European Union (Approvals) Bill

Philip Davies Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

It is a pleasure to move amendment 1, and to consider amendments 2 and 3 with it. As hon. Members who are following the Bill closely will realise, the substance of the amendments lies in amendment 3, which proposes to leave out paragraph (b) of clause 1(2). That would have the effect of making the Bill apply only to subsections (1) and (2)(a). It would no longer include any reference to

“the draft decision to establish a Multiannual Framework for the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights for 2013-2017 (document number 10449/12).”

On Second Reading, the Minister expressed the view that we would be able to go into the issue of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in more detail in Committee, and the amendment gives us the opportunity to do just that. I want to reassert the concern that I expressed last week on Second Reading that, although this Government and this country were always against having such an agency, we are tremendously relaxed about extending its budget and its range of activities now that it has been established. There must come a time when we say to the European Union, “Enough is enough. You have gone too far already and we want to rein back the range of activities of the Agency for Fundamental Rights in the coming five-year period.” I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some words of encouragement on the action that our Government are taking to rein back the activities of the agency and, in particular, to prevent it from encroaching on the competences and activities of the Council of Europe, which covers 47 member countries, including the 27 members of the European Union.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend tell the House exactly what this Agency for Fundamental Rights does? As I understand it, its job is to collect and give evidence on data regarding fundamental rights in all the EU countries. Given that we are all already signed up to the European convention on human rights—much against my will, but there we are—which apparently has nothing to do with the European Union, can he explain why on earth we need this body in the first place?

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[Philip Davies]

I do not intend to detain the House for long, but I wanted to support my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who, yet again, has done a great service to this House. I rather fancy that the Government hoped to sneak this Bill through without any real scrutiny; they hoped it would be nodded through without anybody looking at the detail. Of course, my eagle-eyed hon. Friend has spotted some of the nasty parts of this Bill that the Government were hoping to sneak through, and he has done us a great service by highlighting them.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I am shocked at my hon. Friend’s suggestion that such an important Bill could have crept through this House without being carefully scrutinised. Many of us spoke on Second Reading and have considered the Bill carefully, as it is a sensible advancement of the European Union Act 2011.

[Philip Davies]

While my hon. Friends the Members for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) and for Christchurch are in the House, I can be confident that legislation will be properly scrutinised. Without their services, I cannot always be so confident, and we owe them a great debt of gratitude for the work they do.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is absolutely right about the Fundamental Rights Agency, and I hope that the Minister will make it clear where the Government stand on this issue. Bizarrely, we face enacting something and, in doing so, supporting a wholly unnecessary agency. It is unnecessary because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said, it does the work that the Council of Europe already does. We are already signed up to the European convention on human rights, which is bad enough—if I had my way, we would not be signed up to that—but now it appears that the Government want us to have an EU version of exactly the same thing.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

I rise to speak because I am shocked by what the hon. Gentleman has just said. The European convention on human rights came about at the initiative of the British Government in the beginning; it was done to bring people together to find ways of applying common standards across the whole of Europe in order to prevent what had happened leading up to the catastrophe of the second world war. Surely he is not saying that he thinks the UK would have been better off not having taken that initiative and that Europe should remain a place of conflict where people do not agree on what human rights everyone deserves in Europe.

[Philip Davies]

I know that the hon. Gentleman takes a pride in living in the past, and that is fine and dandy, but of course he was talking about what the convention was set up to do in the first place, many years ago, whereas I am talking about the present. I am sure that he did not envisage our having to have ridiculous things such a votes for prisoners as a result of our membership of the European convention on human rights. I do not want to get sidetracked on to something that is not, strictly speaking, dealt with in this group of amendments, Mr Evans. The hon. Gentleman was tempting me down a path that I fear you might have intervened on had I pursued it any further. My point is that whether we are in the convention rightly or wrongly, we are in it and so it is utterly pointless to have the agency trying to mimic what is already being done there.

My second point relates to the agency’s desirability. Even if it was not pointless, it would certainly be undesirable. Let me give hon. Members an example of the types of issues the agency is trying to interfere in. It had a speaker on a panel discussing:

“Guaranteeing access to healthcare for undocumented migrants in Europe”.

We now have a new term—undocumented migrants. I think my constituents know them as illegal immigrants, but in the politically correct-speak of the EU they are undocumented migrants these days. Of course what the agency is trying to do is encourage all these illegal immigrants to access health care in countries such as the UK. My constituents are sick to the back teeth of the national health service being used by illegal immigrants and rather prefer these people to go back to the country that they should be in to access the health care in the country they come from. I hope that the Minister will address the following question: are the Government really using taxpayers’ money to fund an agency within the European Union that is actively encouraging people from within the EU illegally—this discussion was on illegal immigrants—to access this country and use the services provided for people in this country? It would be a ridiculous state of affairs if it was the official policy of Her Majesty’s Government to use taxpayers’ money to fund an agency to give out that kind of advice. If the Government’s policy is that they do not like this particular organisation and do not approve of what is it doing, what on earth are we doing with this Bill? Why are we being encouraged, in effect, to allow taxpayers’ money to be spent this agency?

[Mr Chope]

I am sure that my hon. Friend will not welcome this information, but this all goes wider than what he has described, because what is often being suggested is that these people seeking to access health care should be able to do so without disclosing their own identities.

[Philip Davies]

Absolutely, and again I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The situation makes the Government’s position on these matters unjustifiable and completely ridiculous. If the Government do not support all this, why on earth are we in this situation? If we are in this situation because the Minister is utterly powerless to do anything about it because he has no influence whatsoever, I hope he will admit that. When our referendum comes, in 2017 or thereabouts, it will be another argument for why we should leave the European Union.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the whole idea of an EU quango to lecture member states on how we should behave on human rights is nonsense? This is a group of democratic states, so surely it is the job of the Parliaments of the individual member states to decide on and uphold the human rights in their countries, rather than to be instructed by EU quangos.

[Philip Davies]

My right hon. Friend, as ever, is absolutely right. We certainly need no lectures from other countries in the EU about how to protect people’s freedoms; this country has a far better track record than member states of the EU will ever have. I suspect that the Minister will be trying to defend the indefensible, but it is a sad state of affairs when it appears that we in this House are powerless to do anything about these sorts of bureaucracies. We all know what happens with these types of bureaucracies: they grow and grow, and they empire build. They will grow their influence and they will try to do things that they are not supposed to do—things they were not set up to do. They will grow the number of staff and grow their budget, and it appears from what I have heard so far that we are utterly powerless to do anything about it. If the Minister can give me some comfort that we can and will do something about it, fair enough, but it seems to me that either the Government approve of all this nonsense, which would be a terrible state of affairs, or we are powerless to do anything about it, which in my view is equally unacceptable. I look forward to the Minister explaining which it is, but whichever it is, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is right to draw the matter to the attention of the Committee and to pursue his amendment, which I support with gusto.

[Michael Connarty]

I rise because I am quite exasperated by speeches of the kind made by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). If I really believed that the people of Shipley did not want to have human rights and participation in a convention that tries to guarantee for people across the wider Europe the same human rights that we—as he said, proudly—think we have in our own country, I would be shocked, but I believe that the people of Shipley deserve better. They deserve to hear an explanation of what this is about.

As a Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, I hear these issues debated at every quarterly session and, I hope, participate with colleagues from both sides of the House to try to point out to many countries that are not in the EU that they are not giving human rights in the right quantity to their citizens, but this is about saying that the EU will have an organisation that will also monitor those things. Some might say, “If you have it in the Council of Europe, why require it in the EU?” The reality is that unless a body has economic and legal might, such as exist in the EU, many decisions, such as those taken by the Council of Europe, do not, I am afraid, carry much weight.

There are thousands of cases against countries in the Council of Europe, which have been found in the Court of Human Rights to be in breach but which are not acted upon by the countries covered by it. There are many cases raised by Conservative Members of countries within the EU where there is a requirement for some muscle to be applied so that people cannot be locked up without trial. One case raised by the hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale), who sadly is not in his place, relates to Malta—our own constituents locked up in other countries.

The point of introducing the change that has been made in the EU is to allow the EU to start to participate in that activity—a role that I believe will be parallel to and supportive of what is happening in the Council of Europe and what is debated in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

[Philip Davies]

Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate the nonsense of this country being lectured about fundamental rights and human rights by an organisation such as the EU, which has as the initiator of all its legislation an unelected European Commission? Surely one of the most basic rights is being able to elect people who make all the decisions. The EU has not even got that far.

[Michael Connarty]

I hope that the people of Shipley are not believing the mythical nonsense that has just been spoken. I have sat on the House’s European Scrutiny Committee since 1998, and the reality is that the European Commission can initiate proposals for legislation, but legislation cannot be agreed in the EU unless it is passed by the European Council, and we are one of 27 countries that take those decisions. A number of people do not like the fact that many of those decisions are now taken by qualified majority voting and there is no veto—I know that the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) is keen on the return of the veto on everything—but that is the decision that was taken by the House through the Lisbon treaty and, before that, through many other treaties. We have participation in a Council that makes the legislation, not the Commission.

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[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is the second of the points that I want to make, which is about subsidiarity. We hear a lot about subsidiarity, yet in practice the European Union goes the other way, rather than saying, “Look, these are the matters which you will probably be concerned with. We’ve had a look at the UK and you’ve got plenty of organisations within the UK to deal with all these matters. There is no need for an EU body.” That applies across all 27, soon to be 28, member states.

[Philip Davies]

Has my hon. Friend thought about what situation we would be left in if the UK got a positive judgment from the European Court of Human Rights, but was then told that it was falling foul of the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which gets to the heart of one of my major concerns about the organisation and why I support entirely the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. It highlights the confusion in the minds of our constituents.

I wonder how many of our constituents even know that that body exists. I suspect that if I conducted a poll on the streets of Bury, I would have to wait a very long time and ask a large number of people before I found anyone who had even heard of the agency, never mind understood what it was intended to do. That is not surprising, because it was introduced in 2007 by the back door. It was introduced under the provisions of section 352 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, the Lisbon treaty, which allows for such new bodies to be established without any proper discussion. As I say, it was introduced through the back door.

The EU goes on about the principle of subsidiarity, but then we find that it is creating an EU-wide body to do things which, as we have heard in tonight’s debate, are not only being done elsewhere in Europe, but ought to be and can be done properly here in the UK. This is not a cheap body. We know that in 2013 the agency will get a subsidy of €21.3 million from the EU budget.

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[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a telling point, and I am sure that the Minister will respond to it with the benefit of his knowledge when he winds up. So often we talk hard on these EU issues—sometimes the Government and Ministers talk hard on them—but when we have it in our power to do something about them, we pull our punches and let the matter slide away. Especially now, in the build-up to the decision that the British people will be invited to take on whether we should leave the European Union, it is vital that the Government do not duck these issues, but face up to them.

I very much welcome what the Prime Minister said in his statement to the House earlier today. It was against the background of it being pointed out in the German newspaper Die Welt that the Prime Minister was wrong to suggest that hundreds of eurocrats were paid more than him or Chancellor Merkel, because its research had shown that the actual figure is 4,365. The Prime Minister said how disappointed he was that the administrative costs will still be some 6% of the EU budget, and he said that reducing the level of those costs would be “a long-term project”. Well, this modest amendment would be a start.

Just because there will be more EU Commissioners, it does not mean that the expenditure incurred by them should increase pro rata. The amendment does not ask for any real-terms reduction in the total spent on EU Commissioners, but it suggests that the total amount spent at the moment should be redistributed among the 28 or 29 Commissioners.

[Philip Davies]

Obviously this is a sensible amendment that is totally in line with the Prime Minister’s announcement earlier today, and I presume that the Government cannot possibly disagree with it. Does my hon. Friend think that he has stumbled across another area in which the Government might have to admit that they do not in fact have the power to do what my hon. Friend would like them to do?

[Mr Chope]

I hope that that is not the case, although I do not know whether my hon. Friend has been tipped off about what the Minister will say in response to the debate. I cannot see the point of the Bill if we cannot pass an amendment that has been accepted as in order. The amendment would simply make it a condition of our acceptance of having an EU Commissioner for each member country that the total budget should not be increased if the number goes above 27, but should be shared among however many Commissioners there are. I would be amazed to be told that such a modest amendment was not within our power, especially when we know that it would be going in the direction of travel—to use that ghastly expression—of many other members of the European Union who are concerned that its administrative expenditure seems to absorb far too much money.

[Philip Davies]

Given the Minister’s form tonight, does my hon. Friend not expect him to say that even if the amendment were accepted, the EU would just carry on anyway and recruit the number of staff and expend the resources it wanted to, because it does not take any notice of decisions in this Parliament?

[Mr Chope]

That is a fair point, and it was reflected in what the Prime Minister said earlier. He said that the European Commission simply has not looked at what it can do to constrain its administrative expenditure. He has a lot of knowledge about that issue because he sees it face to face every time he goes to Brussels or any other European institution. He can see the amount of money wasted on bureaucracy in Brussels. There is obviously scope for a modest reduction, and that is why I had hoped that I would have already received notice that the Government intended to accept my amendment.

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely, and I would have thought that this amendment would be supported by Opposition Members too, as they have been in the forefront of calling for a reduction in expenditure by the European Union. Whether or not they believe that sincerely, they have been calling for that.

[Philip Davies]

Is not the opposite point to the one made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) more pertinent? What message would it send to the European Union about the Government’s determination to clamp down on administrative costs in the EU if they resisted such a modest amendment as this?

[Mr Chope]

That is a very powerful point. By their actions shall people and Parliaments be judged. This is how we are going to send out a message to our European partners. Are we really serious about these issues, or are we just going through the motions? I look forward to hearing from a Member of this House who thinks it is wrong to limit the expenditure of the European Commission to what it is at the moment so that it cannot be increased. If there are such Members, I hope that they will have the courage of their convictions and stand up. If that does not happen, then I hope the Government will accept the amendment. It gives me great pleasure to have moved this modest amendment. Looking at it, I wonder whether it is too modest. On the other hand, it would be better to get this on the record than to create too much controversy.

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[Mr Lidington]

That brings me to my second point, which is that if British Ministers were to open that kind of conversation with our partners, their immediate response would be to say that such is already provided for in the European Union’s budgetary set-up. Even if the number of Commissioners increases to 28 or beyond, that cannot result in any increase in the ceiling set by the multi-annual financial framework, which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister negotiated last week at the European Council; nor can an increase in the number of Commissioners lead to an increase in annual spending limits. To paraphrase what I think my hon. Friend said in moving his amendment, if there has to be additional expenditure to provide for a new Commissioner and his or her team, it would need to be found from elsewhere in the European Union budget, subject to the ceilings set unanimously by the European Council in respect of the multi-annual framework and, subsequently, each annual budget negotiated and agreed by qualified majority vote on a 12-monthly basis, so there is a measure of safeguards already.

Let me also make this point to my hon. Friend. I am the first to agree that when we look for efficiencies and economies, we should not be shy about looking for savings in small matters as well as large. However, we also need to be clear about what an extra Commissioner would entail. It is true that it would mean providing somewhere in the budget for a salary for that Commissioner and their immediate cabinet. That money would have to be found, within the ceilings, by sacrificing spending opportunities elsewhere, but the process would not mean the creation of entirely new directorates-general. Indeed, I can tell the House that the discussions already under way about provision for a probable new Croatian Commissioner involve the splitting up of existing directorates-general and parcelling them in a slightly different way, not adding to the overall number of new people working for the Commission. We are talking about a redistribution of responsibilities among a larger number of Commissioners.

[Philip Davies]

I am enjoying my right hon. Friend’s gymnastics in trying to resist the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). Am I right in thinking that my right hon. Friend is saying that we should not worry because the overall EU budget is capped and, therefore, that if the EU wastes more money on a European Commissioner, that will just mean it has less to waste on something else? Is that really the thrust of his argument?

[Mr Lidington]

What I am saying to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is that the objective that is explicitly sought in the amendment—to ensure that the budget does not increase as a consequence of the appointment of additional Commissioners—is a principle that is already embodied in the European Union’s budgetary arrangements, both multi-annual and annual.

My third point is about what is perhaps the most important area. It should remain a key priority for the Government of the United Kingdom—and, I should add, for a fair number of other national Governments around the European Union—to look for ways to make the European Union more efficient in everything it does and to look for every opportunity to eliminate wasteful or unnecessary expenditure. There are a number of ways that that could be done.

The hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) talked about a possible reconfiguration of the Commission along a senior Minister/junior Minister model. That is not something to which the UK Government are committed at the moment, but it is certainly one idea that is being discussed in think-tanks and elsewhere as a means of trying to impose not just greater efficiency, but greater coherence on the operations of the Commission. If we look at the Commission today, to provide one illustration, we have a Commissioner for External Relations, who is the High Representative on foreign policy, and we have separate Commissioners for international development, for disaster relief and for European Union enlargement. One conceivable model would be to see those four portfolios given to a Commissioner who was head of department and to subordinate Commissioners reporting to that more senior post holder. That is one way of seeking greater efficiency, but there are many others, too.