European Union (Approvals) Bill

Roger Gale Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

In essence, the Agency for Fundamental Rights tries to deal with collective rights, rather than individual rights, whereas the European Court of Human Rights deals with individual rights. That is a moot point, however. As with so many things, the European Union comes along and confuses the issue by giving a new institution a very similar name to that of an existing body. We have a Council of Europe, and, although we do not have a council of the European Union, we have a European Union Council. We also have a Commission of the European Union. The European Union has stolen the flag that was originally the flag of the Council of Europe. It has even stolen the anthem of the Council of Europe, and it is now intent on stealing the main part of the Council of Europe’s activities—namely, looking after human rights under the European convention on human rights.

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

This is part of a creeping sickness, is it not? The European Union is trying to claim rights over trans-frontier broadcasting so that it can tell the whole of Europe what we may and may not broadcast. Upstairs, the House heard this afternoon that the European Union is trying to take over the European Space Agency, which of course goes much wider than the European Union; and now we have this, this evening. Where does my hon. Friend think this might stop?

[Mr Chope]

I know my hon. Friend has been doing very valuable work in scrutinising trans-frontier broadcasting —he is, I believe, a rapporteur on that subject for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

Trans-frontier broadcasting exemplifies the problem we have. The Council of Europe set up a convention on trans-frontier broadcasting which has been signed up to not just by its 47 member countries, but by a lot of other countries as well; it is a very important convention. However, the European Union has come along and said that the convention cannot be brought up to date because it cuts across a fundamental competence of the Union. Therefore, the Council of Europe has been prevented, amazingly, from updating the convention because the European Union has said it cannot do so. Of course, because the Union has 27 of the 47 member countries of the Council, if it says, “You cant’ do that”, the Council’s member states collectively have no option but to obey the Union. This is an example, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) rightly says, of the European Union’s plan to encroach further upon the territory and responsibilities of the Council of Europe, to the extent that ultimately, it wishes to take over the whole organisation. That is what is so sinister about this measure.

If this were for free, we could all be relatively relaxed about it and deal with it as an academic abstraction, but it is costing us serious money: some €83 million at the moment, as we heard on Second Reading. The Agency for Fundamental Rights was set up fewer than 10 years ago with a budget of virtually nothing; now, it already has accrued that amount of expenditure, and the plans for 2013-17 are to expand it much further.

As we heard in my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s brilliant statement today, he and colleagues in the European Union are saying, “Enough is enough: we’ve got to rein back on the European Union’s expansionist programme”. When people put forward the challenge, “What are we going to rein back?”, my view is that this is a good starting point. We never wanted this in the first place, and I hope we are going to hear from the Government what we are doing to push back in the opposite direction.