Judiciary and Fundamental Rights
Michael Connarty Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
I have been asked by the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee to speak on behalf of the Committee. One reason for that is that the position of Opposition Members on this issue is the same as that of Government Members, particularly in the Committee.
Some of us do take the trouble to read other Select Committee reports. The Foreign Affairs Committee looked at human rights in the context of enlargement and it made some salient comments that I hope the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) has taken the trouble to read. That work feeds in to the work of the European Scrutiny Committee. We do not just live in a Euro-bubble, but look at broader matters.
It might be helpful to the House if I put this matter in context by explaining its background and why the European Scrutiny Committee recommended that it should be debated on the Floor of the House, rather than leaving it to go to a European Standing Committee. We have always been concerned about the continuing trend, which the Government, despite their promises, have not reversed, of the European Committees not having permanent memberships. If their memberships were permanent, there would be at least be 13 Members on three Committees—that is 39 people—who would consistently take the trouble to look at European matters and build up a body of knowledge. At the moment, the Committee structure is such that people are put on European Committees randomly. They mostly do not turn up to the debates and do not gather the knowledge that they should have.
The concern is that when Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU in January 2007, it was recognised by Members from all parts of the House that a number of good governance issues had not been addressed. The oddest thing was that the European Commission and the European Council decided that if those countries did not get access in 2007, they would automatically get access in 2008 and become full members of the EU. Basically, the incentive to continue progress, particularly in areas of good governance, ceased for Romania and Bulgaria.
The European Union therefore had to set up a co-operation and verification mechanism. The Minister has described that as making the Romanians and Bulgarians feel as though they were second-class citizens. The reality is that they should never have been citizens of the EU at all because they were not fit to be members. That is the truth of it. They had to be harried and harassed to take the process seriously, and in fact at one point the EU suspended the financing of one of those countries and refused to allow it to spend any more EU money. It got that bad. Nothing had really been done to improve the situation from 2007.
A series of benchmarks were set under the verification mechanism to do with the judicial system—we are talking about the judiciary today. In the case of Bulgaria, there was the benchmark of tackling corruption and massive organised crime at the highest level of the country. There were a number of contract murders—not a couple, but 104 was the figure we heard when the Bulgarian Foreign Secretary came before the Committee. Those were organised killings by organised criminals.
Even now, neither country has reached the point at which the European Commission is able to say that it has what was, and still is, required. I will name those requirements for the record. The Commission does not think that they have an
“autonomously functioning, stable judiciary, which is able to detect and sanction conflicts of interest, corruption and organized crime and preserve rule of law”.
That is its present position on Romania and Bulgaria, to different degrees in each country. Nor do those countries have
“concrete cases of indictments, trials and convictions regarding high-level corruption and organised crime”.
We heard the feeble excuse from the then Foreign Secretary of Bulgaria that Bulgaria had not actually convicted anyone of any of the 104 killings because the criminals had hired hit-men from Russia, who committed the crime, killed people and then went back to Russia, where they could not be found. That is a terrible indictment of Bulgaria. It is in the European Union, but it has a long way to go before it reaches the benchmarks that the European Scrutiny Committee would have set for it. The Commission also believes that those countries do not have a legal system that is capable of implementing the law independently and efficiently.
With those mistakes having been made, and with the Committee having followed the process very seriously, we did not want a post-mortem, but we wanted to have assurances that those mistakes would not be repeated in the case of Croatia. That was why the new chapter 23 was introduced into the EU accession process, dealing with the judiciary and fundamental freedoms. In the summer of 2010, Croatia’s chapter 23 negotiations were finally opened. As the Minister put it then, agreement was based on
“rigorous benchmarks in the areas we want”.
Before the chapter could be closed, that
“comprehensive and robust set of benchmarks”
would need to be met, covering judicial transparency, impartiality and efficiency; tackling corruption; protecting minority rights; resolving outstanding refugee return issues; the protection of human rights; and, crucially, full co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Croatia would need to show a track record of implementation across all those areas, to avoid the mistakes of Romania and Bulgaria.
The common position that we are discussing tonight is the European Commission’s assessment of Croatia’s progress. It recommended that no further negotiations were required, and underlined the importance of Croatia continuing to develop a track record of implementation across the board. It was formally adopted—without discussion, I might add—at the July European Council. I find it quite concerning that there was not in fact a fundamental and deep debate at the European Council about that assessment, because it shows that people may once again be taking their eye off the ball. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the former Europe Minister, pointed out that once countries are in the EU, it seems that the process of vigilance slips away. It is worrying that that might be happening in this case, if the Council cannot even discuss such an important decision at its meeting.
In endorsing the common position, the Secretary of State for Justice and the Minister for Europe made much of the irreversibility of the process, and of the monitoring that would be undertaken during the two years before Croatia could accede. I do not think the EU’s record is quite so good that we can believe that the process is irreversible.
I share the ambition for all the western Balkans to become part of the EU, and all the things that the Minister has said about the benefits of that for trade, democracy and human rights are to be applauded and worked hard for. However, Croatia has a border of about 1,000 km with other parts of the western Balkans. When I met the Serbians recently, and when I have met people from Bosnia-Herzegovina and from Macedonia, where I went with the Committee, they expressed deep fears about what lies on their border and what is going on in the rest of the area. When I met the Serbians, they pointed fingers at other countries, as did the Bosnians. The reality is that this is a serious concern for anyone who is particularly worried about the ability of people to use Croatia as an access to Europe. It is one of the trade routes for human trafficking, for drugs and for other matters that afflict the rest of the EU.
Mr Hollobone
The hon. Gentleman has hit the nail on the head, because there will be a massive expansion of the common external frontier with Croatia’s accession, as there was with the accession of Bulgaria and Romania. One of the biggest challenges facing the EU and the UK—this is where everybody comes, because London is the biggest, most cosmopolitan city in Europe—is the lack of border controls on the EU boundary. The demands on accession countries to have secure borders are far too weak.
Michael Connarty
I think what we have here is a question: should we fear accession and therefore lock countries out of the EU, or should we address that concern properly, so that we can welcome countries into the EU but make sure that we give them the resources to secure those borders? I have recently been to Frontex with the European Scrutiny Committee, and it says, “Do not rely on Frontex to protect EU borders.” It is a small organisation that basically works on intelligence—it has some quick reactive ability but not the massive resources required.
We need to make sure that the Croatians are at one with us on this. We need to ensure either that they have the resources or that we give them the resources, so they can make sure they have a secure border and can protect themselves against worries of criminality coming into their territory, just like anyone in London or any other part of the EU.
The European Scrutiny Committee took the view that it is plain that Croatia still has much to do over the next two years. If our ambition is to have Croatia in the EU, we must ensure that we resource and support it. To have Croatia in and expand the borders without those protections leads to the criticisms made by the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) and many ordinary citizens—that the more we expand Europe, the more we threaten to infect our security, human rights and peace.
The reality is that despite four years of post-accession assistance and monitoring under the co-operation and verification mechanism, the Committee is still looking for that protection in respect of Bulgaria and Romania. We do not want to see Croatia added to that by not being properly resourced and supported.
The Committee noted in particular that the process of systematically tackling war crimes appears to have barely begun. Judging from the latest report by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Croatian co-operation is still some way off being described as “full”. Although the overall case backlog of returning refugees, which the hon. Member for Kettering mentioned—I will cite the same figure he did—has fallen by a further 10,000, some 785,561 cases are still to be dealt with, which is a massive way to go.
In sum, the Committee said that a great deal of further implementation would need to be accomplished by July 2013 if Croatia was to be able to demonstrate a track record that indicated it was truly ready for accession. I noted that the Minister said it looked as though the final decision would be ready for signature on 9 December. It is a matter of concern when the European Commission gives itself a target. Early on, it was saying that the earlier succession date for Croatia would be the end of 2011. It is determined to deliver that, regardless of concerns that might be expressed, so its promises will turn into solid work and a fruitful result for the EU. It is quite clear that it is going for a 2011 accession and is determined to have it. No one seems to be demanding a decent discussion in the European Council about that.
We are in the position at the minute where the Minister has said that he has secured improvements in the EU’s composition. I look forward to him putting his note in the Library and sending it to the European Scrutiny Committee so we can see the detail, but he said basically that “appropriate measures” proposed would be subject to qualified majority voting. Qualified majority voting means that any further measures can be agreed without anyone having a veto, so we are basically giving away the final say in stopping the process by the date that has been given—9 December. I hope people realise that that is what the Government are doing. Any further measures can be completely and utterly forgotten about and we can do nothing about it. The Committee felt that if this was strong language, it strongly suggested that the deal was already done, and that even if it was not, the lengthy and unproductive experience of the co-operation and verification mechanism in Bulgaria and Romania was hardly encouraging.
The Minister for Europe said that chapter 23 was an alternative to the co-operation and verification mechanism, so I hope he will say a word or two about what happens if Croatia turns out to be another problem added to the EU rather than one that has solved its problems. I hope that it has solved its problems. I have warm feelings towards the people I have met in the political class in that country who desire to be in the EU and to bring all its benefits to their country, but we have to worry about things that are not, at this moment, quite as we would want them in a full EU member state.
All in all, there appeared to the Committee to be loud and unwelcome echoes of those earlier accession processes —chapter 23 notwithstanding—and further confirmation that what had been judged most important was not adhering to appropriate conditionality prior to accession. We made that point again and again. If conditionality was applied, it should be easily verifiable: when it is reached, people should come in, but if it is not reached, we should not simply hope that they will get there eventually after they come in.
Although the eventual accession treaty will require the approval of the House, the Committee felt that the House should be given the opportunity now, at the beginning of the process, to debate this issue, vital as it is to the integrity of the accession process. I am sorry that so few Members are taking part in this debate, because this is the next major change to this Parliament’s relationship with the European process, and I would have hoped that more people would have come to air their views.
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
I shall not have time to respond to all the points that have been raised, but I undertake to write to Members who have asked detailed questions, and to place copies of the letters in the Library of the House.
Many of the concerns that have been expressed about Croatian accession derive, understandably, from the experience of Romania and Bulgaria, but I think that there are important differences between the two instances. The earlier problems arose because difficult issues involving justice were not tackled in a systematic manner, upfront, at an early enough stage in the accession negotiations. The process that we are debating this evening was deliberately designed to enable us to learn from the failures of that experience. The decision that must be made by the European council in December—this deals with the point made by the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty)—is not whether to admit Croatia to the European Union immediately, but whether by July 2013, on the basis of the evidence that we have so far and the intent declared by the Croatian leadership so far, Croatia will be in a position to move smoothly towards accepting all the responsibilities of EU membership.
Mr Lidington
Between the signing of the accession treaty and Croatia’s joining the European Union, we shall have the process of pre-accession monitoring that I have described, as well as the three safeguard clauses that are written into the treaty and are powerful mechanisms for ensuring that Croatia continues to make the progress that it has promised. Finally, all 27 members of the EU—including this Parliament—must vote to ratify Croatian accession, which in this instance means primary legislation. To inform its judgment on whether Croatia has met the standards required, the House should have access to the sequence of monitoring reports from the European commission and the reports from the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Therefore, when this House takes the decision on whether to ratify Croatian accession, it will have available to it the evidence about the progress that Croatia has still to make.
I believe that Croatian accession will provide enhanced economic opportunities for British business, as well as for the people and businesses of Croatia, and the political gain of seeing an important country in the western Balkans brought firmly within a European political system based on the rule of law and democratic rights. We have seen too much bloodshed and warfare in the Balkans to be content to shut them outside the door and see the problems of organised crime, people trafficking and illegal immigration persist indefinitely. The accession process is our best chance of getting those problems sorted to the benefit of us all. I believe that the way forward is that accepted by the Government in June this year, and I hope to have the support of the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House takes note of Unnumbered Explanatory Memorandum of 7 July 2011, the European Union Common Position on Judiciary and Fundamental Rights (Negotiation Chapter 23), relating to EU enlargement: Croatia; and supports the Government’s decision to agree the Draft Common Position at COREPER on 29 June and to adopt formally that agreed position at European Council on 12 July.
Council of Europe (UK Chairmanship)
Michael Connarty Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Lidington
I ask the hon. Lady simply to look at the sheer volume of cases before the Court. We argue that there needs to be a system under which the principle of subsidiarity, which the Court is already supposed to observe, is given greater weight. That will require not just a United Kingdom view from the chair, but consensus among member states. We are talking to colleagues throughout the Council of Europe about the right way forward, because what we are seeking to do certainly does not come from any hostility to the Court as an institution. In fact, concerns about the backlog, the case load and the damage being done to its reputation are widely shared not only among state parties, but by the secretary-general and the authorities in the Council itself.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
Will the Minister give way on that point?
Mr Lidington
I will give way once more, then I really am going to make some progress.
Michael Connarty
I thank the Minister. I am trying to be helpful, because I totally agree with and follow his logic on the backlog, but when he states that the Court was never meant to be a court of appeal against a national court’s ruling, surely that logic is wrong, because there cannot be an allowance, for example, for the Ukrainian court that put the country’s former President in jail for carrying out policies that its Parliament had decided. There must be somewhere for people to appeal on human rights grounds, and that is the Court. I presume the Minister meant that the Court could not provide redress in all cases—but in specific cases of such high contestability there must be a court that is above national, political courts.
Mr Lidington
I do not differ from the hon. Gentleman in principle, but we need effective criteria that everyone—from the judges of the Court to the states parties—will accept as enabling the Court to differentiate properly between cases that should be considered at that European level and those that ought to have been dealt with according to the legal systems of states parties that have demonstrated good traditions of respecting human rights.
All this means that there is a clear and pressing case for reform, and all 47 members of the Council of Europe have already signed up to a reform process. The goal of our chairmanship is to drive forward the changes that began in Council meetings at Interlaken and Izmir, and to agree a final package that makes a real impact on the operation of the Court.
I announced, in a written statement to Parliament yesterday, our full set of chairmanship priorities, following my discussion on Tuesday with our friend and ally the Council of Europe secretary-general Thorbjørn Jagland. My statement set out more detail on the reform for which we are pressing. It included proposals that would make the Court more efficient to enable it to deal with its backlog of applications, would reinforce the idea that the Court’s role was a subsidiary one, with states having the primary responsibility to protect convention rights, and would ensure that the best possible processes were in place for nominating judges to the Court, and that the Court’s case law was clear and consistent.
How we will do that? Reform requires the agreement of all 47 member states, and there is no getting round that fact, so we will accord the highest political priority to securing consensus on the necessary reforms by means of a political declaration at the end of our chairmanship. That declaration would record political agreement to a package of reforms and set the scene for later implementation under subsequent chairmanships. The declaration, we hope, will include, where necessary, amendments to the procedural sections of the convention, and provide the basis for a decision of the Committee of Ministers, to be adopted at its annual meeting on 14 May 2012.
No one should be in any doubt that delivering those goals will take time and a lot of intensive and complicated negotiations, but I do believe that the winds of change are in our favour, and if we achieve the reform that we seek, we stand to gain a stronger Council of Europe and a more effective Court, focused better on real substantive breaches of human rights.
Sandra Osborne
I totally agree with my right hon. Friend, and I will come on to that subject later in my speech. If the truth be told, I confess that I was pretty ignorant myself before I became a member of the delegation. That is probably an indictment of me, but also of the level of discussion that we have on the subject in this Parliament. We should take the opportunity to hold more discussions such as the one we are having today.
All the evidence suggests that mankind—I use that word advisedly—learns very little from experience, and very slowly, concerning the exercise of power and the protection of the weak, but at least there is hope when dialogue leads to international treaties. So, if we believe that human rights are at the centre of our foreign policy— sometimes I wonder, although I welcome the Minister’s statement to that effect—we should be prepared to support the European convention on human rights without equivocation.
The hon. Member for North Dorset referred to the meeting earlier this week between the UK delegation and Mr Thorbjørn Jagland, the secretary-general of the Council of Europe. The secretary-general commented that the UK was well placed to use the chairmanship to take forward reform of the European Court of Human Rights, because we started it and we have the diplomatic capacity to gather support. In the six months available, I hope that that proves to be the case. I am aware that a great deal of groundwork has already taken place—although, as the Minister has said, securing consensus among 47 states is a tall order. It is right that that should be the UK’s main priority, however. Everyone agrees that reform is needed, not least because of the huge backlog in applications.
As has already been said, there is also a tension in some people’s minds between the judgments of the Court and national sovereignty. That was illustrated in the UK with the judgment on prisoner voting rights. I was disappointed by the level of debate in the UK on that issue, as it undermined the purpose of the convention, which is to promote human rights. Whatever people’s views on whether prisoners should have the right to vote, the debate was characterised by inaccurate, populist and, in some cases, xenophobic nonsense. If there is a genuine problem—and I think we all agree that there is—with the Court intervening inappropriately in national affairs, let us deal with it in a measured way that promotes subsidiarity where appropriate, instead of bursting out in moral panic.
It is not unknown for the UK to lecture other countries about human rights, and quite rightly so—in fact, I hope the Government will take the chance to raise human rights issues with President Santos of Colombia when he visits the UK later this month—but we should practise what we preach if we want to be seen as an example to other countries. I hope we do, and I hope we are.
Although the reform of the European Court of Human Rights is the main priority, I would like to comment briefly on some of the other priorities that the UK Government have set for our chairmanship. Combating discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity across Europe is a very welcome objective, and I believe the work we have done in the UK stands us in good stead—particularly the measures in the Equality Act 2010 and the right to civil partnership, which were passed in the last Parliament. I am pleased to say that the Scottish Government—believe me, I do not often compliment them—are currently consulting on taking this a step further with the introduction of gay marriage. I am pleased that we can give a lead to other member states on this, and I am glad the Government have made it a priority—not gay marriage, but tackling discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.
Michael Connarty
It has always struck me that in some other countries—this is certainly true where my son lives—people who are heterosexual can register not a civic partnership but the fact that they are de facto partners. That means that when one dies, the pension will transfer automatically to the other member of that de facto partnership. In this country, however, for a heterosexual couple who do not go through a formal legal marriage, either in a church or elsewhere, the pension dies with the partner. If we are talking about human rights, surely when people put themselves into a de facto partnership of that kind, they should have all the rights of those who go through a formal marriage.
Sandra Osborne
I do not disagree with my hon. Friend, but I would say that heterosexual people have the option to marry, which gay people have not had in the past. It is right that it should be afforded to them.
Sandra Osborne
There is a civic partnership that was not previously available—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. We are not conducting a conversation; this is a debate.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate, primarily because I have been calling for a debate on this subject for a good few weeks. I suspect that the Minister may have become sick of hearing from me. I thank right hon. and hon. Members who supported me last week in my pitch to the Backbench Business Committee. They clearly recognised the importance of holding such a topical debate at the time of our chairmanship. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter) for his leadership and his insightful comments. As a new Member of Parliament, I know that he has a great deal of experience of these matters, and I think that all new Members have a lot to learn from him.
I thank the Minister for his opening remarks, and for the written statement that he published yesterday. There is, of course, much to discuss when it comes to our chairmanship and its priorities, and this afternoon is the right time for that discussion.
All Members who have spoken so far have touched on Britain’s strong historic links with the Council of Europe and the drafting of the original European convention on human rights. In view of those historic links, I think that Britain must now play a central role in reforming the COE to ensure that the sovereignty of nation states is respected and the British interest is put first. I say that partly in the context of this week’s debates on European affairs. On Monday we saw exactly what happens when power-hungry supranational institutions simply go too far: the public become somewhat disenfranchised, and the democratic deficit created becomes slightly harder to remedy. The public have a view on that. I think there is a genuine danger that if action is not taken during our chairmanship, the country could find itself sleepwalking down a path towards the stripping away of more of our powers and more important decisions will eventually be taken out of our hands.
No doubt there is unity throughout the House on the need to safeguard rights to a fair trial, respect for family life, protection from slavery, freedom of thought and other great values of which this country and British democracy have been staunch defenders over the years. However, the European system of human rights that is reinforced by the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights and their related institutions lacks accountability and democratic legitimacy.
I believe that central to that problem is the way in which the European Court of Human Rights operates. Over the years, it has effectively become a final court of appeal for those who feel that there are human rights-related grounds that their national courts have wrongly dismissed. I think we all appreciate the importance of that. Recent statistics from the court reveal that in 83% of cases it finds that violation has taken place, contrary to decisions made nationally. The hon. Member for North Dorset mentioned the backlog of cases, and I think there is consensus on the fact that the numbers are alarming. I welcome my hon. Friend’s highly practical suggestion that people should be brought in to read through the paperwork and sort out the situation. While the figures for Britain are better than average, with the Court finding that a violation has taken place in 61% of cases, it is astonishing that in so many cases the Court and its judges rule against judgments made by very able, experienced and qualified judges in the British courts. Moreover, given that section 2 of the Human Rights Act 1998 explicitly binds our courts into the European human rights system so they already give effect to the convention in European case law, it is even more unreasonable for Europe to dismiss so many of the decisions made by our courts.
Politicians will always have their differences with the judiciary and the decisions made by judges, but many of the decisions made in Strasbourg are fundamentally contrary to British values and the British interest. That leads me to question the accountability and legitimacy of the Court.
This situation is made even more challenging to our democracy because no real mechanisms are in place for Parliament to reverse these European Court judgments. Such mechanisms are in place for decisions by domestic courts, however. Earlier this year when the English courts highlighted an anomaly in laws relating to police bail arrangements, Parliament was able to initiate and pass emergency legislation: the Police (Detention and Bail) Act 2011. Just as courts act independently to hold the legislature and the Executive to account, in this case Parliament and the Government were able to hold the judiciary to account. That does not seem to be possible for decisions made in the European Court, however. As has been mentioned, last February the House passed a motion sending a clear message to Europe that it did not believe it was right of the European Court of Human Rights to demand that we scrap our laws and give convicted prisoners the right to vote, yet Europe is still insisting that the judgments of the European Court takes precedence over the laws passed and motions agreed by this Parliament, and is still saying that we must grant prisoners the right to vote.
Michael Connarty
I have been listening to the hon. Lady expand on her point. I think she has got the matter wrong. When the European Court of Human Rights makes a judgment, it passes it back to the country of origin, which must then make proposals to try to fit in with that judgment. I understand that there is no intention on the part of the Government—supported by the Opposition, I hope—to give up their right in this matter entirely. They are being asked to define in which circumstances it is appropriate for someone to be not only incarcerated but deprived of their right to vote.
Priti Patel
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks.
In February we debated the sovereignty and decision making of this House in relation to a particular judgment. By refusing to accept the sovereignty of our Parliament and the democratic decision making of this House, Europe is demonstrating a lack of legitimacy and democratic accountability, which I find astonishing given that the Council of Europe was established precisely to promote democracy. Therefore, in my view, attacking our Parliament and seeking to undermine our democracy is simply counter-productive.
The prisoner votes issue is just one well-known example of the problem—and it is still ongoing. There are other similar Strasbourg decisions, however, such as in the Sufi and Elmi case, where Britain was prevented on human rights grounds from deporting two individuals back to Somalia, despite their being responsible for a very serious spate of crimes, including threats to kill, robbery and dealing in class A drugs. We should bear in mind that such decisions can end up setting a legal precedent, so they can impact on subsequent deportation cases. In the Sufi and Elmi case, human rights were used as an excuse to allow people to remain in Britain.
Mr Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)
I wish to touch briefly on three issues. The first relates to the European convention on human rights, which is the first priority listed on the briefing paper issued by the Government on the UK’s chairmanship of the Council of Europe. Article 5 of the convention sets out the right to freedom. Article 6 sets out the right to a fair trial. A constituent of mine has been held in prison in Malta for more than two years. Another constituent has just faced a highly questionable trial in Lille in France, and he was held for two years before the trial without any right to freedom. Malta and France are both signatories to the convention on human rights.
When I started to look into the background, I wrote to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to request a breakdown of the number of UK citizens who have been held for more than 10 months without trial in countries that are signatories to the convention on human rights and members of the Council of Europe. Initially, those at the FCO said that they did not have a breakdown for all 47 countries and that it would be unreasonable to expect them to do all that work because it would be very expensive. However, not wishing to be unhelpful, they asked me to name the countries I was interested in. I named four: Greece, Spain, France and Malta—the latter two for obvious reasons. It was a freedom of information request and they complied with it.
Malta is holding five UK citizens who have been in prison for more than 10 months without trial, and Malta is a signatory to the convention on human rights. France is holding 12 UK citizens who have been in prison for more than 10 months without trial, and France is a signatory to the convention on human rights. Indeed, my constituent was held in France for more than two years. Spain is holding 43 UK citizens who have been in prison for more than 10 months without trial, and Spain is a signatory to the convention on human rights. Article 5, which sets out the right to freedom, is being breached by these countries. The FCO said that it could not specify the number of UK citizens being held in Greece because that number was so small that doing so could identify the person concerned. I did not quite understand that, but the fact of the matter is that Greece is also clearly in breach of article 5.
In the case of the constituent who was tried in Lille last week, I maintain that article 6 has been breached because I do not believe that he has had a fair trial. In fact, I am afraid that his situation was probably worsened by the intervention of a British Member of Parliament seeking to bring about the trial. The man has been sentenced to five years in prison, fined €10,000 and asked to repay something akin to the debt of Greece—€5 million. He does not have that because he has lost his home and his family; he has lost the lot.
During the UK’s chairmanship of the Council of Europe, I want the Government to hold to the fire the feet of each and every country that is a member of the Council and is holding UK citizens, or any other citizens for that matter, for long periods of time without trial. It is a clear breach of the convention. Many of those countries, France in particular, are preaching to the United Kingdom and trying to tell us that we must give prisoners voting rights. We had that debate in this Chamber and reached a sovereign decision as a sovereign Parliament. I explained that in person to the Human Rights Commissioner, Thomas Hammarberg, the last time we were in Strasbourg. I said, “Tom, you must understand that this is a sovereign Parliament. This is not a Government decision, but a decision taken in the House of Commons by elected Members. We have decided that we do not believe that we have a duty to give convicted prisoners voting rights.” While that is an issue, we are told that other countries can hold citizens without trial for very long periods in breach of the convention.
I would like my right hon. Friend to take to the chairmanship and to Ministers this clear issue and say that we will not budge one inch until every country holding any citizen for an indeterminate period without trial has complied properly with the convention.
Michael Connarty
I just want to get the hon. Member to clarify and put on the record the fact that all of these countries have not only signed, but ratified and implemented the convention, because there are many countries who sign conventions, never ratify them and never, therefore, implement them.
Mr Gale
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is absolutely right. The implication is that because we have signed the convention, we are implementing it. My understanding is that Malta, Spain and France have implemented it, but I am open to challenge on Greece— I ought to know but do not. France certainly makes a big issue of the situation and is very communautaire, just as long as it wants to be, but on this issue it is in clear breach and needs to be told that it is.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale). Having been in the Council of Europe, and in this House for so long, and having watched his endeavours in the Council of Europe at the moment, it is amazing that he is still enthusiastic about searching out the right wording and practice in the things he is involved in. I am sure that he was the same 25 years ago. My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) referred to me as enthusiastic, but I have been here for a mere 19 years. I hope that when I have been here for as long as the hon. Gentleman I am still as enthusiastic for the fight.
The fight is for the correct implementation of the principles behind the Council of Europe. I may not always take the example of the hon. Member for North Thanet on how he approaches things, and hopefully we will be at the meeting seeking the compromise that I suggested might be found between him and the author of the original report, which was deeply flawed in the way it was expressed. I hope that we will work together across the party divide on these matters.
It is a pity the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) has gone. I am not sure whether she is a member of the delegation, but certainly some members on the Government side do not take up their place, and she might be able to learn quite a lot by volunteering to take one of the places that are not being actively filled at the moment. I am sure she would find it enlightening and educational, as we all do. The delegation, although we may come from different angles, is genuinely still the bedrock of debates in the Council of Europe. Delegates are often there at the beginning; they are there at the end of the day, which might be 8 o’clock at night; and they are often there on Friday when most people have decided to go home. We want to take part in debates and make our views known.
Oliver Heald
The hon. Gentleman will recall that he and I were both there on the Friday of the last part-session, disagreeing with each other. I thought he would like to know that I am here, and that I do not entirely agree with him today.
Michael Connarty
We came in together, and hopefully they will carry us out together. I recall that we also came to the House in the same year.
It is absolutely incredible that a court as important as the Court of Human Rights is clogged up by a type of bureaucracy that could not be imagined in the most disorganised country in the world. The simplest cases that will clearly never be correctly allocated to the Court have to be judged by a full bench of judges before they can say, “No, we can’t deal with this.” There is no sifting process and no filter process. No Committee in this House would run if every Member had to gather every day, look at every paper proposed, and come before the Committee to decide whether it could even discuss it. That is what the Court is about at the moment. Anything we can do under our chairmanship to bring in a filtering system whereby one judge or some other method is used to say, “This is still correct to stay on the list and others must be sent back to the courts of the national jurisdictions or rejected”, is long overdue.
I will talk later about the Human Rights Act 1998 in the context of individual countries. It is a myth that the Court can make a country implement its judgment just by lifting the judgment made in the Court and transposing it into the Acts of Parliament of this country. It is not the European Union, after all. I see that the Minister for Europe is here, and he recognises that that can happen with European Union regulations and all the other things that come in, and we have to just get on with it because we have signed away some of those rights—but not at Council of Europe level. It has to come back and be looked at by this sovereign Parliament, which then makes a judgment on what amendments to make that would implement it. I hope that we never move away from that.
There is lots of talk saying that our Human Rights Act is somehow a transcription of the convention on human rights and the judgments of the courts. I hope that it is, in fact, an attempt by this sovereign Parliament to implement the human rights that we all hold so dear for our country and for every other country. If it is not correct and needs to be amended in some way, that is our right as a sovereign Parliament, but we must not get into the situation where we can overturn the human rights that are available to people in Council of Europe countries just because we believe that it will satisfy the feelings of our constituents.
I held a very excellent debate about human rights and family rights. On family rights, yes, there is no doubt that people are angry because that is used as a plea for someone not to be sent back to some other country. But when we come down to the fundamentals and someone is asked, “Do you think that family rights are due to all of us?”, most people would say yes. We then have to decide why it is not applicable to someone who may come from another country. Sometimes, if we throw out that basic judgment that family rights are available to all of us, and must therefore be available to anyone under our jurisdiction, we destroy something very important in what we have fought for, for political gain and for a feeling of anger rather than for a judgment of what is correct.
Bob Stewart
I have a question because I am slightly ignorant on the procedures. If a judgment came back to this House and this House decided that it would not accept it, where do we stand then?
Michael Connarty
That is a very important question. If the Government should bring back a proposal on, for example, whether prisoners in custody should have voting rights, and we decided that we did not wish to accept it, we could reject it. They would have to come back again to try to put another proposal, and I presume negotiations would go on between the Committee of Ministers, particularly with our chairmanship in the next six months, to find something that would be suitable, and that would be correct. However, I believe—this is my own judgment—that if we got to the point where we said, “No, we refuse to implement this”, then there must be some question about whether we want to remain in the Council of Europe at all.
Mr Binley
The hon. Gentleman is a very dedicated member of the Parliamentary Assembly, and it is a pleasure to work with him. Does he recognise that at the end of the day the judgment goes to the Committee of Ministers, and that equally at the end of the day it has no powers of enforcement? I relate that to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale): nothing can be done, and therein lies one of the problems.
Michael Connarty
I think that is correct in what I have seen of the Council of Europe. It can make judgments, it can put down statements, people can support those statements, and they can be transmitted through the Committee of Ministers to the representatives of all the countries who send a representative to that Committee. One of the reasons I am quite a strong supporter of the European Union is that it can bring in directives, and has done so, as I shall mention later, in areas which are close to my heart and to the logic of why I am here as a representative of the people of my constituency. It has an enforceable power, mainly tied up with the economic power that lies in the EU rather than just the Court of Justice. But yes, I think that there is a need for a much more diligent pursuit of the matters raised by the hon. Member for North Thanet.
The third part of what I say will be on the way in which the Council of Europe operates. The debate on the scope and effect of proposals, papers or conventions has to be had vigorously in the committees. That was done by the hon. Member for North Thanet, and I will give examples of where, even in the year that I have been there, I have taken that route and had changes made. Hopefully I will bring about other changes, because that is what we are there to do: we are not there just to go to the plenaries and get our card ticked for being present; we are, I hope, there to go to the committees, participate in the debates and form and reform the papers, the proposals and the conventions that eventually come out of the Council of Europe. If we do that, it is our duty to come here and argue for them to be implemented in our country in the fullest way declared in those conventions. If we cannot do that, I question whether we are fully participating in the process.
I thank the hon. Member for Mansfield (Sir Alan Meale), because he organises the Labour side of the delegation. He was the person who suggested that, having been Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee and been a member for the past 13 years, I might see going to the Council of Europe as a natural progression, because I could see more of the debates at the fundamental level, which I did not see in the minutiae of the implementation of European directives. I thank him for inviting me to attend.
It was suggested that I should go into the committee on culture, science and education. I will speak a little about the processes that I found there, because it is important to put on the record, for those who do not know what this is all about and who read the debates, what happens there. When I went along, one of the large papers that was debated was on “the religious dimension of intercultural dialogue.” When I read it, I realised, as a humanist, that the Council of Europe’s fundamental principle of the right to belief as well as faith, was missing from the paper. When the committee invited people from all the main religions to discuss the paper, it also invited the secretary of the European Federation of Humanists to present a paper and to be heard in Paris. We then tabled amendments, which were debated and added to the paper. The paper was eventually discussed again in the committee, of which the hon. Member for North Thanet is also a member, and went to the full plenary, where it was passed by a 95% vote of the Parliamentary Assembly.
There are some things in that paper that I believe are priorities for our sixth-month presidency and that will be very helpful in a world where we know there is still anti-Semitism, sectarianism and in many countries an anti-Christian movement that threatens people’s rights, but also persecution and a denial of the rights of people who are not affiliated to religious organisations. I found those issues fundamental to why I am here, what I believe in and what I believe are the rights of the people whom I represent, and there they were being discussed in that committee. Hopefully, my participation in that debate changed the document.
There was opposition from one or two fundamentalist born again Christians who tried to take all the references to humanism out of the paper. I am glad to say that it was defended by people of all faiths in the committee and in the Assembly, because it is not about being against something, but about including people and diversity in the real sense, not just in a small way. That was an important lesson for me that when I was placed on a committee, if I took it seriously, I could do something; I would not necessarily have carried the day, but I could at least express those views.
The other committee that I sit on is the social, health and family affairs committee. The discussions of that committee chimed very much with the interests that I have always thought that we are there to pursue, such as the discussions about human trafficking. Some hon. Members may know that I am now vice-chair of the all-party human trafficking group in this House. I have pressed—even harried—the Government to sign up to the European directives on human trafficking and the new, extended European directive against the sexual exploitation and abuse of children. I found that there was very much a campaign running on that in the Council of Europe—the “One in Five” campaign. Again, I am grateful to the leader of the delegation, who nominated me to be the UK representative on that organisation. It is in fact a network of contact parliamentarians to stop sexual violence against children.
When we talk about these things, particularly at a European level about cross-border action, some people think it is not to do with them, but I have to say that in my own constituency, in the town of Grangemouth, an industrial town, there have been two unbelievably horrendous cases—many cases, but two horrendous cases of sexual abuse of female children aged 13 and 14 months by two different people, put on the internet and spread around the massive paedophile rings throughout the world. It is in every street and every town. In fact the deputy commissioner for children in England is going to have a two-year investigation running into sexual abuse of children. On one day, she took a snapshot throughout England of local authorities and care organisations; in one day, on the same day in England, 1,000 cases of sexual abuse of children were reported in England—in one day at that snapshot. That is how frightening this is.
When we had our first meeting we were addressed by Mr John Carr, who is from the UK and is the expert adviser to the International Telecommunications Union on online protection of children. The figures he gave were horrendous: there are 1 million images on paedophile internet sites at any time in the world; there are 15 million transactions a year in the country. The one thing that is a problem is that a site can be shut down or blocked in this country within 24 hours, but there are sites running in Russia and in the USA that were reported and identified over a year ago but are still running, in Russia because of gangsterism and it is hidden and hard to get at, and in the USA because it is protected by state laws and local laws. The providers of these things can still keep running a year after they are found to be trading. It is a massive, criminal, monetary-driven enterprise—paedophile activity and the abuse of children. That was a salutary lesson for me that there was something going on there that wanted to join all 47 countries—and wider than that, but all 47 countries as a start—in a campaign against one of the most heinous crimes and most heinous possible abuses of human rights and the rights of the child.
As an adjunct, we debated in the social, health and family affairs committee—I was asked to speak, and I think the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald) spoke in the same debate—the rights of undocumented migrant children. I think the most succinct statement of what the Council of Europe is about is the amendment from that committee that was spoken to by Madam Strik from the Netherlands. It said that a child is first and always a child, and then after may be a migrant. If that is what the Council of Europe is about, that is so powerful for the people we represent, because they want that to be a right for everyone in all their towns and all their communities, and the Council of Europe allows us to do that.
We have also been addressed by the UN special rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, Najat Maalla M’jid, a woman who does this work throughout the world. It was in fact connecting the Council of Europe countries to what is happening in a much wider portfolio.
In this process of holding the presidency or the chairmanship of the Council of Ministers, I have an extra priority. It is embarrassing, and it relates to the question that I asked the hon. Member for North Thanet about having ratified a convention. The United Kingdom signed up to the convention on the protection of children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, which was laid on 25 October 2007—almost exactly four years ago—on 5 May 2008. We have yet to ratify it, and if we do not ratify it, it is not brought into force. Let us look at the countries that have. Spain, which was referred to earlier, signed it in 2009 and ratified it in December 2010, and has put it into force. It is no use signing something that is not put into force. I have been trying to get in to ask the Prime Minister for a number of weeks now—but have not been called—when we are going to ratify it. In our chairmanship six months, that is the time we should do this. We should ratify that convention.
It is amazing how many people have actually been involved, and I pay compliment to a lady who I am told is called Martine McCutcheon, who starred in “Love Actually”—I think she played the Prime Minister’s girlfriend, if I recall correctly. She presented, with people from the UK, a petition, gathered with the help of the Body Shop, of 735,889 signatures, exactly at the time it was presented, calling for the UK to ratify that convention. That was 12 May 2011. The message does not seem to have got through to our Prime Minister and Government yet, but the people of this country want us to do that.
I pay a compliment to them and to the hon. Member, who is a Member of the Government party, who is the chair of the UK Parliament’s all-party human trafficking group, and to Anthony Steen, a former Member of this House who set up an institute, the Human Trafficking Foundation. He is being supported to get campaigning organisations in all of the EU countries, but we still have a long way to go, and I hope it will be led by our chairmanship.
I have one other small point, but it is an important point. The committee on culture, science and education had a proposal before it for a recommendation towards a European framework convention on youth rights. Disappointingly, the response of the permanent member representing the UK, who will become the chair of the Committee of Ministers, was that they did not really think we needed youth rights. Unfortunately, it is a fact that now, in most of the countries of Europe, there is a long period between being a child and being put out to work. Sometimes people study; sometimes they try to make a life for themselves; and sometimes they go into work. In that period, a lot of young people fall between the two stools. They are not treated as children and they are not adults. They are not people who are making the rules; they are the people who are having to suffer the badly made rules.
Why I want to raise this is that it gives us an example of what we can do in the Council of Europe. I was on that committee and was involved in the draft. I took the draft away with me and I took it to people in the West Lothian youth forum, which is a forum set up by the local authority. I gave them copies and asked them to go away and use the youth forum to discuss this matter. What did they think of it? What did they think should be done with it? What ideas were missing from it? The forum came back with three very simple amendments. One was on housing rights and the right to housing. The forum members pointed out that you can get housing—you can get housing in the worst dumps and slums of the cities—if you are a young person, because you are basically an insecure tenant and you have difficulties. They wanted rights to housing that is actually of a standard that is acceptable at a European level.
The second one was on employment. They wanted in employment the right to training with in-work accreditation, because they knew so many young people who had got jobs and were used, basically. They were told they were getting an apprenticeship, spent two years as a grease monkey, and then when they asked to go to college to get certification, they were sacked and some other young person got taken on to go through the same process again and again.
Those are two very important matters. The third one I think is very important as well, particularly since we allow the UK Youth Parliament to meet here in this House, in this Chamber. People in the forum said they want these matters, if we ever have a convention, to be monitored by the Youth Parliament or their equivalent in Europe, so that they can have a say on whether the Governments who sign up to these things are doing anything about it.
Mr Binley
I am again most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is being very generous with his time. Does he think there ought to be a balancing factor to rights? I am not denying the importance of rights, but I wonder whether we ought to give equal importance to the responsibilities of the individual. Perhaps he has an opportunity to make that point and to ask the Minister whether he might consider it as well.
Michael Connarty
I think that we have quite a developed idea among those who take it seriously that with rights come responsibilities. I explain to everyone who comes around Parliament that it is a nice building, fine, but buildings are buildings; Parliament is about what goes on in here—the concept of democracy, the demos, the people who had the right in Athens and the responsibility to run the country. They had the power but also the responsibility. That, basically, is how society should be run. We get rights, but we have responsibilities at the same time. I think that our Government in the past tried to echo that again and again. I think that there are questions about whether people think that they have only rights. In Scotland at the moment, everyone thinks that everything is free: they do not pay council tax increases, they do not pay for their education, they do not pay for their prescriptions—it is all free. I am afraid that that is not a world in which people can live for very long, because they soon become bankrupted financially but also bankrupted in terms of principle. I think that the hon. Gentleman is right: there needs to be a balance.
Those young people were amazing. They took it seriously. A Member of Parliament said, “Here is a convention or a document that will affect your lives if it is ever passed. What do you think?” They went off and treated it seriously. I know that one of the people who helped to draft it, a young David Begg, sits in the Scottish Youth Parliament, and some of them come down here and participate in the UK Youth Parliament. That is giving them rights and responsibilities in the right way, and I hope that we will take that seriously and perhaps change our position and encourage the development of something that will speak to the youth and that has to contain responsibilities. However, the debate in the culture, science and education committee was the opposite: people said, “We don’t want to talk about responsibilities because we want to talk about young people having rights without saying they have to pay for them.” I do not necessarily agree with the balance, but that was how it was drafted.
I will finish with one last reference to a document, Madam Deputy Speaker, because a lot of the debate going on is as though the Council of Europe is out there, the Court of Human Rights is out there, and they come and fly in and drop things on top of us that we have to implement. There is a paper from 6 June Parliamentary Assembly that I hope that every Member of the House will read. Perhaps members of the public would like to read it. It is called “National parliaments: guarantors of human rights in Europe”. It states:
“The report examines ways to better exploit parliaments’ potential in this respect and proposes basic principles to be respected by the parliaments of the Council of Europe member states.”
It then lists a lot of very, very sensible suggestions for how Parliaments might do this. I think that is what it is about. It is not about saying, “Europe will make the decision for you. The Council of Europe will make the decision for you. You just have to implement it.” It is about thinking about how we, as parliamentarians in our Parliaments, can take those guarantees correctly.
In my first year as a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, I realised that it was the one place where I could find the things that brought me into Parliament, the things that brought me into public life as a community activist, from where I went on to be a councillor and to give up so much of my life and time to this process of democratic representation. It is about human rights. The Council of Europe sets a benchmark against which it says to all the countries in the Council of Europe area, “You will be judged by the Council of Europe.” Enforceability is very important, and I would like to see more of it, but it says, “You will be judged by it. You will be held up to scrutiny by it. The more important thing is that you will have to ask yourselves, in your Parliament, how do you measure up to these human rights that should be available to everyone?” When I hear debates in here with people throwing out phrases that clearly say, “I want this human right, but that person from that country should not have it because we do not want them to have it. Send them back to their country, but they might be tortured. Send them back to their country, but they might face capital punishment,” I am ashamed, because that should not be talked about in this mother of Parliaments. Human rights are fundamental and the Council of Europe is their guardian. I am very pleased to be there, and I am sure that our time as the chair, with the leadership of the Minister and the Labour Benches, will be a good six months.
Mr Lidington
My hon. Friend is right: there has to be unanimity within the EU before accession can take place. Further, there must also be an important role for our Parliament. Under the European Union Act 2011, once agreement is reached on the detail of EU accession, the Government would be required to place that decision before each House of Parliament, and there would have to be a debate and a vote in this place and in the House of Lords before the UK could ratify EU accession to the COE. So not only the British Government but Parliament have to agree before that can happen.
The hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne) asked, first, whether British Ministers would report to the Parliamentary Assembly during the six months of our chairmanship. The answer is yes. I have agreed to attend the session in Edinburgh in November and those in Strasbourg in February and April next year to report on the progress made under our chairmanship.
The hon. Lady also asked for examples of cases in which the Court had substituted its judgment for that of national courts. An issue that came up in the Interlaken declaration on the removal of people from a country when their case had been properly considered by the national courts is key here, as all 47 countries agreed that the Court was looking in too much detail at matters that had been quite properly considered by national authorities. In recent judgments against not only us but Sweden, the Court has checked findings of fact made by national courts in cases about removing people from the country. For example, it has insisted on considering the applicant’s credibility or family situation, but those are not matters that should be considered at the European level.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary went to Izmir, and the declaration adopted at that conference in April called for a stricter approach to interim measures under rule 39, which, as the hon. Lady knows, is often used to halt deportations, with the Court intervening only exceptionally if cases have been considered by fair and effective national procedures. I hope that the marker put down by all 47 countries at Izmir also gives some comfort to my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton South (Mr Binley) and for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) and others who have expressed particular concern about the impact of Court judgments on immigration policy.
My hon. Friends the Members for Northampton South and for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock) asked about the appointment of judges and whether the Interlaken process would diminish the democratic element regarding the election of judges to the Strasbourg court. The key part of the process that requires reform is the national procedures by which each state selects the list of three candidates whom it proposes to the Parliamentary Assembly. If we get this right, concerns about the quality of judges should fall away. We have welcomed the establishment of a panel of the Council of Ministers to ensure that all states put forward three well-qualified candidates for those posts and it has already taken France to task on this very point. We are driving forward work on a recommendation that would lay down standards for national procedures in all 47 states, and I am pleased to report that according to the Parliamentary Assembly itself the United Kingdom is a beacon of good practice in this regard.
My hon. Friends the Members for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and for Gainsborough asked about the recommendation by the Bill of Rights commission that the Strasbourg Court should consider only the most important cases. Our position as a Government on this is that the Court should focus on areas where the convention is not being properly applied or where there is a genuine need at the European level for authoritative guidance on its interpretation. Where member states are applying the convention effectively, the Court should intervene less.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough also raised a number of concerns about immigration. He will understand if I do not comment on individual cases, especially on the basis of Mr Woolas’s memoirs. My hon. Friend said that his arguments were not so much about the principles embodied in the convention—indeed, he spoke up in favour of the convention—but about the means by which it is implemented and applied in this country. I take his comments in that spirit. I remind him again of the work of the independent commission and encourage him to make representations to Sir Leigh Lewis and his colleagues. I would also recommend, if he has not done so already, that he have a look at the very thought-provoking speech made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General at Lincoln’s Inn on Monday, in which, among other things, he discussed the relationship of the United Kingdom Supreme Court to the European Court of Human Rights and indicated how his thinking was developing on that matter.
My hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) made several criticisms—more, I think, of the implementation of the convention in this country than of the convention per se. I took her points seriously. When she and other hon. Friends make those criticisms, they are speaking on behalf of large numbers of constituents who have expressed concerns. But I would caution my hon. Friend and the House about one of the statistics that was deployed—the claim that the Court finds a violation in 87% of all cases and in 61% of cases against the United Kingdom. These proportions are only of the cases where there is a judgment. We must remember that 97% of cases against the UK are thrown out without even having their merits considered, because they are ruled inadmissible. If we look at the raw figures for 2010 and 2011 so far, the Court has decided 1,713 cases that were brought against the United Kingdom, but only 33 of those 1,713 were decided by a judgment; the rest were simply ruled inadmissible by the Court or struck out completely. Given that only 33 went to a judgment, it is not wholly surprising that a relatively high proportion of those 33 cases were decently arguable and led to the finding of a violation.
My hon. Friend also spoke about how one set of rights was seen to be overruled by another set. I know that comes up frequently at public events. As the House knows, and members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe know all too well, the convention expresses a number of different human rights and it is a clear principle that where those rights conflict there is a duty on the countries that are party to the convention to balance those rights in a way that is just and proportionate in the circumstances of a particular case. There is a legitimate debate about where the right to take a final decision in any case should lie—with Strasbourg, with domestic courts, with legislatures or with the Executive in a particular country. Then there is a further argument about whether, in any individual circumstances, whichever authority it is has achieved the right balance in finding a judgment that is right, just and proportionate. We will never get away completely from that type of argument, any more than we do when we read reports of judgments in domestic civil and criminal cases.
The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) asked whether I would support Finnish and Spanish Ministers’ work on local government reform. I can guarantee that the Government will work towards a more effective and efficient role for the Council of Europe in supporting local and regional democracy. We want to see the Council’s work in this field streamlined and more carefully targeted. We are looking forward to Mr Chavez’s report and we will ensure that its recommendations are given serious consideration.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale) raised constituency cases as illustrations of a general complaint that countries party to the convention allow people to be detained for far too long without charge or trial. He fights fiercely on behalf of his constituents whom he believes have been treated unjustly. He knows from discussions that he and I have had that the individuals concerned can make an application to Strasbourg regarding an alleged violation of articles 5 and 6 by their detention without trial. The problem is that the text of the convention does not define what a reasonable period of such detention is. I am sure that my hon. Friend will continue to campaign vigorously on this matter.
My hon. Friend also asked about a convention on transfrontier broadcasting. My understanding is that the European Union has exclusive competence in this area, so there would be problems with an EU member state signing a Council of Europe convention on the matter. On that basis, the Committee of Ministers has agreed to discontinue work on that convention, pending further consultation. However, I will consider my hon. Friend’s point further, consult colleagues in other Departments that are more directly responsible for broadcasting policy and then write to him on the matter.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow and Falkirk—
Mr Lidington
I do not wish to accuse him of having further territorial ambitions.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) asked about two other conventions. On the European framework convention on youth rights, the Government still take the view that we do not recognise the need for such a convention as all the matters described in the draft recommendation are already covered by the UN convention on the rights of the child, which actually goes further than the proposed Council of Europe convention. On the convention on the protection of children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, we agree completely. That is an appalling crime and a form of child sexual abuse. Tackling it is an absolute priority for the Government. The convention sets standards to ensure that countries criminalise sexual exploitation and the abuse of children and adopt similar standards of investigation and prosecution of these crimes. Officials across a number of Departments are currently considering in detail the steps that would be required to ratify the convention. I am sure that a report will be made to the House as soon as decisions have been taken.
The hon. Member for Bassetlaw asked about next week’s cyber-space conference in London. I have been unable to check the guest list, but the conference will encompass the issue of cyber-crime and a lot more, too. It will deal with economic growth, the social benefits of using cyber-space, safe and reliable access to it, and international security.
My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South asked about the European Court’s backlog. We certainly aim to ensure that a time scale is set for the implementation of any measures agreed during our chairmanship, including clearing inadmissible and repetitive cases from the backlog. We will also learn from the experience of previous attempts to reform the Strasbourg Court. I completely take the point that we must not be timid in the measures we take. We will ensure that the long-term context is considered when agreeing short and medium-term measures. I very much hope that he will be able to see the fruits of the work that he supported today.
My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) raised a number of issues, most of which related to the implementation of the convention in this country. Like him, I have had some cases of forced marriage in my constituency surgery, and I think that the basic principle is less about the convention or the Human Rights Act, and more about the fact that it is a principle of any British court or immigration tribunal that evidence given to a judge by one party must be shared with the other party. Like him, I have had the difficult situation in constituency cases where the person who says that she is the victim is afraid to speak out in public, but the immigration judge cannot be asked to take account of evidence in secret without the other side having the chance to respond to it and to rebut it.
The Council of Europe has been enormously successful in promoting common standards and values among its membership, not least as a result of the convention system, which the United Kingdom has had a hand in creating. It matters a great deal to the Government that human rights, democracy and the rule of law flourish in all member states of the Council of Europe. In this light, we see our chairmanship as a genuine opportunity to strengthen further a rules-based international system and to further British interests by strengthening the global rule of law and championing human rights.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the matter of the UK’s Chairmanship of the Council of Europe.
National Referendum on the European Union
Michael Connarty Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hood
I may not be the historian that my hon. Friend gives me credit for, but I remember Mrs Thatcher saying a lot of things. Having been a miner on strike for 12 months during the 1984 miners strike, I have long memories of Mrs Thatcher’s contribution to democracy at that time.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
The mover of the motion, the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), alluded to the fact that Members had been strong-armed into voting against a referendum. Who is likely to be able to strong-arm my hon. Friend?
Mr Alexander
I am glad that at least a degree of truth is entering our discussions—it was suggested earlier that the rebate had not been continued—but I recollect well the circumstances in which those negotiations took place back in 2005. If I recall correctly, there was broad cross-party agreement that we had a responsibility to welcome the A10—the new members of the EU—and that it was inevitable that the European budget would be adjusted to reflect their entry. I am unyielding in my continued commitment to the need for reform of the CAP—I hope that that is another matter on which there is genuine cross-party agreement.
Michael Connarty
There is a lot of talk about being honest with the British people. My right hon. Friend has exposed the false prospectus of the main Government party, but he has been light in tackling the Liberal Democrats, who committed themselves to a referendum, and who are now jumping into bed with the Tories just to keep—so it seems to me—their ministerial cars.
Mr Alexander
I want to deal with business before pleasure. That the Liberal Democrats take strong, principled stands in their manifesto and choose to break them only a matter of months later might simply be habitual, but I await with interest a speech from a Liberal Democrat that tries to make sense of the contortions that they have got themselves into.
Mr Crausby
I will come to that. Voters were deceived by promises of huge increases in national prosperity and soothed by the leadership of the three political parties into voting yes. On one side of the argument sat the three party leaders—Harold Wilson, Ted Heath and Jeremy Thorpe—and on the other sat Enoch Powell and Tony Benn. The British media almost universally portrayed the issue as established common sense against the extreme fringes. The Government produced a document entitled “Britain’s New Deal in Europe”—I kept it because I knew I would be able to hold it against them one day—in red, white and blue. It recommended a yes vote; it was delivered by the Post Office to every home and it made clear promises. The most important promise was that Britain had a veto on all important new policies and developments. It said:
“No important new policy can be decided in Brussels or anywhere else without the consent of a British Minister answerable to a British Government and British Parliament.”
Just 10 years later, another Conservative Government completely reneged on that vital promise without a referendum. This time, it was Margaret Thatcher who gave up Britain’s veto when she signed the Single European Act, which actually makes Maastricht and Lisbon look like a sideshow. To talk now about “no new powers to Europe” is, quite frankly, shutting the stable door once the horse has bolted. It may well be that this is not the time to resolve the British people’s dissatisfaction with our membership of the European Union, but the time must come.
Michael Connarty
I often find that people list all the things that they are against when they make an argument, but given my hon. Friend’s background in the trade union movement, surely he must welcome the fact that the social chapter and social Europe have been massively important for improving the lives of our people?
Mr Crausby
I do, but my point is that we will not resolve this issue until we have sought the consent of the British people, which we have never done.
The leaders of our major political parties must face the facts. If they wish constructively to maintain our relationship with Europe, with public support, they should have the collective courage to take the argument to our people, instead of huddling together against a referendum every time it arises.
Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)
I can think of no other issue where the gap between the political elites and ordinary people in this country is so great. It is not the most important matter the House will ever discuss, but it is the one where that divergence is greatest. This divergence, and the feeling among the population of the country that their views are ignored, breeds and feeds cynicism about politics in general. The most cynical attempt to avoid that popular opinion was used in relation to the constitution that was not a constitution, because if it had been a constitution, it would have to have been put to a referendum. That was a breathtaking piece of cynicism and manipulation. No Member really believes that it was anything other than a means of overcoming the possibility of popular rejection.
It is therefore beholden on us to take seriously the fact that 100,000 voters have signed an e-petition. It was mentioned earlier that millions of Liberal Democrat voters would reject the proposal in a referendum, but I think that such a view is seriously mistaken, because there are probably no more than 100,000 people prepared to own up to being Liberal Democrat voters, so the number of people who signed the petition is greater than the number of Liberal Democrats in this country.
I think that disillusionment on this question has also been spread by the false prospectus the Conservatives gave to the country as they ran into the general election. There was a feeling in this country that a Conservative Government would stand up for Britain much more and take a more robust view on European matters, but the fact is that they have sold the jerseys. The overwhelming majority of people who voted for the Conservatives, believing that they would stand up to Europe, are now disillusioned, which is why every registration of public opinion indicates that there is a substantial drift of voters from the Conservatives to UKIP on this matter. I give the Conservatives the following advice for their own good: if they want to stop that drift to UKIP, they must stand up for what they said they would do during the general election. If they wish to say that they would like to do those things, but the Liberals are holding them back, they should come forward and say it honestly, rather than saying, “It’s actually much more difficult than we thought and we’re up to all sorts of sophisticated things that you are too thick to understand.” That is effectively what they are saying.
I am glad that this is not an in/out referendum, because I must confess that I would not have favoured either option. I am not in favour of voting in the referendum to remain in the EU, because that would be seen as a green light to ever-closer union, and I am not willing to be put in a position where the only alternative is to leave the EU, because I do not support that. I believe, as many of my colleagues on the Labour Benches once believed, that there is a third way—the way of reform. I believe that many of those who oppose the motion are doing so under the banner of reform, but are not actually all that serious about reform. They are committed to ever-closer union, but with a little tinkering.
Therefore, I support the motion because I think that the size of the vote tonight matters as a signal to the country that a substantial number of people are strongly committed to strong renegotiation when compared with those who take the view that it should be business as usual. As for those who say that the time is not yet right, I think that that is a disgraceful argument unless they tell us when the time will be right.
Michael Connarty
My hon. Friend was so opposed to the Lisbon treaty that I assumed that he had read it. Can he tell me where there is anything other than one clause that would allow an in/out referendum? There is nothing else in the Lisbon treaty on that?
Mr Davidson
I thank my hon. Friend for giving me an extra minute.
I also think that those who argue that this is simply a distraction would never want to discuss it anyway. They argue that it is not the right time or that this is only a distraction, but would they have said otherwise if the motion had been brought forward two weeks ago, or at some other time? I do not think so. They are in fact more interested in being part of the cosy club. This is an important debate, but as I said before, it is not the most important debate the House will ever have, and the EU is not the most important thing we will ever discuss.
Mr Hollobone
As far as I am concerned, the hon. Gentleman and his Liberal Democrat colleagues are forcing this country not to have the right policy on Europe. If he wants to talk to me and other Members about justice issues, why does his party not do the decent thing and let us come out of the European convention on human rights? There are prisoners in this country whom we cannot repatriate to their country of origin because they claim spurious family life issues, which keep them here.
Michael Connarty
I hate to continue the process of lecturing, which my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson) did not like, but it is the Council of Europe, not the EU, that set the convention. In 1949, 49 countries came together to bring about human rights for all in Europe.
Mr Hollobone
With the increasing ratchet of the terms and conditions of European Union membership, that is now a condition of membership for new entrants to the club.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
This is an interesting debate, and I apologise for having missed a few of the contributions. It is also a strange debate, however, in that many of the arguments being proposed in support of the motion do not, in fact, support it. My good friend the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) is not in the Chamber at present. He talked about the £40 billion trade deficit, but anyone who voted for the Common Market voted for that to happen, as, unfortunately, it is inevitable in a free market economy. For instance, 73% of our chemical industry is now owned by companies that are not based in the UK, and that will end up against us in the trade figures.
My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) is also no longer here. She urged us to put our own logical or ideological assessments before the instructions of the Whips. I have always done that, which is why I am going to vote against the motion. It is not logical to vote for it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson) has slipped away. He is not so much a friend as an ongoing further education project for me. I pointed out to him that the only way to get any of what he wants is to invoke article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, which states that we can leave the European Union. That has been put in place very deliberately. However, article 49 states that any country that leaves will be dealt with as if it is a new applicant, with no automatic right to rejoin and no special advantages. All this nonsense about renegotiating, repositioning and working on reform does not apply, therefore, and only a straight in/out referendum would be relevant. We could act upon that, but everything else would be left entirely to chance and to negotiations in the European Council and the European Parliament. That is the reality.
Andrew Percy
Surely the hon. Gentleman accepts that we can agree a new treaty that does exactly what many Members on the Government Benches wish. We can leave it to the treaty to achieve that.
Michael Connarty
Let me give the following advice to the hon. Gentleman, and to the Scottish National party Member who is present, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). The SNP thinks that if Scotland votes to separate from the rest of the United Kingdom, it can walk straight into the EU, but that is not the case. Scotland would get into the EU only if it agreed to one major condition: it would have to join the eurozone.
If the UK wanted to get back in, we would have to join the eurozone too. That is the reality, because that is now a condition for entering the EU, and it has been since before the Lisbon treaty. The position is as follows, therefore: we would have to decide in a referendum whether we wanted to be out of the EU, and if we wanted to go back in after that, we would then be at a great disadvantage because a decision would not come into force until after two years. It would have to be ratified by the other states; it would go ahead only if the European Parliament were to agree to it; and there would then be a vote to agree it in the Council under qualified majority terms. We are therefore tied up in knots by the Lisbon treaty, which I have described as a tipping point.
I am glad to see that the mover of the motion, the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), is back in his place. He argued that the closure of an accident and emergency department in his constituency was down to the European Union. If there is such a closure in a Member’s area, the people who can deal with it are sitting on the Government Front Bench. The hon. Gentleman should ask SNP Members about that, because of what happened after their party was elected with a clear majority in the Scottish Government elections. The first thing it did was overturn a proposal to close two accident and emergency units: one in Monklands and the other in Ayrshire. That illustrates the power of Government in this context. Such issues are nothing to do with the European Union, therefore, so the hon. Gentleman should not have made that point.
Some Members have also said that the call for a referendum expresses the settled will of the people. I respect, and am very fond of, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), but that is a very misleading claim to make. If we get 100,000 people writing in to say we should have a vote on a referendum on capital punishment, that would be more likely to be carried than the vote on this referendum. Are we really saying that 100,000 signatures would trigger a debate and vote in the House on a referendum on capital punishment? This is not about the settled will of the people, therefore. It just so happens that a lot of people have sent in some signatures on blogs, and I do not want to pay particular attention to them because I think that it is important that, like the Tunisian people, we respect parliamentary democracy.
Michael Connarty
I voted in the 1975 referendum, and I voted yes. I did not vote in favour of the Common Market; I voted in favour of the aspirations that were so well described by the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter). Do we really think we have lasting peace? How long ago was Srebrenica? What state are the Balkans in at present? Do we really think the search for peace is finished business? It is not finished business by a long way.
I also voted yes because I knew there was a better way forward that was not on offer at that time. That was introduced by Delors, when he brought in the social chapter. That is what I joined the EU for—social agreement. I support most of what would be offered us in the justice and social packages; they would guarantee them for our people as well as for all the people throughout Europe. These are things that are done by negotiation.
Michael Connarty
I do not have time to give way, as I have given way twice and I know how the system works.
It is clearly important that we consider what the European Union is about. There are things to give up, such as our obsession with not wanting people in Europe to have the same rights when they are on trial. We are opposing translation rights and the right to legal representation—this Government are opposing them at the moment. How can anyone justify that? Europe has to be a better place to live. If it was not for the social chapter—
Michael Connarty
The hon. Gentleman knows the rules. I have given way often enough and I have had my extra two minutes.
We need to think about Delors and what happened when the package for the social chapter came in. It protected the people I represent from Thatcherism in its worst aspects; it was a chance to rebalance Europe and bring about a social Europe. So much has been said about that. I respect the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr Holloway), who decided to resign as a Parliamentary Private Secretary, as it is right that people should be able to put their principles before someone’s attempt to give them a little bag-carrying job. I am not sure that he would be resigning quite as quickly if he was a Minister. The problem is that no Ministers have been saying that they will resign their ministerial position over this matter.
The Liberal Democrats say that they would vote for a referendum only on a fundamental shift, but there has been a fundamental shift. It has been away from voting Liberal, and their voting with the Government will damage them. I am sorry about that, but the Liberals did say that they would do something. The European Union still protects the three red lines: defence, tax and foreign policy. What we need to do in this place is give more power to the Backbench Business Committee and the European Scrutiny Committee to stop the Government voting things through in the Council, which they do at the moment.
Palestine and the United Nations
Michael Connarty Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Alistair Burt
My hon. Friend tempts me again to take a position on a hypothetical situation. Let me say again that I cannot go into that until we see a resolution. I stick to the position that I have taken, which is the belief that the United Kingdom must ensure that whatever is tabled next week and whatever gets through the United Nations leads to a proper approach to negotiations in which both sides can feel confident of some movement.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
Can I ask the Minister a simple question? I have heard all the problems that he has outlined and the finessing of those on our Benches, but does he agree with those who say that if there is recognition, it would be a barrier to progress? Would it not be better for two nations to recognise each other and continue to negotiate a settlement than for one to reject, acting as a colonial nation, and for the other to be an imprisoned nation?
Alistair Burt
I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. The barriers to progress are many, and they are very much about trust and confidence as well as the legacy of negotiations in the past. A situation where one side proclaims victory and the other feels defeat will not help anyone, no matter what the subject matter might be. Let us therefore try to work towards a situation next week where a resolution will not bring that about, which is what many parties are seeking to achieve.
Palestinian State (UN Membership)
Michael Connarty Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Richard Burden
I and, as far as I know, everyone in this room is on record as calling on both sides to cease violence against the other. If the hon. Member is active in Friends of Israel he would perhaps already be aware that Israel is recognised: Palestine recognised Israel many years ago. Israel is a member of the United Nations and no one has called for it to be removed, or for its derecognition.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
When we visited Lebanon in January, we were impressed by the offer by that country’s Prime Minister that if the Palestinian Authority or, in fact, a UN-recognised Palestinian state, gave an identity card to the people of Palestine living in Lebanon, those people would be freed up to take up employment and break through all the barriers that do not allow them to have a decent life in that country. Is that not another incentive for the UN to recognise the state of Palestine?
Richard Burden
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I am not alone in making the points that I am making in this debate. As the early-day motion tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley notes, 122 countries, representing nearly 90% of the world’s population, recognise Palestine. Even among Israelis, polls suggest that 48% support recognition and only 41% oppose it.
What is more, last year, President Obama set a target of September 2011 for welcoming the independent sovereign state of Palestine as a new member of the United Nations. That aim was endorsed by the UK last year. The Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, has been congratulated many times by the international community and in this place for the state-building work that he has led, and the Palestinian Authority have been congratulated by many leading international organisations. Recent reports by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the EU and the UN have all said that not only is Palestine ready for statehood, it already operates as a state in many ways. Does the Minister share the view of those major institutions that Palestine has proved itself ready to function as a state? If not, what more does Palestine need to do either to be recognised as a state or to gain full membership of the United Nations? If the two differ, what must Palestine do to meet each requirement?
Statehood does not solve everything. A negotiated settlement will still be needed, and the parties will still need to come together to agree the many difficult issues that lie at the heart of the conflict in the middle east. However, the Palestinians look at it in this way. The international community’s continuing unwillingness to make recognition of Palestine’s right to statehood more than theoretical means that in practice, Palestine’s chance of achieving a two-state solution shrinks with every month that passes. It shrinks with every settlement built or expanded in the west bank. It shrinks with every roadblock that cuts the west bank into Bantustans. It shrinks with every Palestinian home demolished in east Jerusalem, with every Palestinian farmer cut off from the land that he or she cultivates by the construction of Israel’s barrier within the west bank rather than along the green line and with every olive grove destroyed by Israeli settlers. It shrinks with every Gaza fisherman prevented from fishing in waters off the Gaza coast, with every Palestinian workshop prevented from exporting its goods from Gaza into Israel or the wider world and with every truckload of reconstruction equipment prevented from entering Gaza to rebuild homes shattered by war.
That is why Nabil Abu Rudeina, the spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas, said recently:
“As long as Israel’s settlement activities continue and as long as Israel refuses to accept the 1967 borders, after 60 years of occupation, we have no other choice but to turn to the international community. We are not declaring war. We are applying to the United Nations.”
After the Arab spring, at a time when the UK Government have been at the forefront of support for people calling for self-determination across the middle east, are we really saying that the Palestinian people should be different? If not, we return to the essential question. It is not about what we keep saying; it is about deciding what we are going to do.
The EU has said clearly that individual states must make up their own minds on the matter at the UN. When will the UK decide whether it will recognise Palestine and support its admission to full UN membership, if that is the recognition that the Palestinians ask for? In practical terms, what is preventing the UK Government from doing so now?
It is time to help to level the playing field and to support alongside the independent and recognised state of Israel an independent and recognised state of Palestine. Both peoples’ legitimate right to self-determination must be realised. The two states can then enter into negotiations on an equal footing to agree the details of a lasting and peaceful two-state solution and the final borders between those two states based on justice and international law. That is all that the Palestinians ask. Why is it so difficult for us to agree to it?
European Union Bill
Michael Connarty Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Neil Carmichael
Many apologies, Mr Speaker—it is a long time since I have had quite so many interventions. The key thing here is the quality of the decision. If a Minister came along and tried to defend a decision that this House was unhappy about, this House should say so. That is the right approach.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Michael Connarty
May I suggest a much simpler piece of logic to explain why the new clause would probably not be helpful? If the hon. Gentleman has ever attended a European Committee, whose members are supplied with a large volume of documentation that they are supposed to read before debating the issue and taking a position when voting, he will realise that most do not read it. The more information that is supplied on European matters, the more paper that is provided, which will not be read.
Neil Carmichael
That is a really good point to end on. The hon. Member for—
Neil Carmichael
Right. [Laughter.] That is longer than Stroud.
That is an important point to end on, because I do not think that everyone does read everything they should, and we have come across that in the past. The European Scrutiny Committee is under the excellent chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for— [Hon Members: “Stone.”]—for Stone (Mr Cash), but one of the things I noted before becoming a Member was that scrutiny of European measures, if carried out at all, was not thorough. I have done some research and found that decisions have literally been nodded through, which is characteristic of these kinds of issues. It is far better for this House to consider the outcomes seriously, because it is the outcomes that matter. That has always been the case in decision making. Sometimes the process that we use needs to be scrutinised because the outcome is not so good, and clearly we might want to test that.
We should never undermine the capacity of a British Minister to represent our interests and make adjustments to his or her position while in negotiations with other nation states. I repeat that if we were having this discussion about the United Nations or NATO, for example, I do not think we would be talking in these terms, because we understand the value of empowering Ministers to make decisions on our behalf and report back with outcomes that are to our liking.
Mr MacShane
We will see what happens on Friday. I am concerned, as all hon. Members ought to be, that because we are not in the euro—for perfectly good reasons—Britain is not as fully involved as the other deciders in many areas of decision making. We will leave that to be revealed in Friday’s meeting and future discussions.
I am very attracted to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty). We can now, in the House of Commons, announce the new Connarty law: there is a precise ratio whereby the more paper provided on any European decision, the less real discussion and debate there is thereon. I hope that he will agree that that new Connarty law should be enshrined as an official part of how we do business in Europe.
I remember that for the constitutional Convention, on which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston valiantly represented the House of Commons, the then Foreign Secretary and myself set up a special Select Committee and published everything. We had regular meetings for the sake of accountability, but not a single Opposition Front Bencher ever came to them and they were often inquorate. The hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) was valiantly present at every meeting, but his party leadership was absent. Again, that reflects the Connarty law—the more opportunity and information right hon. and hon. Members are given on Europe, the less inclined they are to take it up and debate it.
Michael Connarty
I think that what I said was that the more paperwork that is provided, the less it is read. Information can and should be given, and Ministers do not give it often enough from the Dispatch Box or in evidence. They try to hide information. It is paperwork that frightens people, not information.
Mr MacShane
I am very happy to have that minor revision to the Connarty law—the more paper people are given on the European Union, the less it is read, debated and discussed.
Mr Shepherd
That is the argument, and I am glad that it was so briskly conveyed. On that note, I urge the House to support the new clause.
Michael Connarty
I hope not to delay the House for too long. I am actually a signatory to this new clause, but I hope that the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) will withdraw it. It was an attempt to ask for a process in which information should be provided to make sense of any proposal under section 4, which is mentioned in clause 5 on statements to the House. The truth is that there is a problem with the understanding of, and interest in, the decisions made in the European Council, which are then enacted by this Parliament and which affect the citizens, businesses and communities that we represent.
The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd) is always keen for us to be more informed, but I am not sure that the new clause would achieve that. Listening to the debate, I have become more and more convinced that more and more documentation does not mean more and more information. We need to look carefully at how the House treats the process involved. There are, I think, six members and one former member of the European Scrutiny Committee here today, and we tend to take a lot of interest in these matters, but there is not the same breadth of understanding, information gathering or discussion of European matters in the generality of the House.
Much can be explained by changes in the structure of how Parliament deals with European issues. We used to have European Standing Committees, with specific designations as A, B and C, specific remits and a fixed membership of 13 each, and they debated every single issue that came from the European Council about which the European Scrutiny Committee was not happy. What happens now is that a randomised group of people chosen by the Committee of Selection turn up now and then and the Committees have no sense of a specific remit. They are still foolishly called A, B and C as if they still have specific remits, but when a Minister brings forward provisions to change our position and bring in new law on the basis of a directive, regulation or other proposal from the European Commission, very few people understand what that Minister is doing.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I am attracted by the hon. Gentleman’s argument about the need for a change in the way this House deals with European policy. Is not the logic of his argument, however, that we need to go back to an earlier stage, whereby we as legislators should be involved, pre-negotiations and pre-discussions, in thematic debates and policy statements so that we can make some input to the Commission and the institutions of Europe? Does he accept that?
Michael Connarty
I not only accept it; I fully endorse and applaud it. There is a work programme that comes forward from the European Commission, and it is debated in Westminster Hall, but very few people turn up: that is the reality. We have tried to engage a number of Select Committees by referring to them matters of interest to the European Scrutiny Committee, which continues to be chaired ably by the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash). We are trying to engage Select Committees in those issues so that the European Scrutiny Committee and then the House could be advised of any European matters of substance that should be considered.
We could therefore change aspects of the apparatus we use before reaching the point to which the new clause refers, where a Minister is recommending a referendum. When this clause is triggered, the Government will have decided that they want to do whatever it is the referendum has been called to consider. It will be a referendum on a Government proposal, perhaps for a new treaty or a new decision that will change our relationship with Europe.
Let me finish by providing one example. We took a decision a long time ago—it was probably agreed across the Chamber because it was politically sensitive for us not to opt into all of the Amsterdam treaty—whereby we did not become members of the Schengen group of countries. That group is effectively all the European Union countries apart from us. Frontex, the new border police, is now trying to throw a ring around Europe and it is going to be heavily pressurised by migration from other parts of the world—particularly from Africa, and perhaps very quickly from north Africa. We are not a member of Frontex because we are not a Schengen country. We sit on the board—Frontex has been quite nice to us, even though we did not sign up to it—so we asked whether any of our officers engaged in a Frontex operation could have the same protection from prosecution as other Frontex officers. We are told “No, because you are not a member of the Schengen group.” The train is leaving the station very quickly to protect the rest of Europe, and the United Kingdom is running at the back waving a little flag saying “Can we join? But we do not want to be full members.”
We ought to be fully informed of the consequences of decisions such as that. I am not talking about those who are, for reasons of prejudice, Eurosceptic and against doing things on an EU basis, in the belief that they can somehow be done on a bilateral basis with 26 other countries. If we had been fully informed, we would have concluded that membership of Frontex was important enough for us to take the step of joining the Schengen countries and being a real part of Europe.
Although such information and debate would be extremely useful, that will not be made possible by the new clause, and I therefore hope that it will be withdrawn. However, we need to make those changes in the Chamber if our constituents are to understand that we know what we are talking about in Europe, and that we are acting on the basis of analysis and proper information rather than prejudice.
Charlie Elphicke
It is a privilege to follow the extraordinarily interesting and thoughtful speech of the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty). The debate on the new clause has been largely underpinned by a dislike and distrust of the European Union and its works, and I share that distrust. Many Members feel that an organisation that spends vast swathes of our money and imposes massive increases in our budget contributions in return for no obvious value, at a time of great downturn across the continent, is not an organisation that is in touch with this country—or any other country. They do not trust an organisation that feels so remote from the electors of this country and every other country in the European Union. Even in Germany, an increasing number of people are finding the European Union and its works troubling.
Michael Connarty
I could share many happy memories of that lady turning up in Standing Committees of which she was not a member and holding Ministers to account because of her interest in the subject. Cross-border health care, for example, although not her speciality, was a cause célèbre for her.
I compliment the previous Government and the present Government for continuing to send draft Council conclusions to the European Scrutiny Committee. That is what a lot of Members, such as the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), have been talking about—actually seeing the proposals that are before the Council before they are discussed in the Council. The difficulty is that they are “limité” documents and are therefore semi-confidential. If there was a method that allowed a Committee or group of people in Parliament to have that responsibility—as is done in Denmark and Finland—and to interrogate the Minister on those documents, it would be a great step forward.
Mr Lidington
That is certainly an interesting suggestion. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his compliment. We intend to continue the practice of supplying “limité” documents whenever appropriate.
There is sometimes an issue about where the boundary of responsibility should lie between the European Scrutiny Committee and the various departmental Select Committees. If I have one reflection to offer from my experience in the 10 months that I have held my responsibilities, it is that parliamentary debate on this country’s engagement with the EU tends to take place in a metaphorical annexe. It is as though Parliament had constructed a separate, padded building, where the equivalent of the teenagers with their drum kits could get up to what they wanted. There is a serious question to be asked about whether our arrangements do justice to the fact that the European decision-making and legislative process should now be regarded as part of the mainstream of politics in the UK, rather than as something that can be relegated to an annexe.
Michael Connarty
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, whose speeches I always read, if not always hear. He is very erudite and thoughtful in what he proposes, but today he seems to be saying that this Bill should be raised to a higher level than all the others passed by this House, apart from the European Communities Act 1972, which was given that status, which he opposes, by the courts. He is trying to put this Bill on a par with that Act, and although he does not like the process whereby the courts allocate that status, he says that it should also be allocated to this Bill, by this place.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman has half got what I have been saying and has half misconstrued it. I do not think it right that laws passed by Parliament should be put on a different level based on what judges think of them retrospectively. I do not think that that is a democratic way of deciding which law is important and which is unimportant. One may think that the judges will always get it right, but what if they decided that the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 was amazingly important and this Bill was not, so that the 1991 Act could not be impliedly repealed, but one giving people a vote in a referendum could be? What I am saying is that it is better for us to take this power upon ourselves and say, “Okay, this is an important Act. We’re going to put that in, and say that it is exempt from the Parliament Act 1911.”
The hon. Gentleman asked a good question, which is: why start with this particular Bill? The reasons for starting with this Bill are, first, that the judgment putting the 1972 Act on to a higher plane is relatively recent, and secondly, that I was elected to Parliament only last May and have therefore not had the opportunity before to propose such a measure on a major constitutional Bill, other than the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. The reasons for starting with this Bill are because of that judgment, and because I am now in a position to do this. It would have been a good thing to do earlier, on other constitutional Bills, including on devolution to Scotland.
Michael Connarty
First, may I compliment the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) on the eloquence both of the construction of his new clause and of his delivery in arguing for it? I believe that the new clause is flawed. He suggested that the evidence that we had received—he kept referring to Lord Justice Laws’ ruling—was correct, but we received evidence from many other people that it was incorrect. It was suggested that we could not establish two tiers of laws just because a judge decided to make a remark in court, and that all laws, including the European Communities Act 1972, stand the same and can have implied amendment and repeal.
If Parliament decided to pass a law here that was contrary to a ruling, directive or regulation of the European Union, it would still stand as a law. The dilemma would then be whether the European Court of Justice would have the right to overrule that decision or whether we would press on our courts our decision in the new Act, which would cause a judgment to be called for in the European Court. If no one called for such a judgment on an Act that we had passed contrary to a regulation or directive of the European Union, it would continue to apply. It would not be knocked down, and no penalties would be imposed on the UK, unless someone called for the European Court of Justice to make a judgment on that new Act. So it was nonsense to suggest that in 1972 we had suddenly created an Act that was incapable of implied repeal or amendment.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The evidence that we received focused on the “notwithstanding” approach—that is, that one could not accidentally repeal, or move, an Act that was contrary to the 1972 Act; one would have to do it explicitly. That is different from most other Acts of Parliament that can impliedly be repealed. This is where we come back to Lord Justice Laws’ judgment, which has been de facto accepted.
Michael Connarty
Just to remind everyone who reads these tomes, the 1972 Act embodied a decision by this Parliament that laws, directives and regulations drawn up by the European Union should take primacy over an Act covering the same area passed by this Parliament. It was our decision to use our sovereignty to give that primacy as part of the deal of going into the European Union.
My understanding of the evidence is that if we passed an Act that did not contain a “notwithstanding” clause or set out to be a deliberate challenge, and that simply put in place a law that we wished to have, it would have to be challenged and taken to the European Court of Justice before it created any conflict. So the question is: do we accept that that was right and that the judges have the right to do that?
I suggest that if the hon. Member for North East Somerset genuinely wishes to see that change, he should not apply to the good offices of the 1911 Parliament Act. I agree with the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) that it is wrong that we should appeal to an undemocratic institution. I believe that we should look to a justice Act of some kind to determine that judges cannot make such a ruling or decide that there are two kinds of laws in this country. Some people think that the European Union takes up a lot of time, but I think that the more important laws are those that will determine what is going to happen to people’s pensions in this country or to their employment rights. I hope that the hon. Member for North East Somerset will come back to the House with a justice proposal, which I would be happy to support, saying that the courts cannot make a ruling that overrules the right of this democratic Chamber to decide the law of this land.
Austin Mitchell
I am trying to follow the argument, but, being a European argument, it is very difficult to follow. Surely the situation is that if we pass a law that negates the implementation of a European Union law in this country, our courts would have to accept the European Union law rather than ours. We could not pass such a law unless we specifically exempted it from the European Communities Act 1972.
Michael Connarty
My hon. Friend’s point is correct, but that is not what we are talking about. He describes a situation in which this or any Government decided to challenge the original decision. A law could be passed that would continue to run contrary to European Union law; I believe that that is happening in many countries. We and the Norwegians are the most obsessed with trying to get everything right in terms of fitting in with European directives. A challenge could be made, however, and we would then have to decide whether it was right for us to negotiate a change in the relationship or to abandon our law and accept the ruling of the European Union. At the moment, that does not happen.
My main point is that we in this democratically elected Chamber can overturn these decisions at any time if we have the will to do so. We are not bound by them for ever. Like any other law, we will be able to challenge this legislation in this Chamber, which is why I do not believe that we have to go through the rather tortuous, although eloquently described, process of applying an amendment to the Parliament Act 1911.
On the ability of the Lords to protect us from changes to our democracy, they have not protected us from this shabby coalition, which is proposing a law that would guarantee that the coalition would run for five years—a proposal that I spoke against in the first debate in this place after the election—unless the shabby minority part of that shabby coalition, the Liberal Democrats, decide to pull it down, because no other person in this place could do that. If the Lords could protect us from that, I might have more confidence in the 1911 Act.
Mr Cash
I should like to endorse the general thrust of the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), although I must qualify that slightly by saying that I do not take the view that there is a difference between different types of statute. However, that does not make a material difference to the thrust of his argument, which is that we must at all costs preserve the right of this House ultimately to make the decisions. Indeed, in the 1870s—it might have been earlier—the statesman John Bright put forward the proposition that led to the Parliament Act 1911, some 30 years before it was implemented, precisely because he did not believe in privilege, in aristocracy or in the House of Lords as it was then constituted.
The reality is that we can achieve the objectives by adopting the new clause without necessarily accepting that the House of Lords could not become an elected body if that were the view of this House in due course. I do not accept the proposition put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) because so long as we have a second Chamber, the House of Lords will be the House of Lords—irrespective of whether it is elected.
The question of constitutional statutes has been introduced as a notion, but it is not intrinsic to the argument. What is essential is to ensure that we do not allow the Supreme Court to adjudicate over and above the decisions taken by our Parliament. That is the key issue. Some futile commentators—and, if I may say so, some Members of this House—mislead themselves from time to time by suggesting that sovereignty is not such an important issue. The reason for its importance is very simple: we Members are elected to make decisions, and all the other issues, such as dealing with burdens on business and so forth, stem from that. That explains my view of the European Union, which is that, where necessary, the sovereign Parliament should override through the “notwithstanding” formula to which my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset rightly referred and which I have employed on a number of occasions when I have been supported by Conservative Front-Bench Members—for example, when we were in opposition and with respect to the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, and on other occasions.
What we need to insist on above all—it cropped up in the previous debate—is that this House on behalf of the electorate represents the democratic process whereby we are voted in to make decisions. We must insist on that at the expense of judicial supremacy. Even though I am the first to say that it is for the courts to interpret legislation, it is not for them to make it. That is the fundamental point. I thoroughly endorse both the sentiments and the wording of the new clause.
Chris Heaton-Harris
Well, they do have a say through the Government they elect, and the Government do negotiate these things in the multi-annual packages. As I said in a debate on a previous new clause, this is one way of making sure that if the Government decided it was practical for us to have a rise in the amount of money being spent in the European institutions, the people would have a say on how much it would be. I accept that own resources is covered in some ways in the Bill, but I thought I would phrase the new clause in such a way that it would give the Minister a chance to tell the House exactly what the British Government’s views are on matters of taxation coming in at the European level. My new clause would at least introduce the principle of referendums on own resources decisions bringing about substantial changes in EU taxation, and require future Governments to go through a more exacting process to agree to such changes, which would expend significant political capital if they were proposing something clearly out of line with what the British people want.
The new clauses address the crux of the debate, which is the scrutiny of European matters. We in this place do not do scrutiny half as well as we should. On Third Reading, I hope to speak about how we might improve scrutiny and what the Government should do.
Michael Connarty
I want to speak briefly in support of new clauses 3, 4 and 5. They get to the meat of the discussion we should have been having with the Government before they introduced this silly Bill. It is silly because it is never likely to be used, as there are so many ways that a Government Minister of any political complexion who wishes to continue with the European project can get measures through Parliament, such as by saying that they are insignificant or that it is not necessary to have an Act of Parliament. Therefore, I do not think that the Bill’s measures will be used a great deal. It is based on the premise that the Government want to put in place the measures they introduce, and presumably a Government of any complexion will know that they need a majority in the House in order to introduce any measure that they might decide is significant enough to be dealt with by a referendum or an Act of Parliament.
In reality, therefore, the Bill is a bit of a public relations exercise. But the new clauses are not. They would address the things that are wrong at the moment with the process of dealing with the emergency brake. It should be in place and it should be used properly in a way that gives a Government a chance to speak on behalf of their Parliament and their people in the Council in a fundamental way. New clauses 3 and 4 are very attractive, because would give teeth and meat—a bit of beef—to a Bill that lacks that completely. The Bill is a list of things which might be on the mind of the body politic and perhaps the anti-European press, but it does not have any substance. The new clauses have substance, as they lay out clearly how the brake should be used.
There is absolutely no doubt that new clause 5 is necessary. It deals with a tax and we should have had a similar clause, somewhere along the line, on the giving away of our social security rights. It is clear that people who come to this country to work see social security as an extra payment that does not come out of the pocket of their employer. When someone leaves their family back in Poland, where they still have their house, to come to this country to work, they get all the benefits required under our social security legislation—tax credits, child tax credits and so on—which they often send back home. They also often end up with a council house, because they then bring their family to this country and live in overcrowded conditions, and they leave their house back there being paid for by the British taxpayer. All those things might have been examined seriously if we had had a provision such as new clause 5 to deal with how social security would transfer.
Clearly the own resources arrangement is a tax and will be about creating a European tax as a substitute for VAT. I have been at conferences and seminars called by the Commission in other countries to press that point heavily, and thank goodness Treasury officials were there to argue hard against such an arrangement. We might say that it was one of the three red lines, because we said that tax was a red line that would not be crossed. However, the own resources debate will clearly be pressed again and again by the Commission, which will try to convince us that the proposed arrangement is not a breach of one of those red lines. New clause 5 would put up a nice barrier that we would have to cross purposefully and decisively if we wanted to move away from that red line. I commend the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) for his tenacity, even at this late stage, in tabling well thought-out new clauses. I do not think that they come from a Eurosceptic, anti-European view; they would just be common sense and make good legislation.
Mr Cash
I wish to speak about my amendment 1, because it is important not only in principle, but in practice as we move forward on the negotiations taking place on two main issues. The first is European economic governance as a whole and the other is the, as yet, unformulated competitiveness package, which is coming up in the lift and being promoted vigorously in some other parts of the European Union.
The issue turns on the Bill’s proposal for the circumstances in which a treaty or an article 48(6) decision attracts a referendum. Under clause 4(4)(b), we would not have a referendum where
“the making of any provision that applies only to member States other than the United Kingdom”
came into play. It might sound obvious that we would not want to have a referendum if it did not affect us but, unfortunately, that rather innocuous wording raises a substantial and profound problem.
I remember Chancellor Kohl talking in the 1990s about the need to move forward with a two-tier Europe and he used the analogy of a convoy. The Minister for Europe is doubtless aware of what is coming up in the lift, but he should also be very worried about it because it is one of the greatest and most serious problems that we face. Many people, including distinguished commentators from the Financial Times and other newspapers, take an interest in these matters and get to the root of what is going on in Europe at the moment. Rather than merely having a convoy of ships travelling at different speeds with the slowest eventually being required to catch up—that was Chancellor Kohl’s analogy—these proposals on European economic governance are the equivalent of having an aircraft carrier of the eurozone and a rowing boat of the other member states that are left behind.
I do not believe for one minute that we should be in any way trapped or lured—to use the Prime Minister’s words—into engaging in the kind of European economic governance proposals that apply to the eurozone or to the competitiveness package on their own merits. Given the record of the European Union, neither has worked, is likely to work or will work. But there is a danger in our acquiescing in allowing the other member states to go ahead by participating in the given procedure, be it the ordinary legislative procedure, the special procedure, the special purposes vehicle or something that arises by virtue of a treaty. The key test is whether it
“substantially affects all or any of the political, economic, fiscal, social or constitutional relationship between the United Kingdom and other Member States of the European Union.”
That is how my amendment 1 puts it.
If something falls into that category, as I firmly believe these proposals do, it clearly affects our fundamental relationship with the European Union in such a way as to require a referendum. We went through the arguments about the constitutional treaty and all that followed from it, and we went through the subsequent arguments about the Lisbon treaty and insisted on a referendum on it, because these things affected this fundamental relationship. I am talking about the Conservative party, rather than the coalition, which is quite a different thing. The basis on which we presented our argument for a referendum was that the treaty was creating a fundamental difference in the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union.
I cannot think of anything more likely to demonstrate that fundamental difference than the implementation of these procedures, irrespective of the legal niceties of defining the transfer of powers or competences—I could argue that there is, but that is not the issue I am raising. I am saying that the key question is the substance of what is being done, not merely the choice of specific words employed—not in the Bill, but merely in the coalition agreement—about the transfer of powers or competences. I defy anybody to find the words in the Bill which say that wherever there is a transfer of power or competence there will be a referendum. That is not what the Bill says; it chooses a list of circumstances, specifically but not generically, where a referendum will be required. That is a fatal flaw in the Bill, but the real problem is the substance of what is being decided in a given treaty or article 48(6) arrangement. To my mind, the creation of a two-tier Europe, with the United Kingdom bound into it by acquiescence, puts us at risk because it creates the aircraft carrier of Europe and we are left in the rowing boat.
European Union Bill
Michael Connarty Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Jenkin
Yes, and without wishing to digress, I point out that Lord Phillips, the current president of the Supreme Court, qualified article 9 of the Bill of Rights in a recent judgment by suggesting that the doctrine of implied repeal applies to it. The Supreme Court is questioning the Bill of Rights itself, and if we are not aware of how parliamentary sovereignty is now being questioned, we are not living in the real world.
I listened to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) say that the clause merely reaffirmed the status quo, but the status quo is not a static situation. It is constantly fluid, and the rather lame attempt in the clause to address the situation is causing great concern.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
I could not resist coming into the Chamber when I saw the hon. Gentleman’s name on the board. Could he explain to me how the status quo has changed since 1972, when Parliament basically took the decision to give primacy to EU law?
Mr Jenkin
What has changed is the nature of the legal order in the EU and the UK’s relationship with that legal order. If it had been explained to Parliament in 1971, when the European Communities Bill was progressing through the House, that in future a UK court would be able to strike down an Act of Parliament in the name of the European Union, there would never have been any possibility that we would have joined. The development of the European legal order, with the huge number and range of powers that have been passed over from the UK to the EU, means that I fail to see what competences the EU does not now possess that it could ever possibly need in order to become a fully fledged state. If the hon. Gentleman does not recognise that the situation is fluid, I think he is living on another planet. He had better listen to the rest of my speech.
We know where sovereignty lies in the British constitution—here in Parliament. Under a written constitution, it does not necessarily lie with the people, although the authority to exercise it might lie with the people. I would argue that the authority of Parliament’s sovereignty also rests with the people. Under the American constitution, sovereignty is dispersed among various institutions but ultimately rests with the judges. If we moved towards a written constitution, we would overturn the democratic constitutional settlement that we have enjoyed in this country and that has given us such flexibility and agility for 300 years. We would lock ourselves into a judicial system, which was fundamentally undemocratic because it would be ruled by judges, not the British people.
Mr Jenkin
We sought alternative legal advice and were assured that, in all probability, the domestic British courts would uphold Parliament’s sovereignty and ability to suspend those legal enactments. But that is the point. We might have it now, but will we have it in the future?
Michael Connarty
Is the hon. Gentleman not willing to tell the full tale? The power given to the Commission under European Union law allowed it to stop France banning the import of our beef when it was cleared of infection. Is it not useful to have a common law that everyone agrees can be enforced in the other 26 countries? Without that, we might not be selling beef to Europe to this day.
Mr Jenkin
I fully accept that there is an argument and a balance of interests to be struck. The hon. Gentleman is arguing that it is always in our interests to accept a European Community legal order, but I am suggesting, quite reasonably, that it might not be. There might come a time when it is not in our interest to accept a European legal decision. Sadly, Governments tend to be driven by such a fear of confrontation with the EU that they will agree to anything in the long term. That is what has been happening, and this Government are thinking, “We have so many difficult fish to fry at the moment, we had better not confront them on this. This is the important thing we have to go for.” As a result, more and more power seeps away, and I put it to him that sooner or later that has to stop.
As Martin Howe QC said in evidence to the European Scrutiny Committee, the Bill might stop us on the escalator, but it does not stop the escalator going up. A constant stream of powers and functions—not new competences or changes in voting arrangements that will trigger referendums—is still travelling in one direction to the EU. It is in the textbooks: it is called the doctrine of the occupied field. Once a power has been gained by the EU, the EU can only delegate it back to member states; member states cannot get it back. It is a doctrine formulated, of course, by the European Court of Justice in order constantly to consolidate the federal character of the EU.
The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Before I call the next speaker, let me remind the Committee that the debate will end at 10 pm. I want to ensure that the Minister has sufficient time in which to answer all the questions that have been put to him, and that the mover of the amendment has time to reply. May I ask the remaining speakers to bear that in mind?
Michael Connarty
As you see, Ms Primarolo, I am surrounded by a large number of papers. I have asked many questions during my time as a member of the European Scrutiny Committee, and I hope that I shall not need to rehearse much of the evidence that we received. I hope that Members have taken the trouble to read that evidence rather than merely bringing their prejudices to the Chamber, warmed up for the day.
This is a joke Bill, and clause 18 is the biggest joke in it. It is a silly Bill. As we have already heard, it gives us no ability to change anything. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) quoted a Member who said today that at least the clause did no harm. In fact, it does nothing positive at all.
I respect the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd), who has often spoken very emotionally about sovereignty and our Parliament’s ability to hold back the tide of European power. He emphasised that repeatedly during our debate on the Lisbon treaty, and he spoke very well tonight about many principles that we all hold dear. The joke lies in the suggestion that those principles—of self-government, the will of the people, and the things that we wish to do—have been filtered through clause 18 to give it some force, for it is clear that the clause makes no difference to what went before or what will come afterwards. Section 2(1) of the European Communities Act 1972 gave primacy to EU law by the will of this Parliament. That will continue, regardless of whether we pass the Bill—and in particular, regardless of clause 18.
The joke is also being played on the Eurosceptics on the Back Benches, and I think that they know it. The joke is being played on them by the Government, who are suggesting that the clause somehow constitutes a response to the promises that they gave to their constituents. They are saying, “This Conservative-led Government will give you back some kind of sovereignty.” As was pointed out by the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), if we pass clause 18, these matters may be judged in court. Professor Tomkins said in his evidence that this was a dangerous clause because it put down a written constitutional principle, and any principle that is written down can then be challenged in court. The measure may therefore tempt Back Benchers to go to court when they feel they are not getting a hearing from Front Benchers.
If the Eurosceptics did not put their careers, and maybe their finances, before their principles, the true solution for them would be to leave the Conservative party, which is clearly not a Eurosceptic party—it is not going to challenge European sovereignty—and to join the UK Independence party instead. They could then try to build up UKIP into a force that people might vote for. It would be a party that wished to change things fundamentally by opposing and overturning the 1972 Act—perhaps by making laws in this place that challenge and ignore current EU law, as the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) suggested—and thereby causing that to be judged in a court of law. Would a judge strike it down or not? Would the European Court of Justice try to strike it down by some other means?
That would come about only if UKIP Members were in the majority here in Parliament. It will not come about under this Government. The terrible thing is that this is a joke being played on the British people—on the people who voted for a Conservative party that cloaked itself in Euroscepticism without ever meaning to deliver any change in the relationship between the EU and this Parliament.
When the Lisbon treaty went through I said that it marked a tipping point, in that it was tipping power to Europe in a way that could not be changed unless we changed the 1972 Act, because we cannot get out of the deals that have been done. I was Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee at the time, and I think the rest of the Committee agreed with me.
I happen to like the progress that has been made, however, as I am a Europhile. I think that Europe is our saviour, rather than our enemy. I think that as part of Europe we will go forward as a stronger community and with a better culture than we would have if we broke away from Europe. I have no wish to see my world shrunk politically or culturally, or for the people’s rights, defended by Europe, to be taken away by our going back into partisan fights between right-wing capitalists and left-wing statists.
Mr MacNeil
Is the hon. Gentleman in favour of Europe—Brussels—being the sovereign Parliament, or London or Scotland? As a Scottish MP and a Scottish Member of the southern Parliament, where does he want the major power to reside—Edinburgh, London or Brussels?
Michael Connarty
When I observe the behaviour of the current Scottish National party Government in Scotland, I see my world—where I live—shrinking. I see it shrinking to the point of stupidity, wrapped up in trivia and false history. That has no attraction for me at all. The forces of nationalism are very dangerous, particularly in small countries.
The Second Deputy Chairman
Order. Hon. Members are fully aware that only one Member should be on their feet at any one time, rather than everyone standing up and shouting together. Mr Connarty has the Floor. Perhaps Members will bear that in mind, and perhaps they will also bear in mind the clock, in order to ensure that the final Member to be called gets a chance to speak.
Michael Connarty
I certainly will bear that in mind. I am very aware of the clock, and I think—
Michael Connarty
The hon. Gentleman is showing why my world is shrinking. The bullying culture of nationalism is very fierce.
The Second Deputy Chairman
That is enough. Mr Connarty has the Floor. I ask the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) to be quiet and to listen to the debate.
Michael Connarty
I am grateful, but I really do not need protection from the bullies on the Scottish nationalist Benches.
I believe that this joke is very serious and dangerous. The Front-Bench team can be very persuasive, and it has to convince people that this Bill, and in particular this clause, changes things—but it does not.
Michael Connarty
I will at the appropriate time. I specifically chose the questions that I asked again and again in the evidence sessions: will clause 18 change the way in which the courts interpret their duty to review legislation in the light of EU law under the European Communities Act—and if not, what is the point of having it? I asked that of everyone who came to give evidence, and they all said that the clause would not change things; when pressed, they said that it would make no difference. In fact, it is a restatement of where we are, and I accept where we are. This is not about giving up sovereignty to the EU or to anyone else; it is about our deciding in this House that we would give the EU power to make laws within certain spheres and that the laws then passed would have primacy. But it is the choice of this Parliament, and if this Parliament chooses to take back that power by doing something that says, “We will challenge this,” we are able to do so.
The arrangement is not changed by this clause, but the clause is dangerous because it attempts to con the British people into thinking that it makes a difference. It is also dangerous because Professor Tomkins is right. He is a professor at the university of Glasgow, but he gives advice on constitutional affairs to the House of Lords and he has said that the clause invites a challenge and puts into a Bill something that people will use, perhaps for mischief or for some other reasons.
The clause does not change anything. We have these powers, and we could take them and use them; to put them into a Bill is to mislead people. That is shown in every piece of evidence now lying around me on this Bench: everyone we asked either said that in their written submission or answered the question by saying that it was true that the clause did not make a difference. I listened to the speech made by the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison), and he not only made some good points that agree with what I am saying, but cited some of the evidence that we received from the professors and others, who all said that the clause would make no difference.
It is not right to debate this matter without referring to the amendments, because that is the purpose of this section of the debate. The amendments in the name of the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) and others just add to the confusion. They have drafted something that pretends to be different from the current situation but is not. Adding comments about common law and about preambles before the clause does not change the clause; it just says that under a law that those in this Parliament passed by their sovereign right we gave away certain primacy in law to the EU under section 2(1) of the 1972 Act. What we put before this, or what we put after it, does not make any difference.
Why does a Bill that says, “We will give the people of this country power to make choices, and power over the EU when it makes a proposal,” not contain the right to have a referendum on enlargement treaties? Such treaties are the only ones that will definitely come before this Parliament in the next period, and probably for a very long time after the Lisbon treaty. Why does this Bill not say that that power to have a referendum is going to be given to this Parliament? Why does the Bill not provide an automatic decision that such a referendum must be held? It is because the Government are playing a joke, not only on the people in this place but on all the people of the United Kingdom. If the Government were serious, that provision would be in the Bill. If they were serious, the Bill would contain something different from this clause. The amendments in the name of the hon. Member for Stone and others would not change that.
However, amendment 52, which was tabled by the Leader of the Opposition, is worth supporting because it proposes that the Government will report annually on how much of this Bill has been used to challenge anything coming from Europe. That would give everyone a chance to see whether the Bill is the joke that I say it is, or something of substance. I challenge the Government to accept the amendment. If they are serious and really think—I cannot imagine how deluded they would be to think this—that clause 18 makes a difference, I urge them to accept amendment 52, because we would then have a serious matter before us. We would have a Bill approved by the Government that would not just be a waste of time, because it would allow us, and the people of Britain, to judge annually whether it is a waste of time. That would make a major difference where nothing else would.
I am not angry about this, because I already believed that this is what would happen if we ever got a Conservative Government. I said that from the Government Benches as the Lisbon treaty went through, and I said to the person who is now Foreign Secretary and others that if the Conservatives ever got power they would not be the Eurosceptics that they pretended to be in opposition. This Bill and this clause show how true that is.
Mr Lidington
That enforces the need for us to put on a statutory basis the position that European law has effect here solely because of parliamentary decision and not any other source of authority.
Michael Connarty
Clause 18 says that we gave away our primacy in terms of European law in section 2(1) of the 1972 Act. What is being done in the clause to take back from Europe the power that the people were promised would be taken back?
Mr Lidington
The hon. Gentleman is pre-empting the next section of my speech in which I want to make it clear what clause 18 does not do. I am not going to try to pretend to the Committee that it seeks to accomplish things that it does not do and is not intended to do.
The clause does not alter the existing relationship between European and UK domestic law, nor does it affect the primacy of EU law—a concept developed by the European Court of Justice well in advance of our membership of the European Community, and to which this Parliament gave effect in UK law as defined under section 2(4) of the European Communities Act 1972. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex was right to say, in quoting Martin Howe, that the clause would not stop the escalator, but that it would stop things getting any worse, as my hon. Friend would describe it, than the current position. It is worth saying that although Mr Howe made that comment about the escalator, he also said:
“In my view Clause 18 as presently drafted is valuable and is almost certainly sufficient to achieve its intended purpose of preventing judicial drift towards the erosion of the doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty.”
As our judges have recognised to date, Parliament remains free to amend or repeal the 1972 Act, or indeed other Act of Parliament, at any time. But of course the political reality is that if we chose to repeal the 1972 Act or to disapply unilaterally a particular piece of European Union legislation, there would be a serious crisis in terms of this country’s relationship with the European Union. That might be a state of affairs that some hon. Members would wish to bring about and see as an opportunity, but that is not the Government’s aspiration.
Clause 18 will also not alter the rights and obligations assumed by the United Kingdom on becoming a member of the EU, and it will be in line with the practice of other member states such as Germany, whose federal constitutional court ruled in 1993, in the case of Brunner v. European Union, that Community law applies in Germany only because laws passed by the German Parliament say that it does. Similarly, in Denmark the supreme court held in its judgment of 6 April 1998 in the case of Carlsen v. Rasmussen that Community law applies in Denmark only by reason of, and to the extent permitted by, the Danish constitution. Therefore, although they have a different constitutional framework from that of our country, other member states have given effect to EU law through sovereign acts.
I want briefly to deal with two challenges that were made to the Government’s case: Professor Tomkins’s comments about partial legislation being worse than no legislation at all, and why we do not explicitly make this provision an amendment to the 1972 Act. On Professor Tomkins’s argument, we disagree with his conclusion. The Government are clear about the particular mischief that we are seeking to address, which is to put beyond speculation the fact that this country has a dualist system and that the rights and obligations under the EU treaty, in order to be justiciable before our courts, have to be incorporated in our system through an Act of Parliament. It has never been the Government’s intention in bringing forward this legislation to address the broader issues of potential challenge to parliamentary sovereignty over things such as human rights legislation or the impact of the devolution settlements, to which the European Scrutiny Committee drew attention in its reports.
Oral Answers to Questions
Michael Connarty Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Lidington
My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who leads for us on these matters, is very clear that the priority for the people of the United Kingdom should be the maintenance of our own domestic controls over our borders and not giving control of immigration policy to European institutions.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
I am amazed to find out that Schengen has anything to do with the External Action Service. I certainly welcome the Minister’s balanced approach to this matter. In fact, is it not true that in other parts of the EU the complaint is that there is far too much British influence in the diplomatic corps of the European External Action Service? Surely we must commend that, because it will bring a UK perspective to the actions in the EEAS that we should welcome.
Mr Lidington
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that that complaint is frequently heard in Brussels and in other European capitals. What I would say to those Members of the House, on both sides, who, like me—I freely admit it—voted against the establishment of the EEAS is that now that this body exists we should do all that is within our power to help shape it so that it can be used to give greater leverage to British influence throughout the world.
European External Action Service
Michael Connarty Excerpts(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box for the first time when I have been in the Chamber. I believe that Labour went through eight Ministers for Europe, so he may have a longer tenure than some of ours; I am sure that he will do his best. Just for the record, when we sent this document for debate before the election there was, as he mentioned, a bid from the European Parliament for three deputies—I believe it calls them secretaries-general—and hearings. Could he explain to the House exactly what the final agreement was on the accountability of the EEAS to the European Parliament? I note that this has all gone through and been rubber-stamped by this Government, without this Parliament having a European Scrutiny Committee to ask them to make themselves accountable to their Parliament. So nobody knows what the Minister agreed when he went to Europe.
Mr Lidington
I regret the fact that the European Scrutiny Committee in the Commons has not yet been re-established, so there has not been the opportunity for a debate within that Committee before the House as a whole was invited to take a decision. I took responsibility for deciding that the best way forward in the circumstances was to make provision, through the usual channels, for a debate on the Floor of the House, so that all Members had the opportunity to debate this matter before the recess. Had we delayed bringing this forward for debate until the autumn, there would have been at least equal cause for complaint on the part of right hon. and hon. Members.
The hon. Gentleman asked me about the accountability of the EEAS to the European Parliament. It will be accountable in financial terms to the European Parliament, in the same way as other organisations within the EU are accountable for the way in which they spend European Union money. The High Representative is going to make verbal reports to the European Parliament at regular intervals, but she is not accountable to it in policy terms, nor will it have the right to vet, or hold the equivalent of confirmation hearings on, the appointment of heads of EU delegations to various capitals around the world.
Mr Lidington
My hon. Friend invites me to trespass on some policy areas that are properly the responsibility of other Government Departments, but I will not be tempted too far in that direction. The Government are collectively committed to seeking the greatest possible value for money from every part of the European Union organisation and to ensuring that pressure from within European Union institutions to extend competence is resisted. I hope that my hon. Friend will be reassured, too, if I repeat to him now that it is the Government’s intention later this year to introduce legislation, as promised in the coalition’s programme for government, to require a referendum and a vote by the people of the United Kingdom before any future treaty change that transfers further powers from this House to European institutions.
Michael Connarty
In keeping with what has been called the “tick-box approach”—an approach that won the European Scrutiny Committee the inquisitor of the year award, which has never been won when a Conservative has held the position of Chair—I want to point out that the Minister has not answered the question. The bid from the European Parliament was to have three deputy secretaries-general from each of the political parties in the European Parliament who would substitute for the High Representative. What happened to that bid?
Mr Lidington
That proposal did not succeed. The position on deputising when the High Representative is absent will depend very much on the area of competence involved in that meeting. The High Representative will have three options. She will be able to appoint a senior member of her official team, once that team is in place, to speak in her place. She will be able to ask a fellow commissioner to represent her when the item being discussed is something that properly under the treaty falls to the competence of the Commission. When it comes to a matter to do with foreign or security policy, she is also free to invite the Foreign Minister of a member state to act on her behalf. I hope that I am not breaking some confidences if I say that she is already making good use of that last option. She has asked the Foreign Minister of Hungary to stand in for her at a forthcoming meeting between the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. We have an example there of member states being seen to be clearly in the driving seat and of powers not simply being ceded automatically to the supranational institutions.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
I am sensitive about intruding on private grief, but I am witnessing the acting out of a scenario in which a Minister who takes a very positive approach to issues relating to the European Union is surrounded by a large number of Eurosceptic Members of Parliament who had previously imagined that they were serving under a Eurosceptic Government. The words “a cosy consensus” have been used, but I am not sure that that is what it is. I see it more as the sweet breeze of EU realism blowing through the Conservative Government.
The fact is that the Lisbon treaty is in force, and will not be overturned. In a speech that I made on the issue, I described the treaty as a “tipping point” in the balance of power between Brussels and the national Parliaments. I hope that there will be a rearrangement of power, and that a triangulation of forces will eventually return to us more power than the Commission, and indeed the European Parliament, want us to have.
For me, the key issue is the scope of the European External Action Service. Paragraph 36 of the European Scrutiny Committee’s 18th report of 2009-10, published before the election, stated:
“Given the importance of this proposal, which—the Minister’s assurances on consular protection notwithstanding”—
the then Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), is sitting in front of me now—
“is nonetheless likely to be the most significant change in the conduct of British foreign policy for many years, we consider that this debate should be on the Floor of the House.”
I still believe that that is the case.
We have encountered the question of accountability. While an election was taking place in this country, the European Parliament was using its powers under the Lisbon treaty to advance a case relating to the question of the three deputy secretaries who would substitute for the High Representative. That case was rejected, but in fact the European Parliament achieved a great deal more. There was a second Council decision following the one on the matter that was eventually referred to the Council on 9 July.
The European Parliament saw an opportunity to make a bold opening gambit in relation to those who would be substitutes and guardians, or protectors, of the High Representative. It used the fact that staffing regulations, finance regulations and the EEAS budget would be subject to the European Parliament’s powers of co-decision to advance a strong argument that it should be consulted on matters such as the common foreign and security policy. That, of course, will be subject to unanimous agreement in the Council, but the Parliament has inserted itself into the process to great effect. The Lisbon treaty gave it the opportunity to enhance its ability to influence the politics and policy of a major institution.
The second decision, as the Minister said, was that the High Representative would
“seek the views of the European Parliament on the main aspects and basic choices of policy”.
The Council decided that the European Parliament would have to be consulted on policies such as the common security and defence policy, and on questions relating to the basic organisation of the EEAS central administration and political accountability. It is clear that we have not only had an election, but failed to establish any scrutiny arrangements in this Parliament.
The European Parliament clearly views that agreement as meaning that it will have a significantly greater influence on EU foreign policy in the future. That is where we have arrived after the stages through which we have gone. The Parliament has gained considerable ground. It may not have made all the gains that it demanded, but I do not think that it wanted them anyway. It wanted to make the service accountable to it.
We now need assurances from the Government that they will defend not just the common foreign and security policy and the common security and defence policy, but the right of this Parliament to scrutinise what they do and hold them to account when they go to the Council. That might serve as some small protection against a European Parliament that might otherwise take complete control of this policy and this service in the future.
European Affairs
Michael Connarty Excerpts(14 years, 6 months ago)
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Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
I may be anticipating what the Foreign Secretary will say, but at the moment, many items are available as opt-ins, particularly on criminal law and so on. There will be many cases over the next few years in which the choice will be either to opt-in or to withdraw from a whole section of a treaty. Will those be dealt with so that the House is given a vote on whether the Government should opt in or opt out?
Mr Hague
They will certainly demand a lot of examination in the House. In the coalition agreement, we have committed to approaching further criminal justice legislation on a case-by-case basis. The UK has the right to decide whether to participate in new EU justice and home affairs measures, so we will give careful consideration to whether to opt-in to new measures in those areas while at the same time ensuring that the UK’s security is maintained and our civil liberties are protected, and that the integrity of our criminal justice system is preserved.
We recognise the importance of Parliament having adequate time to scrutinise those opt-in decisions. In all but the most exceptional cases, that means that we will not opt-in to any new measure in the first eight weeks following its publication, to give Parliament time to give a considered opinion. The hon. Gentleman will know that we are looking at how to improve parliamentary scrutiny of decision-making in Europe, and the positions that this Government or any future Government take at European councils. Indeed, we would welcome his views, as a distinguished former Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, on how those procedures can be improved. I know that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House would welcome hearing from the hon. Gentleman.
Mr Hague
I very much agree. It cannot be taken for granted that the problems have been solved. The 5+2 conditions necessary for the closure of the office of the High Representative have not yet been satisfied. As I have often said, I believe that European nations will have to be more forceful about this, and we will have to be prepared to push as well as pull some people in the western Balkans towards EU membership.
Mr Hague
I have given way for the last time: I owe it to the House to allow the shadow Foreign Secretary and others to speak.
We continue to support the negotiations to re-unify the island of Cyprus—I am pleased that they restarted last week. Although we do not underestimate the difficulties, it would be very greatly in the interest of both communities on the island for those talks to succeed.
The House will also want to know about the institutional aspect of the EU’s external relations, the establishment of the European External Action Service. As the House will know, my party did not support the creation of the External Action Service, but it is now a fact. We warned that its creation would not necessarily lead to greater inter-institutional harmony in Brussels and that has unfortunately proved to be the case so far. It is now our task to ensure that the service is both useful to the nations of Europe and respects the role of national diplomatic services. The European Parliament has made its suggestions on how the service is to be organised, and there are discussions on the matter with the High Representative and the Spanish presidency. I hope that the European Parliament will recognise that the service will be a success only if it commands the confidence of member states. That is a crucial consideration.
The High Representative has made a good start to her very challenging role. We wished her well when she embarked on the task, and we look forward to working with her closely in the future.
The last Conservative Government left a considerable legacy in the European Union: the creation of the single market; the enlargement from nine to 15 members; and the setting in train of further eastwards enlargement. I will not take away from the last Government their achievement in helping to complete that enlargement, but in other respects their legacy is to be regretted: the alienation of the British public from the EU; the failure to stand up for Britain’s interests on the budget, and so on. The new Government have started as we mean to continue—with activity and energy in European affairs. We will play our role with enthusiasm, while vigorously advancing our country’s interests and never taking the British people for granted.
David Miliband
The hon. Gentleman says, from a sedentary position, that we should reduce them, but he will know that the 2004-05 budget deal agreed for the first time that British and French net contributions should be more or less equal. That had never been achieved before under any previous Government.
Michael Connarty
Is it not true that not only did it allow the accession of the A8 countries, plus Malta and Cyprus, because they had problems with the budget proposed before that, but it changed fundamentally the basis of the common agricultural policy, so that we did not continue to plough money into the agricultural surpluses, but put the money into development in the countries joining? It was a fundamental change that was necessary for Europe, and one that was beneficial in the long run to the UK.
David Miliband
My hon. Friend speaks with all the authority of a former Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee. Of course, the change was twofold: first, the shift in industrial and infrastructure support into the A8 countries and, secondly, the creation for the first time of the second pillar of the CAP—the pillar devoted not to agricultural subsidy, but to rural development. The previous Government set out a clear plan for how the CAP should be reformed, so that there was spending on rural development and rural support, notably with an environmental, green and climate change focus. The market-distorting aspects of the CAP—the so-called first pillar—were reduced. So I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention.
David Miliband
It is important to point out that there is now a net outflow of European workers from the UK, according to the latest figures, which were published at the end of last month. That reflects quite a lot about our economy. It is also important to say that other European citizens are required to work and pay taxes for 12 months in the UK before they are entitled to claim benefits. That is an important part of the compact. I accept that there are rights, but it is important not to forget that there are also responsibilities attendant on migration within the European Union.
Michael Connarty
It is also worth putting on record that the Single European Act, signed by Margaret Thatcher, gave people the right to travel and work within the European Union. That changed the fundamental structure in which people now operate in the EU. It was not the Labour Government who decided that; it was decided long before we came to power.
David Miliband
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I want to refer back to the exchange between my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) and the Foreign Secretary. It is not often that he is stalled in his stride, but my hon. Friend managed to stall him by pointing out that his new-found enthusiasm for referendums on any transfer of competence, however small, stands in stark contrast to his loyal vote for the Maastricht treaty under his then Government. It also stands in stark contrast to all those Conservative Members who were in the House during the passage of the Single European Act and who loyally stuck to British parliamentary convention. That is, that we are a parliamentary democracy and that when there are fundamental transfers of power around the euro, for example, there should, of course, be a referendum, as all parties have agreed. It is the job of this Parliament, however, to scrutinise, debate and to vote on any other matters.
Although I shall not devote a long section of my speech to this subject today, we look forward to long debates about how the Foreign Secretary will justify spending £80 million to £100 million on referendums, for example, on a change in the organisation of the pension committee of the European Parliament, which is one consequence of the new-found policy adopted by the Government. We will have particular fun in asking the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who has long stood for a high degree of European integration, to explain why that is a good use of taxpayers’ money.
Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)
I welcome the Foreign Secretary and the Minister for Europe to the Front Bench. I think that I speak for the whole House—or certainly for this side of the House—in saying that we now have a very strong team at the Foreign Office which will stand up for the United Kingdom’s interest in Europe as well as the UK’s interest in the wider world. It is with some sadness that I say I am speaking probably for the last time with you in the Chair, Sir Alan. We will miss you in that particular position, but I am sure that we will none the less see a lot of you around the House, which we look forward to in the future.
The Foreign Secretary spoke at some length about democracy and what could be described as a democratic deficit in European affairs, particularly in the European Union. I want to speak a little about what I see as a democratic deficit in common security and defence policy in the EU. There are a lot of good words on the role of national Parliaments in the Lisbon treaty, but there is little substance or structure on that subject. Sadly, one of the last dying acts of the previous Government—on the last day that this House sat before the general election was declared—was the announcement that they were signing the death warrant of an organisation called the Western European Union, and with it parliamentary scrutiny of European security and defence policy and common foreign and security policy.
Let me take a few moments to explain to colleagues what the Western European Union was, as it was the forerunner of the European Union. Its history dates back to 1948. The Brussels treaty was modified in 1954 to make the WEU an effective defence pact, and it participated in the early stages of the Balkans and Gulf wars. Then, 10 years ago, the European Union decided that it would transfer the functions of the WEU to the European Union, including the transfer of its military staff and its satellite centre, and the Western European Armaments Group effectively became the European Defence Agency. That is not what I want to talk about, however.
Michael Connarty
I thought that the hon. Gentleman might move on to make the simple suggestion that the scrutiny process carried out by the Western European Union should be remitted to the European Scrutiny Committee of this House, because at this moment decisions on those matters are not subject to scrutiny by that Committee.
Mr Walter
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I shall come on to the role of European scrutiny committees in that respect. He may know that his colleagues in the French Parliament have already suggested that something similar to COSAC—the Conference of European Affairs Committees—of which the hon. Gentleman has been a member, should be involved in the process.
The Assembly of the WEU has brought together members of national Parliaments from across the European Union and also involved the non-European Union NATO members. Two years ago, the Assembly formally changed its charter to make all 27 national Parliaments and the now five non-EU members of NATO members of its Assembly. The WEU has been providing parliamentary oversight of European security and defence policy as well as wider European defence issues and, more particularly, the use of taxpayers’ money on European collective defence procurement.
As I said, in a written statement on 30 March, the former Foreign Secretary announced that the UK was intending to give 12 months’ notice that it wanted to withdraw from the organisation. The following day, all the other signatory states to treaty announced that they would do likewise on the basis of what can only be described as a cost-cutting exercise. We all want to save money, of course, but there is a danger when it comes to democracy of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
As seen in the Government’s statement, the statement of the WEU Permanent Council—the ambassadors in Brussels—and the recent motion in the French Parliament, to which I referred in my response to the intervention, and at the recent meeting of EU Speakers and at the EU Foreign Affairs Council in April, scrutiny is a role for national Parliaments and not for the European Parliament. They all made that clear.
The European Parliament, however, is ready, willing and able to step into the gap. In a resolution passed back in March, it claimed that the Assembly of the WEU—the European security and defence Assembly—had misappropriated its role in acting on behalf of national Parliaments, and that the European Parliament was the only competent body. That flies in the face of the Lisbon treaty, which states that this area of policy is intergovernmental and should remain so, and that there will be no further competences for the European Parliament.
It is national Parliaments and national Governments who authorise the use of our armed forces, whether it takes place on a European Union mission or on any other type of collective mission. It is national Parliaments and national Governments who pay for those deployments. It is national Parliaments and national Governments who pay for the equipment used by those armed forces, and it is national Parliaments and national Governments who decide on the terms of engagement.
The House of Commons Library contains an excellent research paper, which is currently sitting in the international affairs section, entitled “Parliamentary approval for deploying the armed forces: an introduction to the Issues”. Nowhere does that document, which makes very good reading, mention that the European Parliament has any armed forces whatsoever to deploy, or that it should in any way be involved in decisions about the deployment of our armed forces.
The decision made by the last Government—who have now been joined by other Governments—to abolish the Western European Union and wind up the treaty of Brussels abolishes parliamentary democracy, and nothing has been provided to replace that parliamentary democracy and oversight. Those Governments have provided no mechanism to implement all the rhetoric that they have produced in the Foreign Affairs Council and in their own statements by creating a new structure that would bring together national Parliaments to perform that role.
There are a number of options on the table. The simplest is for the current Assembly to transfer itself in order to become a European Union body. Plenty of precedents are provided by previous structures. The Foreign Affairs Council, which will meet in a week or so and which the Foreign Secretary will attend, may have an opportunity to move the discussion forward. What is proposed is a steering group that could draw up plans over the next six months or so, so that before the end of the life of the WEU and its Assembly we would have a structure that could exercise parliamentary democracy on behalf of all our national Parliaments and Governments.
I believe there is a real danger that if there is inactivity—if we all say that that is a good idea, but do nothing about it—the European Parliament will move into the void immediately. It has the money, the resources and the time to act in that way. We must now look to that Foreign Affairs Council meeting, and hopefully even the European Council meeting, to put some meat on the bones of the declaration of the last Foreign Affairs Council and start to create the structures that can take this form of parliamentary democracy forward. Otherwise, I fear that there will be another centralising drift in the European Union, which none of us wants.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter), and to make some comments that are relevant to what he had to say. First, however, let me welcome the Foreign Secretary to his post. He need not stay; he can do a Member for Glasgow South West on me if he wishes. I welcome the Minister for Europe to his post as well.
Let me begin with a quotation from an article in yesterday’s Financial Times by Charles Kupchan, professor of international affairs at Georgetown university. It is entitled “Britain is no longer America’s bridge to Europe”. Professor Kupchan writes that the present Government
“seems bent on pursuing a traditional Conservative foreign policy: cosy up to the US while giving Europe short shrift.”
In his view, that would
“leave Britain in a geopolitical no-man’s land and marginalise its international influence.”
He gives three reasons. The first is that the United States does not require us to do that any more. The second is that the United States has shifted its focus from the Atlantic zone to the middle east and Asia,
“leaving Washington keenly sensitive to Europe’s ability to share global burdens.”
The third is that
“Europe needs Britain as much as Britain needs Europe… British leadership is sorely needed to help lead the EU out of its doldrums.”
I entirely agree with that analysis.
The United Kingdom needs a strong eurozone. Members should be deeply concerned by the concerted attacks on the euro by the speculators in the money markets, who make nothing but trouble. As the Foreign Secretary generously pointed out, all that that does is weaken our market—the important market that is the European Union.
The process of fiscal consolidation and deficit reduction is very important. It is nonsensical for some Members in other parties, and the public press, to compare the situation in Greece to that in the United Kingdom, or to compare the troubles of Portugal and Spain to the situation facing the UK. The UK concentrated on building its supply side, and on education, training and research and development. As Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee for the past four years, I went to Portugal and Spain, and noted that they concentrated on major infrastructure projects rather than building up the talents of their young people or their manufacturing bases. Unemployment in Spain is nearly 40% among those aged 25 and under, and its national unemployment is 18%. We do not have those problems.
I welcome the paper by Mario Monti. It is important to focus on the new Lisbon 2020 strategy. It is true that growth is anaemic in the European Union, and it is not helped by currency speculation. We should recall the damage done repeatedly to our country and to sterling in past decades by currency speculators, and realise that what the eurozone countries have—whether they wanted it or not—is a commitment to stand together or fall together. Sadly, if we were attacked alone again, we would have to turn to those countries for support, because we do not have the strength that they have through their unanimity.
We need a strong EU climate change and energy programme. The UK’s 2% contribution can make little difference to the carbon footprint of the world without an EU programme. We—the UK and the world—need a focused EU international aid strategy. I pay tribute to Lady Kinnock for working so hard in the EU, when she was a Member of the European Parliament, to secure a strategy that focused on countries and Governments rather than project-by-project commitments. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), the former Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, it is all too easy for national Governments to cut their international development budgets, and it is important that the stability and growth pact is not used by countries to abandon the poor of the world.
Let me now turn to a matter that concerns me particularly. Members have mentioned the European Council that will take place in two weeks’ time, but some may not be aware that five European subject Councils have taken place since the Government came to office. Those who take an interest in what is happening in Europe should note that the activities of two of them were reported in yesterday’s Hansard. There was a meeting of ECOFIN on 9 May, after the Government had come to power but before the current Parliament was formed, but there has been no scrutiny of that or of the subject Councils, because no European Scrutiny Committee is up and running. There has been no written ministerial statement on the 9 May ECOFIN meeting, to which there was a reference in the ECOFIN statement of 18 May, although it dealt with some extremely important matters. There has been a press release from the European Council and a communication from the European Commission, but nothing from our own Government. Very important matters that we should be concerned about were discussed. Those are to do with the consolidation of the financial markets, but there was no scrutiny of that, and no report. The follow-up report
“underlined the need to make rapid progress on financial market regulation and supervision, in particular with regard to derivative markets”
and the role of credit rating agencies, and went on to discuss the excessive deficit procedure for Spain and Portugal. That was widely reported in the press, but nothing came through the processes of this Parliament.
On the Government’s approach and commitments, in what is now the coalition agreement there is the clear statement that
“there should be no further transfer of sovereignty or powers”—
I stress “or powers”—
“over the course of the next Parliament.”
We have heard from the Foreign Secretary about the methods by which that can be done. One of them, obviously, is treaties, but if I heard the Foreign Secretary correctly—perhaps the Minister for Europe can confirm this—he said that that excluded accession treaties: they would not be subject to a referendum, therefore. People will be concerned about the accession of other countries, and we know that there will be amendments attached to those accession treaties clarifying matters in respect of the Lisbon treaty, yet we have just been told that there will be no referendums on them. There is already smoke and mirrors from the Government, therefore. I do not know whether that is because they are influenced by their new Liberal Democrat partners, or perhaps the major Government party have chosen to do that themselves.
We have been told about the use of the passerelle clause, which can change the voting method on any issue from unanimity to qualified majority voting. If the UK Government decide in Council to give up their veto, the passerelle clause will be subject to a referendum or primary legislation, but the Government have to decide in the Council to give that up, because they already have a veto in Council. Therefore, the idea that we will be asked about that after the event is very worrying, as the Government will already have decided—and, I presume, will have discussed the matter with the coalition partners—that they will give up the veto before they put it to the House. They will then, of course, whip in Members in order to effect the dumping of the veto. Again, therefore, this is smoke and mirrors.
I asked about the opt-ins. We currently have opt-outs in many areas. If measures are amended, we can decide to opt in or opt out completely. In the European Scrutiny Committee, there was in the past unanimous concern that this process was not open enough for Parliament to have a say, and that many things were going through because that was suitable to the Government of the time. That is not what the Government that is now in power promised us. There has been mention of the issue of sovereignty or powers being transferred, and I wish to hear how they will deal with that.
Although its publications are not usually my favourite reading, Open Europe has a very good briefing on these subjects, which people might want to take a look at. I see that the former shadow Minister for Europe, the hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), is smiling from the Government Front Bench. It is important that I pay tribute to him for the role he played on the Opposition Benches during the last Government’s term in office. I have always said I am not a Eurosceptic, but I am a Government sceptic, regardless of which Government.
Many parts of the Lisbon treaty are now being interpreted as denying the right of scrutiny to Parliaments—this Parliament and other Parliaments. We must try to deal with these matters sensibly. There are many articles in the Lisbon treaty that say they are not legislative Acts, and therefore, as such, the European institutions have said they are not subject to protocol 1, which gives Parliaments eight weeks in which to look at them, and protocol 2, under which they can be challenged using the orange and yellow cards or challenged in the courts. It is also very important that the draft conclusion of the Council is tabled, so that it can be dealt with in the ESC before going on to the Council. I hope the Government will allow that to happen.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), not least because I still fondly remember having a photograph taken in 1997 with David Lock, the then Labour Member for Wyre Forest. We all had red balloons and we travelled down to Westminster together. I am glad to say that, apart from David Lock, all of those in the photograph are still in the House. I wish the hon. Gentleman well. I am sure that people in his local carpet industry would have had one or two things to say if it had been forced to “go metric” on the weaving shuttles; I am sure that he will have one or two particular points that he wishes to bring to the House.
I wanted to speak today because Europe is facing a political and economic crisis which, although it has been brewing for a considerable time, is, in some ways, being denied both here and abroad. It is a political elite that is in denial, and in some sense that does not surprise me, because I still bear the scars of spending 18 months in Brussels attempting to write a European constitution. The democratic mandate was ignored then, too, and a political elite essentially rode roughshod over the wishes of the electorate.
Frankly, no party here has much to be proud of on the issue of referendums, nor do the Governments in the countries across Europe whose people said no when asked—and were simply ignored, as happened in Holland and France. Ireland’s people were simply asked twice; they were asked until they came up with the right answer. So there is something wrong going on in the house of Europe, and at the moment, that shows itself in terms of economics and the single currency.
Those who have warned against some of the problems of the single currency take little pleasure in being tempted to say, “I told you so”. People need to face up to what is happening at the moment, because this is not a question of one member of the eurozone having a financial crisis from which they can simply be bailed out. A bail-out is not the answer to the problem, nor is it in the current treaty provisions. The central issue in Greece is not associated with the pubic finances, although those are a problem. The real question is what happens when a country in the current monetary union loses competitiveness and cannot regain it. In essence, we are asking Greece to implement what amounts to two thirds of a traditional IMF package, which usually involves raising taxes and cutting public expenditure. However, the third and crucial element that always comes with recovery is depreciation of the currency, and that adjustment is not happening.
What the European monetary union calls “internal depreciation” has to replace a currency depreciation, but that is nothing other than a polite phrase for debt deflation. The programme currently recommended for Greece will crush output and increase both unemployment and private sector default. It will reduce Government revenues still further, and make public sector default and national bankruptcy even more likely.
Some people in countries such as Germany think that every country in Europe should behave like the Germans. As someone born in that country, I think that that is a perfectly reasonable expectation—but it is not the answer, as we cannot answer our economic problems by requiring every country to run a trade surplus. To be fair to Germany, it got out of its own economic crisis of the late 1990s and the first years of this century only at the expense of some of the other countries in the EMU.
So what are we going to do? Two solutions offer themselves. One is to transfer funds from countries with a current account surplus—in effect, those in the German bloc—but that assumes that a one-off payment is the answer. It is not. What is really required are year-on-year transfers, equivalent to what West Germany paid to the old East Germany. Let us be clear about this, however. Just for Greece, such a year-on-year transfer would amount to something like €35 billion to €40 billion a year. If we were talking about the default for Spain and Portugal, we would be looking at something like €100 billion a year, and that would wreck not only the German economy but its public finances as well.
The second solution would involve a massive devaluation of the euro.
Michael Connarty
I hope that my hon. Friend does not mind me intervening, but it seems that, having put down a set of rails, she is going to go all the way along until she crashes. Is there not a possibility that the fundamental flaws lie in how the failed economies acted? For example, Spain and Portugal put money into infrastructure and not education, with the result that people left school and built houses instead of educating themselves and creating a new economy. In Greece, the question centres on how much of the tax take that is due has been paid. Should we not concentrate on changing those economies so that they are stronger? Should we not use the 2020 strategy to rebuild growing economies, and not just bail them out?
Ms Stuart
That is a perfectly fair point, but there are two problems. The first goes back to the claim that we would have trade surpluses if only every country were like Germany, but things do not work that way. The second problem is how such a strategy would be policed.
There is a third difficulty, too. Every successful single currency requires significant transfers from the centre to deal with asymmetric economic shocks, and those transfers would be of the order of between 20% and 30% of the overall tax take. In Europe, that would require a European economic and political Government. The approach could not work in any other way, because we cannot expect countries to behave like that in the absence of any mechanisms for policing or transfer that would compensate them for their loss of competitiveness.
The problem in Greece is that it could become competitive again by devaluing its currency, but it is not allowed to do so. As a result, the approach outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) does not address the problem.