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Mr. Owen Paterson (North Shropshire): Commissioner Kinnock attended the Select Committee on European Scrutiny not long ago. I asked him whether he had fired one person, and he said that he had not.
Mr. Maude: There was one person who lost his job. That was Mr. van Buitenen, the brave Commission official who blew the whistle on what was going on. He lost his job, all right. He was moved out, but no one else--no one who was found guilty of bad practices, fraud and mismanagement. It was the whistleblower who lost his job.
That is carrying on. The National Audit Office recently investigated the state of the European Union's financial controls, in a report that received much less coverage than it deserved. The NAO concluded that
- it is a matter of serious concern that the high level of "substantive" errors found by the Court meant that it was unable to provide positive assurance on the transactions underlying payments for the fifth year in succession.
-
It went on to recommend that
the Commission needs to design and simplify schemes to minimise the risk of fraud and irregularity.
- the United Kingdom Government to press the Commission to make rapid progress in this regard.
I fully accept that the Government cannot be blamed for all the problems, some of which are of long standing, although many have only recently come to light. However, I blame the Government for failing to take seriously a catalogue of error and abuse, responding with words when action is needed.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold): I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. I was part of the Committee that went over to interview Mr. van Buitenen. We found a culture in which one Commissioner stood up for all the Commissioners and one civil servant stood up for another, whether or not they were guilty of mismanagement. It was not possible to get rid of individual Commissioners or members of staff because they had a contract for life. Is not such a culture of protectionism a disgrace, and should not Commissioner Kinnock have done something about it by now?
Mr. Maude: Commissioner Kinnock would have the wholehearted support of all Opposition Members and, I hope, the entire House if he set about making the changes that we know are needed and about which he spoke, albeit in language with which most of us would not be comfortable. We regret that the Government seem to be failing to respond even to the National Audit Office's recommendations to help the Commission to get matters right and to apply pressure. That is not happening.
Mr. Robin Cook: May I assure the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend that the ability to dismiss an individual Commissioner rather than the entire Commission is one of the key changes to the treaty that is likely to come out of the treaty of Nice at the end of the IGC? Is the right hon. Gentleman still proposing to campaign strongly against that as well?
Mr. Maude: The right hon. Gentleman has clearly read my speech of last week extremely carefully, as he has quoted from it. I am delighted that he has done so; he will have found much food for thought there. Having read my speech, he will know that I said that we would campaign strongly against an integrationist treaty of Nice that transfers further powers from Westminster to Brussels. I make no apology for that. We will do that.
Mr. Cook: The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting elision with what he said in Germany. So that Mr. Paul Sykes does not put his money in under false pretences, is the right hon. Gentleman saying that he now reserves the position to see the outcome of the treaty of Nice before the Conservatives commit themselves to holding a referendum? That is not what he is understood to have said.
Mr. Maude: It is clear that the Foreign Secretary's officials put my speech into his Red Box, but he did not
read it to the end. There is no change in my position. If the right hon. Gentleman had done his homework, as he claimed that he had, he would know that I said last week that we would campaign against a treaty of Nice and would demand a referendum on an integrationist treaty, which gave away powers--[Interruption.] That is precisely what I said. Let him check it. It may require a greater degree of diligence than that to which he is accustomed, but I commend it to him.
Mr. Cook: Let me get this entirely clear on the record: the right hon. Gentleman's party is not committed to a referendum on the treaty of Nice.
Mr. Maude: We are committed to a referendum--I say exactly what I said in my speech last week. We will campaign vigorously against a treaty of Nice that is integrationist, which gives powers from Westminster to Brussels. I set out exactly what we fear will be in that treaty. That was the position set out in my speech, which I commend to the right hon. Gentleman. There is a great deal more in it which he will find instructive if he reads it carefully.
The IGC is an opportunity to start to create a European Union that works and embraces the whole family of European nations. We should not just say the words, as though that is enough. It is a scandal that, more than 10 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the countries of eastern and central Europe are still being told that they must wait in line.
The way in which the Foreign Secretary spoke about that was interesting. He spoke as though enlargement was a benefit for the present members of the European Union. It is more than that. It is our moral duty to embrace the countries of eastern and central Europe into the European family of nations. It is even more of a scandal that they are being told that they must accept every last sub-clause of every piece of over-regulation that the EU has produced in the past 40 years.
Worse still, the candidate countries are being told privately--this bears out the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) made earlier--that if they make any fuss about such onerous requirements, they will be unceremoniously booted to the back of the queue. The IGC is meant to be all about enlargement.
Mr. Giles Radice (North Durham): I am glad to hear that the right hon. Gentleman considers it important to have the new countries of central and eastern Europe in the European Union. If that is so important, why is he advocating a veto on the treaty of Nice?
Mr. Maude: They are not new countries; they are ancient countries of Europe. They belong to the family of European nations, and we should generously and unstintingly embrace them into the European Union. The right hon. Gentleman asks why we shall veto the treaty. The treaty is only minimally about enlargement. In previous enlargements, matters such as the re-weighting of member states' votes and the number of commissioners and seats in the Parliament were decided after the completion of accession negotiations. It is not necessary to deal with them beforehand. If the IGC is all about
enlargement, why are proposals on the European security and defence identity, the charter of fundamental rights and qualified majority voting all part of it?There is an overwhelming roadblock on the path to enlargement, but it is not those narrow institutional issues to which the Foreign Secretary devoted so much attention; it is agriculture. It is clear that the common agricultural policy, in anything like its current form, cannot work in an enlarged European Union. It barely works with 15 members. How could it possibly do so with 20, 25 or 30 members? A centralised policy designed in the 1960s for a Common Market of six countries is simply inappropriate for a union of nearly 30 countries.
When the Prime Minister became leader of the Labour party, he promised that he would solve what he described as this "scandal of a food policy". Today's CAP is economic madness; it is an ecological folly, socially and environmentally disastrous, and morally indefensible. On top of that, it now prevents the enlargement of the EU, which is its moral duty and should be its historic destiny. Is not it clear that the right route is towards member states having greater power to decide the precise nature of agricultural support that is appropriate for each of them? Is not that the direction in which the Commission was beginning to go in Agenda 2000? Does not the IGC provide the ideal opportunity to introduce real reform? Why are not the Government demanding that?
If the Government are serious about enlargement, why are not they demanding reform of precisely the policy that is the roadblock to enlargement? Instead, they are busily engaged in an extensive spinning exercise that is designed to lull the public into a false sense of security. The Foreign Secretary was at it again today, in his most reassuring manner. We hear that the IGC will tidy up some loose ends--a bit of wrangling over how many commissioners each country has, the size of the European Parliament and the re-weighting of votes. However, the Government say nothing about the major developments on which decisions could be taken or the treaty changes that would end the veto by extending qualified majority voting in many areas. He has ruled out some of those--[Interruption.] Well, it is precisely because so much of the veto was given away in the past--
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