Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance

Debate between Denis MacShane and Peter Bone

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[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 Bone]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a fair point. The Backbench Business Committee is not given the time in advance to plan any of these debates, so he is absolutely right.

[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.

European Union (Amendment) Act 2008

Debate between Denis MacShane and Peter Bone

Wednesday 16th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr MacShane]

I thought the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) made an important intervention earlier this week about the Saudi invasion and occupation of Bahrain, but that is another point. I am sorry, but the hon. Member for Stone has put his finger on a very profound point, although I would not use the term “appeasement”.

I have affection for the Minister for Europe, who was like Horatio defending the bridge, fighting all by himself “for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his Gods”, as the Tuscan hordes—the Eurosceptic hordes—bore down on him and tried to thrust him to one side in order to bring to bear their vision of what Britain should be like. This is a very serious development. The Government have used article 48(6) of the treaty of the European Union—the famous passerelle clause, which was not meant to be used.

We are agreed that part of the problem is connected with the budget freeze, about which the Minister spoke so passionately and proudly, but in exchange the President of France is going to get an absolute block on any common agricultural policy reform. Right hon. and hon. Members should have no illusions about that; if any part of Europe is frozen, it all tends to start freezing. In the agreed statement, although the new mechanism applies only to eurozone or euro-using members, it fully engages Britain. As the key statement we are debating tonight states:

“The Heads of State or Government of the euro area”—

that is not us—

“and the EU institutions have made it clear… that they stand ready to do whatever is required to ensure the stability of the euro area as a whole. The euro is and will remain a central part of European integration. In particular, the Heads called for determined action in the following areas”,

which were specified. The Heads of the European institutions speak for us. That means the President of the European Council. We appointed him, as we appointed the President of the European Parliament. Our MEPs elected him. I am afraid that this is not simply a matter solely and exclusively for the eurozone. Frankly, this might be a comfort blanket that my dear friend Horatio is trying to throw over the noisy bedsteads of the Tuscans behind him, but the fact is that this will commit Britain to take part in decisions that involve us as a nation.

When I said in a debate last week that the Prime Minister, after discussing the Libyan crisis on Friday, would be asked to leave the room, the hon. Member for Stone intervened, as some Members might remember, and read out a press release saying that the British Prime Minister would take part in these decisions on the architecture of economic governance of Europe as a whole. The hon. Member for Stone might care to recall that, last Friday, as soon as the Libyan discussions were over—they ended, frankly, in nothing, with bits of paper being waved around—the serious decisions of the European Council started and lasted all through Friday afternoon, Friday evening and Saturday. The Irish Prime Minister, the new one of the newly elected Government, went home, not achieving what the Irish people had voted for, but we were absent. This is what the Deputy Prime Minister rightly calls the “empty chair” policy of the present Government, which greatly worries me.

We will pass this legislation tonight, but I accept what the hon. Member for Stone said—this is a matter of high importance. I worry that we are slowly isolating ourselves from the main thrust of decision making in Europe. I think the Minister is putting up a firm defence. The Prime Minister, however, at Prime Minister’s Questions last week, dismissed the intervention of the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone)—I do not mean that unkindly, as I thought it was one of the nicest interventions ever. The hon. Gentleman appealed to the Prime Minister for an in-or-out referendum, but the Prime Minister effectively said on behalf of the British nation state that we are not leaving and that we are not going to a have a referendum, as we are part of Europe.

[Mr Bone]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr MacShane]

I have quoted the hon. Gentleman, so I suppose I should.

[Mr Bone]

I would like to correct the record. The Prime Minister gave his view on how he would vote in an in/out referendum, but he did not rule out either way whether we would have a referendum. He left that entirely open.

[Mr MacShane]

Yes, and I am going to win the lottery on Saturday! I think the Prime Minister was very clear that we are not going to have an in-or-out referendum and that we are staying in the EU. If we are to stay in the EU, it is better to work co-operatively and effectively in it. Unfortunately, the Government do not accept the consequences of their full membership of the EU. They are pretending—here we find that dear Horatio has been waving a wooden sword—that the measure before us somehow excludes Britain from future responsibilities. It does not; it will not: the European Union issue will go on and on for the rest of this Parliament.

European Union Bill

Debate between Denis MacShane and Peter Bone

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I follow very much in the footsteps of the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) by highlighting two very worrying developments in our discussions in this House on Europe that have taken place since the coalition was formed: the abolition of the twice-yearly debates on Europe and the decision of the Foreign Affairs Committee no longer to go to the country holding the EU presidency to examine its plans.

[Mr Bone]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr MacShane]

I am such a fan of the hon. Gentleman’s work on human trafficking that I feel I must give way, but I will try not to take many interventions, for obvious reasons.

[Mr Bone]

The Backbench Business Committee received a powerful bid today for a debate about the European Union and fish discards, and we are taking it forward, so I think that there will be a debate in the House soon about Europe.

[Mr MacShane]

I am grateful that the poor fish thrown into the sea will now have their flippers flipped in the House of Commons.

I want our Government and our House regularly to debate Europe, but the plain fact is that it is the decision of this Government—this coalition—not so to do. The Foreign Affairs Committee, with its coalition majority, is also abolishing its regular trip to the European Union nation that holds the presidency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr MacShane]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because he brings to the House considerable knowledge of how the European Parliament does its business. That is exactly the way in which the European Parliament carries out its scrutiny. Perhaps we should learn from him; perhaps he and I should set up a small committee to go to Strasbourg —for him to return there—to see what we might learn.

In essence, the hon. Member for Stroud is quite right: this is the WikiLeaks amendment. It would abolish the need for WikiLeaks, because the process of Government decision-making would be published. I would love to see that for something infinitely more important to my constituents—the thinking, advice and documents that have led to the promulgation of the NHS Bill or, in two or three weeks’ time, that lead to the Budget. I expect, however, that I would find very little support on the Government side of the House and absolutely none from the Opposition Front Bencher waiting for his turn to speak for the idea that we do government better if we allow Mr Julian Assange to publish every document and every communication that goes into a Minister’s box.

I can confirm exactly the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) made about how negotiations can and do take place. I recall once trying to protect the steelworkers of Britain from a proposal, which the then Labour Government supported, to allow the import of steel—a derogation of the then EU trade rules—from a dodgy supplier in Egypt which I knew to be linked to the army and was, in my view, a wholly corrupt organisation. I could not quite work out why we were so keen to allow the deal to go through, which would have damaged steelworkers’ jobs and production in this country and, if the steel were re-exported, those in the rest of Europe, too.

I could not, however, convince any civil servants. At one stage, I had 27 of them, including two knights of the realm, grouped around me, telling me, “Minister, you have to give way.” I put down my little foot and said, “No, I am elected. That is what I am paid to do.” Then, they went out and got the Secretary of State for Business and Industry to phone me, and at that stage either I resigned on the spot or accepted a superior order.

[Mr Bone]

Did the hon. Gentleman do the honourable thing and resign?

[Mr MacShane]

No, I did not resign, simply because I work in a team. When the hon. Gentleman graces the Front Bench, as I hope and I am sure he soon will, he will have to learn that there is something called teamwork, and that until he becomes Prime Minister he will take rather than give orders.

I am not sure that it would have been any particular help to have published all my animadversions immediately afterwards, although I told my steelworker community friends privately what had happened. Frankly, one cannot do business in that way. I am not even sure whether, constitutionally or legally, suggestions made before a decision is taken can then go fully into the public domain if they belong to other people. I think we may find, legally, that there are certain rules on what is the property of other states. We do not publish every communication with the United States, France, or any country, for good and sensible international legal reasons.

Human Trafficking

Debate between Denis MacShane and Peter Bone

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Streeter, for calling me. I offer my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds), both on securing this debate and on her promotion to the Front Bench.

I do not disagree with much of what has been said. I am here simply to assert that we can do something. Wilberforce should be living at this hour. We have slavery, but it is not known. Slavery in the late 18th century was not much known about; it was incorporated into people’s conservative traditional thinking. It has required strong individuals such as Sir Anthony Steen, who is no longer with us in this House, and other colleagues to take up the campaign against it.

I must place on record my immense disappointment that one specific measure that was put to the new Government shortly after the coalition was formed—namely, a very sensible and practical EU directive—has been spurned. As we honour William Wilberforce, I cannot honour his biographer, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. He made a most eloquent speech at the Upper Waiting Hall exhibition that the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) mentioned, yet as the steward of our European policy he is not prepared to put his ministerial tick where his mouth was just a few months ago.

[Mrs Anne Main in the Chair]

I want to make one small point. The Government and some hon. Members have referred to a report published in August by the Association of Chief Police Officers that talked about 2,600 prostituted sex slaves. I dislike the term “sex worker”—it has an ideological loading. The vast majority of women and girls involved this area are there because of debt or drugs; they are under the coerced control of their pimps. The image of the “happy hooker” sex worker—the “Belle de Jour” sex worker—might apply to a tiny, tiny minority, but this is one of the most disgusting forms of exploitation in our society, whereby a young girl or woman is obliged to take 10 or 12 penises into her orifices each day in order to make money for her pimps and traffickers. So we should have no more nonsense about “sex workers”—these are prostituted women who are suffering horribly.

However, regarding that figure of 2,600 prostituted sex slaves that is quoted in the ACPO report, that report was shredded almost before it was published by the Eaves organisation and other investigators, who noted that it was based on police officers in full uniform going into massage parlours and other brothels and, within sight of the pimps and other controllers of these women and girls, saying, “Excuse me, love, are you trafficked?” and then coming up with that figure of 2,600. It is nonsense, given the world statistics about the level of sex slave trafficking, which are quite reliable. Even if Britain has a smaller share of that trade than other countries, we are still certainly talking about a five-figure number of prostituted sex slaves, at the very least.

There is an important mechanism to deal with this problem of sex slavery, which is tackling the demand side. I will not enter into that debate today; there is some division across the House about it. Nevertheless, until we put the responsibility on the men who pay for sex with coerced and trafficked women, I am afraid that the hope that we will find every pimp and put him behind bars is not a very realistic one.

I pray in aid the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who wrote a marvellous article in the Yorkshire Post about a month ago saying:

“Sex trafficking is nothing more than modern-day slavery. This is women being exploited, degraded and subjected to horrific risks solely for the gratification and economic greed of others. I am therefore stunned to learn that the Government are ‘opting out’ of an EU directive designed to tackle sex trafficking. Generally, I am no great supporter of European directives”

—that might incorporate the views of the hon. Members for the hon. Member for Wellingborough and for Congleton (Fiona Bruce)—

“but this seems to be a common-sense directive designed to co-ordinate European efforts to combat the trade in sex slaves.”

The Archbishop of York is right, and I deeply regret the fact that the Liberal Democrat spokesman in this debate has not been able to back him fully and wholeheartedly. On the whole, those who lie down with Eurosceptic Tories get up with opt-outs.

We will keep pressing the Government on the issue. It is simply not good enough to say, as the Prime Minister said to the then Leader of the Opposition on 15 September, that the directive

“does not go any further than the law that we have already passed. We have put everything that is in the directive in place.”—[Official Report, 15 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 873.]

I am happy to say that the Prime Minister misled the House inadvertently, but he did mislead the House, and that cannot stand. It is clear to anyone who has read the directive, as I have, that the UK is not in compliance. Article 2 deals with offences concerning trafficking in human beings. According to CARE, a Christian organisation working on the issue, the UK Government are only semi-compliant. Article 7 deals with the non-prosecution or non-application of penalties to the victim, a point made strongly by other hon. Members. Again, the UK is only semi-compliant. There is no requirement in UK law not to prosecute victims, even though the Council of Europe convention explicitly states that there should be.

As a delegate to the Council of Europe, I was part of a campaign to get the UK first to sign and then to ratify the convention. The Home Office was utterly resistant, as it is today, to the EU directive. It required the Prime Minister’s personal intervention to get the convention signed and ratified, but we are not yet applying its articles fully. We are certainly not applying the proposed articles of the EU directive.

Article 8 of the EU directive deals with investigation and prosecution. We are not compliant. No specific legislation addresses any of the requirements. The Crown Prosecution Service is currently consulting on its policy on prosecuting cases of human trafficking. Frankly, if the CPS had been around at the beginning of the 19th century, it would have taken until the 20th century to finish its consultation. Parliament itself must get to grips with the issue.

The UK is only semi-compliant with the directive’s article on assistance and support for victims of trafficking in human beings. On the general provision of support for child victims, one of the worst aspects of sex slave trafficking, the UK is, again, only semi-compliant.

[Mr Bone]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr MacShane]

I really do not have time. Forgive me; this is a short debate.

On one important measure in the directive—that there should be national rapporteurs on the issue—the UK is wholly non-compliant. The Prime Minister misled the House on 15 September. I hope that the Minister is willing to accept that and move forward.

The UK Human Trafficking Centre is being abolished. There will be no Operation Pentameter 3, which the hon. Member for Wellingborough rightly demanded. We are shutting down the initial steps taken by the last Government, who were working against “Whitehall knows best” syndrome and much of the mass media. Papers such as The Guardian and shows such as “Newsnight” have constantly downplayed the number of sex slaves and trafficked and prostituted women in our country. It is up to this House alone to persuade the Government.

I make no protest against the Minister who is replying to this debate—he is a sincere and serious Minister on this subject—but he has got it wrong. It is not just about UK law versus Brussels—the Foreign Secretary, in his speech to the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, was pandering to the latent Euroscepticism of his Back Benchers—but about sending a signal to every other EU member state that Britain is part of the joint European campaign. It is also about sending a signal elsewhere in the world that we are prepared to change our law to conform fully to the EU directives, as have all the other EU member states that have signed up, and take the campaign forward internationally.

I know that the Minister will have to read out his brief today, but I say to him that the campaign will go on until we are prepared to support the victims of sex slave trafficking instead of saying, by opting out of the EU directive, that the pimps and traffickers have one or two people on their side in Whitehall.