European Union (Referendum) Bill

Damian Green Excerpts

Friday 17th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

I will seek to be brief, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a privilege to follow the shadow Foreign Secretary, and I am grateful to him for confirming that the Labour party does not trust the British people to express a view on this important matter. I say in all friendship to him that the Labour party’s commitment to referendums on every major treaty would be slightly more convincing if in the 13 years it was in power it had ever held a referendum on any of the various treaties that were agreed.

I support very strongly the Bill presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), as I supported the Bill last year when it was presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton). I should say at the outset that I do so from an explicitly pro-European perspective. I believe this country has benefited from EU membership, benefits from it today and will continue to benefit from it in the future. It will do so even more with the various reforms that not just this Prime Minister but many enlightened leaders across Europe already agree are necessary for the future and better working of the European Union. There is a genuine consensus around Europe that a reformed European Union is necessary. I look forward to a re-elected Conservative Government leading that reform not just, although principally, in the interests of the British people, but in the interests of people in other member states. The programme set out, of renegotiation followed by a referendum, will be good for Britain and good for Europe as well.

It is time to take this decision. The point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst that he, shockingly, was old enough to vote in the 1975 referendum—as was I, just about. Like many of us—I think for the Foreign Secretary as well—it was the first political act I took. I joined the Conservative party in 1975, and then campaigned for a yes vote as an idealistic young student in the middle of 1975 under the new Conservative leadership of Margaret Thatcher. Sadly, I am not quite as young as I was then, but I am still as idealistic. I still think that great things can be achieved within Europe by European countries acting together.

This is an historic decision—one that we perhaps ought to take as a country every generation or two, and it is 40 years since we last did so—and we need to put it in the historical perspective. If somebody had told any of us, particularly any of the young people voting for the first time in 1975, that within 20 years countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic would be democracies co-operating with us in an international organisation, with their people becoming more prosperous and having the freedom to express political views, we would have thought that that was the most enormous historic achievement—and it was the most enormous historic achievement. I think even those who are most hostile, on either side of the House, to the European Union, and particularly to European idealism, should recognise that the existence of the European Union as a beacon of prosperity and peace was one of the things that drove on those reforms in the former Soviet states that had been dominated by Soviet communism. We should not forget that, because that is the single most beneficial historic change that has happened in our continent in any of our lifetimes. A lot of that is due to the European Union. Absolutely, 1975 was a long time ago. There will be many people contributing to this debate who did not have the chance to vote, and it is time that we have another vote when we have renegotiated the terms.

This debate has been debilitating and sometimes poisonous, and it has gone on for too long. As I say, I not only approach this debate from an explicitly pro-European perspective, I go into it confident that, just as the public did in Scotland, the verdict will go the right and sensible way: to stay in a reformed Europe. If I may speak not entirely across the Chamber, it is important that the very many Conservatives who think as I do, that it is in Britain’s interests to stay in a reformed European Union, make the Conservative case for our membership. We heard from the shadow Foreign Secretary the distorted view that there is a view inside the Conservative party that is anti-European, and presumably, by implication, a view inside the Labour party that is pro-European. Neither half of those propositions are true, as I suspect the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) is about to illustrate.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to make once again the distinction between Europe and the European Union? Europe is a fabulous subcontinent that we all love. The European Union is a political construct imposed on part of Europe.

[Damian Green]

It is true that it covers part of Europe, but I would gently make the point that at the time of the previous referendum there were six members and there are now 28. A considerably larger proportion of the European continent is covered by the European Union now. That is hugely to the benefit of the people living in those countries that were not in the European Union in 1975, and who will be living in the European Union when the referendum happens, as I hope it does, in 2017. The slightly crude characterisation of the Conservative party by the shadow Foreign Secretary was wrong. It is clearly, from his point of view, designed to damage the party, and I think it would damage the Conservative party if that canard was allowed to go unchallenged.

One of the interests that my party has represented very strongly is the business interest in this country. It has been one of the observable facts of the current leadership of the Labour party that, after years of Tony Blair attempting to make Labour a more business-friendly party, all of that has been thrown away. It seems perverse of it to do that, but in partisan terms I am quite happy for it to do it. It is very important that the Conservative party maintains close relations with business interests, both for its own sake and for the wider prosperity of the country. I agree with the point made by the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) that the serious voices in British business want us to stay in a reformed Europe. It is not just the CBI, as he quoted, but the Engineering Employers Federation and many big companies. Ford, BAE Systems, Unilever, Citibank and Siemens have all warned of the damage that will be caused to their businesses if we pull out. Of course, that would affect not just their businesses but tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of their workers. We all need to listen to that voice, because it is a very important one.

[Mrs Main]

None of the businesses my right hon. Friend mentions are advocating that people should not be given a choice; they are simply advocating what they would support should the people be given a choice.

[Damian Green]

I absolutely agree. As I said at the outset, I am strongly in favour of the Bill and will be voting for it for the second time in two years. Given my general stance on European issues, one reason I am in favour of it is because I am in favour of democracy and this is an important historic decision that ought to be put to the British people. At the same time, I am confident that the view that we should stay in a reformed Europe will appeal to the British people, and that those who think as I do will win the referendum vote. So from that point of view, bring it on! There are a number of economic reasons for that: the capacity to negotiate on trade benefits that millions of people in this country get from the single market, and the seriousness with which we are taken in other parts of the world. This debate is not the time to rehearse those arguments—the referendum campaign may well be the time to do that—but there are other arguments as well, arguments of idealism.

The other point I would put, in particular to my own right hon. and hon. Friends who may well believe that Britain would be “better off out”, to coin a phrase, relates to Britain’s voice in the world. It seems to me unarguable that if we pulled out, the rest of the world would, first of all, be completely bemused that here was an advanced prosperous democracy telling 27 friendly democratic neighbour countries that we no longer want to act or be in an organisation with them. Not only would that have a damaging effect on our relationship with those 27 other friendly democracies, it would have a seriously damaging effect on our relationship with the other great powers of the world. It is not credible that an American President, a Chinese leader or an Indian business person would take Britain as seriously if we pulled out of the European Union as they would if we stayed in and played a leading and constructive role in it. Britain’s ability to have a strong voice and, in the words of our former Foreign Secretary, Lord Hurd, to punch above our weight in the world depends partly on our playing a leading role in the European Union and in Europe more widely. That is one more reason why our staying in the EU should appeal to Conservatives.

Many people have mentioned the lessons that we should learn from the Scottish referendum. One lesson I learned is that, although it is vital to win the economic argument, as the Better Together campaign did, it is also important to win the emotional arguments. In a referendum campaign, we will need to engage heads and hearts. For all the current travails of the eurozone, which desperately need sorting out, I believe that an idealistic vision remains.

We live in a continent that has spent centuries tearing itself apart with wars that destroyed communities and whole countries, leading up to the terrible slaughter in the first half of the 20th century. In the past 70 years, that continent has become a haven of peace and prosperity in an increasingly dangerous world, and it has built that peace and prosperity in countries that had previously known nothing but occupation and oppression. Go to Cracow, to Bucharest and to Vilnius and see what people there think. They are proud to be members of a democratic European Union, and we in Britain should be proud of our part in building this peaceful and prosperous continent.

I am very much in favour of letting the British people hear these arguments and of putting them to them in a referendum. I am also proud to be a member of the only party in this House that is wholeheartedly in favour of that—[Interruption.] I am being heckled from a sedentary position by the hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell), whom I sort of welcome to his new place. Shockingly, I have had private conversations with senior people in UKIP over the past few days. Before the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), falls off her chair, I should explain that those conversations were held entirely on the basis of policy. I was assured that UKIP’s position was that it would prefer the House of Commons to vote to pull Britain out of Europe without consulting the British people in a referendum. To be fair, that conversation took place last Monday and today is Friday, so UKIP could well have held several positions since then. I very much look forward to the hon. Gentleman catching your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, so that he can clarify exactly what UKIP’s position on a referendum is this morning.

I want to end by quoting some wise words from the 1975 referendum campaign:

“The choice is clear. We can play a role in developing Europe or we can turn our backs on the Community. By turning our backs we forfeit our right to influence what happens in the Community. But what happens in the Community will inevitably affect us.”

That was right when Margaret Thatcher first said it in 1975, and it is still right today. For Britain’s sake, we need to make that argument and to trust the people to listen to it. Most of all, we need to pass this Bill with all speed.