Global Britain
Jack Dromey Excerpts(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Dominic Raab
We automatically take back control of our waters and others’ right to fish in them at the end of 2020. We will be leaving the common fisheries policy, so we will be an independent coastal state. In line with the practice of other such states, the agreement we do with the EU will provide a framework for annual negotiations on access and quotas. I hope that gives my hon. Friend and her constituents the reassurance they need.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
In aerospace, aviation, engineering, food, farming and ceramics, the organisations that represent those who employ millions of workers have expressed serious concern over what happens if the Government get it wrong. Will the Secretary of State undertake that the Government will, in the next stages, fully engage those industrial organisations and the unions that represent the workers concerned, not least because if the Government get it wrong—there is a real risk of that—tens of thousands of workers will pay the price with their jobs?
Dominic Raab
I do not share the hon Gentleman’s pessimistic outlook, but it is important that all areas of civil society, including the unions, are engaged and can feed in their views on all the different sectoral aspects he mentioned. The hon. Gentleman talked in particular about aviation; we believe that there is mutual benefit in an air-transport agreement that covers market access to air services, aviation safety and security. That is just one of the wider areas of co-operation that we will look to take forward with our EU partners.
Rohingya Refugee Crisis
Jack Dromey Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Rushanara Ali
I very much agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiments. I hope that the Minister will be able to update us on what action the Government are taking, because we depend on the Foreign Secretary and Foreign Office Ministers to take a leadership role.
Spending time in our warm homes this Christmas will remind us of the conditions in which people are living in the camps in both Burma and Bangladesh. Being with friends and family will remind us of those separated from their loved ones, some forever. At a time of peace and good will, we should recall the fate of the Rohingya people and other refugees around the world who are subject to war, rape, execution and mutilation, their villages burnt and their lives destroyed.
This is not the first time that the House has debated the Rohingya refugee crisis, and it will not be the last. This is one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our time. The United Nations fact-finding mission concluded that the Burmese military were responsible for
“consistent patterns of serious human rights violations and abuses…in addition to serious violations of international humanitarian law.”
It made concrete recommendations that the Burmese military
“should be investigated and prosecuted in an international criminal tribunal for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.”
And yet so little has been done in practical terms to solve the crisis, provide safety and security for the Rohingya people and bring those responsible to justice.
How did we get here? We know from the history books that human beings only behave like this towards one another after a process of dehumanisation. From Cambodia to Srebrenica, massacres are carried out when communities have been isolated, demonised and presented as subhuman and worthy only of extinction. The Rohingya Muslim minority in Burma have been the subject of decades of systematic segregation and racial discrimination. Much of the forced segregation stems from the citizenship law of 1982, under which full citizenship in Burma is based on membership of one of the national races—a category awarded only to those considered to have settled in Burma prior to 1824, the date of the first occupation by the British. In Burma’s national census, the Muslim minority group was initially allowed to self-identify as Rohingya, but the Government later reversed that freedom and deemed that they could be identified only as Bengali, which they do not accept because they are not Bengali.
Over the past few years, the Rohingya have been indiscriminately targeted by the Burmese military. The August 2017 attacks were the most systematic and the largest in scale, but they were not the first. Attacks in 2012 and 2016 led to the internal displacement of more than 124,000 Rohingya people, who were forced to live in what are effectively prison camps in Rakhine state, with extremely limited access to food, healthcare and shelter. I visited those camps in Rakhine state twice, and the conditions have not got any better. People are arbitrarily deprived of liberty and forced to live in conditions described by the UN deputy relief chief as
“beyond the dignity of any people”.
There are echoes of apartheid in Rakhine, with one racial group separated, corralled and delegitimised. There are echoes too of previous genocides, with civilians sent to camps, villages burnt and human rights trampled under military boots. But this is not the 1930s, the ’40s, the ’70s or the ’90s. It is happening in this day and age, as we sit here in the Chamber this Christmas.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s failure to condemn the violence and stand up to the military has been deeply disappointing. While power over security operations constitutionally resides with the military and her power to halt the military offensive is limited, her ability to speak out in defence of the Rohingya is not. She spoke out for democracy and human rights from house arrest and liberated her country, and yet she failed to speak out for the rights of the Rohingya people when a genocide took place.
The 2017 attacks by the Burmese military came after a lengthy campaign initiated by those in power to demonise the Rohingya people using online platforms. Hidden behind fake accounts, military officers exploited the wide reach of social media to promote their divisive rhetoric and create a culture of suspicion and anger. They created fake news and sent it into the battle against the Rohingya. Of course, incidents of mass violence have happened before, catalysed by other forms of media. In Rwanda in 1994, local radio stations incited Hutus to kill Tutsis. Within 100 days, 800,000 people were dead. While social media platforms cannot be wholly blamed, the UN fact-finding mission singled out Facebook as a tool used to disseminate hate speech and concluded that it played a “determining role” in inciting violence against the Rohingya.
Social media can also be a force for good, as it was in the Arab spring in 2010-11. It is highly influential and can play a positive role. However, it is important that we recognise its capacity to foment division and incite violence—and, in this case, murder. Social media companies have a responsibility to ensure that malicious posts and dehumanising material are removed from their sites without delay. We must ensure that there are regulations and controls to prevent these abuses from happening again.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and on her outstanding advocacy of all that is best in the determination of this country to drive a human rights agenda internationally. I visited Myanmar three years ago. It was a beautiful country of immense potential, emerging—we thought—out of an era of authoritarianism, but it is now scarred and shamed by the treatment of the Rohingya. Does she agree that an unambiguous message needs to be sent today that the Government of Myanmar will forever be a pariah state until they end the shameful war crimes against this noble people, the Rohingya?
Rushanara Ali
I share my hon. Friend’s concerns. The Government need to make it absolutely clear to the Burmese military and the Burmese Government that if they continue to carry on like this without progress on this very important issue, they will continue to be seen in a very negative light and as a pariah state. They will face difficulty doing trade, quite rightly, and challenges from the wider international community. If they want to make the transition towards democracy, and want to make sure that human rights are protected, they have to take action to get their country in order to protect people’s rights, including the rights of the Rohingya minority—and other minorities, because the military have been attacking others too.
There are now over 1 million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Over half the refugees are children, 160,000 of whom are under the age of four. Following the 2017 attacks orchestrated by the Burmese military, some 700,000 Rohingya refugees joined hundreds of thousands who had already fled there following previous periods of targeted attacks, notably in 2012 and 2016. The border pathways are particularly dangerous. Last year, Amnesty International accused the Burmese Government of having laid landmines in the path of fleeing women and children.
In July 2018, I visited Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh with the International Rescue Committee to see for myself the situation of the Rohingya refugees, and to hear about their lives in the camps and how they got there. The overwhelming, immediate impression is the scale of the disaster. Almost 1 million people are now packed densely into only five square miles. During my visit, I heard terrifying stories of the brutal violence and persecution that the Rohingya faced at the hands of the military during last year’s attacks. The people I met were traumatised, unable to sleep or eat. Daughters were raped in front of their mothers; children were burnt to death in front of their parents. Women and men were separated into different rooms and slaughtered. A father painfully told me of his son and how he had been burnt to death in front of him. As I left, he added, “We want justice.”
I met non-governmental organisation relief workers. Local and international agencies are doing incredible work in very difficult circumstances. Some 30,000 NGO workers of Bangladeshi nationality are working in camps with international NGOs. But the NGOs tell me that the lack of long-term funding is making it very difficult for them to plan ahead and scale up their work, not to mention the restricted access and bureaucracy in trying to work in the camps. Although the situation is marginally better than in Rakhine, there are major challenges, and only two thirds of the UN appeal for funding has been fulfilled. That is not enough, and our Government need to do more to ensure that the outstanding funding is committed by the international community.
Last year, the response from the authorities and the people of Bangladesh was incredible. They demonstrated immense generosity to the refugees, despite being one of the poorest countries in the world, with millions of people living below the poverty line and facing the greatest risks from climate change. Over recent years, when thousands were killed by the Burmese military and hundreds of thousands sought refuge, Bangladesh kept its borders open and provided them with sanctuary. But the international community and other neighbouring states must do more to support that country in the humanitarian crisis. We know from our experience in Europe that absorbing so many people is a massive challenge even for this continent, which is among the wealthiest in the world. The end result must be the peaceful return of the Rohingya to their homes, but that must happen only when it is safe and when the Rohingya believe that the danger has passed.
These are particularly turbulent times for the Rohingya people, as only a few weeks ago, in the run-up to the planned repatriation date, there were reports of an increased military presence in the camps. This, according to the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, has caused a state of terror and panic. All the families placed on the list for repatriation refused to return to Burma as they were too afraid of the current conditions. It is imperative that any return is safe, dignified, and, crucially, voluntary. It is vital that we keep up international pressure on the Burmese Government. They need to know that the world is watching.
I welcome the contributions by Nobel peace prize winners Tawakkol Karman, Shirin Ebadi and Mairead Maguire, who implored Aung San Suu Kyi to “wake up” to the atrocities after they visited Cox’s Bazar. Nobel laureates such as Malala Yusufzai, Muhammad Yunus and Desmond Tutu, among others, have also spoken out. I welcome the legal voices who have spoken out in favour of human rights and justice—Amal Clooney and Ben Emmerson QC, among others. I welcome the interventions made by Cate Blanchett, who visited the camps in her role as a UN good will ambassador, and by Angelina Jolie as a special envoy of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Others have supported the humanitarian fundraising effort by visiting the camps to raise awareness and keep the media interested and engaged in what is happening. They include Ashley Judd, Mindy Kaling, Freida Pinto, Priyanka Chopra, and many others.
Most of all, I am incredibly grateful to, and commend, my colleagues in this House and the other House who have visited Burma and Bangladesh and publicly campaigned and voiced their concerns. The fact is that the more attention we generate, the brighter the light we shine, and the more noise we make, the less likely that further murders and atrocities will occur. Scrutiny and activism from campaigners, the media and the wider international community is literally the only line of defence for the Rohingya people against the Burmese military and its might.
Gaza Border Violence
Jack Dromey Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I express the confident hope that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), a legendary campaigner, will not require more than 20 words.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
The Palestinians have a right to nationhood and Israel has a right to security, but does the Minister not recognise the wise words of the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames)? Now is not the time for a “limp response” from our Government but the time to be unequivocal: there can be no justification for a thousand people being shot and no justification for the intransigence of the President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister of Israel, who are a fundamental obstacle on the road to peace.
Budget Resolutions
Jack Dromey Excerpts(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
In his contribution, the Foreign Secretary undertook a global perambulation, bumbling for Britain. May I bring the debate back to Birmingham, a city of 1.5 million people—I am proud to represent Erdington—the city of Chamberlain, and an ambitious, growing, young city that is determined to build on its strengths?
There are some welcome steps in the Budget. We have worked cross-party to secure the midlands engine initiative and local growth deals, but those steps are modest in the extreme. There is £392 million for the entirety of the west and east midlands, and £54 million for job creation in Birmingham and Solihull. That pales into insignificance given the £700 million of cuts already made to Birmingham City Council and the fact that London, in the autumn statement, got nearly 10 times more than the entirety of the west and east midlands, and that was for housing alone. Once again, Birmingham loses out to London.
Time and again, there is a grotesque contrast between how Birmingham is treated and how the leafy Tory shires are treated. The Surrey sweetheart deal on social care is now legendary. On other fronts, the Government talk about social mobility, yet for our nursery schools in Birmingham, which are absolutely vital to giving kids the best possible start in life, final baseline funding is set to drop by 5%, the maximum allowable and the biggest in the country. However, in the Prime Minister’s constituency, in Windsor and Maidenhead, funding per hour goes up. Every school in Erdington bar one is losing out on the funding formula.
On safety and security in the west midlands, crime is rising—little wonder; there has been a cut of 2,000 police officers. Crime is rising by 9%. Violent crime is up by 20%. Yet the west midlands has been hit five times harder than Surrey in terms of police funding since 2010. It goes on.
Time and again, what we hear from the Government is talk of all this being about fair funding. Fair funding? It is shameful doublespeak because it pays no regard to need. One in three children in Birmingham are in poverty. Infant mortality rates in Birmingham are twice the national average. Birmingham is ranked first for the total number of fuel-poor households. There is the extraordinary statistic that, if a man gets on the train at New Street and gets off at Erdington or Gravelly Hill, he is likely to live seven years less than if he continues on that train to Four Oaks in leafy Sutton Coldfield.
It is true that Birmingham is a great city, but it is a city of high need. I always say about my constituency of Erdington that it is rich in talent but it is one of the poorest in Britain. It has the seventh highest level of unemployment. Despite all that, the city and my constituency have been failed by a Government, and a Tory leadership in Birmingham and the west midlands, who have lamentably let Birmingham down. To add insult to injury, they then blame the city for the problems created by the combination of the mess inherited by a Labour council from a previous Tory administration on the one hand and what the Government have done to the city of Birmingham on the other. It is little wonder that in Birmingham people are not impressed by the Budget.
On other fronts, the Government failed to listen to appeals for justice, but nevertheless imposed additional burdens on working people in Birmingham. They failed to listen to the appeal for justice. There were 100 WASPI—Women Against State Pension Inequality—women down last week, who were utterly dismayed that there was not one penny in the Budget to put right that terrible wrong. For example, there is a woman in my constituency who is 62 and cannot now retire until she is 66. Her husband died two years ago, and her father died a week later. She has never done a cleaning job in her life—not that there is anything wrong with cleaning jobs—but is now having to do three part-time cleaning jobs to make ends meet. She had hoped that her appeal for justice would be listened to by the Government, but there was not one penny in the Budget for her.
There are also the additional burdens imposed on working people. If there are 37,000 WASPI women who feel let down, there are over 60,000 of the self-employed who feel that they have been hit hard by a Government who are oblivious to the consequences of their actions. Little wonder that a Kingstanding white van man on Saturday told me how bitter he was that he is being treated in the way that he is, with no additional rights but having to pay more national insurance. What he said is true of so many in the city who feel let down by this Government: “I’ll never believe any promise from the Conservative party again.” He will not be alone.
European Union (Referendum) Bill
Jack Dromey Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Phil Wilson
Nissan and Hitachi Rail Europe are two cases in point. On 8 November, at the launch of the new Qashqai in Sunderland, the chief executive officer of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, told the BBC:
“If anything has to change, we would need to reconsider our strategy and our investments for the future.”
Nissan employs 6,500 people in Sunderland, and supports 40,000 more jobs in the supply chain. Who in their right minds would jeopardise any further investment in Nissan’s Sunderland plant, especially when the person threatening to cause the uncertainty with this Bill is a north-east MP who lives just 20 miles down the A19 from Nissan itself?
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. The automotive sector is now a world-class success story. Key to that success has been inward investment. Key to inward investment has been membership of the European Union. Does my hon. Friend agree with the warnings not just from Nissan, but from Ford, BMW and Jaguar Land Rover that were there to be prolonged uncertainty or were we to leave the European Union, great damage would be done to the employers of hundreds of thousands of British workers?
Phil Wilson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right and that is why I believe that we should have some consultation with people who bring investment into this country and with other organisations that want to promote jobs not just in the north-east of England but throughout the UK.
Mr Thomas
My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point, as indeed has our hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East. She points to the consultation deficit that is implicit in the way the referendum has been brought forward.
Nobody seriously doubts that a referendum will inject uncertainty into British economic life, putting at risk our constituents’ jobs and opportunities for higher living standards. The amendment offers the prospect of serious voices from outside the narrow confines of the Conservative party contributing to the debate on whether a referendum might be held and, if so, when and how. They would be calmer voices than those of Conservative Members terrified of losing their seats. When there is increasing talk about the possibility of interest rates rising, it is hard to believe that the Prime Minister is willing to risk such a huge cut in the living standards of the British people—£3,000 a year per household, according to the CBI—simply to try to maintain the fiction of unity over Europe among Conservative Members.
New schedule 2, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East, specifically suggests that the CBI should be consulted. I would welcome that, because a dose of realism about the stakes involved in a decision to leave the European Union is sorely needed. Any debate on whether, when and in what circumstances a national referendum should be held should surely be informed by contributions from those recognised as representing some of the major interests and communities in the UK.
Jack Dromey
My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does he agree that a strength of amendment 70, also tabled by our hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain), is that it would flush out hidden agendas, because it is apparent that behind the notion of repatriation lies a desire to move down the path towards Beecroft Britain? Our country cannot succeed on the basis of a race to the bottom on pay and conditions.
Mr Thomas
My hon. Friend makes a good point on the case for amendment 70 and the real motivations behind the Conservative campaign to get us out of Europe.
My right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary said on Second Reading:
“Any judgment about an in-out referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union has to be based on what is in the national interest.”—[Official Report, 5 July 2013; Vol. 565, c. 1180.]
A formal consultation with the organisations listed in new schedule 2 could certainly help the whole House, and Conservative Members in particular, reach a more rounded consideration of the circumstances in which a referendum would be in the national interest. It is far from clear that on matters European the Conservatives are able to reach a rational judgment on what is in the national interest, so consultation with a range of organisations beyond the 1922 committee may help us all.
We have heard from some Conservative Members about their dislike of the idea that business should be consulted formally. That is extraordinary: Conservatives turning away from business voices in this debate. Perhaps it is because one part of the business community, TheCityUK, last month published research into the views and mindset of captains of the financial services industry on the issues we are discussing in these amendments. It revealed that over 40% of those surveyed agreed that the prospect of a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union in 2017 has created an uncertainty that is affecting decisions in their business. Over a third said that it was likely that their firm would relocate at least some of its headcount from the UK to a location within the single market if Britain left the European Union. That is just one part of the business community.
Europe
Jack Dromey Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
In the 1970s I was chairman of the north-west London “Get Britain Out” campaign. I remember chairing a rally addressed on the one hand by local Labour MPs and Ken Gill, the general secretary of TASS—the Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Section—and a leading member of the Communist party on the party, and Enoch Powell on the other. I believed that position in good faith and I worked hard for it. I was disappointed by the outcome, but I soon came to recognise that I was wrong, just as I came to recognise that continuing to fight yesterday’s battles was wrong. We took a long time in the Labour party to recognise that. Indeed, when Labour members first went into the European Parliament, the Spanish socialists nicknamed them “Los Japonistos”, after the soldiers who emerged from the jungles in Guam 40 years after the war was over asking, “Is the war continuing?”
Why did I change my mind? I remember an excellent German-Jewish friend who had lost his family in the camps saying to me, “Jack, I’m not the greatest fan of the common market,” as it then was, “but we’ve had a continent at peace for a generation, unlike that which took my family from me.” I remember a very honourable Macmillanite Conservative in the 1980s—in the days when there were such people, before, in the immortal words of Julian Critchley, the “garagistes” took over the Conservative party—saying, “Jack, I’m proud of my country, but we can only be strong in a modern, bi-polar world,” as it was then, “if we are at the heart of the European Union, with its great traditions of Christian democracy and social democracy.”
The reason I changed my mind was also, yes, the rolling forward of the social dimension in the 1980s, when Jacques Delors—Frère Jacques, as we came to call him—came to address the TUC. However, it was also because of my experience in the real world of work, dealing with hard-headed business people—enlightened in their approach—who rightly argued that we needed a single market with common standards, at the heart of which was a social dimension that reflected a belief in the simple truth that how we treat workers is crucial to the quality of the service they provide and what they produce.
Richard Drax
Why do we need to be a member of a federalist state to treat our workers properly? Why cannot we pass those laws ourselves? Indeed, we have.
Jack Dromey
I am coming to that point in a moment.
On the argument that I have just deployed, I remember the chairman of the company then known as British Aerospace saying that we needed a single market, but that as a company and as a continent we could not succeed in the world on the basis of a race to the bottom. That brings me to my first concern, which is the hidden agenda that lies behind the Prime Minister’s argument. There was a tantalising glimpse of that last week when, extraordinarily, he seemed to suggest that we should return to the days when a junior doctor could work 100 hours a week. Repatriation is the cry, but the reality behind that is rolling back a generation of progress on workers’ rights and taking us back to the 1980s, an era I remember well.
Let me give the House an example, which relates to the acquired rights directive. The directive was legislated on at European Union level in 1978, and introduced here, reluctantly, by a Conservative Government in 1982. However, that Government did not extend it to cover 6 million public servants. What we saw was the most appalling Dutch auction, involving cut-throat competition as workers were transferred and suffered cuts to their pay, their holiday entitlement, their sickness entitlement and, often, their pension arrangements as well. I remember a particular example that I dealt with early on involving the Moreton-in-Marsh fire service training college, where 130 women caterers and housekeepers had seen dramatic cuts to their terms and conditions of employment. The only humorous side to that otherwise sad story was the fact that the managing director of the company concerned—Grand Metropolitan catering—was none other than a Mr Dick Turpin.
Two things happened at that time. First, in 1991, I took the case of the Eastbourne dustmen to the European Court of Justice, and we won. It was ruled that the British Government had acted unlawfully in denying protection on transfer from the public to the private sector. Secondly, employers themselves began to speak out. I remember Martin O’Halloran of ISS, the then chair of the CBI, saying that it was madness—that employers did not want a market based on a race to the bottom, and that they wanted a market in which we competed on quality and productivity, characterised by fair treatment and fair competition.
Mr Redwood
I, too, found that my attitude towards the single market changed in the 1980s, when I became the chairman of a big industrial company. I discovered that I had much better access, as an investor and as an exporter, to leading non-EU countries than I had to France and Germany.
Jack Dromey
I say this to the right hon. Gentleman and anyone else on the Government Benches: let us have some honesty in this debate. If they want to go back to the days of the 1980s, they should say so. If they want a Beecroft Britain, they should say so. If they believe that Britain can succeed only by driving down workers’ pay and conditions of employment, and by reducing their health and safety protection at work, they should say so. We will certainly be seeking to draw out what is undoubtedly their hidden agenda.
Damian Collins
The hon. Gentleman is making an impassioned case, but there is nothing to prevent the British Government from introducing legislation of that kind. What has created frustration about the EU is that those powers have come in under the guise of European treaties and not been put before the House properly. They have come in through the back door.
Jack Dromey
They have come in as a consequence of our membership of the European Union and the move towards a single market based on clear ground rules, including the fair treatment of workers. I will say it once again: if Government Members want the repatriation of the legislation that protects workers’ rights so that they can cut that protection, they should say so.
My final point relates to the immense economic damage that this debate will cause. I have worked with the automotive industry for many years.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is making his case very eloquently, and I congratulate him on doing so. I do not agree with him, but that is another issue. I am curious as to which way he would vote in a referendum if we had been able to negotiate the return to the United Kingdom of some of those regulations.
Jack Dromey
What I certainly will oppose is the madness of saying now that we are going to have a referendum on an in/out basis in five years’ time, for exactly the reason that 82% of the cars that we produce in this country, through our world-class success story that is automotive, are exported—and half to the European Union. Key to the future of the industry is inward investment, and key to inward investment is continuing membership of the European Union. There is already a chorus of concern from Ford and BMW, for example, about the grave consequences of prolonged uncertainty, while the director general of the Engineering Employers Federation has said that this is the worst possible way to go about negotiations, as it will weaken any negotiating leverage we need rather than strengthen it.
That is why I believe that the good Lord Heseltine is right and the Prime Minister is fundamentally wrong. With an economy bumping along the bottom and a triple-dip recession possible, this is the worst possible time for prolonged uncertainty, which will inevitably impact on crucial investment decisions. Far from standing up for Britain, as the Prime Minister says he is doing, he is putting party interest before the public interest, and he runs the risk of doing great damage to the economy of our country.
Neil Carmichael
Absolutely not. We do not want to “reduce workers’ rights”, as the hon. Gentleman puts it, but we do want to ensure that more people can be employed. That is being made possible by the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which is probably an Act by now. It copies legislation introduced by the German Chancellor who, at the time, was none other than Chancellor Schröder of the SPD—the Social Democratic party of Germany—to make it easier for small firms to employ people. Those are the sort of measures that we should be introducing here, and we are starting to do exactly that.
Neil Carmichael
No, because I am running out of time. I was asked specifically which policy areas we should be changing. I have dealt with the second, and I now want to talk about the third, which, although more long-term, is critical.
What are we going to do about the Council of Ministers? It needs to be more transparent, and it needs to have more capacity. I think that we can provide the answer to the democratic deficit in two ways. First, this Parliament and the Parliaments of the other member states must become more interactive, engaging in the kind of discussions that take place in the Council. We need to hear more about the agenda, we need to hear more about what is actually said and done, and we need to hear more about how we as parliamentarians can influence all that through our own national Parliaments. The second way in which that can be beneficial is in challenging the effective supremacy of the Commission in ensuring that treaties work as they should, which drives a hole into the argument about the European Parliament’s position that I have heard mentioned several times in the debate today.
There are a great many areas of policy that we can change, but let me canter through the ones that I have mentioned. First, we need to act immediately to deal with the common agricultural policy. We are already too late for 2012, as we are now in 2013, but there are changes on which we should now be insisting. Secondly, we need to extend the single market to energy—although not just to energy: I could have mentioned the digital economy and financial services. Thirdly, there is the constitutional aspect, which I think is central to what the Prime Minister said in his speech.
If we can deliver on some or all of those areas— policy, the single market and the construction of the European Union itself—we shall have something really interesting to say to the electorate at the time of the in/out referendum. Meanwhile, we shall be protecting and, indeed, strengthening our interests. Above all, we shall be producing a better Europe, because it will be more flexible, more competitive, more transparent and more democratic.
Finally, I want to talk about President Obama. It is true that he said we should remain in the EU, but he is not the only American President to have said that: every single one has since Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s. It is a consistent message, therefore, and we should listen to it, but the clear message we are getting from our electorate is this: “Make a difference in Europe. Reform it where necessary. Make it more flexible. Make it more competitive. Make it more useful to us, and make it less intrusive.” I can take that case to my constituents in Stroud, valleys and vale, and to businesses and everyone else who has a clear interest in protecting Britain’s interests through having a reformed and effective Europe.
Chris Heaton-Harris
This is a fairly simple matter, and I tend to agree with what the Prime Minister says: we should renegotiate, get our deal and then go to the British people and settle this question. We should end the uncertainty by putting our trust in the British people and asking them, “Do you want this on the basis of the package that we have renegotiated or not?”
Jack Dromey
On ending uncertainty, does the hon. Gentleman accept the warnings given by Ford, BMW and the Engineering Employers Federation that the danger of prolonged uncertainty is that it will have an impact on vital inward investment decisions?
Chris Heaton-Harris
The biggest uncertainty and biggest danger for the British economy is the chance that Labour might be elected to government. There could be no greater uncertainty for the British economy than that—[Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) mentions democracy from the Opposition Front Bench—absolutely damn right. That is why we should trust the British people, because they will have the final say. We should be able to agree on reform of the European institutions.