High Speed 2

Debate between Jim Cunningham and William Cash

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Sir William Cash]

I endorse what my hon. Friend has said about what is an extremely good idea and fits in with the opinion poll I mentioned. I am extremely glad that he voted against HS2, and sorry that I did not mention that earlier.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. I have consistently voted against the project, for various reasons. It will affect investment in Coventry and at the same time be detrimental to the environment in Warwickshire. It has never been costed properly, and there has never been a proper impact study or a proper consultation that takes on board the community’s concerns. I agree with him that it should be scrapped.

[Sir William Cash]

I am extremely glad to hear that. I am sorry that I did not mention that in my opening remarks. Although he is an Opposition Member, I pay tribute to the wisdom of the hon. Gentleman.

I and the other people I mentioned are concerned about not only the concept, but the manner in which HS2 Ltd has dealt with the issues, as I have said in the petition that I and others deposited, and as I have said in previous debates. I also petitioned on the first and second Bills and raised all my constituents’ grievances, which are on the record for anyone to see. I do not need to go into those today, because I want to deal with the central principles.

I have also taken part in other debates with my right hon. and indefatigable Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham. Our criticisms about the lack of consultation on HS2 are already on the record. Indeed, back in November 2015 the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman found serious failings in HS2 Ltd’s engagement with a community in Staffordshire. The report stated that its actions fell so far below reasonable standards that they constituted maladministration. I had similar experiences to my right hon. Friend, and I understand that she will deal with that later in the debate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) is not able to be here today. He apologises for that—he had another engagement—but I want to cite his concerns, which relate to the disruption it will cause his constituents and the disconnected nature of the railway, which is a matter of grave concern. He makes the point that the railway does not connect with Heathrow, the continent via HS1, or even Birmingham New Street station. He says that if ever there were a model of how not to design an integrated railway, this is it.

Amidst our collective opposition, the white elephant is running amok in the Treasury and has already charged the British taxpayer more than £4 billion before construction has even started. My own position on the outrageous and accelerating costs of HS2 is that, although £4 billion is a colossal sum, there is no excuse for continuing to throw money down a black hole. The spending plans began to spiral after 2018: £3 billion in 2019; £4.2 billion in 2020; and £4.8 billion in 2021. So if we are going to stop it, now would be a good time.

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[Sir William Cash]

That in itself is a complete tragedy. I totally endorse everything that my right hon. Friend said. The project has caused an enormous amount of anxiety and stress. I have friends and constituents who have literally been made physically ill as a result. Not only is it a catastrophic exercise in maladministration and failure to cost things properly, as I will mention, but it has caused anxiety and ultimately cannot be justified.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan), who has led the way in consistently opposing HS2. I have constituents who cannot get compensation because they are just outside the area that qualifies for it. Surely that is a diabolical situation for people to find themselves in.

[Sir William Cash]

As I expected, the hon. Gentleman makes another extremely sound point. The reality is that people are affected by the indirect consequences. People talk about the number of jobs being created. I will come on to that as well, because many other projects could be put in place that would create an equal or greater number of jobs.

EU Reform

Debate between Jim Cunningham and William Cash

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sir William Cash]

I understand that point and my hon. Friend has made it to me before. All I can say is that it depends on the structure being created and the irreversibility established by the treaties themselves as put into legislation. As I shall explain in a moment, the consequence of the existing structure is to create an imbalance in favour of Germany and a disadvantage for the United Kingdom in several areas. That is what we must evaluate because we want a peaceful and stable Europe; unfortunately, however, what is happening now is creating instability, and I believe the European Union as it was conceived will ultimately be undermined. Our parliamentary system is the bulwark of the liberty and democracy that saved us and Europe. That is no anachronism today.

The problem we now face in an increasingly assertive German Europe is one increasingly at odds with British national interests. For me, that was one of the mainsprings of the Maastricht rebellion and it has been exacerbated by successive treaties, including Lisbon—against which, notably, the Conservative party was united.

The situation is getting worse. For example, we are told that the single market is the prime reason, or certainly one of the prime reasons, for our engagement in the European project. Although more than 40% of our trade is with Europe, our trade deficit with the other 27 member states is £56 billion, whereas the German surplus with the same member states is £51.8 billion. At the same time, we have a substantial surplus with the rest of the world with the same goods and services. I fundamentally disagree with the CBI’s analysis.

A host of individual problems give rise to concern—for example, the regulatory system in the City of London. I wrote about that in the Financial Times, warning the City against the consequences, and we have lost case after case in the European Court of Justice. There is the ports regulation, opposed by port employers and the trade unions. There is the change in the patent courts system. There is the lack of a reciprocal policy of liberalisation in relation to energy, professional services and other matters. There is over-regulation, particularly of small businesses, on which no substantial progress is ever made, and which is calculated to cost about 4% of EU GDP.

The effect on our economy is deep. Our growth is being dragged down by the sclerotic eurozone, whose problems in many countries, such as Italy and Greece, are blamed on German currency and export manipulation.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the single market. Logic says that anyone signing up to a single market gets a central bank and a single currency. Surely the horse has bolted. I remind the hon. Gentleman that it was the Labour party that gave the British people a referendum and the five economic tests.

[Sir William Cash]

I entirely accept the hon. Gentleman’s second point about the referendum; I have never disputed that. Far from it—it was an extremely good thing, although back then it was about a kind of Europe different from the one we are now experiencing.

I voted for the Single European Act, but I tabled an amendment to preserve the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament. If that amendment had been allowed for debate, which it was not, it would have changed the whole nature of the matter. I was strongly supported by Enoch Powell, who understood that if we were to have a single market that did not work, the only way to retrieve the situation would be through some form of “notwithstanding” formula of the sort I have returned to over and again in subsequent years.

German economic policy is obsessed with fiscal discipline and large current account surpluses. Without the euro, currency adjustments would control Germany’s ability to export cheaply. German economic efficiency, combined with the single currency, allows for artificially cheap German exports at the expense of Mediterranean countries, which can deflate their currencies to offset cheap German goods, drawing money and jobs north and leaving the southern Governments unable to finance their deficits through economic growth.

German insistence on fiscal discipline is, as Wolfgang Munchau made clear in yesterday’s Financial Times, ideological and a deeply held response to the crisis of the 1930s. The result will be the destruction of the Mediterranean export economies while simultaneously deepening the damage through austerity on a massive scale. An attempt to impose German-style labour laws and fiscal discipline on those countries will fail and will not bring the required efficiency to compete with Germany.

The eurozone, which is dominated by Germany, is a disaster, as is increasingly recognised publicly by some of my Labour colleagues, and it seriously damages our economy. Furthermore, although we are told that consensus is the norm, the political consequences of the present treaties mean that, as of 1 November this year, the majority voting system in the EU Council of Ministers has been profoundly changed, subject only to a compromise transitional arrangement called the Ioannina compromise.

Germany and France with two small states can now effectively determine European decision making. The consensus is insufficiently transparent and is achieved primarily because the member states know the outcome of a given vote, which in any case does not sufficiently correspond to our concerns. In my European Scrutiny Committee, we have been very critical of how Coreper functions and the manner in which we are unable to achieve our objectives. We also have some critical things to say about UKRep.

Indeed, VoteWatch Europe has demonstrated that when the UK has voted between 2009 and 2012, it has done so in favour with the majority of member states in 90% of all votes. That strongly suggests that most European Commission proposals go through in practice. Therefore, the change in the voting system will tend to affect British interests increasingly adversely.

Professor Roland Vaubel of Mannheim university has examined the voting system and argued that the outcome is one of regulatory collusion, favouring Germany in particular. One must recognise that Germany makes a very substantial net contribution—£13 billion in 2013 compared with our £8.6 billion, although our contribution is rising. In return, Germany now acquires disproportionate advantages under the voting system and through its economic influence in Mitteleuropa.

In his speech in Berlin on 13 November, John Major reinvoked the concept of subsidiarity and he did so again on “The Andrew Marr Show” on Sunday. He said that subsidiarity is the answer and that we must

“nail it down as a matter of European law”.

I do not know which planet John Major has been living on since Maastricht, but that is already a matter of EU law. When he promoted subsidiarity in the Maastricht treaty, I described it as a con trick. In my 30 years on the European Scrutiny Committee, I have never come across a single example of the direct application of subsidiarity. Even John Major now reports its failure, and his speech in Berlin was a catalogue of the failures of his European policy at Maastricht.

The European Union is not an abstract concept. It is about the daily lives of our voters, to whom we are directly accountable, across a vast range of matters. The list of chapters in the consolidated treaties sets out the immense impact that the European Union now has on us all.

The European Scrutiny Committee, of which I was elected Chairman in 2010, argued strongly and unanimously in November 2013 that the Government should reintroduce the veto. We were promised that the veto would never be abandoned when the White Paper was issued in 1971; that was the basis of our voluntary acceptance of the treaties by our Parliament in the passing of the European Communities Act 1972, yet so many other additional competences have been added since. That paper described the veto as being in our vital national interest, and stated that to abandon it would even endanger “the very fabric” of the European Community itself. Somebody out there understood where all this could lead, as it has.

The Prime Minister, to his credit, did veto the fiscal compact, although my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) will remember a conversation that we had with him shortly beforehand. My Committee proposed the application of the formula

“notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972”

to our Westminster legislation when it is in our national interest to do so. We could thereby override European laws and the European Court of Justice when necessary, as we can and should, under our own flexible constitutional arrangements unique to the United Kingdom among the 28 member states, thus regaining our right to govern ourselves in matters of vital national interest.

Those proposals were rejected by the Government, which shows how weak our negotiating stance really is in relation to the need to change fundamentally our relationship with the EU in the interests of our parliamentary democracy and the needs of our voters.

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[Sir William Cash]

That is completely right. We need a different relationship with the EU as a whole that also includes the eurozone, because the eurozone, which is causing so much of the dislocation in Europe, is dominated by Germany, and the German financial and fiscal policies, which I have described already, have that enormous impact in destabilising the eurozone.

This is where I really part company with statements made by some members—senior members—of our Government. I am referring to the consequences of the eurozone. We were told at the time when it was evolving, with the banking union and all the rest of it, that it was, in effect, a natural course of events that we could not prevent. Actually, it has created the very instability that is most likely to lead to the destruction of the European Union itself. That is the problem. It is not just a negative view that I am trying to put across; it is the fact that it is destabilising Europe. It is creating problems of a kind that can get completely out of control, with catastrophic consequences not only for this country but for Europe as a whole. That is why the argument that I am seeking to advance is that actually this is a real problem for Europe as a whole. It is not anti-European to be pro-democracy.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

It was remiss of me not to congratulate the hon. Gentleman on acquiring the debate. I know the views that he has held over many years. My point is this. During the last economic downturn, the Germans, for example, did not dictate British economic policy; it may be argued that British economic policy was dictated to Europe. I do not see the hon. Gentleman’s logic. If he feels that the European market as it is constructed now is causing major problems in Europe, why should we pull out of that situation, rather than rebalancing Europe? That is what I do not understand about the argument that he is making.

[Sir William Cash]

The short answer to that is that we do not need to be in the European Union to trade with Europe, because it needs us—for example, in relation to Germany’s export of cars—on a monumental scale. I have already given the figures for the surplus that Germany runs with the other 27 member states. Furthermore, we have a global economy to which we can address our economic and trading concerns, and we are achieving a substantial surplus with the rest of the world, selling the same goods and services. What I am arguing is on the balance of judgment as to whether it is in our interest to subordinate our parliamentary system of government and the democracy that goes with it in order to achieve a trading relationship that at best is extremely debatable and, in certain instances, is positively disadvantageous.

Let me turn to the issue of defence, which is so fundamental to our national interest. Unlike John Cleese’s immortal words in “Fawlty Towers”, “Don’t mention the war”, we must never forget the reasons why we were confronted in two successive world wars by unprovoked aggression from Germany. We must look to the greater historic landscape in our mutual interests and we must look to resolve our real differences about the structure as well as individual issues within the EU.

Ten days ago, at a formal conference in Rome under the Lisbon treaty, comprising chairmen of national parliamentary committees for all 28 member states and the European Parliament, the German delegation formally proposed a defence Commissioner and a defence Council of Ministers and reinvoked the idea of an EU military headquarters. As Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, I argued passionately against that, as did the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) and the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), the former Chairman of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. The British delegation defeated the proposal, but the German delegation insisted that

“it will have to be put back on the agenda at the next conference”

and added ominously that

“Great Britain will simply not be able to maintain their line”.

That harks back to previous German attempts to establish a European defence policy with majority voting and must be repudiated once and for all.