European Union: Recent Developments

Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

My Lords, I start by referring to my register of interests and my education work in Croatia. I welcome today’s debate. I hope, given that it is included with the debate on the two Bills before us, that we will perhaps have another opportunity in the new year—maybe after the Prime Minister’s much-heralded speech on Europe, that which we seem to be looking forward to—to have an even longer and more detailed discussion on these important topics.

In relation to the two Bills, we clearly need to accept the decision that there should be a commissioner for every member state, at least in the mean time. However, that should not stop the United Kingdom from continuing to press for reform within the Commission, even with a commissioner for every member state. The next Commission should operate in a different way from the current one, which has so many departments and acts in such a wasteful fashion.

On the other issue before us in legislation today, the accession of Croatia, I welcome every word that has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Grenfell. The Croatians strike me, in my experience of them over recent years, as having some of the strongest national pride and belief in freedom of almost any people that I have met anywhere in the world. They have an incredible history, particularly the former city state of Dubrovnik but elsewhere in Croatia too. Modern-day Croatians have a sense of nationalism and national pride that as a Scot I found almost exhilarating; it was even greater than anything I had experienced at home. Yet that country, which has that sense of freedom that it fought for not long ago, and which sacrificed thousands of lives in order to secure the freedom that it wanted from the former Yugoslavia, voted last January by a majority of two to one to join not only the European Union but the euro as well.

The Croatians voted to join the second most successful voluntary union of nations ever in history—the first, of course, being the United Kingdom. They did that not because they are naive; the young people of Croatia are not naive but just as cosmopolitan, outward-looking and smart as young people anywhere else. They are excited about this but also very pragmatic. They recognise that in today’s world the pooling of sovereignty—not just the seat at the table, or the benefits that come from the odd grant from the European Commission—is an essential part of contributing to today’s world and looking after our common and individual interests. That is why there is a queue of countries, not just in that part of Europe but elsewhere, that want to join them too.

I will say, very specifically, that in these debates in the UK over the past decade or so, far too often we get into a debate about what is the actual material or even sometimes political benefit, in a very parochial sense, of being at the tables of the European Council. That is not the main issue here, which is: do we want to live in isolation as the United Kingdom, or do we want to live as part of a pooled group of nations that work together not only in their internal interests but externally? In the areas of justice, home affairs and the economy, for which there is that common responsibility, as well as in the area of external relations, there is of course a case for pooled sovereignty in today’s world. That sometimes has to be backed up by laws passed at the European level. We should show leadership in this Parliament in making that case to the people of Britain, not shy away from it.

There are, of course, negatives about the European Union, which we would be foolish to ignore, in the same way that Scots would be foolish to ignore the negatives about the United Kingdom. In the European Union you have waste and a flawed Lisbon treaty—the most recent attempt to try to modernise and reform. You also have the problems with the euro, though at present most of those are problems with the bad financial management of national Governments within the euro. There are positives too, though, such as the peace that has existed in western Europe and now across the rest of Europe too; the single market and the social benefits that have come alongside that in a balanced approach; and the global impact that the EU has had on aid, trade and the environment.

I make a plea to the Government. Political leadership is not only about tactics. I must say that this is true in all three parties at the moment. It is not only about trying to get the better of the other parties in relation to a referendum or any other immediate tactical issue. It must also be about vision, setting out a case for our rule in the world and in Europe and working out how the two go together and how we can then make the best use of them.

I will touch on one other issue: the EU’s aid budget, which might be an almost unintended casualty of the current debates on the EU budget. Whoever is responsible for the current financial crisis in Europe and the Brussels overspend, it is not the people who live in the poorest parts of Africa, Latin America or Asia, who currently benefit from the EU aid budget. The UK has made a proposal to freeze the budget, which I do not necessarily disagree with, but if cuts are made proportionately across all budgets, there will of course be an impact on the aid budget as well. The permanent President of the Council made an outrageous proposal that cuts to the EU aid budget should be disproportionately high in comparison with cuts in other departments, in order to save the subsidies for some of the waste that goes on in the departments that he and President Barroso are responsible for.

For me, this is both morally wrong and makes no logical sense. In the UK, every penny that we take out of the EU aid budget will simply have to be put back in again from our own DfID budget because we have committed to the 0.7% international target. If other countries in Europe want to cut the budget, they will have to do the same thing in their national budgets because the EU spend contributes to our own aid and development assistance target.

Here we had our own aid review. DfID and the former Secretary of State, Mr Mitchell, undertook a multilateral aid review that showed, in an analysis that was quite hard and took money away from a number of multilateral organisations, that in meeting the UK’s aid objectives the European Development Fund was rated strong. In having organisational strengths to use that money effectively, the fund was strong and, in its ability to change and reform, which it is currently doing, it was more likely than most to do that. It would be a terrible signal, in a year when the G8 comes back to the UK, for us to lead an initiative on the budget that led to a cut in the EU aid budget.

Whatever views we might have across this House and the other place on the EU budget, whatever differences we might have over the coming weeks, the one thing that I hope we can all agree on, because it makes moral and logical sense, is that when we are cutting the EU budget over the next financial programme we should cut waste and cut subsidies that stop commerce, but we should not cut the money that goes to the poorest people in the world.