Recent Appearances

2010-07-14T18:44:00+00:00

I am sensitive about intruding on private grief, but I am witnessing the acting out of a scenario in which a Minister who takes a very positive approach to issues relating to the European Union is surrounded by a large number of Eurosceptic Members of Parliament who had previously imagined that they were serving under a Eurosceptic Government. The words "a cosy consensus" have been used, but I am not sure that what is happening. I see it more as the sweet breeze of EU realism blowing through the Conservative Government.

The fact is that the Lisbon treaty is in force, and will not be overturned. In a speech that I made on the issue, I described the treaty as a "tipping point" in the balance of power between Brussels and the national Parliaments. I hope that there will be a rearrangement of power, and that a triangulation of forces will eventually return to us more power than the Commission, and indeed the European Parliament, want us to have.

For me, the key issue is the scope of the European External Action Service. Paragraph 36 of the European Scrutiny Committee's 18th report of 2009-10, published before the election, stated:

"Given the importance of this proposal, which-the Minister's assurances on consular protection notwithstanding"-

the then Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), is sitting in front of me now-

"is nonetheless likely to be the most significant change in the conduct of British foreign policy for many years, we consider that this debate should be on the Floor of the House."

I still believe that that is the case.

We have encountered the question of accountability. While an election was taking place in this country, the European Parliament was using its powers under the Lisbon treaty to advance a case relating to the question of the three deputy secretaries who would substitute for the High Representative. That case was rejected, but in fact the European Parliament achieved a great deal more. There was a second Council decision following the one on the matter that was eventually referred to the Council on 9 July.

The European Parliament saw an opportunity to make a bold opening gambit in relation to those who would be substitutes and guardians, or protectors, of the High Representative. It used the fact that staffing regulations, finance regulations and the EEAS budget would be subject to the European Parliament's powers of co-decision to advance a strong argument that it should be consulted on matters such as the common foreign and security policy. That, of course, will be subject to unanimous agreement in the Council, but the Parliament has inserted itself into the process to great effect. The Lisbon treaty gave it the opportunity to enhance its ability to influence the politics and policy of a major institution.

The second decision, as the Minister said, was that the High Representative would

"seek the views of the European Parliament on the main aspects and basic choices of policy".

The Council decided that the European Parliament would have to be consulted on policies such as the common security and defence policy, and on questions relating to the basic organisation of the EEAS central administration and political accountability. It is clear that we have not only had an election, but failed to establish any scrutiny arrangements in this Parliament.

The European Parliament clearly views that agreement as meaning that it will have a significantly greater influence on EU foreign policy in the future. That is where we have arrived after the stages through which we have gone. The Parliament has gained considerable ground. It may not have made all the gains that it demanded, but I do not think that it wanted them anyway. It wanted to make the service accountable to it.

We now need assurances from the Government that they will defend not just the common foreign and security policy and the common security and defence policy, but the right of this Parliament to scrutinise what they do and hold them to account when they go to the Council. That might serve as some small protection against a European Parliament that might otherwise take complete control of this policy and this service in the future.

read more ›

2010-07-14T17:27:00+00:00

In keeping with what has been called the "tick-box approach"-an approach that won the European Scrutiny Committee the inquisitor of the year award, which has never been won when a Conservative has held the position of Chair-I want to point out that the Minister has not answered the question. The bid from the European Parliament was to have three deputy secretaries-general from each of the political parties in the European Parliament who would substitute for the High Representative. What happened to that bid?

read more ›

2010-07-14T17:27:00+00:00

I welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box for the first time when I have been in the Chamber. I believe that Labour went through eight Ministers for Europe, so he may have a longer tenure than some of ours; I am sure that he will do his best. Just for the record, when we sent this document for debate before the election there was, as he mentioned, a bid from the European Parliament for three deputies-I believe it calls them secretaries-general-and hearings. Could he explain to the House exactly what the final agreement was on the accountability of the EEAS to the European Parliament? I note that this has all gone through and been rubber-stamped by this Government, without this Parliament having a European Scrutiny Committee to ask them to make themselves accountable to their Parliament. So nobody knows what the Minister agreed when he went to Europe.

read more ›

2010-07-08T11:31:00+00:00

Will the Leader of the House press the Health Secretary and other Ministers responsible to come to the House and create a debate on the strategy to deal with obesity in this country? This is not just a question for England, because when I go around my constituency I am shocked by the amount of obesity that I see. We are all being abandoned by the Health Secretary and BIS, because they will not ban trans fats from processed food. They appear to have abandoned us to the processed food industry by abandoning the strategy against obesity in England. It is a very important matter because it is damaging the health of our constituents' children and bringing early death to our constituents.

read more ›

2010-07-01T11:30:00+00:00

May I press the Deputy Leader of the House to get his master, the Leader of the House, to come to the House and give the statement that he promised two weeks ago on progress on setting up the European Scrutiny Committee, and to scotch the rumour that is going about that Ministers intend to vote in the 1922 committee's election of the Conservative chair of that committee? I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will say that even the gelded Liberals would not stand for the Government's trying to elect a Back-Bench committee's chairman.

read more ›

2010-06-30T12:31:00+00:00

I did not say anything.

read more ›

2010-06-30T12:31:00+00:00

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You have often said that you are here to protect the House and to allow it to do its business in holding the Government to account. Will you take up with the Government the fact that although we have had a European summit and a number of European Council meetings, and although five stalwart Labour Members have already volunteered for the European Scrutiny Committee, we have no such Committee to scrutinise the Government's behaviour in Europe? This is the latest that that Committee has ever been set up.

read more ›

2010-06-30T11:30:00+00:00

The Prime Minister might have noticed that the people of Scotland did not choose his party, except in one seat out of 59, and they did not choose the Conservatives' poodles, the Liberal Democrats, either. Can he assure the House, as an absolute chill runs through Scotland at the 1.3 million hidden job losses that he did not publish, that any proposals for cuts in public services and expenditure in Scotland, and any Barnett formula cuts, will be brought before the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs- [Interruption.]

read more ›

2010-06-28T21:46:00+00:00

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

read more ›

2010-06-28T15:31:00+00:00

The Prime Minister mentioned that he had four useful bipartite meetings. Did he meet Juan Manuel Santos-the President-elect of Colombia-or did he indicate that he would meet him when he goes on tour? He is a gentleman who, as Defence Minister, dressed his troops as members of the International Committee of the Red Cross, carried out the extra-judicial murders of 2,000 innocent civilians and bombed Ecuador, where there is, I believe, a murder warrant out for him. Did the Prime Minister, or will he, raise those issues on behalf of concerned people in the UK who follow them very closely?

read more ›

2010-06-24T00:00:00+00:00

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what her policy is on banning the use of landfill.

read more ›

2010-06-22T14:15:00+00:00

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

read more ›

2010-06-22T13:43:00+00:00

I voted for the hon. Gentleman to hold his new position and even told his opponent that I had done so, but I am deeply concerned that today he is making the same mistake as the Chancellor. He said that the greatest problem facing economies is sovereign debt, when in fact analysis shows that it is bank indebtedness. Greece has a sovereign debt problem, but other countries of Europe have a problem with bank debt. That is the problem, so we are looking at the wrong target.

read more ›

2010-06-17T12:28:00+00:00

I note that £1.2 billion-worth of the cancelled projects, as they are called, are from the future jobs fund-for the young people of the right hon. Gentleman's constituency and mine. I wonder what the consequences will be for the Scottish budget. Can he tell us what impact there will be on my constituents in Scotland, or have his Conservative bosses-let us be quite frank-done a deal with the tartan Tories in the SNP in Scotland?

read more ›

2010-06-17T11:56:00+00:00

Will the Leader of the House arrange for someone from the Government to come here and tell us why they are afraid of scrutiny of their behaviour in Europe and why they have not set up the European Scrutiny Committee, which was the first Committee set up in the last Parliament by the previous Government? Are they afraid of the Euroscepticism generated on their Benches when they were in pre-election mode, or are they afraid of the ESC, which of course won an inquisitor of the year award when we had a Labour Government and it had a Labour Chair?

read more ›

2010-06-17T10:30:00+00:00

The Minister will be aware that the decision to have a concessionary scheme in England had consequential effects on funding in Scotland through the Barnett formula. The scheme is already underfunded by the Scottish Government, so may I have an assurance that there will be no further cuts in funding in Scotland through the effect on the Barnett formula?

read more ›

2010-06-15T15:30:00+00:00

I wish particularly to thank the Prime Minister for his frank apology on behalf of the Government and the people of this country. I think that the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) will accept that that will in some way be a salve for the people in the Bloody Sunday incident and the families of the dead. However, does the Prime Minister accept that unless people can see the names and know the people who carried out the acts, for many of the families there may not be a way of putting the incident behind them, as I found out from my contact with the families of those who were killed in McGurk's bar? I hope that he will consider that, not in terms of what will happen with the prosecutions or anything else, but because people must know who carried out those acts.

Finally, will the Prime Minister look in the longer term at the role of the intelligence forces in possibly preconditioning people in the armed forces for what happened on Bloody Sunday? Those dark forces are clearly at work in the British Army, and we must not allow them to hide.

read more ›

2010-06-08T14:30:00+00:00

On the question of Equitable Life, there can be few constituencies that do not contain people who are waiting for payment or people who have died while waiting for payment. Is it not shocking that one of the main perpetrators of the Equitable Life fraud-for that is what it was-will, after last weekend, be able to take up a senior position in a financial institution? Can the Government re-examine what happened in that process, so that these people are not allowed to have senior financial positions in future?

read more ›

2010-06-03T14:31:00+00:00

I hope that my hon. Friend does not mind me intervening, but it seems that, having put down a set of rails, she is going to go all the way along until she crashes. Is there not a possibility that the fundamental flaws lie in how the failed economies acted? For example, Spain and Portugal put money into infrastructure and not education, with the result that people left school and built houses instead of educating themselves and creating a new economy. In Greece, the question centres on how much of the tax take that is due has been paid. Should we not concentrate on changing those economies so that they are stronger? Should we not use the 2020 strategy to rebuild growing economies, and not just bail them out?

read more ›

2010-06-03T14:14:00+00:00

I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter), and to make some comments that are relevant to what he had to say. First, however, let me welcome the Foreign Secretary to his post. He need not stay; he can do a Member for Glasgow South West on me if he wishes. I welcome the Minister for Europe to his post as well.

Let me begin with a quotation from an article in yesterday's Financial Times by Charles Kupchan, professor of international affairs at Georgetown university. It is entitled "Britain is no longer America's bridge to Europe". Professor Kupchan writes that the present Government

"seems bent on pursuing a traditional Conservative foreign policy: cosy up to the US while giving Europe short shrift."

In his view, that would

"leave Britain in a geopolitical no-man's land and marginalise its international influence."

He gives three reasons. The first is that the United States does not require us to do that any more. The second is that the United States has shifted its focus from the Atlantic zone to the middle east and Asia,

"leaving Washington keenly sensitive to Europe's ability to share global burdens."

The third is that

"Europe needs Britain as much as Britain needs Europe... British leadership is sorely needed to help lead the EU out of its doldrums."

I entirely agree with that analysis.

The United Kingdom needs a strong eurozone. Members should be deeply concerned by the concerted attacks on the euro by the speculators in the money markets, who make nothing but trouble. As the Foreign Secretary generously pointed out, all that that does is weaken our market-the important market that is the European Union.

The process of fiscal consolidation and deficit reduction is very important. It is nonsensical for some Members in other parties, and the public press, to compare the situation in Greece to that in the United Kingdom, or to compare the troubles of Portugal and Spain to the situation facing the UK. The UK concentrated on building its supply side, and on education, training and research and development. As Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee for the past four years, I went to Portugal and Spain, and noted that they concentrated on major infrastructure projects rather than building up the talents of their young people or their manufacturing bases. Unemployment in Spain is nearly 40% among those aged 25 and under, and its national unemployment is 18%. We do not have those problems.

I welcome the paper by Mario Monti. It is important to focus on the new Lisbon 2020 strategy. It is true that growth is anaemic in the European Union, and it is not helped by currency speculation. We should recall the damage done repeatedly to our country and to sterling in past decades by currency speculators, and realise that what the eurozone countries have-whether they wanted it or not-is a commitment to stand together or fall together. Sadly, if we were attacked alone again, we would have to turn to those countries for support, because we do not have the strength that they have through their unanimity.

We need a strong EU climate change and energy programme. The UK's 2% contribution can make little difference to the carbon footprint of the world without an EU programme. We-the UK and the world-need a focused EU international aid strategy. I pay tribute to Lady Kinnock for working so hard in the EU, when she was a Member of the European Parliament, to secure a strategy that focused on countries and Governments rather than project-by-project commitments. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), the former Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, it is all too easy for national Governments to cut their international development budgets, and it is important that the stability and growth pact is not used by countries to abandon the poor of the world.

Let me now turn to a matter that concerns me particularly. Members have mentioned the European Council that will take place in two weeks' time, but some may not be aware that five European subject Councils have taken place since the Government came to office. Those who take an interest in what is happening in Europe should note that the activities of two of them were reported in yesterday's Hansard. There was a meeting of ECOFIN on 9 May, after the Government had come to power but before the current Parliament was formed, but there has been no scrutiny of that or of the subject Councils, because no European Scrutiny Committee is up and running. There has been no written ministerial statement on the 9 May ECOFIN meeting, to which there was a reference in the ECOFIN statement of 18 May, although it dealt with some extremely important matters. There has been a press release from the European Council and a communication from the European Commission, but nothing from our own Government. Very important matters that we should be concerned about were discussed. Those are to do with the consolidation of the financial markets, but there was no scrutiny of that, and no report. The follow-up report

"underlined the need to make rapid progress on financial market regulation and supervision, in particular with regard to derivative markets"

and the role of credit rating agencies, and went on to discuss the excessive deficit procedure for Spain and Portugal. That was widely reported in the press, but nothing came through the processes of this Parliament.

On the Government's approach and commitments, in what is now the coalition agreement there is the clear statement that

"there should be no further transfer of sovereignty or powers"-

I stress "or powers"-

"over the course of the next Parliament."

We have heard from the Foreign Secretary about the methods by which that can be done. One of them, obviously, is treaties, but if I heard the Foreign Secretary correctly-perhaps the Minister for Europe can confirm this-he said that that excluded accession treaties: they would not be subject to a referendum, therefore. People will be concerned about the accession of other countries, and we know that there will be amendments attached to those accession treaties clarifying matters in respect of the Lisbon treaty, yet we have just been told that there will be no referendums on them. There is already smoke and mirrors from the Government, therefore. I do not know whether that is because they are influenced by their new Liberal Democrat partners, or perhaps the major Government party have chosen to do that themselves.

We have been told about the use of the passerelle clause, which can change the voting method on any issue from unanimity to qualified majority voting. If the UK Government decide in Council to give up their veto, the passerelle clause will be subject to a referendum or primary legislation, but the Government have to decide in the Council to give that up, because they already have a veto in Council. Therefore, the idea that we will be asked about that after the event is very worrying, as the Government will already have decided-and, I presume, will have discussed the matter with the coalition partners-that they will give up the veto before they put it to the House. They will then, of course, whip in Members in order to effect the dumping of the veto. Again, therefore, this is smoke and mirrors.

I asked about the opt-ins. We currently have opt-outs in many areas. If measures are amended, we can decide to opt in or opt out completely. In the European Scrutiny Committee, there was in the past unanimous concern that this process was not open enough for Parliament to have a say, and that many things were going through because that was suitable to the Government of the time. That is not what the Government that is now in power promised us. There has been mention of the issue of sovereignty or powers being transferred, and I wish to hear how they will deal with that.

Although its publications are not usually my favourite reading, Open Europe has a very good briefing on these subjects, which people might want to take a look at. I see that the former shadow Minister for Europe, the hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), is smiling from the Government Front Bench. It is important that I pay tribute to him for the role he played on the Opposition Benches during the last Government's term in office. I have always said I am not a Eurosceptic, but I am a Government sceptic, regardless of which Government.

Many parts of the Lisbon treaty are now being interpreted as denying the right of scrutiny to Parliaments-this Parliament and other Parliaments. We must try to deal with these matters sensibly. There are many articles in the Lisbon treaty that say they are not legislative Acts, and therefore, as such, the European institutions have said they are not subject to protocol 1, which gives Parliaments eight weeks in which to look at them, and protocol 2, under which they can be challenged using the orange and yellow cards or challenged in the courts. It is also very important that the draft conclusion of the Council is tabled, so that it can be dealt with in the ESC before going on to the Council. I hope the Government will allow that to happen.

read more ›