European Union Bill

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

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

I rise as a sinner, because I would like a referendum on Britain’s future relationship with our European partners. As I am a former member of the European Parliament, that certainly makes me a sinner in the eyes of those out there. Many of the British people are sinners also. We all entered this European garden of Eden fully clothed, and now the British people feel that their clothes have been stolen by previous Governments of both colours, with their shirt finally having been stolen from their back by the last Labour Government when they gave away a huge part of our rebate. That is why we have the Bill.

It is fairly obvious to anyone who cares to ask our voters that they are really fed up with our relationship with the EU, and do not trust the European institutions. Equally, our voters have lost a huge amount of trust in the ability of British Governments trying, or even endeavouring to try, to stand up for our country.

[Mr Swayne]

This House voted not to have a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. If those of us who argued with the Minister, who continued to insist that it was merely an administrative tidying up, had only had the ability to go to judicial review, as this Bill allows, we would have been much better for it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

That is why the Bill is very important, and equally why it is dangerous to oversell what the Bill does.

Government Members have a number of qualms, as do Labour Members, about the sovereignty clause. Vernon Bogdanor, in his evidence to the European Scrutiny Committee, said:

“Although there is therefore a basic rationale for the European Union bill, it seems to me that its provisions are inconsistent with the declaratory clause insisting that Parliament is sovereign. Indeed, the purpose of the bill is unclear to me. A government will not provide for a referendum unless it wishes to support a proposal for treaty amendment or transfer of powers. If it is opposed to such a proposal, it can use its veto, since all matters to be made subject to the referendum require unanimity. The present government has indicated that it will not support any amendment or transfer of powers in this parliament. Therefore, the purpose of the bill must be to prevent a future government from supporting such an amendment or transfer without a referendum. The bill seeks, in other words, to bind a future government. That seems to me inconsistent with the declaratory proposition that Parliament is sovereign.”

I should very much appreciate the Minister’s thoughts on that piece of evidence.

The Minister kindly came to the European Scrutiny Committee yesterday and gave a tour de force on the outcomes that he expected from the Bill. He said that

“it delivers on what was in the coalition programme simply as an agreement to consider the case for a sovereignty Bill—that Bill is being introduced by the means of clause 18.”

Yesterday, at the end of his speech, that was reduced to just a few words:

“Clause 18…is declaratory in intention and in substance.”

May I suggest to the Minister that he must not oversell that clause? There is some value in clause 18 as a declaration, but it absolutely does not represent a sovereignty Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) made some salient points about justice and home affairs measures, which are a good example of what goes on in the European institutions. The Bill seemingly stops powers heading out to Europe in big chunks, but anyone experienced in such matters knows that European negotiators rarely try to swallow their prey whole. They would if they could, but to get past the public anger and angst that such huge transfers of power always cause they have long preferred to chop things up and to salami-slice: they chop away piece by piece, or sliver by sliver, until they reach their goal. Current justice and home affairs arrangements on the opt-in, opt-out basis receive little scrutiny, and the measure before us really put its finger on that.

The European public prosecutor, which is one of those proposals that triggers all the alarm bells in the Bill, simply cannot be introduced under this legislation without a referendum or the people having their say, but the European institutions desperately want it. As a member of the European Parliament, I was there at the start of the EPP debate in Brussels, and it evolved a little like this. Initially, the proposal was about introducing a common body of law in justice and home affairs, but it was not that important; it was just about protecting the Commission’s raising of its own resources. The Commission raises money in many ways, one of which involves VAT, and one role of the anti-fraud office, OLAF, was to ensure that money did not disappear through theft, fraud or VAT avoidance. OLAF was meant to police the Commission’s budget when the wise men set it up, but that story is for another day.

Let us say that OLAF did its job properly and got the authorities in Spain to arrest a British national for not paying VAT on smuggled cigarettes in Bulgaria. It is complicated to get all those authorities to investigate and co-ordinate arrests and prosecutions, so, the argument goes in Europe, we need a European arrest warrant, investigation orders and a whole lot more to make the process work. Before we know it, we have, through various justice and home affairs instruments, all the guts and the body of a European public prosecutor. Its creation would trigger a referendum under the Bill.

Can a current Minister, however, guarantee that a future Minister will not see that measure as a tidying-up exercise, or as just an insignificant power transfer with a European public prosecutor at the end? Can a current Minister guarantee what a future Minister will think is significant? Even if they are able to, will we get the British public to trust a Minister who says that? Not too long ago, a Minister for Europe suggested that the European charter on fundamental rights was of no more significance than The Beano. The Bill is for future use—not much good if no Government can bind their successors. But we are told that we do not need to worry about this Government, as under them there will not be any transfer of power to Europe.

Yesterday, when giving evidence on the Bill, the Minister for Europe told the European Scrutiny Committee—this was confirmed today by answers to questions that my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere asked the Secretary of State—that up to 40 justice and home affairs measures might be passed through the channels of Government in any given year. That is an awful lot. The Secretary of State said that those could take time to investigate. Yesterday, the Minister told us that

“there is a strict time limit attached to our opt-in on these measures—that we have to take a decision within three months. It takes the Government, through interdepartmental consultation, some time to work out what their own assessment of a particular measure is once it is published.”

That causes a problem, because it means that there is no time in the parliamentary timetable for us to investigate those measures properly.

What does the Bill do? It might not tickle the fancy of my fellow Eurosceptics, but I am sure that, when looking at the next area of policy from which to grab power, the Commission negotiators will have at the back of their minds a worry that at one point the British people might have a say about what they are trying to do. As has been described in so many books, they knew in the past that a friendly chat with close friends at the Foreign Office could mean a little less excitement down the line.

At the beginning of my remarks, I described how the British public and British politicians had entered the European garden of Eden fully clothed, only to find that over a period of years we had been stripped. Although I appreciate that the Bill is just a fig leaf, I will happily vote for it because it covers a tiny piece of our modesty.