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The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Ms Joyce Quin): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Trend: May I finish my fantasy? The hon. Member for Rotherham did his job very well. He read the headlines from the German newspapers--to, I suspect, a rather bemused audience--and seemed to suggest that the whole sorry business had been got up as a scare story by the British press. Various other Labour Members have suggested that. He seemed to say that they did these things better in Germany. He has a very promising career. However, the point of sending Parliamentary Private Secretaries is that they can sink or swim on their own without damaging the Government's reputation--although they may do tremendous damage to their own. However, the hon. Gentleman acquitted himself, and I hope his career is progressing nicely.
Ms Quin: I was interested to listen to the hon. Gentleman's fantasy--but it was just fantasy. If he had listened to other interviews yesterday, he would have heard me and other Ministers being interviewed. Sadly, a lot of my weekends seem to be disrupted by interviews on tax harmonisation and other European issues.
Mr. Trend: I have no reason to doubt the Minister, but I thought it curious that, a few hours before Prime Minister's questions, no Minister was available on the BBC lunchtime news on Radio 4. I may be wrong about those things.
The hon. Member for Rotherham, in a spirited interview, suggested that they do these things better on the continent. The evidence of the past six months does not suggest that. The informal summit was billed as an opportunity to debate subsidiarity--it had been prepared for months as a chance to investigate that subject closely. Only a few months ago, it was thought that the question of how to close the ever-growing gulf between the politicians and peoples of Europe was a matter of central importance.
The Foreign Secretary--like other senior European politicians--still airs the language of subsidiarity. He told us today that he was anxious that decisions should be taken as close as possible to the citizen, and we agree. However, what does that mean in practice? When the Foreign Secretary spoke to the Select Committee, it turned out to mean, mainly, a proposal for next year's vision statement for the European Union. If one has no plans for action, I suppose a vision statement will have to do.
Despite the continued use of such language, something fundamental has changed in the past few months. The Euro-land Governments--especially after the general
elections--picked up a new confidence. They could see that the euro would definitely be launched in 1999--that business was over, at least for the moment. The voices saying that it was best now to address the other side of the precarious balance between Governments and the governed were swept aside. Jacques Santer's carefully crafted--and good--paper was put back in the filing cabinet.
Governments surged ahead with their next business. There has been greatly increased pressure in the past few weeks for further and quicker integration in taxation, employment, social affairs, internal policies, foreign policy, immigration and asylum policies. In recent weeks, I have talked to lots of senior European politicians--some of whom I have known for a considerable time. Many are, for the first time, saying in public what they actually believe.
I was told that subsidiarity and accountability would have to wait, as they were yesterday's arguments. The vital principles that we believe should be the very foundation of the European Union are being passed over by the architects of a much more tightly integrated Union.
Does anyone now seriously believe that the architects of the new Europe are building their ever more ambitious edifice on the secure foundations of popular understanding and consent? No. Bigger, not better, government is the order of the day and of tomorrow.
My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate spoke very well on enlargement. Great progress was hoped for on enlargement, and of course the Minister will tell us of meetings attended and timetables agreed to, but nobody involved in the application process believes any of that. With attention now so focused on deeper integration, European Union enlargement is being seriously delayed. European Commission officials were reported in The Guardian to be stating in private that the target date for the first wave of enlargement was slipping to after 2005.
One senior politician said to me, "The European Union has been holding out a carrot to us: we begin to move towards it and get close, but then we find that it has moved it on ahead of us again. How can we ever catch up if these are the rules of the game?"
The Foreign Secretary told the House in June that the speed at which applicant countries enter the European Union now depends entirely on the urgency with which they make the necessary reforms. That is not the view that is taken in Poland, the Czech Republic or Hungary. The amount of legislation that they, and especially Poland, have passed--hundreds of laws--beggars belief, but no amount of new laws will catch up with a European Union determined to make new, far-reaching legislation of its own.
As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe said, the Government did not do the House the courtesy of telling us what had been discussed and agreed at the recent informal summit. A few days after it, however, I was again in continental Europe and met many people who were less retiring. They were happy enough to tell me what the Prime Minister had said. Their impression was that he meant that there had been a true reversal of the British position on defence. Some, I am afraid, cynically thought that that was because he was unable any longer to gain the limelight on economic matters, but others genuinely believed that there had been a fundamental shift in the British position.
Was that impression correct? Back at Westminster, Conservative Members asked the simple questions that we can ask in the ways that the House allows, and it soon became apparent that the Government were in a glorious muddle. The Secretary of State for Defence recently tried hard to explain at the Dispatch Box--I am charitably assuming that he had something coherent to explain--the complex theology that his officials had kindly developed to try to bring the Government's two faces on the matter back into better focus.
It is no longer possible for the Government to say one thing on the continent and another here and pretend that they can keep the House out of the process. The Government are going to Vienna in a muddle of their own making. There is a muddle on taxation, on defence, on enlargement, on reform of the European Union institutions, on internal matters, on subsidiarity and on accountability.
If the Foreign Secretary hopes that other left-of-centre European politicians will provide him with a welcome break from his problems back home, let me remind him once more of what his Euro-allies have been saying recently.
The German Chancellor expressed support for an "ever-integrated Europe". The German Foreign Minister said that turning the EU into an entity under international law, with a common constitution, was
The coming summit will be difficult for Britain. The Government should say more clearly where they stand on all the issues raised in the debate, because it is becoming increasingly clear that an agenda is emerging to which no British Government could subscribe. No amount of warm words about being at the heart of Europe, or boasting about playing it tough in the Councils of Europe, will work much longer. The electorate are getting wise to the Government's two faces. In the end, it is results that count.
"the decisive task of our time".
Our friend Oskar Lafontaine said:
"It is necessary to harmonise tax policy"
and the Austrian Finance Minister agreed. He said:
"The single currency will speed up the need for tax harmonisation."
On the veto, good old Oskar was unequivocal. He said:
"I believe the unanimity rule cannot be maintained."
The French Finance Minister said:
"Either you want fiscal harmonisation or you don't. These are all matters that should be subject to majority voting."
The German Foreign Minister said:
"If it is going to turn into a full union, then one day foreign and defence policy will also have to become community tasks."
We are told that sometimes those statesmen speak for themselves and sometimes for their Governments, but that is spin doctor nonsense. They are speaking their minds and we should note carefully what is in their minds, because their views expressed today--on the record or off the record, officially or unofficially--will surely appear on tomorrow's agenda.
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