European Union Bill

Debate between Martin Horwood and Austin Mitchell

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Austin Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, as usual. The key is the ability of a nation to control its own waters up to the 200-nautical-mile limit, which it would have been sensible to retain, and which we could have retained had we negotiated harder in 1972, but we did not. Only a nation can conserve its own national resource—what is handed on to the next generations of fishermen. The Heath Government made a tragic decision from the point of view of the fishing industry. I want to reverse that, and we should work to do so. I still want to pull out of the common fisheries policy. Perhaps it would require a few gunboats around the coast to establish that.

[Martin Horwood]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but does he not fear that if we returned fisheries entirely to national competence, not every nation would be quite as observant of their own rules as the Norwegians, and there might be a free-for-all that would fatally damage the British fishing industry?

[Austin Mitchell]

That, of course, is nonsense, because nations that have taken control of their own waters and their own 200-nautical-mile limit, such as Iceland, have operated very good and effective conservation policies. It is only nations that have to admit other nations into their waters, under force of European law, that cannot do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Spanish fleets would not fish in our waters, because the idea is that countries would fish in their own waters. I cannot see the problem and I agree with my hon. Friend.

[Austin Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Liberal Democrats are slavish in their idealism of Europe at any price, and will abdicate any British interest to express their devotion to the nefarious construction called the European Union.

[Martin Horwood]

rose—

[Austin Mitchell]

If the hon. Gentleman wants to express more devotion to the farce of the European Union, he is welcome to do so.

[Martin Horwood]

I am just intrigued about precisely what method the hon. Gentleman would use to defend our waters. The Icelanders use gunboats. Is he advocating gunboat diplomacy from the Labour Benches?

[Austin Mitchell]

Frankly, yes. However, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is not so distrustful of our European partners and friends that he believes that if we took legal control of our waters, they would come in and try to steal our fish. Is that his estimation of their character? Is he telling us that there are nations of thieves that would come in and steal our fish if we took our own waters, as is our right? Is that what he is saying? Apparently not.

Amendment 81 expresses an important principle that we need to express and defend constantly. The amendment is a way of defending that principle, so I shall certainly vote for it if it is put to the vote.

I shall move on to amendments 8 and 79. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) in drawing the attention of the Committee to this situation, because it is extremely dangerous from a British point of view. He said essentially that we will be liable, under article 122 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, for difficulties produced by the failure of the euro, and that we will have to make a contribution. That will be decided on by qualified majority voting. If correct, that is an appalling situation. It is important for the Government to tell us tonight whether it is correct.

In my view, one of the greatest achievements of the previous Prime Minister was that he kept us out of the euro when he was Chancellor, against the overwhelming enthusiasm of the then Prime Minister, who saw joining the euro as a romantic gesture of support for Europe—almost an emotional spasm of support for Europe—against the wishes of the majority of the Cabinet, and against the pressure of the Liberal party, which has always been slavishly devoted to any European instrument, however damaging the consequences.

[Martin Horwood]

indicated dissent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Austin Mitchell]

That is true—and then the EU forces us to eat its overpriced agricultural products. The EU gets it all ways. It steals about £3 billion-worth of our fish every year through the common fisheries policy, and costs us about £18 billion on the common agricultural policy, and then expects us to buy its overpriced exports.

[Martin Horwood]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Iceland has just unilaterally increased its mackerel quotas, which if anything—I would not use the word “stealing”—is potentially damaging to Scottish fish stocks? That is quite a major diplomatic issue at the moment and it has occurred under precisely the regime that he is recommending.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Martin Horwood and Austin Mitchell

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

In rising to make what must be my 13th maiden speech, I congratulate the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) on his graceful maiden speech. He ensured that what can be an ordeal for new Members was not an ordeal for the rest of the House. I am afraid that my one association with Bedford is an unhappy one. I was carted there in an ambulance after a car crash on the A1 and was in concussion for some time. When I woke up, the surgeon came to see me and congratulated himself on having stitched my right hand together, before telling me that I should be very grateful to him. When I explained that I am left handed, he just said, “Damn!” and went away. It was interesting to hear of the famous people from Bedford—better John Le Mesurier than Eddie Waring, I suppose—and of the attractions of the town. I am sure it has produced almost as many interesting people and has almost as many attractions to visit as Grimsby.

I am less congratulatory to the Chancellor on his Budget. I congratulate him on the provision to protect low-paid civil servants, of whom there are many, from the rigours of a pay freeze, but I am not sure that such measures will be sufficient to outweigh what my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) called, in his very effective speech, stealth cuts, or the general depressive impact of not only the Budget, but the £6 billion of cuts that went before it and the massive cuts still to come. Those are not part of the Budget package, but they must be viewed as part of the approach. I am sure those measures will have such a depressing effect on the economy that the poor cannot be protected by the simple measures the Chancellor introduced.

In fact, collectively, the package of cuts and the Budget lead me to lament the economic ignorance and social arrogance behind them. The Budget is a dangerous assault on the economy when growth is just beginning—it is not fully entrenched or powerful yet—and there is a glimmer of light ahead. It also represents a transformation in the attitude of the Conservative party. Its leader tried to win the election—he did not actually do so—by charm and by presenting the face of compassionate conservatism. He undertook to protect spending on aid, defence, the NHS and education, to protect front-line services, and to preserve free bus travel and winter fuel payments for pensioners. He also told us that he had no plans to increase VAT. Those must have been the same non-plans that the Conservatives had in 1979, when they increased VAT from 8% to 15%—their non-plans then were equally fulfilled.

That charm offensive—compassionate conservatism—has been replaced by the Chancellor, who was clearly kept in the attic, like Mrs Rochester, during the election campaign, so that he did not go out and frighten people with the extent of the cuts that he wanted to make. He has now been released from the attic to impose his Mrs Rochester economics on the system, with a few pathetic crumbs and benefits, such as the abolition of the cider duty, which we had already in fact abolished before the election. That has now been dropped from the Tory table to the Liberal Democrats to give them and their leader something, however small, to compensate them for having betrayed those who voted for them, thinking them an independent-minded, compassionate middle party.

[Martin Horwood]

Does the hon. Gentleman really think that taking nearly 1 million people out of income tax, which was a key pledge in the Liberal Democrat manifesto on which we insisted in the coalition agreement, is a small matter?

[Austin Mitchell]

No, it is of great benefit. I congratulated the Chancellor on it, and I am glad the Liberals won it. However, it is still not sufficient to compensate those 1 million people for the increase in VAT, which is a regressive tax, and for the general depressing effects on the economy and employment of the other measures in the package of cuts in the Budget. That policy on income tax is a gain for the Liberals—and, indeed, the country—and it was right. I congratulated the Liberals at the time on including it in their manifesto.

The transformation of the Liberals is like that of the pigs in “Nineteen Eighty-Four”—I am not calling the Liberals pigs, but they were pigs in “Nineteen Eighty-Four”—into human beings, if not Tories. The Liberals have been transmuted not into Tories, but into European liberals—I am thinking, in particular, of the Free Democratic party, which is an economic liberal party that, I am pleased to note, is now disrupting the coalition in Germany by demanding stringent cuts from Angela Merkel and the Christian Democrats. I am sorry to see my friends in that situation. There are difficulties in the coalition between the Liberals and the Conservatives, because it is like merging a Brownie pack with the Brigade of Guards. I feel sorry for Liberal Ministers who have to sit there and join in the chorus of nodding dogs on the Front Bench at every Tory policy announcement. I am sorry to see that habit spreading to the Liberals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Austin Mitchell]

Yes, certainly. Sovereign debt is never mentioned. Indeed, this is one of the weaknesses of the Liberal party approach of supposedly involving the whole community in deciding on the cuts. First, it assumes that the cuts are necessary, but, secondly, we have to remember that one person’s cut is another person’s Trident missile.

[Martin Horwood]

In advancing this rather extraordinary proposition that we have nothing to worry about with the level of borrowing in this economy, is the hon. Gentleman saying that he would have opposed the Labour Government’s plans to reduce departmental budgets by more than £40 billion over the next four years?

[Austin Mitchell]

Look, I am not an apologist for everything that happened under the Labour Government. I thought that that was an unnecessary commitment, particularly as it was made in order to safeguard our position and not frighten people in response to the Tory clamour about cuts. The Liberal party made the same concessions, actually, so it is no use the hon. Gentleman coming back to me on that. Even if we attempted to cut the deficit by half in four years, it is all a question of timing. There is a time for cuts—“Lord, make us cut borrowing, but not now” would have been my approach, and I believe that that is the only sensible approach. These cuts are premature. The economy is teetering on the brink of recovery, but it is not recovering, unemployment is still rising, the difficulties are still there, and credit is still tight. The banks are not providing credit on a sufficient scale; they need to expand credit and their lending. In that situation, cuts compound the problem. Thanks to these cuts and thanks to this Budget, we now face the danger of the economy slipping back into a recession.

[Martin Horwood]

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify his position, as it seems to have changed within the space of one speech? Five minutes ago, he was saying that only through growth would these issues be tackled and that we need not worry about borrowing. Now he is saying that it is only a matter of timing and that the Labour Government would have done exactly the same thing in due course.

[Austin Mitchell]

I was not responsible for the decision to try to cut borrowing within four years, but I assumed that it would be a question of “Let us do it as time allows”. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is so strenuous in defending Tory positions—for his is essentially a Tory argument.

The answer is to expand the economy. Growth was beginning, and, as the report from the Office for Budget Responsibility shows, it is now threatened by the cuts and the Budget. Is that what the Liberal Democrats want? Do they want to reverse the improvement that is taking place? If the improvement continues and becomes more substantial, we shall be able to begin to cut borrowing, but that can only be done once the economy is growing strongly and effectively; and it will only need to be done then. We must keep spending high if we are to achieve that economic growth. The Liberal Democrats can make a lot of sacrifices to support the Conservatives, but prostituting their intellects is not one of them.