Leveson Inquiry

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and George Eustice

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

I, too, begin by drawing attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I receive remuneration for a regular column in PR Week—but hon. Members will realise that that has not had any influence on my opinions on these matters.

A number of hon. Members have alluded to the long history of failure on this issue. I am conscious that I have only 10 minutes in which to speak, but I do wish to reflect on some of that history because the House has not always been very good at learning from the mistakes of the past. This story begins in 1949, with the first royal commission advocating the setting up of a royal commission and saying that Parliament should do something about the issue. Four years later nothing had happened, so the Labour MP C.J. Simmons, a former journalist, introduced a private Member’s Bill, which forced the industry to say that it would now act. In withdrawing his Bill, he said:

“I give warning here and now that if it fails some of us will again have to come forward with a Measure similar to this Bill.”—[Official Report, 8 May 1953; Vol. 515, c. 806.]

In 1962, a second royal commission told the press that it needed to toughen up self-regulation:

“We think that the Press should be given another opportunity itself voluntarily to establish an authoritative General Council…We recommend, however, that the government should specify a time limit after which legislation would be introduced.”

In 1977, there was a third royal commission on the press, after more failure. It said:

“We recommend that the press should be given one final chance to prove that voluntary self-regulation can be made to work.”

Let us fast-forward to 1990 and the Calcutt committee. At the time we were told:

“This is positively the last chance for the industry to establish an effective non-statutory system of regulation”.—[Official Report, 21 June 1990; Vol. 174, c. 1126.]

In 1993, the Calcutt review said that the Press Complaints Commission was not effective and recommended a tribunal backed in statute.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend could describe the problems that these great reviews were looking at. We now look back at what was happening in the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s and, in particular, the ‘70s, when my father was editing a national newspaper, as great examples of fine newspaper work, so what were these commissions dealing with? Is it not actually unnecessary to keep on quoting from these reports, because there was not a real problem in those days?

[George Eustice]

Each and every one of those commissions and inquiries was sparked by the abuse of unaccountable power, and I would say that that is what we are seeing today. People sometimes say, “It was a newspaper that exposed phone hacking.” They are right—one newspaper exposed phone hacking—but Lord Leveson is very clear on this: none of the other papers exposed it, and there was almost a conspiracy of silence. He says:

“There were what are now said to be rumours and jokes about the extent to which phone hacking was rife throughout the industry, but (with one sole exception) the press did nothing to investigate itself or to expose conduct which”,

if it had involved anybody else,

“would have been subject to the most intense spotlight that journalists could bring to bear”.

That one exception was Nick Davies from The Guardian, who wrote a story on 9 July 2009 saying that the huge scale of the settlements being paid to some people in respect of phone hacking suggested that a cover-up had taken place. What did the Press Complaints Commission do about it? Did it then think, “Perhaps we should take a second look at this and investigate it”? No, it did not. As Lord Leveson points out, the PCC “condemned the Guardian” for running the story, which is extraordinary. I think that the Leveson report was a good report.

Proceeds of Crime

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and George Eustice

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful for that clarification. I should also like to say, for future reference, that I have been given hope that the Government might occasionally listen to what the House says, and that having debates before a decision is finally made would not necessarily be a bad thing. It might be a pious hope that speeches made from these Benches might influence the wise thoughts of Her Majesty’s Government, but it is one that I hold to. I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation, but I hope that we can have better scheduled debates in future. From a personal point of view, I believe that the slot at the end of business on Wednesdays is extremely convenient for most people.

It is also a shame to be having this debate now, when half the members of the European Scrutiny Committee are away in, of all places, Europe. They are visiting Cyprus, in preparation for Cyprus taking over the European Union presidency. I was glad to have the opportunity of staying in the House. Like you, Mr Speaker, I prefer not to leave. I believe that you require specific permission to leave the country, and I would not mind being under the same constraint myself.

I shall move on to the substance of the opt-in decision, and to the Minister’s comments. It is tremendously important that, under our current law, any freezing order requires the order of a court, but that would not be the case under the proposed document from the European Union. It is unsatisfactory to allow the administrative freezing of assets without a court interfering. That is an important principle of justice, and on that basis alone it would be wise of the Government not to opt in to the directive.

As the Minister said, the directive would offer no direct benefit to our domestic asset recovery regime. That being the case, the only argument for opting in would be to have more Europe, and that is not the policy of Her Majesty’s Government, who are committed to keeping Europe closely under watch and limiting any extension of its powers. It is therefore difficult to see what changes to the draft directive the Government would find acceptable in order to make it better, or whether there is any prospect of their insisting that anything that happened under it should require a court order before being implemented. It would be interesting to know from the Minister what would be the consequences of our not opting in—by what would we be bound in our existing agreements and how would they develop, and what would be our ability to maintain bilateral arrangements with other member states in future? Might that not be a more suitable way of approaching the matter?

There are concerns about the standing of the directive under European constitutional law. As the Minister and other Members know, we have the ability to opt out of a great number of the crime and justice directives in 2014, but—and there is a but—if we signed this proposed directive, it would not be part of that block opt-out and it would remove our ability to opt out of three other directives that we have so far opted into. The block opt-out does not apply to EU policing and criminal justice legislation adopted following the Lisbon treaty’s entry and coming into force where the UK decides to become bound by it, and neither does it apply to pre-Lisbon treaty legislation that was amended once the Lisbon treaty came into effect. The three pieces of pre-Lisbon EU treaty legislation that we would lose are on money laundering, the identification, tracing, freezing, seizing and confiscation of instrumentalities and the proceeds of crime under the framework decision 2001/500/JHA on the same subject, and another framework decision on the confiscation of crime-related proceeds. We would thus be tightly binding ourselves into all our future confiscation and money laundering policies being determined at the European level.

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which is that the longer we delay our decision about whether to exercise our block opt-out under the Lisbon protocol, the more it can be undermined by subsequent directives such as this one coming along. Does he agree that we should make a decision sooner rather than later about whether or not to exercise that block opt-out?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am in complete agreement, and the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) might not be surprised to know that I would opt out of everything at every possible opportunity—and I am more than happy to admit that and to have it held against me in evidence by suitable authorities in future. It is important not to get sucked into more changes through the development of existing pre-Lisbon directives that then become binding and are not subject to the opt-out.

The other important aspect is that this directive does not apply exclusively to cross-border activities, as it applies in the UK alone where we are enforcing standards that apply to crimes committed purely in the UK, so we need to raise the question of what the European dimension is in all cases. If any directive is suitable, is it this directive, or should a completely different one be reframed relating to cross-border activities? That poses all the questions about recognition of foreign countries’ laws and enforcements that we raised with the Minister.

We have those problems to face in a once-and-for-all decision, but I also want to look at what the European Union document states on this issue and the basis on which it has been produced. The two legal bases are article 83(1) and article 82(2) of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union. Article 83(1) includes provisions on organised crime, which the European Commission has decided includes almost any serious crime that could be mentioned, so we can see immediately in that justification part of the general European creep in using the treaties to extend the Commission’s remit—indeed, the EU’s own documentation admits that.

The other legal basis, article 82(2), is all about the facilitation of mutual recognition, so although the current document is not about mutual recognition specifically, this is part of the basis of the directive coming into force. There is some broad contradiction between how the directive will be applied and the legal base used for it. I think we should be suspicious of the EU extending its powers on a basis that it then does not wish to use. Why is it doing it that way?

I know that many other Members wish to speak, but I want to say a little about the way in which the European Union reached its decision. As can be seen in the document provided for the debate, it considered five policy options. The first was the status quo, which it immediately rejected as being completely unsatisfactory. Each of the subsequent options had a slightly more European context than the one preceding it. The second option was non-legislative:

“promoting implementation of existing confiscation obligations… and promoting… existing mutual recognition obligations”.

The European Union did not like that one.

The third option was the “Minimal legislative option”, involving

“transposition and utilisation workshops plus additional policy actions addressing identified deficiencies in the existing”

legislation. Lo and behold, the European Union did not like that one either.

The fourth option was the

“Maximal legislative option without mutual recognition”.

I do not think that “maximal” is a word, Mr Speaker, but your vocabulary is better than mine. Perhaps I should ask you to rule on it later in the day. That option, it was said, would provide many benefits, and

“would consist of all policy actions which do not involve legislative action in relation to mutual recognition.”

Finally, there was policy option 4.2:

“Maximal legislative option including mutual recognition”.

We can see exactly how the process operates. The European Union issues a discussion document and considers all the options. “What should we do? Should we just leave it to the nation states? No, that will not do: we cannot trust them. Should we just do a little bit that will ease the process and make it a bit better? Should we round some of the corners to make them smoother? No, we had best not do that; the European Parliament would not like it.” That is one of the arguments that it uses. “We must go for the maximum option. We must go for the most federalist option. We must go for the option that brings in the European Court of Justice to rule over laws that apply purely in the United Kingdom and purely in the criminal justice area.” That is how the European Union operates.

Her Majesty’s Government were absolutely right to decide not to opt in at this stage, and they should remain right by robustly refusing an extension of EU powers which is, as always, being introduced in the area where it is hardest to oppose. The suggestion is that there are all those nasty people out there, and that if we all club together we will be able to deal with them. However, a Bulgarian enforcement order on some Englishman who has mislaid a parking ticket is not a way of reducing crime. What we need is a robust British system—which I think we already have—that is subject to fair controls and court orders. We do not need a further power grab by the European Union.

Public Procurement

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and George Eustice

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Commons Chamber

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

My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, asked me to make a speech on behalf of the Committee and on his behalf because he thought that he would not be here, but such is the attraction of a European debate that he is in his place anyway. None the less, the Committee is grateful to Her Majesty’s Government for facilitating the debate so quickly. The time scale under the Lisbon treaty for national Parliaments to submit a reasoned opinion on a subsidiarity issue is extremely tight. In this instance, the European Scrutiny Committee received the views of the National Assembly for Wales only a couple of days before the Committee’s meeting last Wednesday, when it recommended that the House adopt the draft reasoned opinion.

The Government have welcomed the proposals, and many of the detailed measures in them, and have provided an impact assessment that suggests that the benefits would significantly outweigh the costs. However, as we have heard from the Minister, they have one major concern—namely, that the proposals would require member states to establish a national oversight body, which would not only have a range of administrative and regulatory powers, but would be able to “seize” jurisdiction of the courts and pre-empt their functions in a way that the Government consider might infringe the principle of subsidiarity.

As I mentioned, this concern was echoed in the letter from the Chairman of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee of the National Assembly for Wales. I understand that the Scottish Parliament takes a similar view. Let me say from the outset that this concern is shared by the European Scrutiny Committee for reasons that I will come on to in a moment. So the debate today is not about the generality of the draft directive, in spite of some of the comments that we heard earlier. Rather, it is about a subsidiarity issue that the Government, two of the devolved Assemblies and the European Scrutiny Committee have identified.

Before I turn to the subsidiarity issue, I should explain that a reasoned opinion is a new procedure under the treaty of Lisbon, available to national Parliaments if they wish to challenge Commission proposals for legislation on subsidiarity grounds. National Parliaments have eight weeks from publication of a proposal to submit a reasoned opinion. The deadline in this case is midnight Brussels time, which would be 11 pm Greenwich mean time, on 8 March 2012.

If such opinions represent one third of all votes of national Parliaments—the bicameral UK Parliament has two votes—the Commission has to reconsider its proposal. We understand that, as the Minister mentioned, one other national Parliament, Sweden’s Riksdag, is also submitting a reasoned opinion on similar grounds. Even if the threshold is not met—in reality, the numbers required mean that it is highly unlikely that it will ever be met—the Commission responds to each reasoned opinion it receives. In addition, national Parliaments can, acting through the Government, now challenge EU legislation on the grounds that it infringes the principle of subsidiarity.

The principle of subsidiarity is born of the wish to ensure—if you believe this, you would believe anything—that decisions are taken as closely as possible to the nationals of individual EU member states. It is touted as a buffer against unnecessary supranational—not supernatural—legislation but it has been largely unsuccessful. If only the legislation were supernatural, we might find that our experience of the European Union was a happier one. None the less, its definition is important. It is set out in article 5(2) of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, which states:

“Under the principle of subsidiarity, in areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Union shall act only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level.”

In addition, the treaty requires the EU institutions to ensure “constant respect” for the principle of subsidiarity as laid down in protocol No. 2 on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. Accordingly, article 2 of the same protocol obliges the Commission to consult widely before proposing legislative Acts. This is one of the parts that has not taken place. Such consultations are to take into account regional and local dimensions, where necessary. If the Commission fails to do so, a reason must be given in its proposal.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the principle of subsidiarity would work far better if rather than just being able to prompt a response from the Commission, groups and national Parliaments were able to strike down policies of the Commission?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

If I may divert from the set text from the European Scrutiny Committee, it is always worth remembering that subsidiarity started as a theological term in the Roman Catholic Church, of which I am a member. That is one of the most centralised bodies of any organisation anywhere in the world, with power vested in the Holy Father, so I have always been rather suspicious as to what the purpose of subsidiarity is.