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6 pm
I realise that many of the speeches by my colleagues in the debate have not always taken exactly the same approach as mine--[Laughter.]--although I have shown that there is quite a lot of common ground between us. Listening to the concluding remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham, I realised that he remains concerned about this commitment to an ever closer Union, which appears again in the article under discussion, as amended. I have already made it clear that the European
Union has for 25 years been a political as well as an economic endeavour. This House committed itself to ever closer union in the debates that I attended in 1972, when the implications were debated at inordinate length.
The process of ever closer union will continue, but it is a mistake to think that that means a united states of Europe, or that it is a threat to the power of the nation state. A united states of Europe is no longer contemplated by any of the members of the EU. I remember in my younger days meeting the founders of the Union, who actually believed in the blueprint: the Commission would become a European Government, the Council of Ministers would be a senate, and the European Parliament would be the European House of Commons. I believe it was that idea to which my right hon. Friend Baroness Thatcher emphatically said, "No, no, no." If my recollection is right, I say no, no, no to that too. It is a dead blueprint; no one pursues it any longer.
Since we joined in 1972 when all these fears were first raised, in my judgment this country has become a more powerful nation state and more respected around the world, with more influence than it formerly had. We have built on our membership of the Union and have become a more successful and self-confident nation. But we live in the modern world, where the political interdependence of nation states will grow ever stronger; where the power of each and every nation state in Europe will increasingly depend on our ability to act collectively; where we have common interests that reinforce our influence; and where our economies are going to become ever more integrated whatever Governments want, or do not want, to do about it. We are moving into a free trade, integrated global economy--and I welcome that.
What we need to retain--and what the Government are losing--is influence over the direction of this process. If we detach ourselves too much from what is going on, we shall lose our influence on the environment in which our political power and economic well-being can flourish. I read of the Chancellor's dismay at the fact that the other member states propose to proceed with an informal Council of Economic Ministers and may not let him attend. I share the Chancellor's view; I spent my time arguing with colleagues on ECOFIN that such a Council should not be created. I am not surprised, however, that the right hon. Gentleman has failed. Once he had made his statement that was supposed to clarify his approach to economic and monetary union; once it was obvious that he had done no such thing; once it was obvious that he had put off making any definitive decision, because hard choices are what the Government talk about but do not make readily; once all this had happened, I could sense the influence of the Chancellor weakening when he returned to Europe. He cannot ask to sit on the new informal Council and influence its decisions but also say that he has to go back and consult Alastair Campbell, Rupert Murdoch and perhaps even the Prime Minister to find out whether he can seriously commit this country to joining once the economic conditions are right.
This is an illustration of how, if we do not take clear decisions based on hard choices, when the circumstances eventually are right, British influence will be damaged. I do not say that it will be damaged by Amsterdam, which is a mouse of a treaty compared with what the people who first thought of the IGC intended. It has some good and some bad features. Among the latter was the failure to get the right deal on the European Court. I strongly agreed
with the criticisms in that respect levelled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe.
The Chairman:
Order. I should like to assist the Committee. This is a wide grouping of amendments, but it is not infinitely wide. I sense that the Committee is in danger of repeating the Second Reading debate, which would be out of order. I remind hon. Members that there is a debate arranged for Thursday, when it will be possible to roam far and wide on the subject of the European Union.
The other danger is that some of the speeches already made on this group of amendments are more pertinent to later groups. That will obviously influence the attitude of the Chair to the length of those future debates. I would therefore ask the Committee to bear it in mind that I have tried in my selection of amendments to allow every aspect of the Bill to be discussed in an orderly manner; and it would assist the flow of debate if the Committee kept strictly within the terms of each group of amendments.
Mr. David Prior (North Norfolk):
I am and always have been a pro-European. I have worked in almost every country in Europe; I have bought and sold products in every country in Europe; and I have run a business in Germany. I believe in free trade, in breaking down tariff barriers and in removing state aids, but we have a long way to go in practice before we can genuinely say that we have created a single market in Europe.
One has only to look at a set of Italian accounts, or to try to sell a product in southern Italy, to know that we have a long way to go before we reach a true single market. It is because I am pro-Europe that I am opposed to article 1 of the treaty of Amsterdam, and opposed to the monetary union foreshadowed in it.
I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) that the treaty of Amsterdam marks
I shall deal with the first point first. The Conservatives have always focused on trade. Whether it was the European Coal and Steel Community, the Common Market or the Single European Act, our focus has been on trade--although I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) that there has always been a political dimension to Europe as well--but we in this country have not stressed that dimension as much as we should have for the purposes of a truly fair
public debate. Indeed, we have played down the loss of sovereignty inherent in the moves afoot in Europe. Under this treaty, with the extension of qualified majority voting, the increased powers of the ECJ and the foreshadowing of a common defence and foreign policy, the political aspects of Europe become more explicit.
I believe that we are arriving at a watershed. No longer can we pretend to our constituents that Europe is solely about trade, because it is not. We must be more honest and accept that there is a sizeable political dimension to our continued involvement in Europe.
Mr. Ian Taylor (Esher and Walton):
My hon. Friend is right to say that the politics may not have been stressed enough in public debates, but one of the key achievements of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister was her realisation that qualified majority voting was essential in the about-to-be created single market to overcome the protectionist instincts of any one nation. She realised that it was vital to Europe's wider interests that there be no national veto in the single market--which I am sure is why my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) voted in favour of the Single European Act.
Mr. Prior:
I, too, am in favour of the Single European Act, but when the Chancellor of the Exchequer says that monetary union will involve some pooling of economic sovereignty, that statement is disingenuous. I believe that monetary union goes beyond that. That view is not necessarily wrong, as I accept that there are different views on Europe, but monetary union goes way beyond some pooling of economic sovereignty.
The combination of Amsterdam and monetary union provides the basis for a single European state, and that is what the debate should be about. Although my personal views are against that, it is the nub of the issue that we should be debating. It would be a tragedy if, in the discussions on monetary union, we were diverted into a narrow debate about convergence criteria, and so on. We would be doing the public a great disservice.
Nothing could be more dangerous to this country than if the British public went into closer political union without fully understanding the facts, and that is what they are doing. In those circumstances, political union would unquestionably be damaging to Europe.
My second point is the economic one. In 1972, when we joined the Common Market, the continental systems had performed extremely well for 20 years. There is no doubt that, despite the high levels of state ownership and the more dirigiste approach to managing their economies, they were extremely successful That was before the general agreement on tariffs and trade had largely opened up free trade, before the globalisation of business and the capital markets, and at a time when the western economies were still pre-eminent technologically.
"an unnecessary move towards further integration of the European Union. It contains a series of measures that transfer power to Brussels from the national parliaments".--[Official Report, 27 November 1997; Vol. 301, c. 1138.].
The treaty raises two issues that go to the heart of the European question. First: is the Conservative vision of Europe as a community of independent states compatible with the treaty and with monetary union, or is the treaty compatible only with the Government's vision of a Europe of the regions? Secondly: is the economic and industrial playing field being created in Europe, inspired as it is by a corporatist and dirigiste ethic, good enough to be competitive with north America and Asia in the future?
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