European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords]

Richard Shepherd Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Cryer]

I will give way in a moment.

A few years ago when I was the Member of Parliament for Hornchurch, I wrote to the London office of the European Union, asking specific questions about where resources were going on different education and propaganda campaigns. I never had a response, despite the fact that I sent a follow-up a few months later. It never answered a single question in the letter.

[Sir Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

By an Act of Parliament, we are European citizens. It was passed in this House by a Conservative Government, and when asked whether the Queen was a citizen, the then Home Secretary said, “I see no reason why not.” We are European citizens by the will of this Parliament, and that is what many of us here want to defeat: this very concept of being cluttered along into something we never wanted to be part of.

[John Cryer]

I wish I had not stood up now. I feel really depressed. I wish I had just stayed in my office and stuck to working. Perhaps the Minister might like to comment on that.

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[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I entirely agree that it is insidious. Indeed, we have seen in the other place in recent days that a lot of their lordships who receive pensions from the EU are voting to prevent the people of my constituency and my hon. Friend’s from having their say on whether they want us to remain a member of the EU.

I now want to turn, Mr Gray—sorry, Mr Robertson; you have changed in the twinkling of an eye—to article 5 of the proposal that we are being asked to approve. The money in question will be available not just to member states but to acceding countries, candidate countries and potential countries. Not only existing member states but all the others that the EU would like to draw into the net will be able to put their hands into the pot. The money will be used to persuade them and their citizens of the benefits of the EU.

To back up what was said earlier about access to the programme, article 6 provides that it shall be open to those wanting to promote

“European citizenship and integration, in particular local and regional authorities and organisations, twinning committees, European public policy research organisations (think-tanks), civil society organisations…and cultural, youth, educational and research organisations.”

Money could be taken from the fund only by those who want to promote EU unity and the EU ideal. Someone who, like me, believes that the citizens of Europe would be better off if we had a Europe of independent nation states working together where it was necessary to do so, and trading with each other as neighbours, would get nothing from the fund. As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said, it is likely that they would find themselves up against a political candidate who was funded by the EU and supported, perhaps indirectly, to put forward the case for EU citizenship.

I support the amendments entirely and urge the House to vote for them.

[Sir Richard Shepherd]

First, I wish to express my appreciation to my hon. Friends who have tabled these useful amendments.

I have great difficulty with the Government’s position. They tell us that they are in a process of evaluating the EU’s competences, functions and so on. I guess the process is rather bogged down in the sands at the moment, but no doubt it can be lubricated with yet more money. To many people in this country, the EU has become just a money trap that has built itself on transfer payments made to other nations. It is as simple as that. Those who queue up for that money have expectations of yet more money, acting as the glue that binds together this quasi-state.

I have lived through all the statements from hon. Friends on the Front Benches. “No essential loss of sovereignty” was one of the great clarion calls of an earlier phase of this debate, but this measure is now being brought forward as a little squeak, without any opposition from those on the Government Front Bench. It is extraordinary; here we are going through a European monetary crisis, solvency questions and all the rest, but it is so automatically the case that the British Government will go in and support almost every initiative focused on or brought forward from the European Union. The country cries out, “Why? Why are we transferring money when we need money? Why are we supporting these endeavours?”

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[Mr Redwood]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the European Union is not so much a quasi-state as a virtually emerged state? It now has a Parliament, a Court, a currency, a Government and citizenry. It presumes to be a state.

[Sir Richard Shepherd]

It pretends to be a state. It has all the trappings that we fund it to have to be that absurd construction—and it is an absurd construction if we believe in democracy. There is no relationship between that construction and democracy.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it seems strange that although those on the Government Front Bench have said they want to bring back powers from Europe and will have a referendum—something we all want; well, I certainly do—and although we have here an opportunity to say no to something that the British people overwhelmingly want to say no to, we get excuses and all sorts of things to put the measure through? [Interruption.]

[Sir Richard Shepherd]

I hear some squawking on the Opposition Benches, but I think what the hon. Lady says is true for most British people. How does one reconcile the collapse of the Department of entertainments into acquiescence? That is the worry.

[Mr Vaizey]

rose—

[Sir Richard Shepherd]

I will give way, of course, to my right hon. Friend the Minister.

[Mr Vaizey]

I am grateful not only to be promoted to the Privy Council but for the opportunity to respond to my hon. Friend. Given his concern over wasting money, will he acknowledge that the Government succeeded in getting the first ever reduction in the budget of the European Union?

[Sir Richard Shepherd]

Of course I acknowledge that. It is what I expect a British Government to do. That the Minister holds that out as if it is some sort of triumph is amazing.

[Mr Vaizey]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Richard Shepherd]

No. We have a long way to go, as the Minister well knows. [Interruption.] I do not want to have a chit-chat with him outside the rules of the Committee. I am trying to give the Ministry backbone.

I cannot see how the measure is compatible with what the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) has said. We are in the beginnings of a negotiation. The Foreign Office is supposedly trawling to find the balance of competences and whether it is right. By and large, surprisingly—my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) has made a study—it has found that it is about right so far. That is all tosh, and hon. Members know it.

We are playing out a shadow boxing match over what are said to be small sums of money. Governments get very grand. No sum of money is small to those who do not have it, but to Governments, no sum of money is too large to tax people. I am not making a case for not doing good things; I am making a case that was made formidably by the hon. Members who have tabled amendments, which the Committee should support.

Hon. Members are here to represent the British people. As the hon. Member for Vauxhall and I have pointed out, the House agreed that we were to be citizens of the EU, with all the assurances of no essential loss of sovereignty. “Citizens of the EU” is a hollow expression, because the relationship comes from who we are, what we feel and the context in which we grow up.

[Bob Stewart]

When I was a new MP, I seem to remember coming to the Dispatch Box and swearing loyalty to Her Majesty the Queen. We are citizens of this country first—[Interruption.] Forgive me. We may be subjects of Her Majesty the Queen, but we are equally citizens of Europe. I know which one takes priority.

[Sir Richard Shepherd]

I am with my hon. Friend on these matters.

The dissolution in the sense of ourselves in the past 30 years that I have been in Parliament is not entirely down to me. The disillusionment is partly down to the grinding of the EU; its false prospectuses; its lies, lies and lies; and its belief in the objective of creating the dream of a Monsieur Delors or a group of European politicians of the earlier part of the second half of the last century. It is not my dream. It was undoubtedly the dream of a part-generation of British politicians. It has been so encompassing and encased in bonds of steel and iron that Ministers and shadow Ministers sit on the Front Benches not even thinking it necessary to say, on a small matter such as the Bill, “Why? Stop it. No. Don’t go on.”

I urge hon. Members not to pay the Danegeld or to support that message. They should reject it. They should let the Government know that the purpose of Parliament is to ensure a proper negotiation on competences and what we are about. Do not give money to the Danes because they will only come back for more.

[Helen Goodman]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I should declare an interest: I am half Danish—my mother is Danish and my father is English.

The hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), who has moved amendment 4, was right to remind the Committee that today is Holocaust memorial day. As well as remembering those horrific episodes, it is extremely important that people learn from them. In my constituency, I have found that holocaust education has been particularly useful in the learning of young people who might be tempted to get involved with racist organisations. They have learnt that what begins as a small piece of prejudice can grow into something very dangerous indeed.

Her Majesty’s Opposition will not support the hon. Member for Daventry in the Lobby this afternoon. He is of course right that archiving is important and uncontroversial, and that remembrance is extremely important, but it is not adequate to say that we do not want to educate our citizens on the institutions of Europe when they have a role in taking part in elections to the European Parliament. They need to understand what powers it has and does not have, so that they are able to make intelligent decisions. I am sorry, but I am not convinced, as I said on Second Reading, that knowing more will mean that people will be uncritical. I think that if they know more they will perhaps understand the case for some of the reforms.

I wish to remind Government Members that in this country we have a serious problem with the low participation of young people in democratic processes. In the previous general election, only 44%—fewer than half—of 18 to 24-year-olds voted, while 76% of those over the age of 65 voted. I would have thought that it is common sense that people need to understand the institutions they vote on and the influence they can have by doing so. Government Members have as keen an interest as anybody in educating people, particularly young people, so that they participate and take these matters seriously.