European Union

Robert Walter Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

The hon. Gentleman has had a chance, and I want to make some progress.

The stock of inward foreign direct investment in the UK from the EU has risen by 800% in less than 10 years, and our membership of the EU single market helps to attract the other half of our FDI, from non-EU investors, who see the UK as a platform from which to break into European trade and access the wider single market.

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

Will the Minister confirm to the House that Norway also has access to the single market, as a member of the European economic area, and in return has a better record in implementing EU directives, in which it has no say, than we do?

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend makes the point well. Countries in the European economic area have to comply with EU regulations and implement them fully if they are to have the single market access that we enjoy by virtue of our membership. If we were in a comparable position, British business would have to meet the costs of compliance with whatever regulatory standards the UK decided to impose, in addition to the costs of meeting the differing standards of the remaining EU bloc or any of the other European countries with which they wished to trade.

Council of Europe (UK Chairmanship)

Robert Walter Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

Ambitions must sometimes be tempered by the need to obtain the necessary consensus. In the context of getting 46 other countries to agree, the freeze that I talked about is a pretty good outcome. Further encouragement is that the combination of the freeze in the Council of Europe’s budget and the recalculation of the relative contributions of member states to that budget means that the United Kingdom will pay a smaller proportion in 2012 than we did in 2011. That is a good outcome of our negotiations.

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

Discussions on the budget take place in Strasbourg, and 27 of the 47 member states are members of the European Union. Those 27 member states are sitting idly by while the Fundamental Rights Agency, which was established in Vienna and has some spurious objectives, increases its budget for allegedly doing a human rights job on behalf of the 27 states.

[Mr Lidington]

My hon. Friend, who is the leader of the United Kingdom delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, makes his point cogently. He tempts me on to a much bigger debate about European Union expenditure, but I will confine myself to the matter before us.

The Government take the need for budgetary control over European Union agencies very seriously indeed. The growth of such expenditure and the proliferation of agencies within the European Union have been overlooked for too long. We have been making strong representations to the Commission about that, and have sought to build alliances with other EU member states to secure the sort of reform and budgetary discipline that my hon. Friend rightly wants.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

As the Minister for Europe said in his opening remarks, this is an interesting week in the House of Commons when we have two debates on Europe. If I may say so, it is good that we are debating Europe, and not necessarily the European Union, today, although I will touch on the relationship between the Council of Europe and the European Union.

As we have already heard, the Council of Europe dates back to 1949 and is very much dedicated to democracy, human rights and the rule of law. We can be proud to have been one of its founding fathers. It now runs to 47 member states across the continent of Europe. The only states that are not members are Belarus, Kosovo and Vatican City—which I understand is not yet a democracy.

[Mr Leigh]

Nor should it ever be. [Laughter.]

[Mr Walter]

As the hon. Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) pointed out, the fact that there are 47 member states means that it will be 23 years before we get the chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers again. It is therefore very important that we make good use of our six months in the chairmanship that starts in a week or so.

This House, as has been pointed out, is represented in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Eighteen Members from both Houses of Parliament serve as full members of the Parliamentary Assembly and a further 18 stand ready as substitutes.

[Jim Sheridan]

Notwithstanding the hon. Gentleman’s enthusiasm for Europe, does he accept that his party’s delegation is not made up of the most enthusiastic people on European matters? Hopefully, after the British chairmanship, we will have a more enlightened delegation of Government Members to the Council of Europe.

[Mr Walter]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I think he will find that more members of the delegation are present on my side of the House than on his, where there are only four. The delegates from my party play an active role in the proceedings of the Parliamentary Assembly, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who chairs the committee on migration, refugees and population.

One of the powers of the Parliamentary Assembly is to elect judges to the European Court of Human Rights. I have often heard statements in the British press, and occasionally from colleagues, that we should not be subject to the judgments of unelected and unaccountable judges. Well, we do not have any elected judges in this country, but we do have an elected British judge who serves on the European Court of Human Rights.

Perhaps I may correct one other myth. Often we are told that Europe has acquired a flag and an anthem. Those are not the flag and the anthem of the European Union. They were adopted as far back as 1955 by the Council of Europe. Just like Liverpool football club, which also has a flag and an anthem, the Council of Europe has not yet become a nation state.

I want to deal with the United Kingdom agenda and one important aspect of it in particular. During our chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers, an important ongoing issue that may make some progress is the accession of the European Union to the European convention on human rights. The question of European Union accession engenders mixed responses. Among the non-EU members of the Council of Europe, it is considered to be a good thing. They wonder why the institutions of the European Union should not be covered by the European convention on human rights and why the European Court of Human Rights should not have jurisdiction over its institutions. In that spirit, I believe that we should take this matter forward. My concern is about the manner of the participation of the European Union.

[Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the conscientious and diligent way in which he has led the British delegation to the Council of Europe. I agree with the remarks with which he has prefaced his comments on the accession of the European Union. Does he agree, none the less, that we would all be the losers, in particular the non-EU member states in the Council of Europe, if the accession of the EU resulted in it appearing that there were two classes of members in the Council of Europe: EU member states and non-EU member states?

[Mr Walter]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. I will come on to say why I believe that there could be dangerous developments on this issue, particularly in relation to the Committee of Ministers, of which the United Kingdom is about to take the chair, and its voting procedures when European Union matters are under consideration. At the Dispatch Box earlier today, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said, in relation to the eurozone countries, that it was against his basic view that there should be any form of caucusing within the Council of Ministers. I think that that is absolutely right.

I remind my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe that when he issued his statement yesterday on the UK agenda for the Council of Europe, he also issued a written ministerial statement on voting by European Union member states in multilateral organisations. The EU, of course, is not a member of the Council of Europe at the moment, but it aspires to be one. I therefore raise a concern that has been raised not only by EU member states, but more particularly by non-EU member states. If there was a judgment in the European Court of Human Rights against an EU member state, would the EU member states in the Committee of Ministers, when it came to enforcing that judgment, vote as a bloc or would they do what they do today, which is to decide individually how the judgment is to be implemented?

[Sandra Osborne]

I, too, pay tribute to the fantastic job that the hon. Gentleman does as the leader of the delegation. Does he agree that unless the EU is subject to the same rules as the countries, some non-EU member states may use that as an excuse not to carry out their obligations?

[Mr Walter]

I think that the hon. Lady is right. She is making the point for me that we must be seen to be fair and even-handed in the way we enforce judgments. That might become even more of a problem.

This issue is already taken account of in the draft of the accession of the EU. I am afraid that the Lisbon treaty is quoted in aid on this matter. If there was a judgment against an institution of the European Union, such as the Commission, the European Court of Justice or the European Central Bank, the 27 EU member states—or 28 as there will be by the time this is implemented, with the accession of Croatia—would be obliged under the Lisbon treaty to vote as a bloc. That brings into question the whole history of fairness and even-handedness in the Committee of Ministers.

The reason given for that is that if there was a judgment against the EU, it would be up to the 27 EU member states to implement that judgment. They therefore have to act as one and as a party. That is fine, but it sounds rather like they will be judge, jury and executioner. We have to question seriously how we will take that matter forward. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to that in his summing up.

The next point may sound rather technical, but it goes back to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor’s comment earlier that we are developing a situation in which there will be European Union mechanisms and institutions such as the European financial stability facility and the European Central Bank that involves not all 27 member states but only the 17 eurozone members, If there was a judgment against one of those entities in the European Court of Human Rights, would we vote as 27 member states or would the 17 vote together? Would the 10 non-eurozone members be let off the obligation in the Lisbon treaty to vote as one? I would again be interested to hear the Minister’s response on that.

[Mr Gale]

It gets a bit worse than that. There is a thing called the transfrontier broadcasting directive, which is a European Union instrument. There is also a thing called the transfrontier broadcasting convention, which is a Council of Europe convention that preceded the directive. The convention needs updating and the Council of Europe was in the process of doing so intelligently and in line with technical developments. The European Commissioner responsible for broadcasting has told the Council of Europe and its 47 members, many of which are not members of the European Union, as my hon. Friend has pointed out, that we cannot discuss the matter. What right does the European Union have to say to the Council of Europe—the greater body—that it can or cannot discuss something?

[Mr Walter]

My hon. Friend makes a very significant point about the sovereignty of member states, whether they be members of the European Union or of the Council of Europe. I believe that the sovereignty of the 47 member states of the Council of Europe should be absolute in the case of a Council of Europe convention.

[Sir Alan Meale]

Like the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues, I pay tribute to him for his work at the Council of Europe over many years. Members of all parties will agree that he does a fine job. I apologise, but I will have to leave the debate shortly to chair the sitting in Westminster Hall.

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about the sovereignty of nations, what about Turkey? It has refused to accept the outcome of the Louzides case on the confiscation of property—it has paid up, but it has never accepted it. What about its current threat that if Cyprus is given the presidency of the Council of Ministers, it will leave the Council of Europe and not pursue any path towards entry into the European Union?

[Mr Walter]

I think the hon. Gentleman knows that I am an avowed supporter of Turkish membership of the European Union, but that does not mean that I will in any way make excuses for the Turkish Government’s non-compliance with their international obligations. I also regret the Turkish Prime Minister’s statement that Turkey would not participate in any discussions with the EU should Cyprus take on the presidency of the Council of Ministers. That is a wrong decision, as I have said to many Turkish colleagues.

To return to the question of EU accession, I wish to refer for a moment to the role of the European Parliament. It has been conceded that when it comes to the question of the election of judges, the European Parliament will have the same rights as the largest member states. We are one of those five largest member states. However, the draft arrangements go on to give the European Parliament special treatment, which I think is unjustified. It will have an ex officio place on the sub-committee that interviews the candidates for the post of judge in the European Court of Human Rights. As the leader of one of the other large delegations, I ask why I cannot appoint an ex officio member to that sub-committee on the basis that I should have the same voting rights as the European Parliament.

Under its internal mechanisms, the European Parliament will have the power to veto the three candidates who are on the shortlist. No other Parliament has that power. It will also have the power to be on the sub-committee that interviews the candidates. I contend that that will create an uneven playing field, and I hope we will resist it when we come to debate EU accession.

[Oliver Heald]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one thing that is quite hard to understand for people who are not on the Council, or regularly attending it, is that some of the largest member countries are not in the EU? They are proud countries, and sadly often ones that are on the receiving end of judgments of the Court. If the arrangements that are made do not seem to be fair and equal right across the Council of Europe area, it affects how they look at the Council and its judgments. It also affects whether those judgments are enforceable and will stick.

[Mr Walter]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point, because it sums up the fact that what I have described will bring into question the legitimacy of the decisions of the Committee of Ministers when it comes to enforcing judgments that have been handed down by the Court.

I want to move on to one aspect of the United Kingdom’s agenda for our chairmanship, with which the Minister also dealt at length. It is the reform of the European Court of Human Rights, which not only we in this country but many member states across Europe welcome.

There seems to be some dispute about what the backlog of cases in the Court is at the moment. The last figure that I heard, which was at the beginning of this month from the secretary-general of the Council of Europe, was 162,000 cases, and growing at the rate of 2,000 a month. I therefore welcome the approach that we are taking as the new chair of the Committee of Ministers.

[Mr Brian Binley (Northampton South) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend concerned that most of us sitting in the Chamber today might not be here when the end of that list is reached? Does that bother him?

[Mr Walter]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, which brings me neatly to the next one that I wanted to make.

I welcome the work of the commission on a Bill of Rights under the chairmanship of Sir Leigh Lewis. It was set up to advise on a British Bill of Rights, but at the request of the Prime Minister the first document that it published was advice to the Government on the reform of the European Court of Human Rights. It has expressed a view on that question, and I shall come to that in a moment. I also welcome the interest taken by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which I know has been to Strasbourg and met the Court and is considering that very important issue.

I wish to deal with four issues related to the reform of the Court. The first, to which a number of Members have alluded, is the quality of the judges. Under the existing procedure, each member state puts forward three nominees when there is a vacancy for a judge of that nationality. Under the new procedures, those candidates are to be interviewed by the Committee of Ministers and by a sub-committee of the Parliamentary Assembly set up specifically for the purpose of making recommendations on which of the three judges is probably the best candidate. It then comes down to the Parliamentary Assembly to vote on those judges.

There has been phenomenal criticism in the Parliamentary Assembly that the judges nominated are not up to the quality that one expects in such an important court, which deals with human rights across the continent. Some of the judges are academics, and some are only what I would call administrative lawyers, but I believe that judges should have experience of sitting as court judges, preferably in the supreme court of their member state. They should not be people who have applied because they have been teaching a nice academic course specialising in human rights at a university for the past few years and thought, “Why not go to Strasbourg for a few years?” That is not the right way to select candidates.

The Parliamentary Assembly is considering another matter of some concern. If one of those judges drops out and is unable to perform his or her duties, the member state in question can nominate ad hoc judges to sit in their place in the Court. In the past four years, 77 ad hoc judges appointed to sit in for judges who were unable to be in Strasbourg were involved in 516 judgments. I am not sure, and there is some doubt, whether those ad hoc judges are of the same quality, because they do not go through the same selection procedure. They are not nominated, they are not interviewed either by the committee of Ministers or by the sub-committee of the Parliamentary Assembly, and they are certainly not voted for by the Parliamentary Assembly. I am not sure that the spirit of the convention is being implemented if we allow those 77 ad hoc judges to sit in judgment.

The second and most important point raised by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe was on subsidiarity and the filtering of cases, causing the backlog. Is the ECHR the final court of appeal for the 800 million people who live on the continent of Europe? I contend that it is not. I believe that it exists to act in partnership with our national supreme courts and that it should not be used as the final court of appeal. A number of members of the delegation met the secretary-general of the Council of Europe on Tuesday to discuss that. He said that—this is even worse—the majority of the cases before the Court involve people using it not as their final court of appeal, but their court of first instance. In the majority of cases, people are disgruntled by something that has happened in their locality—a remote part of Russia or wherever—and they do not use the Russian legal system first and foremost, but go straight to Strasbourg. We must stop that from happening.

People who appeal to the Supreme Court in this country, or even to the Court of Appeal on their way up to the Supreme Court, must seek leave to do so. We must create a situation like that. Requiring people to seek leave to appeal would mean that a judge in this country or another member state would determine whether such a case is admissible, or whether it should be heard by a national supreme court and whether that should be the end of the road.

[Mr Leigh]

The European Court often gets blamed unfairly for judicial activism, but the real judicial activism is happening in our own courts, because the convention is incorporated in our law. That was the big mistake, and I am constantly referring to it, which is why I intervened earlier. In a sense, the focus of the debate is wrong. We cannot focus only on the Court in Strasbourg; we must also focus on our own courts.

[Mr Walter]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why the Government were right to set up the commission on a Bill of Rights, which will consider whether the Human Rights Act 1998 should be replaced by a British Bill of Rights that better reflects the sentiments he expresses.

[Oliver Heald]

By way of a rider to my hon. Friend’s point on seeking leave to appeal on a point of law, which I basically agree with, occasionally, a court in a country refuses leave in circumstances that do not hold water legally. Should there not at that point be a possibility of applying for leave to appeal directly to the Court in Strasbourg?

[Mr Walter]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that point. We must strike the right balance—strike out spurious claims but not genuine ones. In some cases, those making genuine claims could be refused leave to appeal for, if I may say, political reasons, when their case should go to the Strasbourg Court. In this country, I have every confidence that the Supreme Court or any other lower court would act in the interests of the law and equity, but I might question the courts in a number of other member states—I will not name them in the Chamber.

My third point concerns the competence of the Court and its relationship with national Parliaments and sovereign member states. That the House debated and voted overwhelmingly against prisoner voting rights showed that we in this country feel that somebody committed to jail for an indictable offence should have their voting rights taken away while in prison. That is at variance with the judgment of the Court. I am not a lawyer, but in my view it is absolutely right that a court can sentence somebody to prison and so deny their liberty in several areas. In sentencing them to prison, we are not infringing most of their convention rights—for example, we are not infringing their right to life or imposing on them inhuman and degrading treatment. Instead, we are deciding to deny them certain liberties—for example, by not allowing them to go home to their family every night, we are denying them the right to a family life.

[Mr Binley]

Do the people sent to prison not have the choice about whether they go to prison, and should that not be a major consideration? Furthermore, is this not a constitutional right, rather than a human right? I know that that takes us on to aspects of law, but these are the things that make people very angry.

[Mr Walter]

Of course, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is the point that we are making. We could have a wider debate about why people commit crimes and why they go to prison, but my specific point is about the denial of liberty and what convention rights that denial of liberty impinges on. It is accepted that some rights in the convention can legitimately be denied. I am interested that Mr Hirst, when he went to Strasbourg, did not say that he was being denied the right to a family life by being in prison and ask why he could not have his wife and children there. He picked on one emotive issue—his voting and democratic rights—but I think that it is absolutely right that this Parliament decide the voting rights of prisoners, and if it decides that prisoners should not have a vote, so be it. That is part of our national sovereignty. It is a matter for national legislatures, not the Court.

My fourth point concerns the backlog. As I mentioned, the figure that I have is 162,000 cases, growing by 2,000 a month. I commend the commission on a Bill of Rights and its advice on this matter: it expressed concern that, whatever reforms we came up with for the Court, they would not deal with the cases currently in the system, and it recommended that we find a way to clear the backlog. One of the commission’s proposals, which is worth taking forward, is that across Europe are retired judges experienced in human rights law who might be brought out of retirement on, say, a one-year contract, subject to their being vetted, interviewed and so on, and that they be given responsibility solely for going through the list of 162,000 cases, deciding which are admissible and, if necessary, immediately sending them to the Court for judgment.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Did the commission not also recommend that the judges be able to dismiss cases, in order to reduce their number, saying, “We cannot deal with this anymore”? The figure of 162,000 is ginormous. We would never get through them.

[Mr Walter]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, we cannot get through them. We know that about 97% of those cases are inadmissible and could be got rid of straightaway, but we need somebody to sit down, go through the paperwork and say that they are inadmissible. If that were done, we might be able immediately to bring before the Court the few thousand cases that lie in the balance, or use this coterie of retired judges to sit in judgment if there are points of law involved that the Court has already been determined in previous cases and so no new judgments to be made.

It is not all as simple as that, though, because there are other constitutional issues. Many of the cases in Strasbourg get there because, as I understand it, there is no supreme court in the Russian Federation to adjudicate on them. They come straight to Strasbourg from the provincial courts, so we might have to persuade the Russian Federation to have a look at its court procedures—after it has got through its elections, of course.

I welcome the United Kingdom chairmanship. I know from colleagues in the Chamber that we are willing and ready to help the Minister and the Government to take forward our agenda, particularly on reform of the Court. The Interlaken process set in train some years ago was followed by a high-level conference under the Turkish presidency in Izmir, in which my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor participated on behalf of this country. I hope that we come up with concrete proposals in our six months to ensure that reform of the Court is not only an agenda item, but a reality.

I wish my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe well. I commend him and his deputy in Strasbourg, our excellent ambassador, Mrs Eleanor Fuller, who has done tremendous work. Thorbjørn Jagland, the former Norwegian Prime Minister, is an excellent secretary-general—one of the best the Council of Europe has had for a number of years—and is also very much in tune with the United Kingdom agenda.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Mann]

The hon. Gentleman is a very good parliamentarian and he used to be my MP, but he sometimes gets over-excited. I am not criticising the COE. I am proposing a cut in its budget, and in the budgets of other international institutions. That is not a criticism of the COE; rather, it is to do with the economic realities. If the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues wish to prioritise certain areas of expenditure, such as by red-circling overseas aid, they are perfectly entitled to do so. What I am saying is that the Government should use their chairmanship of the COE to implement a small cut in its budget—and that the budgets of other EU and international bodies should also be cut.

[Mr Walter]

I want to give the hon. Gentleman some reassurance. The delegation from this place to the COE has had its budget cut, as have the delegations to other international bodies. It was cut by 10% this year, and it will be affected by the overall House of Commons budget cut of 17% in this Parliament.

[John Mann]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that information, and let me stress that I do not celebrate such cuts, but they are, perhaps, inevitable. I have only been to Strasbourg once—it was many years ago and it was not a trip to the Council of Europe—but it is certainly an opulent place. The following question should certainly be asked: do we need European parliamentary institutions in Strasbourg as well as Brussels?

National Referendum on the European Union

Robert Walter Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

May I reassure hon. Members on both sides of the House that I shall be voting tonight not in response to a three-line Whip but in what I believe is the national interest?

I am saddened by some of the comments I have heard in the Chamber today. Since 1960, the Conservative party and Conservative Governments, whether it was Harold Macmillan, Alexander Douglas-Home, Ted Heath, Margaret Thatcher or John Major, have always believed that our future was in Europe, and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister follows in that tradition.

It was from the embers of the second world war—a Europe torn apart by Germany and Italy—which for many was the second terrible war in a generation after the great war, or the war to end all wars, that the idea of the European Community and European union was born. I believe that European unity was a cause to end all wars—on this continent at least. I campaigned hard in the 1975 referendum for a yes vote and I remember endless arguments with my late father-in-law who told me not to trust the Germans and certainly never to trust the Italians. He rang me up after the vote and said, “I thought I’d better tell you I voted in the referendum yesterday,” and I said, “Oh, yes,” expecting him to tell me that he had voted no. He said, “I voted yes—not for me and probably not for you but for my grandchildren.” His grandchildren are my children and they are grown up now; indeed, they are the same age as many of my colleagues in the House today.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

The hon. Gentleman reminds us that the debate about joining the European Economic Community back in 1974 or 1976 was never just an economic argument. It was precisely the argument about securing peace in Europe that was behind European union, and that was also one of the factors that was put forward in the debate at that time, although I accept that economic motives were the prime issue in that debate.

[Mr Walter]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right—it was a political argument. What I am sad about is that there are those who want to destroy that legacy and the legacy of those who fought and voted for that lasting peace—a Europe in harmony, comfortable with itself and respecting differences of culture, language, history and nationality, but confident in its ability to work together.

[Mr Cash]

I just want to mention to my hon. Friend that my father was killed in the war in Normandy and I am sure that he, together with all the others, also appreciated that what they were doing was fighting for freedom and for the democracy that is being put at risk by opposition to this motion.

[Mr Walter]

I hope that that is not correct and I remind my hon. Friend that he and I first met when we were both on a committee of the European Movement, which, of course, had just campaigned for a yes vote in that very referendum.

[Mr Redwood]

rose—

[Mr Walter]

I shall not give way any more.

The world has shrunk. More than ever, we travel, we trade and we live in each other’s countries. In 1972, this House voted not only to be part of that common European future but to be an architect of its destiny as a full member of the European Community. The European Union is not a perfect form of government, but neither are the British Government, any Department of State or any local government. If that were the case, we would not be here; we would all be wasting our time.

[Mr Redwood]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Andrew Percy]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Walter]

I will not give way any more; I really need to get on.

The European Commission and the European Parliament have ideas and aspirations that sit more than awkwardly with the concept that we all have of a sovereign state. There are those in Brussels who see national Governments and national Parliaments as a nuisance and who think that life would be much simpler if we decided everything at a European level, but thank God we live in a democracy. Thank God we have Members of the European Parliament who are prepared to stand up for the British interest and, more particularly, that we have Ministers and a Prime Minister who can go to Brussels, argue our case and succeed.

What is it that my colleagues and friends want from any new treaty? Have we not had enough of treaties? Can we not at least make the one that we have work? What would a new treaty do? Would it relegate us to the European Free Trade Association or the European economic area? Would it get us the Norwegian deal? They argue that the EU would have to give us access to the single market—yes, but at what price? Norway does not have a free ride in its access to the single market. It does not contribute to the common agricultural policy but it jolly well pays its share to other areas of the EU budget and it gets absolutely nothing back. What is more, its price for access means that it too implements all EU directives—in fact, it has a better record than us, with 99.6% of EU directives having been implemented by the Norwegian Parliament—but the difference is that it has no Ministers at the table when they are discussed. It has no commissioner, no parliamentary representation in co-decision and it has to accept whatever Brussels sends. It is not even a case of, “Take it or leave it;” it is, “Take it, or else.”

We cannot blame Brussels and the wicked foreigners for all our woes. To quote the Prime Minister,

“We are all in this together”.

Europe needs Britain and Britain needs Europe. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary struck the right note earlier. We are in Europe, our history is European and our destiny is European. As far as I am concerned, we are here to stay and I beg my colleagues to reject the motion.

North Africa and the Middle East

Robert Walter Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I am going to talk about Libya in a moment. What I am talking about now is the long-term approach of the United Kingdom and, we hope, the whole of the European Union to the region. I am talking about the offer that should be made, and the magnet that should be held out to encourage positive change in the region. If all the levers and policies of the European Union relating to its neighbourhood were brought into one coherent policy, even my hon. Friend might be driven to agree that that could play a positive role in the developments in the region.

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

The Foreign Secretary will be aware that the European neighbourhood policy has spent several billion euros over the years on trying to evolve a policy on that region. At the same time, Turkey has been much more successful, in economic and political terms. Will he tell us whether Turkey will be included in this new initiative, rather than excluded, as it has been in the past?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, that is a very important point. I certainly want this to be coherently organised with Turkey as well. Turkey is of course a positive model of democracy in a Muslim nation, and it has a vital role to play in the entire future development of the middle east. That is one of the reasons that we have placed such importance on bilateral relations with Turkey, and on the EU’s relations with the country.

Inter-Parliamentary Scrutiny (EU Foreign, Defence and Security Policy)

Robert Walter Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Ottaway]

I think I follow my hon. Friend’s point. My point is that unless we get our act together so that Parliaments across Europe adopt the proposals, there will be no counterweight to what is coming from the European Parliament, to which he just referred.

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way; I might be able to help him. Early in 2009, the European Parliament passed a resolution, paragraph 74 of which

“Recalls that the European Parliament is the only supranational institution with a legitimate claim to exercise democratic supervision over the EU’s security and defence policy”.

[Richard Ottaway]

I am sorry, but I missed the beginning of my hon. Friend’s intervention. Will he clarify who made that point?

[Mr Walter]

It was made in a motion to the European Parliament, which was then passed.

[Richard Ottaway]

The European Parliament is free to pass all the motions it likes. The truth of the matter is that the Lisbon treaty invites national Parliaments to exercise a scrutiny function over European foreign, defence and security policy. What we are doing is putting forward a proposal. If we cannot agree on it, we cannot influence the debate—going on in Belgium, not in Brussels—and we will not have a seat at the table. What I hope will happen today is that the UK Parliament will come up with a proposal to lead the charge in providing a counterweight to the European Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr MacShane]

There we are. I never get to eat as many Belgian chocolates as I would wish, and the amount is going down minute by minute. I thought the figure was six, but now it is four, which amounts to 13 or 14 times less representation than that of the European Parliament.

The Foreign Affairs Committee report is what the French would call a nombriliste discussion, which is to say a lot of navel gazing. It is a discussion about different bits of the axis between your Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and the Woolsack. There is some reference to the Speaker not appointing a Chair. I am very interested in what the constitutional and parliamentary reasons for, or implications of, that are, but this is about what we say to each other in three Select Committees in this House and two in the other place. What is not on the record is what we should have been doing. We are utterly incapable of doing this, although we actually did start debating the matter a bit on Tuesday. I am talking about working out how we connect this House to other national Parliaments and parliamentarians in order to discuss EU business.

It is no use just sitting on endless piles of the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph in London or telling each other across the Chamber about these wretched things called the European Union and the European Parliament, which some hon. Members do not like. We need to reorganise how we link up with many like-minded members of national Parliaments to put in place a more effective national parliamentary network to look at how the affairs of the European Union can better mesh and integrate with the work of national Parliaments. That is because, in essence, a huge transfer of authority is taking place away from the now defunct WEU to the European Union and the European Parliament. We do, however, have the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which is a very worthwhile outfit, to which many of the member states that will now be excluded can come and others can come by invitation.

We are seeing that Europe is completely unable to respond to the Libyan crisis in the southern Mediterranean with a degree of muscular soft power or slightly less than full military hard power. In our debates, we find that the new structure being proposed is expected to provide the European parliamentary supervision of exactly the decisions that are or are not being taken on Libya and the other north African countries in revolt. A Heads of Government meeting will take place tomorrow, and I wish the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary and his team well in coming up with a policy that can connect, but it will have to have some parliamentary oversight. We are already being told no to war. We are being told that NATO must not intervene. We can sense a protest building out there, whereby if this country were to be involved in some kind of decision, with or without UN sanctions, that might produce a public opinion backlash. Again, we have given up adequate parliamentary supervision and discussion of these issues. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter), who valiantly tried to keep the WEU alive, made all sorts of concessions and worked with colleagues, but was steamrollered by Whitehall.

[Mr Walter]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words. This relates to the point about responding to a crisis such as the one in Libya. Let us suppose that we were to follow the Foreign Affairs Committee’s recommendation, to which I shall refer in a moment, if I catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker. If that Committee had met three weeks ago, it would be another six months before it could express any opinion on our collective response to the Libyan crisis.

[Mr MacShane]

I accept that fully and it is true of all inter-parliamentary oversight committees. We are, willy-nilly, increasingly having to discuss how, collectively, at European level, we express our common foreign policy goals when we decide what they are. Yesterday, the Prime Minister slapped down the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) when he called for an in/out EU referendum. The Prime Minister said, “We are staying in the EU and that is it.” I am glad that he said that after five years of encouraging the hopes of Eurosceptics, but if it is the case, this House has to work out how best to take part in debates and decisions on what Europe is going to do—we cannot wish it away.

I am not criticising the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee or the officials who have worked on this report, because it is probably the best they could manage of a bad job, but it is exactly a reflection of our House’s inability to network and create alternative sources of democratic parliamentary legitimacy and oversight for what is done at European level.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

May I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) and the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs for the work that they have done on this subject? As hon. Members will gather in a moment, I do not entirely agree with their conclusions, which are very similar to the work of Lord Roper and his Select Committee on the European Union in the House of Lords. May I also express a slight concern that a number of my colleagues who are members of the WEU Assembly, representing this Parliament, might have been here had it not been for the fact that we had only 48 hours’ notice? I and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) were involved in other meetings and have had to return to take part in this debate. Let us move on, however.

I shall briefly give the background. In December 2009, I was telephoned by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), the then Minister for Europe, who told me that he wanted to save €2.3 million, which was the United Kingdom’s contribution to the WEU—to the whole organisation, not just the Assembly. The Assembly’s cost to the United Kingdom was considerably less than that. The UK was therefore seeking to renounce the Brussels treaty.

[Mr Clappison]

Cost is a very important factor and we all need to consider carefully the costs of what we do. Has my hon. Friend seen the reports that the European External Action Service and the High Representative are taking on additional public relations consultants at a cost of €10 billion? Has my hon. Friend done any maths to see whether the cost to which he has just referred might be much less than the cost of some additional spin doctors for the EEAS?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Walter]

I can tell my hon. Friend that the entire global cost of the WEU organisation—the body located in Brussels as well as the Assembly in Paris—was considerably less than the figure he mentions for PR staff for the EEAS. In fact, the total bill to the United Kingdom Parliament for the Parliamentary Assembly was about €1 million.

[Mr MacShane]

Not even a banker’s bonus!

[Mr Walter]

Indeed.

The WEU’s history goes back to 1948 and the Brussels treaty. The treaty was amended in 1954, which is when the Assembly came into effect. One very good thing about the treaty is its article 5—a common defence pact that, as it is not in any way replicated in the Lisbon treaty, we will lose as a result of the WEU and Brussels treaty ending in June. The Assembly, which was part of the treaty, has evolved over the years and has been known as the European Security and Defence Assembly for some time. It has brought together parliamentarians from all 27 European Union member states as well as non-EU NATO members in Europe, which have had associate status within the body. As such, they have been able to speak and vote but have not contributed to the budget. Eventually, as a result of the discussions I have mentioned, on 30 March 2010—the very last day before the general election on which business could be introduced in the House—a written ministerial statement from the then Foreign Secretary indicated that the United Kingdom intended to withdraw from the Brussels treaty. I think the other signatories to the treaty must have had some notice of that because the following day all 10 of them indicated that they too would cease operations before the end of June 2011.

Those statements and a statement that the EU Foreign Affairs Council made a month later all paid tribute to the Assembly and said that its work should be continued by another inter-parliamentary body and that it should involve the non-EU NATO members in that parliamentary scrutiny. We all believed that was a way forward but, sadly, not much has happened since then. It has been a considerable frustration to me and my colleagues from all Parliaments across Europe that nobody has given any guidance on what we should do next. The EU Speakers Conference decided to take an initiative and ask its Belgian presidency to report on what the way forward should be. It was to report next month but, as we are all aware, Belgium had an election just after our election and although it took us five days to form a coalition, the Belgians are still working on it. As a result, there has been little action in Belgium on this matter.

However, our Select Committee on Foreign Affairs has produced a report, under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South, and has—quite rightly, because it needs democratic legitimacy—put it before the House. In the report, my hon. Friend repeats an error to which I have just referred. Paragraph 3, on termination of the WEU, points out that

“the then Government announced that it intended to withdraw…from the WEU”

and

“commented that the WEU was ‘no longer relevant to today’s European security architecture’”.

[Richard Ottaway]

That is a quote.

[Mr Walter]

It is an absolute quote and I am not sure that I agree with it. Although it is factually correct, I am not sure that the WEU was no longer relevant to today’s European security architecture. We have just entered a number of agreements with France on defence, which are a form of what the Lisbon treaty calls “structured co-operation”. But that is another matter.

The report notes that

“the role being played by the Assembly did not justify its cost to the UK of over €2 million per year.”

As I pointed out just now, the Assembly costs were not €2 million a year; they were barely €1 million to the UK.

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

May I inform the House about the costs as I understand them? Annual membership of the Western European Union costs the British taxpayer €2.3 million, so after withdrawal the United Kingdom will no longer have to pay the full €2.3 million subscription, although it will continue to be liable for a share of the cost of WEU staff pensions. We will recoup some money from the sale of the WEU building in Paris, which the UK part-owns with other member states.

[Mr Walter]

I am grateful to the Minister for making those points. My point was that the €2.3 million is the cost of the WEU organisation, not the cost of the Parliamentary Assembly of the WEU, which is half that. I am delighted by the Minister’s assumption that the United Kingdom will gain from the sale of the building in Paris, because there had been rumours that it was to be gifted to the French Government. As holder of the presidency of the Assembly, we took the precaution of having an independent valuation of the building; it is worth at least €50 million, so the UK should benefit somewhat from its sale.

The Foreign Affairs Committee has been diligent in looking at the structures. Paragraph 5 of the European Union Committee report refers to some of the existing structures:

“We backed a ‘conference of committees’-type institution to replace the WEU Assembly, comprising a combined and enlarged version of the current informal Conference of Foreign Affairs Committee Chairpersons (COFACC) and Conference of Defence Committee Chairpersons (CODCC).”

The only problem with that is that, to my knowledge, the Conference of Defence Committee Chairpersons has not met for at least the past two years, so we are not actually replacing an effective body.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

It was interesting to hear that list of terminology. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the only way forward for dealing with the European Union is to put the matter to the British people in a referendum, so that we can have a debate in this country and decide whether we want to stay in that hugely bureaucratic organisation, or leave it and become an independent country again?

[Mr Walter]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention, although I think it goes a little beyond the scope of the motion. However, we and the Assembly of which I have the honour to be president are dealing with what are almost entirely intergovernmental structures consisting of European Union member states and other states in Europe such as Turkey, which has been mentioned several times, Norway or Iceland. We come together as willing partners in collective defence and security operations. Community institutions are not in any way relevant to our debate today; we are debating intergovernmental functions that are entered into freely.

My final point on the Foreign Affairs Committee report relates to the reference to the EU Speakers’ Conference, which will take place in April. The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee has already referred to the Belgian text—Belgium holds the EU presidency—which proposes an inter-parliamentary conference for common foreign and security policy and common security and defence policy, composed of delegations of the national Parliaments of EU member states. Paragraph 2 of that text suggests:

“Each national parliamentary delegation shall consist of four members.”

Paragraph 3 requests that

“The total number of delegates from the European Parliament shall not exceed one third of the members of the Conference.”

Therefore, if there are 108 members from national Parliaments, there will be 54 from the European Parliament.

On a reasonably rough approximation the UK and France together contribute around 60% of Europe’s defence budget, and we will have eight votes between us. However, the European Parliament, which makes absolutely no contribution to Europe’s defence budget, has no troops at its disposal, does not buy any aircraft carriers or other warships, aircraft or fighters, and has no troops deployed anywhere in the world, will have 54 votes. Is that the right proportion in terms of democratic accountability? I hasten to suggest that it is probably an imbalance. I am not averse to the European Parliament having some role and that its voice should be heard, but the presumption that its voice should somehow be considerably greater than that of the United Kingdom, France and others that contribute to Europe’s defence is nonsense.

The Belgian text goes on to suggest:

“The Conference shall have its seat in the European Parliament in Brussels. Meetings shall be organized twice a year in Brussels or in the country holding the rotating Council Presidency…The meetings shall jointly be presided over by the national Parliament of the Member State holding the rotating Council Presidency and the European Parliament.”

That means that responsibility is now to be divided 50:50. Paragraph 9 proposes:

“The secretariat of the Conference shall be provided by the European Parliament.”

The agenda will be set by the European Parliament, the conference will meet in the European Parliament and one third of the conference’s members will be Members of the European Parliament. My view is that that body will simply be an extraordinary meeting of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee: twice a year, it will invite Members of national Parliaments to come along to Brussels to hear what it has been doing. It will not be exercising genuine parliamentary scrutiny.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Does he accept that what is proposed is inconsistent with article 10 of protocol 1 of the treaty on the European Union, which mentions a conference of parliamentary committees submitting contributions for the attention of the European Parliament? That is completely different from what is being proposed by the Belgian presidency.

[Mr Walter]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I do not want to become too legalistic, but I will refer to a number of principles that I and colleagues have laid down that suggest we should have a much stronger inter-parliamentary standing conference. The principles on which we based that suggestion are all entirely consistent with the Lisbon treaty, which I know my hon. Friend and others were not enthusiasts for; none the less it is where we are.

Article 12 of the Lisbon treaty states:

“National Parliaments contribute actively to the good functioning of the Union.”

Article 10 of protocol states:

“A conference”—

which my hon. Friend has just referred to—

“of Parliamentary Committees for Union affairs may…organise interparliamentary conferences on specific topics, in particular to debate matters of common foreign and security policy, including common security and defence policy.”

The most important words in the treaty are in declaration 14, which states:

“The Conference also notes that the provisions covering the Common Foreign and Security Policy do not…increase the role of the European Parliament.”

In fact, the European Parliament has therefore no new competence as a result of the Lisbon treaty, but if we read the Parliament’s documents we find that it assumes that it does have that new role. Even if it does not, it is jolly well going to grab it and take it, because national Parliaments are doing nothing about it. That is why we need a strong functioning body. Madam Deputy Speaker, I know that you do not propose to call my amendment, but the spirit of my proposal was that we should have a much stronger body than that which the Foreign Affairs Committee proposes.

We propose a standing conference of inter-parliamentary representatives, which would carry on the work of the European Security and Defence Assembly, the Assembly of the Western European Union, enabling us to have effective inter-parliamentary scrutiny that would embrace at least the ground that it covered and include the five non-EU European NATO members, who provide considerable support to the work of the European Union and, collectively, to European defence.

We believe that that inter-parliamentary standing conference could be based in Brussels. It could have been based in Paris, but the Minister tells us that we are going to sell the building, so it cannot. The conference’s prime role would be to engage on European foreign affairs and defence issues with the Council of the European Union, its supporting and executive agencies, member Governments and Parliaments as appropriate. Recommendations and opinions would be made, but they would not necessarily bind national Parliaments.

The Council of the European Union, and especially the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, would make regular reports to that standing conference.

[Mr Clappison]

My hon. Friend has made some very powerful points throughout his speech, and the last two have been the most powerful of all. Is there not a danger that, if there is no such body as he describes, there will be a gap into which the European Parliament will be unable to resist the temptation to move?

[Mr Walter]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, because the alternative, which is before us today, is a body that would meet for one-and-a-half days every six months. The security and defence sub-committee of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee meets approximately every fortnight, and it has a large secretariat and research staff working for it. It will easily work its way in to provide such scrutiny and, because it is located in Brussels, summon the High Representative or the director-general of the EU military staff, who until recently was a British general and who has now been, I am pleased to say, promoted to the office of Black Rod in the other place. That alternative would be an absolute negation of what we believe to be parliamentary scrutiny, in that the European Parliament would take on that role.

Before I sit down, I want to deal with the question of funding, because that is the one argument against our having such a standing conference, which would have a small secretariat and perhaps two committees as opposed to the existing Assembly’s six. Staff at the existing Assembly have worked out the following figure in detail, however, and the feeling is that we could run an entire inter-parliamentary body, based in Brussels with a small specialist secretariat, for about €1.5 million. That would mean, spread out among the 27 member states, that the contribution of the United Kingdom would probably be about €100,000 at the most. Let me tell the House that in the 2011 Budget, this Parliament’s contribution to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly—of which I have no criticism—was €465,845, and that was just towards its administration. The contribution to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe for this current year is €267,035. The contribution towards our proposed standing conference—a body to scrutinise areas of activity where our armed forces are putting their lives at risk—would have been barely €100,000, or considerably less than £100,000. I therefore do not believe that cost should be the determining factor in this.

We should have a strong inter-parliamentary conference that involves Members of national Parliaments who have an interest in defence matters, drawn from our national foreign affairs and defence committees, among others. None of the members of the current Assembly, bar two or three, are members of their national committees, but that does not mean that they do not have expertise in these areas. The acknowledged need for continued inter-parliamentary scrutiny of common security and defence policy involving the 27 member states, plus the five non-EU members, is beyond question. As the Foreign Affairs Committee has indicated, there are different ways of approaching this question, but we need a much stronger framework within which to work.

European Affairs

Robert Walter Excerpts

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[David Miliband]

Indeed, as my right hon. Friend also says from a sedentary position.

We look to the new Prime Minister to continue to show the level of engagement seen in the past on European economic issues. Of the many hard lessons that Europe has learned, the most significant is the importance of collaboration in the global economy. The “Europe 2020” growth strategy will be formally adopted at the Council. It was the previous Government who led on the development of those proposals, during the financial crisis that Europe faced last year, and who pushed for many of the positive solutions. We support a strong external dimension, to ensure that the EU is promoted on the global scene, notably through engagement with the so-called BRIC economies—those of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

We also support the expansion of research and development, increasing the share of renewables in final energy consumption to 20% and moving towards a 20% increase in energy efficiency. We also look to the Prime Minister to make the case for longer-term reform in the European Union, particularly in areas such as energy liberalisation and the completion of the single market in areas relatively untouched, such as e-commerce.

There was one country that the Foreign Secretary did not mention, but which it is appropriate to do so. He rightly talked of the importance of the rising powers, but he did not mention Russia. The EU is by far Russia’s largest trading partner, with three quarters of all Russia’s direct foreign investment coming from EU member states. The EU-Russia summit—the first since Lisbon came into force—took place on Tuesday, I think. I look forward to hearing further from the Foreign Secretary about how he sees Europe’s relationship with Russia. He will know—he referred to this in the debate on the Gracious Speech—that Britain’s relations with Russia over the past three years have been extremely testing.

The then Opposition supported the Government in the measures that we took in respect of Russia. However, when it comes to helping the modernisation of Russia, the European Union should be our best instrument. That is why we agreed to the opening of the so-called partnership and co-operation agreement negotiations—I think against the advice of the then Opposition. I hope that the Foreign Secretary will seek to use those discussions to help the process of engagement with Russia. We have a lot to gain, not least on issues to do with energy supply, on which the whole of the EU is a significant partner for Russia.

The European Union also has an important human rights dimension to its work in Russia. Indeed, it is appropriate that the Secretary of State for International Development should be in the Chamber now—he missed the Foreign Secretary’s speech, but I am glad that he has come in at this moment. He made great play during the election campaign of what he called the absurdity of the Department for International Development funding work in China or Russia. Let us leave China to one side. The work that the Department for International Development was funding in Russia was vital human rights work in Chechnya and Ingushetia, parts of Russia that are extremely poor and extremely riven with human rights abuses.

I hope that the Foreign Secretary will talk to his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development, because the important work that was being done with DFID money—relatively small amounts of money, compared with the multi-billion pound DFID budget—was supporting human rights issues that the Foreign Secretary said in his speech in the Loyal Address will be a vital part of his Department’s work. We have heard a lot of words about joined-up government from the new Administration, and this is one area where the price of a campaign commitment to an across-the-board cut in the work done in Russia will be borne by people trying to do brave and important work, in an important country in an important part of the world.

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

I am pleased to hear what the shadow Foreign Secretary is saying, but could he explain to the House why under his Administration the funding for the Council of Europe—and, implicitly, for the European Court of Human Rights—was basically frozen, while he allowed the European Union to spend hundreds of millions of pounds creating a fundamental rights agency that has nothing whatever to do with human rights in Russia or anywhere else?

[David Miliband]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman’s intervention had so little to do with what I was talking about, which was a serious point about the development of human rights support in Russia. As he knows, the Council of Europe continues to receive generous support from the United Kingdom. The fact that we froze our budget is an example of the sort of efficiency and drive that he has often preached about. However, there is an important point there for the Foreign Secretary to address.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

I welcome the Foreign Secretary and the Minister for Europe to the Front Bench. I think that I speak for the whole House—or certainly for this side of the House—in saying that we now have a very strong team at the Foreign Office which will stand up for the United Kingdom’s interest in Europe as well as the UK’s interest in the wider world. It is with some sadness that I say I am speaking probably for the last time with you in the Chair, Sir Alan. We will miss you in that particular position, but I am sure that we will none the less see a lot of you around the House, which we look forward to in the future.

The Foreign Secretary spoke at some length about democracy and what could be described as a democratic deficit in European affairs, particularly in the European Union. I want to speak a little about what I see as a democratic deficit in common security and defence policy in the EU. There are a lot of good words on the role of national Parliaments in the Lisbon treaty, but there is little substance or structure on that subject. Sadly, one of the last dying acts of the previous Government—on the last day that this House sat before the general election was declared—was the announcement that they were signing the death warrant of an organisation called the Western European Union, and with it parliamentary scrutiny of European security and defence policy and common foreign and security policy.

Let me take a few moments to explain to colleagues what the Western European Union was, as it was the forerunner of the European Union. Its history dates back to 1948. The Brussels treaty was modified in 1954 to make the WEU an effective defence pact, and it participated in the early stages of the Balkans and Gulf wars. Then, 10 years ago, the European Union decided that it would transfer the functions of the WEU to the European Union, including the transfer of its military staff and its satellite centre, and the Western European Armaments Group effectively became the European Defence Agency. That is not what I want to talk about, however.

[Michael Connarty]

I thought that the hon. Gentleman might move on to make the simple suggestion that the scrutiny process carried out by the Western European Union should be remitted to the European Scrutiny Committee of this House, because at this moment decisions on those matters are not subject to scrutiny by that Committee.

[Mr Walter]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I shall come on to the role of European scrutiny committees in that respect. He may know that his colleagues in the French Parliament have already suggested that something similar to COSAC—the Conference of European Affairs Committees—of which the hon. Gentleman has been a member, should be involved in the process.

The Assembly of the WEU has brought together members of national Parliaments from across the European Union and also involved the non-European Union NATO members. Two years ago, the Assembly formally changed its charter to make all 27 national Parliaments and the now five non-EU members of NATO members of its Assembly. The WEU has been providing parliamentary oversight of European security and defence policy as well as wider European defence issues and, more particularly, the use of taxpayers’ money on European collective defence procurement.

As I said, in a written statement on 30 March, the former Foreign Secretary announced that the UK was intending to give 12 months’ notice that it wanted to withdraw from the organisation. The following day, all the other signatory states to treaty announced that they would do likewise on the basis of what can only be described as a cost-cutting exercise. We all want to save money, of course, but there is a danger when it comes to democracy of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

As seen in the Government’s statement, the statement of the WEU Permanent Council—the ambassadors in Brussels—and the recent motion in the French Parliament, to which I referred in my response to the intervention, and at the recent meeting of EU Speakers and at the EU Foreign Affairs Council in April, scrutiny is a role for national Parliaments and not for the European Parliament. They all made that clear.

The European Parliament, however, is ready, willing and able to step into the gap. In a resolution passed back in March, it claimed that the Assembly of the WEU—the European security and defence Assembly—had misappropriated its role in acting on behalf of national Parliaments, and that the European Parliament was the only competent body. That flies in the face of the Lisbon treaty, which states that this area of policy is intergovernmental and should remain so, and that there will be no further competences for the European Parliament.

It is national Parliaments and national Governments who authorise the use of our armed forces, whether it takes place on a European Union mission or on any other type of collective mission. It is national Parliaments and national Governments who pay for those deployments. It is national Parliaments and national Governments who pay for the equipment used by those armed forces, and it is national Parliaments and national Governments who decide on the terms of engagement.

The House of Commons Library contains an excellent research paper, which is currently sitting in the international affairs section, entitled “Parliamentary approval for deploying the armed forces: an introduction to the Issues”. Nowhere does that document, which makes very good reading, mention that the European Parliament has any armed forces whatsoever to deploy, or that it should in any way be involved in decisions about the deployment of our armed forces.

The decision made by the last Government—who have now been joined by other Governments—to abolish the Western European Union and wind up the treaty of Brussels abolishes parliamentary democracy, and nothing has been provided to replace that parliamentary democracy and oversight. Those Governments have provided no mechanism to implement all the rhetoric that they have produced in the Foreign Affairs Council and in their own statements by creating a new structure that would bring together national Parliaments to perform that role.

There are a number of options on the table. The simplest is for the current Assembly to transfer itself in order to become a European Union body. Plenty of precedents are provided by previous structures. The Foreign Affairs Council, which will meet in a week or so and which the Foreign Secretary will attend, may have an opportunity to move the discussion forward. What is proposed is a steering group that could draw up plans over the next six months or so, so that before the end of the life of the WEU and its Assembly we would have a structure that could exercise parliamentary democracy on behalf of all our national Parliaments and Governments.

I believe there is a real danger that if there is inactivity—if we all say that that is a good idea, but do nothing about it—the European Parliament will move into the void immediately. It has the money, the resources and the time to act in that way. We must now look to that Foreign Affairs Council meeting, and hopefully even the European Council meeting, to put some meat on the bones of the declaration of the last Foreign Affairs Council and start to create the structures that can take this form of parliamentary democracy forward. Otherwise, I fear that there will be another centralising drift in the European Union, which none of us wants.

Gaza Flotilla

Robert Walter Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I do not think Israel will be in any doubt about the seriousness of the message. The fact that a Security Council statement was agreed so rapidly, with the support of the United States as well as of the United Kingdom, will have made an impact on Israel; the hon. Lady can be sure of that. If she could have heard the conversations that we have had with out Israeli counterparts, she could also be very confident that they are aware of the strength of opinion and our deep concern about these issues.

The EU-Israel agreement is not exactly progressing at the moment anyway. I take the point that she makes about that, but it is not an additional measure for this particular situation. As I have explained in answer to previous questions, I want to concentrate on trying to make sure that that credible and independent investigation takes place, and that the case is understood in Israel for the lifting of the blockade of Gaza in their own best interests. It is important that we put it in that way.

[Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)]

The flotilla, which was probably doomed to fail, was an expression of the frustration of ordinary people at the failure of the United Nations, and in particular of the Quartet, to get Israel to comply with its UN obligations. The Foreign Secretary has had conversations with Mrs Clinton. I understand that he is also meeting the EU High Representative. Does he believe that between us we can encourage the Quartet to take firmer action with Israel, which still in its statements today seems not to understand the gravity of the situation?

[Mr Hague]

There is a real international focus on these matters now, and that is true in the United States. I was with the EU High Representative, Baroness Ashton, last night in Sarajevo, and she certainly has the same focus on these issues, as do many other EU Foreign Ministers. This morning I was at the EU-western Balkans high-level meeting in Sarajevo, and many of the Foreign Ministers discussed the issue in the margins of that. One of the results of the action was to bring the issue centre stage. It has shone a spotlight on the problems of Gaza, to which so many right hon. and hon. Members have referred. It is now important for us to take the momentum from that and make sure that the necessary work continues over the coming weeks and months to improve the situation.