European Union (Approval of Treaty Amendment Decision) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Adams

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

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

What a pleasure it is, after aestivating for six weeks, to have returned to this House to discuss, of all things, the European Union. It puts a veritable spring in one’s step, even as we advance into autumn. It is a real pleasure to be able to support the Government on this occasion—a rare treat, one might say, when it comes to matters European. I will probably even find myself in the same Division Lobby as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood).

The Government deserve praise to come on them from all sides for, first, the European Union Act 2011, which has led to today’s debate on this Bill. Without it, there would have been a two-hour debate in the House of Commons or the House of Lords and, bingo, a European treaty would have been changed. We would not have been arguing the finer points, as I have done with my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), about whether the matter deserves a referendum. It would have gone through on a quiet Wednesday evening, on a deferred Division, with nobody here and nobody thinking or concerned about it. Thanks to Her Majesty’s Government, that has been put right. We have a proper process and a full-scale Bill, and I believe we will have the Committee stage on the Floor of the House as it is a constitutional Bill. It is all being done in a way that makes a parliamentarian’s heart glow with pride, if hearts glow with pride. It is a great achievement of the Government to have got us here.

The Government deserve a good deal of credit for what they have succeeded in negotiating. I want to be reasonably generous, but not excessively so. They have got us out of article 122, on the European financial stabilisation mechanism, which required us to put money into a European pot to bail out, so far, Portugal and Ireland. One may say that bailing out Portugal and Ireland is not too bad a thing to have done. Portugal is our oldest ally, and I am sure your mind often turns to the treaty of Windsor in 1386, Mr Deputy Speaker, which is why we have a fellow feeling with the Portuguese. Ireland is our close neighbour and friend and is important to us. It is worth noting that that €48 billion liability still remains, and the Foreign Secretary was careful to say that the Bill would exclude us from new liabilities. The old ones are still there, so we are signed up to our share of €48 billion of liabilities, which may come back to haunt us. However, we are exempted from further liabilities.

The European treaties say that there should be no bail-out from us, although my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) complained that often European treaties say one thing and the European councils do another, which is perfectly true. It is a regular state of affairs that the construct of the European Union is basically dishonest. A point that I shall make at every opportunity is that we know that the judges of the European Court of Justice are so corrupt that they judged in their own favour to give themselves a pay increase. We therefore know that the institutions of Europe are rotten, failed and corrupt. None the less, we are living with them, and they have decided that they will have a bail-out mechanism. It is better that we should be out of it. We should say to them, “This is your euro project. You go ahead, you pay for it. Thank you very much.” It should be outside our bailiwick, to the eurozone members’ charge, not the British and the other non-eurozone countries. The Government have achieved something in ensuring that, although I have questions about what the black letter of the law actually says.

We know full well that recitals are not the law, and that article 122 remains. We know that the regulation allowing €60 billion to be spent on propping up the euro remains intact, and it is conceivable, if unlikely, that that part of the European treaty could be used in future, because it is a qualified majority matter rather than a unanimity one. That has not been excluded from the treaty, but there is a strong political promise that it will not be used. Although I have my doubts about strong EU political promises—in the past they have not necessarily been adhered to—it is still an achievement to have got the bulk of the future cost away from Her Majesty’s Government and the British people. The Government deserve to be commended for that.

We have talked much in this debate about what the best solution for the eurozone is, and about whether we, as a country looking on, should help it prop up the euro or obstruct it in its desire to do so. That raises a fascinating moral question about the duty that one owes to one’s neighbour who is determined to follow a course of folly and error. If someone sees a man who is about to run under a bus, it is their moral duty to make some effort to grab him back. They may even risk their own safety in attempting that endeavour. It is an important requirement of neighbourliness and a duty of humanity. The question is, are the members of the eurozone throwing themselves under a bus, or are they committing some lesser folly which means that, because we know our intervention could not succeed, our duty to intervene and stop them does not exist? I think that the second category is the answer. If the Europeans had any sense, they would have an orderly dissolution of the euro.

Consider what the euro is doing to Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy: impoverishing their people, putting them out of jobs, making them unable to afford some of the basic needs of life. That is done for a political project driven by bureaucrats with no democratic accountability. They fire Governments that they do not like and they have put their despots into Greece and Italy. The panjandrums of Brussels are sent in to rule, overturning democracy as we have historically known it. They have done all that to prop up the euro, which strangles economic growth.

Although one does not want a constant series of devaluations and a Zimbabwean-style economic policy, we have found in the past that devaluation can be the answer to otherwise incessant deflation. We found that ourselves, not just in 1992, when we left the exchange rate mechanism but also—perhaps the more appropriate comparison—in 1931, when we came off the gold standard.

When we look back at countries leaving the gold standard in the 1930s, we see that the later the country left, the worse its economic performance. The greater the deflation, the longer countries pressed down on their peoples with falsely inflated currency values. Europe is doing exactly the same again. It learnt the wrong lesson from Weimar Germany. It was not the inflation, but the deflation that led to Hitler. The fear of inflation is so great that Europe would rather crush the people of Greece under a deflation than risk the printing of currency, which the Greeks could do for themselves if they reintroduced the drachma.

That is the crisis that we are allowing our European neighbours to take upon themselves, and the Government are doing nothing about it, but letting them—if the analogy is right—throw themselves under the bus.

I have some sympathy with the Government, and I am sorry that the Foreign Secretary is not here because he would approve of the quotation that I shall use from one of his most distinguished predecessors, George Canning, who said:

“But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,

Save me, oh, save me, from the candid friend.”

If Her Majesty’s Government were to take up the role of candid friend—it is fine for Back Benchers to do it, and “friend” may not be quite the right word for the European Union—what would happen? What response would we find from the courts of Europe? They would say, “The British never liked the euro in the first place. You set out with your bankers, whom we’re now going to regulate, to undermine it, and it is your fault that the euro is collapsing.” Not the fault of those who have spent too much in Greece and those who have worked too little in some other European countries, arguably including Greece, but that of the Anglo Saxons and their evil bankers. I therefore understand why the Government are not being as robust as those of us who do not bear the responsibilities of office find it very easy to be in such debates.

Here we are, back after the summer. The cricket season comes to an end—

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

Shame!

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I agree with my hon. Friend—it is a great shame. The cricket season comes to an end but the euro crisis continues. It has gone on holiday for the summer, like most of the Eurocrats, and we find that Britain is allowing them to carry on with it because she has no choice. We are therefore right to let them go in that direction and not to obstruct them. Of course, we should use any future treaties to bring powers back to the United Kingdom, but on this occasion, we got something back. Honour was satisfied by what we got back, and, most importantly, Parliament and, therefore, the British people are being properly served by the proposal coming to us as a Bill rather than being pushed through as a mere piece of minutiae, in the same way as we may decide whether to charge for tours of Big Ben.