European Affairs Debate
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David Lidington
Main Page: David Lidington (Conservative - Aylesbury)Department Debates - View all David Lidington's debates with the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
(8 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
May I first congratulate all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in the debate this afternoon?
Mr Rees-Mogg
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thought the Minister might begin with an apology for the absence of the Foreign Secretary. It is custom for senior Ministers who have opened debates to return for the end of them. On such an important matter, it is a rather surprising discourtesy to the House that the normal convention has not been observed.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. What I would say is that it is the choice of the Foreign Secretary, and who knows, we may hear something yet, as the Minister for Europe has so far only managed to get three words out.
Mr Lidington
My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is meticulous in his courtesies to this House, but sometimes Secretaries of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs have to deal with extremely urgent matters to do with this country’s national security.
I want to single out the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), as anybody who heard it, whichever side of this argument they stand on, will remember it as one of the great parliamentary set pieces of their years in this place.
I do not want to dwell at length on the arguments about renegotiation, because my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister went into them in great detail and answered questions about the subject for three hours on Monday. I simply say that I have sat through a fair number of these debates in the last six years, and I will be the first to say to my hon. Friends the Members for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) that they are models of consistency in their opposition to British membership of the European Union. If the Prime Minister had come back from Brussels brandishing the severed heads of the members of the European Commission and proceeded to conduct an auto-da-fé in Downing Street of copies of the Lisbon treaty, they would still be saying, “This is feeble, insufficient, not enough.”
Mr Lidington
No, I want to deal with what the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) said, as he raised some serious issues about the impact of a British withdrawal upon the devolved Administrations, particularly, but not exclusively, Scotland’s. It is for the Government of the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom being the member state party to the treaties, to decide whether to trigger an article 50 process after such a referendum result. But he is right to say that there would be some pretty complicated outworkings of British departure from the EU for all three devolved Administrations and for the United Kingdom and English statute book, because a fair number of Acts of Parliament reflect European law as it has developed over the past 40 years. Those things would have to be gone through, both in the two years’ negotiations following the triggering of article 50 and, I suspect, in the years subsequent.
Alex Salmond
Does the Minister understand the point here? If there is not to be a vote in this place because it is superseded by a popular sovereignty vote for out, what would be the circumstances, under the Sewel convention, of a vote in the Scottish Parliament if the popular vote in Scotland had been for in?
Mr Lidington
The United Kingdom is the signatory to the European treaties, and therefore it is the UK Government who take the decision on whether to invoke article 50.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) raised important points about what he saw as security risks from people who had migrated to Germany crossing to the United Kingdom. My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) said, accurately, that we have some pretty effective security arrangements at our borders and that the record shows not only that the chief terrorist threat to the United Kingdom too often comes from British citizens, but that there have been terrorist incidents abroad that have been brought about by people who were British born and bred. In Germany, it takes eight to 10 years for someone to get citizenship, and they have to have a clean criminal record, pass an integration test and show that they have an independent source of income. It is probably because those tests are so rigorous that only 2.2% of refugees in Germany take German citizenship and get German passports. What we can and do do here is stop people, including EU citizens, at our borders and refuse entry to anyone about whom there is information of terrorist links. Some of my hon. Friends overlook the fact that our safeguards against terrorism are stronger precisely because we are party to the various European agreements on data sharing and information sharing, such as on passenger name records, which we would be outwith if we were to leave the European Union and were unable to negotiate some alternative arrangement.
The key question in deciding our position on membership is one my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) touched on: how will we be better able to control our destiny and influence for good the lives of the people whom we represent? The point that the leave campaigners must face is that the alternatives that we see—most notably Norway and Switzerland—are countries that, in order to get free trade and the single market, have had to accept not only all the EU regulations that govern those matters without any say or vote in determining them, but the free movement of people and a duty to contribute to the EU budget. That is not sovereignty, but kingship with a paper crown. It would not bring the power to shape European policy and co-operation for the benefit of the people whom we are sent here to represent from all parts of the United Kingdom.
What has dismayed me during this debate is that, apart from my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), there has been little attempt to describe what the alternative is that will somehow enable us to have all the things that we value about European Union membership with none of the things that may matter to other Governments around Europe and which we perhaps find irksome or troubling.
Mr Lidington
No, I will not give way.
I am bemused that some of my hon. Friends have managed to convince themselves of two propositions: that other European countries are at present engaged in what has been termed a “vindictive and spiteful” attempt to harm our interests or a conspiracy to do us down; and that those same Governments will rush to give us everything that we want with none of the downsides if only we vote to leave. That is a fanciful analysis of European politics today. If we accept that we want a single market, we must have the EU rules that go with it and the other costs, such as those that Norway and Switzerland have to pay today.
We are putting so much at risk at a time of real peril not just for this country but for the whole of the west. We face a massive economic challenge from global competition and digital technology; a challenge from transnational crime and global terrorism; the collapse of states in parts of Africa and the middle east, which has allowed terrorism, people trafficking and drug trafficking to flourish; and the challenge from a newly aggressive Russia in both eastern Europe and the middle east. No one country in Europe, not even the biggest, will be able to tackle those challenges on its own. That is why our key allies—not just those in Europe, but the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand—see the United Kingdom as stronger and more influential in the world as a leader in our own continent. I am dismayed by the insouciant attitude of those who want to leave to the risk that their campaign poses of the possible fragmentation of the west. It is truly shocking.
We need to have confidence in this country’s ability to lead and shape events in Europe, as we have done in creating the single market, in pioneering free trade deals, in organising a firm response through sanctions to Russian aggression in Ukraine and to Iran’s nuclear programme, and in defeating piracy in the Indian ocean.
The United Kingdom should be confident in our ability to work with allies in Europe and around the world. We should not see the two things as in any way contradictory. As we look to the future and face again the challenges of large-scale migration driven by terrorism, failed states, climate change and economic problems in much of the developing world, we need to work together with our partners and our allies, because none of us can tackle that on our own. We see the United Kingdom today as a European power with global interests and global influence. Those two aspects of this country are not contradictory; they complement one another. We need to go forward with the confidence and optimism that the United Kingdom can help make a better future not just for every family in this country but for all the nations of the wider European family. That is the case that I and my right hon. and hon. Friends will be putting to the country in the months to come.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered European affairs.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Have the Government given any indication that they might be interested in making a statement about guidance that they have given to civil servants to restrict information to Ministers during the period of the referendum, which involves concealing information that is being used by other Ministers for campaigning purposes?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
The Minister for Europe is desperate to answer.
Mr Lidington
I am happy to respond. The Prime Minister responded to this point in answer to questions on Monday. The Government have a very clear position, which is to recommend to the country that people vote to remain members of a reformed European Union. Quite exceptionally, Ministers are being allowed to depart from the normal rules on collective responsibility in order to dissent from the official Government position on that referendum question, but the civil service exists to serve and support the policy agreed by the Government of the day. The letter published by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, subsequently extended by formal guidance from the Cabinet secretary to civil servants, does no more than give effect to that policy.