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Orders of the Day
European Communities (Amendment) Bill
Considered in Committee [Progress, 4 February]
[Mr. Michael Morris
in the Chair ]
The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr. Michael Morris) : Before we begin the debates on the Bill, I have a statement to make. Right hon. and hon. Members will see that the amendments and new clauses that appear for the first time on today's provisional selection list are identified by an asterisk. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will find that innovation helpful. That procedure will continue in force until the end of this Committee stage, and will then be reviewed by the Chairmen's Panel.
3.31 pm
Mr. George Robertson (Hamilton) : On a point of order, Mr. Morris. I refer to the statement made to the House last Monday by the Foreign Secretary, relating to the legal position on amendment No. 27, which was included in the group of amendments led by amendment No. 7, on the social fund.
Clearly, major issues are involved that need to detain the Committee. I put it to you, Mr. Morris, that they must be debated, and that there must be urgent consideration of the Foreign Secretary's remarks last week--which directly contradicted the comments made by the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, in Committee on 20January.
The legal implications also must be considered, and perhaps we ought to hear from the Law Officers--who were, after all, the architects of the Foreign Secretary's remarks last week.
The Committee faces a dilemma. Debate on the group of amendments that included amendment No. 27 has come and gone. We are therefore not in a position to consider either the legal points advanced by the Law Officers to the Foreign Secretary of the policy implications of the changed legal judgment in relation to the social chapter and social protocol.
My right hon. and hon. Friends and I believe that the Committee must be given an opportunity to debate those matters on two, almost separate, grounds. First, we must hear from the Law Officers--and they must be answerable to Parliament and not just to Ministers of the Crown for their observations--as to why the views that they expressed were so different from the comments of the Minister of State. Secondly, we need a debate in which to consider the policy implications of the new legal interpretation.
On Friday last week, the Prime Minister wrote to my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition, following a request for sight of the legal advice given to the Cabinet by the Law Officers. In his letter, the Prime Minister said :
"With their agreement, Douglas Hurd set out in his statement in the House on 15 February the advice of the Law Officers. If the House of Commons wishes to have further advice on the meaning and effect of the Bill, Law Officers will be present when the Committee Stage of the Bill resumes."
I know that this pre-empts your authority to some extent, Mr. Morris, in as much as the Prime Minister appears to
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be offering the House the services of Law Officers so that they can answer questions that--as you know--we wish to put to them. On the other hand, the Prime Minister's offer was made in the context of a legal view of an amendment that has already been debated. That is one of the dilemmas that now face the House.Serious questions of substance have arisen, concerning not merely amendment No. 27 but the treaty itself. On 20 January, the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, said :
"The hon. Gentleman"--
he was addressing the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston)--
"knows that the social protocol is an integral part of the treaty of Rome. We shall be party to that protocol even if the arrangements of the 11 which are attached to it do not apply to the United Kingdom."--[ Official Report, 20 January 1993 ; Vol. 217, c. 445.] That statement has now been reversed by what the Foreign Secretary told us last week, but it relates to the protocols, not just to one protocol. It seems to be a general policy statement relating to protocols as a whole--and that must have implications not just for the social protocol, but for other protocols attached to the Maastricht treaty.
In his statement last week, the Foreign Secretary said : "I must make it clear that there can be no question of the United Kingdom ratifying the treaty except through the normal parliamentary procedures."--[ Official Report, 15 February 1993 ; Vol. 219, c. 28.]
We have here a contrast between a Minister who tells us that the protocols are part of the treaty, and a Law Officer who is apparently telling us that they are not. The Foreign Secretary, meanwhile, tells us that the principle to which he will adhere is the ratification of the treaty by Parliament. A massively important issue of principle regarding the legalities needs to be resolved, and I suggest to you, Mr. Morris, that that cannot possibly be done other than in a debate involving the Law Officers and enabling them to answer our questions.
I wish to raise some other issues, perhaps less significant than the one that I have just cited. First, there is the impact of the Law Officers' revision of opinion on other parts of the treaty that may have already been dealt with. Can the House feel confident that the legal views expressed by the Minister of State in our earlier debates are sound, or will a revision now take place across the board? I direct your attention specifically, Mr. Morris, to the debate on title I that took place at the beginning of the Committee stage. We relied on Foreign Office legal advice, which I understand came from Treasury solicitors.
I should also like to know whether there is a prospect of new amendments being tabled to that part of the treaty, or to the protocols relating to the social protocol, now that a debate on the issue--as distinct from a debate on the legalities--has come and gone. Many hon. Members are trying to find ways of tabling further amendments that would allow the House to make a specific judgment on certain aspects of the social protocol.
It would be outrageous if the House were bypassed in some way by a nitpicking legalistic exercise, simply to get around the political difficulties that face the Government when they are likely to be defeated on amendment No. 27. We require nothing short of a debate on the Law Officers' present views, which they refuse to put in the Library of the House and to give the House.
Therefore, I ask whether you will accept a motion, That the Chairman do report progress and ask leave to sit again.
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The Attorney-General (Sir Nicholas Lyell) : Further to that point of order, Mr. Morris.
The Chairman : There cannot be anything further to that point of order, because at this stage I have to consider the motion put before me, and before I rule on that I must comment on the policy implications mentioned by the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson).
I am grateful to the hon. Member who leads for the Opposition on the Committee. I listened to the Foreign Secretary's statement, and subsequently read it, with the greatest care. We are some way off a vote on amendment No. 27, and other developments may occur at any time, but at this juncture I am minded to take seriously the need for a further debate before the Committee votes on that amendment. I have also listened to the hon. Member for Hamilton and to the feelings of the House. He has sought to move a motion that I report progress and ask leave to sit again. In weighing up my decision, may I remind the Committee that Standing Order No. 33 lays down that the debate shall be confined to the matter of the dilatory motion --in this case, the effect on ratification of the treaty of carrying amendment No 27, as set out in the Foreign Secretary's statement.
I therefore accept the motion that I report progress and ask leave to sit again, and I call Mr. George Robertson.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Chairman do report progress and ask leave to sit again.
Several Hon. Members : Further to that point of order, Mr. Morris.
The Chairman : Order. There cannot be anything further to that, in that this is a very important matter. I call Mr. George Robertson. [ Hon. Members-- : "Further to that point of order, Mr. Morris."] Order. As I accept that what I said may have come as a surprise to certain hon. Members, I shall repeat what is laid down by Standing Order No. 33, so that there will be no misunderstanding. We shall keep the debate firmly within the confines of the Standing Order--that is, to the matter of the dilatory motion, which in this case means the effect on ratification of the treaty of carrying amendment No. 27, as set out in the Foreign Secretary's statement.
Sir Teddy Taylor (Southend, East) : In the Foreign Secretary's speech, in column 30, he said that the amendment on the Committee of the Regions was similarly affected. That is the amendment that we were discussing before the Committee stopped. While I accept that it is vital that we consider the statement on amendment No. 27, the Committee was considering an amendment relating to the Committee of the Regions, and the Foreign Secretary said : "Another amendment that can be cited in this respect is the one about membership of the Committee of the Regions."--[ Official Report, 15 February 1993 ; Vol. 219, c. 30.]
Surely, as the Foreign Secretary mentioned that, and as the Committee is considering that amendment, the issue of its relevance to the Committee of the Regions could also be relevant. Is that not fair?
The Chairman : Order. When we return to the debate on cohesion and amendment No. 13, it will be in order to discuss that matter. Several hon. Members rose --
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The Chairman : Sir Russell Johnston.
Sir Russell Johnston (Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber) : On a point of order, Mr. Morris. What duration will the debate on the motion be entitled to?
The Chairman : That is not a matter for me at this point.
Mr. Nicholas Budgen (Wolverhampton, South-West) : On a point of order, Mr. Morris. One of the issues that we did not cover in earlier discussions about the legal consequences of amendment No. 27 was the way in which the doctrine of judicial review might be applied to a situation in which a majority of the House were in favour of ratification of a treaty, which could not legally be ratified by that method. I hope that you will allow discussion of that issue and even suggest to the Attorney-General that he might explain his wider position because, as you well know, there is a conspiracy in this House among the three Front Benches to get the treaty ratified by hook or by crook. It is quite possible that that could be done unlawfully. We might be heading for a confrontation between a sovereign Parliament and the judiciary. It would be interesting--even vital, I suggest--to hear my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney- General explain his position, as a Law Officer, in that dilemma.
Several Hon. Members rose --
The Chairman : Does the hon. Gentleman want a reply?
The Chairman : I am most grateful for the hon. Gentleman's attention. Any speech that the hon. Gentleman makes should be related to the Foreign Secretary's statement.
3.45 pm
Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones (Ynys Mon) : A number of hon. Members wished to speak in the debate on Monday 4 February on the Committee of the Regions. Will you, Mr. Morris, make it perfectly clear to the House that whatever time is allocated to the debate on the motion will not be deducted from that allocated when the subject returns for debate?
Mr. Nigel Spearing (Newham, South) : On a point of order, Mr. Morris. May I first thank you for your announcement about asterisked amendments, contingent on a point of order that I raised some time ago? May I draw your attention to another matter that may considerably assist the Committee and those outside--the possibility of showing on future selection sheets the votes that are permissible immediately after the end of each group of amendments? We shall encounter complications later, and that would simplify things. In his statement last week, the Foreign Secretary said that he wished
"to make a statement on the process of ratification of the Maastricht treaty."--[ Official Report, 15 February 1993 ; Vol 219, c.27.]
Can we assume that his supplementary answers are also covered by the definition that you have just given?
The Chairman : On the hon. Gentleman's first point, I cannot anticipate votes or make a statement without
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consulting my colleagues on the Chairmen's Panel. On the second point, the Law Officers will have heard the hon. Gentleman.Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) asked how long we can debate the dilatory motion under Standing Order No. 33. I draw your attention. Mr. Morris, to the fact that, normally, reporting progress at the end of the day can be contested and debated, and the Government have to get a closure if necessary. Many such debates have taken two or three hours.
It is important to make it clear that this is not just a dilatory motion to debate progress on a Bill but is more important, as it is about what the Government had to say last week and the arguments that have taken place since. It is pretty clear that the Government are in a complete mess on the Maastricht Bill ; the wheels have come off. I argue that, like a motion for the Adjournment of the House, the motion should be debated for a full day. This matter affects everyone. The closure should not be accepted after two or three hours, because many hon. Members will want to speak.
The Government have thrown their Bill into turmoil. It has all the seeds of decadence of the years between 1977 and 1979, when devolution Bills were presented. You can smell it in the air. Almost every constitutional measure in recent years has finished up down a big black hole. We should debate the motion throughout the day, and the Government Whips should not contemplate closing it down after a short time.
The Chairman : I thank the hon. and experienced Member for his advice.
Mr. Ian Taylor (Esher) : On a point of order, Mr. Morris. As this debate is on amendment No. 27, could you clarify the fact that the amendment relates to clause 1(1) but not to clause 1(2), which deals with the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1978? It is vital to seek your guidance, because there might be an attempt to turn an important dilatory motion into a dilatory procedure with an effect on the passing of the whole Bill, on which many hon. Members want to make progress for exactly the reasons--this country's
interests--outlined by the Foreign Secretary at the weekend.
The Chairman : I respectfully suggest that the hon. Gentleman reads amendment No. 27 again, as it will clarify the issue.
Mrs. Margaret Ewing (Moray) : On a point of order, Mr. Morris. While most hon. Members will welcome the opportunity to debate the dilatory motion, can you say whether a copy of the legal ruling on which the motion is based has been made available in the Vote Office? It would be especially helpful to us, together with guidance from the Law Officers of Scotland, where there might even be a different interpretation.
The Chairman : Not to my knowledge.
Mr. Tony Marlow (Northampton, North) : This is a very important issue, Mr. Morris, and I am sure that the House is grateful for your ruling. However, as you said yourself, it has come as a surprise to many of us, who were not expecting it. You will know that, even on the most charitable interpretation, the Government's legal advice has been a little erratic recently. Has the Attorney-General
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also been taken by surprise by the ruling? It is important that he has had sufficient time to prepare his remarks in response to the debate.The Chairman : No one knew of my ruling.
Mr. Donald Anderson (Swansea, East) : Hasty legal advice is bad legal advice. It is clear that the Attorney-General has not had time properly to prepare his speech. It is also clear that your ruling, Mr. Morris, is of considerable significance to the House and to the progress of the Bill as a whole, which is what many of us want. In a Standing Committee, if something is important technically and practically, it is possible for the Committee to bring together a series of experts. In this case, we are dealing with an important point of legal interpretation, on which lawyers in this country and on the continent will have views which would be relevant to the Committee if the Committee is to make an informed decision. Is there any procedure whereby a Committee of the whole House could, like a Standing Committee, bring together relevant experts to ensure that, this time, we get it right?
The Chairman : There is no such procedure, but the Chair expects all hon. Members to be following the Bill--it has been a week since the Foreign Secretary made his statement.
Sir Russell Johnston rose --
Sir Russell Johnston : I am sorry if I did not explain myself clearly enough last time, Mr. Morris. All I want to know is whether the debate can continue until a closure is moved and you accept it, or, if a closure motion is not moved, until 10 pm or, perhaps, until tomorrow? Perhaps you could also explain why the motion is called a "dilatory" motion, because it so admirably describes the Government's position?
The Chairman : The answer is that the absolute time limit is 10 pm.
Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) : On a point of order, Mr. Morris. The debate revolves around what, for many of us, are difficult legal points. The debate has been announced without preparation for those difficult legal points-- [Interruption.] I am only trying to be fair. It seems that these matters will be determined in the end by the courts. There will be one opinion against another.
It is difficult to determine where the balance of the argument lies. A number of legal opinions have been available. Sir Anthony Lester, QC has given one opinion and Opposition Front-Bench Members have another. None of us has had the opportunity to see those legal judgments. You have accepted the dilatory motion, Mr. Morris, but could it not be debated later, when we have had time to prepare for it?
Mr. George Robertson : I am grateful to you, Mr. Morris, for your decision. It is right for the Committee and right for parliamentary democracy that we have this opportunity to consider the remarkable situation. The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has unprecedently repudiated, almost completely, all that
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his right hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones), the Minister of State, told the Committee on a previous occasion. I know that I was not alone in being stunned a week ago to hear the Foreign Secretary tell the House that all that had gone before was wrong. He apologised to the House, it must be said, for that, but he entirely repudiated not only his own colleague in the Department, but the legal advice to which the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had held firm for the previous 10 months.The Committee and the outside world must keep in mind the fact that amendment No. 27 was tabled on 20 May 1992--10 months ago. Amendment No. 27 was no ordinary amendment. It was not likely to be seen inside the portals of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as simply one of the 450 amendments that were tabled immediately after Second Reading.
The social protocol--the opt-out from the social chapter--was the jewel in the Prime Minister's crown when he came back from Maastricht, with the Tory tabloid newspapers crying, "Game, set and match." The social protocol was at the heart of the Government's strategy, at the heart of the treaty and at the heart of the Bill which was given a Second Reading in the House last year.
Amendment No. 27, which sought to exclude the whole social protocol from the Bill, must have commanded attention deep within the recesses of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, stretching from the solicitors who advised, through the clever officials who have given the Minister of State his speeches and advice, right up to the Foreign Secretary. The amendment must have transfixed them because of the impact that it might eventually have on the ratification of the treaty.
Last year, on the day following the date scheduled for the Danish referendum, the Committee was ready to deal with the Bill. The Committee was scheduled to have its first sitting last June. The Minister of State would have had his notes ready and available, and would have had his preparations made, as was true of many Opposition Members. It was believed then that progress on ratification of the Maastricht treaty might be quite swift.
There was no way in which the Minister of State, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and even the Foreign Secretary could have held the view that the issue could be postponed, put off, shovelled under the carpet and simply left to be worried about another day. They knew about amendment No. 27. They had worked things out. They must have pondered closely the implications of the amendment.
The Minister of State, who had by that stage tendered his resignation and entered one of the longest periods of notice ever given by a Minister, intervened repeatedly in the debate on the group of amendments led by amendment No. 7. The right hon. Gentleman was not speaking off the top of his head. His remarks cannot be dismissed as one of "Tristan's flights of fancy", as some would have had us believe over the past weekend.
The right hon. Gentleman, who is a Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, is a far cleverer man than that. As he sits on the Treasury Bench today, he gives the impression of a man of casual habit, relaxed and laid back--almost to the extreme, now that he has handed
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in his resignation--as he tries to pilot the Bill through the House. But there is nothing relaxed about him, as Baroness Thatcher found out to her cost.When the right hon. Gentleman came to the House on 20 January, he knew what he was about. His speech had been worked out and planned in advance.
4 pm
Mr. Anderson : My hon. Friend has made a valuable point about the Minister's speech, which had been worked out in advance. Is it not clear that, if the legal advisers in the Foreign Office had had any doubt about the accuracy of the opinion they were giving, they would have consulted the Attorney-General's office in any event? Apart from the importance and implications of the subject, if there had been a mere scintilla of doubt within the minds of those advisers, they would certainly have sought a second opinion from the
Attorney-General.
Mr. Robertson : My hon. Friend has two areas of expertise that allow him to make that cogent point. First, he is a lawyer, and no one knows lawyers like other lawyers, even if they always disagree with each other. Secondly, not only did my hon. Friend serve with me for a long time as a member of the Opposition Front-Bench foreign affairs team, but he worked in the Foreign Office as a diplomat. Therefore, he knows only too well how cautious officials are inside the Foreign Office.
My hon. Friend has rightly put his finger on the matter. If there had been the slightest doubt in the minds of advisers about the advice they were to give to the Minister of State, and had they felt any caution about the strength of their opinion, the first thing they would have done was go to the Attorney-General, so that his Department could clear up the matter.
When the Minister of State came to the House on 20 January, his remarks were based on authority, and all the backing that comes from the heavyweight authorities of the Foreign Office who service him and the country. In reply to my right hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham), the right hon. Gentleman said :
"The hon. Gentleman knows that the social protocol is an integral part of the treaty of Rome. We shall be party to that protocol even if the arrangements of the 11, which are attached to it, do not apply to the United Kingdom."--[ Official Report, 20 January 1993 ; Vol. 217, c. 445.]
The right hon. Gentleman repeated those remarks in the House and outside it. He even took to writing them in a letter to the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston), in the faint hope that, somehow, the Liberal Democrats might be dislodged from their consistent support for the social protocol and the social chapter. There was no mistake about the meaning of the Minister's remarks.
I do not know when the right hon. Gentleman was taken aside by his boss--I do not know whether that was a private meeting or a public humiliation. One can only guess at the theatre that now takes place inside the Conservative Government. One can only imagine what it was like for the right hon. Gentleman, who is so laid back that he does not even have a desk in his office at the Foreign Office. He just sits in an armchair and greets the assembled dignitaries who come before him.
One can only imagine how stunned the right hon. Gentleman must have been when, at some point in the week before last, he heard from the Foreign Secretary that everything he had said was wrong, that he had misled the
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House with the advice he had offered, and that the Foreign Secretary, no less, was going to have to come to the House on 15 February to apologise on his behalf, because everything he had said before was wrong. I think that that is material for a book--a novel, one might say--and there is no better man to write it, with all those characters, unbelievable though they may be, than the Foreign Secretary himself.Mr. Marlow : Is not the reality that, when my right hon. Friend the Minister of State made his statement, he was in political mode? He was trying to put the frighteners on the Opposition parties. He knows that they want to get the Bill through, as he does. He was trying to say that what they were doing was against the interests of the Bill. At the same time, the Government were trying to put the frighteners on their Members by totally misrepresenting the social protocol and saying that, if hon. Members voted for the amendment, they would have the social charter thrust down their throats. However, that did not work, and they had to do something else to get themselves off the hook, so they approached the Attorney-General for new legal advice.
Mr. Robertson : I was about to come to the real modus behind the operation but, as usual, the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) has arrived at the conclusion faster than others. That is why, I believe, he is destined to keep his position below the Gangway, probably for the rest of his political career.
Sir Teddy Taylor : Does not the hon. Gentleman think that there might have been a simpler motive? Might not the Government, perhaps along with some of the other parties, have been trying to give Parliament the impression that it was deciding the great business? That was all right as long as Parliament behaved itself, but the moment that it seemed that the clever, saintly Members of Parliament who were carrying out such important work were going to vote against the Government, they pulled the rug away. The Government said, "We are terribly sorry, but your opinions do not count." Is that not a far more simple and objective possibility than all the complex legal suggestions?
Mr. Robertson : One only had to read the heavyweight newspapers last week--even the tabloids broke through the fog of the Government's propaganda--to see precisely what the Government were about : faced with defeat, they produced yet another legal opinion. We know that. Sometimes, when I consider the Conservative Government, an old Glaswegian phrase comes into my mind : one sandwich short of a picnic. The Government seem so clueless, incompetent and capable of mismanagement that they have taken that policy to an art form. Anyone intervening at any time in the debate is likely to produce a more reasonable explanation of what happened than the one that we heard from the Foreign Secretary last Monday.
Mr. Budgen : Will the hon. Gentleman tell the House how many lawyers --in-house, as it were--the Foreign Office have? When they have to interpret a treaty, do they normally go to the Attorney-General for advice? It seems that the Foreign Office already has a substantial legal staff, headed by the gentleman who is a knight, and therefore presumably a most distinguished lawyer.
It seems odd that the distinguished legal advice, which must have been given carefully--and, I dare say, been
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