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Mr. Shore: My right hon. Friend has made it clear--very convincingly--that all the information is now available about the stability pact, about what would happen to us if we remained outside and so on, to enable us to make a rational decision about whether it is in the British interest to join. What we would also like to know is what my right hon. Friend thinks about the stability pact and its imposition on the British people.
Mr. Brown: If my right hon. Friend, who contributes to all these debates and has done so for many years, will be patient, I shall tell him. As he knows, there are two outstanding issues relating to the stability pact that have yet to be agreed and I shall come to those issues in a minute. They are the definition of exceptional circumstances and the discretion that is available to the Council. I think that he would agree that those are important issues on which the Labour party--[Interruption.] This is the problem with trying to have a rational debate on Europe. Because some Conservative Members are against a single currency in principle and in all circumstances, they are not prepared to debate the issues that affect the United Kingdom.
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Mr. Brown: Now they ask me to give way to them, so that they can repeat their views. I shall not do so.
Mr. Bernard Jenkin (Colchester, North) rose--
Mr. Brown: The two hon. Members, who have ruled out support for a single currency in all circumstances, now ask me to give way simply so that they can put their case. Let us look at the detail--that is what we are going to do.
Mr. Jenkin: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I believe that the right hon. Gentleman is misleading the House. He says that he wants a debate, but when anybody tries to engage in debate with him, he does not give way.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): That is not a point of order for me.
Mr. Brown: The Chancellor tries to find common ground with the rebels. He goes to Europe and comes back saying that he has got what amounts to a footnote in the new agreements that member states that are outside the euro will be under no obligation to avoid excessive deficits--something that was already stated in black and white in the Maastricht treaty anyway.
The Chancellor gets that provision in order to appease Conservative Members, but it makes no difference to them. They have only one mission in mind, which is to prevent there being a single currency in any circumstances--the tragedy is that the Chancellor knows that too. If they can, they will write into the Conservative manifesto that there will be no commitment to a single currency in any circumstances. If they fail to do that, they have made it clear that they will have their separate, personal manifestos and write it into those. They will also write in a statement that they would prefer Britain to be outside the European Union altogether.
Mr. John Townend (Bridlington)
rose--
Mr. Brown:
Here is another Conservative Member who takes that view. That is the position of many hon. Members on the Conservative Back Benches--I suspect that they form a majority of the hon. Members present today. Increasingly, they are becoming a party within a party and no amount of rabble-rousing on their part can disguise their agenda and their pursuit of it.
Madam Deputy Speaker:
Order. It is quite clear that the right hon. Gentleman is not giving way. It is his right not to do so, if that is his wish.
Mr. Brown:
I shall give way to one hon. Gentleman, but then I shall move on.
Mr. Townend:
Will the right hon. Gentleman now come to the heart of the problem? If he, as Chancellor of this country, decided that it was right to abolish the pound, does he accept that that would mean a major transfer of sovereignty from this House to Europe?
Mr. Brown:
We do not accept that a country moves into a federal Europe immediately on considering the
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I give way all the time to Conservative Members and, instead of asking questions about details that affect Britain's interest, they repeat the same old question, because they are wholly against the single currency. That is their agenda.
Sir Peter Tapsell:
Get to the detail.
Mr. Brown:
I am now on the detail. [Interruption.] We have one section of the Conservative party saying, "Let's have a debate on the detail," and another saying, "We must debate only the principle and we must rule out the principle of a single currency."
Mr. Brown:
I shall make progress with my speech now and take no more interventions from the disruptive element that is trying to prevent me from speaking.
Mr. Terry Dicks (Hayes and Harlington)
rose--
Mr. Brown:
If, in the interests of fairness, I take one intervention from a pro-European on the Conservative Benches, I suppose that it must be the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Dicks:
The right hon. Gentleman just said that he would make a decision in the national economic interest. Does he see a distinction between that, which is what the Chancellor said, and the national interest vis-a-vis sovereignty? There must be a distinction. Does the right hon. Gentleman not see it?
Mr. Brown:
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman is participating in this debate. He is the person who rebelled on Sunday when the Prime Minister talked about irrelevant Members of Parliament who were stirring up the issue to get a moment's fame. The hon. Gentleman asks about sovereignty. I do not accept that a single currency removes our freedom to make decisions on taxation and other issues in the House of Commons. It will annoy Conservative Members that I share the Chancellor's view on that matter--[Interruption.] The Chancellor is smiling because he has at least one supporter on the issue in the House. That will be the Labour party's position on the matter.
We cannot sit out these negotiations simply because a group of Conservative Members say that we must rule everything out in principle. We must play an active part in the negotiations, but, try as the Chancellor does to find common ground between him and his Back Benchers, it is becoming impossible as they push him further and further to a position where he cannot agree with them.
On the two outstanding issues on the stability pact, there must be flexibility rather than rigidity in the definition of exceptional rules. On that point we would agree with the position that the French have put over the past few days.
There must be discretion for the Council. Indeed, that was the spirit of the Maastricht treaty. In answer to a question put earlier, we should have the ability to examine
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Mr. David Hunt (Wirral, West):
Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me to recap? When a question was put to him earlier, he said that the word "flexibly" did not appear in the document. It was then put to him that page 23 of "A New Economic Future for Britain" says:
Mr. Brown:
I thought that the right hon. Gentleman was referring to "The Road to the Manifesto", the document that we have produced and circulated to our members. That has been voted on by 95 per cent. of the members and is the manifesto on which we shall fight the next general election. The right hon. Gentleman is not quoting from that document, but that was my understanding of the comment that was made, and that is the basis on which we shall fight the election. I understand that it is impossible for the Conservatives to have a similar document at this stage. Indeed, it may be impossible for them to agree on a manifesto on those issues, but the Labour party has agreed its position. [Hon. Members: "But what does it mean?"] I explained to hon. Gentlemen what it meant. It meant taking into account employment issues when making a final decision on monetary union.
It is interesting that the Chancellor said little about exchange rate co-operation, but concentrated on the stability pact. We know that the exchange rates of the outs as well as the ins will have to be monitored and assessed under the new arrangements being agreed, but the purpose is to avoid real exchange rate misalignments. Surveillance of what are clearly market-sensitive areas will be published by the Commission in the form of recommendations. Whether binding or not, recommendations in such market-sensitive areas are bound to have an impact. Once again, however, desperate for common ground, the Chancellor tried to get included in the document an understanding that that would be non-binding on the British Government if they were outside the euro.
"the convergence criteria must be applied flexibly".
What does he mean by that?
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