House of Commons Hansard Debates for 6 Dec 1990

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their powers to yield competence in certain spheres. It should not be a question of the Community sitting on high and doling out powers to nation states ; it is the other way around.

I move now from the areas of which we must say that we are not persuaded of the need for change to the areas about which we have specific and positive ideas. We want to make the Community more efficient and effective. Part of that means making sure that it operates only where it needs to. We want to improve enforcement and compliance--carrying out in practice what is talked about and agreed in principle. We want to strengthen the voice of Europe on the world stage, and we want to reinforce the democratic accountability of the Community.

Mr. William Cash (Stafford) : My right hon. Friend will be interested to know that I have with me the draft statutes for the European central bank, supplied to me this afternoon by the Bank of England. They state :

"The statute--as the Treaty itself--will have the status of primary Community law and therefore any amendment to the statute would normally be subjected to the procedure applied to EEC Treaty changes."

Given the importance of democracy here and in Europe, would I be right in thinking that we will not accept that point?

Mr. Hurd : That is a matter for the Chancellor and for the debate that we shall have on economic and monetary union. As we do not accept the principle of the proposal illustrated in those statutes, I think that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will feel fairly robustly about what my hon. Friend has just said.

We want, as I have said, to make the Community more effective, operating only where it needs to but operating fairly and well where it does. We want to improve compliance with the rulings of the European Court. My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman) nodded when I made that point earlier. She will probably know that, at the end of last year, there were 80 outstanding judgments by the European Court against European member states, and that only one was against this country. We have an excellent record of compliance. We should like the conference to consider sanctions in cases of prolonged failure to comply. We want the Council to look at implementation of decisions by the Council through the passage of national legislation.

The Government are sometimes criticised for their record in social matters in the Community, but we are the only country to have implemented all Community directives on social matters. We are the only country to have carried through completely what we said we would do. That is a distinction that we must draw continually in the Community.

I am afraid that the Opposition Front Bench spokesmen are increasingly seduced by declarations such as the social charter, and so are not watching what is happening and the extent to which other countries carry through what they say they are in favour of. Two of my hon. Friends have asked me to comment on subsidiarity. We want the conference to determine whether this principle can be brought into the treaties in a useful way. That could be done if we can properly define subsidiarity. It would help the Community to decide before setting out what it should do whether it is necessary for it to do anything, or whether the subject concerned is best left to member states.

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Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge) : Is my right hon. Friend aware that we recently held the conference of the Parliaments of the European Community? I quote from the preamble to its final declaration :

"While seeking to remodel the Community into a European Union on a federal basis".

The conference's idea of subsidiarity was that it comes from the top down ; it was content to delegate powers downwards to sovereign states. We want sovereign states which might, perhaps, be prepared to delegate powers to European institutions--unlike the declaration that I have cited. With the best will in the world, we are not talking the same language as our European partners.

Mr. Hurd : In the IGC, we will discuss treaty changes that can be achieved only by unanimity. It will not be like a parliamentary debate, ending in a majority vote. I am setting out the sort of improvements in Community institutions that we think are sensible. We shall argue our case, others will argue theirs, and we shall see at the end how we get on. There is no question of the British Government agreeing to proposals that reflect the declaration that my hon. Friend has just quoted.

Mr. Ron Leighton (Newham, North-East) rose --

Mr. Hurd : I shall give way for the last time.

Mr. Leighton : Will the principle of subsidiarity be spelt out clearly in the treaties, and will it be justiciable before the court?

Mr. Hurd : Those are the two very issues that the conference will have to tackle. We shall have to look for a way of spelling out subsidiarity in the treaty ; then we need to find a way of enforcing it. It will not necessarily have to be enforced by the European Court of Justice : there are other ways of enforcing it. I am glad now that I gave way to the hon. Gentleman because he put his finger on two practical questions to which we shall have to find positive answers. If we cannot find them, we shall have had a useful debate but we will not have found a practical way of including the principle in the treaties.

We should like national Parliaments to work singly and together to improve their influence over the Council of Ministers. We would like the European Parliament to direct fresh energy not at increasing its legislative powers, but at strengthening financial accountability by reinforcing the role of the Budgetary Control Committee and the Court of Auditors. We hope that national Parliaments will be more effective in controlling the Council of Ministers, whereas the European Parliament would be more effective at doing what the House cannot do, which is monitoring and strengthening the financial accountability of the Commission.

Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South) : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hurd : No. I know the hon. Gentleman's interest in this matter, and I have tried to meet what I know is his point.

Our third objective in the intergovernmental conference will be to strengthen the voice of the Community in the world. As the House knows, the Community already co-ordinates foreign policy by consensus. We think that that should continue and we have made modest but specific proposals for improving that co-ordination. We think that the conference should define more clearly

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security questions, which are also dealt with by consensus. The Twelve have edged forward to discussing certain security questions, despite the reserve of the Irish, and those discussions can be defined and strengthened.

I shall give two examples of security questions which we think that the Twelve can reasonably consider. They can consider all that is carried forward from the conference on security and co-operation in Europe, the confidence building schemes, the conciliation of disputes and the conflict prevention centre. Those matters can rightly be co-ordinated in the Twelve, although they also need to be discussed with the United States and Canada. Another example is the export of arms and weapons technology, in which the Opposition are traditionally interested. Such subjects come under the heading of security questions which we think the Twelve can usefully consider. Defence is a distinct matter. The collective guarantees under which we live in safety, the integrated command and the deployment of forces and weapons are regarded as a separate matter under the heading of defence. I see a clear need to build up the European pillar of the North Atlantic Alliance, and I think that that will be one of the main debates and needs of 1991. However, I do not think that the Twelve are the right instrument for that, although the Italians have ideas in this field. The Twelve will not be intimately concerned with defence as I have defined it.

The Western European Union is a more fitting instrument for building up the European pillar of the alliance. In the coming months, we hope to develop our ideas on that, not just at the

intergovernmental conference but in the WEU and at the NATO review, which is a rejuvenating, a changing, of NATO to meet new circumstances.

I have tried to cover the main ideas which I foresee on the summit agenda. I have tried to give the House some fresh information about the line that we shall take in the intergovernmental conference on political union and the institution of the Community.

Mr. Skinner : Cotton wool.

Mr. Hurd : The Community and the House evolve by discussion and argument, and even the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) is anxious to take part in such debate. His participation in this debate has been almost continuous.

Mr. Skinner : I have listened to the Secretary of State for the last half hour. His background is that of a diplomat. He is supposed to be telling us about what will happen and about the Government's position at this international government conference. He has wrapped the whole thing in cotton wool and he does not have the guts to tell the House why. It is because some of his hon. Friends are against the Common Market and some, such as the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes), are Euro-fanatics. By trying to placate both factions, the right hon. Gentleman tells us exactly nothing. That is his game ; but he does not con me.

Mr. Hurd : The hon. Gentleman has been talking all the time, and I can therefore accuse him of not listening. Plainly, he has not listened to a word of my clear and distinctive speech about Government policy. I am delighted that I have been able to expose the hon. Gentleman in this way.

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The policies which I have outlined and those which my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will outline in the debate on economic and monetary union command overwhelming support in the House. Those positive ideas will preserve and advance the national interest by making a success of our membership of the Community.

5.24 pm

Mr. Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) : I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof :

"condemns Her Majesty's Government for its neglect of British interests in the European Community and its failure to produce a coherent policy towards the Inter-Governmental Conferences due to be held next week.".

Anyone listening to the Secretary of State's placid not to say soporifc account of events in the Community would never think that that issue has caused such upheavals in the Government. It has cost them the resignation of six Cabinet Ministers in the past five years, including the deputy Prime Minister last month and the Prime Minister a couple of weeks ago. I am not sure to what extent the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) would welcome the somewhat morbid obituary notice that the right hon. Gentleman has delivered on her. Regardless of the quaint remarks with which the right hon. Gentleman finished his speech, if the Government go on in the same way as before, more resignations may well be expected before they are done. We really must hand it to the Foreign Secretary. Four weeks ago he spoke about the European Community in the debate on the Queen's Speech and said :

"One thing that has emerged clearly from our exchanges yesterday was that there was a great deal more light and sweetness on this side of the House than there was on the other side. Our view has been expressed with admirable clarity and coherence."--[ Official Report, 8 November 1990 ; Vol. 180, c. 152.]

Within five days of the Foreign Secretary saying that, the right hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Sir G. Howe) tore the veil aside and showed that the Cabinet was a snakepit of dissension and backbiting on the issue of Europe. No one would have thought from the Foreign Secretary's speech today that in this area of policy the Government have been isolated time and again on the wrong side of the debate within the Community. The new Prime Minister has once again declared his opposition to the social charter.

Mr. Tony Favell (Stockport) rose--

Mr. Kaufman : The hon. Member for Stockport (Mr. Favell) should not intervene. If he had sensibly kept his mouth shut, he would now be with the Prime Minister and Mr. Shamir instead of on the tundra of the Back Benches.

Mr. Favell : Does the right hon. Gentleman have the support of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) in his approach to Europe?

Mr. Kaufman : I always have the idiosyncratic support of my hon. Friend on every matter to which I refer. I know the size of the majority of the hon. Member for Stockport. After the general election he will not be able to give support to anybody from Stockport. The Government have been on the wrong side of every European Community debate. They have been on the wrong side of the debate on the social charter, on employment practices, and on carbon dioxide emissions,

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on which the United Kingdom had to be given a special dispensation for a five-year delay. That was an issue on which the Government blew loud trumpets that turned out to be raspberries.

The style has now changed dramatically and the change was signalled by the new Prime Minister in one of a never-ending series of interviews that he gave during the Tory leadership campaign. The text and transcripts of those interviews provide a rich goldmine of quotational nuggets that will be used to our satisfaction and benefit for some time. In an interview with Brian Walden the new Prime Minister spoke approvingly of compromise within the Community, or what he called fudging things. Fudge is certainly on the menu today. Under the previous Prime Minister, we and Europe knew exactly where we were. Ministers, led by her, went into meetings and conferences simply saying no to whatever was proposed. Now, there has been a dramatic reversal. From a policy of no, the Government have moved to a policy of no policy. We got the first remarkable example yesterday, when the Secretary of State for the Environment, having fought his leadership campaign on a manifesto of changing the poll tax, came to the House with the dramatic news that he had no policy on the matter, and was installing a suggestions box next to the letter board in the Members' Lobby. That is a mess that the new Government have created for themselves, and in which they now wallow uncomfortably. The policy of no policy on the European Community is, however, a far graver matter, for it means that next week the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer go to Italy for three meetings crucial to the political, economic, industrial and social future of the country with next to nothing to say. Perhaps the new Prime Minister's approach was symbolised by what happened to his speech at the Altrincham and Sale Conservative party dinner last Thursday. The text of the speech got lost. Perhaps it was cleared away by sensible waitresses, along with the dirty crockery and the soiled serviettes. This is what he said :

"It means that we must put forward our own ideas for a liberal and open Community That will be easier to achieve if our partners in the Community are convinced that we are whole-heartedly engaged with them in the great enterprise of building, shaping and developing Europe.

I want Britain to play a leadership role in that enterprise". It is not clear what those words mean.

During the leadership election campaign, the Foreign Secretary proposed, as part of his platform, drafting a Cabinet paper on Europe, as if it were some revolutionary proposal, which I suppose that it was for this Government. He said :

"concern about Europe runs very high and I would like to see the publication, quite openly, of more of the information that would go to the Cabinet so the House and the public can be well informed of the choices facing the Government."

Mr. Phillip Oppenheim (Amber Valley) : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Nicholls : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Kaufman : I shall give way later, but I wish to deal with what the Foreign Secretary proposed, and what has come of his proposal, because that is important. What has become of the paper? Was it discussed at today's Cabinet meeting? It seems not because, according to The Guardian today, the Foreign Secretary, at the meeting of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs yesterday,

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"hinted that the government had shelved its plan to issue a broad-brush policy paper on Europe before the Rome summit. Instead, it was concentrating on refining its proposals for the

intergovernmental conference on political union, which would be launched then."

Today, The Times puts the situation more bleakly. It says : "The government has delayed or shelved plans to produce a white paper on Europe amid hints that a cabinet consensus may be harder to reach than expected. A senior"

Mr. Oppenheim : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Kaufman : I shall in a moment, but I am quoting from The Times and one must not interrupt that. The Times says :

"A senior source"--

to our delight, no longer Mr. Bernard Ingham--

"said that the cabinet did not want such a paper at this time, and was uncertain that it would ever be produced."

Where are we on this? If the Cabinet is not even discussing the matter, if it has not got a paper, if it has no idea of what is to go before the intergovernmental conference next week, how can anybody else comment on the Government's policies? How can our partners in Europe respond? How can the House of Commons comment and how can the British people, who may be said to have some justified interest in the matter, comment?

Mr. Oppenheim : The right hon. Gentleman accused the Government of having no policy on Europe. Perhaps he can enlighten the House by telling us whether the Opposition have a policy on a single currency. Are the Opposition in favour of a single currency, yes or no?

Mr. Kaufman : I shall come to those very matters.

Mr. Oppenheim : Yes or no?

Mr. Kaufman : I do not know which way the hon. Gentleman voted last week, but I had better advise him to stop asking for yes or no answers because I have some quotations from the new Prime Minister on the matter that do not add up to yes or no. I shall come to that. The Labour party conference, two months ago, passed a detailed policy on political union and political progress. On economic and monetary union, our national executive will publish a detailed policy next week, which I shall gladly send to the hon. Gentleman. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), to whom reference has been made, is aware of that because he was the only person to vote against the policy.

Mr. Skinner : I should have been in a minority of two but the chair would not accept the Baghdad proxy. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) was in the Gulf.

Mr. Kaufman : My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) was not in the Gulf ; he was in Mesopotamia. The Gulf is a bit further south-east. My right hon. Friend was carrying out his mission and was not able to vote.

Mr. Skinner : He did a good job.

Mr. Kaufman : He did a job. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover must be relieved and satisfied that he upheld that minority view in the national executive, but he has confirmed that the Labour party has a detailed policy

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of economic and monetary union, on which only a tiny minority of the party has stated its reservations. That is completely different from the deep split in the Tory party.

The Foreign Secretary said this afternoon that the Government will go into the intergovernmental conference with their own ideas and proposals. Given what he said, you could have fooled me, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Six months after signing up at Dublin to full union before the end of 1992--that is what the right hon. Member for Finchley, with the Foreign Secretary, did, and she did not deny that when asked about it in the Chamber--the Government have no idea about what they mean to do, apart from the farce of the hard ecu.

Mr. Nicholls : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Kaufman : I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, but when I have done that, I shall not give way again because many hon. Members wish to speak in the debate.

Mr. Nicholls : The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister at Altrincham. That speech says :

"It doesn't mean that we have to accept a federal Europe : certainly not. There is no question of that."

The hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) is fresh back from Rome where he voted in favour of a declaration containing an undertaking to seek to remodel the Community into a European union on a federal basis. We know that that is not the policy of Her Majesty's Government because we have heard what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said. Will the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) now tell us whether that is Labour policy?

Mr. Kaufman : I understand that the hon. Gentleman left early, so I am not sure about the basis of his comments. We also know that the Conservative delegation, if one can call it that, was split not just down the middle but into several fragments at the assizes. We have the very great advantage, indeed the enticing prospect, that my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) hopes to catch Mr. Speaker's eye to wind up the debate for the Opposition. Having been there all the time, he will speak with great authority on the matter.

Mr. Cash : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Kaufman : No. If the hon. Gentleman wants to ask about the document, my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton will deal with it with his customary suavity and competence.

Mr. Cash rose --

Mr. Kaufman : No, I have explained what will happen with regard to that document.

There are some issues on which the Government's confusion has become even worse. For example, we thought that we knew roughly where the Government stood on defence--that is, that they were against a defence role for the Community. But now, suddenly, all that seems to be in the melting pot.

In Brussels, the Foreign Secretary was quoted as saying that there were now compelling arguments for much closer EC co-operation over defence and security. The correspondent from The Guardian in Brussels made a further report on the matter, in which he said : "In a first sign of a softening in the Government's line on Europe since John Major became Prime Minister, the Foreign

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Secretary, Douglas Hurd, signalled yesterday that Britain may support giving the European Community a formal role in foreign policy and security."

We had another variation of what the Foreign Secretary is proposing when he was questioned by the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs yesterday. We had yet another variation today. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House with great clarity whether the Government support and advocate, or do not support and advocate, a defence role for the Community? If the right hon. Gentleman does not support and advocate a defence role, but does support and advocate a security role, will he explain the difference between the two, and will he then also explain how that fits in with our commitments to NATO?

Mr. Hurd : I said exactly the same in my press conference in Brussels and to the Select Committee. I do not believe that the 12 should have a defence role, and I draw a distinction between the defence role and security matters ; a distinction that I explained in some detail 10 minutes ago.

Mr. Kaufman : The right hon. Gentleman may have sought to explain it, but he did not explain it in a way that was clear to the House. He talked about co-operation on the Gulf and he reproved members of the Community for what he claimed to be their inadequate response to the Gulf crisis. Does the right hon. Gentleman see the Community co-ordinating a military response in the Gulf? Does he see it co-ordinating a naval blockade in the Gulf? Does he see it co-ordinating an air blockade in the Gulf? If so, what was he up to talking about the Community's response on Gulf issues? Hostages are clearly an important matter, but is that a security matter? We need to know what the Government mean by security as distinct from defence.

Those are important matters, on which the Government may come to the House with legislation at a future date and we need to know exactly what they propose. After all the right hon. Gentleman's statements in Brussels, his statement to the Select Committee and his further statement this afternoon, what he is proposing is not at all clear and could be dangerous.

The right hon. Gentleman spoke this afternoon, as he has on other occasions, about majority voting. But nobody has any clear idea where he, and therefore the Government, stands on majority voting. Speaking to the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Communities on 25 July 1990 he said :

"Undoubtedly, this country has quite substantially gained from the Single European Act, in that many of the decisions leading to the Single Market are to be taken by qualified majority. We and the Commission would not be nearly so successful in demolishing protectionism in the Community had it not been for qualified majority voting, and that is a point I ought to make from the point of view of those who approach qualified majority voting with some suspicion." That appears to me to be something of an encomium for qualified majority voting.

Three months later the right hon. Gentleman appeared to change his mind. In the debate on the Queen's Speech on 8 November, four weeks ago today, he said :

"We do not want significantly extending qualified majority voting."

Does that mean more majority voting or not? What is the significance of the word "significantly"? Does he mean that

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he is opposed to any more qualified majority voting, or that he is ready to see some more qualified majority voting? If so, in what areas?

That is an important issue for the political intergovernmental conference, yet there has not been a word of clarification today, just a repetition of the fuzzy words on the matter that the right hon. Gentleman has been saying all along, except, as I say, for his encomium for qualified majority voting at the House of Lords Select Committee three months ago. If he cannot sort out his own mind, how on earth will he make a clear, positive and useful contribution at the intergovernmental conference?

What about the issue of sovereignty? In his interview with Mr. Walden on 25 November, the new Prime Minister--not then the Prime Minister but about to become so--seemed very firm. He said : "At the moment I can foresee no chance of pooling any more sovereignty."

He also said :

"I see no circumstances at the moment in which we could or would present legislation to the House of Commons to surrender more sovereignty."

That seemed pretty clear until one read it, when one saw that repeated phrase, "at the moment". That gave the Prime Minister a let-out should he decide to change his mind. The chances of his changing his mind seem quite strong.

In yet another campaign interview published two days later on 27 November in the Financial Times the Prime Minister said : "I have no doubt that when we go through this conference"-- that is, the intergovernmental conference- -

"it is possible to negotiate a treaty that will be acceptable to the House of Commons that will move Europe forward and keep it forward together."

What will there be a new treaty for if we are not going to sacrifice, as the right hon. Member for Finchley would put it, some sovereignty?

The Prime Minister acknowledged in that interview that a new treaty would have to come to the House, and a new treaty will mean, in the Prime Minister's own words, pooling more sovereignty ; surrendering more sovereignty. Where do the Government stand on the issue of sovereignty? Where do they stand on a new treaty? Do they accept that they may have to bring this new legislation, pooling or surrendering sovereignty, to the House, and that if they meet opposition, they may have to guillotine it through the House as they did the Single European Act?

We have a right to know about those matters, but the Foreign Secretary told us nothing about them this afternoon. It may be that there is a good reason for that. Perhaps he does not know himself. Perhaps, in the immortal words of the Secretary of State for the Environment, the Government are ruling nothing in and ruling nothing out. We do not know. The Foreign Secretary did not tell us. The only hint that he has given about proposals for the political intergovernmental conference, before his extremely woolly words this afternoon, was provided in his speech to the House on 8 November when he said :

"we would like to see a more prominent role for the European Parliament, not by giving it more legislative powers but in monitoring Community expenditure."--[ Official Report, 8 November 1990 ; Vol. 180, c. 152- 53.]

What on earth does that mean? What does it mean in terms of providing powers or not providing powers for the

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