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Mr. Letwin: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that he is making a well-nigh impossible request of the type that he was earlier asking the Government to forswear? Would not the argument for a European central bank and EMU virtually collapse if the central bank were accountable to political forces in Europe and could thus distort interest rates in favour of one part of Europe or another? Is not the bank meant to be a far-seeing body entirely divorced from politics?
Mr. Heath: It is right that the bank should be independent of political pressures, but it should also be accountable for the exercising of its functions. It should report to the European Parliament or the Council of Ministers, or both, on the exercise of those functions and on the decisions that it takes.
To return to the environment, it is important to hold hard to the principle of the 15 per cent. cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2010. Following the Kyoto conference, I believe that Britain should seek to establish a special conference of the European nations to determine how we can make practical advances towards that objective. We must take action to clean up the environment of the applicant countries of central and eastern Europe, which suffer terrible environmental degradation, and which will need help in the short term to bring them up to the standards of the best of the western European countries.
There must be progress on implementing the habitats directive, and a commitment to more renewable energy sources. The next test, therefore, will be whether the British Government, during their presidency, introduce a practical measure to bring about advances in sustainability.
A great deal of lip service is paid to cutting the costs of the EU, yet there is little activity--even though there are some obvious targets. At the risk of incurring the charge that I am asking for the impossible, I point out that certain questions need to be asked repeatedly. For instance, why does the EU continue to subsidise the growing of tobacco to the tune of £750 million? It is absurd that European taxpayers' money should be used to subsidise a crop whose use we want to reduce.
Why do we not try to end overpayments to cereals growers, who are over-compensated to the tune of £12 billion owing to a miscalculation of cereal prices? Savings of £1 billion are to be had there. I accept that it will not be easy, but it could be done in the common interest.
Although administration costs are sometimes exaggerated, it worries me that Commission staff are paid a 16 per cent. allowance for being based abroad, even though many of them are based in Brussels all their working lives. That alone costs £86 million a year; it could easily be negotiated on. I will not today go into the question of the European Parliament's dual seats, but I strongly believe that it should have a single site--a point to which we must return during discussion of the Amsterdam treaty.
As for cracking down on crime, I was accused in Committee this morning by the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Leeds, Central (Mr. Fatchett), of being a friend of international crime for daring to suggest that we in Britain might resent large-scale immunities for Europol officers when they are not granted to our own constabulary. I was surprised to receive scant support from the Conservative Front Bench. I thought that the Conservatives were interested in such issues. We must balance stronger international co-operation on crime with the rights of the individual, ensuring that civil liberties are maintained. Europol must be operational at the earliest opportunity, with those safeguards in place. We also need greater customs co-operation to reduce drug smuggling and the use of drugs.
I mentioned in an earlier intervention the importance that we attach to the European code of conduct on arms exports. We wish the Foreign Secretary well in his negotiations with other member countries on establishing that code. We should be considering other aspects of the arms trade and looking for an opening up of arms procurement. That would have two beneficial effects--cutting costs, and promoting the consolidation of the arms industry across Europe, which must be to the benefit of companies such Thomson Marconi in my constituency, which has already taken such a step to an extent in its co-operation with its French counterparts.
I agree with the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) about the need for a fair deal on trade and aid and for the liberalisation of trade between the European Union and the Lome countries. However, on farming and fishing perhaps we enter the sphere of the impossible.
We all agree that fundamental reform of the common agricultural policy is necessary. There is a blueprint for that in the Agenda 2000 document. The Government would do well to persuade partners to attach their names to the principles of that document. We also need the entire common fisheries policy replaced by a regionalised fisheries policy. We should look for the short-term savings to which I have referred in the agricultural policy so that we have the headroom in which to make progress.
Open and accountable European institutions are important to us. The Amsterdam treaty refers to open access to European Union documents in two years. Britain does not need to wait two years to promote that objective. There should be more transparency in the operation of the institutions. We should back the European ombudsman--an institution put in place by Maastricht which almost nobody knows about, partly because it is hidden in Strasbourg. It should have a Brussels base, it should co-operate with national ombudsmen and there should be greater public awareness of access to it. There should be better co-ordination among the Commission, the European Parliament and national Parliaments to ensure better scrutiny of European measures.
I do not want to repeat points made by other hon. Members about enlargement. It is incumbent on the British Government during their presidency to make every effort to accommodate and assist the negotiations of the applicant countries. That should go beyond the initial five plus one. It is equally important that the interests of the second tranche of applicant countries are properly catered for. We must provide a clear process and a clear timetable so that no one is under any illusions about where they stand and how to make progress towards their objective. We must also calculate the genuine costs of enlargement so that no one has any illusions about what is needed to provide for it.
The last in my compendium of tests is that the United Kingdom must be properly prepared. We need to enhance our arrangements for parliamentary scrutiny of measures that come from Europe. We must enhance our data protection arrangements to bring them up to the standard of the best in Europe. We must work with the European Court of Auditors to ensure direct connections with our excellent local and national auditing processes, so that European money is traceable from source to its final point of--one hopes--productive use. That would set an example to other countries and encourage them to make the same arrangements available to the European Court of Auditors.
The Council of Ministers must also be more transparent to this House and to the other Parliaments of Europe. It is appropriate to ask Ministers to report fully, at the earliest opportunity after a meeting, on what they have done on behalf of the House and the British people .
I have listed 10 areas in which we can apply objective tests of the Government's progress during their presidency. We wish them well and hope that they will make progress in several of those areas. The responses of Ministers in recent months have given us reason to believe that they share several of our priorities to make the European Union more transparent and accountable, so that citizens will feel reconnected to the European process.
Mr. Bowen Wells (Hertford and Stortford):
We should start from what people are saying in the streets. During and after the election campaign, they said to me, "I thought we joined Europe so that we could have a trading partner and so that we could have jobs and employment." At the time, the other markets of the world were closing against British and European products. Our natural trading partner--apart from third world countries, which were closing their doors at the time--was Europe.
A referendum was held and a yes vote was achieved. The Conservative party led Britain into Europe to expand the opportunities of people in this country to work, to be
fully employed and to sell their goods freely to Europe without tariff barriers or any inhibition to trade or the expansion of our industry. Joining Europe enabled Britain to make use of its undoubted talent, initiative and enterprise and to continue to grow and fulfil the ambitions of the people of this country.
My constituents say, "Why are we going to substitute such a Europe for a Europe in which we are ruled by bureaucrats from Brussels, bureaucrats from Strasbourg and now bureaucrats from Frankfurt, who are entirely unaccountable to our House of Commons to which we elect Members of Parliament? That is not what we voted for in the referendum." In bewilderment they ask, "What is happening to our policy on Europe?"
At the heart of the change is the politically led drive by Chancellor Kohl, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) referred. That move is driven by political reasons which have their origins in the second world war and the fear of further war. The drive is towards a political union which is seen as somehow binding Europe together so that European countries will never fight again.
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