(14 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend makes an important point, founded on the actual experience of going to Afghanistan and talking to people there. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State for International Development is nodding his head, but the Secretary of State for Defence is not. The joining-up clearly has some way to go and the lessons of Afghanistan have not been learned by the Conservative party. My hon. Friend made an important point, which those on the Government Benches would do well to accept.
We will also hold the Government to account for their contradictory, mutually exclusive and incompatible promises on Europe. The Foreign Secretary made great play of his pledge that there would be no further institutional change in this Parliament, but it was agreed at the December 2007 European Council that there would be no institutional change until 2017. However, as a result of the coalition agreement, the Government go into European negotiations with no policy on European defence, which is not mentioned in that agreement, and no policy on European energy, which is also not mentioned. On justice and home affairs, all they can say is that they will review cases one by one—there are no principles or plans at all. The reason is simple: they cannot agree on anything. The result is that Britain is weakened and so is Europe.
One of the ambitions that we all have is that Turkey should join the European Union if it fulfils the conditions. That will involve a redistribution of powers within the EU. Under the new Government policy, that would require a referendum, which I do not think would be won in Britain. The Government have just announced the death of our pro-Turkey policy.
I strongly support Turkey’s entry to the EU and it was disappointing that the Foreign Secretary did not manage to mention Turkey’s aspirations to join the EU or the Government’s view of Turkish entry. However, the accession of a country—Croatia is likely to be the next—does not of necessity mean that there will be a change in the balance of power.
There is an important point. We have a fundamental principle in this country that when there are fundamental changes in the balance of power between this country and Brussels, there should be a referendum. That is why we are absolutely clear that there would have to be a referendum on the euro. However, the idea that there should be referendums when there are minor changes, such as how members are appointed to the pension committee of the European Parliament, which came up in the last Parliament, is absurd, and everybody knows it.
The Prime Minister has been threatening vetoes abroad, but the truth is that policy is being vetoed at home. The Deputy Prime Minister has said that
“if we remain outside the euro, we will simply continue to subside into a position of relative poverty and inefficiency compared to our more prosperous European neighbours.”
He also says that the Tory party is allied with
“a bunch of nutters, anti-Semites, people who deny climate change exists, homophobes.”
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister says of the Lib Dems that they want to
“take away Britain’s seat on the United Nations Security Council and replace it with a European one.”
The Foreign Secretary himself has called the Lib Dems
“the most fanatically federalist party in Britain.”
So when it comes to—[Interruption.] That is quite enough from my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), the former Foreign Secretary. When it comes to policy, no wonder they cannot agree, and that hurts Britain.
Here is one example among many. Labour Members support Eurojust and agree with the Crown Prosecution Service analysis, which points out that 80% of non-domestic homicide cases had an element of outside of jurisdiction, resulting in a huge increase in the UK’s use of Eurojust. But the Government have no policy at all—not for it, as the Liberal Democrats want, or against it, as the Tories say. There is nothing at all—no mention, no agreement, not even a review.
In the last Parliament, the Foreign Secretary had fun at my expense when he was able to say that there had been 50 reviews in three years. He even alleged that there was a review of sun beds, although I must say that I never found that one. However, the boot is on the other foot now and there have been 40 reviews in three weeks from this Government. We want to understand how these reviews are ever going to come to a conclusion on European policy. The truth is that on European policy the Government resemble nothing except Hugh Lofting’s pushmi-pullyu in “Doctor Dolittle”. This is what Lofting wrote:
“They had no tail, but a head at each end, and sharp horns on each head. They were very shy”.
They were very shy indeed—so shy that they could never move an inch. Britain needs Europe, but also, as President Sarkozy made clear to the Prime Minister during their recent meeting, Europe needs Britain—a Britain with strong and clear commitments on Europe, not an internal feud that paralyses discussion and action. Unfortunately for the Foreign Secretary, that paralysis means that he goes into European discussions without any policy at all.
After 18 years of Conservative government in 1997, Britain had halved overseas aid spending, fought and lost a beef war in Europe, and stood on the sidelines when tens of thousands of people were slaughtered on the edge of Europe. The previous Government put that right. We tripled overseas aid, made Britain a leader in Europe and stood up for human rights around the world. We are determined to protect that legacy and prevent history from repeating itself.
We also, for 13 years, put up with bucket-loads of moral sanctimony from the Liberal Democrats, as they complained about everything and gave credit for nothing. Conservative MPs repeatedly said in the last Parliament that the one thing we know about the Lib Dems is that if they are promising something in one part of the country, we can be sure, as night follows day, that they are opposing it somewhere else. In the general election, the Liberal Democrats campaigned for votes under the banner “Keep the Tories out”, then promptly proceeded to put the Tories in. They are, as the Prime Minister so rightly said, a joke.
We know that the Foreign Secretary is good at jokes—but now, for the first time in a very long time, he is in a job that needs judgment, not good jokes. Britain is respected around the world, and we will seek to ensure that he and his motley coalition do not put that respect at risk.