European Union (Referendum) Bill
Debate between Thomas Docherty and Martin Horwood(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Thomas Docherty
No? I am sorry about that, because it has been puzzling me.
I am keen on giving the people of Gibraltar an opportunity to take part in a referendum that will directly affect them. I regret that it has taken us so long to persuade the hon. Member for Stockton South to accept that obvious point about a flaw that has been in his Bill from the very beginning.
Martin Horwood
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty), who is right to say that this omission—this flaw in the Bill—was pointed out at a very early stage and that the anomaly of the situation of the people of Gibraltar could have been rectified much earlier. That reflects the nature of the Bill, which in many respects—I am sure we will come on to them—is not very well thought out. It was, in effect, a public relations exercise to cover up the deep division in the Conservative party over the question of whether or not to remain in Europe.
That has been highlighted clearly in today’s edition of The Economist, the front cover of which has a road map that goes onwards and upwards to Great Britain, with a little cul-de-sac off to the right marked “Little England”, accompanied by an image of the European Union symbol with a cross through it. I think that the risk of the little Englander is the real issue behind much of the Bill.
The subject of new clause 1 is Gibraltar. It raises the obvious question of what would happen if Gibraltar exercised an expression of its destiny, as the hon. Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) eloquently put it, and voted to remain in the European Union but the UK voted to leave, perhaps with the votes of people in Scotland, which may by then have voted, in theory, to leave the United Kingdom. I am not clear where that would leave Gibraltar. It is included in the European Union only by virtue of the UK’s membership of the EU. It is represented in the European Parliament, not in its own right, but only by virtue of being a British Crown dependency.
Thomas Docherty
If I may briefly correct the hon. Gentleman on two points, he just referred to Gibraltar as a Crown dependency, but I am sure he meant to say that it is an overseas territory. I am sure he also misspoke when he said that it is represented by the United Kingdom when, of course, it has votes in the South West and Gibraltar constituency of the European Parliament.
Martin Horwood
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I was talking about representation and was about to point out that Gibraltar is part of the South West England and Gibraltar constituency, which also includes my constituency of Cheltenham and is ably represented by Sir Graham Watson. The point is that Gibraltar does not have separate representation in its own right in the European Parliament. The hon. Gentleman is right to correct me on calling it a Crown dependency; it is, of course, an overseas territory. It has many of the same special arrangements as various other territories but, uniquely, it is part of the European Union while other overseas territories and Crown dependencies are not formally part of it.
Thomas Docherty
I am listening attentively to the hon. Gentleman and, as a Scot, I do not quite follow his logic. Under the new clause, which seems to have cross-party support, the people of Gibraltar will get a say in the referendum. If Scotland chooses to stay part of the EU, it would still be bound by the collective result and the same is true of Gibraltar, unless it chooses to cease being part of the United Kingdom. I am struggling to understand why the hon. Gentleman does not see it in that way. Perhaps he could explain further.
Martin Horwood
I will explain. The situation is different from that in Scotland, because Scotland, for the time being at least, remains part of the territory of the United Kingdom, has representation in this Parliament and is represented in Europe by virtue of being part of the UK, not of being a territory of the UK. Gibraltar has self-government and that is a cardinal principle of our relationship with it. Should it at any point decide to join the kingdom of Spain, it could take that step without having to leave the United Kingdom. In effect, we are saying that we would expel Gibraltar from the EU even if it voted to remain in it.
Thomas Docherty
The hon. Gentleman must have misspoken. I think he just said—perhaps I heard him wrong—that Gibraltar could join the kingdom of Spain without leaving the United Kingdom.
Thomas Docherty
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for endorsing me. I do not think the hon. Gentleman meant to say that. He said that Gibraltar is self-governing. It has self-government on many issues, but not all. We still provide its international relations, Home Office functions and defence functions. I think the hon. Gentleman is misspeaking.
Martin Horwood
No, on this occasion I do not think the hon. Gentleman is right. Gibraltar is a UK territory but, like other overseas territories and Crown dependencies, it is not actually part of the United Kingdom. The test is whether there is direct representation in this Chamber.
Thomas Docherty
I really am disappointed that the hon. Gentleman has not had an opportunity to talk to the many Members throughout the House who have a close interest in overseas territories. Overseas territories have a great deal of self-governance, but they still rely on the UK for many of their functions, including defence and foreign affairs. It is not mutually exclusive to say that they have self-governance but that the UK provides many of their functions.
Would the hon. Gentleman also like to take the opportunity to correct the record? It has been endorsed by my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) that he said that Gibraltar could choose to join the kingdom of Spain without leaving the United Kingdom.
Martin Horwood
The reason why Gibraltar could decide to join the kingdom of Spain should it ever want to—obviously, there is no prospect of that in the near future—without leaving the United Kingdom is that it is not formally part of the UK at the moment. We would respect the wishes of Gibraltarians if they ever expressed that desire. They would not have to leave, because they are not formally part of the territory of the United Kingdom itself. They are an overseas territory.
Martin Horwood
It is a rather semantic point. I feel that we are leading the House down something of an angels-dancing-on-a-pinhead diversion, so we should probably move on to more substantial issues. The substantial point that I was trying to make before being entertainingly diverted by the hon. Gentleman was that we could end up in a situation in which the people of Gibraltar voted to remain in the European Union, but were effectively expelled from it by virtue of a United Kingdom referendum. We can leave the debate about the precise nature of Gibraltar’s detachment from the United Kingdom for another time.
Martin Horwood
That was a much more constructive intervention and it was typically well made by the hon. Gentleman. He is absolutely right that there is a strong case for Gibraltar to remain within the European Union, as there is for the United Kingdom to remain within it, not only because of the issues that he mentioned, but because of the fight against cross-border crime and terrorism and a range of other issues.
Thomas Docherty
The hon. Gentleman has not mentioned the most important benefit of the European Union. We have a bully in Spain that has been trying to force its will upon the people of Gibraltar. One of the huge advantages of the European Union, as the people of Gibraltar know, is that it allows them, following the representations of the Minister for Europe and others, to stand up with the United Kingdom to that bully. That would not be happening if they were outside the European Union.
Martin Horwood
I will not rise to that point. It takes us away from the core subject matter of the new clause.
I want to make it clear to Members on both sides of the House that I support the new clause because it aims to correct the anomaly. There are some reassuring parts to it. It is great to know that subsection (2)
“is not to be regarded as restricting the operation in relation to law made by the Gibraltar legislature of the Colonial Laws Validity Act 1865 (under which colonial laws are void if repugnant to the provision made under an Act of Parliament).”
I am sure that that will be a massive reassurance to the people of Gibraltar. It is a serious point that it will reassure them that the overall constitutional framework is being respected and not changed by the fact that we are passing legislation in this Chamber that relates to the constitutional position of Gibraltar.
I am happy to support the new clause, although I would be interested to hear what the right hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr Lidington) thinks the position would be for Gibraltarians in the event of their voting yes and the United Kingdom voting no. Where would that leave them constitutionally? Would they be able to renegotiate their own separate membership of the European Union? If so, would their membership carry on automatically or would they be in the position that it has been suggested Scotland might be in if it voted for independence, whereby it would leave the European Union automatically and have to reapply as an independent country?
I will not go through the raft of amendments that we are considering in this group one by one. I am sure that that is to the relief of Members behind me. However, some of the amendments, although addressing issues that are critical to the future of the UK and its position within the European Union, run the risk of looking a wee bit frivolous. It is important for those of us who are in favour of a debate on Europe and in favour of European Union membership to retain some credibility.
Energy Efficiency
Debate between Thomas Docherty and Martin Horwood
Martin Horwood
I am sure the hon. Lady is right to emphasise the importance of communication. I was going to go on to pay tribute to the outgoing Administration, and in particular to the right hon. Members for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) and for Lewisham, Deptford, who towards the end of the Labour Government brought some urgency to the issue and improved things. However, it is true that at times they were tempted to take credit for things that were the result of larger factors, and that, given the number of consultations and pilots in which they indulged, they did not get round to implementing some of the schemes that they had contemplated. It now falls to the coalition to increase the pace of change, and the early signs are good.
The need is urgent. If we are to achieve throughout Europe a target of 30% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, which I believe should be the target for the whole European Union, we will have to make those radical step changes in policy. Indeed, we need to do so if we are to have any chance of reducing the concentration of atmospheric CO2 to 450 ppm or lower, which I believe is absolutely necessary. If we do not do that, the chance of global warming increasing by more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels rises, threatening food production, conflict and, ultimately, the economies on which we depend to finance public sector and Government programmes.
In that respect, energy efficiency is no panacea. Not long ago, I visited a company near my constituency called Messier-Dowty, which provides world-class aircraft parts, particularly undercarriage. I remember having a conversation with its staff, in which they extolled the virtues of those parts and the aircraft industry’s efforts to make aircraft more efficient and lighter, and use less energy as they flew. However, I pointed out that eventually the industry would have to adjust to a world in which people learned to fly less and used alternative means of travel and communications. The same analogy is true for the whole economy. Energy efficiency is the first and most cost-effective area to address, but it is no substitute for the wholesale decarbonisation of our economy, which we also need to work on.
I shall focus on three areas of energy efficiency: first, energy efficiency in buildings, especially the skills needed to deliver it; secondly, smart metering; and finally, energy markets and pricing. In the first area, it is right that we concentrate on buildings. Throughout Europe, apparently 90% of our time is spent indoors and 30% of our energy consumption is devoted to heating and lighting buildings, so the green deal is an important step in trying to address that scale of energy use. However, there are traps ahead, and I have spoken to training suppliers in the further education sector and those hoping to run apprenticeships in architecture and building trades in and around my constituency. They point out a severe lack of skills in those new building technologies, particularly the skills needed not just in isolated instances, such as the installation of renewable technologies or the provision of insulation, but in new building materials, in the different approach that we need to take in the building trades and in architecture, and in constructing and retrofitting buildings. Such skills must be fundamental to training in those sectors.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
I am slightly confused. Given that the hon. Gentleman supports deep and savage cuts to the training budgets of our colleges, how does he expect them to produce those vast numbers of desperately needed skilled workers in order to bring about that step change that we all want?
Martin Horwood
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. One answer is clearly the green deal, which will incentivise private companies to invest in such training themselves. Apprenticeships might be part of the solution, too. However, when I asked Gloucester college, a forward-looking and innovative FE college based partly in my constituency and partly in Gloucester, what was the single biggest step that could be taken, the answer was not to fund extra courses. It suggested allowing FE colleges that provide such training to accredit their own courses, rather than having to defer constantly to universities. I commend that recommendation to Ministers and their colleagues in other Departments. The college believed that that would enable it to respond much faster to market situations and to design courses much more flexibly, and that it was the single most important change that could be made. I hope that provides an answer to the hon. Gentleman.
On new buildings at least, the other possible pitfall is the rather prescriptive and increasingly complex code for sustainable homes. I welcomed the code when the previous Government introduced it, and generally, as an instrument of policy, it is a welcome development. However, it has been painfully slow at raising energy efficiency levels in new buildings, and it risks becoming so over-prescriptive that it defeats our objectives.
I know the Secretary of State well, and he is no friend of over-prescription; he prefers the creation of the right market environment, which would avoid the need for such complexity and enable the process to move faster. Instead of having standards of such complex design, perhaps we should reinforce one or two simple measures—for instance, a measure of kilowatt-hours per square metre for every building, old or new. To follow up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), that would be easy to communicate to the public and easy for estate agents, politicians and everybody else to understand. It might become a powerful measure of energy efficiency, with no need to prescribe such complex details as we find in the current code.
This morning there was a round-table discussion hosted by The House Magazine, and one point repeatedly came up. Examples were mentioned of earlier civilisations—even the Romans—that were very good at preserving openness and light in buildings and making them energy-efficient through the communal use of heat; the renewable heat issue has already been mentioned. More traditional wooden buildings within the Arctic circle still seem to require less energy to heat than many buildings in this country. I know from my own experience of villages in India where buildings made basically out of mud were beautifully cool in summer and beautifully warm in winter. They were very energy-efficient, but used materials that would probably not be allowed under current building regulations. Incidentally, I am not suggesting that we should all start living in yurts or anything like that; that would be a bit too Liberal.