Northern Ireland
Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and John Redwood(10 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Chris Heaton-Harris)
I beg to move,
That the draft Windsor Framework (Constitutional Status of Northern Ireland) Regulations 2024, which were laid before this House on 31 January, be approved.
Getting devolution back up and running has been the principal focus of Government policy in Northern Ireland since February 2022, when the then First Minister resigned. The agreement that I set out to the House yesterday is designed to secure the widest possible support among the community in Northern Ireland for participating in the political process. These regulations should be seen and considered in the context of forming part of a package. This package will safeguard and durably strengthen Northern Ireland’s integral place in the Union and the UK’s internal market, and it will do so by placing commitments in that package into law.
The Windsor Framework (Constitutional Status of Northern Ireland) Regulations 2024 affirm, strengthen and future-proof Northern Ireland’s place within the Union, underpinned by the Acts of Union and the terms of the Northern Ireland Act 1998.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
If the Chancellor of the Exchequer wishes to lower the VAT rate or to take something out of VAT altogether, will that be a good law for Northern Ireland as well as for the rest of the UK, and can we now set taxes for the whole country?
Chris Heaton-Harris
On the example my right hon. Friend has given of VAT, that has just been done for a number of different things. I believe the latest one was solar panels, but I will check with those in the Box. There are various other products, and I will get an answer for my right hon. Friend. But, yes, is the answer for VAT, and also for tax.
The regulations address the concerns that have been expressed in parts of the Unionist community in Northern Ireland that its status has been diminished. Let me say from the outset of our discussions that what the Government wanted and the Democratic Unionist party wanted, and which we had, was our shared determination to strengthen our Union.
John Redwood
Someone wanting to send goods from GB to NI would naturally expect to use the new internal market lane—the green lane. Who decides whether they would not be allowed to do so? Would it be the EU, the UK Government or the Stormont Executive?
Northern Ireland
Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and John Redwood(1 year, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Heaton-Harris
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, which I did not hear completely. The green lane will be open for goods travelling into Northern Ireland for consumption in Northern Ireland. There is a red lane for goods going into the Republic. If I misheard his question, I will write to him to clarify, if that is okay.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Why do EU laws apply under this agreement to businesses in Northern Ireland that are not trading with the EU? How many EU laws apply, and why can we not see a list of them?
Chris Heaton-Harris
It is less than 3%. This preserves access for Northern Ireland businesses to the single market, and yesterday I listed a whole host of different areas in which these EU laws are disapplied in Northern Ireland.
Leaving the European Union
Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and John Redwood(5 years, 8 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
John Redwood
Well, the Government will make sure that haulage will work, and of course that is something that the Government can and will do. I have every confidence that roughly the same number of lorries will come through Calais and Dover on 30 March as on 28 March. I am sure it will work fine. I know of no reason why the Government would stop lorry drivers moving through Calais and Dover.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Chris Heaton-Harris)
I thank my right hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene at this unusually early stage; I know that he was just coming to the point that, back on 19 December, the Commission issued a no-deal notice to say that lorries can travel as they do now until December 2019, so there is no issue.
John Redwood
Exactly. That is another way of putting my reassurance that of course things are going to work, because it is in the interests of both sides.
I find it almost unbelievable that MPs elected to this place, who are meant to be serving the interests of their constituents, take delight in spreading false rumours about how everything will go wrong, like this nonsense about how drugs will not arrive in this country on 30 March. I know of no pharmaceutical companies on the continent that currently supply drugs to the NHS but have notified it that they no longer wish to do so. I have seen very clear documentation from the French side that it knows how it will handle the transit of trucks containing drugs, and there is very clear evidence that the UK Government wish all those drugs to carry on coming in with no new barriers. So what is the argument about drugs, other than a deliberate scare story to make the most vulnerable people in our country think that there is something wrong with Brexit? It is a disgrace, and we are fed up with it.
Energy Bill [Lords]
Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and John Redwood
John Redwood
Can my hon. Friend tell us what the fix is for this? Is there a realistic way of suppressing the noise?
Chris Heaton-Harris
The best way to suppress the noise is to turn the turbine off for the period of time when the noise is likely to occur. As acousticians have demonstrated to me, the noise is more likely to occur at night when other background noises have dropped down. We can predict it, because we know which way the wind is blowing and at what speed. It drops down to ground level in a certain way, so we can know exactly which houses and which zone it will affect. Therefore, with sensible meteorological readings using the correct monitoring equipment, which is now remarkably cheap to purchase—it used to cost an awful lot—we can do a lot better.
European Union Referendum Bill
Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and John Redwood(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John Redwood
A register of interests would be one way of handling it. It would be quite complicated for large companies, but rather easier for grant-receiving organisations. The issue for companies is rather different. I am all in favour of business people taking an active part in our politics, but they may need to intervene as individuals, because if they are an executive in a very large company that has a broad shareholder base, they may not be speaking for their shareholders on a very political issue. People would ask them, “Is this your private view or are you speaking for the company and has it been tested in a company general meeting?” That is probably a debate for another day. I am all in favour of major business involvement, but unless someone owns the company they have to be careful in associating the company with their own particular views.
The conclusion I wish to put to the Government is that this Bill is extremely welcome, but it is work in progress. These are very complicated areas, because the EU is a unique and powerful institution. In order to have a fair assessment by the British people of its worth or demerits, we need to be very careful and to not in any way trammel our usual belief in independence and fairness when we test the mood of the people. I do not think the Bill quite yet meets that requirement, but I hope that, on Report, Ministers will have better and more detailed answers about how we handle the scale of campaign donations and the period prior to the referendum campaign proper with respect to controls over messages and financing, and that they will be able to address the very vexed subject of how much power, influence, money and messaging the EU itself can inject into what should be a United Kingdom debate.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) and I want to draw on some of the points he made about amendments 10 and 53.
It is a very poor politician who spends a lot of time talking about his previous speeches, but I would like to refer the House to what I said in this Chamber on 13 January 2014, when we had a lively debate on the Europe for Citizens budget, which we had a right to veto at the time and which involved the funding of a whole host of European pet projects. One such project is the European Movement and, from the very position on which I now stand, the late and much lamented Charles Kennedy made an impassioned plea for us not to cut the funding for the organisation of which he was the president. That relates to the point I want to make: we should be very wary of how organisations that receive European funding will act during the referendum campaign and ask whether they should be regulated in some way.
The preamble of the draft regulations for the Europe for Citizens programme states:
“While there is objectively an added value in being a Union citizen with established rights, the Union does not always highlight in an effective way the link between the solution to a broad range of economic and social problems and the Union’s policies.”
Therefore it wants the organisations that it funds to be very positive in the arguments that they make when they engage with civil society.
The Europe for Citizens budget line, which the European Commission funds, gives the European Movement a very large sum of money. I do not wish to pick on the European Movement all the time, but it is a good example of an organisation that receives some money to campaign to present a positive view of Europe, which I know is welcomed by many in this House, and whose funding comes from the European Commission which, I believe, wants to ensure a certain result in the forthcoming referendum.
European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords]
Debate between Chris Heaton-Harris and John Redwood(10 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Chris Heaton-Harris
Absolutely. It is a mere fraction. We are talking about it today only because of article 352, which I have already mentioned.
I feel strongly concerned about this Europe for Citizens line because it has certain requirements that need to be fulfilled before money can be obtained. It wants to build a strong feeling among citizens about belonging to the Union, and it wants to build ever-closer union. Article 3(1) of the draft regulation said that all activities of the Europe for Citizens programme would involve “fostering European citizenship”. Those are all things that go directly against the ethos that the Prime Minister built into his speech at Bloomberg about a year ago.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
As it is the clearly expressed wish of this House that we should have a lower EU budget, would it not be strange for the Government not to want to veto something when they can actually stop some spending?
Chris Heaton-Harris
I understand my right hon. Friend’s point, but even if we vetoed the measure completely, the money would remain within the budget we have agreed. A veto will not stop money being spent at EU level, but would signify the intent of the British Government that money should no longer be spent on EU propaganda budget lines and that when we get the opportunity to cull them, we will.
The draft regulation provides a reference amount for the total budget of the programme over the multi-annual financial framework term of about £154.6 million. That is a reasonable sum of money—
Chris Heaton-Harris
I agree. I estimate that the UK would contribute £17.8 million, so in times when we are a bit stretched for cash I think we should at least ask for better value for that money from the European Union.
Mr Redwood
It is a very large sum of money. As it takes more than 100 taxpayers to contribute £1 million in tax, on average, we are talking about thousands of taxpayers who will have to contribute to make up this sum. If we blocked the measure, although the money could theoretically be spent on something else, it would be made more difficult and would send a clear message that we do not want this spending.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I concur with my right hon. Friend. When I was a Member of the European Parliament, I used to table amendments to try to cull such budget lines. There was a Europe for Citizen’s programme between 2007 and 2013, which was the previous multi-annual financial framework period. It had a slightly bigger budget and, essentially, public funding was granted to various organisations promoting European integration and a federal European state. I think that most people in this House would struggle not only with funding pro-European propaganda but with using taxpayers’ money to fund politics in general.