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Mr. Jones : No. I am sorry. There is little time and many hon. Members wish to speak.
Having taken some time to tell the House that we must become more positive in our attitude to Europe, I shall concentrate on my next point. It is time for us to have openness and honesty about what European integration means. We must be clear about that. Although I disagree fundamentally with the analysis of the hon. Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor), he was absolutely right when he said that we must be clear, open and honest.
Mr. Gill : Will the hon. Gentleman give way ?
European integration means that if decisions are removed from the House of Commons and go to the European stage, sovereignty in Parliament will be diminished. We should not despair about that, because if one understands the nature of sovereignty in modern Europe, one will know that decisions are taken at different levels. That is what subsidiarity is trying to tell us about.
Subsidiarity means that there is a European level where decisions are made and the hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Taylor) mentioned a number of matters that have to be taken on the European stage. How can we hope to understand the problems in our environment unless we understand the need for European and worldwide co-operation on environmental matters? How can we begin to understand the need for a proper energy policy if we do not understand the need to have a European approach to that?
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There are levels at which we can take decisions in other places. The problem with subsidiarity so far as the British system of politics is concerned is that it cannot accept that decisions can sometimes take place below the level of member states. If one reads the document on subsidiarity contained in the foot-high pile that the hon. Member for Newport, East (Mr. Hughes) mentioned one sees that it mentions the need for the Community to accept that there are levels, below the levels of member states, at which decisions can be taken. There is the European level, the member state level, the regional level and the local authority level.The problem within the British system is that no regional level is available. Therefore, the Birmingham declaration was clearly designed to save the British embarrassment about not having a regional level. It said that subsidiarity means that certain matters are decided at a European level and on other matters it is up to the member state to decide.
Another problem is that all the modern European democracies have a regional level. We shall see the problems that that causes to Britain's representatives when they attend the Committee of the Regions in Brussels in January. On the one hand, there will be the president of Catalonia, the president of the Basque region and the presidents of the German Lander, and on the other there will be local authority representatives of the United Kingdom.
The danger is that because we do not have a regional level, and because there is such a massive democratic deficit in the United Kingdom, the regional representatives in the Committee will have much more influence and power than the local authority representatives from the United Kingdom. I urge the Government to accept the need for the regional dimension in politics in Britain. We have heard that from the Liberal Democrats and I am sure that we shall hear it from the Labour Benches.
It is crucial that we meet the issue head on, because if the people of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and other parts of England are to play a full part in the Europe of tomorrow, we must have representation at regional level with Parliaments in Wales and Scotland and assemblies in England and Northern Ireland so that we can have a direct input in Europe.
Mr. Gill : The whole House will not be unaware of the support that the hon. Member for Cardiff, Central (Mr. Jones) was able to give to the Conservative Government during the passage of the Maastricht treaty. Is not there a great irony in a situation in which he, with his avowedly nationalistic intentions and ambitions, is siding with the party of the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
Mr. Jones : Let me make it perfectly clear to the hon. Gentleman that I supported the Maastricht treaty because I believed that that was the way in which we could move towards European integration. It happened to be that the Conservative party and many colleagues in the Labour party and Liberal Democrat party agreed with us. That was why we went through the Lobby together, to support the ideas and the principle. It is by supporting that that our kind of nationalism can best be described. We do not favour separatism and the building of borders. I do not want to see frontier posts on the A55 near Shotton or on the M4 near the Severn crossing. I accept the principle enshrined in the Single European Act of breaking down trade barriers. That
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is the kind of Europe that I want to see--a free Europe, but one which accepts the diversity of different languages, cultures and perspectives. That is why I supported the Maastricht treaty and I ask the hon. Gentleman to accept that.Another vital part of the debate that has been touched on by many hon. Members is the European White Paper on growth, competitiveness and employment. I share the view that many hon. Members have expressed that because we had the document late in the day it has been difficult to make a proper analysis of the needs of economies in Britain.
But we share some aspects of the vision in the White Paper on jobs because we in Wales have suffered historically high rates of unemployment, far higher than many other parts of the United Kingdom. There are aspects of the report that we would accept. First, we need proper investment in a pan- European transport network.
When I argued that point during the Maastricht debates, many Conservative Members said that it was nonsense to invest in infrastructure projects. But if we in Wales, on the periphery of Britain and on the periphery of the European Community, are to compete in the single market, which I support, it is essential that we have the same opportunity to compete as other parts of Britain and other parts of the Community.
I concede that the great danger is that the core of the European Community will become extremely wealthy at the expense of the periphery. If we are to compete, we need proper road, rail and air links. I fully subscribe to the view contained in the White Paper that we should have transport infrastructure projects. That will do two things. In the short term, it will create jobs because people will be employed building roads, improving rail links and so on. It will also make our economy on the periphery much more competitive. Some of the documents prepared by the Government show that about 10 per cent. of structural funds will be spent on Community initiatives. That is a good thing. Some Community initiatives aimed at improving, for example, transport infrastructure between regions such as Wales and Ireland are crucial if we are to succeed economically. We in west Wales have a fragile economic base. Links between the western seaboard of Wales and the east coast of Ireland could be improved, not only transport links but telecommunications, tourism and energy conservation--all of which are valuable. That is why the Government would be wrong to argue against some of the interventionist principles in the White Paper.
Every time I meet Conservative party members in Wales they point out to me the success of Lord Walker and the current Secretary of State for Employment as Secretary of State for Wales as a result of their interventionist policies. They came to Wales to establish a partnership between the public and private sectors. I did not agree with all the policies that they pursued. There were ideological differences between us. They did not come from the same political tradition as I did, but at least they subscribed to the view that there needs to be a proper partnership between the public and private sectors.
All that I would say to the Government is that they cannot have it both ways. They cannot point to the success of the Secretary of State for Wales in using public money to stimulate the Welsh economy and at the same time go to Europe and say that there should be no public investment. The Government should ensure that the public and private
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sectors, coming together in partnership, have a vital role to play in stimulating economic recovery in Wales. That is the message that I hope the Government will take to the European Council at the end of the week.8.4 pm
Mr. William Cash (Stafford) : The problem that we face in the aftermath of the Maastricht debates is simply that the Government and the country now have to justify the signing of a document, the provisions of which have given rise to the White Paper that the Government are now rejecting.
One of the problems that we are up against is that article 103, which gives rise to the economic strategy guidelines--I shall come to defence and policy guidelines in a moment--gives Mr. Delors and others the opportunity to come forward with their socialist programme, which Opposition Members are only too delighted should be brought forward, but which we, unfortunately, have to reject. But for the fact that we had allowed the treaty to go through in the first place, we would not be placed in this dilemma.
The same applies to the article written by the Prime Minister which appeared in The Economist on 25 September 1993. I agreed with much of what he said in that article, but the problem is that a few weeks later we had the summit and the presidency conclusions which are extremely difficulty to relate to that article.
We now have another summit coming up tomorrow and I am bound to ask whether, when pressures are brought to bear in discussions over the next few days, we shall move yet further down this apparently inexorable route which has been prescribed under the treaty that we signed so recently.
I voted for the European economic area and for the single market in 1986. In 1975 I voted that we should stay in the Community. But, most emphatically, I do not believe in the kind of policies that are now permeating the Community. As my hon. Friend the Member for Esher (Mr. Taylor) said, we must consider whether our domestic policies have been sufficiently permeated by the European dimension for us to require, as I am sure all permanent secretaries do now as a first priority when devising legislation, the question to be asked : are we allowed to do this?
If a sense of defeatism has permeated our political environment during the past year or so, is that not partly because we have relinquished control over our affairs to far too great an extent? That is why I agree so much with the sentiments, but not the conclusions, of my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor).
I am an optimist. I believe that we shall manage to pull this back and I sincerely hope that the Government will find the will to say the right things at the summit and, if necessary, to issue a separate communique . There is nothing negative in setting out the territory that has already been set out with respect, for example, to our professed opt-outs for economic and monetary union and the social chapter. There are, as we know, problems in implementation. We shall have difficulty in remaining at the heart of Europe if, as suggested by the summit that took place a few weeks ago, those objectives are re-endorsed and we sign up to the presidency conclusions. When the conclusions of the summit are produced, I suggest that we issue a separate
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communique --I hope that we do not need to do so--because there is a point at which it is essential that we learn to say no at the right time and mean it.My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Mr. Legg) summed up the exchange rate mechanism and gave us a superb analysis of the position. He dealt with the question of whether the recovery was running before we came out of the ERM. I have no doubt whatever that the arguments suggesting that we had are at best technical and at worst bogus. As my hon. Friend pointed out, the stock market has risen by some 50 per cent. since then and, in addition, on an entire range of criteria, it is perfectly clear that the recovery had not begun before we left the ERM. For example, the improvement in gross domestic product in the second and third quarters of 1992 was due to a temporary boost in consumer spending immediately after the general election and the end of de-stocking. It was not until the fourth quarter of 1992 that non-oil GDP at factor cost ceased to show a decline on the previous year. Manufacturing industrial output registered increases only from September 1992 and unemployment began to fall four months after our departure from the mechanism. In September 1993 we saw the first year-on-year increase in house prices since mid-1991, interest rates fell from 12 per cent.--the inescapable fact, as my hon. Friend mentioned-- on black Wednesday, or white Wednesday, to 5.5 per cent. and inflation fell from 3.5 to 1.4 per cent. All those facts are entirely contrary to the Treasury warnings that without the ERM inflation would soar. We had to come out of the ERM because there was a marketplace which we had to recognise. That message has now gone across the whole of Europe. There are Euro realists not only in this country, but in Germany--Mr. Stoibei in Bavaria-- in France--Philippe Seguin, Phillipe de Villiers, Marie-France Garand and others--and in Spain and Denmark there are similar movements. Throughout Europe, in line with public opinion, there is a recognition of Euro realism which is even borne out in the White Paper prepared by the European Commission, "Growth, Competitiveness and Employment", which the Government have rejected. I do not agree with all its conclusions by any mve in a highly competitive global village. Today, I have been up to my constituency in Stafford and back again because GEC Alsthom has been awarded the Queen's award for exports. It won that award because, in the aftermath of the recovery and because it is highly competitive in world markets, it has managed to produce superb, world-beating products.
We must stay out of the ERM. We must stay out of the control on economic guidelines of the kind that are prescribed by that White Paper and by article 134 of the Maastricht treaty if we are to survive as a free-trading nation across the globe. If we do not compete in real terms, we will collapse. Our economy will not be sustained and the dire warnings that my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East gave earlier, combined with the inexorable growth of public expenditure, which is complementary to the decline of our industrial competitiveness, will drive us into the sand.
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The public sector borrowing requirement rose to £50 billion because social security costs--housing benefit and mortgage repayments--and all the things that followed in the wake of the high interest rates regime that was imposed on us by ERM, not only forced public expenditure through the ceiling, but guaranteed that our base for future wealth creation went with it. Therefore, I was delighted that the Budget laid emphasis on enterprise and small businesses because we must generate the wealth creation to pay for public expenditure and at the same time ensure that we do not have unnecessary direct tax increases. We have come close to national bankruptcy, but, thank Heavens, as a result of the arguments of Euro realists throughout Europe--and also, some may think, arguments in the United Kingdom--we have now embarked on a policy that looks more realistic than it has looked for several years.When I look at the question of further increases in public expenditure, the framework of growth initiative that emerged from the Edinburgh summit in the past year, the papers that the Select Committee on European Legislation considered a few days ago and the explanatory memorandum published on 2 December in the name of my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General, I have to ask whether it is such a good idea for us to borrow the kind of money that is set out in the White Paper. Is it such a good idea to be providing cohesion funds up to the amount that is set out? Believe it or not, the structural funds allocated between 1994 and 1999 will be no less than £108 billion. Where is that money coming from? If it is coming from the taxpayers of Germany, one can understand why they are beginning to jib at the whole concept of the European Community. If one considers Italy, a country that is virtually bankrupt, one can understand why people have fears about the direction in which the European Community is being taken. If one thinks of the taxpayers in Britain, one can understand why public opinion polls are registering so strongly in favour of the view of the Euro realists, who have been vilified for so long for nothing worse than getting it right. It is necessary for us to be realistic, but not because we want to stand on our dignity or pride. That would be absurd. We do not particularly want to be right. We want to be right only because it produces the right result, not because it makes us feel self-satisfied. As a country, we are trapped by arrangements which we have entered into by going along with things all at the time and afterwards saying that we did not like them. That is no way to run a policy. For example, a tremendous amount has been said this evening about subsidiarity, as if, somehow, a magic wand is waved over the subject by which all will be resolved. The right hon. Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones) said that around 25 per cent. of the legislation would be wafted away. I hope that he is not in the Chamber and I hope that I am quoting his words correctly.
A paper that was deposited with the European legislation committee only two days ago sets out the basis on which the Government have reported on the European Commission's document on subsidiarity. It does not look as though it will produce the results described by the right hon. Member for Watford. For example, according to the Commission, challenging the principle of the acquis communautaire must be avoided. That does not sound radical. It also says that priority in any review of the legislation is to be given to older, rather than more recent, legislation. We all know why--because so much of it has
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been overtaken by court cases. The review has been carried out simply to emphasise the most recent stuff, most of which we dislike. The paper also says that re-examination should be limited to rules and regultions of a legislative nature. There is not much suggestion of a revision of policy, which is what we were looking for. I strongly suggest that hon. Members take the opportunity to study the explanatory memorandum to satisfy themselves. Furthermore, I hope that they will look at the declaration on the entry into force of the treaty on European Union, produced by the European Council on 29 October 1993. It sets out the guidelines with respect to common foreign and security policy. The hon. Member for Watford spoke optimistically about common foreign and security policy. Those guidelines say :"A common defence policy, which might in time lead to a common defence, must"--
I stress the word "must"--
"eventually be framed by the Union on the basis of its security interests."
That document sets out the basis on which title 5 of the Maastricht treaty is being--not will be--implemented. I have not time to go through it all in detail but I assure hon. Members that it is well worth reading because it does not suggest that we shall act unilaterally.
Mr. Jenkin : It does not mention NATO.
Mr. Cash : As my hon. Friend says, and as I was about to mention, nowhere does it mention NATO. That is extraordinary in the light of all the assurances that we were given. We must therefore watch carefully to see how the legislation that we have just ratified works in practice.
On the voting arrangements in the Council of Ministers, a serious problem exists in how the European Community budget has been increasing. In so far as we can retain control over that through the voting arrangements, I draw hon. Members' attention to the fact that the total EC budget has increased from £30.9 billion in 1990 to £52.3 billion in 1993. It has increased by 69 per cent., while the United Kingdom is trying to cut public expenditure in its domestic politics. Administration costs in the European Community have risen by 18 per cent. between 1990 and 1993 and now stand at £2.7 billion, whereas emphasis in the United Kingdom is on deregulation.
Spending on agriculture in the Community has increased between 1990 and 1993 from £19.4 billion to £30.3 billion--I am giving the figures in pounds, not ecu--despite the MacSharry reforms and set aside. Those figures come from the statement on the 1993 Community budget. Our contribution is said to fall and it will do so from 1994-95 to £1,350 million. But it then increases again to £2,890 million, and again in 1996-97 to £2,930 million--a total of £7,170 million. That total will not even be covered by the amount raised by putting VAT on domestic fuel and power over the next three years. The 1996-97 contribution of £2.93 billion will be greater than the combined budgets of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department of Trade and Industry, which are £1.24 billion and £1.39 billion respectively.
The cumulative net contribution to Brussels from 1991-92 to 1996-97 will be £12.14 billion. If one estimates the cost of defending sterling on white Wednesday at £4 billion, the total cost for that period will be in excess of £16 billion.
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Against that background, we must ensure that we are not further out-voted in the Council of Ministers. So my final plea is that, at all costs, we ensure that we do not end up with a further increase in majority voting at our expense. The treaty has given rise to so much of the pain and suffering which I have described and which the British people have experienced. It has caused the difficulties and contradictions with which the Conservative party has had to deal, and the absurdity of the doctrines that emanate from the European Peoples party, which we shall have to sort out in the manifesto. Those all add up to one thing : let us look calmly and rationally, and support the Government in their determination to get those matters right. However, we must not allow the matter to continue rolling inexorably forwards. Like the other countries in the European Community, we must put down a marker and do something about it. We must renegotiate the Maastricht treaty.8.26 pm
Mr. Ernie Ross (Dundee, West) : In the short time available to me, I wish to discuss two issues not covered by the Secretary of State's contribution--subsidiarity and support for the middle east peace process.
Last Friday, my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson), who made such a powerful impact on our debates on the Maastricht treaty, spoke in his new capacity as shadow Secretary of State for Scotland at a meeting of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the Signet library in Edinburgh. He said :
"there are many in Scotland who believe that the endeavour to create the right constitutional arrangement for our country is not only a noble purpose, but a practical and sensible one as well, and it is in line with all the tides of power decentralisation alive throughout our continent today."
My hon. Friend then asked the convention to look at what our continental neighbours are already doing by way of decentralising power and devolving decision making. In Spain, Belgium, Germany, and now in Italy, the regions are on the move and the new Committee of the Regions will underline that fact in the months ahead. However, as I said, the Secretary of State did not mention subsidiarity, although he did mention the constitutional court in Germany.
As the House will know, during the ratification process of the Maastricht treaty in Germany, the Bundestag and the Bundesrat demanded and obtained changes to the German constitution--the Basic Law--to grant both Chambers a greater say in the decision-making process. Paragraph 1 of the new article 23 of the Basic Law states : "With a view to establishing a united Europe the Federal Republic of Germany shall participate in the development of the European Union, which is committed to democratic rule-of-law, social and federal principles as well as the principle of subsidiarity".
Paragraph 6 of article 23 states :
"Where essentially the exclusive legislative jurisdiction of the Lander is affected by the exercise of the rights of the Federal Republic of Germany as a Member State of the European Union shall be transferred by the Federation to a representative of the Lander designated by the Bundesrat."
The House will know that the presidents of the German Lander form the second Chamber in the German Parliament--the Bundesrat--and they or their representatives have for a long time exerted a greater influence in Brussels than any other regional authority leader among the EC member states. They have well established offices in Brussels from where they lobby German Ministers on
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the Council of Ministers, and they will no doubt play an even more significant role on the new Committee of the Regions established under the Maastricht treaty.In Spain, new laws passed in September 1993 aim to give all the autonomous communities the same powers--with one or two exceptions--in two phases. The first is to be completed by the end of the year and the second by next summer. It will be achieved by changes to the autonomy statutes and will involve 33 areas of competence. The Government there have also agreed to give all the autonomous regions the power to spend 15 per cent. of the income tax collected in those regions. The Government of Felipe Gonzales has had to make further concessions in return for regional support in approving the rather controversial budget proposals earlier this year.
We now know that Jordi Pujol, Catalonian President since 1980 and president of the Assembly of European Regions, is to be the president of the European Union's Committee of the Regions. He has been a controversial figure in Spanish politics because of his efforts to secure more autonomy for Catalonia, and he will no doubt want to promote one of the union's concepts --that we are a Europe of regions. In Belgium, shortly before his death at the end of July, King Baudouin signed constitutional amendments, finally approved by the Belgian Parliament on 14 July, making Belgium a federal state in which French-speaking Wallonia, Flemish-speaking Flanders and the mainly French-speaking capital Brussels would have greater autonomy. Amongst other things, responsibilities for agriculture, scientific research, external trade and social security have been given to the regions.
On 14 July, the Belgian Chamber of Deputies approved by 143 votes to 61 legislation to implement constitutional changes to create a federal state. The Bill was supported not only by the four ruling parties--the Flemish and Walloon Christian Social Democrats and the Flemish and Wallon socialist parties--but by the Flemish nationalists and the Walloon and Flemish green parties. That vote completed a long-running constitutional reform process which had begun back in 1970 and devolved further powers to the regions in three stages. There we have it : Governments to the right and Governments to the left are applying the principle of subsidiarity as widely and as quickly as possible whereas, in the United Kingdom, we have not heard a word today from the Secretary of State about this most serious of matters. What we have had, not only today but in the debates on the Queen's Speech and at the Tory party conference, is a series of policy statements, decisions and commitments which, taken together, add up to an assault on elected, accountable government, locally and nationally, and its creeping replacement by an unelected, un-nominated and unaccountable patronage state.
I support my right hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) by referring briefly to the middle east peace process and the support for it contained in the documentation that we are considering. The House will be aware that Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, will visit Britain next week as a guest of the Government. The House will also know that he will address Members of both Houses in the Grand Committee Room immediately after Prime
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Minister's questions next Tuesday afternoon. During the recent debate on the Queen's Speech, the Foreign Secretary said : "The Government are looking at ways in which to help the Palestinians to set up the institution of self-government."--[ Official Report, 1 November 1993 ; Vol. 233, c. 115.]My right hon. Friend the Member for Copeland supported that role. He has today been more specific in calling for not only European assistance but direct Government assistance to an organisation called PECDAR--the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction.
PECDAR is the critical institution for initiating the process of rehabilitation and reconstruction in Palestine. It is the institution for which all multilateral and bilateral arrangements of aid have called and which the Palestine National Authority has established. At its last meeting in Tunis on 4 and 5 December, PECDAR's board of governors resolved to establish the new institution on modern management lines to ensure efficient and quality performance. To do so, the board will need the expert assistance of professional consultant firms and expert advice on an emergency basis. Being a new institution with limited resources, PECDAR is in need of all possible assistance to accomplish its objectives. The Government could make a significant contribution to the development of PECDAR through a financial offer to utilise the services of British firms and academic staff wherever they were needed. When the Secretary of State has had time to reflect on the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Copeland and myself, and perhaps when he meets the chairman of the PLO next Tuesday and Wednesday, I hope that he will be able to have further discussions on how that aid might be channelled to help the Palestinians. There is one other European experience that we could usefully deploy to support the middle east peace process. One of the vital tasks is that of confidence building among the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. It is urgently needed to assure the Israelis and Palestinians of the benefits that will flow from pursuing the peace protocols as quickly as possible. I refer, of course, to a system that first saw the light of day in Europe-- town twinning. It originated in Europe and it is in Europe that it has expanded most dramatically over the past 40 years.
There are at present more than 8,000 municipalities in western Europe involved in schemes ranging from villages to major cities. Of those, 88 per cent. are located in European Community member countries. The European Parliament considered the subject and in February 1988 adopted a twinning report which is now funded directly by the EC and used to pursue various objectives, one of which I am sure all hon. Members will accept. One of the cornerstones of democracy is precisely the freedom of citizens to participate in the management of affairs which most directly concern them at the grassroots level, within the individual municipalities wherever possible.
The town twinning arrangements have paid off in France. The task of reconciling France and Germany after 1945 was made much easier by the large number of twinning schemes between towns on either side of the Rhine. I suggest that we use our influence not only with local authorities in the United Kingdom but with other countries in Europe to convince European towns and cities to twin with Palestinian and Israeli towns and cities, if only to give them the experience which we have had and which the Palestinians will need as they start to run their own
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country for the first time in 27 years. Such a step would also give confidence to the Palestinian community, which has been living under occupation for the past 26 years.Many in the Palestinian community believe that the peace protocols will not amount to much more than Jericho and Gaza. If we can start to establish twinning links between cities, towns and villages in Europe and towns in Palestine--towns that are identified as Palestinian--we shall be giving support and confidence to the Arab Palestinians living there by showing that the people of Europe understand that there will be a Palestinian state and that Palestinian towns are entitled to enjoy the same democratic freedoms as we do.
My suggestion would not break new ground. The first twinning of a British-- or a United Kingdom--city took place in November 1980 when my town of Dundee was twinned with the Palestinian town of Nablus. There was no follow up to that until last year, when Glasgow twinned with Bethlehem. Even during those difficult periods, the contact between Dundee and Nablus gave support and confidence to the Palestinians in that region. I am sure that if we could encourage more of that, it would help the Palestinians to participate much more actively in the peace protocols that we hope for and that we are supporting in the documents today.
8.40 pm
Mr. Bernard Jenkin (Colchester, North) : This is an extraordinarily wide-ranging debate. We opened with the statesmanlike and comprehensive comments of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, and then moved on to the subject of the European People's party with the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham). Monetary union was mentioned. A Welsh Nationalist, the hon. Member for Ynys Mon (Mr. Jones), said that he supported the Maastricht treaty because it would lead to European integration. That flies in the face of what my hon. Friend the Member for Esher (Mr. Taylor) believes, which is that it will lead to a different type of integration--no doubt he supported the treaty for completely different reasons. We finished with the hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross) speaking about Palestinian town-twinning. That raises a question about the nature of the debate and the nature of the accountability of the European Union.
Right hon. and hon. Members have already referred to the extraordinary pile of papers with which we were presented for the debate. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how the Ministers who are answerable to the House will be able to read the debate before they sit down with their European partners at the European Council tomorrow and on Saturday. There is a disconnection ; a growing problem of accountability.
In that respect, I shall refer to the speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones), a thoughtful statement about the future of the European Community, in which he offered some solutions and some thoughts about how the Community was going to develop. The most interesting thing that he said was that the European Council should perhaps meet more often and more regularly.
Where does that leave the House and the role of the national Parliaments? My right hon. Friend the Member for Watford referred, it is true, to the declaration at the end of the Maastricht treaty, affirming a strengthened role for the
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national Parliaments, but how can the national Parliaments scrutinise the volume of legislation that emanates from the European Community, a vast quantity of which is never read in this place before it becomes law, when we are presented with it, fait accompli? Where does that leave us as individual constituency Members? There is a growing despair throughout the country. Constituents write to Members of Parliament, who pass the letters to the Minister. With all respect to my right hon. and hon. Friends sitting on the Treasury Bench and those who serve elsewhere in the Government, the reply that we receive from the Minister somehow slightly fails to engage with the comments that were made in the initial letter. The letter goes back to the constituent and the constituent is left wondering where he should go. The Community is blamed ; there is a lack of accountability. We have created a regulatory monster, which is destroying jobs up and down the country, and it is something what we need to consider. In that respect I shall address my comments to the issue of subsidiarity.We have, of course, a Conservative agenda in the European Community and one which is gathering support on all sides of the Maastricht debate on the Conservative Benches. I am reminded of the comments that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out in his article of 25 September 1993 in The Economist. He wrote :
"The vision of the founders of the Community was a fine one. What we have seen in the last two years is not so much a swing against Europe as a demand for a different kind of Europe."
That is certainly where I stand and I believe that that is the position where others of my colleagues who opposed the Maastricht treaty stand, who have hitherto supported every piece of key legislation to do with the European Community--the referendum, entry and of course the Single European Act. To be opposed to Maastricht was not to be opposed to Europe as a place.
The Conservative agenda is gaining ground among our European partners. The emphasis on the general agreement on tariffs and trade round is welcome. I was a little tempted, at this stage in my speech, to congratulate the Prime Minister, President Clinton and the French Prime Minister, M. Balladur, on the success achieved in the GATT talks. We are witnessing the last stages of a ballet--a pas de deux between the two partners standing off, who will inevitably be able to come together at the last moment. Perhaps that is slightly premature, but that is an advance of the Conservative agenda in Europe. The problem about advancing the arguments about competitiveness and growth is that the document that the European Community has tabled at such incredibly short notice--we should not let the lateness of that document's arrival pass without some acerbic comments--contains nothing about comprehensive deregulation and, indeed, recites the need for monetary union, for a unified Europe, not taking on board the logic of the argument so ably set out, for example, by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Mr. Legg). There are gains. They are printing the graphs, for example, that demonstrate the loss of employment, the lack of competitiveness, the declining share of world trade. We are gaining ground and we should not begrudge that.
There are gains from subsidiarity. My problem with it has always been that before I came to the House subsidiarity was proclaimed as a great victory and soon after I came to the House, on 20 May 1992, the Prime Minister described the inclusion of subsidiarity as one of
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the great victories of the Maastricht negotiation that demonstrated that we were achieving a new turning point, away from centralisation in the European Community.As we got more and more involved with that subject, however--never can so many trees have been felled in vain on such an obscure topic as subsidiarity--the more and more obscure became the concept of subsidiarity. By the time that the debate in Committee took place, subsidiarity had become rather a mouse. In an intervention, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary made a comment on the speech that I was making and said that it was taking place
"outside the debate that has been taking place inside the Community for the past two years."
He said :
"What is happening now however--I ask my hon. Friend to take my word for it --is that the different institutions are changing. That is reflected in article 3b, the Edinburgh declaration, the activities of the Commission and the sharp reduction in the number of legislative proposals coming forward. That is political fact before it is a legal obligation."--[ Official Report, 8 March 1993 ; Vol. 220, c. 746.] What we have in subsidiarity is not a narrow legal concept. We have a potent political force, but it is incumbent upon the Government to make subsidiarity worth much more than its technical, legal value.
In a report entitled "Commission Report on Subsidiarity" that was produced by the Commission to the European Communities in November 1993--in French, I may say; the Library provided a translation--the key phrase is that subsidiarity
"is not a matter of challenging the acquis communautaire : the basic principles of present policies will not be submitted to a new debate."
The key legal weakness of subsidiarity, as far as we are concerned, is that it does not provide for a net retrieval of self-government to the United Kingdom. It does not return power to the House. All we can beg for is that the Council of Ministers and the Commission should allow us to have some power back, to have it delegated back to us.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) describes subsidiarity as a state of mind. It is not a limit on Community action because it limits that action only so far as Community institutions are prepared to allow it to limit themselves. If we are serious about exploiting the force that we have unleashed--the political potency of subsidiarity--we need to apply it more comprehensively. We need to implement what my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) referred to as the "Brixton manifesto". That would mean a Europe of nation states, with self- government. That is not merely the Europe to which my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary referred--a Europe of nation states that respects those nations, "history, identity, culture and pride"--but a Europe of nation states that reflects our power, our status, our influence and our importance as self-governing democracies. I am afraid that I must tell my right hon. and learned Friend that pride is not something by which I set much constitutional store.
At the intergovernmental conference in 1996 we must insist to our European partners that the objective of moving decisions closer to the citizen is to apply subsidiarity to the objectives of the treaties themselves. We shall consider the principles of economic and monetary union, having found by then, as the Prime Minister said in his article in The Economist, that
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"the troubles in the ERM are just a foretaste of the difficulties in moving to a full monetary union"and having discovered that so much of the power moved to the centre has been misused to over-regulate, to destroy jobs, to remove the pride of the independent nation states and to create a sense of crisis between the elected representatives and the despair of the people. We shall move the powers back to the nation states. Ultimately, the European Community can govern only through the consent of the nation states. We need to remember that.
8.51 pm
Mr. George Stevenson (Stoke-on-Trent, South) : The motion asks the House to take note of many things, two of which are the preliminary draft budget for the European Community for 1994, and the letter of amendment No. 1 to that draft budget. I agree entirely with the hon. Members, especially my hon. Friends, who have said that one of the greatest challenges facing the EC is unemployment. However, another corrosive problem keeps eating away at the base of the Community--the common agricultural policy. That has hardly been mentioned in the debate, yet 34 billion ecu is to be spent on it out of a total original budget of about 69 billion ecu.
A previous Minister of Agriculture, who is now the Secretary of State for the Environment, told the House when he reported on his endeavours to reform the CAP that the deal was good for the country, good for farmers, good for consumers and good for taxpayers. However, although the right hon. Gentleman may have convinced the House to change the track, the train is still out of control.
The ink was not dry on the preliminary draft budget for 1994, which was presumably agreed by the Government, when letter of amendment No. 1 was written. I do not believe that that document is in the pile of papers that hon. Members have been given, but, as a resulcian, but that sum must knock a hole in £500 million.
At the same time that the Government were agreeing those horrendous increases, most of which go to the agriculture budget, they were cutting unemployment pay and the money for public services, and saying that we must have strong control of public expenditure. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer winds up the debate, he should explain why public expenditure has to be so tightly controlled in this country, whereas £500 million here or there for the CAP, which is clearly out of control, is okay.
I ask hon. Members, before they vote for the motion to take note of the preliminary draft budget and the letter of amendment, to consider a few examples of what we are to take note of. As I have already said, there is an increase in agriculture expenditure of about £500 billion for next year--and let us not forget that that comes on top of what is already a record agriculture budget.
Here are some examples of what the letter of amendment asks hon. Members to take note of. We are told that cereal storage should be reduced, yet it is to have an increase of about £6 million. Premiums for tobacco--I am sure that the House is concerned about those--are to increase by £4.8 million. Export refunds for cheese are to increase by £13 million, and skimmed milk powder export refunds by £34 million. Depreciation allowances for dairy produce are to increase by £39 million, and export refunds for beef by £3.5 million. The list goes on and on.
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The result of all that is that we shall be asked to take note of about half a billion pounds being added to an already record common agricultural policy budget. How that will benefit taxpayers escapes me. Perhaps when the Chancellor sums up he will tell us how further spending of half a billion pounds on agricultural policy will benefit the taxpayers of the United Kingdom--but of course, benefiting the taxpayers of the United Kingdom is not exactly the Chancellor's forte at the moment ; I fully understand that.I cannot understand how the settlement equates to the assurances given to farmers, either. Perhaps we will be told that, too. The truth is that the so-called CAP reforms have turned what was a crisis into a potential disaster, certainly in financial terms.
The amendment tabled by the Leader of the Opposition says that the Government have
"failed to advance British intersts."
I finish by saying that if we simply take note of the motion, it will be another example of how the Government are failing to advance the interests of the British people. Those interests are totally overwhelmed by Government dogma, which firmly places the United Kingdom within the margins of the European Community and keeps us enmeshed in the morass of the common agricultural policy waste. Let me make it clear that there can be no progress unless the waste is tackled. We simply cannot have a Government saying that they are firmly in control of measures when £500 million is given willy-nilly to the common agricultural policy, which we all know is a massive waste. There must be fundamental change.
When we consider the issues in front of us today, we see that perhaps the Government's greatest failure is that they reject investment that will attack unemployment but seem to be enthusiastic and willing to pour hundreds of millions of pounds down the black hole that is the common agricultural policy.
8.58 pm
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