European Union (Approvals) Bill

David Nuttall Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

The Government at the time had grave reservations about this being included in the provisions of the Lisbon treaty, for the very reason to which my hon. Friend refers—namely, that it represented a duplication of activity that was already taking place. It was an attempt to set up in the European Union a duplicate body to the European Court of Human Rights and the European convention on human rights.

My hon. Friend asks what the agency does. It was intended to try to create what was called a fundamental rights culture within the European Union, and to that end, the organisation does an enormous amount of research. It holds conferences, one of which I have attended. As I said on Second Reading, it was more a propaganda exercise than anything else. The agency produces large tomes of documentation relating to what it describes as fundamental rights in different countries in the European Union. However, it is clear from everything that it does that its ultimate agenda is to be not an advisory body but a legislative body. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that the Government realise that that is the agenda, that they have seen through it, and that they are vigorously opposing it, given that it involves the duplication of so many activities.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

I am still not clear about one point. Will my hon. Friend give the House a precise summary of the difference between a human right and a fundamental right?

[Mr Chope]

In essence, the Agency for Fundamental Rights tries to deal with collective rights, rather than individual rights, whereas the European Court of Human Rights deals with individual rights. That is a moot point, however. As with so many things, the European Union comes along and confuses the issue by giving a new institution a very similar name to that of an existing body. We have a Council of Europe, and, although we do not have a council of the European Union, we have a European Union Council. We also have a Commission of the European Union. The European Union has stolen the flag that was originally the flag of the Council of Europe. It has even stolen the anthem of the Council of Europe, and it is now intent on stealing the main part of the Council of Europe’s activities—namely, looking after human rights under the European convention on human rights.

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[Michael Connarty]

I take the point. It is well made by the hon. Gentleman, who speaks from the dual perspective of looking in from the European Union at the effect on other countries, and looking out now from this Parliament at what the European Union is doing.

I find it remarkable that every time the European Union grows, we have a convention that the new member state gets a new Commissioner. At my first meeting in Brussels, I believe I raised the matter with UKRep—why did we need a new Commissioner every time we added a country? Why does every member state have to have an office of some kind because it does not have an office of some other kind? We did it. We were fighting over the universal patent recently, and the most important thing to the UK was where the patent court would be based. It had to be based in London. It was not about whether the patent was a good or a bad thing. There is a problem with the EU in that it sprays benefits around. I believe it has put some institution on Crete—a wonderful island where I have holidayed often, but I could not work out why a major institution of the European Union had been located on Crete, apart from the fact that the Greeks wanted to have their turn.

That has to be looked at fundamentally, but the principle is correct. If the European Union sets up the agency, it will monitor what is happening with human rights, and I hope it will then begin to ask how it can help the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights and those who want, as Churchill and many others did after the last war, to base Europe on human rights. The questions will continue about the corpus juris, which the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) will no doubt talk about, and the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) will no doubt talk about economic interference.

After all that is discussed, I hope we will all be able to agree that if the EU supports the Council of Europe and does the business, making human rights available to all the people in the EU and then beyond, it will advance Europe in accordance with the original principles of the people who set up the convention, which should be at the heart of our politics.

[Mr Nuttall]

That was an interesting contribution from the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), but one with which I fundamentally disagree. It was obvious from the early part of his comments that they reinforced the points that have been made throughout this debate. In essence, we have jumped back from fundamental rights to human rights.

In an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), I asked whether we could try to agree on the difference between human rights and fundamental rights, but everyone seems to have jumped back to accepting that fundamental rights is just another phrase for human rights, and that the agency does no more than replicate what is done elsewhere in the European Union by the Council of Europe. What came out of those comments was the fact that if reform is needed, we need to reform the Court, so that it can enforce the decisions made by the Council of Europe.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

What is the difference between British human rights and European Union human rights? Surely British human rights should be decided here and should take precedence.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is the second of the points that I want to make, which is about subsidiarity. We hear a lot about subsidiarity, yet in practice the European Union goes the other way, rather than saying, “Look, these are the matters which you will probably be concerned with. We’ve had a look at the UK and you’ve got plenty of organisations within the UK to deal with all these matters. There is no need for an EU body.” That applies across all 27, soon to be 28, member states.

[Philip Davies]

Has my hon. Friend thought about what situation we would be left in if the UK got a positive judgment from the European Court of Human Rights, but was then told that it was falling foul of the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which gets to the heart of one of my major concerns about the organisation and why I support entirely the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. It highlights the confusion in the minds of our constituents.

I wonder how many of our constituents even know that that body exists. I suspect that if I conducted a poll on the streets of Bury, I would have to wait a very long time and ask a large number of people before I found anyone who had even heard of the agency, never mind understood what it was intended to do. That is not surprising, because it was introduced in 2007 by the back door. It was introduced under the provisions of section 352 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, the Lisbon treaty, which allows for such new bodies to be established without any proper discussion. As I say, it was introduced through the back door.

The EU goes on about the principle of subsidiarity, but then we find that it is creating an EU-wide body to do things which, as we have heard in tonight’s debate, are not only being done elsewhere in Europe, but ought to be and can be done properly here in the UK. This is not a cheap body. We know that in 2013 the agency will get a subsidy of €21.3 million from the EU budget.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

Is it not anomalous that the agency should have a separate multi-annual financial framework for the five years from 2013 to 2017, rather than being rolled into the overall multi-annual financial framework from 2014 to 2020, which the Prime Minister has ably ensured will be significantly reduced?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. The question arises what would happen in a situation which has partly happened now and will certainly happen in the next multi-annual framework, where the agency straddles two financial periods. How can an agency properly budget when its framework straddles two budgetary periods? It does not make sense. That is just another example of muddled thinking in Europe, and of an organisation that has no intention of being transparent or open to the people whom it seeks to serve.

[Mr Redwood]

I am sure my hon. Friend has noticed that in the supporting documentation it is asserted that there will be no impact on public sector manpower or cost. Having to deal with yet another one of these fiddly agencies means huge legal bills, on top of the ones that we have for the European Court of Human Rights and on top of our domestic ones. Is that not an awful lot of extra money?

[Mr Nuttall]

Yes. My right hon. Friend again makes an excellent point. We will find that someone who is concerned about a particular right in this country is faced with a plethora of bodies, and those involved in this field in this country have an extra body to liaise with on the European front. Whereas in the past they would just have looked to the contents of the European convention on human rights and the findings of the European Court of Human Rights, they now have to think, “I wonder what the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights will think about all this. I wonder what it has said about it.”

I will not go down that road, as we have other amendments to consider and there is a further debate afterwards. I doubt whether we need that body at all. That is why I will support my hon. Friend’s amendments tonight. The body is unnecessary and it adds confusion to what is already a very crowded playing field in the area of human rights. I simply ask the Minister how the agency will benefit my constituents in Bury, North. How would they notice if it were simply abolished? That is what I think should happen.

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and I do not always agree on matters relating to the European Union, but we generally agree on matters relating to human rights. He does sterling service in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of the Europe as chairman of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights.

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[Damian Green]

I was not suggesting for a moment that my right hon. Friend, my hon. Friends or anyone else who has contributed to this debate were out of order; I was merely making the point that I want to address the amendments. My right hon. Friend has expressed his views with characteristic force, but I have to disappoint him by saying that the amendments would not achieve what he hopes they would.

Let me be clear about the consequences of the UK not approving the draft decision. Failure to agree the work programme would deprive the Council of the opportunity to set the direction of the agency by defining the themes. However, the absence of a work programme would not mean that the agency would go away or down tools. My right hon. and hon. Friends should bear that important point in mind when considering whether or not to support the amendment. If there was no draft framework, the agency would still be able to carry out its role. However, its focus would shift to answering requests for work from other EU institutions. Not supporting the framework therefore means that member states, including the UK, would have less influence on the work that the agency does. I do not think that that would be a good result for the UK and I suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch would agree with that.

The themes set out in the work programme continue those in the current one, and I welcome the European Scrutiny Committee’s analysis that the proposed work programme can indeed be considered to be equivalent to the former one. Although there are some adjustments between the two work programmes with regard to terminology, the changes will not alter the work that the agency has been doing.

During negotiations the UK Government were successful in ensuring that the themes set out in the work programme should continue to be limited to Community law. Other member states proposed the inclusion of themes on police co-operation and judicial co-operation in criminal matters. That would have been an extension of the agency’s work and it was successfully resisted by the UK Government. The draft decision records that we were successful. Agreeing to the draft decision will ensure that that is a binding decision of the EU institutions. That is why we are asking Parliament to approve it.

Moving on to some of the specific points that have been raised, the issue of duplication of the work of the Council of Europe has been a feature of this debate. The agency’s role is to provide the EU institutions and member states with independent evidence on how fundamental rights are respected. It does so through undertaking research and producing comparative data of the situation of rights across those member states, and through producing indicators that can be applied across the EU. Some of my hon. Friends were treating it as though it were an alternative to either the European Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights. It is, in essence, a data collection and dissemination agency that does not do any of the work of the ECJ or the ECHR. I agree that that would be unnecessary duplication. The same point applies to those in this country who, quite reasonably, would not want to lectured by the Fundamental Rights Agency about our performance on human rights. It does not do that sort of thing—that is not the work that it does.

There has been much discussion and concern expressed about money. This, of course, has to be set in the context of the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister earlier today. As he made clear—I think this was widely welcomed by all parties—the Government will continue to push for a good deal for UK taxpayers through agreement on the next multi-annual financial framework. The agency’s budget for the period covered by the next MAFF will form part of our negotiations following the agreement of that framework.

[Mr Nuttall]

Before the Minister concludes, could he give just one example of how British citizens have benefited in any way whatsoever from the existence of this agency since it was established?

[Damian Green]

The dissemination of hard facts and data on human rights performance across the European Union is intrinsically useful for British citizens and, indeed, those of other countries, because it enables us to assess how one of the basic things that we all wish to preserve—not just in our country, but in neighbouring countries—namely a basic commitment to human rights, is actually happening. It is extremely desirable for the citizens of democratic countries to enjoy human rights almost as a matter of habit, and it seems to me that any body that promotes such a state of affairs, in however small a way, is doing useful things for the British people.

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[Mr Chope]

That is a fair point, and it was reflected in what the Prime Minister said earlier. He said that the European Commission simply has not looked at what it can do to constrain its administrative expenditure. He has a lot of knowledge about that issue because he sees it face to face every time he goes to Brussels or any other European institution. He can see the amount of money wasted on bureaucracy in Brussels. There is obviously scope for a modest reduction, and that is why I had hoped that I would have already received notice that the Government intended to accept my amendment.

[Mr Nuttall]

Given that the decision by the European Council to maintain one Commissioner per country was taken only because of the result of the Irish referendums, and the decision by the Irish people to say no to the Lisbon treaty, would it not strengthen our Government’s hand in their attempt to cut the administration costs of the European Union if the Committee approved the amendment?

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely, and I would have thought that this amendment would be supported by Opposition Members too, as they have been in the forefront of calling for a reduction in expenditure by the European Union. Whether or not they believe that sincerely, they have been calling for that.

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[Emma Reynolds]

With characteristic modesty, the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) has presented his amendment. He also discussed the scope of clause 2, and I wish to speak to that before I come on to his amendment.

The hon. Gentleman highlighted the fact that there is a live debate on both the shape or membership of the European Commission and on financing it. Clause 2 provides for the current formula of one Commissioner per member state to be maintained at least for the next Commission. According to the explanatory notes, it also provides for a review of that decision either before the 2019 European Commission is formed or before the 30th member state joins the EU, whichever is sooner. We are having this debate today, we had a debate on it on Second Reading and it will continue to be debated. I want to highlight some of the points that were made on Second Reading.

There are two sides to this debate. On the one hand there is a complaint—one that I think we should listen to, and one I am sure other hon. Members will make—that the European Commission College of Commissioners has become too big and unwieldy. As the EU has grown to 27 member states—soon to be 28—there are simply too many Commissioners and that has had an effect on how it can take decisions. The other side of the argument, put powerfully and effectively by the Irish Government in recent years, is that for small member states the current formula of one Commissioner per member state guarantees an equality that would not otherwise be secured. That point has been made in the intergovernmental conference and the convention, in the constitutional treaty discussions and the Lisbon treaty negotiations by Ireland and other small member states, although not all. I mentioned last week that Denmark is of the opinion that although it does not want to give away that equality, it is worth giving it away in order to make the European Commission a more effective decision-making body.

Those are the two sides to the debate. On Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) and I suggested that there is a case for considering different degrees of seniority. If we were to keep one Commissioner per member state, then, as with our system of government where there is a Secretary of State and Ministers beneath that level, we could keep one Commissioner per member state, but with degrees of seniority, which might make for more effective decision-making.

[Mr Nuttall]

Does the shadow Minister think there would be any merit in a system whereby only those countries that were net contributors to the EU had a Commissioner?

[Emma Reynolds]

All I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that that is a fluid situation, so it would be unfair to both new and existing member states. For example, the Polish economy is the only economy that I can name, certainly in Europe, that did not go into recession after the global financial crisis hit, and so its trajectory is healthy. We would do well to remember that the success of the Polish economy might mean, sooner than the hon. Gentleman might think, that it will become a net contributor rather than a net recipient.

On Amendment 4, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Christchurch, last autumn he and I were in the same Division Lobby calling on the Government to seek a cut in the EU budget, and we strengthened their hand in the negotiations. To an extent I agree with the spirit of his amendment and see some merit in it.

It would be better, however, if the hon. Member for Christchurch called on the Government to prevent an increase in the administration ceiling in the EU budget. According to the comparative table we received following last Friday’s negotiations, however, that ceiling will increase by 8% over the MFF period. I do not think that such a big victory. We heard a lot of cheers earlier during the EU Council statement, but very little attention was paid to that point, and it is a point worth considering. That would be a more powerful demand for him to make of the Government than their writing into this fairly minor Bill the conditions he has set out. For that reason, I am not in favour of the amendment, although, as I said, I agree with its spirit.

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[Mr Nuttall]

My right hon. Friend is making a very good case for the Government about why this modest amendment is being resisted, but let me ask him a simple question. If my right hon. Friend does not feel that he would be able to persuade our partners in the European Union to accept such a modest amendment as this one, what hope is there of us ever being able to negotiate anything like the sorts of return of competences that would be necessary to satisfy the desires of the British people?

[Mr Lidington]

If my hon. Friend looks at what the Prime Minister achieved last week—against expectations in some parts of this House and outside it—and if he looks at the significant moves taken towards fisheries reform in recent weeks, I think he would see evidence to show that it is possible for a determined and energetic UK Government working closely with like-minded allies to secure the kind of reforms to the European Union that both he and I would wish to see enacted.