European Council

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point and I am sure that citizens in Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain will be asking in whose interest is the survival of the euro as it stands. They will be able to see that it is in the interests of the Germans and some of the stronger economies, as they have an artificially low currency that makes it easier for them to export across Europe. I am sure that is one reason that the German economy has continued to do well. Those citizens will also ask, however, what is in it for them and whether they—and Europe—would be better off in the long run if countries with weaker economies and bigger problems with debt were able to reach a much more sustainable level for their currency.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

In actual fact, in countries such as Spain and Greece there is no such campaign to leave the euro—any campaign, such as it is, is very minor. The vast majority of people accept that the euro is there to stay and they want to make it work.

To return to the hon. Gentleman’s earlier point about the stability and growth pact, the only way that it could have worked would have been if the European Union had had power to enforce audit on countries and to enforce the rules. That is an argument for more Europe, not for less.

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[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thought you were about to call somebody more senior.

I agree with the hon. Members who said it is a shame that the debate has had to rely on the kindness of the Backbench Business Committee. When I was Minister for Europe it was an important part of our mandate that before we went to a European Council we had to turn up in the House, in Government time, to answer a debate, even if it meant inconvenience for Ministers. It is a terrible shame that the Foreign Secretary is not here. I respect enormously the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), and I saw him assert that he is pro-European, which is great, but it is wrong that the Foreign Secretary is not with us.

I want to raise two issues that are not on the Council agenda but should be. The first is Cyprus. For far too long, the European Union has had within it a divided country, with a divided capital city. It affects many people in the UK; there are strong Cypriot communities in Cardiff and elsewhere in the country. The real problems faced by the Cypriot economy could be resolved easily if one were to overcome the political problems, because Turkey is the fastest growing economy on the borders of Europe. I hope that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister will make it clear that we want progress in Cyprus, and this is no bad time for it, when Greece is trying to resolve some of its own economic problems.

The other foreign policy issue that should be on the agenda is Russia. The elections just before Christmas were a complete and utter farce. In a vast majority of areas, they were corrupt, as every organisation sent to monitor the elections made clear. Absolutely nothing has been done. There have been many warm words from Mr Putin and Mr Medvedev, yet there has been no action. We still have no resolution of the cases of Mr Khodorkovsky and Mr Platon Lebedev, both of whom are purely prisoners of conscience, and not tax evaders. There is also the case of Sergei Magnitsky who worked for a British company.

The British Government should make it absolutely clear that Europe will manage to improve its business with Russia only when corruption is rooted out in Russia. That will not happen if country after country tries to make its own sordid little deals; it will only happen if the whole of the European Union acts in concert and in union to make it clear that Russia has to clean up its act.

I believe in more Europe rather than less Europe. I say that unambiguously. I said to the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) that enforced audit would have meant that we did not get into the hole we are in, and there are other areas. The United Kingdom was wrong when we decided to go our own way, with Ireland, saying that there were to be no transitional arrangements with regard to people from the new member states working in the UK. One of the reasons why so many people came here was that every other country in the EU was going down a different route. It would have made far more sense if there had been a single European decision on that policy area.

[Mr MacShane]

At a conference last week, the German film-maker, Volker Schlöndorff said how much he wished that 1 million-plus Poles had gone to Germany and learned German and then gone home imbued with German ideas, language and contacts to build a closer relationship between Poland and Germany. We have made 1 million-plus Polish friends because of our policy; it has been good for Poland and good for us.

[Chris Bryant]

I hope we have made a lot of Polish friends. When I was a curate in High Wycombe, we had a long-standing Polish community there, many of whom fled German ideas about Polish people from the 1930s and 1940s. But I still think it would have been better for us if there had been a whole-European decision. We underestimated the number of Polish people who would come to the United Kingdom and that was a mistake for our economy.

Anyone from Brazil, China, Russia or India—or, for that matter, Mexico or Turkey—would say that they are all interested in trying to do business with one set of rules in Europe, not 27, on the size of plugs, on electricity, and on many other elements. I believe it is in our interests that we should strive ever more for the extension of the single market, so that we can do better out of the growing economies of the world; otherwise, our future will be on the sidelines, not at the heart, of the world’s history.

I have anxieties about the Government’s attitude on these issues. I know the Prime Minister tries to show a little bit of leg to Conservative Back Benchers and then to his European allies. There is a little bit of leg being shown here, there and everywhere. But the truth is that we need British businesses to be far more courageous about doing business in Europe; they should not just sally forth and speak louder—shout in more grammatically incorrect English than they would to their children—in the belief that they will get a contract. We must have more ambition when it comes to Europe.

I would say to those who said earlier that they praised the Prime Minister before Christmas that—leaving aside my opinion that it is giving the Prime Minister that dangerous element of messianism, which is always worrying for a Prime Minister—the child who has stormed off to his bedroom is rarely the person in the family who wins the argument.

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[Alistair Burt]

I thank my hon. Friend for his generous remarks. As he knows, occasionally colleagues cannot be where they would like to be because of other business, but I have heard what colleagues have said. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) expresses an interest in how the House scrutinises European business, and I will certainly take back to the Minister for Europe and the Foreign Secretary what colleagues have said. I would like to underline the effort and valuable work of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) and the European Scrutiny Committee.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the Minister give way?

[Alistair Burt]

No, because I might take another intervention on something else. Time is limited and I cannot do justice to everyone.

On Tuesday the International Monetary Fund published its world economic outlook. It revised down its global growth forecasts, mainly because of developments in the eurozone. It now expects the eurozone to enter a recession in 2012, with GDP falling by 0.5%. Those of us outside the eurozone are not immune from that. The ongoing sovereign debt crisis is having a chilling effect on our economy, too. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), I do not want to see the euro fail.

The eurozone needs to find a credible and sustainable solution to the debt crisis. Beyond that, there is a challenge for all 27 EU member states to release the brakes on growth to generate wealth, jobs and enterprise, and that was very much the focus of the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins).