European Affairs

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I do congratulate the previous Prime Minister. I am not in the habit of doing that, but on this subject I am very happy to do so. What a good job it was that the former Prime Minister, Sir John Major, ensured that we had an opt-out so that the most recent Prime Minister could keep us out of the eurozone.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Hague]

I give way to a former Minister for Europe.

[Keith Vaz]

I am most grateful to the Foreign Secretary; I am actually going to be very nice to him. I congratulate him on his appointment and remind him that I gave him his first job in the Commons, as secretary of the all-party footwear and leather industries group. I am glad that he is going to be active; we would expect nothing less from him. On enlargement, will he continue the previous Government’s policy of ensuring that countries that are capable of joining will be allowed to join? Leaving aside transitional arrangements such as whether people will be able to work, particularly in relation to the Croatia file, which must be on his desk, will he confirm that we believe in a Europe that is wider and stronger?

[Mr Hague]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The role that we played together on the leather and footwear industries all-party group 20 years ago will for ever be somewhere in the recesses of my mind. I am very grateful for that reminder; the memory has just been retrieved from somewhere. He is absolutely right: there is a strong cross-party commitment on EU enlargement, to which I want to turn later in my speech. I want to talk specifically about Croatia later. He used an important phrase about countries joining when they have met the conditions. It is important that they meet the conditions for membership, rather than the conditions being changed to suit a particular country. I very much agree with what he said.

It is also our intention to approach European issues in a more coherent way across Whitehall than has sometimes been the case. In the three weeks for which I have held the office of Foreign Secretary, it has been apparent to my colleagues and me that under the previous Government, Departments could have worked together better, particularly more strategically. That point might also be relevant to previous Governments, and we intend to put it right. We are establishing a new Cabinet Committee on European affairs that I will chair, with the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change as the deputy chair. [Interruption.] It is another example of a good coalition in practice.

That Committee will allow the new Government to take a more holistic approach to EU issues than was sometimes the case in the past, and I hope it will achieve better results for Britain. We must ensure that we are always ahead of the game in Brussels, unlike the previous Government, of whom that could not always be said; the position in which they left us in relation to the hedge funds directive is a particular example. In doing so, we will be aided by achieving a more collegiate feeling in a two-party Cabinet than in the previous Cabinet of one party.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Miliband]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman’s intervention had so little to do with what I was talking about, which was a serious point about the development of human rights support in Russia. As he knows, the Council of Europe continues to receive generous support from the United Kingdom. The fact that we froze our budget is an example of the sort of efficiency and drive that he has often preached about. However, there is an important point there for the Foreign Secretary to address.

[Keith Vaz]

“Europe 2020” is the successor to the Lisbon agenda. What went wrong with the Lisbon agenda was that European countries did not acknowledge and achieve their benchmarks on certain aspects of policy. Before the shadow Foreign Secretary finishes the economic section of his speech, will he say whether he agrees that, as we focus on the new European Council, it is extremely important that there should be credible benchmarks? There has to be a proper understanding from European countries that those benchmarks are not pie in the sky; rather, they actually have to meet them if Europe is to become truly competitive.

[David Miliband]

I fear that there is a rather more fundamental problem than the one that my right hon. Friend has addressed. Although it is right to have a single European growth strategy, there is not a single European Government, nor is there a single European economic policy. We have nation states of Europe that pursue their own policies, and the vast majority of right hon. and hon. Members across the House would support that. The benchmarks that he talks about could not be enforced by the European Commission, or by anyone else, in those areas that were not within the competence of the European Union. I do not think the lesson from that is that we should centralise all work on universities or other supply-side issues. However, the structural problem remains, whereby the European Union operates by agreement, but implementation in significant areas is carried out by nation states.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Miliband]

First, we will attack the Government for being insufficiently pro-British, and not for being insufficiently pro-Brussels. When they are insufficiently strong in their defence of the national interest, in regard to any aspect of European policy, we will attack them for that. Let me address my hon. Friend’s last point. His new ally, the Prime Minister, repeated in each of the prime ministerial debates that Britain needed a policy in which new entrants to the European Union had transitional arrangements for labour market access. That exists today for Romania and Bulgaria, precisely because we are learning the lessons of the past 10 years. I would say to my hon. Friend that, when our comrade party has done something right, it would be worth his while to recognise that. In this case, we have got it right.

[Keith Vaz]

Please could the shadow Foreign Secretary explain to our comrade from Glasgow—this now seems to be the parlance on these Benches—that this is not actually immigration? Once the treaty has been signed, people from the European Union have a right to come and work here unless there are transitional arrangements. Furthermore, there are 1 million British citizens working in mainland Europe in exactly the same way.

[David Miliband]

It is important to point out that there is now a net outflow of European workers from the UK, according to the latest figures, which were published at the end of last month. That reflects quite a lot about our economy. It is also important to say that other European citizens are required to work and pay taxes for 12 months in the UK before they are entitled to claim benefits. That is an important part of the compact. I accept that there are rights, but it is important not to forget that there are also responsibilities attendant on migration within the European Union.