European Union (Approvals) Bill

Debate between Mark Reckless and David Nuttall

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which gets to the heart of one of my major concerns about the organisation and why I support entirely the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. It highlights the confusion in the minds of our constituents.

I wonder how many of our constituents even know that that body exists. I suspect that if I conducted a poll on the streets of Bury, I would have to wait a very long time and ask a large number of people before I found anyone who had even heard of the agency, never mind understood what it was intended to do. That is not surprising, because it was introduced in 2007 by the back door. It was introduced under the provisions of section 352 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, the Lisbon treaty, which allows for such new bodies to be established without any proper discussion. As I say, it was introduced through the back door.

The EU goes on about the principle of subsidiarity, but then we find that it is creating an EU-wide body to do things which, as we have heard in tonight’s debate, are not only being done elsewhere in Europe, but ought to be and can be done properly here in the UK. This is not a cheap body. We know that in 2013 the agency will get a subsidy of €21.3 million from the EU budget.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

Is it not anomalous that the agency should have a separate multi-annual financial framework for the five years from 2013 to 2017, rather than being rolled into the overall multi-annual financial framework from 2014 to 2020, which the Prime Minister has ably ensured will be significantly reduced?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. The question arises what would happen in a situation which has partly happened now and will certainly happen in the next multi-annual framework, where the agency straddles two financial periods. How can an agency properly budget when its framework straddles two budgetary periods? It does not make sense. That is just another example of muddled thinking in Europe, and of an organisation that has no intention of being transparent or open to the people whom it seeks to serve.

Sustainable Livestock Bill

Debate between Mark Reckless and David Nuttall

Friday 12th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point, which I will deal with. The clause is, in many ways, a fig leaf. It tries to give the impression that everything will be all right because the Secretary of State must take into account the amount of meat consumed in this country and should not do anything that would increase, the proportion of imported meat consumed in the United Kingdom.

Two dangers arise from that. First, the provision slightly contradicts the rest of the Bill and would put the Secretary of State in a difficult position. Secondly, clause 1(4), which I shall come to later, makes no reference to dairy products, which are excluded. It is purely about meat eating. There is no reference to milk, cheese, butter or other dairy products.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

Is not a further issue with clause 1(4)—potentially an advantage, rather than a problem—that it might not be consistent with our obligations under the European Communities Act 1972?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. There is a danger that the Secretary of State would be in a cleft stick in trying to deal with the obligations imposed by the Bill and the competing obligations under the rules and regulations of the common agricultural policy.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. That is a real danger arising from the Bill. We would finish up with people having no choice but to eat only food that we could do nothing about and which was produced in the European Union. That would be bad for consumers, it would damage choice, and our good relations with countries such as New Zealand would be put at serious risk.

[Mark Reckless]

I am cautious about contradicting my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), but if we inserted the provision “notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972”, there would be nothing illegal about the clause whatsoever, and would not the courts be obliged to give effect to it?

[Mr Nuttall]

As my hon. Friend knows, I entirely support the idea that the House should be sovereign, and if there is any doubt about which set of rules should reign supreme, it should be Acts of Parliament passed in this House, not those passed by the European Union. I do not want to spend too long proceeding down the line of European Union rules and regulations. I appreciate that that would stray—