Renegotiation of EU Membership (Devolved Administrations)

David Lidington Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) on securing this debate.

I, too, want to avoid reprising the greatest hits from today’s ministerial statement in the House, but it would be remiss of me if I did not start by putting it on the record that today the Prime Minister wrote to the President of the European Council setting out four key areas on which he seeks reform: on sovereignty and subsidiarity; on competitiveness; on eurozone governance; and on migration and welfare. Anyone who examines the Prime Minister’s speech this morning or the text of his letter to Mr Tusk, which was released slightly later, will see that many areas in which we are seeking reform match the views often expressed by members of the devolved Governments of the United Kingdom.

The Scottish Government have published their agenda for reform, which includes calls for greater focus on competitiveness; deepening the European single market, and particularly for the creation of a Europe-wide digital single market; and progress on an internal energy union. The United Kingdom Government have embodied all those things in their approach to European reform. Our proposals for smarter, less burdensome and less complex regulation will be particularly welcome in Northern Ireland, which is overwhelmingly a small and medium-sized enterprise economy.

If we look at previous economic reforms, we find that the EU-South Korea free trade agreement, for example, is worth up to £500 million a year to the British economy. That agreement is already bringing advantages to sectors such as whisky and financial services, which are important in Scotland and in the two other devolved parts of this country. The Scottish Government’s agenda for reform also mentioned a stronger role for national Parliaments and the need to secure a stronger focus at European level on subsidiarity and proportionality—those ideas are meant to be written into the DNA of the way in which the EU operates.

I was asked why certain other matters were not included in the Prime Minister’s letter. Of course, the Government have already delivered quite a lot of effort on securing reform on some of those issues. Earlier, in the House, I mentioned the Damanaki proposals on fisheries reform, which have delivered things such as the ban on discarding, which successive British Governments have sought for many, many years and which have led to a shift towards greater local and regional management of fisheries. It is no secret that British Ministers would have wished to go further, and I am sure there will be an opportunity to return to the charge; but in the meantime, the real priority in fishing is to ensure that we implement those reforms in full.

Similarly, a measure of reform was achieved in the last common agricultural policy round, but, of course, the timing of the agricultural reviews matches that of the multi-annual financial framework, so the next opportunity to seek more thorough reform of agriculture will be in a few years’ time, as we approach the review of the MFF.

Many contributions to today’s debate focused on the negotiation process. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is leading a clear process to secure reform, which is now well under way. He has already met the leaders of all the other 27 member states, as well as the President of the European Commission and the Presidents of the European Parliament and the European Council. In parallel, talks on technical issues have been taking place in Brussels to inform our analysis of the legal options for reform. There will now be a process of negotiation involving all 28 member states leading up to the European Council in December, which will be the next time that Heads of Government will substantively discuss these issues.

We attach great importance to our engagement with the devolved Administrations on this issue, as we do on others. Having said that, all hon. Members will be aware that foreign policy issues, including the United Kingdom’s membership of international organisations, are reserved matters and that relations with the EU are the responsibility of the Parliament and the Government of the United Kingdom as a whole. Of course, Scottish National party Members have a mandate from their electors in Scotland to hold the United Kingdom Government to account for the policies that we adopt on those reserved matters, so the hon. Ladies and hon. Gentlemen from the SNP who spoke this afternoon are doing precisely what it is constitutionally right for them to do on behalf of the people of Scotland.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Lidington]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I would like to make a bit more progress. I will try to give way, but I am conscious of the time and wish to try to respond to the points made in the debate.

We try to involve the devolved Administrations as directly and fully as possible in decision making on EU matters that touch on devolved areas. We have held discussions with representatives from the devolved Administrations throughout the renegotiation process, and I will be continuing those discussions when I visit Edinburgh tomorrow. I am actively looking for dates to visit Cardiff and Belfast in the near future. The UK’s renegotiation is now also a standing agenda item at meetings of the Joint Ministerial Committee on Europe, which I chair. The renegotiation will also be an issue for discussion at the next meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee chaired by the Prime Minister and involving the First Ministers of the three devolved Administrations, which is next due to meet in January.

It has been implicit in a number of speeches this afternoon that it will not be enough simply to rely on a series of formal meetings at set intervals. If the consultation process is to work effectively, it will rely not only on UK Ministers arranging meetings or conversations, but on devolved Ministers getting on the phone when an issue arises that concerns them or when they wish to express a particularly important point of view to a British Minister, so that view is registered and can be taken into account in framing the UK position. That, after all, is how we now work in respect of EU policy generally. There is an agreed position across the Government that every Department, before it seeks collective agreement within the UK Government on a negotiating position in relation to a European issue, should analyse whether that question touches on devolved responsibilities and, if it does, should consult the devolved Administrations. In their written submission to fellow UK Ministers, Departments should summarise the views and interests of the devolved Administrations, so that we can take them into account when making our decisions.

As the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) said, we are one United Kingdom. There will be one in/out referendum, which will be decided on a majority of those who vote. It is the UK that is the member state of the EU, so it is right that the electorate of the member state as a whole has a say on continued EU membership.

I was also asked about the Government’s approach to involving the devolved Administrations in EU business, and I strongly maintain that we always try to ensure that the interests of the devolved Governments and the people of all parts of the UK are defended and advanced. The Scottish Fisheries Minister, Mr Lochhead, is in north America this week, and our embassy in Washington has been active in arranging meetings for that visit. Our officials in the United States have been active in seeking benefits for Scottish business of the kind sought by Mr Lochhead, such as the lifting of the US ban on the import of haggis.

We have a system under which we welcome devolved Ministers to join delegations in Brussels, and I have welcomed a Welsh Minister to meetings of the General Affairs Council more than once when we have been due to discuss cohesion policy, which is of particular importance to the Government and people of Wales. All three devolved Administrations sent Ministers and officials to the fisheries talks, where collectively they usually far outnumbered the UK delegation.