so many of them have given to the programme of reform we have set in train.
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberI see no need for a stand -alone Bill on House of Lords reform, not least because the real reform—namely, the introduction of democracy —has not made progress. As I have said, however, there are a few very specific housekeeping measures that we could incorporate, and would be prepared to consider incorporating, in a wider Bill if the need arose during the coming period.
Why did my right hon. Friend choose to answer this question and not the question about lobbying, which has been in his in-tray for the last three years?
(11 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe House has already heard much about Margaret Thatcher as a huge political figure—the iron lady who dominated British politics and world politics—but my wife and I grew to know her after she retired from the House of Commons. We came to know someone who was far from the arrogant or heartless figure portrayed by her adversaries. She was someone who must have forced herself to be strong, to hide any self-doubt, to deny herself any weakness, in order to live up to an ideal of herself. She was anything but arrogant.
I do not know how many times we saw her reject the adulation that was so often heaped upon her. She felt undeserving of such praise and standing ovations. She would say how she could never have achieved anything on her own, that her Governments were a team effort in which many played their part. This was genuine humility, not arrogance. And we have read and heard so much about her acts of personal kindness.
It was her passion for the truth that made her such a dangerous adversary in argument—a danger which she harboured long into old age—and she loved a good spat. She met some bright young candidates before the 1992 election—me included—[Interruption.] I beg your pardon. Two now serve as senior Ministers of state. As they tried to justify UK membership of the exchange rate mechanism, she scorned the one who had worked closely in her Government with heavy inflection. “Oh,” she said, “I am so disappointed with you.” She listened to the other, who argued that the exit from the exchange rate mechanism would involve too much loss of face for the Government. She retorted: “Loss of face? What is loss of face compared to the loss of 350,000 jobs? If you think that, you’re a fool. There’s the door!” Not an easy introduction for an aspiring candidate.
What we miss from politics today is her certainty, her seriousness, her clarity of principle, her fusion of the practical with her sense of moral purpose. Those who disagreed with her undoubtedly felt that to be arrogance on her part, but she felt she was a guardian of greater truths and principles, which were far more important than her mere self. This, with her formidable intellect, gave her an extraordinary prescience about the world. How right she was about the exchange rate mechanism, and about the Maastricht treaty and monetary union. I would caution those who try to use her name in support of the EU, as it has become, as though she would ever have put her name to the Lisbon treaty or anything like it.
Another myth that this debate helpfully dispels is that she had no sense of humour. When she arrived in Essex in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) for the 1992 election campaign, a junior reporter from the Essex County Standard breathlessly caught up with her hectic pace and asked, in front of 200 other journalists, “Do you agree that the Conservative campaign is lacking in oomph?” Mrs T retorted, with heavy irony, “That’s what I’m here for, dear.”
She will always be revered as a woman of principle with iron determination, even by those who disagree with her. Her premiership was about restoring national self-belief, something few can deny she achieved, and that is what we must now do for ourselves. It has become an axiom in the coverage of reaction to Margaret Thatcher’s death that she was divisive, which ignores the fact that the UK was already bitterly divided. We need to hear about the scars that industrial decline has left in many constituencies represented on the Opposition Benches, but that should not detract from her achievements; nor should she be blamed personally for what was, in many respects, an inevitable transition of economics.
We should regard some of the more unseemly reactions to her death as a backhanded tribute to her, a reminder of the attitudes she had to overcome in order to achieve what she did, but let the argument about her legacy be based on the facts and not the myths which her opponents would prefer to believe. Spending on health, education, pensions and welfare continually increased under her premiership. The number of people in work increased by 1.8 million. Manufacturing output was significantly higher when she left office than when she was first elected. Wider home ownership and share ownership spread wealth more widely than ever before; social mobility was greatly increased. The incomes of every section of society, including the poorest, increased in real terms. Income taxes paid by the richest 1% of the population increased from 11% to 15% of the total tax take.
As she grew older, we regarded Lady T less and less as a former Prime Minister, more and more as a favourite aunt or grandmother. Sometimes it was hard to believe that this small, frail lady had once held the world in the palm of her hand. The whole nation will be for ever in her debt.
(11 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberAs I noted in my previous answer, we believe in accountability and in being able to “shop” those examples where that occurs. We take action on every such example and I am confident that that will cover what the right hon. Gentleman seeks.
Does my hon. Friend agree that the sheer cost inflicted on smaller businesses trying to bid for public contracts is prohibitive? What are the Government doing to reduce the cost of bidding for public contracts? Unless we reduce the cost, they simply will not bid.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have streamlined the procurement process by introducing faster and simpler procedures. We have removed bureaucracies such as pre-qualification questionnaires for contracts below the European Union threshold. We are also continually finding ways to help SMEs and others to navigate their way across Government. We look forward to continuing to work with my hon. Friend’s Committee to do more of that.
(11 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberAlthough the Eastleigh by-election is now under way, to be fair to the Deputy Prime Minister there was agreement that we were going to take a very tough line, and if we could not get a good deal we were able to say no.
May I join the many voices of congratulation for my right hon. Friend and say how much I am enjoying this statement? Not only has he brought back a good deal for the British taxpayer, but it was a good day for the British Parliament—this House voted for a cut, and he delivered it.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is important that other European leaders recognise that when we sit round that table, we listen not to the European Parliament, which has its legitimate views, but to our own Parliaments. That goes for the British Parliament and also for the German, Swedish, Dutch and Danish Parliaments. All Parliaments of the net contributors must be listened to.
(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. We have good relations with countries such as Tunisia and Morocco at a political and diplomatic level. There are obviously opportunities for intelligence sharing, and I would argue that we need to add to that a degree of military-to-military talks and co-operation, so that when these regrettable events take place there is a high level of trust and an ability to work together. Obviously, there are some countries in the region with which we have very long, historical relations—Nigeria, for instance, with which we have a very thick relationship politically, diplomatically and militarily, and with counter-terrorism and all the rest of it. I think we need to go through all our contacts and work out how best to strengthen them in each case.
May I commend my right hon. Friend’s statement? Is this not a sharp reminder that we live in a world of ungoverned spaces and terrorist groups that can strike and create violence at any time? Is it not therefore very important that we maintain Whitehall and our agencies on a wartime footing, ready to respond, as my right hon. Friend is now?
I thank my hon. Friend for what he has said. I think this is a reminder of two very clear points. First, we face a large and existential terrorist threat from a group of extremists based in different parts of the world who want to do the biggest possible amount of damage to our interests and way of life. Secondly, those extremists thrive when they have ungoverned spaces in which they can exist, build and plan. I very much agree with what my hon. Friend has said. Under this Government—as under previous Governments—a lot of priority has been given to the funding of the security services, and there is now a good system for bringing together intelligence and military and political planning through the National Security Council, and in other ways including the emergency committee Cobra framework, which brings people together very rapidly to ensure that all parts of the British Government and state are able to bring their expertise to bear.
(11 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberMay I commend my right hon. Friend on his determination not to wreck his Christmas by trying to write a speech on the European Union at the same time?
My right hon. Friend said that we had
“agreed a new voting system that means that the eurozone cannot impose rules on the countries outside the euro area, such as Britain, without our agreement.”
Will he confirm that, in saying that, he did not mean that the treaty had been rewritten, or that the single market article was now subject to a different voting system, so that anything agreed by the banking union could still be put forward by the Commission as a single market proposal to be forced through on a single qualified majority vote?
I greatly respect my hon. Friend’s views on and knowledge of this issue. I was not claiming that we had changed the treaty. The point that I was making was that a number of people in the European Union, including the Commission at one stage, had said that it was impossible to write new rules to deal with circumstances in which some were in the single currency and some were outside it, but we had persevered. We said “If you want to go ahead with banking union, this really is essential”, and that is why there is effectively a new system. If more than four countries are outside the banking union, there must be a double majority in favour of a proposal: a majority of those outside, and a majority of those inside.
I am not claiming that we have rewritten the treaties, or that this is a new treaty change; it is not. However, I think that it is a step forward to deal with a deep problem that Europe will have as the single currency integrates further and those outside it want to ensure that they are properly protected.