European Union (Approvals) Bill

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am very concerned about this issue because before my time in Parliament, I was involved in the trade union movement, in which I have a strong interest, and my feeling is that the agency and fundamental rights in the European Union are a bit of a paper tiger when it comes to defending workers’ rights. As I said when I intervened, I want fundamental rights to be strengthened. Whether they are strengthened by legislation in this Parliament or at the European Union level is a matter for debate, but they certainly need to be strengthened. The rights of trade unionists were weakened considerably by previous Conservative Governments and they have not been restored to anything like my satisfaction.

The “paper tiger” nature of fundamental rights in the European Union was shown in the Viking Line case. Industrial action was taken and, strangely, the fundamental right to take strike action was overridden in favour of the interests of employers. Profits and the rights of employers were seen to have primacy over the fundamental rights of trade unionists. So, I am not impressed by the fundamental rights guaranteed by the European Union. If they are fundamental, the trade unionists taking that action should have been found to be in the right, and the European Court of Justice should not have ruled against them, finding in favour of employers. There have been two such cases, major cases, and they have shaken the confidence considerably of many trade unionists who mistakenly put their faith in the European Union to defend their rights.

I was never impressed with the European Union. As the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) knows, I am a critic from a left-wing, rather than right-wing, point of view. I was never as confident as perhaps some of my colleagues were that the European Union would defend trade union and worker rights. I will not necessarily be voting with the hon. Gentleman on this issue—if a vote is indeed called—but I do want the fundamental rights of workers and trade unionists strongly supported and defended, be that in the European Union or in the United Kingdom.

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

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I want to talk about the agency in general terms. I am very concerned about the growth in the number of agencies at European level: the European “quangocracy”, as many call it. As a Member of the European Parliament, I sat on the Committee on Budgetary Control, whose purview extended to the agencies when we approved their accounts or gave them a statement of assurance each year. People always moan about the risk of fraud, mismanagement and maladministration in the European Commission, but it was fairly obvious that the further away from the Commission—from the centre—agencies were, the less the scrutiny of their accounts.

My concern is that giving the Fundamental Rights Agency a multi-annual financial framework and such a big budget increase could lead to issues with the way it runs its accounts. I am not saying it had issues in the past—actually, it did have one—but we are talking about a massive expansion in its budget. It is an arm’s length body that has very little oversight from the European Commission, the European Parliament or national Governments.

Over the years, the European Court of Auditors has sporadically looked at projects run by the agency. It is fair to say that they have been of mixed value. They have certainly improved over time, as one would expect, but I understand why concerns are being raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), among others, about including an agency whose work obviously duplicates other bits of work going on within the European Commission, the Council of Europe and possibly in other places.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Connarty]

I recall that well, because I have been a Member of the House since ’92, and I remember the very lengthy debates that took place, but this is not about the Maastricht treaty; it is about the proposal in the Bill, which is basically to set up a

“Multiannual Framework for the Fundamental Rights Agency”.

That is the point that is of interest to me, because that is an important thing to do and we should be going forward with it. I hope that we do. If the Government really are about to do an about-face and vote against that, I wonder what their position was in the Council, when this went through. Were they voted down in the Council? Are they about to change their position?

I am interested in the Government’s position as much as anyone else, but I am speaking from my point of view, looking at this as someone who has been on the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the European Scrutiny Committee for a long time. It is important, I believe, for us to realise that, while we might not like the fact that the EU sometimes asks us to do things that we might not have wished to do ourselves—for me, some of those are in fishing and agriculture, neither of which has been massively amended by anything that has happened recently under this Government—human rights will not be harmed in this country but will be advanced markedly in other countries by having the EU alongside the Council of Europe and the Court of Human Rights, fighting for human rights for all in Europe. Who would wish to deny that, apart from the hon. Member for Shipley?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Is there not a concern, though, about the duplication and growth of those agencies? Even the European Commission, through Commissioner Šefcovic, said at the end of last year that we need to reform many of these agencies, which have unruly-sized governing boards, and try to prevent conflicts of interest. Just in this particular field, we have the Fundamental Rights Agency based in Vienna, the European Institute for Gender Equality based in Vilnius, and the European Asylum Support Office based in Valetta. Surely the question is, should we be growing this agency and giving it such a big budget and a multi-annual financial framework of such a size before we have undertaken some reform of those agencies?

[Michael Connarty]

I take the point. It is well made by the hon. Gentleman, who speaks from the dual perspective of looking in from the European Union at the effect on other countries, and looking out now from this Parliament at what the European Union is doing.

I find it remarkable that every time the European Union grows, we have a convention that the new member state gets a new Commissioner. At my first meeting in Brussels, I believe I raised the matter with UKRep—why did we need a new Commissioner every time we added a country? Why does every member state have to have an office of some kind because it does not have an office of some other kind? We did it. We were fighting over the universal patent recently, and the most important thing to the UK was where the patent court would be based. It had to be based in London. It was not about whether the patent was a good or a bad thing. There is a problem with the EU in that it sprays benefits around. I believe it has put some institution on Crete—a wonderful island where I have holidayed often, but I could not work out why a major institution of the European Union had been located on Crete, apart from the fact that the Greeks wanted to have their turn.

That has to be looked at fundamentally, but the principle is correct. If the European Union sets up the agency, it will monitor what is happening with human rights, and I hope it will then begin to ask how it can help the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights and those who want, as Churchill and many others did after the last war, to base Europe on human rights. The questions will continue about the corpus juris, which the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) will no doubt talk about, and the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) will no doubt talk about economic interference.

After all that is discussed, I hope we will all be able to agree that if the EU supports the Council of Europe and does the business, making human rights available to all the people in the EU and then beyond, it will advance Europe in accordance with the original principles of the people who set up the convention, which should be at the heart of our politics.