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6.34 pm
Mr. Bill Rammell (Harlow): I welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate. The most important issue on the agenda at Helsinki will be enlargement. We have a moral and a practical responsibility to push forward enlargement as quickly as possible. We have a moral responsibility because, for decades, we lectured the former eastern bloc countries about the need to move to democracy. When they have done that, it would be wrong and irresponsible for us not to acknowledge that and to bring those countries into membership.
We have a practical responsibility involving our own self-interest and security interests. The real danger following the cold war is that of a continued division in Europe between those nations that are permanently rich and those that are permanently poor. The permanent exclusion of some countries will create the threats of illegal migration, a growing drugs trade and a degree of political instability that is not in this country's interests. That is why enlargement is crucial and should not be just a pious aspiration.
We must will the means as well as the ends. That is why the agenda for the intergovernmental conference must be set firmly in place at the Helsinki summit. We must pick up on what my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary described as the leftovers from the Amsterdam summit, but they are large leftovers and we must get to grips with the problems quickly. We must bring the decision-making structures and the institutional structures of the European Union, which were originally designed for six countries, up to a standard that can cope with an EU of 20, 25 or more countries.
That will involve considering the size of the Commission, the reweighting of votes and a further extension of qualified majority voting. There is a strong argument for reforming the voting system. The point has already been made--it is worth repeating--that if enlargement takes place without reform of the voting system, we will be in the indefensible position in which the countries that represent the majority of the population of the EU would not be able to muster a blocking minority under qualified majority voting. We cannot support that. Clearly national sensitivities are involved and votes cannot accurately reflect the size of populations. However, there must be movement towards the larger nations. To put it crudely, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Spain must have proportionately more votes.
In any organisation--the EU is no different in this respect--achieving such change would mean us offering something in return. Therefore, along with the other larger countries, we should consider giving up one of our Commissioners, so that each country has, at this stage, one Commissioner. I would however like to go further than that, and I would welcome the comments of Ministers on this subject. It has not been fleshed out in the past.
If the EU is ultimately made up of 25 or 30 nation states, it will be preposterous to have 25 or 30 Commissioners. There are only portfolios for 12 or 15 Commissioners. The devil makes work for idle hands, so if we accept the proposal to have 25 or 30 Commissioners, we will createthe impression--and often the reality--of excessive bureaucracy. Too many people will be trying to do the same jobs, and that is an impediment to decent decision making in the European Commission.
If we stick to the notion that every country must have a Commissioner, we shall support the false notion that the Commission is a quasi-Government. Although I am strongly pro-European--it is in Britain's interests to be in the EU--I am not in favour of a federal Europe. Dealing with that issue sooner rather than later is in all our interests. For the next wave of entrants, we could accept the proposition that every country has one Commissioner, but at a later date--possibly in 2009 or 2010--we should limit the number of Commissioners to, for example, 20. That would be a sensible move.
Clearly, we would have to consider what to do when there are more than 20 member states. It would be perfectly proper, in those circumstances, to consider a system of rotating Commissioners from the different nation states, and the focus of decision making would then be on the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. That would be a far more effective way of dealing with the democratic deficit and of beginning to explain to people what influence they have over decisions in the European Union.
At the intergovernmental conference and in the discussions at Helsinki, we need to address the issue of extending qualified majority voting. In the right circumstances and on the right issues, that is a perfectly sensible arrangement and could be in our national interest. The Conservatives extended qualified majority voting 42 times while they were in office. Either they were going through an 18-year temporary loss of their senses--which is always a possible explanation--or they realised that it was in Britain's interest to extend that procedure on certain issues. I therefore support the Government's position that there are certain areas in which it is in our interest to be prepared to consider such an extension.
I strongly make the point that an extension is not against the national interest. When the Foreign Secretary opened the debate, he gave some figures that I shall expand on. He said that last year under QMV, we lost a vote on only two out of 213 occasions, and so far this year, we have not lost a vote on any of 181 occasions. The idea, therefore, that QMV is not in this country's interest is simply not borne out by the facts, and we should use it to stop other countries unreasonably blocking reforms that are in our interest.
We need to focus on the reform of the Commission, where Neil Kinnock is doing sterling work, but we need also to consider what we should do when there is clear evidence that individual Commissioners have been involved in misconduct and have committed an act that brings them and their political office into disrepute. There should be a clear and readily understood mechanism for dealing with that.
In securing the nomination of the existing Commission, President Prodi secured an informal right to dismiss Commissioners on the basis of the personal undertakings of the commissioners who were the nominees in 1999. There is a strong, or at least arguable, case that we should go further and enshrine that right in the treaty so that it is clear that if misconduct occurs, there is a mechanism to deal with it. I heard the shadow Foreign Secretary say that the matter should be left to the Council of Ministers. Considering what happened last year, however, I do not think that that is an effective mechanism, and we should consider including a provision in the treaty.
Offstage at the council, there will also be bilateral discussions with the French Government about the continuing beef crisis and their refusal to lift their ban. I hope, however, that the matter will be resolved shortly. Let me make it clear that there is no dispute between hon. Members on either side of the House--the French Government are clearly in the wrong. The scientific evidence is overwhelming, and the changes that have taken place mean that British beef is among the safest in the world. The key dispute is not about interpreting the French Government's position but about how we resolve the problem, get the beef ban lifted and stop the French Government blocking our exports.
I argue, as do the Government, that our only leverage over the French is our membership of the European Union, because a set of legal rights and responsibilities gives us influence. It is worth repeating that outside the European Union, 60 countries are imposing a ban on British beef and there is nothing whatsoever that we can do about that. Australia, Canada and the United States of America all oppose lifting the ban on British beef, and we can do nothing.
Mr. John Cryer (Hornchurch):
Is my hon. Friend arguing that an elected sovereign Government do not have the right to introduce selective import controls?
Mr. Rammell:
We have the right to adopt selective import controls, but that is a dangerous course because we regularly export £10 billion of goods to the European Union, and only British exports and jobs would be the losers.
I am glad that my hon. Friend asked that question because it leads me on to my next point. Conservative Members have argued that we should ignore the rules and the legal situation, and simply begin a trade war by imposing an illegal ban on French imports. As I said, our exports and jobs would be at risk. There is a history to the Tory tactics on that issue. At the beginning of the beef dispute, when the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) was Prime Minister, there was a time when he said "We shall not accept this. We shall not agree to any European Union decision until the issue is resolved." He said just that on 21 May 1996, and then humiliatingly climbed down on 21 June 1996.
That underlines that such tactics do not help us to make progress, or protect and pursue the British national interest. We should continue to do as we are doing and use the rules that apply by dint of our EU membership, while pursuing the French diplomatically so that we can get the ban lifted sooner rather than later.
At Helsinki, there will also be a substantial debate about the withholding tax. Some people, including many Conservative Members, will say that it is the thin end of the tax harmonisation wedge and that if we join the single currency, we will be on a slippery slope and eventually all tax rates will be set in Brussels. There is no evidence to substantiate that allegation. Certainly, nothing in the Maastricht treaty implies that there must be centrally set and co-ordinated tax rates. There is a 3 per cent. limit on Government deficit as a proportion of gross domestic product, but individual nation states still retain the right to comply with that limit by using either high tax, high spend policies or low tax, low spend policies.
Earlier, we discussed countries that share a single currency but do not have harmonised tax rates. The United States is the most obvious example. Contrary to popular Euro-sceptic myth, there is no great desire among other European Union nations to push for further tax harmonisation. A Conservative Member referred to corporation tax earlier in the debate. The Italian Finance Minister is on the record as saying, last December, that harmonisation of corporation tax would be untimely, questionable and, above all, hardly feasible. The Spanish Prime Minister has made it clear on a number of occasions that he is opposed to a single tax rate because it would be a recipe for inefficiency. The Conservative party's argument that there is a great momentum towards having unified tax rates throughout the European Union does not stand up to detailed scrutiny.
In principle, the withholding tax is logical because its purpose is to tackle tax evasion--a notion that I should have thought we would all support. However, the current proposal is seriously flawed. Like some hon. Members who spoke earlier, I believe that there is a danger that we will drive capital out of Europe. There are many issues that should be dealt with in the nation state and many that should be dealt with at a European Union level, but tax evasion should be tackled at an international level, across the board. I welcome the fact that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is currently considering the issue.
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