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Mr. Tony Blair (Sedgefield): I shall confine my remarks mainly to beef. First, on dates, the Prime Minister chose his words with elaborate care. Can we be clear as to what he is saying? Is he saying that he can give dates and that the ban will finally go in total in November?
Some Conservative Members are now shaking their heads, but that was the clear impression--they are now all shaking their heads, but if one was listening to the Prime Minister, that was the impression--[Hon. Members: "The right hon. Gentleman was not listening."] I was listening.
If the Prime Minister is now saying that those are definite dates, why were they not in the European Union agreement? I suspect--perhaps he will confirm this--that all that he is really saying is that he will table proposals by October and November, but the decision will be taken through the process of the veterinary committee, inspection, verification and so on.
So, can we return to the question that we have consistently asked the right hon. Gentleman? When will the ban finally be lifted, so that people in Europe can eat British beef under the same conditions as people in Britain?
Secondly, will the Prime Minister confirm that--again, contrary to the impression that he sought to give--there is no automatic link under the agreement between the steps that Britain must take and steps towards lifting the ban? We are obliged to do certain things in Britain, but other member states are simply obliged to follow certain procedures. There is no binding agreement on them, merely an agreement to consider. As for stating that he has won an undertaking that they would refuse consent only on scientific grounds, is not the committee that we have to satisfy the very same veterinary committee with which we had the problems in the first place? It has always ostensibly said that it was acting on scientific grounds; it has never said that it was acting on political grounds. The Prime Minister is no further forward on that.
If the basis is supposed now to be science, why have we agreed to a massive additional slaughter policy when we say that it is not scientifically justified? I suspect that the principal changes that the Prime Minister got were made once the British Government had submitted a programme for eradicating BSE and taken it round the European capitals--which, frankly, is something that they should have done a couple of months before.
Thirdly, as for the much vaunted concession on the third country ban, I agree that the ban is completely unjustified, but will the Prime Minister confirm: that it is only an undertaking from the Italian presidency and not an undertaking from the European Union; that it has no legal force; and that within minutes of it being given, a Commission official said:
Fourthly, will the Prime Minister confirm that the extra compensation at Florence was for all European Union farmers and that British farmers will see only a small part
of it? Will he confirm also that this country's bill, net of European Union payments, for the BSE crisis will be well in excess of £2 billion in the years to come? Is that not the price that the British people will pay for the utter incompetence with which the matter has been handled from the very beginning: the failure to intervene in the way necessary when BSE began; the failure to compensate and inform farmers when the crisis was under way; the failure to announce the link with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, with proper consultation; and now the failure to secure the lifting of the ban once one was imposed?
The Whitehall farce even continued at Florence, where we had the spectacle of the Government trying to hang on to one Minister who was threatening to resign and hanging the poor Minister of Agriculture out to dry to try to get him to resign. [Hon. Members: "Where is he?"] There appears to be a notable absentee from our deliberations.
This has been an object lesson in the Government's capacity to turn any crisis into a catastrophe. The truth is that whatever fig leaf the Prime Minister has today, the damage will be with this country for many years to come.
The Prime Minister:
The right hon. Gentleman has just illustrated that he is not interested in what is right for this country. In this House, he claimed to support our policy of non-co-operation because he did not have the guts to criticise it. In Germany, he criticised British policy because he did not have the guts to defend it. He has spent half his time claiming that we have been too hard in our relations with Europe, and then jumped to the other side of the fence and claimed that we have been too soft. He has invented objectives that we did not set and then criticised us for not meeting them. It is my job to look after the interests of the British beef industry, and despite his obstruction and his determination to do anything or say anything, irrespective of the damage to the beef industry, in his own interests, that is precisely what I have done.
Let me reiterate the points that were clearly made in my statement, which the right hon. Gentleman then asked about again, having failed to understand them. First, there is no massive additional slaughter policy, as I have explained to him repeatedly on many occasions. I hope that he now fully understands that. On the mechanism for the future, the great new European is effectively saying that he distrusts the word given to Britain by the European Heads of Government and by the European Commission. He distrusts it, despite all that he has said. Let us be clear about what he is about.
Let me deal with some of the other points. As I explained repeatedly in my statement, we have set out what we sought at the outset: objective criteria that we can meet in order that the ban can be lifted. The dates for lifting therefore lie in the hands of the British agriculture industry and the British Government; I have set out the dates by which we think that they will be met on each and every part of the agreement over the past few minutes. It is a shame that the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) failed to understand that. [Interruption.]I invite hon. Members to read the statement when it is printed in Hansard tomorrow; if they did not understand it when I made it, perhaps they will understand it when they read it.
We sought an agreement that that matter would be dealt with objectively, without politically blocking the correct scientific judgment. That is what has happened in the past; that is the political commitment that we have achieved; that is the commitment that we expect our partners to meet.
Mr. Douglas Hurd (Witney):
Given that the Government adopted a legitimate, even familiar, tactic for a specific and limited objective that they have now obtained, will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister take no notice of the Leader of the Opposition's confused mischief making? Does my right hon. Friend accept that the best service that the House, particularly we on the Conservative Benches, can do in the difficult times that lie ahead is to take what may be the last chance in this Parliament to give united and effective support for the policy which my right hon. Friend set out last week and which is also set out in the Foreign Secretary's White Paper, published in the spring?
The Prime Minister:
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who is certainly right about the Leader of the Opposition's capacity for mischief against the national interest. It is equally true that we have set out in our White Paper what we believe is the right way for future developments in the European Union in this country's interests. We have set out a clearer definition of that than any other country that will be negotiating in the intergovernmental conference. It is precisely so that we can get down to the details that I invited the Irish presidency to introduce detailed texts, so that we can begin to look at the details of what people specifically expect to be agreed at the intergovernmental conference rather than deal with the generalities, which have been the subject of the debate so far.
Mr. Paddy Ashdown (Yeovil):
I am glad that the puerile policy of posturing masquerading as war on Europe is now over. When the Prime Minister announced it, I told him that it would achieve nothing that could not be achieved by other means. The damage that has been done to Britain's influence and respect will be great. The Prime Minister tells us that he had to take the action as Europe had been obstructive for eight weeks; is not the truth that the Government did nothing for eight weeks, which is why nothing happened? The Prime Minister tells us that we have set hurdles that were not originally set. Does he remember the statement made by his Downing street spokesman on 22 May, the day after he announced the policy in the House of Commons? Presumably speaking on the Prime Minister's behalf, the spokesman from No. 10 Downing street said:
The Prime Minister said that he was looking for binding commitments from our partners in Europe. Is it not true that every one of the steps must be validated through the Commission, the Scientific Veterinary Committee, the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee--"super-SEAC"--and the Standing Veterinary Committee--the very people who, the Prime Minister claims, obstructed the actions in the first place? Far from our achieving success in lifting the third country ban, is it not true that, within minutes of the Foreign Secretary
announcing that success, a Commission spokesman,in whose hands the matter is supposed to be, said that any beef that we were not able to sell to Germany or France could not be sold to South Africa?
"it didn't commit the Commission to anything"?
Foreign Ministers have said that the third country ban will remain. Is that right or not?
"Nothing short of a full timetable for the phased lifting of the entire beef ban will be sufficient."
Is it not true that no such thing has been achieved?
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