Europe

George Freeman Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir James Paice]

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[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

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[Mr Douglas Alexander]

I shall make a little progress before giving way.

The Prime Minister’s speech last week disregarded the greatest concern—I would argue—of the British people, namely the need for stability, growth and jobs. In truth, it was a speech that the Prime Minister did not want to give, on a subject he prefers not to talk about, at a time when no decision was required. Its primary aim was to try to deliver unity through the device of obscurity. That is why the Foreign Secretary’s speech was so illuminating.

Alas, I calculate that the Prime Minister’s speech managed to unite the Conservative party for less than 96 hours, at which point the papers were once again full of new plans and plots against him from within the Conservative ranks. Who can blame them?

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[Sir James Paice]

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[George Freeman]

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[Mr Douglas Alexander]

I will make a little more progress before giving way.

Let me read the principles so that the House can know just how crystal clear they are. The principles are competitiveness, flexibility, that power must be able to flow back to member states and not just away from them, democratic accountability and fairness. As I have said, the Opposition agree with those principles—I hope that does not cause great discomfort on the Conservative Benches. Indeed, to be fair, there is a degree of common ground between the Prime Minister and the Opposition on the need for change in Europe.

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[Mr Alexander]

The Labour Government secured an opt-out on the working time directive, and that process of change can be advanced now rather than in many years ahead. It is significant that the Foreign Secretary, for all his skill as a parliamentarian, singularly avoided giving a single additional detail in his lengthy remarks today on what the Prime Minister was talking about.

[George Freeman]

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[Ben Gummer]

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[Mr Alexander]

We want to see some of the changes that the hon. Gentleman mentioned today, as distinct from what he has said on previous occasions, which was to suggest that the abolition of the common fisheries policy was the way forward. Incidentally, it is a great pleasure to be responding to a Scottish National party Member today, and not simply because we now have agreement on that issue. I was fascinated by his party’s response to the Prime Minister’s speech, because the hon. Gentleman will be aware—he knows the figures as well as I do—that Scottish exports to the European Union are worth approximately £9 billion. Scottish exports to the rest of the United Kingdom—including from his constituency, so he should listen—are worth approximately £45 billion. What was the response of the Deputy First Minister in her ill-fated speech in Dublin? She suggested that a referendum could cause instability and threaten growth. Why would a referendum on Europe, affecting an export market worth £9 billion, cause instability and threaten growth, but a referendum affecting an export market worth £45 billion not be a cause of instability? I have to say that when I heard the Deputy First Minister speak, I thought irony had left the building.

[George Freeman]

rose—

[Mr Alexander]

I will make a little more progress and then I will give way.

The Foreign Secretary had his fun today on the matter of clarity, but within moments of the Prime Minister ending his speech it emerged that he could not tell the country how he will vote in his anticipated referendum. He cannot tell us what people will be choosing to stay in or to stay out of. Crucially—this reflects the point I have just answered—he cannot tell investors whether the United Kingdom will be part of the world’s largest single market in four years’ time. I am sure that even the Government Front-Bench team would accept that in any negotiation, European or otherwise, there has to be give and take. However, the Foreign Secretary cannot or will not tell us whether his party would advocate a yes vote or a no vote at the time of any potential in/out referendum if they had secured only 50% of the negotiating objectives—or indeed 60%, 70%, or perhaps even 80%. That is partly because we do not know what the negotiating objectives are, and partly because the Prime Minister simply cannot answer, as his party would not tolerate his answer.

[George Freeman]

I am extremely grateful to the shadow Foreign Secretary for giving way on that point. We all know that business needs certainty, and we live in uncertain times. Will he take this opportunity to be tough on uncertainty and tough on the causes of uncertainty, and tell us whether Her Majesty’s Opposition support the Government’s proposal to renegotiate and to put the solution to the British people in an in/out referendum?

[Mr Alexander]

We do not support the Government’s approach. We do not support the idea, when we have seen a 0.3% shrinkage in the British economy in the last quarter, that now is the time to call for an in/out referendum. We listen to the voices of businesses in communities across the country. If the hon. Gentleman suggests that economic stability should not be the priority, I fear that he falls into exactly the area that the Prime Minister used to define his leadership by opposing. Does anyone remember the days when the Prime Minister talked about modernisation? He used to say that the Tories were going to have a different approach to the health service, and then they delivered the biggest reorganisation that the NHS has ever seen—one that the chief executive said could be seen from space. Does anyone remember the time when the Prime Minister said, “We’re going to be a different kind of Conservative party. We’re not going to be the nasty party anymore. We’re all in this together”? Then they delivered a millionaires’ top-rate tax cut. Does anyone remember the time when the Prime Minister said, “We’re going to stop banging on about Europe.” Well, that is exactly what we have now from those on the Government Benches.

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[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I want to start by paying tribute to the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister. Their leadership on this issue has electrified Europe, the nation and this debate, and not before time.

The context for this debate is that the EU has changed fundamentally and is still changing. The eurozone crisis demands that we rethink our relationship, and the rise of globalisation and new markets require us all, as Europeans, to look to new models of economic growth.

The principal reason why this debate is so important to my constituents is democracy. The British people voted nigh on 40 years ago for a common market. They have been delivered a federal political union that does not have the legitimacy of their support. At the heart of all democratic politics is a golden principle: those who are elected to serve should never give away the power vested in them by the people they serve without their authority.

The electorate are looking to us to build an economic future for them and their families. They demand that we leave no stone unturned in insisting that the European project adjusts to the realities of globalisation and growth. Furthermore, the world economy demands that Europe becomes more enterprising and more prosperous, and that it engages more with the economies of tomorrow.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The hon. Gentleman says that we do not have what we signed up for in 1975. I agree with him about that. However, does he not agree that the biggest transfer of power to Brussels and the biggest change in the EU came with the Single European Act, which was signed in 1986 by Margaret Thatcher, who never even considered taking it to the country in a referendum?

[George Freeman]

I disagree. We could have an interesting debate about how the illegitimate ratcheting of power has happened over the past 30 years. The Lisbon treaty had a big part to play. The previous Government’s promise to hold a referendum and their denial of one played a big part in the destruction of trust.

Twenty-five years ago, the then Conservative Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, made a major speech on Europe that became known as the Bruges speech. I think that our Prime Minister’s speech will become known as the Bloomberg speech. I pay tribute to his leadership. He set out some important messages, not least the idea that Europe requires a new model to deal with global growth and that we cannot build a 21st century economy within the constraints of a 20th century political and economic institution. I warmly welcome the five principles that he set out to guide this important renegotiation.

I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement of our belief in a common single market—not a market that is over-regulated by big government and dominated by the big businesses that feed of it, but a single market that is dynamic, entrepreneurial, open, innovative and global. We are, as the Prime Minister said, in a global race. We need a Europe that helps us and itself to cope and compete in that race.

I consider myself to be an optimistic, entrepreneurial and global European. I am Eurosceptic in terms of the political, federal project that I have witnessed during my lifetime, but I am an optimistic democrat and businessman when it comes to Europe’s future in the world and our future in the world through it. We have much to be optimistic about. Post the cold war we have seen an extraordinary change in Europe, the middle east and across the world, and more recently we have seen the Arab spring and an opening up across the middle east. Rather than focus on ever-deepening European political union, should we not seek to widen the influence of a looser, pro-enterprise and entrepreneurial Europe? I dream of the day when the strife, poverty, violence and terror that dominate the middle east are vanquished because that area is part of a much wider European market. I want to buy goods from Syria, not watch it on television while it and neighbouring countries are torn apart by violence and strife.

Globalisation creates enormous market opportunities for us and for Europe, and a Europe that is plugged into that global phenomenon would be capable of leading against the two big blocs of America and China. That is not, however, the Europe with which we are confronted. In my field of science and innovation I know all too well how powerful the European market is and can be because of CERN, the life sciences and the European Space Agency. On Monday I was at the Sanger Institute in Cambridge and visited the European Bioinformatics Institute where hundreds of young European scientists here in Britain are at the forefront of breaking down the human genome and increasing our understanding of how disease affects different populations.

As a mature, sophisticated set of western economies, we can lead the world with the translation of our knowledge to help the developing world. Over the next 30 years, the developing world will have to go through revolutions that took us 200 years. Perhaps they will go through Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from the basics of food, medicine and energy to becoming sophisticated western markets that will unlock enormous markets for our talents and skills.

The problem is, however, that the European Union of today is not in a fit state to unlock such opportunities. Economically, the eurozone is riven by debt—I remind the House that as a whole, Europe currently owes €10.9 trillion—and it has high rates of unemployment, with the EU average currently running at 10.7%. That is unsustainable. Furthermore, politically we are seeing that the federal model of ever-closer union is simply not capable of accommodating the needs of the eurozone as well as those of us who are—fortunately—outside it. The need to recover trust among those of us who have observed the illegitimate ratcheting of a federal union demands the change set out by the Prime Minister.

Closer integration in the eurozone is a problem for the UK but also an opportunity for us and other countries not included in that zone. We need to define a new structure and I believe that a two-tier Europe is emerging. I have in my hand a list of the 17 nations in the eurozone. It is a long list, and the big leader is Germany. On the right is a list of the 10 nations outside the eurozone, and if Norway, Switzerland and the next wave of possible new entrants are added, the obvious leader of that group would be the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We can, I believe, develop our leadership in the context of a debate about that structure. Our leadership must be in the context of the global race about which the Prime Minister, and many hon. Members in this debate, have been so lucid.

The life sciences are a particular interest of mine, and this country and Europe have a big part to play in the big markets of food, medicine and energy. Through collaborations between European universities, investors and companies, we lead the world in that sector. The truth is, however, that the European Union is not always—and of late has increasingly not been—supportive of our, or its, ability to unlock that strength. In particular, it has begun to develop a series of policies and directives on genetic modification that are holding back this country’s leadership. Global food demand is set to increase by 70% in the next 30 years, 29 countries are growing GM crops, and biotech crops are valued at £90 billion yet only two are licensed in the European Union. If the European Union will not let us lead in that sphere, we need the freedom to do it for ourselves.

I congratulate those hon. Members who have put together the Fresh Start group, and reiterate my support for them. If we set out a positive vision of a new Europe and build alliances with nations that share our interests, we can deliver real change. The truth is that Europe 1.0 is over and we need Europe version 2.0 in which we can lead and to which we want to belong. We must seize the moment and build the alliances to deliver that.