European Union Bill

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I would not rule out anything, to be honest. As I started by saying, the new clause is designed to generate more openness and transparency in the transfer of powers and, ultimately, the amount of say that the EU has over us in this country. Right hon. and hon. Members, as well as the public, could therefore review the report, audit the EU and further hold decision makers to account, so I would welcome the opportunity not only to discuss but to vote and to have full-blown transparency.

The new clause is necessary because the monitoring of EU policies and the transfer of powers is not as effective as it should be. I pay tribute to the European Scrutiny Committee for its tremendous work. Unfortunately, the Chair of that Committee is not here this afternoon. It should be of concern to the legislature that such information is not always readily available and that important qualitative and quantitative data on the EU are not easily accessible.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I am slightly surprised. Given the evidence of the past three weeks, is my hon. Friend really suggesting that even the slightest scintilla of power moving from this country to the European level will not be noticed by the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) or the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) or all her other hon. Friends? They seem to be on to these things like terriers most of the time.

[Priti Patel]

And quite rightly so. Of course, we have a House full of assiduous Members and the European Scrutiny Committee has been very effective, but I am talking about an annual report and more openness and transparency.

By asking a range of parliamentary questions of 10 Departments, I received information stating that at least 79 current EU directives were pending transposition into UK law at a total cost in excess of £20 billion, and that is just one example. Of course, assiduous Members will ask many other questions and do a lot more fact finding to identify and uncover other transfers, too.

There is no reason why such information should not be published regularly, and Ministers must endeavour in future to be more transparent and accountable. It is therefore important in going forward with the Bill that information on the costs, benefits and powers exercised by the EU is available and accessible, as that greater transparency and opportunity to hold Government policy to account over the EU would, in my view, be most welcomed by the British public.

The new clause would go somewhat further than just making more transparent the EU, the Government’s policies on the EU and transfers of power, because it effectively asks the Government in their annual report to publish details of plans to repatriate the powers and competences from the EU that they believe should be held by this country. As drafted, the Bill will establish a referendum lock and safeguards against further significant transfers of power, which I have consistently supported and welcome, but it does not cover the approach that should be taken to repatriate powers to this country that the EU currently holds that are not in our national interests and on which the public expect us to act.

We have heard about many opinion polls in these Committee proceedings, but I shall refer to another one. An opinion poll conducted four years ago, before the previous Government handed over even more power under the Lisbon treaty, found that 58% of the British people believed that the EU should have less power and that more decisions should—surprise, surprise—be taken nationally and locally, and that 68% of people thought, quite frankly, that the EU did not represent ordinary people in our country.

Across a diverse range of policies, the public and parliamentarians of all parties can point to powers that the EU should not have, and that the British people believe should be brought back to our country, for a range of democratic reasons as well as on cost grounds. They include policies on access to our territorial waters, which we debated last week when discussing fisheries, as well as on justice and home affairs.

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[Priti Patel]

Absolutely not! I believe that the Conservative party has very much embraced the views of the party that I represented back then. I have been campaigning for a referendum for more than 15 years, and the Conservative Government are now proposing it.

I was talking about the powers that have been handed over to the European Union. The European arrest warrant has been the subject of a great deal of debate in the House, and social and employment policies have cost the UK more than £38 billion. We have heard mention of the working time directive, as well as of waste in regional policies, economic controls and financial services, not to mention the endless regulations that burden our businesses, the £1 billion that the EU is seeking to fine the UK and the £50 billion, which I mentioned during questions today, that the UK is set to hand over as a net contribution over the next few years to 2016.

[Martin Horwood]

Many of us think that the European arrest warrant is a useful and positive counter-terrorism measure. Would it not be better to take what would presumably be an annual debate on the hon. Lady’s proposed report and broaden it out into a debate on the work of the European Union or the Commission’s work programme as a whole? That would subject the whole programme of the European Union to scrutiny in this place, and allow those of us who have a more positive view of the EU to put our case as well.

[Priti Patel]

I suggest that timetabling the required number of hours and days for such a debate could be quite challenging, because it would have to cover a vast number of issues.

In my view, the British people deserve to know what their Government are planning to do, not only about the powers that the EU seeks to exercise but about those that it currently uses and—dare I say it—abuses, according to some in this House. Like all Conservative Members, I stood on a manifesto that clearly stated:

“The steady and unaccountable intrusion of the European Union into almost every aspect of our lives has gone too far.”

Following the ratification of the Lisbon treaty, we made a commitment not to let matters rest, and to negotiate the return to Britain of criminal justice powers and the opt-outs of the charter of fundamental rights and of social and employment legislation. The new clause would give the Government and the Prime Minister an annual opportunity to update the House on the actions being taken to deliver that, and to bring genuine openness and transparency to these proceedings.

Forty years ago, when we entered what was then known as the European Economic Community, few could have predicted with any accuracy how deeply integrated and ingrained the EU has now become. Had we known that at the time, I am sure that this Bill would have been even more robust than it is.

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[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s intervention. Her views on this have been most helpful and supportive. I am sure that other Members will try to catch your eye, Mr Evans, and I hope that the debate will still be going on when she returns. She makes the fair point that when both sets of Front Benchers agree on something, it is almost certainly wrong.

[Martin Horwood]

I think that the hon. Lady might have been excluding the Liberal Democrats from the establishment parties, which I would obviously be very pleased about.

The hon. Gentleman will acknowledge, I hope, that Liberal Democrat policy remains in favour of an in/out referendum, although not in the way that his new clause suggests, and we argued for it strongly during the passage of the Lisbon treaty Bill.

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[Mr Bone]

I apologise, Mr Evans. I am also sorry that I did not finish the quotation from my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister.

I wanted to make it clear to the Committee that Conservative Members will have a free vote if the new clause comes to a vote. I think that there is some confusion about that, and that the Chief Whip does not quite understand the Prime Minister’s instruction. I just hope that some of my colleagues are not put off voting for new clause 11 tonight because of that.

The people of Britain put us in a coalition Government. We must therefore work together as a team—a unit—that works in the very best interests of this country. The public must have seen certain aspects of the Liberal Democrat and Conservative manifestos that they liked. I will deal with the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) raised. I would like to think that the following part is what particularly caught the eye of Liberal voters. To quote another piece of literature that was interesting, although not quite as good as the first:

“The European Union has evolved significantly since the last public vote on membership over thirty years ago. Liberal Democrats therefore remain committed to an in/out referendum”.

That is straight out of a good piece of literature, the Liberal Democrat manifesto 2010, “Change that works for you—Building a fairer Britain”. It certainly works for me, and I hope it works for the country.

[Martin Horwood]

Would the hon. Gentleman like to complete the sentence from our manifesto that he quoted?

[Mr Bone]

I am afraid I have already tried your patience, Mr Evans, so I will not quote any more.

[Martin Horwood]

The end of the sentence, which the hon. Gentleman omitted, stated that we were committed to a referendum when a significant transfer of power takes place from the British to the European level. In essence, that was an alternative to the current Bill, which the Conservatives instigated. We can have one or the other, but not both.

[Mr Bone]

I really should have added that, because it helps my case, and I apologise for not having done so. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and that is exactly what my new clause would achieve. If there were a significant transfer of power, an in/out referendum could occur. That is exactly what the Liberal Democrats want, so the new clause should gain their support more than a proposal to have a referendum that was not even in the Conservative or Liberal manifestos, such as on the alternative vote.

[Martin Horwood]

I am afraid that what the hon. Gentleman is proposing is not what was in the Liberal Democrat manifesto. The question is, what should trigger a referendum? In our view, it should be a substantial transfer of power. His new clause suggests that it should be the loss of a previous referendum, presumably only weeks or months before.

[Mr Bone]

I am afraid that we are in a coalition, and we do not get everything we want, but we get the best of it. I am taking the best of the Liberal suggestion, and it is only fair that I go on to examine the Conservative view.

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[Mark Reckless]

My hon. Friend is correct, but the key point is that we can still have the referendum that the Liberal Democrats wanted. The Conservatives cannot go back to the pre-Lisbon EU position because the founding treaties have changed. We have the Lisbon treaty, but we could still decide to hold an in/out referendum.

[Martin Horwood]

rose—

[Mark Reckless]

The in/out referendum is still an option, and I would hope the hon. Gentleman still supports it.

[Martin Horwood]

It is no surprise that the Liberal Democrats voted for the Lisbon treaty—we were in favour of it. Is the hon. Gentleman arguing against the logic of the Bill? Under new clause 11 there would be an in/out referendum when a transfer of power happens, but the Bill proposes specific referendums on those transfers of power. There is absolutely no logic to having an in/out referendum after a transfer of power is defeated in a referendum, because no transfer of power will have taken place.

[Mark Reckless]

I am saying that the principle of an in/out referendum is important. The Liberal Democrat position, as I understand it, is that the British people should decide whether we stay in the EU with Lisbon, or whether we leave. Let us have that referendum.

The most important point in respect of the Bill is that Ministers seem not to have noticed that the world has moved on. A Bill that would have been perfectly satisfactory in 1992 at the time of Maastricht is now, after 19 years of further transfers of powers to the EU, utterly inadequate for its task. My constituents are not especially concerned about referendums on technical transfers of power five or six years—at the earliest—down the road; they want to vote on our membership of the EU, and they want to do so now.

Ministers have made a serious mistake in thinking that the Bill will somehow buy off dissent, or that my constituents will believe it really changes the EU situation. My constituents believe that the transfer of powers to the EU has already gone much too far. The only thing that can deal with that situation is an in/out vote, so that we can re-establish our independence as a nation.

I am more surprised about the political error that Ministers are making in thinking that the Bill is sufficient. They do not consider what they leave themselves open to if the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) flips position, as I believe he might. We have debated the Liberal Democrats’ position, but Conservatives cannot assume that we will always be on the popular side of the argument relative to the pro-European Labour party. There are very few Labour Members in the Chamber, but what defines the Labour party in respect of Europe is not that it is pro-European but that it does not feel that strongly about Europe relative to other issues.

My friend over the water whom I mentioned says that there is a first rule of politics. He says that, essentially, all parties in government are pro-European, and only Opposition parties become genuinely Eurosceptic. What will happen if in two or three years, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North flips position and says, “The Labour party is pro-European and we want to put that case, but it is for the British people to decide.” Where will that leave the Conservatives? Will the Minister accept that the principle of the in/out referendum is now overpowering? Will he allow the British people their choice?

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[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

rose—

[Martin Horwood]

rose—

[Keith Vaz]

I give way to the hon. Member for Cheltenham.

[Martin Horwood]

I rise with some fatigue, having I thought made this point three times already, but the Liberal Democrat position was to support an in/out referendum at the time of a substantial transfer of power from the British to the European level. The Bill provides for far more referendums. That is not necessarily what the Liberal Democrats would have wanted in the first place, but this is the Bill before us and our Conservative colleagues believe that it is very important. Those referendums will be referendums on the specifics of a transfer of power. There is no logic to the new clause—and certainly no consistency with the Liberal Democrat position—because it says that only when a referendum is lost, thereby establishing that there will be no transfer of power, should an in/out referendum be held. It is barmy.

[Keith Vaz]

I am not surprised that the hon. Gentleman has had to explain that three times, because I am afraid that he lost me in the first sentence. I do not think that what he said is logical at all. I understand what the Government are trying to do. The Minister is here, and I know that the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood said that he had met him a few years ago at a dinner party. I first met the Minister for Europe when I was 18 years of age—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman was 18 as well? Goodness, that is rapid progress. Perhaps it was the same dinner party. Anyway, what the hon. Member for Cheltenham has set out is an illogical position. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having such a referendum.

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[Mr Hollobone]

Those countries would still be able to trade with us. The big difference between 2011 and 1972 is the fact that trade barriers have fallen all over the world and continue to do so. As a free independent trading nation, Britain would still be trading with China, India, South America and the European Union, with lower trade barriers than we had 40 or 50 years ago.

[Martin Horwood]

If the hon. Gentleman is not persuaded by the argument about the jobs that would be lost if we left the European Union, what about the democratic deficit that would result from our trying to trade and have full market access to the EU, while having absolutely no say in the regulations and legislation that would deliver that access?

[Mr Hollobone]

The democratic deficit in this country lies in the fact that most people want to leave the European Union, but are not being given a say in that.