House of Commons Hansard Debates for 6 Jul 1993

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democratic, and tends to support the obligation of this country under European Community law to adopt a common system of election, reinforced by the European Parliament as recently as March. I submit that the House should strike out clause 1 of the Bill and proceed in a wholly new way to give effect to the decisions made at Edinburgh. If it does, it will meet with total understanding from our European Community partners, and widespread support and that of other countries' political parties in the European Parliament. It is damaging to the representativeness of Parliament, and is a step back from the developments that we want. I suggest that the clause should not stand part of the Bill.

Mr. John Biffen (Shropshire, North) : It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), who has spoken with courtesy and scholarship on what is undoubtedly a very important point. He was technical in its presentation because, as he rightly observed, it has much wider ramifications and I am sure that the Committee will be interested in the ministerial reply. The hon. Gentleman's approach had something of the relentless charm of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) and I hope that unofficial negotiations can be undertaken to conscript him into that wider audience of men of good will on this topic. However, I am not a mascot to the hon. Gentleman's organ grinder, so my contribution will be brief and wholly different. My intention is simply to place on record the fact that the clause increases the membership of the European Parliament, and the United Kingdom component of it, so that the total membership will stand at 567.

8.30 pm

Unlike the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), I am happy to support the clause, but I should like to leave, just as a trace in the sand, a question mark over the assumption that we should always be increasing the membership of the European Parliament and of the Commission. I shall not say that such things are done thoughtlessly, but the rhetoric that accompanies them--phrases such as "increasing our influence"--implies that the additional Members in a larger Parliament will give us a more significant and indentifiable national interest than would otherwise be the case.

In the presence of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone), who is well versed in North American affairs, I observe that I do not consider that Congress loses any of its effectiveness by being a smaller entity than many European national Parliaments and smaller than the Parliament at Strasbourg. I say that as no more than a passing observation to my hon. Friend, but it is not an idle passing observation.

The enlargement of the Community is in prospect and that will constantly call into question what size the Parliament should be. It seems to me that, unless we have a much clearer idea of what its finite functions will be and how they will be conducted, we shall be dribbling along accepting increases in membership because we can think of no more suitable way of conducting our affairs than to assume that more means better. I do not say that more

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means worse, but I say that the idea of more has to be considered rather more objectively than has been the case hitherto.

Mr. Peter Lloyd : Of course it is necessary to give effect in domestic law to the Council's decision of 1 February, but I realise why the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland raised that issue on clause stand part. I entirely sympathise with him and I hope that he will not think me satirical when I say that that was his way of bringing up the subject of the absence of proportional representation in the system. His failure to bring his amendments into order meant that he had to raise the issue in that roundabout way.

The Council's decisions could not be put into effect, and we could not increase the number of seats, without changing the 1978 Act that governs our representation. The clause and the Bill as a whole demonstrate how that should be done, in terms of distributing the extra seats between the four countries that make up the United Kingdom.

The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland was teetering on the edge-- indeed, I think that he teetered over it--of suggesting that it would be possible to drop the clause from the Bill and to meet the Council's requirement that all the countries in the Community should have adopted the appropriate number of additional seats that they had been awarded, without any of them being prevented from being able to fill those seats at the 1994 election.

However, it is clear from the latter part of the Council's decision--I believe that the hon. Gentleman has a copy of it with him--that, if we do not include the clause, we shall not be able to take up the six extra seats, and nor will any of the other countries in Europe be able to take up theirs, unless we produce other legislation in double quick time. No doubt the hon. Gentleman would prefer us to produce other legislation that would award the seats differently within the United Kingdom and introduce a different method of voting. It is for the House to decide which it should choose.

Mr. Beith : Why does the Minister say that that would have to be done in what he calls double quick time, given that such legislation would not require the same apparatus as is required by the Bill in its present form?

Mr. Lloyd : I shall risk straying out of order if I talk about a form of voting different from that provided for in the Bill, but if we produced another Bill, introducing proportional representation, no doubt even more hon. Members would complain about the type of election being adopted. Such a measure would be no easier to get through the House than the present Bill, and there would have to be an enormous amount of consultation beforehand on the appropriate form of proportional representation.

There is no easy alternative to the method that we have chosen. It is in line with our traditions and--I regret to say--it will not pre-empt the argument on future elections, but we shall have those arguments after the Council of Ministers has considered the De Gucht report. The Council has not yet done that, so there is no obligation upon us to interpolate the report into our system of electing European Members of Parliament.

Mr. Maclennan : I am grateful to the Minister for giving way and for his candid admission, with which I do not

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disagree, that there could be another way of doing things. It appears that the only argument is about time, yet he will recall that, when the House legislated in such a manner before, it agreed to introduce a form of proportional representation for Northern Ireland. Things were done with at least as much celerity in 1978 as would be required now, and it has to be said that it was rather more complicated to set up such an arrangement for the first time. Even under the timetable now proposed, the process is unlikely to be concluded before the end of the year at the earliest. It would be a remarkable consultation on the system of voting which could not be concluded in a much shorter period than that.

Mr. Lloyd : The hon. Gentleman refers to the previous time that we dealt with such an arrangement, when we had at least twice as long to make the arrangements that we have now. Of course he is right to say that we could have adopted a different system of distributing the seats and of organising the elections. The form that the Government have chosen to present to the House in the Bill is the form that I think is most likely to command the most widespread support. The hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends would not agree with me. They believe in a different system, but on that matter they are in a minority.

Mr. Rathbone : In answer to an earlier intervention, my hon. Friend the Minister said that the House, or perhaps the Committee, would decide what the method of election would be. May I ask him to clarify at what point in the consideration of the Bill that decision will take place? Is it taking place at this very moment, or will it take place on clause 2, or on the schedule?

Mr. Lloyd : I did not mean that the decision would be taken on the Bill. When I said that the House would return to the issue, I did not intend that to apply to the 1994 elections, but afterwards, when the Council had considered the De Gucht proposals, as it no doubt will. I am sure that the House will return to the subject, but not in the Bill, and not yet.

I shall refer briefly to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) said. He made a point that we shall have to bear in mind when we revisit such matters, especially when the Community expands. It is undoubtedly a characteristic of legislatures to accrete members. The House of Commons has done so over the years and it is inevitable that there should be pressures for legislatures to do so, especially with the Community assemblies, when new members are joining. However, as my right hon. Friend rightly said, in terms of cost, of management and of effectiveness, the question of how large legislatures-- the European Assembly and, indeed, the House of Commons--should be, must be tackled at some point.

Mr. Bob Cryer (Bradford, South) : I wonder whether clause 1 should stand part of the Bill. That is not because I believe that proportional representation is the answer. I believe that proportional representation would be an undemocratic disaster. But I wonder whether we should enlarge what is in essence not a legislature but a consultative assembly. I speak with some experience, because for five years I was an elected member of that

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bickering body. I was grateful to be elected. The European Parliament is one of the best Government job creation schemes that has ever been devised for defeated Members of Parliament. So I do not quibble about the availability of seats when resting between general elections.

However, the fact that I put all that behind me and preferred to return to the United Kingdom Parliament is an indication of the great importance that I attach to the House of Commons and the low importance that I attach to the EC Assembly, which meets in Strasbourg and Brussels and has its offices in Luxembourg. It is worth bearing that in mind. Life in the EC is such that there is simply not the demand among the ordinary people for the extra MEPs proposed in clause 1.

The amount of correspondence that MEPs receive is but a tiny fraction of that received by Members of the United Kingdom Parliament, even though MEPs have constituencies of more than 500,000 people in Britain. Indeed, they are so large as to be completely amorphous. MEPs do not have any recognition among the vast majority of their constituents.

It is also worth noting that, in the Strasbourg Assembly, the United Kingdom is the only member state in which the MEPs have a constituency and some recognisable connection with the people who elected them. In that sense, the United Kingdom representatives are unique. The contempt with which representatives from other member states regard the quaint notion that United Kingdom representatives have some connection with a group of people in the country from which they come is telling.

All the other representatives are chosen by some form of proportional representation which involves the central bodies--the apparatchiks of the parties--choosing the representatives. There is no direct constituency involvement.

The hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) argued that clause 1 should not stand part of the Bill, because he wanted a circuitous route to the introduction of proportional representation to be adopted. I am hotly opposed to that.

Mr. Beith : I intervene not so much on the issue of proportional representation as on the point about what the additional MEPs would do. Did not the hon. Gentleman find it odd when he was an MEP that the representation of the two British party groups was so distorted? On his point about the role of the United Kingdom MEPs, surely he recognises that there are two categories. There are those in England, Scotland and Wales, who, with the best will in the world, cannot be expected to identify with the electorate in their huge European constituencies in the same way as the hon. Gentleman does with the electorate in his smaller constituency. Then the three Northern Ireland MEPs are elected on a different system. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the Northern Ireland Members are not representatives of the community there?

Mr. Cryer : For those who are elected by the first-past-the-post system, there is a much clearer and more recognisable relationship with the electorate. I include the people of Northern Ireland in that. The amorphous system of choosing people is one of award of favours by the political parties.

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After the election, apparently there is a whole lot of new faces in the Assembly. That is brought about not by changes in the electoral decisions, but by the political party to which the Members belong simply switching them on the lists to which they were appointed to exclude them from the Assembly.

Mr. Andrew Mitchell (Gedling) rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question put, That the Question be now put :--

The House proceeded to a Division--

Mr. Beith (seated and covered) : On a point of order, Mr. Lofthouse. The preceding debates came to an end after my constituency had been mentioned. I sought to take part in that debate, but I was prevented from doing so by the moving of the closure motion. There have been only three or four speeches so far in this debate and I still have not been permitted on clause stand part to make the point about the part of the Bill that relates to my constituency and which was raised in the preceding debate.

I plead with you, Mr. Lofthouse, after all our experiences during the Maastricht debates, to recognise that it is only reasonable that hon. Members should have a fair opportunity to take part in the debate in Committee.

The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse) : I take the view that there has been a wide-ranging debate on clause stand part. The matter has been reasonably covered during the debate.

Mr. Beith : Further to that point of order, Mr. Lofthouse. It would have been out of order in the preceding debate to discuss matters relating to England, which I could not have raised even if I had been allowed to make a short speech.

The First Deputy Chairman : I have explained my decision and that is where the matter stands.

The House having divided : Ayes 238, Noes 41.

Division No. 319] [8.44 pm

AYES

Ainsworth, Peter (East Surrey)

Aitken, Jonathan

Alexander, Richard

Alison, Rt Hon Michael (Selby)

Allason, Rupert (Torbay)

Amess, David

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

Arnold, Sir Thomas (Hazel Grv)

Ashby, David

Aspinwall, Jack

Atkins, Robert

Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset North)

Baldry, Tony

Bates, Michael

Bellingham, Henry

Beresford, Sir Paul

Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

Booth, Hartley

Boswell, Tim

Bottomley, Rt Hon Virginia

Bowis, John

Boyson, Rt Hon Sir Rhodes

Brandreth, Gyles

Brazier, Julian

Bright, Graham

Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thorpes)

Browning, Mrs. Angela

Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

Budgen, Nicholas

Burns, Simon

Burt, Alistair

Butcher, John

Butler, Peter

Carlisle, John (Luton North)

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Carrington, Matthew

Carttiss, Michael

Channon, Rt Hon Paul

Chapman, Sydney

Clappison, James

Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

Coe, Sebastian

Colvin, Michael

Congdon, David

Conway, Derek

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre For'st)

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

Cormack, Patrick

Couchman, James

Cran, James

Currie, Mrs Edwina (S D'by'ire)

Davies, Quentin (Stamford)

Davis, David (Boothferry)

Day, Stephen

Devlin, Tim

Dickens, Geoffrey

Dorrell, Stephen

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Dover, Den

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