Balance of Competences

Douglas Alexander Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)]

I thank the Foreign Secretary for his remarks today and for advance sight of the statement.

The Opposition have no objection to a proper, thorough and factual analysis of what the EU does and how it affects us in the United Kingdom, and we welcome the involvement of a wide range of external stakeholders in the exercise announced today. We are also clear, however, that we support a future for Britain within the EU. To cut ourselves off from a market of 500 million customers would imply not just that we had lost faith in Europe, but that we had lost faith in the ability of British companies to out-compete their European rivals. In an era of billion-person countries and trillion-pound economies, we need to find ways to amplify Britain’s voice on the world stage. Where we have shared goals—from climate change negotiations to tackling cross-border crime and human trafficking—working together in Europe makes global agreements more likely.

However, committed as we are to a future within Europe, we also recognise the need for reform of Europe. The Foreign Secretary made only passing reference today to the eurozone crisis, which is still afflicting Europe, so in many ways this was a curiously contextless and rather ahistorical statement, the announcement of which, I fear, owed more to enduring political problems than to immediate policy challenges. Let us remember that President Van Rompuy stated at the European Council just a couple of weeks ago that his plan was to

“submit to the December 2012 European Council detailed proposals for a stage-based process towards a genuine Economic and Monetary Union”.

Given that that timetable is much shorter than the one the Foreign Secretary has set out today for full publication of the internal Government audit, will he confirm that the work initiated today will not be completed and so will not inform the Government’s negotiating position in the critical weeks and months ahead? Given the broad terms of the Foreign Secretary’s statement, will he take the opportunity of his reply to set out more clearly to the House what the Government’s specific negotiating objectives are in the crucial six months ahead?

Every Member of the House knows that it has not exactly been a great week for coalition unity. That is perhaps reflected in the strength of support from the Liberal Democrats Benches for the Foreign Secretary’s statement today—

[Mr Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (LD)]

Quality, not quantity.

[Mr Alexander]

I am glad to say that what is missing in quantity is indeed made up for by quality on the Liberal Democrat Benches. There are still some true and honourable Liberal Democrats, I am glad to acknowledge.

The statement we have just heard from the Foreign Secretary will do little to create a greater sense of consensus between the coalition parties, I fear—indeed, the project is not even under way yet and already cracks are emerging. The Foreign Secretary’s Liberal Democrat colleagues, including the Deputy Prime Minister’s advisers, have reportedly been claiming that the audit is a small, low-key affair and largely a technical exercise. The Foreign Secretary today makes grand claims about the scale and scope of the project, but the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), co-chair of the Liberal Democrat parliamentary committee on international affairs, has already said:

“The call for a long list of demands for unilateral repatriation and carve-outs is neither achievable nor desirable.”

Indeed, the Deputy Prime Minister is reported in the newspapers to have already warned that the review must not simply provide a turbulent backdrop to what is already a tense relationship between Britain and its EU partners. Given that the Deputy Prime Minister knows a thing or two about tense relationships, what assurances can the Foreign Secretary give his colleague today that that scenario will not come to pass?

The timing of today’s announcement seems to have more to do with managing the fallout from the recent weekend of referendum shambles than with promoting Britain’s national interest, because the splits on Europe are not just between the coalition partners, but within the Conservative party. The timing seems to reflect growing rumblings from those on the Conservative Benches, many of whom will see today’s announcement as merely another step on the ramp towards an inevitable EU referendum. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Right on cue, and from the Conservative Front Bench. Let me therefore take this opportunity to ask the Foreign Secretary an important question that the Prime Minister failed to answer when he returned from last month’s EU summit. If the Conservative party were to propose a referendum premised on a package of powers being repatriated—a list that would probably be drawn from the audit announced today—but the Foreign Secretary was unable to secure such an outcome in his negotiations with members of the EU, would he contemplate advocating withdrawal in a subsequent referendum? I invite him to desist from warning about defeatism and simply to answer the question.

In conclusion, the Prime Minister himself said recently that it is vital for our country

“that we get our relationship with Europe right.”

Much that determines that relationship could well be decided before the Government’s review is completed. The truth is that Britain urgently needs an effective Europe strategy, and an audit, although worth while, is not a substitute for a strategy.

[Mr Hague]

Stripping away one or two of the remarks about political parties, I think that amounted to a welcome for the announcement, as the right hon. Gentleman said that he had “no objection”. That is as near as we get to enthusiasm from Opposition Front Benchers on this subject, so I am grateful to him for what counts as a very strong welcome and I look forward to the Labour party submitting its evidence to the review in due course.

Given that the right hon. Gentleman got into party political matters, let me say that it is a pity that Labour never conducted such a review. It might have helped the Labour Government when they were handing over so many competences without understanding what they were doing, without subjecting them to proper scrutiny in this House and without having a referendum. We remember—[Interruption.] Opposition Members are talking about particular treaties, but it was in the Nice treaty that Labour gave up the veto, which ended up with our being implicated in eurozone bail-outs under qualified majority voting—something from which this Government have now extracted the United Kingdom. The Opposition will therefore benefit enormously—and could have benefited in the past—from this kind of analysis, and I am glad that they have no objection today to its being undertaken.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about our priorities in the coming months. They are, of course, to protect the integrity of the single market. There is much talk about banking union, for instance, although different countries and different commentators mean different things by the term. We will protect the integrity of the single market, but above all our priority is to support measures that will really bring growth to the EU. They include removing barriers to business and pursuing free trade agreements with countries such as Canada and Singapore. Much of that agenda was endorsed at the June European Council.

The right hon. Gentleman went on to ask other questions about the future, and to suggest that the timetables were somehow amiss, but he himself said in an article in The Guardian on 1 July that

“there are also those within the Labour party who have speculated about the possibility of a referendum… We should not decide now because the pressing priority…is…securing Britain’s interests and protecting the single market”.

That is exactly what I have been saying. He went on:

“And we cannot sensibly decide now because none of us can fully predict where Europe will be in a few months, never mind a few years.”

So he does not want to answer the questions that he has just been putting to me about the longer-term future. What we do know is that, whatever happens, we will be in a better position if we have undertaken this work. It should have been undertaken before. It will inform our negotiations, improve our discussions with our partners and allow the public to be engaged in the process. Perhaps it will also lead to Governments undertaking more successful negotiations than the one that he will remember from his time as Minister for Europe, when he gave away £7 billion of our rebate. There is much to learn if we are to avoid negotiations that are so memorably, comprehensively and disastrously unsuccessful as those.