European Council

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom]

That is a good observation and I have noticed that, but it was not what I meant, and my hon. Friend knows it. What I have outlined is down to the Prime Minister to achieve. He has committed to do it. We must have confidence in his determination to follow it through.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I respect my hon. Friend’s intellect and erudition on this issue, but she will be familiar with the story of Pyrrhus and his remark, “One more such victory and we are doomed.” We can very well defeat the straw man of the financial transactions tax, while we ignore the creation of a de facto country, perhaps called Greater Germany, that will militate against the long-term financial, economic and political interests of the United Kingdom.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I do not see things as starkly as that. We are now in a position where the Prime Minister can protect Britain’s interest and is committed to doing so. We need to give him the chance to do that.

I want briefly to discuss things that we can do ourselves. First, there is an awful lot of talk about repatriation and things that we could do differently, but in the long years of the previous Government, the EU was largely ignored and many opportunities to improve how we do things at home were missed. Some quick examples include how we implement EU directives. We have an opt-out from the working time directive, as do 16 other member countries, which makes a majority in the 27, if my maths serves me correctly. We could band together with the other 16 and demand that the EU reconsider the directive in its entirety. I have talked to a British delegation of MEPs who think that there could well be interest in doing that. Why have we not done so, if we all like to think that the directive is disastrous?

Secondly, why do we have so few British workers in the EU institutions? Why are none of our people employed there? Why did the previous Prime Minister choose to put someone in the post of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, instead of having someone in the financial services commissioner post? It has been left to a Frenchman who does not understand financial services particularly well to do that job for us.

Something that should be entirely within our gift to sort out is scrutiny in Parliament, and we do not do enough of that here. We leave it up to the incredibly overworked European Scrutiny Committee, which is ably chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash). In areas such as financial services and agriculture, we should pass directives on to the specialist Select Committees, which have the interest and expertise to look at detailed areas, and ask them for their help and support to ensure that, before we receive directives that we then have to implement, we have done the best job that we possibly can for Britain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Horwood]

I hesitate to challenge an expert in her own field, but we might find that the kind of interests that we are able to defend in economic policy, and financial policy specifically, within the European Union would not be so easily defended if we were outside the EU. It is one thing for Norway or Lichtenstein to be allowed access to European markets and to gain the benefits of the European economic area, because they do not pose much of a threat to Germany, France or the other EU economies. It would be different if an economy the size of Britain’s was taking advantage of such a situation or trying to mould the rules to our own advantage. It is critically important to the City of London that we retain our membership of the EU.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a number of assumptions about the likely ramifications of our leaving the European Union. Was that the basis on which he offered the voters of Cheltenham at the last general election a Liberal Democrat policy prospectus that included an in/out referendum? Yet, in the face of massive and irrevocable constitutional change today, he has resiled from that undertaking to his own electors.

[Martin Horwood]

I have resiled from no undertaking whatever. There is a great habit of selective quotation of the Liberal Democrat manifesto. The whole sentence said that we would offer an in/out referendum at a time of a fundamental shift in the relationship between Britain and Europe. That is why we supported a referendum at the time of the Lisbon treaty—I am not sure which way the hon. Gentleman voted on that, but I do not remember many Conservative Members coming into the Lobby beside us. Incidentally, we also supported a referendum at the time of Maastricht, and did not succeed then, either. If there is another fundamental shift in Britain’s relationship with Europe, I fully expect us to support a referendum at that point.