Richard Drax
Main Page: Richard Drax (Conservative - South Dorset)(10 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Vaizey
It is not a question of subsidiarity. The question of subsidiarity applies to the whole programme, which has been in place since 2007 and supports a number of measures. I will come to examples of the programme shortly.
Following my hon. Friend’s perceptive intervention, I hope he will indulge me for a few minutes while I deal with the first measure and see what interventions we have on that. The measure establishes a legal obligation on the European institutions to deposit their paper historical records at the European University Institute, which is based in Florence. Previously, European institutions have voluntarily deposited their archives at the EUI under contractual agreement, and the proposal is to make this obligatory. It is designed to provide long-term certainty that the archives will be preserved in accordance with recognised international standards at a single accessible location.
Richard Drax
Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be wonderful news if the EU were not archived?
Mr Vaizey
Speaking on a measure on archiving documents of European Union institutions gives rise to the possibility of many light-hearted comments. I have resisted making such comments, but that is in no way an indication that I would resist those of other Members about the interest, or otherwise, that these documents could engender when being read by future generations.
A 1983 Council regulation already obliges the European institutions to preserve and provide access to the historical papers once the records are 30 years old, when they would no longer be in business use. Europe’s Council, Parliament, Commission, Court of Auditors and Economic and Social Committee, and the European Investment Bank, currently meet that obligation by depositing their paper archives with the EUI on a contractual basis. The proposed legal obligation reflects those existing arrangements and will not change the point in time at which the public can access historical records or the place at which they can be accessed.
Making this practice a legal obligation will help to ensure transparency and scrutiny of the European institutions’ work, and it fits alongside this Government’s drive for greater transparency both at home and in Europe. We should all welcome a measure that allows for greater accountability around EU decision making, the more so because it will have no impact, financial or otherwise, on the UK’s own archives.
As the European Union moves towards digital record-keeping, the measure also provides that the European institutions should, where possible, make their records available to the public in digital format. In addition, the EUI is to be given permanent access to each institution’s digital archives to fulfil its obligation to make historical records accessible to the public from a single location once they are 30 years old.
The European Court of Justice and the European Central Bank will be exempt from the obligations under the proposed regulation, although they can deposit their records on a voluntary basis. The Court is exempt because of the large volume of records, most of which are case files often containing sensitive personal data that need to be quickly accessed to support its functions. The exemption of the ECB is due to its organisational autonomy and the fact that its historical records are subject to a separate 2004 regulation.
The measure will be financed by the depositing European institutions from within their existing budgets and so will have no financial impact on the UK. Hon. Members will be delighted to learn that the Italian Government have made suitable premises permanently and freely available to the EUI to ensure that the deposited archives of the European institutions are preserved and protected in accordance with recognised international standards. The European Council has published the text of this measure and has received consent from the European Parliament. It is therefore ready for adoption, subject to the agreement of hon. Members.
Let me move on to the second measure, on which I do not anticipate a great many interventions. It provides for the continuation of the Europe for Citizens programme for the period January 2014 to December 2020, building on the previous programme that covered the period 2007 to 2013. It is important to point out that there have been some crucial improvements to the programme. More effort will be put into monitoring and evaluating funded projects against published performance indicators and boosting the transferability of results to give a better return on investment.
Mr Vaizey
In this debate, we will find that many hon. Members are incredibly well informed and know a lot about the issue. My hon. Friend’s intervention is the second that tempts me to jump ahead in my speech. It is important, however, to answer a direct question directly: the budget is €185 million. I will come on to the budget, because there are certain things to say about it at the right moment.
Richard Drax
On questions of percentages and budgets, I understand that 20% will go towards commemorations, but will my hon. Friend comment on the 60% for projects linked to the Union political agenda?
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
As the Minister set out, the two purposes of the Bill are to provide proper archiving arrangements for European documents and to establish a programme for a citizens’ Europe. At first sight, they seem rather disparate, but they have a shared theme—history. The first is about preserving documents for future historians and the second is about looking back at the European events that catalysed the foundation of the EU.
I hope the programme can be used to strengthen people’s understanding of the EU, although I am not wholly convinced that more knowledge will mean a less critical view of the current institutional arrangements.
Richard Drax
Would the hon. Lady agree that the more people know about how the EU works, the less likely it is to continue to exist?
Helen Goodman
The money will not be given to political parties in any case, so the hon. Gentleman’s concern about unfairness is somewhat misplaced. The fact is that the money will not be spent before the European elections.
How will the money be publicised, so that we in Durham might benefit from it as much as people in Oxfordshire evidently have? How will people apply? It is crucial to the success of the project as a lever in raising people’s participation that it involves not just the same group of organisations that have a long-standing interest and involvement in European projects, but goes wider than that.
I hope the evaluation is not too onerous, because as much could be spent on the evaluation as the sums of money that are being given out, which would not be efficient. What steps has the Minister taken to ensure that the arrangements are open and straightforward?
Richard Drax
Given that the EU accounts, as I understand it, have not been signed off for the past 15 years, how can anyone be confident that this money will go where it is meant to go?
Helen Goodman
The hon. Gentleman needs to look at the areas that have caused the European Union’s auditors to qualify the EU’s accounts. My understanding is that they do not include the citizens programmes of education and learning for young people.
I am content with the arrangements on the Order Paper for further scrutiny of the Bill. I do not intend to divide the House tonight, but I agree with the suggestion made by other Members that it is important that we encourage and facilitate non-political cultural exchange, for which the Minister has responsibility. Over the Christmas holiday I was looking at the BBC’s collection of the nation’s favourite poems. Hon. Members will be pleased to know that the nation’s No. 1 choice is Kipling’s “If—”. I think that reveals something about the British, while the collection taken as a whole tells us something about our imaginary life and the value we place on our countryside. It would be fascinating if we knew more about the cultural life, views, experience and perspectives of the other member states, so I wonder whether the Minister has paid any attention to what we might do to facilitate more cultural exchange as well.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I understand the statistics that the hon. Gentleman has just relayed. That just goes to prove that what the European Commission believes to be happening and what is happening are two completely different things. Indeed, the Commission is quite Orwellian in its interpretation of what goes on around it.
Richard Drax
Surely the evidence that it is not working is there for all to see. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) is an expert on such matters, as the Minister recognised, so why are the Government not listening to the experts and looking to act on the evidence?
Chris Heaton-Harris
Fortunately, that is one for the Minister to answer. There are plenty of experts on both sides of this very political argument and one point that I shall continue to make during my speech is that this is a very political matter that should therefore not be funded by taxpayers’ money.
It is interesting to see that the European Commission recognises some of the issues it faces. The preamble continues:
“In order to bring Europe closer to its citizens and to enable them to participate fully in the construction of an ever closer Union, a variety of actions and coordinated efforts through transnational and Union level activities are required.”
In other words, the solution to some of the issues we face today is not less Europe but, according to the European Commission, more Europe, and to ensure that people think that way the Commission will pay for a bunch of projects to try to tell them that that is the case.
Article 1 of the draft regulation states that the general objectives of the programme are
“to contribute to citizens’ understanding of the Union, its history and diversity”
and
“to foster European citizenship and to improve conditions for civic and democratic participation at Union level.”
I am pretty sure that that is a reference to the European elections, which is slightly concerning. That, together with the preamble, suggests that the programme is aimed at lauding the European Union as a political project with, as I will demonstrate, many a federalist overtone. That is reinforced by the fact that article 6 of the proposal states that the programme is open to
“stakeholders promoting European citizenship and integration”.
In other words, one can apply for money from the programme only if one believes in one side of the political argument.
I heard what the Minister said about the collaboration element of the project. Like everyone else in the House, I support any attempt realistically to encourage the commemoration and remembrance of important events in the history of Europe, volunteering, or participation in the democratic process, where there is genuine enthusiasm for it, but I am greatly concerned about trying to force one particular political viewpoint down peoples’ throats.
Chris Heaton-Harris
My soon-to-be right hon. Friend’s organisation could benefit from funding, if it changed its basic principle on belief in the European project, but he is a very principled gentleman and would not do that, so no is the simple answer; there would be no access to EU funding for those groups.
I am supportive of trying to encourage the things I mentioned, but I do not believe that that is best achieved by a European Union spending programme that has its decision making centralised in the European Commission, and in which everything is tied to a supportive view of European Union political integration. The draft regulation’s preamble even asserts that there is a link between remembrance and European identity; I struggle to see that link.
The Government’s support for the regulation calls a number of points into question. It sits uneasily—does it not?—with the Prime Minister’s speech on Europe on 23 January last year, which made it clear that Britain has no desire for ever closer union with other EU countries in any political sense. The Prime Minister also said:
“There is not, in my view, a single European demos.
It is national parliaments”—
not EU institutions—
“which are, and…remain, the true source of real democratic legitimacy and accountability in the EU.”
The regulation, which we might be asked to vote for, would establish a political programme, which we would fund, with exactly the opposite ethos. How can that be?
Moreover, the regulation states that the programme would have a budget of €185.5 million, which, according to the Google currency converter last night, is about £156.5 million over the multi-annual financial framework period. The Government have estimated that the UK will meet about 11.5% of the cost of the multi-annual financial framework, after the rebate is applied. That means that the UK may end up paying roughly £18 million for the programme, over its course. The shadow Minister said that we expect to receive about £7 million back. That is not a bad return on European money—normally, we pay in a fiver and get £2 back—but the money comes back to us with caveats on how it should be spent, and who it should be spent on. I understand the Minister’s point about the general budget envelope, but there are better ways that we could spend the money; we could spend it on much more worthy projects in the UK, without the involvement of a middleman with sticky fingers in Brussels.
The House might be interested to know how much money was spent on the previous Europe for Citizens programme, which ran from 2007 to 2013. Most of this information comes from budget questions relating to 2013, because it is best to have the most up-to-date information, and from a compendium of summaries of reports submitted last year under strand 1 of the programme, produced by the European Commission agency responsible for selecting projects, the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency. As I mentioned, I have followed this issue for quite some time.
Let us start with a nice, friendly organisation, the Transeuropa citizens festival, an annual festival that, in 2013, took place in October in various cities simultaneously. Page 4 of the Commission’s compendium says that it took place in nine cities, but the festival’s website claims that it took place in 13: London, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Bologna, Prague, Bratislava, Belgrade, Warsaw, Lublin, Sofia, and Cluj-Napoca in Romania. The compendium’s summary says:
“Transeuropa Citizens Festival is an annual festival of citizenship happening across Europe. For the European Year of Citizens it will take place in 9 cities simultaneously in October 2013 and will celebrate free movement. The festival promotes active citizenship: it is made by and for citizens from throughout Europe (particularly central and eastern Europe). About 300 active citizens”—
I have no idea what they are—
“will meet and work together to make events which promote their vision of Europe to a wider public”,
so it is an interesting festival.
Richard Drax
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and I am most grateful to him for giving way a second time. If this nightmare continues, can he foresee a time—say, in 10 or 20 years—when countries that do not participate in these awful affairs will be fined for not doing so?
Chris Heaton-Harris
The few times in my political career when I have not relied exactly on facts, I have always stumbled and fallen over, so I will keep to what has happened and is happening, rather than having a guess at what might happen in future.
The 300 individuals, and the people they then talk to, will
“act as European Citizens of the future and peer-leaders. The festival will focus on the issues of precarity, poverty and solidarity in a Europe facing the financial crisis, as well as themes of common goods, media pluralism, migrants and Roma rights and the fundamental rights given by Europe.”
Obviously, to be involved in this scheme, one has to approve wholeheartedly of the application of the EU charter of fundamental rights by the European Court of Justice. Those interested in Roma migration should note that the festival was held in London, as well as many other European cities, to promote that sort of thing.
Last year, the festival was awarded €149,000 from the Europe for Citizens budget. It appears that the 2011 festival was awarded €150,000. In 2010, European Alternatives Ltd was awarded €40,000 for a project called “Transeuropa citizens”. In 2009, the same company was awarded €36,300 for a project called “active and transnational citizens in dialogue”. In 2008, the company was awarded €24,800 for a project called the “active and transnational citizenship programme”. I wonder what all these programmes did, or do; from the preamble, one can probably guess exactly what they did.
In addition, European Alternatives Ltd has been awarded grants to fund its existence, which the Commission said it would cut out; no longer could organisations bid for money simply to run themselves, so that they could bid for more European money to run projects for the Commission, so that they could bid for more money from the Commission, so that they could run more projects for the Commission. That was not the case here. In 2012, 2011 and 2010, it was awarded a €100,000 annual operating grant. In 2009, it did a bit worse: it got only €60,000. This one organisation was awarded, all in all, approximately €760,000 from one section of the Europe for Citizens programme budget over the period from 2007 to 2013. Bear that figure in mind when I come on to the sort of grants that have been issued to projects in the United Kingdom.
Let us look at another example of an organisation that has received money from the Europe for Citizens programme. The grants were intended to support the running of the organisation itself, so I am pretty sure that it would not exist were it not for this funding. It is the French think-tank called—perhaps Members will be able to work out why it has been awarded funding—Notre Europe, the Jacques Delors Institute. It was set up by Jacques Delors in 1996 after he stepped down as European Commission President. It aims to contribute to the debate on the future of Europe and to influence decision makers. We are paying for an organisation to try to influence decision makers in a highly political way on the future of Europe and other European integration matters.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I will just say, briefly, that a previous Leader of the House stood godparent for me when I was baptised into the Catholic Church, so I think I consented through him.
I will turn to the text of the document, because we need to look at the detail of what the Government are signing us up to. My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry has mentioned paragraph 3 of the “Europe for Citizens” document, but I should like to construe it in some detail. It says:
“While there is objectively an added value in being a Union citizen with established rights, the Union does not always highlight in an effective way the link between the solution to a broad range of economic and social problems and the Union’s policies.”
But that is not true. The very fourth word of that paragraph is a falsehood. Objectively, there is no added value in being a European citizen—that is a subjective view of being a European citizen. The document is a dishonest document and we are only on the third paragraph.
The paragraph continues:
“Hence, the impressive achievements in terms of peace and stability in Europe”.
It occurs to me that the achievements in terms of peace may have had something to do with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the willingness of the United States of America to spend billions of dollars on putting a defensive shield around western Europe to protect us from the USSR, the evil empire. This is a document of ipsedixitrists: people who believe that, because they say it themselves, it must be true, but, by and large, it is not true.
The paragraph goes on to tell the great joke—I doubt you ever thought, Mr Deputy Speaker, there would be such humour in a European Union document—about long-term stable growth. Tell that to the Greeks, the Italians, the Cypriots, the Spanish, the Portuguese and the Irish. Are there any other offers from hon. Members? [Hon. Members: “The French!”] The French and Monsieur Hollande would like to hear about the stable growth provided by their kind brethren in the European Union.
The paragraph goes on to tell us about the “promotion of fundamental rights”. How splendid that is. I am all in favour of fundamental rights—we have had them in this country for quite a long time—but what is the one fundamental right that the European Union disapproves of? Why, it is democracy of course. They do not like that a bit, because we might vote against them. I am sorry to say that even our own Foreign Secretary does not much like democracy any more, because he thinks this Parliament may have the discourtesy to vote against rules and regulations and instructions sent down from on high by the European Union.
The paragraph notes that the situation has, sadly,
“not always led to a strong feeling among citizens of belonging to the Union.”
My infant children blow raspberries sometimes. In this House of Commons it may not be appropriate to blow a raspberry literally, but let me metaphorically blow a raspberry at the idea of having a strong feeling about belonging to the Union.
I will come back to the next page later, because it ties in with a comment made by the Prime Minister that, importantly, needs to be examined. The sixth paragraph looks at the
“interim evaluation report of the Europe for Citizens programme”,
which says that the last programme was a great success and worked very well. The European Commission has produced a report to say that what it has just done was enormously successful. That strikes me as, to coin a phrase, marking one’s own homework.
I will move on, if I may, to paragraph 7. Where are they going to do all this wonderful stuff? They are going to do it
“in the areas of education, vocational training and youth, sport, culture and the audiovisual sector, fundamental rights and freedoms, social inclusion, gender equality, combating discrimination, research and innovation, information society, enlargement and the external action of the Union.”
Not all of those are, in fact, competences of the European Union, so in this article 352 extension to the powers of the EU we see an attempt to push those powers even further by spending money in areas that are not actually competences of the EU. The Government are agreeing—in breach of the coalition agreement—to an extension of the power and competence of the European Union.
I quite like paragraph 8, because it wants to promote reflection on defining moments in European history. If we do have to have this Bill, I hope it will get through by 2015, because there are four defining moments in European history that I am looking forward to celebrating in 2015. It will, of course, be the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta; the 750th anniversary of the meeting of the House of Commons with Members from boroughs; the 600th anniversary of Agincourt; and the 200th anniversary of Waterloo. We can have a jolly time in 2015 celebrating the defining moments in European history, which I am glad to say mainly involve the success of the English and, more latterly, the British.
Richard Drax
Given that my hon. Friend is giving such an excellent speech and talking about anniversaries, I would be failing in my duty if I did not point out that it is his wedding anniversary today and that his other half is not too far away.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend is spot on. He has discovered the secret of the Rees-Mogg household: we celebrate our anniversary by speaking about the European Union. I have a feeling that that is probably true of Members on both sides of the House. Could there be a nicer way to spend one’s seventh anniversary?
Reflecting on the history of Europe is important, because we as Britons can take some pride in the fact that we have on four occasions—arguably five—destroyed an attempt to have a single European superstate: Louis XIV was unquestionably one, followed by Bonaparte, the Kaiser and Hitler. It may be that the fifth attempt to create—