Europe: Renegotiation

Debate between David Lidington and Douglas Carswell

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point. We have a single market for goods, and it is working pretty well, but the single market for services is woefully underdeveloped, despite the fact that in every European economy, it will be the services sectors from which the new jobs and the new growth will come. We need to seek determined action in that area.

[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)]

The Prime Minister has paid the usual lip service to the EU’s crisis of competitiveness, but, rather like what happened under his predecessor, Tony Blair, 15 years ago, nothing has changed. The Minister’s own officials are growing weary of initiatives that fail to tackle Euro-sclerosis. What exactly is going to be different this time? Will the Minister spell out the details of the plans that will magically make the EU more competitive?

[Mr Lidington]

If there is one thing that does not change, it is the nature of the hon. Gentleman’s interventions on this subject. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Business Secretary and I have spoken frequently on the agenda on competitiveness, and I would be happy to send the hon. Gentleman a sheaf of speeches if he would like me to. Broadly, this is about three things. It is about cutting the cost of unnecessary red tape and regulation on all businesses, particularly on small and medium-sized enterprises. It is about deepening the single market, particularly in digital and in services, where it is underdeveloped at the moment. And it is about forging ambitious new trade agreements with other countries and other regions of the world, for their benefit and ours. These are the opportunities that British business has urged us to take, and this Government are determined not to follow but to lead on these matters in the European debate.

Commission Work Programme 2014

Debate between David Lidington and Douglas Carswell

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

No, the hon. Gentleman has had a bite of the cherry already, so I will make some progress.

It is good that the Commission has focused on continuing negotiations on the transatlantic trade and investment partnership. The Government estimate that the benefits of that deal to this country could be worth up to £10 billion a year, or more than £380 for every household. Frankly, I would like to have seen even greater priority and emphasis in the work programme for that potentially transformative deal. I would also like other ongoing negotiations to have been mentioned, such as those on an EU-Japan free trade agreement, which we estimate could be worth £5 billion a year for the United Kingdom.

The Government also welcome the objectives of the telecoms package and the other measures in the work programme that would contribute towards the completion of the digital single market. For the EU to remain competitive, the single market needs to keep pace with developments in the digital economy. The digital economy is not only helping to connect, inform and entertain us, but driving innovation and growth across our economies.

[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)]

The Minister talks about the need to deepen and complete the single market. At the same time he complains about excessive regulation. Does he not recognise that much of the excessive regulation has been brought in under the auspices of a single market, and that by extending and deepening it, he greatly expands the scope for excessive regulation, which produces economic stagnation?

[Mr Lidington]

I understand my hon. Friend’s argument, but—if I may say so—I think that he oversells his case. It is true that we can have European regulation, just as we can at national level, that is overly prescriptive, overly complicated and far too costly as far as business is concerned. Therefore, one of the tests that we have in mind when judging Commission proposals is whether in the first place the introduction of a single regulatory regime to govern a European single market would produce a net benefit for business, compared with the 28 different national regimes that would be eliminated as a consequence of a single European regulatory framework. Also, Ministers in this Government have argued repeatedly that we think the Commission could make more use of the principle of mutual recognition, which after all was made clear in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice some decades ago in the Cassis de Dijon case, rather than relying all the time on the detailed harmonisation of national arrangements, which can easily lead one into the sort of overly complicated system that my hon. Friend fears.

European Union Bill

Debate between David Lidington and Douglas Carswell

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

I am confident because of what I see and hear when dealing with Ministers from other European Governments who have woken up to the scale of the competitive challenge that Europe faces from other regions of the world. When one talks with Ministers from Germany, Scandinavia, much of central and eastern Europe and even France, which has historically had a different approach to business and trade than we have had, one realises that there is a real fear that we are facing not only a difficult economic downturn and an ongoing economic crisis, with high unemployment across our continent, but a profound, long-term challenge to the competitiveness, and therefore prosperity, of our societies. I find Ministers from other countries alive to that challenge and so have greater hope that we can make progress than does my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd).

[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)]

Will the Minister not find that that is precisely the sort of lip service that was paid to reform at the time of the Lisbon agenda more than a decade ago, when Ministers throughout Europe said that they would achieve reform and precisely nothing happened? Have we not been here before and heard that song sung too often?

[Mr Lidington]

The Lisbon agenda was certainly a grievous disappointment, and our chief concern about the Europe 2020 programme is that it will go the same way by being much too concerned with targets and inputs and not looking at competitiveness. However, if we look at the history of this country’s relationship with the EU, we can see how the UK has at key moments helped lead a movement that has changed Europe for the better.

I was teased earlier by Opposition Front Benchers about the impact of the Single European Act, but the creation of the European single market gave opportunities to business and individual workers in this country and in every other member state, and that has helped us to become more competitive and prosperous now than we would have been had Margaret Thatcher and Lord Cockfield not had the vigour and commitment to see it through.

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[Mr Lidington]

It is possible for that to happen, but it depends crucially on the content and complexity of the measure. Regulation is not desirable simply because it takes place at a European level and replaced national regulations. It is especially undesirable from the UK’s point of view if a familiar system of regulation that reflects the way we do business is replaced by something modelled on completely different practices from a different member state.

[Mr Carswell]

The Minister sings the virtues of the single market, so will he explain to the Committee why we have had a trade deficit with Europe every year since we joined the single market, whereas before we had a trade surplus? Will he also explain why non-EU states such as China seem to have no difficulty in gaining market access without having signed up to many of the regulations he supports?

[Mr Lidington]

I am sorry that my hon. Friend seems to regard Margaret Thatcher as having sold out to Europe when she agreed to the single market. I ask him to talk to UK businesses, as he will find that they regard the single European market as a great boon. It was the combination of the UK being in the single European market and at the same time offering the best deal, with regard to regulation and low taxes, that led the UK, under the Conservative Government that he and I supported, to attract the lion’s share of foreign direct inward investment into the entire EU.