Common Foreign and Security Policy

Debate between Jesse Norman and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Monday 1st February 2016 General Committees

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I thank the Minister for his answers; he has shown once again that he has a full understanding of this issue and a comprehensive, encyclopaedic knowledge. There is a “but” coming, which I know he anticipates, and I am afraid to say that it is this: he is defending business as normal, which is a complete contradiction of the Government’s renegotiation strategy. On the one hand, in the next major area for Europeanisation of British competence and power, the Government are allowing things to move steadily in the direction of more Europe, while they are arguing for minor returns of power in the renegotiation. The two just do not go together.

The overwhelming majority of what is happening in the European Union is leading to ever-closer union, and Her Majesty’s Government are doing essentially a synthetic renegotiation to pretend that they are serious about returning powers. All the pages in front of us are about developing increasing competence over foreign affairs and defence for the European Union, and things have been moving in that direction for some time. The Government go along with that and have not been enthusiastic about scrutiny because they do not want it shown up that that is the direction of travel. That fits in with the overall picture of a steadily growing single European state.

[Jesse Norman]

I am interested in the line of thought my hon. Friend is developing. Does he think there is a potential tension between the drift he describes in the area of foreign security policy and the European Union Act 2011, which attempts to constrain what the Government can do in terms of granting, if not new competences, at least things that amount to new competences?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The 2011 Act is a good Act as far as it goes, but wide areas are not covered by it and do not require a referendum.

We have the steady move of powers to the EU, and we have the good manners of the Government in the Councils of Europe not wanting to cause a fuss. When it is a question of whether we should upset our friends in Europe or stand up for proper scrutiny in this House, the choice is easy for the Minister: he does not want to offend our friends in Europe, so he does not veto a report that is extremely late, where the High Representative has been slow, lazy and tardy, regardless of the fact that it offends the House of Commons. Why? Because he is a good European and because he wants to go along with it.

It is not so much about the formal side of things, which is indeed protected at the highest level by a referendum, but the steady day-by-day accretion of powers, allowing more things to happen under the competences that already exist and pushing those competences to the edges. My hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire is the distinguished Chairman of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport—an area where there is almost no EU competence, but the European Scrutiny Committee still receives documents in that area, where the EU is beginning to evolve an interest.

That is where the Government are not being strong enough. They are not showing the backbone that I have called for them to develop over the past few years. They are allowing this to go through because they do not want to stand up to it; they probably believe in it, but they know that the British people do not like it, so we get a little bit of a renegotiation on the edges. This document is symptomatic of what is going wrong, and I urge my very civilised right hon. Friend the Minister to be a little less civilised in the Councils of Europe and a little more robust.

House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Jesse Norman and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Friday 18th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and for referring to Edmund Burke’s principles for reform. Under those principles, would it not be better, with regard to excluding peers who commit offences, to build on the Titles Deprivation Act 1917, which provides a precedent for removing peers and taking away their titles?

[Jesse Norman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that typically scholarly and thoughtful intervention. That piece of legislation worked in the opposite direction, beginning by taking away titles and then allowing removal or exclusion from the Lords to follow therefrom. Such an approach would raise a thicket of further constitutional issues and probably steer us directly into the centre of the Bermuda triangle, never to return. It is therefore with some hesitation that I would endorse his suggestion, but I absolutely invite him to expand on it in any remarks that he makes later.

This Bill meets every one of the seven tests of Burke that I set out. If it succeeds, it will be an excellent example of effective reform, and we, and indeed our country, will be the better for it.