Inter-Parliamentary Scrutiny (EU Foreign, Defence and Security Policy)

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Ottaway]

The European Parliament is free to pass all the motions it likes. The truth of the matter is that the Lisbon treaty invites national Parliaments to exercise a scrutiny function over European foreign, defence and security policy. What we are doing is putting forward a proposal. If we cannot agree on it, we cannot influence the debate—going on in Belgium, not in Brussels—and we will not have a seat at the table. What I hope will happen today is that the UK Parliament will come up with a proposal to lead the charge in providing a counterweight to the European Parliament.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman is aware that these discussions have gone on for quite a long time. In fact, they pre-date the re-establishment of the Foreign Affairs Committee after the last election. I was involved in discussions in late 2009 and early 2010. I would like to stress that this is a very important statement of intent by our national Parliament to say to certain people in the European Parliament who have certain aspirations, “Get your tanks off our lawn; national Parliaments are in the lead on this matter, and we are going to remain in the lead on it. We are working with you, but you are not going to get away with the claim that the European Parliament is the sole democratic institution.”

[Richard Ottaway]

The hon. Gentleman makes his point eloquently. It is an important subject. Perhaps 10 years ago, this debate would have taken place in a packed Chamber, which illustrates how the world has moved on in considering some of these issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

This really is a pretty shoddy second-rate shambles. We are going to betray the Norwegians, our closest allies and friends, we are reducing the Turks, the biggest single military contributor to NATO in terms of personnel, to observer status—I suppose they can bring in the coffee—and we have not got support from one major EU country. The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee rattled off a few—

[Mike Gapes]

Is France not a major country?

[Mr MacShane]

France has only just rejoined NATO. It does not have quite the same weight in NATO councils as ourselves, Germany and Italy. We have a real problem.

We could have been a lot more robust about preserving the Western European Union. The idea was put to me when I was a Minister, but it was one of those topics that just get put back in the box in the hope that it dies. The last Labour Government and their Foreign and Commonwealth Office team should not be awfully proud of that. The WEU was not the greatest organisation in the world, but it did bring together serious, real-life parliamentarians from countries that were directly involved in military activities. Instead, we have now got an absolute disaster of a sequence of proposals, of which I worry most about the proposal from the presidency of the EU, which is currently held by Belgium. I do not know where that proposal comes from because Belgium does not have a Government to put a proposal forward.

We heard some interesting comments in this week’s debate on the EU referendum Bill from the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash), the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee. He started animadverting on something called a non-paper and treated the concept with immense scorn, but a non-paper or aide memoire is quite a common bit of diplomatic terminology. However, this is the first time that the current House of Commons has had to deal with a very major proposal relegating its importance, and coming from a non-Government.

I hope we can be robust on this issue, because let us be quite clear: the Belgian presidency proposal sets up a new committee of which six members will come from the Westminster Parliament—both Houses—and 54 from the European Parliament, so it will have nine times more representatives on the committee. Having spent some time in the couloirs of European Union decision making, let me assure Members that a proposal put forward by the country holding the EU presidency carries a lot more weight than a resolution of any particular committee of any particular national Parliament, much as we all respect, love and admire our own Foreign Affairs Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have some sympathy with the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter), who obviously feels passionately about the organisation that he has been chairing, which is about to go out of existence. I can understand his frustration. I appreciate many of the points that he made, particularly his attack on those in the European Parliament whose view of their organisation is that it is somehow superior to national Parliaments and should be the body that scrutinises defence, security and foreign policy matters to the minimisation, or potential exclusion, of national Parliaments. That is something that we have to confront.

This debate is really about how we put into practice the Lisbon treaty requirement that there be a mechanism within the European Union based on national parliamentary committees coming together and co-operating to deal with matters that are dealt with on a national co-operative basis, not a communautaire basis. There is a deep philosophical difference in the views of those Members of the European Parliament. The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and I were in discussion with them when we visited Brussels in September. Some of them have a view, and a model, that goes even further than the paper produced by the Belgian Council presidency—a federalist view that says that the European Parliament is the supreme democratic body on all matters to do with the European Union.

We need to be very clear about this. There will be a negotiation, and the position that our Parliament and other national Parliaments put forward will probably not be its final outcome. It is therefore important that we lay down some principles about where we are starting from. The work that the Foreign Affairs Committee has done in this Parliament began in the previous Parliament when I was discussing this with the then Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), just before the general election. We had been presented with this situation, and we were trying to find a way to secure some accountability and a mechanism, knowing that Parliament was going to be dissolved and that it would be some months before new Committees were established. We were trying at that point to get some initiatives based on the successful work over several years of the Conference of Foreign Affairs Committee Chairpersons, or COFACC, and the Conference of Community and European Affairs Committees of Parliaments of the European Union, or COSAC, which are the two bodies that bring together the representatives of Foreign Affairs Committees and European Scrutiny Committees periodically to discuss common concerns. That is not a perfect model and it probably needs some beefing up and development.

We must be aware of the danger that there are people in the European Parliament who want a permanent, well-funded secretariat based in the European Parliament, serviced by people who serve its Committee on Foreign Affairs. Those people have an ideological dispensation towards a certain approach to foreign, security and defence policy matters. We need to find a mechanism that takes account of the clear point in the Lisbon treaty that the body should be based not on the European Parliament, but on bringing together the national Parliaments. After it is established, the national Parliaments might decide to co-opt or bring in representatives who attended the meetings of the assembly of the Western European Union. They might also decide, in time, to establish a secretariat of their own to assist the rotating troika model that we have put forward in the report. Basing the mechanism on the rotation may well not be perfect. From time to time, there is a presidency country that has more resources and a greater ability to host such meetings.

From my experience of attending COFACC meetings over five years, that is a very good model. We did not have interminable discussions over the entrails of commas and full stops in meaningless resolutions that would never go anywhere, but had a real exchange of views. People such as Mr Solana, Cathy Ashton, and the Foreign Minister or Prime Minister of the country that had the Council presidency came before us, answered questions and were accountable to the spectrum of opinion from the 27 member states.

Today, we frankly either have to agree to this report or have no position. If we have no position, we are effectively undermining our friends in like-minded countries. I had discussions with the Speaker of the Portuguese Parliament in January last year when the Foreign Affairs Committee visited Lisbon and when this idea was first developed. Concerns have been expressed in like-minded European Union countries about the aggrandisement, or even quasi-megalomania, of some in the European Parliament in relation to how these matters should go forward post the Lisbon treaty. If we have no position, we will undermine the work of our partner countries that are on the same wavelength as us, to which the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee referred. I intervened on my right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), who is not present at the moment, to point out that France is not an insignificant country in the European Union. We have friends in a diverse group of countries, including Finland and Portugal, who hold similar views about how defence, security and foreign policy should be scrutinised and how accountability should be dealt with.

We have not reached the final position, because there will have to be negotiation and there will probably be an almighty row. People in the European Parliament who do not like the suggested model will clearly resist it. Some countries, such as Belgium, will do so—I could make a joke about chocolate soldiers, but I will not, because it is an old joke from a previous decade. The Belgians are not alone—there are people in Germany, Italy and other European countries who have a similar attitude to the European Parliament and its aspirations. We need to come to a view today that helps the debate and clarifies it for the future.

[Mr Chope]

We do not need to come to a view today in adopting the Committee’s report. At the beginning of April, Mr Deputy Speaker, the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans), will represent Mr Speaker at the conference. I am sure that he will faithfully reflect the balance of opinion in today’s debate when he represents this Parliament at that conference. It will not be suggested that we are not doing anything, because we are achieving a lot through today’s debate.

[Mike Gapes]

I would rather we had a clear position to guide our representatives when they take part in those negotiations. Of course, a negotiation ultimately leads to some movement and compromise. From the thrust of the remarks of the hon. Member for North Dorset, I believe that although he is not entirely happy with the report, he is more happy with it than the approach that came from the Belgian Council presidency.

We have a choice today. I have to declare an interest as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee who was involved in the discussions on the matter in the early days, before the report was agreed. Nevertheless, I am very pleased that the Committee’s members from three parties have reached a consensus view, which also reflects the view expressed by the Committee in the last Parliament.

We have had experience of attending seminars organised by the European Parliament from time to time. National parliamentarians are sat at the end of the row, then some man who has been elected with about 3% of the popular vote in his country proceeds to denounce the views of a whole delegation of national parliamentarians, who collectively might represent 95% of the popular vote in their country. That is the nature of the debates in the European Parliament on these matters.

We, as national parliamentarians, have to take the political heat on the doorstep when matters of life and death are involved. We have to debate issues such as Afghanistan, whether we should establish no-fly zones, humanitarian interventions and the responsibility to protect people in north Africa. The people who have to be held democratically accountable for those matters are not the Members of the European Parliament but the members of the national Parliaments.

I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham has rejoined us. One thing I agree with him about—he will be able to read what I said earlier about where I disagree with him—is that we in this House do not scrutinise European matters adequately. We need to get our act together rapidly, because those issues become more and more important. The report is at least an attempt, with co-ordination between different Select Committees and our colleagues in the other place, to get a common British view to put into the important international process. I therefore hope that the House will endorse the report today.