European Affairs

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Lady is exactly right. The Danish agreement has been in place for 23 years and continues to serve Denmark extremely well.

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Hammond]

I am going to make a little progress now.

The second area we set out to address was Europe’s impact on competitiveness. We have achieved a commitment to completing the European single markets in services—a key area for Britain given the importance and competitiveness of our services sector—in digital; in energy, to ensure greater competition and lower energy bills for British households; and in capital, ensuring greater access to sources of finance for our entrepreneurs. We have also delivered a clear commitment to prioritising international trade agreements with the largest and fastest-growing economies across the globe, with the potential to boost our economy by billions of pounds a year; and agreement to cut the burden of EU regulation on business, with specific targets to be set for key sectors. That builds on a programme of work that the Commission is already undertaking, which has already slashed by 80% the pipeline of regulatory proposals, and bakes the deregulatory approach into the DNA of the European Union.

The third area in which this deal delivers is in ending the abuse of the principle of free movement to work in order to access the benefits of our welfare system, which are paid for by hard-working British taxpayers. We have already ended access to unemployment benefits and social housing for new arrivals and limited their time in which to find a job to six months. The package agreed last Friday gives us new powers to exclude criminals from EU countries, and stops EU nationals dodging British immigration rules to bring family members from outside the EU to live in Britain.

Under this agreement, we can apply our rules, including on minimum income and English language competence. It ends the unfairness of child benefits at British rates being sent to children living in countries with much lower living costs, and it gives us a new seven-year emergency brake to ensure that EU migrants will not have full access to in-work benefits until they have been in the UK for four years, answering the perfectly reasonable question: why should people take out when they have not paid in? Under this new arrangement, they cannot do that—no more something for nothing. Taken together, this is a package that will address the concerns of the British people about abuse of our benefit systems and erosion of our immigration controls.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

On child benefit, will the Foreign Secretary confirm that the agreement does not meet the promise set out in the Conservative party manifesto, which said:

“If an EU migrant’s child is living abroad, then they should receive no child benefit or child tax credit, no matter how long they have worked in the UK and no matter how much tax they have paid”?

That has not been achieved. It is a failure.

[Mr Hammond]

As I have said before in this House, any reasonable person will look at the package that has been delivered. We have been clear from the outset that tackling abuse of our welfare system is about reducing the pull factor that makes the UK a target for inward migrants because they can get their wages topped up with a variety of benefits. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Although my hon. Friend can pick on a specific part of the package, I think that most reasonable people will want to look at it in the round.

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[Mr Hammond]

I am going to make a little progress. I am happy to take interventions, but in doing so I am conscious that I am eating into the time available for debate.

We have also set out to strengthen the powers of this Parliament and of the British people. In the last Parliament, we legislated, through the European Union Act 2011, to ensure that no more powers could be handed to Brussels without the explicit consent of the British people in a national referendum. That Act introduced a vital check on the one-way ratchet of the transfer of powers from Westminster to Brussels.

This deal goes further, breaking the ratchet once and for all, with a new mechanism to return powers from Brussels to national Parliaments. For new legislation, the UK Parliament, working with the other national Parliaments, will be able permanently to block proposed EU legislation that a majority of them do not want, through a red card system.

The declaration, signed by all 28 member states, that we secured at the European Council last Friday is, as I have said, legally binding in international law and has already been registered as a treaty at the United Nations. Authoritative legal opinion is clear on this point. It cannot be undone without the consent of every single member state, including Britain. The agreement commits all member states to changes, in due course, to the EU treaties to enshrine the protections for Britain as a non-member of the eurozone, and to confirm explicitly that ever closer union does not apply to the UK.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way a second time. He phrases himself incredibly carefully. He says, quite correctly, that the agreement is binding in international law, which is not justiciable, but it is not binding in European law, where it has only to be taken into account by the European Court of Justice. Nor is it irreversible, otherwise section A(7) could not say:

“The substance of this Section will be incorporated into the Treaties at the time of their next revision in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Treaties and the respective constitutional requirements of the Member States.”

If it requires the respective constitutional procedures of the member states, that means that if they are not followed, it will not be implemented.

[Mr Hammond]

In the Rottmann decision, the ECJ itself made clear that it had to take account of a decision of this nature. I say to my hon. Friend and others who repeatedly make points about the legally binding nature of agreements that we are having a substantive debate about the future of Britain, in or out of the European Union. We have a package that has been agreed by all 28 countries and endorsed by their Heads of State and Government. It is not only legally binding, it is a solemn political commitment. I advise colleagues to address themselves to the substantive issues that we are debating, namely Britain’s place in the European Union and what the world would look like from the perspective of a Britain outside the EU.

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[Mark Pritchard]

It is always difficult to set out the defined and true position at the outset of any negotiations, otherwise one would not negotiate the position one would want to find oneself in at the end of it, so I do not agree with that. I think the Prime Minister achieved more than many people thought he would achieve. Of course, for some people even if he had parted the English channel it still would not have been good enough. Perhaps some even might have wanted him to fail. Overall, it is a good reform package for the United Kingdom.

I agree with the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) about tone. The parliamentary and national debate needs to be done in the right tone with the right language, in a measured and respectful way. I hope that will be the case. We have heard some reference to scaremongering today and in the media, but it was Nigel Farage, in a recent Oxford University debate, who said that the EU referendum issue would be “settled by security”. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), in the penultimate paragraph of his remarks, suggested that security was a key issue too. It is unfortunate that the issue of scaremongering is coming into the debate. It is legitimate to talk about national security, both for those who want to remain in the European Union and those who want to leave, and it is on national security that I would like to focus my main remarks.

The hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) wrote in the Daily Mirror this morning:

“The threats posed to the UK’s security are just like the threats posed to the rest of Europe”.

He is right. Common threats require a common response. Europe’s threats are our threats too. The UK’s threats are Europe’s threats. In an unsafe world this is not the time to be walking away from our friends and allies. This is a time to stand together. This is not the time for the United Kingdom to be quitting Europe. My view is that the UK is safer in a reformed European Union and the European Union is safer with the UK standing by its side, now with our own special status.

The Paris attacks have been mentioned a couple of times today and in the media over the past few days. Some say that it is less likely that the United Kingdom will be subject to Paris-style terror attacks if we leave. I disagree and think that is a very, very bold statement to make. Some say the Syrian refugee crisis has had an impact on terrorist incidents across Europe and will therefore have an impact on the UK. That may well be the case, and I will come on to those points in more detail later. Specifically on the nationality of those involved in the Paris attacks, however, the majority were EU nationals. In fact, they were led by a Belgian national.

Some have referenced open borders in the United Kingdom. We do not have open borders in the United Kingdom. That is inaccurate and, unfortunately, misleading. The fact is that under Schengen we do not have open borders. That is a fact.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

We do effectively have open borders for Belgians. Belgian passport holders can come here without so much as a by your leave. They come through and we cannot refuse them unless we have specific evidence. If we could make them apply in advance and get clearance, as we have to before going to the United States, our borders would clearly be safer.

[Mark Pritchard]

First, the reference to the Belgian EU nationals was to make the point that it was not Syrian refugees who undertook that Paris attack. Secondly, my hon. Friend may not want to make this point, but I will make it for him. The majority of terrorist threats in this country, as proven by the 7/7 attacks, are actually by British nationals, not EU nationals. Of the four involved in the 7/7 attacks, three were British nationals and one was a German national. It is not necessarily the case that coming out of the European Union will make us safer from attacks. I think there is a danger from some—not Members and certainly not my hon. Friend—of a Trumpification of the out campaign. There is a danger of the shadow of Donald Trump coming into this referendum campaign, which I think would be very unhelpful and dangerous.

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[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

It was very reassuring to hear my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary tell us earlier that he is a Eurosceptic and explain how successful the renegotiations were from his Eurosceptic ivory tower. That is encouraging, but I thought it might be worth looking at what the renegotiations achieved compared with what Her Majesty’s Government set out. In the Conservative party manifesto, it was “an absolute requirement”, according to the opening of the paragraph, that child benefit not be given to anybody whose children are living abroad. It seems to me that that has not been achieved, so our Eurosceptic Foreign Secretary has failed in that regard.

The Conservative party manifesto stated that we would

“reform the workings of the EU, which is too big, too bossy and too bureaucratic”.

The workings of the EU post the renegotiation remain too big, too bossy and too bureaucratic, so my Eurosceptic friend has achieved nothing.

In the Conservative party manifesto we made to the British people a pledge and a promise, on which we campaigned in, I hope, good faith. We said that we would

“reclaim power from Brussels on your behalf”—

not yours, Mr Deputy Speaker, but that of the British people—

“and safeguard British interests in the Single Market”.

We have not reclaimed a single power, so, in that, my Eurosceptic friend the Foreign Secretary has failed to live up to the Eurosceptic credentials of which he boasts—and with which I credit him, because the Foreign Secretary is an honourable man.

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that what we needed was fundamental and far-reaching reform. We have not achieved fundamental and far-reaching reform; his Eurosceptic Foreign Secretary has, in that regard, let him down. In the renegotiations, we have not achieved anything of any great substance. On the free movement of people, we have nothing. We have so little on the issue of benefits that the great mass migration will continue. It was announced today that 257,000 people came from the European Union in the last year, 55,000 of them from Bulgaria and Romania. My Eurosceptic friend has done nothing to change that.

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said in his Bloomberg speech:

“Complex rules restricting our labour markets are not some naturally occurring phenomenon. Just as excessive regulation is not some external plague that’s been visited on our businesses.”

But that plague is to continue, and the renegotiations have done nothing to stop it. They have not summoned Moses back to try to deal with it, as I seem to remember he finally got rid of the plague of frogs that afflicted Pharaoh. On immigration, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that he thought it was essential to

“restore a sense of fairness”

and

“to make our immigration system fairer and reduce the current exceptionally high level of migration from…the EU”.

Nothing has been done to achieve that.

Not only is the renegotiation a failure because it has achieved so little—it has failed to tackle the problems that we promised the British electorate we would solve—but, worse than that, we have given away our negotiating card when the European Union comes to a fundamental treaty reform of its own. The document that was settled last weekend states:

“Member states whose currency is not the euro shall not impede the implementation of legal acts directly linked to the functioning of the euro area and shall refrain from measures which could jeopardise the attainment of the objectives of economic and monetary union.”

The Eurosceptic Foreign Secretary—the honourable man to whom I referred—has managed, with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, to give away our most powerful negotiating card. When the European Union needs to develop the fiscal union that it has asked for, we have nothing to say because we have promised that we will do nothing.

And so we have left ourselves still on the path to a European superstate. That state has been getting bigger and bigger since we joined it in 1972—a state that has a flag; a state that has an anthem; a state that, because it is greedy, has not one but five Presidents; a state with a Parliament that has not one, but two seats of operation; a state with the symbols of statehood and the powers of a state. It has legal personality to conduct treaty negotiations. It has the legal power to make laws, and those laws are senior to our laws.

My right hon. Friend the famously Eurosceptic Foreign Secretary said that the treaty is legally robust, but he phrased himself very carefully, with the pedantry that one would hope for and expect in somebody from the Foreign Office. He said that it was robust in terms of international law. That gives it no justiciability in the courts of the European Union; it is merely taken into account.

We have a pretty worthless agreement, and we have scare stories to tell us why we should not vote no. If it was dangerous—if he thought the world would collapse on the day we voted no—why did the Prime Minister offer us a referendum? Is he some hooligan or some Yahoo who thinks it is safe to risk this nation’s future by trusting the people? When he said he ruled nothing out, surely he meant it. Surely he was not saying that, in fact, he was always going to go along with whatever our friends in Brussels said, because the Prime Minister is a most trustworthy figure, who negotiates in good faith. That is the problem with all that underlies this negotiation.

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[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

May I first congratulate all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part in the debate this afternoon?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thought the Minister might begin with an apology for the absence of the Foreign Secretary. It is custom for senior Ministers who have opened debates to return for the end of them. On such an important matter, it is a rather surprising discourtesy to the House that the normal convention has not been observed.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. What I would say is that it is the choice of the Foreign Secretary, and who knows, we may hear something yet, as the Minister for Europe has so far only managed to get three words out.