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Mrs. Gorman: What about that little country Great Britain, which is doing more trade with China than it does with any of our European partners?
Sir Teddy Taylor: As always, my hon. Friend is right. She showed great courage and determination in saying such things when we were laughed at and harassed in the party.
Mr. William Cash (Stafford): Yes.
Sir Teddy Taylor: Yes, indeed. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) has not had an easy time, but my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay(Mrs. Gorman) has had a terrible time with people attacking her. Her views are now accepted by the vast majority of the party, and I am obviously glad for her. Still, having said that, I should like to pay tribute to her courage and determination throughout this period.
We must remember that, if we are to survive as a small country off Europe we must go for world trade, low costs and the Conservative policy of getting away from artificial subsidy. I believe that the Economic Secretary to the Treasury is a straight and honourable person and I hope that, instead of voicing the usual Treasury nonsense, ambiguous words and things that mean nothing, she will tell people five simple facts. I have asked her for factual information. I know that we will receive that information from her and that it will be a major contribution to this desperately important debate.
Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent):
My friends and family sometimes tell me that one of the many reasons why I have never been asked to join the Front-Bench team is that I have an uncanny habit of naively exposing the fact that I am not as sophisticated or well informed as many people, and that I should keep my mouth shut when I do not know what I am talking about. I am not an economist and, unlike many of my hon. Friends, I feel insecure in talking about economic concepts. There is not a great deal of harm, however, in exposing to the House the type of difficulties that the ordinary punter faces in this debate.
I was brought up to believe that devaluation, on the whole, was to be avoided. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) has pointed out, however, we have been engaged in devaluing the pound since the
time I was born, and certainly since the second world war, yet those who most passionately resist any attempts to devalue never seem to talk about any of the costs that are involved therein.
Mr. Bernard Jenkin (Colchester, North):
Everyone is against devaluation or debasement of the currency. It is important to realise that devaluation of the currency occurs when one has economic inflation and then resists the consequential adjustment of exchange rates, leaving an imbalance between the exchange rate and the real value of the currency which causes the economic dislocation. That is what occurred when we were in the exchange rate mechanism, and that is what occurred under the gold standard.
Mr. Rowe:
I bow to my hon. Friend's superior knowledge, but his contribution does not explain the devaluations that occurred in the years before the European Union was even dreamed of.
National power is one of the main issues in the debate. The truth is that the world was once on the gold standard because it was the currency that the United Kingdom used. Worldwide, people wished to be linked with our currency to give their currencies credibility--a function of the enormous power that was wielded by this country. I have told the House before that we are no longer in a position to dictate to anyone in the world. That has marked consequences, shown most clearly in the Suez crisis when the world decided that it did not wish three sovereign states to continue a war and simply pulled the plug on them.
We are in no position to stand alone. Our armed services are so small that, with the exception of certain fire-fighting activities, there is no way that we can operate alone on the world stage. We require the sort of co-operation that is taking place--one hopes with happy results, eventually--in Bosnia. Except in certain cases, we do not even make our own armaments. We make bits of them because we are entirely dependent on our partnerships with manufacturers in other states.The process of gradually moving towards one another is accelerating.
As an ordinary layman, I become rather confused about why there is the tremendous imperative from above to drive us towards a single currency. A single currency will emerge during the years ahead, as sure as night follows day, as we do more and more business with our European partners. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East said, as more people travel through Europe and find that constant currency adjustments are expensive and tiring, we shall find that businesses increasingly wish to make use of a single currency unit. Big businesses will start the process, small businesses will follow, and tourists will follow that. In my lifetime, I do not expect to be able to buy a loaf of bread in my village bakery--should it manage to resist the supermarkets that long--with a single European currency unit.
Mr. Dykes:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I did not give way at all, but he has kindly referred to me twice. Is it not interesting that consumers who go to other European countries are increasingly usingcredit cards rather than getting too much currency?The equivalent, therefore, is that the single currency becomes the credit card without any charges or expenses.
Mr. Rowe:
That is entirely true.
Having a national currency is no guarantee of independence. I have just returned from Nepal, which is desperate to preserve its national independence and have its own currency. The idea that it is not wholly overshadowed by India, its enormous neighbour,is nonsense. I do not believe that the preservation of our national currency is a guarantee that we will not lose our capacity to act independently. That capacity has been substantially diminished over the years, for the reasons that I have set out.
We are engaged in an extraordinarily acerbic debate about something that has been made more immediate than it should have been by the pressures from the European Union and the central bank. I should much prefer us to evolve towards the single currency which I am sure will follow.
Mr. Marlow:
My hon. Friend is making a case, albeit not a strong one, for joining a single currency. Given that any single European currency would include Greece and Portugal--that would happen if he were to have his way--would it not be rather better to join with the dollar and the United States?
Mr. Rowe:
I am reluctant to join any closer to the United States. I am fond of the United States and think that it is a fine country, but I should infinitely prefer to resist a great many of the influences that come from it.I do not wish to be closer to a country whose racial problems, for example, could be imported into this country. I do not want such a divide in the United Kingdom. The American culture seems to be destructive of many of the values that we in the House hold dear.
Mr. Charles Kennedy (Ross, Cromarty and Skye):
I apologise to the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill), who initiated the debate, for being elsewhere earlier and not hearing his speech. Does not the intervention by the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) tell us something interesting about that section of the parliamentary Tory party? The fact that the Americans have concluded a North American Free Trade Agreement in which, unless I have missed something, they did not expect the United Kingdom to participate speaks volumes. Does the hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) think that such an approach has any economic coherence given that we are part of a single market?
Mr. Rowe:
It is fair to say that my hon. Friends do not stress the fact that we should also join Mexico, although they may prefer Mexico to Greece and Portugal.
It is important not to lose sight of the fact that the origins of the European Union arose from a passionate desire that Europe should not yet again plunge the world into war, the cost of which would dwarf any costs that might be incurred by joining a single currency. This country was ruined as a consequence of our incapacity to contain German expansionism. We have been provided with a mechanism for containing any possible future threat from such expansionism and I am extremely wary of taking steps to turn our back on that.
Mr. Legg:
Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Rowe:
I think that I have given way enough. Other people wish to speak.
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