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Mr. Charles Kennedy (Ross, Cromarty and Skye): The machinations of the right hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, in his position as a senior Back-Bench Conservative Member of Parliament, are a fair reflection of the difficulties within the Conservative party. Although the right hon. Gentleman and the Foreign Secretary are fundamentally pro-Europeans, it was also self-evident from the Foreign Secretary's speech that they must dress up their pro-Europeanism these days in fundamentally sceptical language.
It is rather depressing to watch that going on. The net result is that the sceptics are more and more driving policy, and that is bad for the Tory party, for the Government and for the country.
Mrs. Currie:
It may be an entirely rare occurrence, but I must point out to the hon. Gentleman that there is not a single Euro-sceptic on the Conservative Benches. There may be on the Opposition Benches, but not here.
Mr. Kennedy:
There are certainly Euro-sceptics, if that is a term of description, endearment or abuse to which they would answer, on the Labour Back Benches, but there is an important Euro-sceptic on the Conservative Benches, and that is the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Boothferry (Mr. Davis), who will be replying to the debate. That is the most fundamentally depressing of all.
The people in the reflections group taking the decisions and making the interventions on behalf of Britain--in this case, the Minister of State--are delivering speeches there that are targeted not at fellow Ministers in the reflections group but, unfortunately, at the domestic Conservative
audience back at Westminster and the other parts of the Tory party across the country. That is fundamentally depressing and not helpful.
The Foreign Secretary and his shadow go back a long way. They have been debating with each other and enjoying debating with each other since their earlier political incarnations, when they were both operating at elected level in Edinburgh. The mutual sophistry showed through. The position of those on the Front Benches of the Labour party and the Conservative party is somewhat cynically similar on many matters.
For example, on the issue of enlargement, the Conservatives will the ends. They say that they are in favour of enlargement. They do not appear willing to will the means, which will have to be a logical extension of qualified majority voting.
The Labour party says, as the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) did this afternoon, that it wishes to see the achievement of a single currency, but the means by which that would be achieved are means that it knows will not be realised. The Swedish proposal is unlikely, for the reasons that the right hon. Gentleman outlined with great lucidity, to be in the ascendancy in the Union.
Even if it was, there are unlikely to be the further criteria that the Labour party has been saying should be written in. It knows that the criteria will never formally be on the agenda, so it is easy for a Labour Front-Bench spokesman to keep both ends happy by saying that the Labour party wills the objective, knowing that the hurdle that would have to be crossed to obtain that objective never will be crossed. Therefore, we have a degree of mutual cynicism which is not helping the debate in the House.
As we approach the IGC, I hope that the debate will be helped by two sets of events which have not been discussed in this debate at all--one is Northern Ireland and the other is Scotland. Britain has an unwritten constitution. It is deeply unsatisfactory, but it is there, and it is unwritten. The Prime Minister, along with others, is making valiant efforts in favour of the Northern Ireland peace process. We wish him well, and we hope that that meets with success.
If it does, the Government's stated position is that they would wish to see some form of elected body re-established in Northern Ireland. I agree with them. That is a good policy, for which it is worth aiming. But if that success is attained, the minute some form of elected political legislative body is reinstituted in Northern Ireland, the status and rights of Northern Ireland Members vis-a-vis other Members of the House are affected.
Equally, Scotland last week saw the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and others launch the Scottish Constitutional Convention blueprint for re-establishing a Scottish Parliament within the United Kingdom. If we go down that route, it will have major constitutional implications for the rest of the United Kingdom. Therefore, I welcome the fact that those other items are on the British political agenda. They will be deeply relevant to the IGC.
However much Ministers may wish to persuade us that it is not the case, Europe is developing in a decentralised way. We want to encourage that tendency. The great chance of the IGC is to give Europe and the European project a firm push in the direction of more decentralisation, more democracy and more diversity across the nations and the regions of Europe. That means
the very principle to which the Government pay lip service, subsidiarity, being applied not just at European level but within the member states of the European Union.
For example, it means that subsidiarity is not a principle that ceases to have any constitutional, political or legal validity the minute one crosses the English channel. It is a principle which the Government are willing to apply in the context of Northern Ireland, and which the Liberal Democrats and the Labour party would wish to see applied in the context of the English regions, Scotland and Wales. It needs to be applied within the United Kingdom and throughout the United Kingdom. Therefore, I hope that the IGC will be a heaven-sent opportunity to move the debate in that direction.
Unlike the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath), I would welcome it if the Government were to produce a White Paper setting out their vision of Britain's future in Europe. It may be a rather short one, if that is the task that they are setting themselves. There was no hint of vision in what the Foreign Secretary said today. If they bring such a publication forward, it would be in Britain's best interests if it contained four important principles.
The first is unequivocal support for United Kingdom participation in the development of Europe, deepening it and in due course widening it. The second is a determination to play our part as a country in making the European Union more decentralised, more democratic. The third is an active role for Britain, which we have effectively, in large measure, so far eschewed in preparation for a single currency.
The right hon. Member for Guildford is right to say that no one can predict deadlines for the likely developments on a single currency. In many ways, the most significant feature of the Chancellor's Budget statement was his specific reference to the Maastricht criteria. He is clearly not ruling out the possibility, which is a sensible stance. Given what the Prime Minister said at Question Time this afternoon, however, it is clear that, if the process takes place, it would be insane for this country not to be part of it.
Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby):
Why?
Mr. Kennedy:
Trying to run the pound sterling alongside a single European currency while we were still part of a single market would have as much validity as an attempt by Manhattan to run a separate dollar from the rest of the United States. That is not the real world.
Mr. Mitchell:
Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that, in a single market, the only way in which a laggardly economy--or one that is not competing with the most successful--can insulate itself and take shocks that would otherwise result in unemployment is through the exchange rate? That is the current experience of Canada and Mexico in the single market in the North American Free Trade Area; it was also the experience of Ireland, which cut its ties in 1979 when sterling was rising too far in a defective single market.
Mr. Kennedy:
That last example is the worst that could be cited. In fact, Ireland is rather enthusiastic about the project, and wants to be part of a single currency in due course.
Competitive devaluation--or the prospect or option of such devaluation--is hardly a good basis on which to run an economy. It is not part of any Government's policy to
keep competitive devaluation in the back locker to use when all else has failed; that should not be what democratic Governments are about, whatever their political complexion.
The single currency is often associated with the loss of sovereignty. In real political day-to-day terms, the country would experience a far greater loss of sovereignty and clout internationally if a single currency were introduced and we were not part of it, than if there were not such a currency at all.
Fourthly, as well as playing an active role in European monetary union, we should learn the lessons of Maastricht, which have been referred to. The House did not cover itself in glory during that exercise. There was never any proper debate; the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) and I sat through hours of discussion, and all too often--whichever section of the treaty was being dealt with--we would hear a defensive speech from a Minister and a cagey speech from the Opposition Front Bench, but no real debate, because there was no difference between the Front Benches in regard to the fundamentals. The debate would then take place on the Back Benches.
There are two lessons to be learned from that. First--I voted for this at the time, and I hope that, if the IGC proves to have constitutional implications, we will pursue the policy--we should have had a referendum on the Maastricht treaty. The matter should have been debated openly, in public. The House failed to achieve that at the time.
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