European Union Bill

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

To take up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), I am a great advocate of transparency, which is crucial. The problem is that the Bill proposes unilateral transparency. We are not in the business of declaring that we are for unilateral disarmament before negotiations. Will the Minister ensure that although we need to make progress on transparency, we need to do so across Europe, and not just in respect of our negotiating team, which might feel hampered in making the key decisions that matter so much to my constituents?

[Mr MacShane]

The hon. Lady makes a fair point. Aneurin Bevan famously said apropos of unilateral nuclear disarmament that we should not send a Foreign Secretary naked into the conference chamber. Now and then at the more tedious European Council meetings, someone coming in naked might have cheered everyone up, but she is right to insist that Britain cannot unilaterally reveal itself in its wondrous glory, naked to the rest of the world, while 26 other members are smuttily enjoying the sight while keeping their own crown jewels well and truly hidden.

[Laura Sandys]

The hon. Gentleman is perhaps taking the analogy a bit too far.

[Mr MacShane]

I was tempted to do so, but I shall resist.

My frustration, after 17 years in the House, is that we still do not know how to discuss the EU. We are still frightened of going to the national capitals of Europe. Much of the information that the Bill calls for can be found if hon. Members are prepared to take the time to meet opposite numbers of all parties—the European debaters and deciders in the Bundestag, the Assemblée Nationale or wherever. Hon. Members could also easily find things out from civil servants in Brussels. Most of the information is available if they are prepared to take the time to find it.

Our own negotiating functionaries, to whose extraordinary qualities I pay tribute, would be quite happy to discuss with Committees of this House what they do, but we have reduced European matters to adversarial, in-or-out, horrors-of-Brussels debates and all the drivel that one can read in the Daily Mail and similar papers, instead of accepting that we are in the EU and, as the Prime Minister has made very clear, that we are not leaving. The EU will come forward with new proposals, some of which will be tricky and some of which we will advance, and it would be much better if we could have a mature dialogue with other national parliamentarians. There are 9,700 national parliamentarians and 700 MEPs. We overreact to what the latter say, and ignore the need to connect to the national Parliaments and parliamentarians of Europe to debate decisions.

That would mean a revolution in how we do business. Frankly, the Labour Government failed miserably in improving the quality of oversight and debate on EU decision making. I could publish some of the papers I wrote—if they are not locked away under some 30-year rule—to call for some of the measures that we are discussing. I wish the Minister and his team well in changing how we do EU business. The new clause is not the way forward, and I hope the motion is withdrawn after the debate, but it represents, and is a symptom of, a deep malaise in our nation and of the distrust of Europe that many people feel. I understand that fully, but I insist that parliamentarians can put it right. Hurling insults at the EU will never achieve that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Gummer]

The hon. Lady has clarified that beautifully. It argues for wider consideration of such issues in the kind of structure anticipated by my hon. Friends and the process in Finland that she described.

There is a broader transparency that the House enjoys, which is to put to the electorate a manifesto at the time of elections. In the past 10 years a party has put forward a manifesto proposing a referendum on the European constitution, lately called the Lisbon treaty, yet that referendum was never granted. The purpose of this Bill is to ensure that such mendacity cannot be repeated. I therefore propose that the new clause be advanced at a later stage and on a wider basis, but I support the broader purposes of the Bill.

[Laura Sandys]

Does my hon. Friend agree that taking that proposal forward and evolving it over the next couple of years and months must be done on a multilateral basis, not a unilateral UK basis?

[Ben Gummer]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, because it is patently obvious how difficult it is for the United States, our ally, to negotiate at the moment, following the unilateral release of its documents to the world’s media, which was not its choice. If this is to be done, clearly it must be on a multilateral basis, especially with our key allies in the Commonwealth and the United States, as well as those in Europe.

I support the main aims of the Bill. I am greatly attracted to the thrust of the new clause, but I suspect that it would have more power and greater reach if it were advanced at a different stage and on a wider basis.