European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords]

Natascha Engel Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP)]

Listening to the hon. Gentleman, I am wondering whether the BBC finds it more difficult when an organisation such as the European Commission gives it money or, in respect of human rights, when money is taken away, as is being done by the UK Government?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. In talking about the BBC, we are straying quite far from debating a narrow Bill.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, as I did rather provoke reaction from my SNP colleagues, because I wanted to prove the point that when questions are raised about the partiality of an organisation, either through its funding or its actions, it could devalue that organisation’s input into something important, such as a European referendum.

Let me return to the point about who our EU social partners are in this dialogue that we are facilitating through the Bill. As I have said, in 2014 the European Trade Union Confederation received €4 million from EU institutions and spent more than €1 million of that money lobbying those same EU institutions on legislation. In 2013 the CEEP—the European Centre of Employers and Enterprises providing Public Services—spent €120,000 lobbying the European Union and received €155,000 from the EU’s directorate-general for employment.

I question the added value of the dialogue at the tripartite social summit for growth and employment. Like many things in the European Union, its title is motherhood and apple pie. Who could possibly be against a tripartite social summit for growth and employment? However, if it delivers very little and if the only people who attend it and talk to the European Commission are actually paid by the Commission to do so, that will be a significant issue because the conversation will simply go round in ever-decreasing circles.

The EU social partners have agreed to a number of things in the recent past, and they wish to discuss important matters. They have agreed to

“negotiate an autonomous framework agreement on active ageing and an inter-generational approach”.

That is obviously something we need to discuss at a national level, not to mention the European level. They have also agreed to

“step up efforts to improve the implementation of their autonomous framework agreements, with a specific focus on the 8-10 Member States where the implementation has been identified as insufficient”.

This group is going to lobby for more European regulation and harsher implementation of directives.

The social partners’ work programme also notes that they have agreed to

“highlight the importance of more public and private investments”—

I imagine that Labour Members would like to have a conversation about that, especially given their new leadership—

“in order to reach an optimal growth, to boost job creation and to revive EU industrial base”.

The joint working programme also wants to “prepare joint conclusions” on things that we would all wish to see, including

“promoting better reconciliation of work, private and family life and gender equality to reduce the gender pay gap”.

I cannot believe that any Member of this House would not want to achieve that. However, given that the European Commission pays indirectly for this group of people to turn up once every six months to talk about these things, and given that they have already done so for quite some time without any concrete achievements—in fact, some of those ideals may have gone into reverse during that time—perhaps we should question the validity of supporting such a social summit for growth and employment.

Another of the work programme objectives—this did not become controversial until quite recently—is to

“contribute to the efforts of the EU institutions to develop a mobility package, to address loopholes and enforcement issues on worker mobility and to promote mobility of apprenticeships.”

This country is currently having a debate about mobility and, indeed, the freedom of movement of workers and others. It is interesting that we are promoting such a debate—our European partners are also having a big debate on the very same issue—while at the same time funding a summit of the worthy and the good to discuss the same thing.