Referendums

Debate between Bob Stewart and William Cash

Monday 29th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

The date is obviously a crucial moment in the development of this referendum, but I have reservations about 23 June. I have not yet decided, and I want to hear what the Scottish National party has to say about this issue, because that will be interesting and may have some impact on the way I vote. I am interested in the democratic side of this issue.

On 3 February, in my response to the Prime Minister’s statement on the UK-EU renegotiation, I said that this is all about voters’ trust, and I went on to give examples of why I thought that promises and principles had been broken. Above all else, I asked whether this will be a political stitch-up by the European Council because the agreement—such as it is—and any other subsequent legal arrangements must be both legally binding and irreversible.

Information was contained in the White Paper published a few days ago, and I have had quite an interesting weekend, given the remarks that were made about me—I need not elaborate on that, and I assure you, Mr Speaker, that it caused me no concern whatsoever. Whether this agreement will be irreversible is a question of trust, and today we had an extremely important urgent question on information. I put a question to the Minister, and tomorrow my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) will interview the Cabinet Secretary on this matter. The real question is about voter trust. On 23 June, will people have enough proper information, based on a fair arrangement between those on both sides of the debate? The Government first insisted on the purdah arrangements that they wanted to use for the whole of the civil service machinery. We drove them off on that, but then they brought in, through the House of Lords, a legal duty to provide such information —if I may say so, they pretended that that had come from other people in the House of Lords, but it was clearly at least half sponsored by the Government.

When we got to ping-pong, I waited until the last minute before it ended, and I got up and asked the Minister—he knows what is coming—whether he would give me a straight answer, yes or no, about whether the information that is due to be published would be both accurate and impartial. He said, “Of course.” He added that it would be perverse if the Government were to do otherwise.

Well, Mr Speaker, I have to say that I am intrigued. On 23 June, the people may not have impartial and accurate information. I believe the Government are probably, if not certainly, in breach of their duty under sections 6 and 7 of the European Referendum Act 2015. Furthermore, despite what the Minister had to say on this today, the words “the opinion of” in this context will not, I believe, be a sufficient safeguard from the potential concerns that they know must already be in some people’s minds that this is not fair and may well not be legal. This is a very, very important matter.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I am confused. When the Paymaster General answered the question I put to him, he said that the Cabinet Secretary is not neutral. That I accept, when the Cabinet Secretary is working for the Government. In this matter, however, the Cabinet Secretary may well be working for the people, because it is the people who are going to decide this matter. In my view, it is therefore proper that the Cabinet Secretary, or someone of his ilk, should draft or head up a paper that puts the facts for both sides of the argument, so that the people who are going to make the decision—this is the people’s decision—can make a decision that is based on objective facts.

[Sir William Cash]

The sentiments my hon. Friend expresses are very relevant to the question of voter trust. In the debate on 25 February, and when the Foreign Secretary gave evidence to the European Scrutiny Committee, which has considered these matters in great depth, I said that the Government are effectively—in fact, I will go further and say definitely—cheating the voters. This cannot be said to be legally binding and irreversible. In the debate on 25 February, I pointed out that the Council conclusions—I ask that hon. Members look at the Council conclusions—refer to the words “legally binding” and there is a common accord with respect to the international law agreement. What they cannot do is say that it would be irreversible. Furthermore, although Mr Tusk, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have been saying “irreversible”, they cannot prove that that is the case. I will explain why in one second.

On 23 June, a most momentous and historic decision will be taken by all the people in the United Kingdom who can vote. They have a right to know whether the question they are going to be asked, on whether to remain or to leave, can be answered. It is the basis of my proposition that it is impossible for them to know whether it is going to be irreversible for a simple reason. Under the international agreement where the European Court may or may not take into account the question that has been posed by the White Paper, certainly there is no guarantee of a treaty change and certainly there is no guarantee that the mechanics of the international law decision will produce a definite result that the European Court can decide on. Nobody can say that the European Court will or will not accept any treaty change. As a matter of fact, with respect to the question of referendums, there is no guarantee that there will not be referendums.

There are currently at least four Governments of the 28 in the EU, in the great stitch-up in the political decision-making process I referred to, who barely have control over their government at all. There are massive problems in Portugal and Spain, and now in Ireland as well, and there are massive problems in Greece. There is absolutely no reason why anybody should guarantee either that there will be treaty change or that it will be irreversible.

I happened to take part in the referendums that produced “no” votes in other countries, including France and Denmark. To say as a matter of absolute certainty in this disgraceful White Paper that it is irreversible when it is impossible as a matter of fact, let alone of law, for anyone to say that they know what the European Court will do or indeed that there will not be a referendum and what the outcome of that would be, is simply unacceptable.

European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Bob Stewart and William Cash

Monday 4th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Cash]

I do not want to be drawn too far down that route, but the simple reason for primary legislation is that, without it, there would not be adequate legislative authority, even for the questions that arise under this Bill.

I shall now turn to one or two issues relating to the Bill that required a considerable amount of consideration by the European Scrutiny Committee. I will give a tiny bit of history on the multi-annual framework for the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, but I will try to be as brief as possible. The Justice Minister, Lord McNally, stated in an explanatory memorandum that was issued to the House and the European Scrutiny Committee in January 2012 that he thought that the proposal was justified. He said that the Government would have opposed the proposal to extend the multi-annual framework, but wanted to consider whether the technical issues that they disliked had been addressed.

The European Scrutiny Committee reported on the proposal on 1 February 2012. We asked the Government whether they accepted the view of the European Commission that

“with the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the Agency’s remit automatically extends, in principle, to all areas of EU competence under the TFEU, and that the Agency may therefore undertake activities within the field of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters without any further amendment to its founding Regulation”.

We questioned the Government’s view that this decision satisfied the exemption requirements under section 8(6)(a) of the 2011 Act and would not require an Act of Parliament. Our 10th report, which was published on 17 July 2012, set out our concerns in greater detail. The draft decision remained under scrutiny.

The former Lord Chancellor, who is now the Minister without Portfolio, told the European Scrutiny Committee in July 2012 that a political agreement had been reached on the draft decision which excluded any new activity covering EU policing and criminal law measures. In a letter that he sent on 22 November, he told the European Scrutiny Committee that, having heard what we had said, the Government were now—although they had not been before—of the opinion that the exemption did not apply in this case, and that primary legislation would be introduced.

That is why we have this Bill—the European Scrutiny Committee did its job and asked for further clarification. [Interruption.] I am extremely grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds), for nodding his head, because sometimes people wonder what all the detail is about and whether we have to be so intricate. The bottom line is that the European Scrutiny Committee, by pointing out the legal objections and having a dialogue with the Government, who in turn had a dialogue with the European Commission, helped to make the legislation better. We helped to guarantee that there would be primary legislation and that, in the absence of the authorisation through the 2011 Act that had been deemed to be appropriate, this House would have the opportunity to consider the matter in the way we are considering it today. Indeed, after this debate, there will be a Committee stage and a Report stage.

The European Scrutiny Committee reported on the proposal again on 28 November. We cleared the document, but in January 2013 we pointed out to Ministers that the Government’s uncertainty about whether the exemptions applied to this decision had prevented the new measure from being agreed in good time. That is the history of this matter and it is important to put it on the record.

The draft decision on the number of European Commissioners provides another example of the European Scrutiny Committee takings its findings to the Government and, thereby, to the Commission. We received an explanatory memorandum and a letter from the Minister for Europe on 27 September. He stated that the size and composition of the European Commission was a fraught subject. He went on to say that it was difficult to identify a solution that was equitable, legitimate in terms of the relative size and weight of different European countries, and efficient. That is all in our report.

The European Scrutiny Committee considered the draft decision in its 13th report, which was published on 2 November 2012. We noted that because of delays in the draft decision being communicated to member states and because Parliament was in recess, it was not possible for us to scrutinise the proposal before political agreement needed to be reached on the draft decision at the General Affairs Council on 16 October 2012.

I put that on the record because it is important that these matters have a proper legal base and that Parliament has an opportunity to debate them. We are having this debate on the Floor of the House, so it is open to any Member of Parliament to discuss these proposals, to oppose them, to examine them in Committee and to table amendments.

[Bob Stewart]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Cash]

I will give way in just a moment, if I may.

The problem is that when we provide for amendments to be made to matters that have been through the Council of Ministers, we are obliged under section 2 of the European Communities Act 1972 to continue to pass that legislation through our Parliament. That poses the very questions regarding the role of national Parliaments that the Prime Minister raised in his recent speech. The European Scrutiny Committee is currently conducting an inquiry into scrutiny and that is among the matters that we are considering.

If the House of Commons—or indeed the House of Lords, although I will stick to the House of Commons for my purposes—were to take exception to a provision that was included in an Act of Parliament for lack of a legal base or for some other substantive reason and wanted to vote against it, that would raise the very question that was embedded in the White Paper of 1971, which led to the passing of the 1972 Act. Under section 2 of that Act, we must implement all decisions that have been decided in the Council of Ministers, irrespective of any other factors. Under section 3, we must agree to all decisions of the European Court.

In the context of the Prime Minister’s speech— I welcome his comments on the referendum, although I think it will come too late—we have to evaluate where the power lies in passing legislation. We need an Act of Parliament for the provisions contained in the Bill for the reasons that have already been given, which I endorse. However, could Parliament veto the provisions that it covers if we did not want them to go through? We should be allowed to do so, and that will be part of the inquiry that the European Scrutiny Committee is now conducting. It is difficult to justify to the British people the fact that if they vote in a general election to have certain legislation implemented, they can then find that it is all decided in the Council of Ministers, where 91.7% of votes go in favour of European proposals. That brings up the whole business of how UKRep advises, or even decides, on such legislation, which is a vital question that affects the daily lives of this country’s voters.

[Mr Cash]

It is difficult to make sense of a lot of things that come out of the European Union, and I am reminded of what Alice said in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” about believing half a dozen impossible things before breakfast every day. That is possibly one example.

The reality is that there are 27 member states, and there was a lot of discussion about whether there should be an equivalent number of commissioners. It was decided that each member state would continue to have a commissioner. I understand well what my hon. Friend says, and it is quite difficult to justify given countries’ comparative size, geography, GDP and so on. On the other hand, if some countries were to be denied a European commissioner, I suppose some people would say that they were being treated unfairly. Finally on the number of commissioners, I have argued in the past that the European Commission should be relegated to the role of a secretariat rather than the role that it currently enjoys.

[Bob Stewart]

My hon. Friend has eloquently, and at some length, posed and answered the question that I was going to put to him earlier. I was going to say that whatever we do here, it will have no impact on the number of commissioners.

[Mr Cash]

That is correct, given that the veto that was promised to us has been taken away.

Right at the beginning, when the European Communities Act 1972 went through, the functions of the European Union were fairly restricted. Up to the Single European Act in 1986, which I voted for, there were a limited number of qualified majority voting arrangements. That Act greatly expanded them, and I tabled an amendment at the time suggesting, “Nothing in this Act shall derogate from the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament”. I was then advised by the Clerks—indeed, I went to the Speaker about it—that it was not possible to move such an amendment, because it would challenge the fabric of the 1972 Act. Time has moved on, and qualified majority voting is now used in a lot more cases.

There was a qualification in the 1971 White Paper, which led to the passing of the 1972 Act by a mere six votes. It stated that there would be no essential erosion of British sovereignty, and that we would have to retain the veto in our vital national interest, because doing otherwise would undermine and endanger the very fabric of the European Community itself. I repeated that point the other day and will do so again and again, for one reason—the mass of legislation that there has been since the referendum in 1975, including all the treaties, with some 35 million people in this country never having had an opportunity to express their view on that legislation. As I said in The Times the other day, treaty after treaty has gone through on a three-line Whip, without a referendum. There has been a vast accumulation of qualified majority voting, and all that legislation has been passed.

The Bill contains just one provision. Matters that would normally require a Bill have gone through both Houses of Parliament without one, but this one, which is based on a few lines in a directive or regulation, is in a Bill. There is a complete mismatch in proportionality in how we legislate.

There may well be no Division this evening, but that does not alter the fact that we have done our job, both in the European Scrutiny Committee and in the House, by examining a matter that would otherwise not have had a legal base under article 352. It is dangerous to legislate without having the power to do so. The rule of law is essential to the running of a stable Government and a stable European Union—if there is to be a European Union, it had better be stable and in accordance with the rule of law. Increasingly, the EU is demonstrating its lack of regard for the rule of law on matters such as the stability and growth pact. We also see it in the unlawful manner in which 25 member states went ahead after the Prime Minister had exercised the veto. There are many other examples. When a body that vaunts the rule of law as much as the EU is blatantly in breach of its own rules, there is trouble ahead.

Remuneration of EU Staff

Debate between Bob Stewart and William Cash

Tuesday 21st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Cash]

Indeed, and that is far too much of an endemic problem throughout the EU. We know about the case of Marta Andreasen, who was one of the chief accounting officers in the EU some time ago and had the temerity to challenge the basis on which its administration in the Court of Auditors was being run. She was sacked. Before that, there was Bernard Connolly. I am given to understand today that in Greece the chief representative for EUROSTAT, who has to operate within its regulations, is under siege and under incredible personal pressure, and may even be taken to court because he has taken unpopular decisions.

The problem lies in the idea of acting as judge and jury and being self-serving when the whole of Europe is in a state of complete crisis. People are, frankly, lining their own pockets at public expense at a time when we know, because we have just had our letters from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, that we are not going to be given an increase, any more than are the civil servants and so forth. The disparity between what is going on in the European Union and what is going on in the domestic administration of this country is so glaringly obvious that we have every reason as a Parliament not only to debate the issue but really to put our foot down.

How are the Government approaching the negotiations on annex 11 of the staff regulations, which deals with annual salary adjustments? It strikes our Committee that the procedure by which the exception clause is invoked is tantamount to a breach of natural justice, as the Commission, in effect, decides whether it should freeze the salaries of its own staff. I would be grateful if the Minister explained how she would like this procedure to be amended.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Would it not be natural justice for European bureaucrats to have exactly the same conditions as our own civil service, with no additional money being paid by this country for them to get an add-on to their salaries?

[Mr Cash]

I certainly agree with that, and I would say the same about the European Parliament and the analogy with this House. The reality is that there is an air of unreality. In the words of T. S. Eliot,

“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

It is time that we sorted this out.