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8.55 pm
Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough): I shall try to gallop through my speech in order not to trespass too much on the time of the Front-Bench spokesmen. I hope that, in galloping, I shall not garble, but in my part of Leicestershire we are quite used to galloping.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary said that he did not want a radical rewriting of the treaties governing the European Union and the IGC; he wanted practical steps towards improvement in the workings of the Union. It is not good enough for the hon. Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Gapes) simply to complain about, for example, Lady Thatcher's attitude to the European Union--or the European Community, as it was in those days--or about what he believes to be the Conservative party's attitude towards the institutions. Only through the proper working of those institutions can we secure the co-operation between nations on which the hon. Gentleman seems so keen. I urge him to lay aside the mantra of attacking the Conservative party on the issue; it must be realised that the best way in which to achieve what is best for Britain and for Europe is to ensure proper arrangement in the institutions.
I, too, welcome the enlargement of the European Union to include the countries of eastern and central Europe, but we and they have a great deal to do before their accession. What we must not do is promise them more than we can deliver, or raise expectations that cannot be fulfilled. I want Cyprus and Malta to enter the European Union, but Malta in particular must be prepared to recognise its duty
to assist in enforcing British court orders by convention and out of respect for the comity of nations, which it seems remarkably reluctant to do. In this respect, I refer to the case of my constituent, Mrs. Anna Bergmann, who is the beneficiary of a financial settlement order from the High Court's family division in London, made against her ex-husband who is now resident in Malta.
The Madrid summit will take place next week on 15 and 16 December. It is to be chaired--I may be wrong but, anyhow, it does not matter--by Carlos Westendorp, the Spanish Foreign Affairs Minister. He in particular reminds us of the historic links between Spain and the low countries, places that were once linked through a common Crown and are now members of the same European Union. If we and they are not too careful, however, they may eventually be linked again--and more closely--as separate provinces within a United States of Europe, having to fend and contend with a single currency.
Whether Mr. Westendorp's Government will be in power long enough to witness the conclusions of the intergovernmental conference is debatable. What is more certain is that his British counterpart, my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, will be in office, not only when the IGC convenes next year, but when it completes its deliberations.
The reflection group, which has been preparing for the IGC, has been meeting since 3 June and my hon. Friend the Minister has been travelling to and from Europe to attend its meetings. Unlike some representatives of the member states, however, he is not only a member of our legislature, but a politically accountable and aware Minister. He knows, as all Ministers must know, what his fellow parliamentarians want to come out of the IGC. As important, if not even more important, he knows from his constituents what the British people require and what they do not want from the IGC.
Unlike many mainland European politicians, who have been elected by proportional representation and put into government by post-election backroom deals, and who represent a party list rather than individual constituents, our Ministers in every Department engaged in European Union affairs are closely in tune and in touch with our country's citizens. They do not pay lip service to the democratic process, but daily must respect it and respond to it.
The major fault of European federal enthusiasts, of the integrationists, is that they belong to that school of politics that sees no real need to listen to or to consult the public because they know what is best for the people. They have decided, for example, that there will be a unified single currency by a given date. In France, the political elite seems prepared to destroy social harmony in order to meet the convergence criteria, no matter what the consequences, long or short term. The elitism of so much of continental political thought and practice, although sometimes majestic to behold, is not always beneficial to the state or to the people whom the politicians believe they are governing.
In the few minutes left to me in the debate, I want to concentrate on just one of the five subjects considered by the reflection group: common foreign and security policy. In its first report on the CFSP, the group identified as the problem with that policy, as presently constituted, the separation of the European Union's external policy dimension and its external economic dimension. Whereas
the bulk of, if not all, decisions on economic matters can be taken by qualified majority voting, CFSP decisions require unanimity.
That is not a problem, but a strength, as it recognises the delicate nature of security issues for each member state and underscores my view that no Government have a right to delegate their people's allegiance to the sovereign. By that, I mean not simply the Queen or the monarchy, or the Crown in Parliament: I mean that intangible concept of nationhood, which I accept is easier to recognise than to define, but which applies to all democratic states.
I am saying not that it is wrong to ask our fellow citizens to fight for Europe, for liberal democracy or against totalitarianism, but that it is for this Parliament, or at any rate a Government supported by this Parliament as representing the popular will, to hold to itself the decisions about which battles to fight and which wars to wage.
We, or at least my parents, my grandparents and their generations, have fought for freedom and for Europe. They have been soldiers in allied armies and in other military formations commanded by foreign generals, but that does not mean a loss of statehood or of national determination in time of war. It represents the consequence of a national decision to act on security matters in and for the national interest. Even now, and obviously, the historical and geographical links that differ from country to country--one takes the most obvious examples of France and the United Kingdom-- demonstrate that there are interests that we and, for example, the French have which go well beyond the shores of Europe. That surely must allow us to take our own decisions unfettered by a common foreign and security policy.
For the IGC to amend the treaty of Rome to "cure" the problem that I identified earlier, because member states are worried that the CFSP's lack of qualified majority voting is a cause of its ineffectiveness, is badly to misunderstand the question. A CFSP cannot be dealt with suitably if some aspects remain subject to unanimity and some are made subject to QMV. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister not to retreat into that sort of compromise which, no matter how comfortable and attractive it might seem at 5 o'clock in the morning in the IGC meeting room, is a dangerously flawed solution.
Soon, thousands of NATO troops will have been deployed in Bosnia. They will include troops from Britain, France, America and even Germany. There, in my submission, is the evidence we need to demonstrate that a CFSP in Europe is for Governments acting in their own national interests but in concert, making decisions based on shared analyses and shared intelligence and doing something together because they all believe it to be right and achievable.
Ms Joyce Quin (Gateshead, East):
Like all European debates this has been predictably wide ranging because of the nature of the subject. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) said that these debates were sometimes seen as routine. However, in this debate hon. Members on both sides of the House have dealt with many new elements of the changing European situation, particularly the opening up of the European Union to the countries of central and eastern Europe. Hon. Members have also mentioned the changing economic circumstances which are affecting the major countries in the European Union now.
Sharp differences of view have been expressed on both sides of the House and, occasionally, on the same side of the House. Hon. Members have also mentioned matters of widespread and common concern. Virtually all hon. Members talked about the need for the intergovernmental process to be seen as relevant to the citizens of the countries represented in the European Union. A thread running through many speeches was that an intergovernmental conference which seemed to be a Maastricht mark 2 would not be widely welcomed and that we want to avoid any huge gap between the so-called political elites of Europe and the populations of Europe. We need to take that to heart. Presumably, when the Minister replies to the debate and reports on the activities of the reflection group, he will refer to that.
There was widespread support for the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood). He referred to the report of the Select Committee on European Legislation and mentioned some of the important aspects of the way in which the House looks at European legislation and how that could be improved in the future. He said that the report contained a litany of failures and, in many ways, that is so. He said that the report talks about the undue secrecy involved in European deliberations, the frustration of dealing with unofficial texts rather than with official and properly translated documents, the frustrating delays facing the Select Committee on European Legislation and European Standing Committees A and B when looking at European legislation and, allied to the delays, the inadequate time that they have to consider what are sometimes very important matters.
My hon. Friend the Member for Clydesdale also, quite rightly, called for much more efficient and swift communication between European institutions. It seems absurd, with modern technology, that some communications procedures seem to take so long. That does not help the important business of scrutiny.
The Government frequently hide in scrutiny Committees--especially European Standing Committees A and B--matters that should be debated on the Floor of the House. In European Standing Committee B recently, I have been dealing with enlargement and other wide-ranging issues which, despite the useful work done in the Committee, should be dealt with on the Floor of the House. However, the Government sometimes do not want to parade their divisions in front of us.
We want the Government to go further and push for much greater openness within the European decision-making process. We want them to agree with our view that, when the Council of Ministers makes decisions as a legislature, it should do so openly so that the people
can have full knowledge of how votes were cast at the critical time. We certainly support the proposals for greater openness from some of the other Governments in the EU, especially from the Swedish Government, but also from the Dutch and Danish Governments. We rejoice that there have been some successes in ensuring that more documents are available, not just to national Parliaments but to the wider public. That is essential if people are to see the European project as more relevant and if they are to be more directly connected with it.
Many hon. Members on both sides of the House referred in considerable detail to economic and monetary union and the proposed single currency, including the Foreign Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook), the right hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore).
Many hon. Members referred to the convergence criteria, the reaction to them by different countries--not just Britain--and the question of how those criteria might or might not be met. The hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs. Currie) predicted that Britain would fulfil the criteria, but not join the single currency. I do not know whether she was thinking that that would happen under her Government or under a future Government. However, it was significant that at Question Time today the Prime Minister once again refused to be specific. He also refused to rule out joining a single currency, as he was urged to do by many of his right hon. and hon. Friends.
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