Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance
Denis MacShane Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of the legal and other action now to be taken by the Government in upholding the rule of law and protecting UK interests in respect of the nature and content of the Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union.
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for approving my application for this debate. I am also deeply grateful to all those Members—some 100 or so—who rose so spontaneously and strongly to support the proposal that I put to the House yesterday afternoon. This is only the fifth emergency debate since 2001. The debate is about the rule of law: not only the rule of law as it affects the United Kingdom but, inevitably, the rule of law in Europe as a whole. The Prime Minister, to his great credit, rightly exercised the veto to protect UK interests, but this is not simply a question of the single market and financial services, however important they may be to the UK economy.
The rule of law is inseparable from democracy, which, based on freedom of choice, leads to the making of law through general elections in line with the wishes of the voters. That is as important as it is simple. Unfortunately, the European Union, despite its much-vaunted claims and aspirations, has increasingly departed from democratic principles and from the rule of law in the pursuit of ideology. We are now witnessing ever-increasing tendencies towards bureaucracy, and even the imposition of technocratic Governments on individual member states, as in Italy and Greece. Yesterday, as it has in the recent past, the Bundestag voted on European bail-outs. According to opinion polls, about 80% of the German people are against the bail-outs, yet the German Government and the Bundestag passed the proposals by a massive majority.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
This line about European technocrats imposing technocratic Governments all over the place is very fashionable. However, the truth is that the current crisis, which is very serious—the hon. Gentleman is right to hold this emergency debate—is about the raw power of politics. It is about the politics in Germany in not wanting to bail out Greece; the politics here; the politics in Greece, where people voted pretty overwhelmingly to accept the bail-out package, with parties splitting up; and the politics in Italy, where people dumped the wretched Berlusconi and put in quite a good guy, Monti, for the time being. The Commission is not involved in this; the technocrats are out of the game; the Eurocrats are off the pitch. It is about raw politics. We are in the driving seat, and the hon. Gentleman might be as well.
Mr Cash
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who makes an important point. However, this is not merely about technocrats but about the brutal fact that the political game as it is now being played is increasingly coercive. That is part of the problem that I shall address.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
I will do my best, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I do not really disagree with some of the points that the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) has just made, but to achieve her aims she will have to find allies. The difficulty is that the Conservative party is perceived as profoundly hostile to European co-operation. It is allied with some very odd gentlemen in the European Parliament, as we know, and it sits with the Russians at the Council of Europe. We represent a democratic political organisation in this Parliament, and we cannot achieve co-operation at a supra-parliamentary level by just telling people what we want and expecting everybody else to agree. Therefore, there has to be a new approach to Europe.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) on securing this debate under Standing Order No. 24. It is absolutely outrageous that we do not have proper debates on Europe in Government time. Indeed, I am sorry that the Leader of the House is not here—I have made that point to his face; I am not saying anything behind his back. It is unfair to ask the Backbench Business Committee, which is generous on a number of issues.
Mr MacShane
And it is not as if this place is crammed full of legislation, is it, Mr Deputy Speaker? I really wish that the Government would stop continually hiding behind the Backbench Business Committee’s existence to deny their allocation of time for what are important debates.
The hon. Member for Stone made the interesting observation that the EU institutions could not be used for just a group of EU member states, but of course that is nonsense. They are used if there are rows over Schengen, which does not include us, or if there are rows over fisheries policy, which on the whole does not involve Austria, Hungary or other land-locked nations. Also, there have always been groups or clusters of EU member states with particular concerns which the European institutions have to have some regard for.
Mr MacShane
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I want to give time to other colleagues and do not want to take up my full time.
I should inform the House that I might not be here for the wind-ups, because I have to go and hear Monsieur François Hollande speak at King’s college London. I am excited about meeting Monsieur Hollande, this socialist who is proposing to increase the income tax on people earning €150,000 to 45%—in other words, lower than the business-crushing tax rate that the present Chancellor of the Exchequer imposes on higher earnings. Of course, Monsieur Hollande is not proposing to rip off the epaulettes or the légion d’honneur from bankers he does not like—as our Prime Minister did with Sir Fred Goodwin—nor is he proposing retrospectively to deny bankers their bonuses or to introduce retrospective tax legislation on what bankers earn. We have the most anti-banking Prime Minister in the history of Great Britain. As a low-tax socialist, I will be glad to be at the college listening to Monsieur Hollande, who seems to have a much more moderate and pragmatic policy.
I would be interested to hear from the hon. Member for Stone, who has left his place, why exactly the Royal Bank of Scotland—partly owned by us—and HSBC are running to the European taxpayer, in the form of the European Central Bank, to ask for cheap loans. Why on earth should the European taxpayer bail out appallingly badly run, inefficient British banks that do not lend their money, but continue to try to pad out their bonuses and salaries? I certainly do not object to their doing so; indeed, I hope that the European taxpayer will show some generosity.
Mark Reckless
The right hon. Gentleman is commenting about two banks, which he has given as an example, but as for HSBC at least—a large international bank with interests throughout the world, particularly in Asia—the UK is only a modest part of its operations. Frankly, his comments are unjustified in that respect. What is the objection to those banks accessing liquidity ECB support on the same terms as anyone else, and why should they not do so?
Mr MacShane
Because of the breathtaking hypocrisy of the Conservative party, in that when action is needed to allow HSBC and RBS—British firms—to continue functioning and operating in a Europe that needs to keep its head above water, and which therefore might need some help from the IMF, all we hear from the Conservatives is that we should not be part of it. However, what is sauce for the RBS and HSBC goose—going and asking for euro taxpayer handouts—has to be sauce for the UK gander. We are all in this together.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr MacShane
Although I will lose time, I will give way—it is the hon. Gentleman, for heaven’s sake.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman; I will be very brief. RBS has business in Ireland. It is lending against its loans in Ireland, which are in euros and are therefore a matter for the eurozone. Of course it ought to be able to get money from the ECB on that basis.
Mr MacShane
And 50% of our exports go to the eurozone; therefore, it makes sense for us to help the eurozone stay alive. However, that will be difficult, because in our broad economic and fiscal policy we are more European than the Europeans. We are implementing anti-growth, deflationary, 1930s-type policies that Herbert Hoover or Heinrich Brüning would have instantly recognised. That is why unemployment is going up, why job creation is falling and why growth is flatlining. The paradox is that we need new policies for Europe, but they are not on offer from this Government, this Chancellor or this Prime Minister, who is entirely on the same wavelength as Chancellor Merkel, President Sarkozy and all the others who are currently pursuing job-killing, growth-crushing, deflationary, austerity, Treasury-driven financial and fiscal policies in Europe. I am surprised that we have not heard the terms “Camkozy” or “Merclegg”, because there is undoubtedly very little difference between the right-wing Conservative policy of our political leaders and that of the politicians controlling the big continental countries.
Let us be clear: the Commission is not involved in this. The European technocracy and bureaucrats are not involved in this; they are utterly sidelined. This is about the raw politics of anger in Germany against Greece, and the raw politics in Greece against Germany. It is also about the raw politics of the Conservative party in this House, some of whose members rightly feel that all the pledges made by their leader, now the Prime Minister, on referendums, renegotiation and repatriation have not in any way been delivered. That is what is causing upset and concern in the House of Commons. I am sure that it was also raw politics in Ireland that led the Taoiseach to agree to the referendum there. We know that Monsieur Hollande has said that, if elected, he will renegotiate the treaty. We also know that Mr Rajoy, the new conservative leader in Spain, has said that he will not implement a Merkozy-type dose, because Spain could not take it.
We need a new approach in Europe, and in this country. I would have no problem if, after 15 years of wallowing in Euroscepticism, the Conservative party rejoined the real European world. I would like to see Conservative MEPs sitting with other centre-right MEPs, precisely to create the links that the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire mentioned. We need more engagement, and not in order to join some Euro-federalist nirvana—that is not on offer at the moment. We are living in not a two-tiered Europe but a multi-tiered Europe, and we have to be part of it. We are not at the moment, but I hope that the Government can change their course before it is too late.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) in debates on Europe. He is the authentic voice of Euro-enthusiasm on the Labour Benches—[Interruption.] He is one of the authentic voices. I could not, however, work out from listening to his speech whether he was in favour of the treaty or not.
It is also traditional to congratulate the hon. Member who secured a debate such as this, but in this case I think that the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) has missed the point on a colossal—almost historic—scale. There are questions of legality and politics around the treaty, but they are dwarfed by the really big issue, which is the future of the European economy. The treaty represents a sincere and concerted attempt to make that future stronger, safer and more prosperous. We can argue about its chances of success, but I think that the hon. Gentleman is trying to have his cake—perhaps I should say “gâteau”—and eat it. He is calling on European economies to practise fiscal responsibility without the treaty, while simultaneously criticising them for not sticking to the previous, more flexible, regime. I do not think that he can have it both ways.
That is in stark contrast to the letter written by the Prime Minister and 11 other Heads of Government in the run-up to the summit, which tried to address the real issue of promoting prosperity in Europe. It talked about completing the single market in service markets and promoting the digital economy, as well as
“providing a secure and affordable system for cross-border on-line payments, establishing on-line dispute resolution mechanisms for cross-border on-line transactions”.
It also proposed promoting an “internal market in energy” and “energy interconnection”, as well as a
“commitment to innovation by establishing the European Research Area, creating the best possible environment for entrepreneurs and innovators to commercialise their ideas”.
That is exactly the agenda that should be dominating our discussion of the summit. We should be talking about how we are going to get the whole of the European economy back on track towards creating jobs and sustainable prosperity.
We have to ask ourselves: what is the real threat to the UK’s national interests? Is it really the use of EU institutions by fiscal compact countries? Could that not be interpreted as a connection that will strengthen the interests of the 28, relative to the fiscal compact countries? That connection, and the involvement of the Commission, will mean that at least one institution will have to uphold proper adherence to the European Union treaties and the safeguards in the fiscal compact treaty.
Is there any threat to the single market, which is one of Britain’s primary interests in all this, given the safeguards that we have succeeded in inserting into the treaty by having a seat at the table and being part of the discussions that led to the drafting of the treaty, despite not being a signatory to it? That is in contrast to the view expressed by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds), who is no longer in her place. I believe that that was a positive step by the Government, and a positive example of the re-engagement that we have seen since December.
Mr MacShane
Does the hon. Gentleman still share the view of his leader, now the Deputy Prime Minister, that the Conservative party’s colleagues in the European Parliament are “nutters”, “anti-Semites” and “homophobes”?
Martin Horwood
I think that the right hon. Gentleman is misquoting the Deputy Prime Minister, who was referring to the other parties that are members of that group. I obviously have a great deal of sympathy with that point of view, but I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that our leader was not accusing Conservative MEPs of that.
What is the most serious threat to the UK’s national interests? Is it the use of the EU institutions? Is there a threat to the single market, given the safeguards that have now been inserted into the treaty? I would say not. The most serious threat to the UK’s national interests is the most serious economic crisis in Europe’s post-war history. It is a real and present danger to British jobs, British prosperity and British companies. Why would we now throw a spanner into the works of the only vehicle with a chance of bringing that crisis under control? To use the term used by the hon. Member for Stone, I think that such an idea reveals something about his own pursuit of ideology, rather than any real defence of the UK’s national interests. For that reason, I think that he might even be losing sympathy among his Conservative colleagues for what must now count as the political equivalent of antisocial behaviour in continuing to be completely obsessed by the legal minutiae and institutional details, rather than the really big picture that is facing Europe and Britain within the European economy.
Oral Answers to Questions
Denis MacShane Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Alistair Burt
We have said clearly that we want a comprehensive arms trade treaty, which would include all conventional weapons, including small arms and ammunition. The precise details of the treaty have yet to be negotiated. I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s comments about the noticeable support of NGOs. I particularly thank Amnesty International for its recent comment on the preparatory conference. It said that
“the UK championed our right to be in the room during final negotiations”.
That is a measure of our relationship with NGOs in support of a robust and effective treaty.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
Mr Speaker, you and the Minister will recall that one year ago I asked an urgent question on Bahrain, when the House was shocked to learn that we were still exporting arms to the country used in the repression of its citizens. Today, people are still locked up in prison, and Amnesty reports hundreds, dozens, scores of political prisoners and tear gas being thrown into confined spaces. It is just as brutal as ever it was, yet we have resumed arms sales to Bahrain. Again, may I ask the Minister and the Government to suspend arms sales to these repressive regimes until a political and peaceful solution has been found?
Alistair Burt
If the right hon. Gentleman looks at precisely what has been sold to Bahrain, he will find that licences for any items that could be used for internal repression have been refused. Body armour, sporting targets and rifles, and naval cannon have been sold, but these things cannot be used for internal repression. We support the reform process that is under way through the independent commission that is working in Bahrain, and we support all political parties in working towards a settlement and reforms there.
Syria
Denis MacShane Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Hague
That is bilateral and multilateral. I have already mentioned some of the bilateral contact we have had and the fact that we have an ambassador-level representative dealing with the opposition. I also believe that one of the roles for the wider international coalition would be to meet the various groups of the Syrian opposition, which I think would be a catalyst for the opposition to propose their plans, to make clear commitments to a democratic future for their country and to set out their commitment to human rights and, indeed, the protection of minorities. It is also important for them to try to come together, since one of the challenges for the opposition is to develop a single platform and a single agreed body for taking forward their concerns. There is no limit on what resources we can provide. We have already provided training in the documentation of human rights abuses, in strategic communications and so forth. We may be able to do more in the future.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
The Foreign Secretary cannot be faulted in the handling of this crisis and, if I may say so, his Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), was very impressive on the BBC yesterday. However, before we go down the road of arming the opposition, should we not recall what happened when the west armed the mujaheddin and they turned into the Taliban and al-Qaeda? More broadly, this is the fourth major intervention in a majority Muslim country—and Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are not happy examples to follow. Do we not need a broader strategic approach to this region of crisis?
Mr Hague
Well, I think that is what we have. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for saying that he could not fault my colleague and me, although there was then a “but.” Let me reassure him further, therefore: we are not contemplating arming anybody. Indeed, one of the things we stressed in our meetings with the Syrian opposition was that they should remain peaceful. We have not been in contact with the Free Syrian Army, which is engaged in a different kind of struggle with the Syrian authorities. I would not classify this as an intervention, therefore. We are supporting the work of the Arab League, we are assembling the widest possible international coalition, and we are not calling for military action or intervention, so I think the right hon. Gentleman can be reassured and continue to be as effusively supportive as he was in the first part of his question.
Falkland Islands
Denis MacShane Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Browne
I want to start my response to the hon. Lady by thanking her for going to the Falklands; we had a good meeting on her return to discuss her experiences and what she learned from that visit. I take her point that we should not exaggerate the effectiveness of the Argentines’ actions, and I will discuss that point later in my speech. At the same time, however, it is important that, without being inflammatory in our language, we are very clear and unequivocal in this debate about the position of the British Government and, I believe, the British Parliament, and do not leave any room for misinterpretation.
I want to reassure the hon. Member for Hexham and others who have contributed to the debate that the Government have been extremely active in condemning any attempts by Argentina to erect an economic blockade of the Falklands, and it is right that we call it what it is, which is an economic blockade. It is designed to try to hurt the Falkland Islanders economically, to disadvantage them and to reduce their standard of living. As I have already said, we have been very clear that we regard that course of action by Argentina as wrong. We want vital trade links to be maintained.
We are not in any way complacent about what is happening at the moment. We understand the tactics being adopted by the Argentine Government, and they may yet seek in the months ahead to intensify the pressure that they are applying. However, to expand on the point that I was just making to the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Gemma Doyle), we should not exaggerate the success that Argentina has had. The Falklands economy continues to grow strongly, with a budget surplus and very healthy reserves. If the objective of the Argentine Government is to weaken the resolve of the Falkland Islanders through economic means, it is not an objective that they have achieved.
The hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), who speaks for the Opposition, asked what representations the British Government are making to countries across south America. The answer is that we make frequent representations at a very high level. As she said, the Foreign Secretary has just been to Brazil, where he specifically raised the issue of the Falklands at the highest levels of the Brazilian Government. We have also made unambiguous representations to the other Mercosur countries, Uruguay and Paraguay, and to Chile, which is associated with Mercosur. Indeed, right across Latin America, we have made our position clear, and I have made direct representations to Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and other countries right across Latin America, some of which instinctively support the Argentine position however many representations we make. Nevertheless, it is still important for us to make our position clear and unambiguous, and I think that other Latin American countries are more susceptible to reasoned argument than those that instinctively support the Argentine position.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
I apologise for coming in late; I was detained, but I have been watching the debate downstairs. The Foreign Secretary was in Brazil, which is not a natural ally of Argentina, and yet Brazil is lining up with Argentina on the Falklands question. Did the Foreign Secretary obtain any reassurance that Brazil, which is now a major world power, is going to distance itself from what is, frankly, the very wrong position that Argentina is taking and that it would line up with the world’s democracies, including our own, or did he return empty-handed?
Mr Browne
No, I would not see it in terms of the Foreign Secretary returning “empty-handed”. Brazil is keen to have a constructive relationship with its neighbour, Argentina—the relationship with Argentina is important commercially and politically for Brazil. At the same time, we are very pleased that Brazil is keen to have a growing relationship with the UK. The Foreign Secretary had an extremely valuable and productive visit to Brazil, and he had extensive talks in Brasilia with the Brazilian Foreign Secretary. The subject of the Falklands was not the only subject that was raised in the discussions between the two Foreign Secretaries, but it was raised. Not all of our diplomacy is so visible, because some of it is more discreet than that. I assure my hon. Friends and all Members present for this debate that we attach a very high priority to the issue of the Falklands, that the Brazilians and others understand our position and that, like ourselves, the Brazilians and others do not wish to see an economic blockade of the Falklands.
The hon. Member for Bristol East, who speaks for the Opposition, asked whether I thought that the Prime Minister’s position was appropriate. It is right that the Prime Minister is clear in this House—in Parliament—about the strong support that the British Government give to the status of the Falkland Islands. And on the military point that was raised by a number of Members, I assure the House that the Government continue to take necessary steps to maintain the security of the Falkland Islands.
More broadly, Members have talked about our wider relationship with Argentina. We have made it clear to Argentina that we are enthusiastic about having a more productive relationship and about addressing global issues together, including climate change or the global economy. Argentina, of course, is a member of the G20, so we have another opportunity in that forum to raise and discuss issues with it, and to build alliances with it where it is appropriate and in our shared interests to do so.
We want to work with Argentina constructively. There are areas where we share interests. We not only share economic interests, but wider trade issues, energy issues, transport issues, cultural issues, sporting issues and educational issues. There are lots of areas where we want to work more productively with Argentina than we are sometimes able to do at the moment, but only so long as Argentina understands that that process is not in some way part of a negotiation on the Falkland Islands. The status of the Falkland Islands is non-negotiable for us, but in other regards we wish to have a helpful and productive dialogue with Argentina.
I have not yet had the opportunity to meet Argentina’s new ambassador to the UK—I do not think that she has arrived in London yet. However, I certainly will meet her when she arrives and at the moment I have regular and perfectly amicable engagement with the Argentine chargé d’affaires, who will be replaced by the ambassador when she arrives.
European Council
Denis MacShane Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the speech of the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), which was measured and considered. He will forgive me if I do not embrace his term “fellow traveller” as Britain’s destiny in the coming years, as those of us who know our history do not really like that language.
I was rather worried when the hon. Gentleman said that “the markets will make that decision for them”, “them” being the people. I rather hope that at some stage we might have some recognition from the Conservative party that markets should be the servants of the people, not their masters.
Damian Collins
The point I was making was that the markets will make the decision for the European Council members and for the Governments and that if they do not act, they will be forced out.
Mr MacShane
I am very happy to hear the hon. Gentleman gloss over his speech, but that is the point I was making.
I am all for exporting to the BRICs, but their growth rates are slowing. India is talking about a return to “Hindu economic growth” and China might go as low as 8% or 7%, which is a real worry for the Chinese authorities. The same is the case in Brazil—[Interruption.] Hon. Members say that that is not bad and, of course, I would love a 7% growth rate for my own country, and I shall come to that. However, rapidly developing countries throughout history have had very high growth rates when peasants and others move from the fields and core industries are developed, but the plain fact is that we export more to Ireland than to all the BRICs combined. Belgium exports more to India than we do. The absurd notion that Brazil, India or Russia, run by kleptocrats, are an alternative to the mature, balanced, middle-class consumer economies of the European Union is not right.
Mr Redwood
Does not the hon. Gentleman understand that the markets that feed and clothe him are the people? The markets we are talking about today are his pension savings, his other savings and those of millions of other people who are trying to protect themselves from the euro disaster.
Mr MacShane
I do not really want to get into a debate about the markets as I am also pro-market, but the markets are also Mr Hester, the hedge fund billionaires and the donors to the Conservative party who make a fortune out of speculation and who have so increased inequalities in the past 30 years that we now have a generalised social crisis that might cause severe dislocation.
I do not share the cataclysmic views that some have about what the Prime Minister did on 9 December. I think he was ill-advised, that he allowed the Treasury to run the negotiations and that the key decision was taken at a time—2.30 am—when no sane person should take a decision. None the less, the plain fact is that across the rest of the European Union there is a sense that Britain does not want to engage or be fully part of the EU. Last week, at a conference with the former French Defence Minister who negotiated the French side of the French-British defence treaty of 2010, I was surprised to hear his extraordinary, virulent attack on what one could call “Albion perfide” and how Britain was no longer a defence player with France, was not prepared to co-operate and was doing all it could, he said, to sabotage the good effects that the treaty would have. That is the reputation we have and that worries me.
It also worries me to hear reports that one of the new intake on the Government Benches, whom I shall not name, said in a conference over the weekend that it would have been impossible to have been selected as a Conservative candidate in recent years—or, indeed, to be a Conservative MP—without showing the most strident Euroscepticism. [Interruption.] Well, if there is an exception that proves the rule and if the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) is about to make a pro-European speech I shall welcome that. None the less, that is the impression in this country.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr MacShane
I have given way to two Europhobes, and I think three would be too many. It is a real worry when one party, the governing party of our country, is so monolithic—without internal debate, internal division or much internal discussion. [Interruption.] I look forward to hearing the speech of the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) when he makes it.
Then we have the fundamental problem that this Government and the ruling elites of the European Union are at one. Mr Sarkozy, Mrs Merkel, Mr Van Rompuy, Mr Barroso, Mr Rajoy, Mr Berlusconi and Mr Monti are all applying the 1930s austerity recession approach of making the poor pay and protecting the rich, which is the official policy of Her Majesty’s Government. I do not understand why there is any debate or division at all because for the first time those the other major European Union capitals and the Brussels institutions are on the same wavelength as Her Majesty’s Government. That is why there has to be some policy for growth, as people are pointing out again and again. Mrs Lagarde and Mr Soros have pointed that out and Mr Obama is seeking to achieve it.
Government Members are correct to suggest that not only the European project but the entire western, democratic, liberal, rule-of-law, market economy project is under threat because of a generalised crisis based on inequality and the giving of too much power to money and too little power to people. The answer to that must be forms of solidarity. In 1942, at the height of the war, before we had won El Alamein or turned any corner, Winston Churchill sent a Cabinet memorandum to his colleagues saying, “Hard as it may be to say at this time, I think we should start considering the possibility of a council of Europe for after the war. We need to move towards a united states of Europe where all may travel and trade freely. I think we should conduct studies about how to have economic unity.” How extraordinary that at the height of the war—that was not the Zurich speech—Winston Churchill had that vision for what we have half-achieved, perhaps, in my lifetime and certainly in recent years.
That is also why Mrs Thatcher, our then Prime Minister, after pushing through the Single European Act—the biggest transfer of sovereignty ever in British history—supported the arrival of Jacques Delors as President of the Commission. In 1984, our contribution to the EC budget was £656 million, but by 1990 she had increased it to £2.54 billion, quadrupling Britain’s solidarity budget to the then European Community. When asked about that in the House of Commons, she said that of course we should help our poor friends in Portugal and Greece and also implicitly in Ireland and Spain. She was absolutely right. That is why we set up the International Monetary Fund after the war—precisely to deal with imbalances, crises, sudden recessions and, yes, Government incompetences that produce the kind of problems that Greece and some other countries are facing. It is quite preposterous to say that Britain will renege on its obligations to the IMF. I was happy to vote with the Government on this in the last Division and I certainly hope that Opposition Front Benchers are not going to play the Eurosceptic card on the IMF question if the matter comes back to the House.
Finally, what do we have today? We have the surreal sight of a British Prime Minister in Davos not enjoying himself on the slopes but lecturing other European leaders on what they should do. What example is he citing—£1 trillion-worth of debt, recession economics, mounting unemployment or mounting poverty? There are mounting concerns all over the world, as the Chinese told the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he was in Beijing recently, about whether Britain is serious about marginalising itself in Europe and not helping to support Europeans with problems through the IMF. If it is, China cannot be interested in Britain because it is not interested in an isolated, protectionist Britain.
We are taking huge risks with our economy and our nation by promoting these new, protectionist, isolationist politics. It is bad enough that we have to live with 1930s, Treasury-driven economics, but it will be a disaster if Britain continues to have the reputation it has sadly earned internationally as a country that wants to turn its back on Europe and that seriously believes its future could lie only in competing with Belgium for exports to India. This is a turning point for our nation. We either break out of this isolationist, protectionist logjam and work in solidarity with the countries of Europe that are growing and creating jobs and that have much better public finances than we have, or we pretend, in our own little sinking ship, that everything is for the best and this is the best of all possible worlds.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thought you were about to call somebody more senior.
I agree with the hon. Members who said it is a shame that the debate has had to rely on the kindness of the Backbench Business Committee. When I was Minister for Europe it was an important part of our mandate that before we went to a European Council we had to turn up in the House, in Government time, to answer a debate, even if it meant inconvenience for Ministers. It is a terrible shame that the Foreign Secretary is not here. I respect enormously the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), and I saw him assert that he is pro-European, which is great, but it is wrong that the Foreign Secretary is not with us.
I want to raise two issues that are not on the Council agenda but should be. The first is Cyprus. For far too long, the European Union has had within it a divided country, with a divided capital city. It affects many people in the UK; there are strong Cypriot communities in Cardiff and elsewhere in the country. The real problems faced by the Cypriot economy could be resolved easily if one were to overcome the political problems, because Turkey is the fastest growing economy on the borders of Europe. I hope that the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister will make it clear that we want progress in Cyprus, and this is no bad time for it, when Greece is trying to resolve some of its own economic problems.
The other foreign policy issue that should be on the agenda is Russia. The elections just before Christmas were a complete and utter farce. In a vast majority of areas, they were corrupt, as every organisation sent to monitor the elections made clear. Absolutely nothing has been done. There have been many warm words from Mr Putin and Mr Medvedev, yet there has been no action. We still have no resolution of the cases of Mr Khodorkovsky and Mr Platon Lebedev, both of whom are purely prisoners of conscience, and not tax evaders. There is also the case of Sergei Magnitsky who worked for a British company.
The British Government should make it absolutely clear that Europe will manage to improve its business with Russia only when corruption is rooted out in Russia. That will not happen if country after country tries to make its own sordid little deals; it will only happen if the whole of the European Union acts in concert and in union to make it clear that Russia has to clean up its act.
I believe in more Europe rather than less Europe. I say that unambiguously. I said to the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) that enforced audit would have meant that we did not get into the hole we are in, and there are other areas. The United Kingdom was wrong when we decided to go our own way, with Ireland, saying that there were to be no transitional arrangements with regard to people from the new member states working in the UK. One of the reasons why so many people came here was that every other country in the EU was going down a different route. It would have made far more sense if there had been a single European decision on that policy area.
Mr MacShane
At a conference last week, the German film-maker, Volker Schlöndorff said how much he wished that 1 million-plus Poles had gone to Germany and learned German and then gone home imbued with German ideas, language and contacts to build a closer relationship between Poland and Germany. We have made 1 million-plus Polish friends because of our policy; it has been good for Poland and good for us.
Chris Bryant
I hope we have made a lot of Polish friends. When I was a curate in High Wycombe, we had a long-standing Polish community there, many of whom fled German ideas about Polish people from the 1930s and 1940s. But I still think it would have been better for us if there had been a whole-European decision. We underestimated the number of Polish people who would come to the United Kingdom and that was a mistake for our economy.
Anyone from Brazil, China, Russia or India—or, for that matter, Mexico or Turkey—would say that they are all interested in trying to do business with one set of rules in Europe, not 27, on the size of plugs, on electricity, and on many other elements. I believe it is in our interests that we should strive ever more for the extension of the single market, so that we can do better out of the growing economies of the world; otherwise, our future will be on the sidelines, not at the heart, of the world’s history.
I have anxieties about the Government’s attitude on these issues. I know the Prime Minister tries to show a little bit of leg to Conservative Back Benchers and then to his European allies. There is a little bit of leg being shown here, there and everywhere. But the truth is that we need British businesses to be far more courageous about doing business in Europe; they should not just sally forth and speak louder—shout in more grammatically incorrect English than they would to their children—in the belief that they will get a contract. We must have more ambition when it comes to Europe.
I would say to those who said earlier that they praised the Prime Minister before Christmas that—leaving aside my opinion that it is giving the Prime Minister that dangerous element of messianism, which is always worrying for a Prime Minister—the child who has stormed off to his bedroom is rarely the person in the family who wins the argument.
Mr Redwood
As I just explained, it is totally different if a country has its own currency and can use monetary mechanisms to try to grow its way out of the problems, and can establish an exchange rate that allows it to export its way out of the problems, which is exactly what these countries have to do, yet are unable to do because they are locked in.
Mr Redwood
I have no more injury time available, so I need to develop my argument rapidly.
If those countries are to have some hope of prosperity, they need to solve the two underlying problems. It is obvious to most external observers that the way to solve the problem of competitiveness quickly is to devalue. Normally, an IMF programme for a country in trouble not only asks it to cut its budget deficit and reduce its excess public spending, but suggests that it devalue its currency and move to a looser monetary policy domestically, so that there can be private sector-led growth, export-led growth—the kind of thing it needs to get out of its disastrous position. That is exactly what those countries are unable to do. That is why the IMF should not lend a country such as Greece a single euro or a single dollar. Greece is to the euro area as California is to the dollar area: it is not an independent sovereign state, and it cannot do two of the three things that a country needs to do to get back into growth and prosperity, because it cannot devalue and it cannot create enough credit and money within its own system.
We need to give honest advice to our partners and colleagues in the eurozone, around the European conference table—in private, not in public—that the only way forward, the only way to resolve the crisis for those countries that can no longer borrow in the marketplace at sensible rates of interest, is to have an orderly way of letting them out as quickly as possible, so that they can re-establish their own currency, their own looser and appropriate monetary policy and their own banking policy, and offer some hope to their subject peoples.
I am very worried that this is not only an economic crisis, a banking crisis, and a currency crisis, but also now a crisis of democracy. The challenge, in countries such as Greece and Spain, is how the Governments manage to get buy-in to the policy of deflation and cuts with everything that is the only offering from the euro scheme and the euro system. We see in some of these countries now that the electorates do not choose the Government; the European Union’s senior players choose the Government. We see in some of these countries that the electorate change the Government but they do not change the policy. The new Government have to pledge to follow exactly the same policy, which does not work, in order to get elected and to be acceptable to the European Union, in order to carry on drawing down the subsidies and loans from within the European Union that have to be on offer to try to make the system operate to some extent.
I hope that the British Government will adopt the following position. I hope that they will say in public, whenever asked about the euro, that the British Government have no intention of providing any running commentary on the euro whatever or of saying anything that makes the position of the euro worse, but will always give good, strong, independent advice in private. That should be the public position. It is too dangerous to say things. Most of the things that politicians say about bond markets and currency crises make the position worse, so the United Kingdom would be well advised to have a simple formula, which all Ministers use, that we are providing no commentary on the euro and we wish the euro members well in sorting it all out.
In private, we are important allies and partners of the euro area and the British Government need to give honest advice to try to get our continent out of this mess. I do not believe there is a single fix that can solve that problem for all the countries currently in the euro. Many of them went into the euro with inflation rates that were too high, with state deficits and debts that were too high, and with currencies that were not in line with the German currency. It was a huge error. The founders of the euro knew that there had to be very strict requirements; they broke them from day one.
It will not solve the problem to sign up to some new constitutional pact that says that a country down on its luck, unable to borrow money, running out of cash, will be fined. Who will pay the fine? The answer is that the fine would have to be lent to the country in trouble by the very people who are fining it. It is so preposterous that I find it very difficult to believe that serious people can sit round a table, negotiating such an instrument. They should cast aside the draft instrument. It is irrelevant; it cannot work. They should sit down in private and work out how to get non-competitive countries out of this mess before even more damage is done to their economies and their democracies.
Emma Reynolds
The process of re-engagement might be under way, but the Prime Minister’s decision to walk out of a summit that did not have a text to it has undermined our influence in the EU. His spectacular mishandling bought him short-term political respite from the pressure of his Back Benchers, but they will always want more, and we heard that in today’s debate.
Mr MacShane
May I pray in aid the Deputy Prime Minister, who said that the Conservative party in the European Parliament is now allied with “nutters, anti-Semites and homophobes”? The right hon. Gentleman has not resiled from that. That is walking away from Europe. As long as the Conservative party is in alliance with those weirdos, it loses a good part of the political traction that it should have in Europe.
Emma Reynolds
My right hon. Friend makes a valid point. If the Prime Minister had not pulled his MEPs from the mainstream centre right in the European Parliament when he was Leader of the Opposition, he would have found that he had much more influence before the summit, because he would have been in Marseille for the European People’s party meeting in preparation for the European Council summit.
It is of real concern to the Opposition that by isolating the UK the Government have lost influence with our European partners and could lose influence over the single market. Deeper fiscal integration by the eurozone countries does not necessarily lead to the development of separate trade policies or separate decisions on the single market, but that could come about if the UK continues to lose influence.
I understand that the Polish Government are now seeking to secure a seat at the frequent eurozone summits—a logical negotiating position. If they are successful, they would then have a voice, even if they did not have vote, at eurozone summits. As it stands, our Government will be barred from such meetings, leaving the UK without a vote and without a voice, unable to guard against eurozone Heads of State and Government straying into areas of decision making that are relevant to the EU of 27.
EU Sanctions (Iran)
Denis MacShane Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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Mr Hague
That is a very important question. The reason something different is happening is partly because of one of the factors to which I was just referring—we can be fairly confident that if Iran develops a nuclear weapons capability, other nations will seek to do so. That will not help the security of the people of Iran; it will simply mean that the world’s most unstable region starts to have a large number of the world’s most destructive weapons. That is not in the interests of the people of any of the countries there. Secondly, Iran’s record of concealment, which we have just discussed, and statements by the President of Iran that have included his saying at one stage that Iran would like to wipe Israel off the map, create a focus of attention on Iran’s nuclear plans to an even greater degree than on those of any other country.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
The Foreign Secretary referred to our oldest D-class frigate, which was in the flotilla that just went through the strait of Hormuz and displaces less than 5,000 tonnes, but without aircraft carrier power Britain can have no maritime power projection. I wish our Foreign Secretary well, and I do not want him to go into the conference chamber naked, so will he talk to Brazil, Argentina and Thailand, which have had the good sense to keep their aircraft carriers, and see whether we can borrow or sub-let one while the crisis unfolds?
Sergei Magnitsky
Denis MacShane Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to initiate this debate under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea. Today I want to deal with the tragedy of a lawyer who worked closely with and for a British company—and its British chairman who is present in Westminster Hall—and who was done to death under the most atrocious circumstances. If a British lawyer working for an overseas firm had been arrested and so mistreated in the UK, all hell would break loose. This tragedy, however, happened in today’s Russia, and my charge is that the British Government have been singularly lax in dealing with the case, and lacking in adequate and necessary measures, not only to obtain justice but to send a clear message that putting to death a lawyer who represents British interests is not cost free. I do not claim a new policy of “advocatus Britannicus sum”, but the idea of civilisation and the rule of law, as well as the clear rules in the European convention on human rights to which Russia is a signatory, provide a special place for lawyers to represent their clients without facing prosecution or persecution unto death.
The details of the tragic death of Sergei Magnitsky are somewhat well known. Mr Magnitsky was the Moscow lawyer of British businessman William Browder. Mr Browder was born American and is the grandson of Earl Browder who was leader of the Communist party in the United States during the 1930s until he fell out with Stalin in 1945. Earl Browder’s grandson decided that capitalism was a better bet than communism, and over a decade beginning in the 1990s he built up the largest investment fund in Russia with billions of dollars of assets. However, not all went well for young Browder when he started publicly complaining about endemic corruption in Russian state companies, and in 2006, President Putin expelled him from Russia as a “threat to national security”. I would like to recommend to the House the remarkable documentary by Ms Norma Percy on the early Putin years. It will be shown on BBC 2 next Thursday and it illustrates the interface between politics, state bureaucracy and business.
Once the Putin regime decides that it does not like a business leader, it does not operate in half measures, and when it decides to turn on someone, it does so in spectacular fashion. After Browder’s expulsion, Putin’s tax police raided his offices in Moscow, seized all his company stamps and seals and stole his investment holding companies. Browder hired a bright young Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, to try to stop this continuing state-sanctioned crime. Magnitsky investigated all the police actions and discovered that Browder’s companies had not only been stolen but had subsequently been used by the tax police to fraudulently refund from Government coffers the $230 million in taxes that Browder’s firm had paid in the previous year.
Magnitsky did what any lawyer would do on behalf of his client: he filed criminal complaints and testified on the involvement of the tax police in that enormous theft. That was a big mistake. He was subsequently arrested by the same tax police officers against whom he had testified, and blamed for the fraud himself. The scams that the Putinocracy arranges are not just for a few high-up people—everyone gets a cut. To shut him up, Magnitsky was flung into one of the roughest prisons in Russia and essentially held a hostage. Because the Russian state could not get at Mr Browder, who, as a British citizen was now safe in London with his family, they went for his lawyer to send a signal to other firms operating in Russia saying that when the tax police—or anyone else demanding a cut—knock at the door, co-operation is wiser than insisting on the rule of law.
Sergei Magnitsky was brutally treated in prison. He was tortured for 358 days by sleep deprivation, freezing temperatures, the withholding of food and other torments left over from the Stalin era of torturing people whom the Kremlin did not like. After six months of such treatment he became extremely sick and was systematically denied any medical treatment. Eventually, Magnitsky’s beleaguered body began to give way and his condition became critical. Instead of sending him to the emergency room, his jailers put him in an isolation cell and allowed eight riot guards with rubber batons to beat him until he was dead. In November 2009, he was found lying in a pool of his own urine, dead on the cell floor at the age of 37.
Since then, the Russian Government have tried to cover up the cause of Magnitsky’s death, and a network of named officials in the tax, police, public prosecution and prison departments of the Russian state has been identified as part of that cover-up. Many of those involved have bought property abroad at prices that would be impossible on their declared salaries.
None of those facts are secret and they have been reported by journalists in Moscow, as have the details and names of those involved. The names have been listed by US Senators, Congressmen and Congresswomen, and by parliamentarians in some EU member states and in the European Parliament. The Magnitsky affair has also been the subject of a Council of Europe report. I, together with a number of right hon. and hon. Members, as well as Peers, have asked questions in Parliament and sought to highlight this assault on a respected British business, and show the terrible insight that the Magnitsky death gives us into how Russia operates. I had the luck to secure this debate, but that could have happened to any number of interested colleagues who support me on this affair, some of whom are present in the Chamber.
Vasily Aleksanyan was another young lawyer, and former general counsel to Yukos. In 2006, Mr Aleksanyan was arrested as part of the persecution of those involved in Yukos. He rapidly developed serious health conditions due to AIDS-related illnesses, but was denied antiretroviral treatment or chemotherapy in prison. In 2008, the European Court of Human Rights intervened and ordered Russian authorities to release Aleksanyan. The damage done to his body during his detention was too great, however, and he died last year as a direct result of the denial of treatment in jail.
That is the Magnitsky story. We must now turn to the Whitehall story and ask the Minister why the Foreign Office and Home Office have been so lax in taking up the Magnitsky case, and unwilling to take action against the named officials who were involved in theft via the tax system and the crime that Magnitsky sought to reveal. Will the Minister explain why some of the principals involved have been allowed to enter the UK without let or hindrance? Lieutenant Colonel Artem Kuznetsov from the Russian Interior Ministry was named in Magnitsky’s testimony as having orchestrated the theft of the Hermitage fund’s investment companies. Kuznetsov was also accused of perpetrating the $230 million tax fraud, as well as Magnitsky’s false arrest and persecution in detention. Public records—let me stress that—show that shortly after the $230 million was paid from the Russian Treasury, Kuznetsov’s family acquired $3 million worth of high-end apartments in Moscow, land plots outside the city and several luxury cars. Kuznetsov travelled to the UK twice in 2006.
Major Pavel Karpov, also from the Russian Interior Ministry, was named by Magnitsky as a close accomplice of Kuznetsov. Karpov initiated the criminal case against Mr Magnitsky that was used as a pretext for his false arrest. Public records in Russia—again, I stress that—show that Karpov’s family acquired $1.3 million in real estate assets and luxury cars following the completion of the fraud. Mr Karpov travelled to the UK four times between 2006 and 2007.
Dmitry Klyuev is the owner of Universal Savings bank through which the $230 million proceeds of the fraud were laundered. He was previously involved in a number of other tax-refund frauds, and in 2006 was convicted of a $1.6 billion fraud relating to the attempted theft of shares from Mikhailovsky GOK, a Russian iron ore company. Mr Klyuev also travelled to the United Kingdom at least five times in 2008. As I have said, all these names are on the record in Russia and on Capitol hill in Washington.
The following Government officials also played a role in the tax fraud that Magnitsky uncovered, his subsequent arrest and imprisonment, the persecution of Hermitage lawyers and executives, Magnitsky’s continued detention, the denial of medical care, torture, the denial of fair hearings, and finally his death in custody and the subsequent cover up: from the courts service, Judge Yelena Stashina, Judge Alexei Krivoruchko, Olga Egorova; from the Interior Ministry, Mr Oleg Silchenko, Oleg Urzhumtsev, Alexei Anichin, Oleg Logunov, Boris Kibis, General Major Tatiana Gerasimova; from the FSB—the Russian secret service and the successor to the KGB—Mr Viktor Voronin; from the tax offices, Olga Stepanova and Elena Khimina; from the prison services, Dmitri Komnov, Fikhet Tagiev and Yuri Kalinin; and from the General Prosecutor’s Office, Andrey Pechegin.
I ask the Minister to agree that those people should now be banned from entering the UK and their names circulated via Interpol and Europol. We need to sharpen up our diplomatic tools by declaring that the functionaries linked to Magnitsky’s death are unwelcome as visitors in Britain, thus copying what the US State Department has done under pressure from the US Congress.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman and I are probably about to say exactly the same thing. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is not much point in just banning these people secretly behind closed doors? It is important that we say publicly that they are not welcome in this country.
Mr Raab
I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Does he agree that in addition to highlighting the tragic case before us, it is time for a British equivalent of the US Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which would hold to account more generically foreign officials responsible for grotesque human rights abuses, through travel bans and asset freezes, and also that, as in the US, this a matter not just for the Executive, but for Members of this House and for Parliament?
Mr MacShane
I would support that. Perhaps some right hon. and hon. Members present might combine to ask the Backbench Business Committee for a longer debate, which might allow a slight pause for breath and more development of some of these themes. In particular, it would show the Russian authorities that this is a cross-party affair, with support from a considerable number of Members of both Houses.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I just want to add Canada to the list. It has also passed legislation in similar terms to the United States, so it is not just one country but many countries taking a strong stand against these appalling acts.
Mr MacShane
Poland and, I believe, the Netherlands have done so as well, but the addition of Canada, which is a great beacon of democracy and a Commonwealth country, is most welcome.
Yes, I believe that we should be doing what has been set out. We should not need to have a debate, because I hope that when the Minister replies, he will tell us that he fully accepts that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will put a statement, a note, in the Library tomorrow, with those names on it, saying that they are not welcome in the UK, and will pass the names on to Europol and Interpol. So far, the FCO has resisted that idea and has constantly sought to downplay the Magnitsky affair. The FCO position or, more accurately, the Whitehall position has been to shelter behind Russian bureaucracy.
On 15 November 2011, the Minister for Immigration finally replied to a letter that I sent him in August on the idea of a visa ban. That was a very discourteous gap between my letter and his reply. He wrote:
“The Russian Presidential Council on Human Rights presented to President Medvedev its report on Mr Magnitsky’s arrest and treatment”
and the
“Minister of the Interior has announced that its own internal investigation has not found any evidence of abuses by their officials”.
Well, that is a surprise—a bureaucracy defends its own people. Nevertheless,
“the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation chaired by Alexander Bastrykin”
would report by 24 November. To my knowledge, no such report was issued, and it is time for the FCO and Home Office to stop parroting Russian excuses for inaction and instead to follow the example of the United States, Canada and Poland and make it clear that those who stole the money that Magnitsky was investigating and then colluded in his death should not be given a permanent status of impunity by Whitehall fiat.
In an earlier reply to a parliamentary question from me on 13 July 2011, the Minister for Immigration—I welcome the Under-Secretary from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but this is as much a matter for the Home Office as it is for the FCO—confirmed the following:
“The Secretary of State for the Home Department…does have the power to exclude foreign nationals whose presence in the UK she judges would not be conducive to the public good”,
but he added that
“the duty of confidentiality means that the Government are unable to discuss the details of individual immigration cases.”—[Official Report, 13 July 2011; Vol. 531, c. 398W.]
I am sorry, but that will not do and it is not true. Her Majesty’s Government have regularly published the names of those to whom they deny visa entry. They include or included the TV cook Martha Stewart, the actor George Raft, the Scientologist L. Ron Hubbard and even a Nobel laureate, the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who wrote:
“Death is the stone into which our oblivion hardens.”
It is the wish of the Russian authorities that Magnitsky’s death hardens into oblivion, but as another great writer who lived under communism, Milan Kundera, wrote:
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
Let us not hear from the Minister today that the Government cannot publish the names of the people whom they ban. We should not allow Magnitsky to be forgotten. If the Home Office can publicly ban a cook, an actor, a loopy and a poet, surely it can ban those Russian officials named as associates in this massive theft, then the arrest and ill- treatment to the point of death of a lawyer representing a British citizen and his company.
Modern Russian apparatchiks like to visit, buy flats in and educate their children in London. If we name and shame and announce that they will lose those privileges if they break the law and allow a lawyer representing a British firm to die in agony for having defended his client’s interest, diplomatic pressure will be focused and sharp and will send a clear state-to-state signal that Russia cannot live above the law.
This is not just about Russia, however. We need to find ways of sending signals to mid-level officials in other authoritarian regimes that when they break the law, the doors of Britain are not easily open to them. A new approach is required to create a new tool of democratic diplomacy—namely, the precisely targeted travel ban that is made public so that all law-abiding state officials in Russia and elsewhere can see that corruption and collusion in murder are no longer crimes without sanction. That is what more and more decent Russian citizens want.
A further signal could be sent. Just as Mr Putin is not welcome on the streets of Moscow today, Britain should say that he is not welcome at the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics. In 1980, Mrs Thatcher had the guts to say no to a formal British endorsement of the Moscow Olympics after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. If the Prime Minister wants to emulate the Iron Lady, he should say no to Mr Putin, who will use the London Olympics and the winter Olympics in two years’ time as events for self-promotion.
Of the 20 years since the end of communism, Russia spent the first decade being plundered by oligarchs and the second decade being robbed by state functionaries up to the highest level. It is time that Russia became a normal rule-of-law nation and its tax collectors levied taxes for the good of the people, not their own offshore bank accounts.
European Union
Denis MacShane Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
Very simply, what action did the Prime Minister veto? A veto is imposed to prevent something from happening.
Mr Dodds
I will come on to that in detail, but he prevented a treaty from coming into place that did not have sufficient safeguards for the United Kingdom. It is a pity that when the Labour party was in government, it did not take such action to prevent some of the things that happened to this country.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds). I know that when she worked for the Socialist group in the European Parliament she was behind the scenes doing deals, but they always involved giving powers away from the United Kingdom and to the European Union. I am sure that, like me, she is desperately upset about the fact that the Deputy Prime Minister has chosen not to be a distraction in this debate either.
The motion makes three points. It
“commends the Prime Minister on his refusal at the European Council to sign up to a Treaty without safeguards for the UK”,
it mentions
“the use of the veto”,
and it refers to
“the desire of the British people for a rebalancing of the relationship with our European neighbours”.
I shall discuss all those points, and try to destroy some of the myths that have emerged from speeches made by Opposition Members.
It is fairly obvious that the British people, as well as some Members, commend the Prime Minister. I have a list of names of dozens of people who have sent e-mails supporting him. They are not Conservative party members or head-bangers. but they are passionate about this country, and I look forward to handing those e-mails to the Prime Minister in the near future.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I will happily give way to the armless right hon. Gentleman.
Mr MacShane
I have to hold my arm up for blood-related reasons.
I have received similar e-mails. In 1983, 50% of the British people wanted to get out of the European Community, and a further 25% wanted a total renegotiation. The Labour party adopted that as its platform and its manifesto for the 1983 election. Margaret Thatcher ignored those feelings with contempt, won that election and the next one, and created the Single European Act without a referendum. What has gone so wrong with the spirit of Thatcher that today’s Conservatives are happy to betray it?
Chris Heaton-Harris
I must tell the right hon. Gentleman that times have changed just a tad since then. I believe that the attitudes of the parliamentary Conservative party directly reflect the attitudes of the electorate. They certainly reflect the attitudes of the electorate in England, and they would probably prove to reflect the attitudes of those in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales should they ever be consulted, as I hope they will be one day.
Let me say something about the veto that we supposedly exercised. I was a Member of the European Parliament, and I saw negotiations of this type up close and personal on a number of occasions. I saw the French walk out of meetings over the common agricultural policy. I enjoyed seeing the Spanish throw a magnificent strop during budget negotiations, which eventually ensured that the bulk of the Spanish fishing fleet was rebuilt or renewed at the expense of European taxpayers. Those countries were doing what most people do in business: they were setting out a negotiating position on the basis of which they could proceed. The one thing that all Members know is that this process will take months to reach fruition. At least we have the starting block of a solid negotiating position, something that earlier Governments were been unable to secure when embarking on European negotiations.
We have other vetoes that could be used in negotiations. One example is the multiannual budget financial perspective. In 2010-11, our net contribution to the European Union was £9.2 billion. We are the second largest net contributor to this club, but we ask very little in return for the money that we give. Our contributions will average about £8.5 billion for the next five years, and we should be demanding much more value for our money.
So many myths have been circulated. Today’s Financial Times—a newspaper that some people consider to be an accurate record of what is going on, as indeed it normally is—contains an article headed “MEP threat”, which states:
“A British MEP who leads the European parliament’s most powerful committee on economics and financial regulation is facing the threat of being ousted in a post-summit backlash against Britain.”
In fact such positions are decided on the basis of the number of MEPs in a political group, and the only people who can oust Sharon Bowles are fellow members of the European Liberal group. That is a complete misunderstanding, and just one of the myths that are peddled nowadays.
Mr Donaldson
I accept that entirely. People who talk about vox pops in France and who quote the French ought to talk to the French farmers about the European Union and the rules that their Government sign up to. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) said, it is all very well talking about Britain being left outside the door, but let us wait until this treaty gets to the people in these member states and see the response when they realise its full consequences. In Northern Ireland, we have of course seen the consequences, at times, of bad European policies. As my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) reminded us, we have seen those consequences and the impact on our fishing industry in Northern Ireland. Our white fish fleet comprised more than 40 trawlers in 1999, but it now numbers just four—that is the result of the common fisheries policy. At the end of the 1990s, the Northern Ireland over-10 metre fleet comprised 240 vessels, but now it comprises 140—that is the result of the CFP. We could also say the same about our farmers, because although there have undoubtedly been some benefits, small farmers have paid a very high price for the common agricultural policy. The directives that have been imposed on agriculture have presented a real challenge for many farmers across the United Kingdom, not least those in Northern Ireland.
Mr MacShane
On that very technical point, I would not object if the CAP were abolished, but what would a British agricultural policy—a BAP—look like? How much would it cost in taxpayer subsidies to keep our farmers, small and large, going as we would wish? Has anybody done the figures?
Mr Donaldson
The reality is that we would spend a lot more of the £18 billion we give each year to the European Union—half of which we get back—in supporting our farmers to produce the food that our country needs, and we would do so without the kind of silly regulation that Europe imposes on us. If we had a national policy in place of the CAP, we would use our own money to help our own farmers.
The same applies to our haulage industry. I talk to hauliers in my constituency and they tell me that they do not understand these crazy regulations that are imposed at times by the European Union. Business faces the same situation. As we all know, business is struggling as a result of the recession, yet the endless stream of bureaucracy emerging from Brussels continues unabated and we continue to fund those who create those regulations, with no diminution in the budget that goes into the super-structure that is European Union bureaucracy. So, as the leader of my party has pointed out, there are many benefits to the concept of rebalancing our relationship with the European Union. There are benefits for the economy, for business, for farmers, for fishermen and for hauliers—indeed, it is difficult to see who would not benefit from such a rebalancing.
Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land border with another European member state. When we look across the border, we see the Irish Government subjected to the ignominy of having to give their budget to Europe for approval—and it leaks all over the place—before their Finance Minister has the opportunity to get up in the national Parliament to tell the people of the country what their Government are doing. Many people in Dublin now regard Berlin as the capital of the Republic of Ireland, not Dublin, because that is where the real decisions are being taken about their future.
Oral Answers to Questions
Denis MacShane Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Mr Lidington
We continue to urge on the leaders of all political parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina the need for urgent progress to establish that state-level Government. I talked about that to EU Special Representative Peter Sørensen and the international community’s representative, Valentin Inzko, a week ago. Every actor with influence on the Balkans needs to work towards greater stability in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
Yesterday two German soldiers were shot and wounded by Serb thugs in northern Kosovo. It is a huge problem. Will the Minister and the Foreign Secretary appeal to President Tadic, whether it is in Bosnia and Herzegovina or in Kosovo, to assume responsibility? The proposed talks next week about Serbia joining the EU cannot get under way so long as there is no democratic law-and-order authority in Kosovo—or, indeed, in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Mr Lidington
I deplore the incident that the right hon. Gentleman described, and I discussed it with my German counterpart yesterday. The Commission’s report on EU enlargement clearly sets out the fact that Serbia needs to address its relations with its neighbours if it is to make progress towards EU accession, as it hopes to do.
Topical Questions
North Africa and the Near and Middle East
Denis MacShane Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
I do not know how to follow the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), who is a west midlands colleague of mine.
I welcome this debate and in particular the way in which the Foreign Secretary opened it. Even though I have some differences with the Government on their non-vote on Palestinian recognition, as was clear from the last statement on the middle east, I have been impressed by the willingness of the Minister and the Foreign Secretary to engage on that issue and to provide regular briefings. I am sure that that is welcomed by hon. Members on both sides of the House.
There was a very interesting speech by the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), which I will comment on in a minute. I am not sure that I entirely followed his analysis on Iran, but he made some telling points on a number of other areas. My right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) made some important points that we should all heed on Bahrain and Syria.
I would like to say a few words on Syria. All of us, particularly those with a keen interest in the middle east, have been appalled by the level of repression and violence by the Assad regime. As the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington said, the Syrian people have showed incredible bravery and fortitude in standing up to that in the most appalling of circumstances. He was right—this has been said in the messages that I have been getting as well—that one of the most important things that we can do is to show the Syrian people that they are not an afterthought, but that we are with them. It is important that we help to keep their morale up. He was absolutely right that that is one of the important points about the Arab League initiative. I hope that the sanctions bite and are effective, but my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley is correct that we need to think beyond those sanctions as well. The statement that they have made is that the situation is a concern not simply to the outside world but to the Arab world itself, and that the Arab world will not stand for what is going on in Syria.
In Egypt, as we have heard, the polls are open for a general election, which I am sure we all welcome. However, we have to bear it in mind that there are parties that are boycotting the election because of the context in which it is taking place, and that people are still in Tahrir square voicing disquiet about how those elections could turn out. If the Muslim Brotherhood wins or gets the largest single number of votes, as seems likely, it will be really important that it carries through what it has said about recognising that democracy in Egypt has to be for all shades of opinion, secular as well as Islamist. That will need to be reflected in the future constitutional settlement.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
Will my hon. Friend comment on the case of the 26-year-old Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil, who is now in his third month of a hunger strike? He was one of the first bloggers and the first Egyptians to say that the army and bits of the Muslim Brotherhood may be coming together. It is the army that is sending thousands of Egyptians to prison, with military courts and 93% conviction rates. That young man may die and be sacrificed as a martyr to the fact that the Egyptian army will not accept the will of the Egyptian people.
Richard Burden
My right hon. Friend draws attention to a very brave individual, who is one of many in Tahrir square and beyond. Everyone recognised when the Mubarak regime fell that there were close ties between that regime and the military. Nevertheless, the military were also seen as a national force who were not moving against the people. That is one of the tragedies about what has been happening in Egypt. The fact that things have not moved as people in Tahrir square and beyond wanted them to is a source of profound regret, and that is what is being said in Tahrir square today. I hope that not only the Muslim Brotherhood but, as he says, the military themselves take that on board in the context of the elections. The military in Egypt can be a force for national unity, but they have to change their approach from the one they have adopted in recent weeks and months.
The Muslim Brotherhood is clearly an influential force in Egypt, and in other parts of the Arab world in north Africa and the middle east. Political Islam is a potent force there, and again, the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington made an important point about that. If Members look for political symmetry between my views and those of the Muslim Brotherhood, they will have great difficulty in finding any points of contact. However, he was right to suggest that success for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood are a disaster for groups such as al-Qaeda and the Salafist tradition of political Islam. We must bear that in mind, and it is why the Government are correct to look to open up engagement with political Islamist forces, whether in north Africa or elsewhere.
We recognise that such engagement is necessary in north Africa, for instance in Egypt and Tunisia, and perhaps—who knows?—in creating a dialogue in Jordan. As chair of the all-party group on Jordan, I welcome the visit of King Abdullah to the House the other week, which showed that there is a chance for greater engagement as Jordan continues its reform programme. That sends a clear message that involvement by the UK in the formation of political parties in Jordan is to be welcomed as it moves towards reform. I hope that the Minister will say something about what more we can do on that. However, if we see that engagement with political Islam is important in all those places, we cannot suddenly put the shutters up as a matter of principle if the country involved is Palestine, because the bit of the Muslim brotherhood involved is called Hamas rather than the Muslim Brotherhood.
At the moment, there is a chance of a different way forward in relation to Israel and Palestine. Talks have been taking place in Cairo between Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and Khaled Mashal of Hamas about a possible reconciliation between those two parties. Anybody who knows about Palestine knows that both Hamas and Fatah, and both political Islam and secular organisations, are part of the reality of Palestinian politics. If we are to get to the stage of a two-state solution and enduring peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as I am sure the whole House wants, the peace deal has to reach out to both those traditions. It has to include political Islam as well as secular forces.
In the same way, we could not say that the only people we wanted to talk to in Israel were those who would generally be regarded as being in the peace camp. We have to recognise that the reality of Israeli politics also includes people such as Mr Lieberman, whose views are hardly the most progressive in the world—some would say that they are racist. It includes groups such as Yisrael Beiteinu and Likud. If we accept that in relation to engagement with Israel, we have to do so in relation to Palestine as well.
That gives a choice in relation to the reconciliation talks. There have been fairly clear signals coming out of those talks, as there have been from Hamas not for months but for years, about its involvement or acquiescence in a peace settlement. We would be totally foolish to ignore those signals. Yet somehow, the international community has got itself into a position of trying to put preconditions on the involvement of Hamas in talks. That was why I asked the Foreign Secretary a question about the matter earlier. In practice, those preconditions seem to have been designed not to encourage Hamas to come into peace talks but to find ways of keeping it out. Hurdles have been erected so that we can work out whether Hamas has jumped high enough, rather than our understanding what it means and responding when it offers truces and unilaterally declares hudnas. The term “hudna” has huge importance in Islam.
If we want to see peace between Israel and Palestine, a more subtle approach is important, and we cannot have that unless we are prepared to discuss matters and have dialogue. I think most diplomats would understand that dialogue and discussion do not necessarily mean the same as negotiations—negotiations can come later—but are an important start to the process by which negotiations can happen.