European Council

David Miliband Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. A number of leaders of different European countries kept referring to what they thought the European Parliament would do if we agreed this figure or that figure, so the point had to be made fairly frequently in the Council that we should also, and more importantly, be listening to the individual national Parliaments, because of course it is our Parliaments that have to vote the money. The European Parliament does not have any responsibility for voting the money, and it is to our Parliaments that we should account.

[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

I am sure that the Prime Minister is right to say that no deal would be very damaging, both for Europe and for Britain. Could he say something about the part of his statement that referred to a new power for the European Parliament to negotiate flexibilities over years, and I think also over budget heads? On one reading, that is a sensible bit of flexibility; on another, it is a chance for the modicum of reform that has been achieved to be rolled back. That would obviously be very damaging indeed. Could he say a bit more about that?

[The Prime Minister]

I would be delighted to. First, we have to remember that the answer to the question, “Why is it that the European Parliament has any say over this budget at all?” is the Lisbon treaty, which the right hon. Gentleman’s party, in government, passed. Having said that, and given that we have to try to ensure that there is a deal, and it is better to have a deal than no deal, it is right to say to the Parliament, “It is important you can look at flexibilities between different years—between different budget headings—to try to ensure that spending is planned properly,” but I was very specific, and it was very specifically said at the Council, that this flexibility cannot result in the €908.4 billion ceiling being increased. That cannot go up. Money can be moved around to plan spending more effectively, although, of course, all that has to come back to the Council to be agreed, but the €908.4 billion, in my view, is inviolable.

EU Council

David Miliband Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. and learned Friend makes an important point, which is that we need to make sure that the whole debate about our engagement in Europe is properly informed. I do support our membership; I do think that the single market is vital for us and that determining the rules of that market matters for us. However, it is important that we air these facts and figures, and the balance of competences review that will be launched shortly will help all parties, all politicians and all parts of civic society in Britain to see some of the arguments and some of the facts and the figures. I think that that will help to inform the debate.

[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

Further to that question, I wonder whether there are any circumstances, further to the Prime Minister’s negotiations, in which he will recommend to the British people that they should leave the European Union.

[The Prime Minister]

As I said, I want to stay in the European Union for the reasons I have given. But I will always stand up for the British national interest as I see it. That is the job of being Prime Minister.

European Council

David Miliband Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. and learned Friend, with all his experience, makes an intriguing suggestion for further steps that the Arab League could take. Indeed, it has shown great leadership in putting pressure on Syria. However, if we want to turn the pressure up on the regime, a United Nations Security Council resolution that could be unanimously agreed and that was tough about humanitarian access and the unacceptability of what is happening should be part of the picture.

[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

May I welcome what the Prime Minister said about the developments in the western Balkans? However, I wonder whether he agrees that the most significant piece of economic news last week was the decision of the Spanish Government to amend their austerity programme in the face of stagnation and recession. The Prime Minister of Spain said he thought that when circumstances changed, policy should change. Is that not the kind of common sense that we need here?

[The Prime Minister]

I am not at all surprised by what the Spanish Prime Minister did. After all, he is stuck inside a fixed exchange rate system with no ability to have an independent monetary policy. If we had listened to the right hon. Gentleman all those years ago and joined the euro, we would be in the same boat.

EU Council

David Miliband Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. and learned Friend makes an important point. This is not about the speed at which different organisations travel: it is about the fact that Europe already has different facets. Britain is not in the single currency or in the Schengen no-borders agreement, but we are a leading member of the single market and we play a huge role in foreign and defence policy throughout Europe and NATO. We should not be embarrassed about that, and we should do what is in our national interest—rather than thinking that the right thing to do is to sign up whether or not it suits us.

[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

Will the Prime Minister confirm that in all the negotiations since 1973 the United Kingdom has never lost a significant vote on financial services regulation? Why does he think that his negotiating tactics in the future would fail where those of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair succeeded, and why does he think that it is helpful to have driven nine other members of the European Union who are not in the euro into Franco-German hands?

[The Prime Minister]

For all the right hon. Gentleman’s experience, I think that he is very naive about what is happening in Europe over financial services. Time and again—[Interruption.]

G20

David Miliband Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

It is important for people to see the European Commission report on the financial transactions tax, which shows the figures that my hon. Friend talks about, and shows that it would cost jobs. As I have said, if we could achieve global agreement for a tax of that nature there would be a case for it, but it is very hard to see that happening. I think that the focus of politicians in Europe should be to meet the promises they have already made about development rather than to hide behind a financial transactions tax that they know is very unlikely to come into being.

[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

The frustration and impatience that the Prime Minister expressed on Thursday and Friday last week were extremely well merited, and it would be as well if he came here and repeated his concerns about the failure of leadership across Europe at this vital time. In that context, though, is it not a tragedy that when Europe does need a voice for reform—for example, on budgetary policy, which is going to be a major issue in coming years—he has dealt himself out of the game with a focus on the repatriation of powers, which, frankly, is not the issue that is going to make or break the European economy?

[The Prime Minister]

I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman, for this reason: I have managed to assemble a coalition for budgetary restraint in the European Union, and this year Britain, France, Germany and others have all agreed to freeze the EU budget in real terms. I would like to go much further, but I have to say that a freeze in the budget in real terms is not something we have been able to achieve in recent years, and is a breakthrough, so I do not accept the point about looking at rebalancing powers in Europe and fighting for a deal on the budget. We can do both.

Public Disorder

David Miliband Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think the police have the clearest possible message that we want them to be a police force. We want them to be focused on crime; we do not want them fighting paper behind their desks. They have had a very clear message from the whole country this week that people want visible policing, but they want very robust policing too.

[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister will be as pleased as I am that there has been no rioting or looting in South Shields. He has rightly praised the independence and professionalism of the chief constables. Why, therefore, does he want to get rid of them all and make them stand for election?

[The Prime Minister]

We are not proposing to make chief constables stand for election; what we are proposing is to have police commissioners stand for election, replacing police authorities. The point that I would make is this: yes, we have independent police chief constables and, yes, they have to be responsible for their judgments, but in recent days the argument that it is important that they are accountable politically—and there is a discussion that can take place between politicians and police chiefs—is a thoroughly good one.

Afghanistan

David Miliband Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I misspoke—I referred to the spirit of the British Army, but I should have talked about all the British armed services. It is very striking when one is there just how many RAF personnel, and indeed how many Navy personnel, are in Afghanistan, not least the Marines. I had the great pleasure of being able to speak to both the UK Royal Marines and the US Marine Corps—an odd thing to do on Independence day, but I struggled through none the less.

My hon. Friend is right to mention what we are calling “Sandhurst in the sand”, which I think is the right proposal for British involvement in the future. Clearly there is also a case for doing more on civil service training, and we will look at that as well.

[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

May I beseech the Prime Minister to reconsider his rejection of the idea of a UN mediator? His own arguments about the record of the Afghan Government, and indeed its present activities, show why an independent figure from the Muslim world needs to be engaged there, with the Afghan Government as a party but also with western nations and neighbours as parties.

Secondly, will the Prime Minister pick up the idea of a council of regional stability? Although he is right to mention Pakistan, the truth is that stability in Afghanistan requires the engagement of all its neighbours, not just the Pakistanis. The dangers in Afghanistan relate not just to the presence of the Taliban in the political system but to some of the northern and other groups. A council of regional stability is essential to provide the type of support for a stable Afghanistan that we all want to see.

[The Prime Minister]

I listen carefully to the right hon. Gentleman, who has considerable experience in this. I agree very much about ensuring that Afghanistan’s neighbours are fully involved. One point I would make, though, is that from what I have seen there is no shortage of ideas for new processes to wrap around that. The problem is a lack of commitment. We need to see real commitment from the Afghans to work with the Pakistanis and real commitment from the Pakistanis to work with the Afghans.

President Karzai made the very reasonable point to the Pakistanis when he visited recently that there must be an ability to allow Taliban who want to talk to go to talk, but that those Taliban who do not want to talk must be arrested and confronted by the Pakistanis. It seems to me that it is about commitment. We can wrap all the processes in the world around it, and I will certainly look at what the right hon. Gentleman says, but in the end what we should be about is encouraging real commitment to make the peace process work.

European Council

David Miliband Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support, and for his question. I have got us out of the mechanism from 2013, because Britain is excluded from the treaty change that is going through putting in place the new permanent bail-out mechanism. It took negotiation to get that deal, because we were in a mess beforehand.

[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

I have two brief questions. The Prime Minister mentioned Sir Mervyn King’s remarks of last week. Does the Prime Minister agree with Sir Mervyn that the combination of austerity plus bail-out will never bring Greece to solvency? Secondly, the Prime Minister mentioned the stability of the banking system in advance of what I believe is an inevitable Greek default. In that context, is it not the case that future European Councils will be discussing whether to use the European financial stability facility or the European stability mechanism to shore up and recapitalise the banking system, rather than throwing good bail-out money after bad?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course the Greeks have a debt and solvency problem as well as a liquidity problem, but they have decided that they want to use liquidity to give themselves some time to deal with their debt problem. That is the choice they have made—and that is the choice the eurozone members are supporting—and I can quite see why they want to do it in that way. Let me also just make the following point, as I think a number of colleagues will ask similar questions: we must be very careful not to speculate about the financial situation faced by a fellow member state of the European Union.

House of Lords Reform

David Miliband Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

I apologise to the House for having to absent myself for a short period this evening.

It is nice to be able to speak in the House in full and enthusiastic support of the manifesto on which I was elected, and consistent with my previous votes in the House for 100% election and 80% election to the Lords, in 2003 and 2007. I look forward to getting the chance to vote on the matter again.

I wish first to dispose of three very bad arguments against proceeding towards an elected House. The first is that we need to sort out the functions of the House of Lords before doing so. The truth is that there is agreement on that point. The House of Lords is a revising Chamber not equal to the House of Commons, prevented by statute from pre-empting the supremacy of this House and established by law and by practice to persuade and restrain this House.

The second argument is that the public have got other things on their mind. The idea that the Government have a bad economic policy or health policy because they are distracted by House of Lords reform is frankly risible. We are elected to this place to debate the big issues of the time, and I do not believe that it is sufficient to say that this is not people’s main preoccupation.

The third bad argument is by far the most tempting. It is: because the Deputy Prime Minister is in favour of an elected House, is sponsoring the debate and will sponsor the Bill, it must be a bad idea. That view has many supporters in both main parties, as we will discover, and one can see the force of the point. When the right hon. Gentleman said before the election that he wanted to unite the nation, he could scarcely have imagined that people of all shades of opinion would come together so quickly to agree that he is not a very lovable rogue. However, although that is a tempting argument, I hope that my colleagues, especially Labour colleagues, will not fall for it. The right hon. Gentleman needs no help from either of the two so-called main parties to administer his fate, and there is a much bigger game here than the temptation to kick a man when he is down. The roadblock to reform is not, in this case, the right hon. Gentleman, but the Government’s puppetmaster, the Prime Minister. We should not be diverted by the temptation of kicking smaller fry.

The fundamental issue at stake is whether a stronger, more assertive, more legitimate House of Lords will be good for the governance of the country, not just in democratic theory, but in real life and practice. I believe that it would. I am a believer in strong government. I also believe that a strong Government get stronger and better when they are more accountable to a strong legislature. That is what we are debating today. That is a recipe not for gridlock but for better government.

Legislative strength is, in part, the way in which this House functions. Personally, I would have liked to see electoral reform of this House and the second Chamber on the same ballot paper in a single referendum, because we should debate the Parliament of the United Kingdom as a whole. The House of Commons and the House of Lords exist in relation to each other, not simply separately. However, following the alternative vote fiasco, that opportunity has been missed. None the less, it is striking that many of those who argue that reform will make no difference to the public also contend that it will mean the end of the House of Commons as the voice of the public. They cannot have it both ways.

Reform of the House of Lords is important to the strength and effectiveness of the legislature as a whole. That is why I argue for it.

[Jesse Norman]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for reciting such a compendium of errors. If he is giving us a lecture on logic, how does he explain the contradiction of a Prime Minister, who is allegedly, in the right hon. Gentleman’s view, a puppetmaster, yet also an enthusiastic advocate of the proposed legislation?

[David Miliband]

The hon. Gentleman tempts me and I will deal with that exact point shortly.

To those who say that an elected House of Lords will be stronger, I reply, “Good.” It will be good for the House of Commons and good for Governments of any stripe to face more effective and assertive scrutiny, and, where necessary, revision of their legislation from the House of Lords. That is not the same as advocating the overthrow of the primacy of the House of Commons, or as saying that the House of Lords will be a rival to the House of Commons. This country’s democratic problem is not neutered Government, emanating from the House of Commons, but under-scrutinised, under-accountable, over-centralised and over-confident Government.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

In the first minute of his speech, the right hon. Gentleman said that the House of Lords would not be more powerful; in the fifth minute, he said it would be. I think that it would not be a bad thing if the House of Lords were more powerful, but we ought at least to recognise what we are doing.

[David Miliband]

I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but I have my speech in front of me, and I did not say that the House of Lords would not be more powerful. I made the logical point that the House of Lords could have a stronger voice in the nation’s affairs; that it would not become a rival to the House of Commons, but that it could provide more effective scrutiny of legislation proposed by a Government elected to this House.

The problem in the current system of an over-centralised and under-accountable Government would be significantly reduced by an elected House of Lords. The simplest and most principled case is for a wholly elected House. It has my support. However, I do not accept the argument that the reservation of 20% of seats for independent voices, independently selected, torpedoes the purpose of reform. It is less pure than a wholly elected House, but it may be more practical. The argument that it creates a hybrid House is not strong, given the current composition of the House of Lords, in which the hereditary peers and the non-party peers are in a class of their own.

Let me conclude with some history, which addresses the point that the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) made. I had the pleasure of writing with Lord Irvine of Lairg the 1997 Labour manifesto that committed the new Government to removing hereditary peers from the House of Lords. The wording was designed to pre-empt any queries from the other place on Salisbury convention grounds. However, we did not bank on the willingness of Viscount Cranbourne and his backwoodsmen to threaten the whole of the Government’s programme if we proceeded with the abolition of all hereditary peers. That was the origin of the then Government’s acceptance of the so-called Weatherill amendment, which reprieved 92 hereditary peers.

In speaking to the historic motion to remove some 650 hereditary peers from the Lords, Lord Irvine said that the compromise in respect of the 92

“would guarantee that stage two would take place”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 March 1999; Vol. 599, c. 204.]

One reason for its not taking place is that, until now, the Conservative party has been officially opposed to an elected House of Lords. However, the Conservative Opposition in the House of Lords in 1999, in reply to Lord Irvine, said that it was absolutely crucial that one amendment to the Bill should be a timetable setting out exactly when stage two would be put in place.

Twelve years on, we are still waiting, to the shame of all parties in this House. Many of us fear that the Deputy Prime Minister’s Joint Committee will be another recipe for foot dragging. However, for the first time in centuries, the Conservative party has been dragged to support an elected House of Lords. Let us get on with bringing it about.

Libya/European Council

David Miliband Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank the right hon. and learned Gentleman for that question. This is a very important point. All sorts of people will quite rightly want to ensure that there will be a proper political process at some stage so that Libya can transition to democracy. It is important, however, that while such clear and flagrant breaches of the UN Security Council resolution are going on, we should do everything we can to protect people and, as a result, the Gaddafi regime will effectively be driven back.

[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

May I strongly associate myself with the Prime Minister’s words about the successes of the past week in justifying the UN Security Council resolution on Libya? The rebels’ progress more than reflects the widespread view across the House about the importance of the resolution. However, the Prime Minister did not say much about the European Union’s relations with the rest of the Arab world in future. One reason to support the resolution was the danger for the rest of the Arab world of Gaddafi’s potential slaughter. Will the Prime Minister say something about the potential for conditionality in EU engagement with the countries of the middle east and north Africa on trade, development and other matters as we go forward in support of democratic governance in north Africa?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which is that Europe’s engagement with north Africa and the middle east has not always been very successful in the past, particularly on the grounds that he describes. There has not been enough conditionality on the progress those countries need to make towards more open societies and the building blocks of democracy, getting rid of emergency laws and the rest of it. The European Council conclusions, like those from our emergency summit, talk about putting in place a new partnership and making a new offer to these countries with deeper economic integration, broader market access and greater co-operation and, in return for that, we should ask for more conditionality in the progress that they make. Money is not the problem; there has been plenty of money put into these areas by Europe. We need more of a focus on what we believe we should be getting out of it.