Europe

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Neil Carmichael]

We would also need to look at—I think—the Marine Act 1986 if we wanted to make that a consistent strategy. I agree with my hon. Friend’s important point, but we should not overlook the other legislation that governs our access to our waters.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that, like the Welsh Agriculture Minister Alun Davies, we should be in there at the heart of the negotiations? If we are to get a proper deal on the CAP, we should be seen not as the country that is trying to leap out of the Union, but as a country at the heart of the negotiations.

[Neil Carmichael]

That is exactly right, and I think the Prime Minister has spelt out exactly how we are going to be at the heart of those negotiations. We are really talking turkey this time; we are saying that things have to change, and we are bringing the full force of this coalition Government behind that direction of change. The hon. Lady is right: we have to be in on the act; we have to be constructive; and we have to make sure that Europe nevertheless understands that we pack a punch. We pack a punch by eventually having a referendum.

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[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I think that I will be able to do that during my speech, in the next few minutes. It was a pleasure to take an intervention from the hon. Gentleman, whose wife I enjoyed working with as an MEP. I believe that he was working for her at the time and so was obviously feeding her some good lines, but it was a pleasure working with her none the less.

The fear of caucusing could cause the UK and others outside the eurozone to be outvoted in the Council in the very near future—the voting weightings are just about to change—possibly affecting our access to the single market. Most Members from all parts of the House are keen to ensure that that access remains, so we need to have, at the very least, what the Prime Minister called “new legal safeguards” to protect us from that problem.

I am not as defeatist as many Opposition Members have been. I was getting concerned about the idea of a European banking regulator, which came out of the blue last year as a new thing that Europe desperately needed to correct problems in the eurozone. I was worried about how it might affect our banking system, but Europe, as ever, managed to find a reasonable fix—one well negotiated on our behalf by the Chancellor of the Exchequer—in the double-majority mechanism. Such a mechanism had not existed before, but it made sure that the UK position was fundamentally safeguarded. I am a great believer in the fact that these things that I and other Conservative Members might be calling for are achievable and that Europe will find solutions to problems if we enter the negotiation with a broad mind.

I am a founder of the Fresh Start group of Conservative MPs. Some Opposition Members are keen on detail, and we have detailed some of the areas where we think it would be worth while negotiating. In a way, we are making the Conservative political pitch, so I expect disagreement from Opposition Members, but I will try to explain why it is important at least to look at these areas, which include justice and home affairs. We highlighted a number of areas, and some Opposition Members might agree on some of them.

The first such area relates to a new legal safeguard to maintain access to the single market—I am sure hon. Members on both sides will agree that we need to ensure that the eurozone cannot prevent our accessing that. Secondly, we need an emergency brake that any member state can use on future EU legislation affecting the financial services market. That market is important to the United Kingdom, as a huge amount of our GDP is created in financial services. The single market has been important to that, by always providing an opportunity, but it is beginning to look a bit more like a threat, because of the 48 directives and regulations coming down the track at the moment.

Thirdly, we need the repatriation of competences in social and employment law. That is a controversial area for many Labour Members, but I was in the European Parliament when Labour Ministers appeared before its employment committee and were begging people to understand the different, liberal nature of the UK work force and were asking them not to put in extra measures on the working time directive and the temporary workers directive that would directly affect the number of people getting into employment in the UK.

Fourthly, we need to opt out from existing policing and criminal justice measures, as some of them are not working, some of them are defunct and some of them are based on mechanisms that no longer exist. Europe does not repeal things and it really should; there should be sunset clauses in some of the legislation.

[Nia Griffith]

Do I understand from what the hon. Gentleman says that he is very much in favour of a common market and economic union, but has reservations about other aspects? What sort of referendum is he therefore suggesting? Should we have an in/out referendum, or is he suggesting that any question would have to be worded differently and address whether people wanted to stay in one thing but not another?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

This is a fairly simple matter, and I tend to agree with what the Prime Minister says: we should renegotiate, get our deal and then go to the British people and settle this question. We should end the uncertainty by putting our trust in the British people and asking them, “Do you want this on the basis of the package that we have renegotiated or not?”

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[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Business needs certainty. What business wants to know is, “Where are we going to be in the next 10 years?” It does not need a situation where it does not know whether we will be in or out of the Common Market or European Union.

In Wales we depend heavily on foreign direct investment. We want to be part of the European Union that allows us to be a country where goods can be manufactured and then exported to the European Union. We forget how very complicated it was before the days of the Common Market. We forget the number of bilateral trade agreements that were necessary and the number of different safety standards. We take it for granted that we now have common standards and free trade, and we lose that at our peril. Instead of investing in my constituency and neighbouring constituencies, firms such as Tata Steel will say, “Well, we’ve already got a plant in IJmuiden in the Netherlands. We know that that will stay securely in the European Union. If we make further investment, that is where we’re going to put our money.” That is a very real risk for people working in the steel industry, the car components industry and in the many other industries whose products are exported to other countries in Europe.

Of course we want reform of agricultural policy. Our Agriculture Minister in the Welsh Assembly Government, Alun Davies, is discussing common agricultural policy reform at the heart of Europe, and also consulting Welsh farmers so that we get the right sort of reforms. On consumer protection, yes, we want to move forward together. Consumer protection and employment legislation are two sides of the same coin. As well as protecting the worker, such measures protect investment in this country because we are competing on a more level playing field if we expect the same standards of rights, pensions, welfare and so forth to apply to workers in the countries with which we may be competing.

We in the Labour party delivered devolution to Scotland and Wales. There will always be a discussion about the level at which certain decisions are best made, but we forget at our peril the important decisions made at European level in respect of issues such as the pollution of rivers and acid rain. Borders are not respected by the elements and we have to get it right for all of us. The same applies to the emissions trading scheme. Again, it is about creating a level playing field so that businesses and industries can compete on the same terms.

When we look forward to where we are going to be by 2017, we seem to be looking at a huge Pandora’s box, and we do not know where the Prime Minister is leading us. Instead of showing real commitment to Europe, he is showing a lack of commitment. Unfortunately, instead of such commitment being a bargaining tool, some of the countries of Europe might be quite pleased to see us go. One of the big problems is that we do not know what the referendum will be about—whether it will be about the Common Market, the state that we were in pre-Maastricht or pre-Lisbon, or something else. That is the uncertainty that business does not like to operate in.

We would like a much clearer commitment from the Government to a proper pro-European policy and to getting the very best for the country from our membership of the European Union. Of course there must be accountability and scrutiny. We will always be able to say, “That could have been done better,” or “Money could have been spent more wisely,” but that is the same at every level of government. We should be at the heart of Europe, fighting for our cause.