European Affairs

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of European affairs.

It is a great pleasure to have the honour of opening the first European affairs debate of this new Parliament. These debates not only provide the House with the opportunity to consider developments in the European Union in general but, more immediately, allow the House to give its thoughts on the forthcoming meeting of the European Council. In the past these debates have been held so shortly before the European Council meeting—sometimes only hours before, or the day before, or two days before—that the House has had no real chance to ensure that its thinking is in any way absorbed by the Government in their approach. We believe, in the new Government, that we can do better than that. This debate is taking place two weeks ahead of the European Council meeting, and before the Foreign Affairs Council meeting in Luxembourg on 14 June.

The new Government will bring a fresh approach to Britain’s involvement in the EU. I said in opposition—to some scepticism on the Labour Benches, it has to be said—that we would be active and activist, positive and energetic, from day one. We have been exactly that. The Prime Minister’s first visits to foreign capitals were to Paris and Berlin, where he had highly successful meetings with President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel. My ministerial team has been extremely busy. The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), attended the EU-Latin American and Caribbean meeting a fortnight ago in Madrid, and the EU-Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in Madrid. I was able to meet many of my European counterparts at the Latin American meeting. I was in Sarajevo yesterday for the EU-western Balkans meeting, which I shall come to later. In the next seven days I intend to visit my counterparts in Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and Rome. The Minister for Europe attended the informal ministerial meeting on the eastern partnership in Poland last week, and has met in Brussels Members of the European Parliament and the European Commission. We said that we would be active from day one, and we have indeed been so.

This Government strongly believe that the European Union has a crucial role in enabling the countries of Europe to work together to face the vast challenges of this century: the maintenance of our global competitiveness, the problem of climate change, the grim facts of global poverty, and the need for the nations of Europe to use their collective weight in the world to deal with foreign policy issues. All are better dealt with if the nations of Europe can bring together common solutions—and above all, the right solutions.

We will, where necessary, be more robust in defending Britain’s national interests than the previous Government were. We will not repeat their wretched handling of the negotiations on the current financial perspective, which saw them accept a cut of £7 billion in our rebate while obtaining nothing of substance in return.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Will the Foreign Secretary, here and now, congratulate the previous Prime Minister on his great wisdom in keeping Britain out of the eurozone?

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[Mr Hague]

There are several parts to my hon. Friend’s question about the reasons for low economic growth in the European Union. One of those reasons is the extent of regulation, inflexibility and bureaucratic burdens. I think that is true in most, if not all, the countries of the EU, for a mixture of reasons. Some of that regulation is at EU level and some is at national level. I was going to deal with that issue.

Winning the argument for appropriate regulation is a very important part of the plans that we have put forward to revive economic growth in the EU, and sometimes that will mean having lighter regulation. That can be addressed partly through the European Union regulating more effectively and in a less burdensome way, and partly by nations doing so individually. The extent to which we can deal with the issue by changing the balance of competences between the EU and member states is something that we now have to examine as a coalition. My hon. Friend has a long-held view on the subject, and I have expressed views about it. We are a coalition Government, and he and I must accept that there is not necessarily a majority in the House of Commons for every single thing that we would have wanted to do. We must examine the issue as a coalition, and we are now doing so.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The Foreign Secretary speaks warmly—as so many Europe Ministers and Foreign Secretaries have—about our trade with the European Union. Is not the reality that we have a massive trade deficit with the European Union, and we do much better with trade outside the European Union? We do not benefit from that trade; Europe benefits from us and our market.

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[Mr Hague]

I do not have proposals at this moment to address that, but the hon. Gentleman raises a legitimate point, so I will note it as something that the new Government will look at. From what I remember, it is not an easy problem to solve, but the point is legitimate and we can have further discussions about it.

The hon. Member for Glasgow South West has gone—I was about to address his point. So much for his enthusiasm for an answer! As I was explaining, the major issue is the difficulties facing the eurozone. Given the extent of our exports to the eurozone, of course we will support our partners in their efforts to deal with the current difficulties, but without being drawn further into the eurozone. For example, while we recognise the importance of maintaining a dialogue on deficit reduction across the eurozone and the wider EU, we are firm in our view that our national budget must always be presented first to our national Parliament.

We are listening to member states that are discussing institutional reforms to the eurozone—that is an ongoing debate—but I assure the House that the Government will maintain our position that there should be no further transfer of sovereignty or powers from Britain to the EU over the course of the Parliament. Sanctions for breaches of the stability and growth pact may be the right way forward for our partners in the euro area, but they should never apply to countries that retain their own currencies, and this country will retain its currency.

The next question for all members of the European Union is, “From where will the growth that we need come?” The Government, working with our European partners, mean to address that question with vigour. We know that spending our way further into dangerous levels of debt is not the answer. We need to get Europe back to work, create jobs, attract investment and deal with the erosion of our long-term competitiveness. Those issues concern every member of the European Union, not just the eurozone. We will urgently make the case for the extension of the single market, better regulation that can lighten the burdens on businesses, and seizing opportunities to create freer and fairer trade between the European Union and third countries. In that context, we will particularly encourage greater economic engagement between the European Union and new, rising economic powers.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

rose—

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman wants to intervene for a third time. I will let him do so once again.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I will try to make this the last intervention, but it is on an important point. Squeezing deficits and introducing labour regulation, which would depress wages, will simply drive the European Union further into depression and deflation. Is not that the real danger that we face?

[Mr Hague]

I do not think that that is the danger that we face. Deficits unaddressed or regulation that prices people out of work in some European nations are the real dangers to economic growth in the long term. When we consider the position of the countries in the eurozone that face the most severe fiscal difficulties, their problem is not insufficient state spending or insufficient regulation, but very much the opposite. I am sorry—the hon. Gentleman and I agree on so many aspects of European policy, but we will have to disagree on that one.

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[David Miliband (South Shields) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is unusual in the House for the Foreign Secretary—at least it was under his previous roles—to lose an audience during a speech, but I will seek to address many of his points, focusing my remarks on the agenda for the European Council in two weeks. Of course, this quarter’s pre-European Council debate is unusual in that it is scheduled in the middle of the Queen’s Speech debates, but it comes at an important time for Europe.

I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for his explanation of the Government’s approach. We want the Prime Minister, when he attends the European Council, to represent the interests of the country in a strong, outward-looking European Union, supporting an agenda of economic reform and social justice at home, and hard-headed internationalism abroad. The Foreign Secretary bravely said, in the Queen’s Speech debate last week, that he now favoured a policy of enlightened self-interest. We congratulate him on moving from unenlightened to enlightened self-interest—it is a step forward—but I hope that he will allow me, in the nicest possible way, to remind him of Harold Macmillan’s point that a Foreign Secretary is always caught somewhere between a cliché and an indiscretion. I hope that his repetition of his commitment to enlightened self-interest will not capture him in that trap.

It is not enough to say that one is enlightened. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary need to show it, and show it quickly, on the big issues facing Europe. They must put to one side institutional squabbles and focus on the substantive issues facing the European Union: a steady process of building economic growth alongside deficit reduction; developing the EU as a low-carbon economic zone of the future able to lead the international green economy; and supporting a strong European foreign policy that uses our weight in Europe to advance British interests. The Prime Minister’s press conference with Chancellor Merkel last month—his first foray into European politics as Prime Minister—was not encouraging. We are told that the Prime Minister is a fan of Disraeli, who said that

“petulance is not sarcasm, and insolence is not invective”.

The Prime Minister’s remarks in Berlin verged on both petulance and insolence.

I will focus on the Council’s agenda, but first I must pick the Foreign Secretary up on one thing. These debates are not traditionally partisan affairs, and my remarks will not be dedicated in that dimension. Pre-European Council debates—not European debates in general—have generally been focused on the agenda of the European Council. The shadow Foreign Secretary said—[Hon. Members: “You’re the shadow Foreign Secretary!”]I mean the Foreign Secretary. It sticks in the gullet, Mr Deputy Speaker; I am happy to admit it. However, in a few weeks, I hope I will get used to referring to the right hon. Gentleman as the Foreign Secretary.

I think I quote the Foreign Secretary correctly. He said that the United Kingdom got “nothing in return” for the 2004-05 budget deal. He also said that he was a long-standing supporter of enlargement, and he congratulated the previous Government on achieving enlargement. He knows that the budget deal agreed was necessary to make enlargement possible, and I say to him in the nicest possible way—well sort of—that he cannot keep on attacking the 2004-05 budget deal while professing his loyalty to the project of European enlargement. That project requires commitments in substance, and sometimes in budgets, as well as in words, and it simply is not good enough for him to keep on saying that we gave away the house in 2004-05 when it is not true. The EU achieved a historic agreement to expand, which he says he supports.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

If all budget contributions by nations were proportionate to their living standards, it would be fair, but they are not, so it will always cause problems, especially for Britain.

[David Miliband]

The rebate, which now applies to four countries, not just to the United Kingdom, is there because of the pattern of spending in the EU, and it is the pattern of spending that distorts the net contributions.

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[Ms Stuart]

That is a perfectly fair point, but there are two problems. The first goes back to the claim that we would have trade surpluses if only every country were like Germany, but things do not work that way. The second problem is how such a strategy would be policed.

There is a third difficulty, too. Every successful single currency requires significant transfers from the centre to deal with asymmetric economic shocks, and those transfers would be of the order of between 20% and 30% of the overall tax take. In Europe, that would require a European economic and political Government. The approach could not work in any other way, because we cannot expect countries to behave like that in the absence of any mechanisms for policing or transfer that would compensate them for their loss of competitiveness.

The problem in Greece is that it could become competitive again by devaluing its currency, but it is not allowed to do so. As a result, the approach outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) does not address the problem.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Exactly.

[Ms Stuart]

Thank you.

The second solution is a massive devaluation of the euro—a devaluation that some people say would have to amount to something like 50 cents against the dollar. A small devaluation would not be enough for Greece, and a large devaluation would be disastrous for the other countries in the EMU. For a country like Germany, a small devaluation would help competiveness, but a large devaluation would lead to incredibly high inflation that would ruin the economy again.

Again, what should we do? There is a least bad solution, although it is not a happy one. People argue that Greece should leave the euro, but I think that the least bad solution would be for the German bloc to leave the euro. That would, in a sense, allow for competitiveness to develop. Germany’s banks would still have to recapitalise, but it would be less costly to do this directly than it would be to do it indirectly by trying to rescue Greece.

The simple truth is that neither the eurozone countries nor any countries around the eurozone will get out of this mess without some very serious decisions being made, and there will be consequences for us all. As I understand it, the Prime Minister says that it is in Britain’s interests for there to be a stable and strong euro. If he says that out of diplomatic politeness, I understand and accept that, but with the current structure there is no way that he can have a stable euro and a strong euro. It will be weak in its basic economic fundamentals, and that is what has been wrong with something that was driven by political will but underpinned by excessively bad economics. The euro has always been a political project, and people keep assuming that given sufficient determination by the politicians, this structure will work. But it is fundamentally flawed.

It is then argued that the answer is more central control from Brussels, with its already incredible intrusion into countries’ sovereignty. Look at what has been happening to Greece, and what has been happening to Spanish Ministers and what they were told to do. Essentially, Brussels is now running Greece as if it were a protectorate. Is that the answer? I do not think it is. I do not think it is acceptable. That is the real difficulty—that nobody is facing up to the fact that the structure is so fundamentally economically flawed that it will not work.

That is why, when the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister go for the first time to European Union meetings in their new roles, I urge them to stop using phrases such as “having to protect our negotiating capital.” I think they have to face the fact that that is simply a polite phrase for not being prepared to say no when on occasions you need to say no. Again I have seen it, and the Foreign Secretary himself acknowledged that once people join the Government again, the tones get slightly softened. When a problem arises, the Brits will, as always, within a few hours say, “I’m sure there’s a way through this,” encouraged by our very able diplomats—who, I remind the House, are always in government, irrespective of which side of the House hon. Members are sitting, so it is in their interests to find these rather smooth solutions.

We are coming to a point where, to get out of serious economic difficulties, Britain will have, on occasions, to say no. When it comes to threats to our financial industries and our financial sector, it is no good protecting our negotiating capital. It is time to say no, just as the French would say no if we attacked their wine industry, or the Germans if we attacked their car industry. The price that will have to be paid if we do not become competitive again, if we do not protect our own currency, will not be paid by Members in the House, or by the Commission in Brussels. The political elite and the nomenklatura are always protected. The price will be paid by the old and the young, by the people who have no jobs, the people who lose their savings and the people who lose their pensions. The political elite have not been prepared to listen to them. It has been driving through a political project that was underpinned by bad economics. I hope that the people on the Government Benches will now show that when in government, they are able to act with the mettle that they pretended to have when they were in opposition.

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[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Let me first say what a splendid speech we have just heard from the hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley). I am particularly interested in his support for music. As a former musician and a lifetime lover of music, I think that he will make a very valuable contribution.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

You like jazz.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Indeed, that is true, but I have a wide range of tastes in music, including opera and classical. My son is even educating me in heavy metal, but that is a rather new field for me, I am afraid. I was very interested in what the hon. Member for Hove said, and I congratulate him; I am sure that he will make a fine contribution to the House over the years.

I want to speak about the eurozone and its current problems and to reflect some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart). The eurozone is facing disaster at the moment—a disaster that some of us predicted some time ago. However, the eurozone is not the European Union, and it is quite possible to imagine the European Union without a eurozone. Indeed, I think that that is likely to be the future provided that the EU itself does not start to fragment as a result of the eurozone’s troubles. I also want to emphasise, as I have time and again in the past, that Europe is not the European Union, or the European Union is not Europe; eliding the two terms is a mistake. The European Union is a political construct that has been imposed on, or adopted by, several of the nations of Europe, but it is not Europe. Europe is a place that, like the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), I love very much. In a few weeks’ time, I shall be surrounded by the vineyards of Provence, no doubt listening to Mozart and drinking something very decent. I love Europe in every sense, even in struggling to speak French, but I am deeply critical of the European Union and think that the eurozone is a terrible mistake, as is proving to be the case.

The eurozone is in crisis, and a very predictable one. Some 20 years ago, I wrote a paper—I used to write many papers on the EU and its economy—predicting the exchange rate mechanism debacle before we actually joined, and I proved to be exactly right. People thought I was prophetic, but anyone with a moderate knowledge of economics and a little foresight would have seen that the ERM was going to bring about a disaster. In fact, it led to the defeat of the Conservatives in 1997 and the election of a Labour Government, so for the Government side of the House it was indeed a disaster, but, unusually and unexpectedly, it brought benefits in terms of a Labour Government.

Strong currencies derive from strong economies, not the other way round. If one tries to impose a strong currency on a weak economy, it will not survive. There are great examples of this around the world. The best one in recent years is perhaps Argentina, where people linked the peso directly and rigidly to the dollar for a period, which caused terrible mayhem inside their economy. Eventually, after some 10 years, when the economy was almost wrecked, they were forced to devalue to break that link. As a result of that devaluation, Argentina is now bouncing back, no doubt helped by its splendid wine industry. I am sure that the competitive edge that the wine industry has had because of devaluation has helped the Argentine economy to recover.

Weak economies within the eurozone will have exactly the same problem, and we will not solve it without those countries departing from the eurozone. The first would be Greece, but others would follow. I will come to some of the problems with that in a moment. From time to time, I have met Irish politicians and suggested that their only solution is to recreate the punt, devalue and rejoin the sterling zone instead of the eurozone, because we are Ireland’s major trading partner—it is essentially part of the larger economy of the British Isles. Ireland would benefit greatly from such a decision.

Some people think that it is unrealistic to expect countries to leave the eurozone, although Angela Merkel suggested, some eight or nine weeks ago, that it should not be impossible for countries to do so. She was then roundly condemned with a fierce reaction from the French, who thought that that was an appalling thing to say, and she has now drawn back from it. However, there are those who believe that in the long run the Deutschmark will be recreated, or that there could be a Deutschmark zone that might include Holland and Luxembourg, but not much more.

The problem is that if Greece goes, the other PIGS countries––Portugal, Ireland and Spain––will also eventually depart the euro. The problem that the French and German Governments have is that their banks are heavily exposed in lending to those countries, which would immediately devalue and start to become very competitive with stronger nations in northern Europe, particularly with the French. The French would immediately have a problem competing with Italy and Spain—their next-door neighbours––and would then eventually leave the eurozone and devalue. That would leave the German economy on its own, effectively with a currency that in real terms was much more highly valued because the others would have been devalued.

That takes us back to what Keynes suggested in Bretton Woods. He wanted a world in which there would be stable but separate currencies and said that those countries that get into a big deficit should be able to devalue and, indeed, those countries that run big surpluses should be required to revalue. Indeed, the German economy was built for decades on an undervaluation of the Deutschmark, which is, in a sense, what has given it its strength and has enabled it to become effectively overvalued within the eurozone. Other countries cannot compete with Germany—indeed, we cannot compete with it, which is why, I think, we devalued. Despite the devaluation, we still have a massive trade deficit with Germany, but we are starting to improve and recover, because we had that opportunity.

Because we are outside the eurozone, we have the ability to devalue—depreciate—our currency as appropriate and to choose our own monetary and fiscal policy. Those policies are interrelated—we have relations with the countries in the eurozone—but, nevertheless, we have a degree of freedom in managing our economy that countries inside the eurozone do not. If we try to impose strong currencies on weak economies, such a problem occurs.

If we do not allow those countries to leave and dismantle the eurozone, we will see massive deflation. One cannot just expect countries such as Greece and Spain to cut their deficits and deflate their economies massively and, indeed, get rid of protection for workers, so that wages are driven down. That would merely make their economies much poorer and weaker, increase unemployment and be no good at all. The logical thing for those countries to do would be to withdraw from the eurozone, start to direct demand towards their own economies and spend time behind the effective barrier of a depreciated currency, rebuilding the strength of their economies in a realistic way.

That is what is needed in the eurozone and that is why the eurozone is deeply flawed. It has to be dismantled and we have to build a Europe based on economies that have separate currencies, which are like shock absorbers between economies––they have to be able to adjust. If they cannot do so, those economies will be in serious trouble for a very long time. Indeed, there could be serious social unrest, the like of which we have not seen for a long time.

In a sense, I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston was saying. We ought to look forward practically. Rather than indulging in Schadenfreude—pleasure in the pain of others—and saying, “I told you so,” we should take practical steps to persuade those countries to think about dismantling the eurozone, recreating their separate currencies and progressing from there onwards in a much more practical and sensible way.

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

I had the pleasure of being able to refer to some of the matters I wish to mention in the Queen’s Speech debate. I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me another opportunity to carry the matter forward, particularly in the light of some absolutely superb speeches from Back Benchers on our own side on the question of the European Union as a whole and also in the light of the contribution of the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who began to move quite perceptibly towards the centre of gravity of where we are now in the coalition Government.

It is no secret that my concern about any coalition Government remains that we must keep to our principles and our manifesto promises. It is essential that we stick to our template and manifesto commitments on sovereignty—I originally proposed a sovereignty Bill some five to seven years ago—and human rights, with which I will deal shortly, and the associated charter of fundamental rights, for a simple reason. There are three categories of activity in coalitions: the easy stuff, the difficult stuff and the red lines stuff. As I said repeatedly on radio and television in the aftermath of the coalition announcement, we must stick to the red lines because they are about who governs us and how. I do not need to elaborate, but a sovereignty Bill and the repeal of the Human Rights Act 1998 are central to that.

As hon. Members who spoke this afternoon have strongly emphasised, we have a responsibility and an obligation to put the sovereignty of Parliament at the top of our agenda because, as I have often said, it is not our Parliament but that of the people who elect us. The question, “Who governs the United Kingdom?” is therefore central and we have no right to make any concessions on that.

Like the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) for her speech. By the mettle of her arguments and the manner in which she addressed the questions that I asked in several interventions on the Foreign Secretary and the shadow Foreign Secretary about the burdens on business and deregulation, she gave the impression that she had somehow been liberated.

With great respect, it is not good enough to imply that gold-plating and national over-regulation is the real problem, when the problem is the extent of the acquis communautaire. It has an enormous impact on burdens on business—£88 billion according to the British Chambers of Commerce recently. I pay tribute to Tim Ambler and Francis Chittenden for their remarkable analytical work, from which I drew the figure of 4% of GDP, to which Lord Mandelson referred when he was a Commissioner. Mr Verheugen gave similar figures about the over-regulation of European business.

The eurozone does not function properly because of the economic model of the Lisbon agenda—my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) admitted that it had not been working. For years, the European Scrutiny Committee has shown that it has not worked properly. That is all part and parcel of the reason for the widening of our trade deficit with Europe. We cannot manage to trade with an imploding eurozone, part of which is affected by profligate public expenditure, as in the case of Greece, and part of which is affected by the deeply flawed statistical base of the EUROSTAT system. People are allowed to engage in what would be regarded as false accounting in any company.

We are in a European Union that simply cannot work as it is. It is imploding. It cannot compete with China and India because it is inherently ossified. It is a great concrete jungle of over-regulation. One cannot change the nature of employment, yet the whole social and employment base must be changed. To my mind, whether we transfer further powers is neither here nor there. It would be wonderful if we had a referendum on the European question, but the notion that we would be committed to it only when a further transfer of powers occurred is wrong. I have heard it all before. I heard it when Lord Hurd was Foreign Secretary during the debates on the Maastricht treaty. I stood in this very place, inveighing against it. As the hon. Member for Luton North said, we got so much about that right at the time. The late Peter Shore and I found an amity based on a common understanding that that system was not going to work, and so it has proved.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

The hon. Gentleman may know that Lord Hurd, a euro enthusiast, said last week that it would now be difficult to find more than one in 10 people in Britain who are prepared to contemplate the single currency.

[Mr Cash]

I certainly do, and I say without any sense of self-congratulation that when we said such things in the Maastricht debates, we were vehemently criticised by the then Government. We were rubbished, if I may use that expression, for daring to suggest that the single currency would not work. The same goes for the paraphernalia that followed in a succession of treaties. I must have tabled at least 150 or 200 amendments—I cannot remember exactly how many—to each of the treaties from Maastricht onwards, including the Lisbon treaty, which we simply must not implement.

The whole European system must be radically and drastically reformed, precisely because it is impossible to repatriate powers without a sovereignty Act—I repeat my call for that to be introduced as urgently as possible—and we need that to underpin the negotiations on economic recovery. We must have economic recovery because otherwise, we cannot reduce the debt or pay for the necessary public services. We are living in a fool’s paradise if we think otherwise. That is fundamental.

I am concerned about further enlargement, and my earlier exchanges with the shadow Foreign Secretary are on the record—I was slightly pulled up for following my point up. The European Scrutiny Committee asked very serious questions about the accession of Bulgaria and Romania. Those countries are reasons why we should not enlarge any more, to include, for example, Albania, Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey. I do not have time to go into those arguments now, but the bottom line is that the European Union is more than large enough, and unfortunately, it does not work, and must be reformed drastically.

If there is no way of reforming the EU from within because of the acquis communautaire and the role of the European Court of Justice, and because other member states are simply not prepared to negotiate sensibly on legislation that requires unanimity to repeal, we are going to be stuck by the majority vote. All the protestations, hopes, aspirations, and perhaps some rather over-enthusiastic promises, will come to nothing, because it is impossible to change the system under majority voting when there is no will to do so on the other side, which takes us back to repatriation and the sovereignty Act.

The human rights question is enormously important. The necessity for the repeal of the Human Rights Act 1998 runs in tandem with the charter of fundamental rights. In a recent speech to judges, the Lord Chief Justice stated:

“The primary responsibility for saving the common law system of proceeding by precedent is primarily a matter for us as judges…Are we becoming so focused on Strasbourg and the Convention that instead of incorporating Convention principles within and developing the common law accordingly as a single coherent unit, we are allowing the Convention to assume an unspoken priority over the common law?…We must beware.”

We must take such things very seriously.

Lord Hoffman has said that the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg

“has been unable to resist the temptation to aggrandise its jurisdiction and to impose uniform rules on Member States. It considers itself the equivalent of the Supreme Court of the United States, laying down a federal law of Europe.”

The same applies to the charter of fundamental rights. We must stop that process.