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House of Commons
Friday 19 October 1990
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. Speaker-- in the Chair ]
Points of Order
9.34 am
Mr. Stanley Orme (Salford, East) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday when a question was raised about the Prime Minister calling my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition a "crypto-communist", you said :
"Allow me to reflect upon the matter to see what can be done."--[ Official Report, 18 October 1990 ; Vol. 177, c. 1394.]
Have you had a word from the Prime Minister about withdrawing that remark?
Mr. Speaker : I have not had a word from the Prime Minister, but I have reflected upon the matter. I have discovered a specific ruling on this point. On 5 May 1948 the Speaker ruled that it was not out of order for one hon. Member to refer to another as a crypto-communist. However, he deprecated personalised attacks. As I said when the matter was raised yesterday, it appeared to me that the Leader of the Opposition was amused rather than offended by what the Prime Minister said and I took the precaution of seeing the action replay on television this morning. Perhaps we should leave the matter there.
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker : No. I have not yet finished. I must add that I do deprecate personal aspersions between hon. Members. For the benefit of the House I shall quote page 380 of "Erskine May" which states : "Good temper and moderation are the characteristics of parliamentary language. Parliamentary language is never more desirable than when a Member is canvassing the opinions and conduct of his opponents in debate."
Mr. Skinner : Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is well known that in the House hon. Members comment about others and that on occasion hon. Members are penalised for making those remarks. I referred yesterday to the time when I was thrown out of the House for calling Doctor Death a pompous sod. It seems that the rules are changed according to who makes the remark. For example, what would your reaction be--
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Mr. Skinner : --the Prime Minister a crypto-fascist? Is that in "Erskine May"?
Mr. Speaker : Order. Will the hon. Gentleman sit down? I refer him to the precedents on this matter. If he looks up Hansard of 5 May 1948, he will see the exchanges that took place. Times have changed since 1948 and I repeat again
Mr. Skinner : It depends who says it.
Mr. Skinner : You dare not throw them out.
Mr. Speaker : Order. I again draw the attention of the whole House to the excerpt from "Erskine May" that I have just quoted. We should not cast personal aspersions on each other. I deprecate it. Hon. Members who saw the action replay on television this morning will have noted that there was a great deal of noise. The microphones amplify noise coming from the Back Benches on each side. It is not always possible in the Chair to hear remarks made in a soft voice.
Mr. Orme : Thank you for your comments, Mr. Speaker. It might benefit the House if the Prime Minister reads what has been said today. I see that the deputy Prime Minister is present. The Prime Minister might reconsider her remark and let the House know accordingly.
Mr. Speaker : I am sure that the matter will be drawn to the Prime Minister's attention.
Mr. Robert G. Hughes (Harrow, West) : On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will recall that two days ago I raised a point of order because my name had been added in error to a number of early-day motions, including 1398 which is entitled "Massacre in Jerusalem". Some of my remarks at that time about the naivety or anti-semitic nature of the contents of the motion could have been taken as a personal remark about the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes), who shares my name. I should like to make it clear to the House that that was not my intention, nor is it my view. Naturally I withdraw my remarks so far as the hon. Gentleman is concerned.
Mr. Speaker : That is in the best traditions of the House, and I thank the hon. Member.
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German Unification
[Relevant documents : Fourth Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee on German Unification : Some Immediate Issues (House of Commons Paper No. 335), the Observations by the Government on the Report (CM. 1246), and the Seventh Report from the Treasury and Civil Service Committee on International Monetary Arrangements : Eastern Europe (House of Commons Paper No. 431) and the Seventh Special Report from the Committee : the Government's Observations on the Seventh Report (House of Commons Paper No. 645) so far as they relate to German Economic and Monetary Union.]
9.39 am
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Tristan Garel-Jones) : I beg to move
That this House takes note of European Community Documents Nos. COM(90) 400 on transitional measures consequent upon German unification and 8782/90 on revision of the Community's financial perspective in the light of German unification ; and endorses the Government's approach to these negotiations.
The House will be aware that I have spent most of my parliamentary life in the genteel and rather sheltered world of the usual channels. To that extent, in relation to the House, I claim to be an innocent abroad. The hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) kindly arranged a little outing on the nursery slopes for me by placing an Adjournment debate on the Order Paper just before the recess--a typically thoughtful gesture on his part--so I cannot even claim the House's indulgence as a novice performer at the Dispatch Box.
Today's main business is to debate the European Community's package of legislative proposals integrating the former German Democratic Republic into the European Community. That matter cannot be divorced from the wider background of the enormous changes that have swept across Europe in the past year. Nothing has symbolised those changes more than completion of the "Treaty on the Final Settlement with respect to Germany" and the achievement of German unification. The unification of Germany is without doubt one of the single most important events to take place in our lifetime. It is a triumph for the German people and a vindication of the steadfastness of the allies throughout the cold war. And it is a tribute to President Gorbachev and his new Soviet Union.
German unification has heralded in an exciting prospect of a different and more hopeful world--a world not without danger and difficulty, but a world where it is possible for the community of nations--faced with the challenge of Saddam Hussein--to unite in a way that would have been unimaginable a year ago.
On a more prosaic level may I make a general House of Commons point? Those great events were triggered a year ago by the collapse of the Berlin wall ; they gathered pace and moved on at a speed that is a salutary reminder to us politicians that, quite frequently, it is not we who shape events--but people themselves. The most that we can claim to do sometimes is to run along behind, trying to place these events in some kind of order. In essence, that is what we are doing in the House today.
The treaty, unification, and the EC reaction to it all took place while the House was in recess. I place on record my thanks for the co-operative response I received from the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson), who
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leads for the Opposition on EC matters, and from the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) who chairs the Scrutiny Committee, when I expressed to them my anxiety that the House was not able to discuss these matters as and when they arose.Equally my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell)--whose Select Committee report is one of the documents relevant to today's debate- -has taken great pains to keep in close touch with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State throughout this fast moving drama. The Secretary of State has twice given evidence on German unification to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. The Government's reply to the Committee's report was published on 10 October.
I am grateful to all three Members for the interest they took in those matters during the recess, and I hope that the House itself will recognise that Her Majesty's Government have taken the earliest possible opportunity to enable the House to address itself to those matters.
In my speech, I shall remind the House briefly of the process of German unification, including two-plus-four talks and related matters. I shall then examine the EC implications of German unification, focusing in particular on the Commission's proposals for integrating the former GDR into the Community. In doing so, I shall draw attention to two detailed points that I expect to be of interest to the House : the interim arrangements now in force and the financial consequences of the overall package.
Let me turn first to the remarkable events of the past year in Germany. The process of unification began at the moment the Berlin wall was breached. From then on, the pressure for unification grew ever more intense as the bankruptcy of the GDR's economic and political system became clearer. Once the people of the GDR had voted on 18 March for unification, democracy and a market economy, work began in earnest. A decisive step was the introduction of German economic and monetary union--GEMU--on 1 July. I draw the attention of hon. Members to the report on this by the Select Committee on the Treasury and Civil Service and the Government's reply. GEMU initiated a period of economic and social adjustment which will no doubt take some time to be resolved. The economic and social upheaval in turn gave rise to political pressures which led to the decision to unify on 3 October. Therefore, I shall deal first with the non-EC aspects. At Ottawa in February my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and his colleagues agreed on the framework of the so-called two-plus-four talks, which brought together the two German states and the four wartime allies--Britain, France, the United States and the USSR--to discuss the external aspects of German unification. That proved to be a successful piece of machinery. Throughout the two-plus-four process the Government took the view that unification itself was something for the Germans themselves to decide. But we were concerned to ensure that the external aspects, which considerably affected our interests and which included a number of rights and responsibilities, were properly addressed and dealt with. Two-plus-four Ministers met four times : in Bonn on 5 May, in East Berlin on 22 June, in Paris on 17 July and in Moscow on 12 September. The Polish Foreign Minister took part in the Paris meeting when Germany's border with Poland was discussed.
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The outcome of those meetings was the treaty to which I referred earlier. The treaty ends four-power rights and responsibilities relating to Germany as a whole and to Berlin, makes Germany's borders definitive, spells out that Soviet troops will leave Germany by the end of 1994, reaffirms Germany's right to belong to whatever alliances it chooses and deals with security arrangements for the territory of the former GDR. It is a good treaty, which meets our objectives while taking account of legitimate Soviet concerns. The treaty comes into force when all signatories have ratified it. Germany and the United States have already done so. Our own ratification will be complete soon. It has been laid before the House in the normal way, for clearance under the Ponsonby rules. To cover the period between unification and entry into force of the treaty Foreign Ministers of the two-plus-four countries agreed in New York on 1 October that four-power rights and responsibilities would be suspended from the date of unification, 3 October, so that Germany would enjoy full sovereignty from the outset.Two-plus-four was limited to those areas of business that the four powers and Germany needed to resolve together. We have also been active in negotiations with the Germans, the French and the Americans over issues that concern the western allies. The outcome of those is a series of agreements dealing with : the stationing of forces in Germany, the stationing of forces in Berlin, the 1952-54 relations and settlement conventions, and air services to Berlin. The purpose of those agreements is to put in place the practical arrangements needed to replace those that fell away with the ending of four-power rights and responsibilities. They will all be published as Command Papers.
Sir Geoffrey Finsberg (Hampstead and Highgate) : My hon. Friend the Minister mentioned a document on air services. Will he say now or during the winding-up speech whether the ridiculous height limitation on flights into Berlin have been abolished?
Mr. Garel-Jones : I shall ask my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who is to wind up the debate, to answer the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Sir G. Finsberg).
The background that I have outlined is, of course, directly relevant to the central purpose of our debate--the EC implications of German unification. The two-plus-four negotiations did not address the integration of the former GDR into the European Community. That is a matter for all EC member states. The United Kingdom has, from the outset, worked for the smooth and rapid integration of the GDR into the European Community. At the Dublin European Council in April, the Prime Minister was instrumental in securing conclusions that set the Community machine in motion. The European Council tasked the Commission to prepare proposals paving the way for EC-GDR integration. The Commission produced a detailed and thorough set of proposals in August. They landed on my desk, all 322 pages of them, at a time when many right hon. and hon. Members had other seasonal distractions. Those proposals are the focus of today's debate. The leitmotif--hon. Members will forgive Watford a little Wagner today--of the Commission's approach was
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to ensure that, in principle, the territories of the former GDR became part of the European Community upon unification. That meant EC law had to be applied there as from 3 October.Dr. Norman A. Godman (Greenock and Port Glasgow) : I hope that the hon. Gentleman or the Minister who is to reply to the debate will say something about the implications of unification for some of those whom I represent--the fishermen in Scotland. I have not met a single person in Scotland who has not wholeheartedly welcomed unification, but our fishing communities are deeply concerned about the implications of an enlarged German fishing fleet being allowed to fish in the so-called free waters west of Scotland and in the North sea.
Mr. Garel-Jones : The hon. Gentleman raised that question with my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House when he made his business statement on Monday. I know that the hon. Gentleman will be relieved to hear that the reply that my hon. Friend the Minister will make at the end of the debate will satisfy both the hon. Gentleman and those whom he represents.
It was not possible for EC law to apply in its entirety in the former GDR immediately ; environmental and other standards were well below the Community norm. A transitional period was clearly required before such standards could be applied. A limited number of derogations were necessary. The Commission's package therefore contains a series of substantive proposals for legislation. Each of them has been described for the House in an explanatory memorandum deposited with the Scrutiny Committee during the recess.
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : How much will they cost?
Mr. Garel-Jones : I shall deal with that later in my remarks. The main areas covered are trade, agriculture, environment and transport. When the Commission prepared its package, it was assumed that German unification would take place towards the end of the year. The telescoping of the timetable for German unification meant that European Community institutions could not complete their handling of the package before 3 October. It was therefore necessary to adopt interim procedural arrangements that would cater for the period between unification on 3 October and final adoption by the Council of the Commission's proposals. We expect that to happen in late November or early December.
We had a unique problem during that interregnum. No one wanted the ex-GDR integrated into the Community but unable to apply the acquis in full and with no constraint on the extent of its non-compliance. The Commission package therefore also contained two draft Council instruments that authorised the Commission to apply the proposed measures during the interim period as if they had already been adopted. That was of course without prejudice to the final Council decisions on the individual legislative proposals.
I submitted explanatory memorandums on those measures to the House on 10 September. I discussed them with the Chairman of the Scrutiny Committee on 7 September, and wrote to him on that date. It is fair to say that he, too, recognised the need for an interim arrangement, and the impossibility of holding up a
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decision until after the House reassembled some two weeks after unification. The Foreign Affairs Council discussed the draft instruments on 12 September, and finally adopted them on 17 September.I regret that, because of the recess, it was not possible to meet normal scrutiny arrangements for those measures. Our purpose was to set a limit to the extent of derogations permissible during the interregnum. An absence of specific legislation would have risked a free-for-all which would have been in no one's interest. The procedure also allows the Commission to act, during the interim phase, as if its proposals were in force. Negotiations so far have shown that there are no major problems for Britain in the Commission's proposals. I hope that the House will agree that under the circumstances the Government were right to take a decision on those measures during the recess.
I now come to the main package of transitional measures. European Community --GDR integration poses a number of detailed technical issues across a range of EC policies, of interest to several Whitehall Departments. The Commission's proposals are the subject of intense negotiations in Brussels. A special working group has been dealing with the package in uninterrupted session. There will be a brief discussion of the package at the Foreign Affairs Council next Monday and probably also at the Council in November. Now is, therefore, an ideal opportunity for the House to express its views on the substance.
The task of integrating the GDR into the European Community throws up no institutional problems. The German Government have not sought amendments to the treaties establishing the Community--only to secondary legislation. Nor have the German Government sought amendments to the provisions for German weighting in qualified majority voting or an increase in the number of German members of the European Parliament to reflect German unification. I am sure that the whole House will welcome that.
Mr. Harry Barnes (Derbyshire, North-East) : Does not the German lack of interest in extending its representation in the European Parliament show the weakness of the European Parliament? It is like joining nothing, so there will not be any great pressure to take additional seats. Additional seats will be required only if the European Parliament begins to be of significance--the more significant it is, the more pressure there will be from the Germans to take additional seats.
Mr. Garel-Jones : I am interested in the hon. Gentleman's comments. I suppose that he is a crypto-member of the Labour party in these matters. His view on the Community and on the European Parliament is not, as I now understand it, the view taken by the Labour Front Bench. I do not think that it is even remotely plausible to accuse the Federal Republic of Germany of a lack of interest either in the European Parliament or in the Community.
Mr. Skinner : The truth is that the Minister is a crypto-Euro fanatic and always has been. When he entered this place, his main intention was to become further embroiled in the Common Market, but I do not think that he told the electors of Watford about his intention. Now he has an opportunity to prove it. He is saying something
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quite appalling to the House today. Germany has a £36 billion surplus on its trade with the rest of the world, and we are up to the neck in debt, yet the Minister is proposing that British taxpayers, who are already saddled with £16 per family to prop up the common agricultural policy, should hand out more of their money so that Germany can be even more powerful than it already is. I think that the Minister is a crypto-jackboot.Mr. Garel-Jones : It is an important moment in the life of any Front -Bench spokesman when he receives his first intervention from the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). It was a
characteristically cosmopolitan intervention. If I am a crypto-Euro fanatic, he is a crypto-member of the Labour party in these matters.
Mr. Harry Barnes : On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I do not intend to raise a point of order about being called a crypto-member of the Labour party--nor, I imagine, will my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner).
Mr. Garel-Jones : The House may find it helpful if I highlight the major substantive issues under negotiation in Brussels. One area of discussion in Brussels so far has been trade. It is extremely encouraging that the Commission estimates that about 80 per cent. of single market legislation can apply to the ex-GDR immediately, including that on public procurement, financial services, company law, indirect taxation and intellectual property.
The Community does, however, have to take some account of the very different trading environment within which the GDR has been operating until only very recently. It would, for example, cause considerable difficulties for the East Germans if goods produced in the former GDR were suddenly banned from sale in their own markets on the ground that they did not comply with EC standards. The Commission has, therefore, proposed that such goods may continue to be sold in the territory of the former GDR for a limited period. That does not, of course, affect other EC goods, which may circulate freely in the former GDR.
While many trade agreements between the former GDR and her traditional trading partners in eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union, expire at the end of this year, others will need to be renegotiated. The normal application of the EC rules would mean the immediate imposition of EC tariffs and standards on imports into the former GDR. Not only would that cause difficulties for GDR businesses, but it might also cause economic problems for the third countries involved that we and others are trying to assist. The Commission has, therefore, proposed that the derogations allowed for sub-standard GDR goods may also be extended to traditional eastern European imports, and that tariffs on east European imports may be suspended up to the maximum quantities and value of traditional patterns of trade. We support those proposals. They should not cause any distortion to UK trade, because the transitional periods are so short--only limited derogations are allowed beyond 1992--and the goods benefiting from these derogations will only be traded within the territory of the former GDR.
We must of course ensure that the goods benefiting from those transitional arrangements do not circulate elsewhere in the Community, which would risk distorting trade. We have had particularly close contact with the German Government on that point, and, I am pleased to
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say, have reached a satisfactory agreement. We are confident that the risk of leakage is small--but were any problem to arise, arrangements have been put in place to ensure very rapid action to end it.I have already mentioned briefly the length of the derogations. The Commission's aim, in line with the conclusions of Dublin Council in April-- reported to the House by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister immediately afterwards--is to keep the number of transitional derogations from EC law as few, and as short, as possible. Quite rightly so. In practice, most derogations are for two years--until the end of December 1992. In some areas, however--notably the environment--longer derogations are unavoidable. Rt. hon. and hon. Members will need no reminding of the appalling state of environmental decline in the GDR--as good a symbol as one could hope to find of the failure of the communist system.
With derogations proposed until the end of 1995 at the latest, GDR industry will need to make considerable and rapid efforts to meet EC requirements, and the Commission also wisely ensured that new infrastructural investment in the GDR will be excluded from these derogations. So from now on, for example, any new power stations there will have to be built to EC standards. Again, we are satisfied that there is little risk of distortions to competition, but any difficulties could be taken up with the Commission.
Mr. Tony Banks (Newham, North-West) : Does the Minister have any calculations about the cost of cleaning up East Germany? I have heard a figure mentioned, for a 10-year period, of $140 billion to $150 billion.
Mr. Garel-Jones : The cost, which will be substantial, will fall on the Federal Republic. I do not know what the exact figure will be, but that is the price that the former citizens of the GDR must pay for 40 years of the kind of rule that some Opposition Members below the Gangway would support for our own country.
Competition policy and state aids are, of course, of particular interest and concern to us. One great advantage of bringing forward the date of unification is that the full force of the EC treaty in those areas will now apply to the former GDR. That is important at a crucial time in the economic development of the territory, with massive new investment flowing in. We have now moved to a position where the competition policy Commissioner, Sir Leon Brittan, has direct responsibility for applying the treaty of Rome in a country which a year ago was a communist state.
The Commission package includes proposals to allow derogations from secondary legislation on state aids, by allowing assistance to the shipbuilding and steel sectors. But we are satisfied that the current provisions of the sixth shipbuilding directive, which will apply to the ex- GDR and will be extended to the seventh Directive, protect the interest of other member states, and we have successfully pressed for assurances from the Commission that they will closely supervise the provision of aids to the steel sector, and take urgent action should any distortions of competition arise.
Agriculture is of course a key area, too, and one with immediate financial implications for the Community. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of
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Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, will speak later in the debate, if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and will cover those matters in some detail.The United Kingdom has worked hard in the Brussels negotiations to resolve issues of potential concern. I am glad to be able to report that virtually all the areas of concern to us have been worked out to our satisfaction. Subject to approval by the House today, I hope that the Council will be able to reach a common position on the Commission's package before the end of the month. Final adoption should be by early December at the latest, following the Second Reading in the European Parliament.
That decision will, in effect, complete the handling of the external aspects of German unification. The rapid pace at which the package will have been handled in Brussels and Strasbourg is a tribute to the effectiveness of all the Community institutions. I turn to the financial implications, in which the hon. Member for Bolsover expressed an interest. Volume III of the main commission package, which I am sure the hon. Member for Bolsover has read, covers that aspect, and the financial implications are updated by the Commission's proposal for revision of financial perspective, which also forms part of this debate. It is, of course, for the German Government to cope with the costs of unification. It has always been clear that they would bear the lion's share of the cost of adjustment.
There will, however, also be both expenditure and revenue on the EC budget as a result of integrating the GDR into the Community. As I have already made clear, EC law applies to the former GDR from unification. That includes the own resources decision. There will, therefore, be an immediate new source of income to the Community as a result of integration. However, the former GDR territories will also be eligible for Community expenditure- -for example, from the structural funds and on agriculture.
Overall, the budgetary costs of EC-GDR integration should be well within the revenue ceiling set out in the 1988 own resources decision. Precise estimates are difficult, but the Commission estimates a net cost to the Community of about 500 mecu in 1991, peaking at a maximum of 1 becu--about £700 million--in 1992. But our latest estimate is of a net cost to the Community of some 650 mecu in 1991, peaking at a maximum of some 1.2 becu-- around £835 million--in 1992.
Thanks to the Fontainebleau mechanism--I know that the hon. Member for Bolsover is closely attached to that because it has involved substantial savings for Britain over the years, thanks to the intervention of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, savings which the Labour Government were prepared to forgo--the net cost to the United Kingdom of EC-GDR integration will be small--on these figures, nil in 1990 and about £32 million in respect of 1991. I should stress that these figures can only be indicative at this stage.
Mr. Skinner : We have heard all this before about the Prime Minister going to the Common Market and coming back with barrowloads of money. The truth is that since the Government got in in 1979, it has cost the British taxpayer £14 billion to be a member of the Common Market, so where are the barrowloads of money? The Minister now says that the cost will be nil this year and
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about £32 million next year. The truth is that those figures are fiddled like all the other Government figures.. Here we are with the British taxpayer paying £16 a week for every family in Britain to prop up the common agricultural policy. We are now giving money to make the German regime more powerful. The Minister also said that the Government are going to prop up shipbuilding yards in east Germany and elsewhere--while they are shutting down shipbuilding yards in Sunderland and Birkenhead. What a scandal.Mr. Garel-Jones : The truth is that the cost to the United Kingdom is considerably less than the British taxpayer has been spending for the past 20 years on propping up the industry that the hon. Gentleman is so interested in. If the Commission needed any advice on cooking the books, I think that it would know where to go.
This small cost to the United Kingdom will, we hope, be offset by greater opportunities for United Kingdom firms to do business in the German Democratic Republic. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry is encouraging United Kingdom businesses to explore for themselves the important opportunities created by German unification. There are now 16 million new consumers in the single market. It is vital that we do not leave these new investment opportunities for others. The former German Democratic Republic territories must certainly come to terms with massive economic problems as a result of the transformation of their economies, but we believe that rapid growth is likely in due course.
At the outset of the debate I referred to the historic importance of these events that the House is now debating. As the Foreign Affairs Committee report points out,
"the re-emergence of a great unified German state is a development which alters the structure of world power".
A year ago East Germany was a communist country with all that that meant politically, economically and in terms of human rights. Today, with the documents before the House, we have in our hands the tools which bind that ex-communist territory into our democratic system, into our single market.
The new united democratic Germany makes the Community stronger and larger than it was before the recess. Yes, it is a challenge, too, because Germany will carry--and deserves to carry--a lot of weight within the Community institutions. But those challenges will be met on the level playing field increasingly provided by the single market. We in Britain must meet them because it is the challenge of the market place for which we have fought for so long within the Community.
But there is another challenge that all nations now face, and that is the wider challenge of the new world order, in which the new Germany will play an important role. As we have seen in the Gulf, it is an order which is not without danger and risk, but the very response the world has made to the situation there underlines the hopes that we all have for the future.
I have no doubt that the House will want to play its part in pressing forward with the process of EC-GDR integration which is a small part of the wider process of European integration after the collapse of communist ideology. I commend the proposals to the House.
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10.14 amMr. George Robertson (Hamilton) : I offer a warm welcome to the Dispatch Box to the hon. Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones). He comes with a remarkable reputation, forged in the smoke-filled heat of the Whips' Office, and the delight of his right-wing friends at his movement to the Foreign Office--perhaps he will be replaced by some of them--tells its own tale of his background.
I offer the Minister a salutary warning--he should not get to like his job, because it is not an especially safe post. Since I was appointed to the Opposition Front Bench to speak on foreign affairs, nine years ago this month, I have watched no fewer than 23 Foreign Office Ministers come and go. The last tranche of three lasted one day less than a year. The hon. Gentleman's predecessor, the hon. Member for Warwickshire, North (Mr. Maude), the Minister for Europe, was one of those who managed one day less than a year. In the light of certain events last night in the south of England, it is likely that the hon. Member for Watford will be back in the Opposition Whips' Office before that record can be broken.
I welcome the debate because the subject is of enormous and momentous importance, but I must enter one caveat. I note the congratulations and thanks that the hon. Member for Watford gave for the co-operation he had received. The Scrutiny Committee, to whose work he paid testimony, does an enormously valuable job and has produced two reports on the documents that we are considering. I became aware of those reports as I sat listening to the Minister's speech. The reports are extremely important and apparently they were in the Vote Office at some point during the week--perhaps late on Wednesday--though they are not on the Table of the House for hon. Members this morning. I know that this is not directly the Minister's responsibility, but when the House is asked to consider documents running to more than 320 pages at very short notice and when the Scrutiny Committee goes to the time and trouble of going through them, making recommendations and drawing conclusions, the House should at least be made aware that its report is available in the Vote Office. The attention of Front-Bench spokesmen, as well as those responsible for the issue, should be drawn to that fact. It is a matter of some regret to me that that did not happen and I point it out for the future.
Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South) : I am grateful that my hon. Friend has drawn our attention to reports, which hon. Members on the Scrutiny Committee feel are important. For the record, the Committee considered these documents after receiving them in the post during the recess. I pay tribute to the Minister for his excellent communications to Committee members during the recess. The Committee met on Tuesday morning at 10.30 and we hoped that our report would be made available. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for advertising the importance of our reports. Ultimately they will be published as our 32nd report of the Session. When debates arise at short notice we put the typescript of our reports in the Vote Office and we hope that these reports are a succinct summary of the content and import of many important documents.
Mr. Robertson : I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and to the work that his Committee has done by glancing through
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these documents. In the limited time available I have found that the report offers a helpful and useful gloss on the matter that we are considering. The authorities of the House should consider how Scrutiny Committee reports can be made more generally available to hon. Members.Although it is the European Community implications of German reunification that we are considering today, that act of uniting the two German states, brutally and artificially divided for the last 40 years, marks the final end of the second world war and puts a line under the cold war itself. Those of us, such as the Minister and myself, who have known only the days of a divided Europe, and a continent divided on that fault line which ran through Germany from the Baltic sea to the borders of Czechoslovakia, can especially savour the final act of a chilling and paralysing play which went on for so long.
I still retain memories of seeing the Berlin wall for the first time. Few people, in my experience, found it easy to take in. It seemed, at exactly the same time, to be both obscene and absurd, with concrete, guns, guards, dogs, traffic traps and searchlights all the way down the centre of a city in the modern world. It struck me then, and it still does, as incredible and sinister. I cannot imagine such an absurdity surviving the derisive vandalism of a couple of days of Glaswegian hostility. It survived, however, for far too long. Its asbestos-riddled chill will have entered the soul of a generation of Germans and others. It will not, and never should be, forgotten. The wall has now gone, but it is not yet a full year since that emotional 9 November when the pack of rotten cards that was the edifice of the German Democratic Republic finally crumbled.
Today is a day for marking in this Parliament our joy at the end of a divided Germany, a day when this Parliament of our United Kingdom can pay tribute to those brave people in the former German Democratic Republic who stood for freedom, decency and self-respect against a corrupt, corrosive communist dictatorship and whose real sacrifices laid the foundation for people to be free for the first time in almost 60 years.
We can, and we should, also pay tribute to the robustness of West Germany's democratic institutions. Some of them were certainly influenced and built by us after the second world war, but all of them were made to work by Germans who were determined not to repeat the horrors perpetrated by former generations. The success, both economic and political, of the Federal Republic of Germany is a testimony to the achievement of the post-war German generations in building a new nation which is peaceful, prosperous, generous and friendly, and that may be a moral for the new world order to which we all aspire.
We should also pay tribute in the debate to some others who transformed science fiction into political science during the last 12 momentous months- -to the Hungarians, whose decision to open their borders to the refugees from Herr Honecker's "workers' paradise" kicked the final crutch from under the regime ; to the Poles, whose devotion to Solidarity, even after martial law was imposed, kick-started the whole process that led to the end of the walls, the wires and the communist ruling classes ; and to Mikhail Gorbachev, justifiably the recipient this week of the Nobel peace prize. who gave the signal that force would no longer be the means of tying the satellite states to mother Russia and who now sees mother Russia herself disintegrating into a dozen potential Lebanons.
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