Northern Ireland Elections
Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and Bernard Jenkin(2 years ago)
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Chris Heaton-Harris
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his words and his questions. I hear exactly what he says. He details where legislation is in this place. The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill is, I believe, now in Committee in the House of Lords, unamended at this point. It is moving at good pace. This Government’s preferred view is to have a negotiated solution with our European partners, but he can see what we are aiming for in the content of that Bill.
I also hear what the right hon. Gentleman says about the history—I have made that point myself to all those who have raised similar points with me because I am aware of it and of the responsibility that sits on my shoulders. I am also aware that the 25th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement on 10 April could and should be a great day for Northern Ireland, its politics and its past, present and future. I look forward to working with the right hon. Gentleman on all those matters.
Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I very much welcome the bipartisan tone of these exchanges; we need to look forward without blame and with hope in our hearts that we can restore power sharing and the working of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement as quickly as possible, but are we not learning something from the state of the Northern Ireland protocol? It has been in force for nearly three years but it has not been fully implemented and probably never will be. Might we not have to face the fact that, for as long as the protocol exists and applies EU law in Northern Ireland directly, it is increasingly unlikely that power sharing will be restored in Northern Ireland? Do we not need to look more grandly and strategically at this question with the Republic of Ireland, with our American allies, with the European Union and with all the parties in Northern Ireland about how to restore the functioning of the Good Friday agreement?
Chris Heaton-Harris
I concur with the sentiment behind my hon. Friend’s question. He has mentioned a whole host of important interlocutors in this space. Drawing on my experience of European institutions, I do not believe that the protocol was written in malice. I believe that it was written in a way that people believed would work. However, the practicalities of it are obvious to all in Northern Ireland in many different ways. Even its partial application is disrupting goods and the way people can go about their business, and it has had serious ramifications for consumers and businesses across Northern Ireland, so it absolutely does need to be reformed. This is now recognised by all the parties in all negotiations.
European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords]
Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and Bernard Jenkin(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Chris Heaton-Harris
I absolutely agree. It is the guarantor bit that causes the real problem in this matter.
Notre Europe also calls for
“substantial improvement to the coordination of economic policies”
as part of building a European “social market economy”. Notre Europe
“insists on the pressing necessity for the Union to become a global and influential actor... It must, in due course have summoned up a defence policy and the joint forces to go with it.”
The charter also states:
“Though healthy emulation may be conceivable, nay desirable, competition between nations is the harbinger of all sorts of conflicts and the very negation of all concepts of political community, not to mention being a brake on the coherence and might of a large integrated economic block. Some types of fiscal and social competition are destructive and must be resisted.”
In other words, the European Union should set tax rates and social and employment law.
Notre Europe, which is funded from the Europe for Citizens budget line, also believes that
“there are domains where Union action is of the essence and where it will have to be increased. The issue of mobility”—
currently a pertinent subject in the UK—
“comes in that scope: a European labour market is needed for those who go from one country to the next, including common rules and protections. Member States must further come to an agreement on a minimum package of social rights to be observed everywhere and at all times.”
Notre Europe also
“champions Jacques Delors’ groundbreaking vision of a Federation of Nation-States.”
It is notable that that phrase was later propounded by the current Commission President, Mr Barroso, in his state of the Union address in 2012.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
Does not that episode underline the point of our signing a letter to the Prime Minister at the weekend, because it is not the lack of a power of veto that seems to matter in this case, but the reluctance to exercise a veto even when we have one?
Chris Heaton-Harris
The latter part of my hon. Friend’s intervention is exactly right. We have a veto on the matter, so it is up to Parliament to choose whether it wants to exercise it. That is the point of this debate.
Finally—this bit I find particularly galling—Notre Europe’s charter states:
‘The 21st century EU must also have at its command a budget in keeping with its ambitions. It will not be possible… to settle for a ceiling at 1.27% of Member States’ gross national product without abandoning stated goals. It must establish new own resources levied through genuine European taxation, proof perfect of European solidarity beyond the States’ calculations in terms of “return” on their contribution, calculations the philosophical, political and economic basis of which Notre Europe disputes.’
In other words, the funding that Notre Europe receives from that budget line goes to try to get a European tax to fund even more Europe.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I am sure that you, as Chairman of Ways and Means, will be pleased to know that we were fairly generous in 2013, because Notre Europe was awarded €435,500 from the Europe for Citizens budget line. It was awarded €500,000 in 2012, €550,000 in 2011 and €605,000 in 2010. That means that under the last Europe for Citizens programme that organisation was awarded a total of almost €2.1 million.
It also turns out that Notre Europe has been awarded grants for particular projects under the last Europe for Citizens programme—the European Commission likes not only to fund an organisation, but to give it things to do. In 2009 it received €46,400 for a project called “Think Global—Act European”. In 2011 it received €102,500 for a project of the same name. A cursory examination of the European Union’s budgets online shows that that programme received about €2.24 million.
The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy), who has just left the Chamber, would have been pleased to hear my next point. Also benefiting handsomely under the previous Europe for Citizens programme is our old friend the European Movement. Hon. Members might have noticed that we all receive a regular e-mail commenting on British and European political matters from the UK chapter of the European Movement. It claims that it raises its own moneys and that its objective is to
“contribute to the establishment of a united, federal Europe”,
which is a fairly political objective.
Seemingly, however, the European Movement does receive EU moneys. The grants that I am about to list were all given to help the running of European Movement International, which is based in Brussels, rather than for any one specific project. The European Movement received €432,500 in 2013, €430,000 in 2012, and €430,000 in 2010. A little more delving shows that in 2007 it was also awarded €56,360 for a project that is not identified on the relevant list of selected projects but it still got the money. The total receipts for this organisation under the previous programme, the latest version of which the Government want us to recommend to go through, were almost €1.78 million—the best part of £1.5 million.
My final example of egregious spending under the Europe for Citizens programme is the money doled out to the Union of European Federalists. As its name suggests, this organisation is “dedicated to the promotion” of a “federal Europe”. Over the course of the previous programme, the UEF was awarded grants totalling €671,000 to support its existence—again, not to support projects that it runs. It received €121,000 in 2013, €110,000 in 2012, €110,000 in 2011, €110,000 in 2010, €110,000 in 2009, and €110,000 in 2008. It was also awarded grants for particular projects. In 2010—this money was given to the Belgian member organisation of the UEF, the Union of European Federalists Belgium, which is based somewhere in the same location—it was awarded €15,214 for a project called “European issues and citizenship”. We can see a theme running through many of the sums that are given. In 2007, it too received money—€27,670—for an unspecified project. The UEF got so much money during the course of the previous programme that it raised €714,000.
European Union
Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and Bernard Jenkin(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Chris Heaton-Harris
Indeed I have.
Other myths have been circulated. It has been suggested, for instance, that the Prime Minister’s actions caused Britain to lose a seat at the table. Given that the United Kingdom was never going to take part in the Merkel-Sarkozy pact and thus potentially be subject to EU sanctions—I assume that the Opposition would be quite comfortable with that—I would not expect us to be invited to the monthly EU meetings that will start in January 2012. If the Prime Minister had signed up, the United Kingdom would still not be sitting at that table, because we are not in the eurozone, The veto changes mean nothing structurally in terms of UK influence at those meetings.
Another myth is that the Prime Minister’s veto has created a two-tier European Union. That is complete tosh. We have a eurozone of 17, and a whole new group of Schengen countries. In 2004, when we signed up to the EU accession, a group of countries decided to allow entry to workers from the accession countries, but only Britain allowed them to hold the burgundy passport immediately. Other countries decided to move at a completely different speed.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I entirely agree. The Prime Minister’s actions were, in fact, a timely reaction to the signs of caucusing of the 17 eurozone countries, and those countries that rely almost completely on Germany for their trade.
There are so many myths. There is, for instance, the myth perpetrated by the BBC’s Stephanie Flanders—or, at least, the person who wrote what was on her autocue—that the Prime Minister used his veto to protect a tiny part of our economy. In fact, financial services accounted for a £35 billion trade surplus last year, 2 million jobs in the United Kingdom, and £54 million paid to the Exchequer in taxes.
The truth is that these constitutional treaty changes are the result of yet another EU summit that skirted around the problem of eurozone debt without paying off one cent of it. Many commentators, and some politicians here and abroad, may well have had a fun weekend pointing fingers at the UK and pulling shocked faces at the fact that a British Prime Minister dared, after nearly two decades, to engage properly in negotiations by setting out a solid position at the beginning rather than just saying yes. Let us now get down to negotiations. Let us talk. I commend this excellent motion,.