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6.24 pm
Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling): I should like to devote my remarks to the European affairs part of the debate. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is no longer in his place, predictably had a limited amount of fun--no doubt he could not resist it--with the difference of view in the Conservative party in relation to the negotiating position on the single currency. However, on the issue immediately facing us, which is of the most profound significance--our negotiating position at the Amsterdam intergovernmental conference summit--the Conservative party is wholly united in its opposition to surrendering our opt-out from the social chapter, in not making further surrenders of our rights of veto, and in its overall approach to that critical conference.
As this Parliament evolves, and if we do get further European treaty legislation following the IGC, it will be interesting for us Conservative Members to see whether the Labour party in government is as seriously split on the new treaty legislation as it most certainly was in relation to the Maastricht legislation in the previous Parliament.
I wish to make this point on the European treaty. This is no reflection on either of the two Front-Bench teams; it is simply a matter of the conjunctions of timing. We are now less than four weeks away from the Amsterdam summit, when that profoundly important treaty will be decided. There has been inadequate parliamentary scrutiny and parliamentary accountability in advance of that critical summit.
No Select Committees of the House have been set up, the new draft of the intergovernmental conference treaty, which is about one inch thick in my estimate, was available only last Friday and with the best will in the world few, if any, hon. Members will have been able to give it the detailed and intense scrutiny that it most certainly requires. In this debate, important economic issues and equally important European issues are being dealt with simultaneously. In terms of parliamentary accountability, it is essential that before the Amsterdam summit there should be at least another full day's debate on the IGC summit so that hon. Members have the opportunity to put their views to the House before the summit takes place, particularly as Madam Speaker said at the start of this debate that, sadly, some Members who are seeking to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, may not be called.
The most critical issue in the new treaty, which contains some of the most far-reaching provisions, is the extent to which the British Government further surrender our rights of veto at the Amsterdam summit. I am not in any way detracting from the other critical issues in the treaty: the extent to which it proposes far-reaching new competences for the European Union; the proposals substantially to increase the powers given to the European Parliament; the extremely radical proposals for bringing about greater Community involvement in the foreign
affairs and security pillar; and the even more radical proposals in the home affairs and administration of justice pillar. So far as this Parliament is concerned, however, I believe that the critical issue will be the extent to which the present Government do or do not sign up to further surrenders of our rights of veto, particularly in the areas at present covered by unanimity.
It cannot be stressed too strongly how crucial in constitutional, legal and policy terms a decision to surrender our right of veto in a given policy area is. It is crucial, first, because each surrender is irreversible in practice. There has been no case, to my knowledge, in which a move from unanimity to qualified majority voting has ever been reversed since the European Union came into being--and here I am going back to the formation of the EEC.
Once the right of unanimity is surrendered, in effect it takes away from the elected British Government the ability to say no to a particular policy area and framework of law which applies in that policy area. In addition, it opens up for the indefinite future the possibility of further directives which the elected British Government will have no powers to resist if they do not have the votes under the qualified majority voting system.
During the election campaign I listened extremely carefully to what the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) said about the circumstances in which a Labour Government, if elected, would further surrender our rights of veto. He said that he would not surrender the veto in a limited number of stated areas. He referred to tax, defence and security, immigration, EU budget contributions and treaty changes. That was clear. Important as they are, however, those five areas represent only a fraction of the total policy areas involved. All the rest was left open.
The right hon. Gentleman, now the Prime Minister, said that he would be prepared to surrender our rights of veto and move from unanimity to qualified majority voting if he believed that it was in our national interest to do so. Against the background that I have outlined, I find it difficult to believe that there can be any areas in which it could be in the British national interest to make further surrenders of our rights of veto, unless and until a very substantive concession was obtained in return; those are the only circumstances in which I believe that it could be justifiable to make a further surrender of rights of veto--hypothetically, at any rate.
I find it poor on the part of the new Government that on their first visit to the European institutions they have made a wholly unconditional surrender of our opt-out from the social chapter without getting anything whatever in exchange. That was negotiating naivety in the extreme.
I want to make three points about the social chapter. First, at no time in the election campaign or in the run-up to the election did I hear Labour Members explaining that their commitment to surrender the opt-out from the social chapter involved not merely one surrender, but two. First, obviously, by surrendering our opt-out we are bringing within the ambit of Community decision making and Community law an area of policy which is at present the exclusive preserve of the United Kingdom.
The second surrender arises because it is clear from protocol 14 of the social chapter that there are two types of procedure for different subject heads. One of those areas is covered already by qualified majority voting.
The process of surrendering our opt-out from the social chapter means not merely substituting Community law for what would effectively be an exclusive right of national law but at the same time surrendering our rights of direct control in those areas and replacing them by a qualified majority voting system.
I remind the House what those areas are in which the very act of surrendering the social chapter opt-out brings QMV into effect. Those areas are extremely wide-ranging and cover
My second point relates to the other subjects in protocol 14--those which are subject to the decision-making process by unanimity. Do the Government intend to surrender to existing pressures and to exchange unanimity in that part of the social chapter for qualified majority voting? Will that be one of the areas in which they will surrender our rights of veto? Those areas, too, are profoundly significant and include
That brings me to the third point about the surrender of the social chapter opt-out: the implications for the future. It is true that so far only two directives have come into effect under the social chapter. One is the works councils directive; the other is the parental leave directive. I found the parental leave directive particularly interesting. Having taken advice on it, I wonder how many employers in the United Kingdom realise that under that directive, in the case of employees who have a child, employers will be under an obligation to allow both parents to have not less than three months leave from their place of work. That is a significant and interesting point.
Beyond that, there is the question of what further directives will be issued under the social chapter. A directive that is already considerably advanced will shift the burden of proof in sex discrimination cases so that it falls in part on the employer--requiring the employer to prove a negative in such cases. That has significant legal implications. Another directive that is quite far advanced deals with rights for part-time workers and temporary workers. That has the capacity to produce a serious loss of job opportunities among those currently in part-time or temporary work.
The issue is not whether those areas of legislation are desirable or not. They are all grounded in national legislation. The Government have decided that they no longer want to rely on national legislation in those areas. However, I put it to the House that national legislation can deal with those matters perfectly satisfactorily. By surrendering our opt-out, we are telling the EU that it may take over legislating in those areas--and, ultimately, the European Court of Justice rather than the British courts will be the determining body when directives are issued. That is why I believe that it is a profound change.
The issue of surrendering our right of veto applies not simply to the social chapter, but much more widely. There is no doubt that the Commission and some of our EU partners have substantial ambitions in that area. It is significant that in February this year the Commission published a paper entitled "Extension of Qualified Majority Voting", which listed 18 new areas where unanimity could be replaced by qualified majority voting. The Government have said that they might be willing to surrender unanimity and replace it with qualified majority voting in two of those 18 areas: the industrial and the environmental areas. Such a change to the industrial chapter would have profound implications for businesses in this country. The introduction of qualified majority voting would also have profound implications for certain parts of the environment chapter, which is currently subject in part to unanimity.
Article 130s lists the environmental articles that remain subject to unanimity, including town and country planning. If unanimity were surrendered in that area and replaced by qualified majority voting and the Commission agreed--possibly against the wishes of the elected British Government--to produce an EU directive on town and country planning which would bite in Labour Members' constituencies, I wonder how pleased they would be about the surrender of the veto undertaken by their Government at Amsterdam. That illustrates the scale and importance of the issues at stake.
The Government have said that they will support the proposed new employment chapter. The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson), has set out clearly the Government's overall negotiating position. I refer to a Reuters press release issued after the Minister's first visit with his European colleagues. It said:
"workers' health and safety; working conditions; the information and consultation of workers; equality between men and women with regard to labour market opportunities and treatment at work"
and
"the integration of persons excluded from the labour market"
which, I am told, is Eurospeak for rights for the unemployed. I list those to indicate the breadth of the areas that the surrender of the opt-out from the social chapter already brings within the QMV system in which, of course, the British Government have no right of veto.
"social security and social protection of workers; protection of workers where their employment contract is terminated; representation and collective defence of the interests of workers and employers"
and
"financial contributions for promotion of employment and job creation".
Those are enormously wide areas, which could be the subject of later directives. A critical policy issue, therefore, is whether the Government will end up, after the Amsterdam summit, having conceded not merely our opt-out from the social chapter, but qualified majority voting throughout protocol 14.
"Henderson said Labour would end the British opt-out from the EU's Social Chapter, agree to more qualified majority voting in some policy areas and support an employment chapter in a new EU treaty to be adopted in mid-June in Amsterdam."
I put it to the House that the package of surrenders that the Government propose--surrendering our opt-out on the social chapter, replacing our existing rights of unanimity with qualified majority voting in key areas such as industry and environment, and accepting the existing employment chapter--has potentially damaging consequences for industry in this country, affecting investment, costs, labour market flexibility and competitiveness. If the Government go down that route, the British people will ultimately pay the price with their jobs.
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