John
Hemming: Would the Minister agree that it shows a certain
amount of laxity on the part of the Commission not to try to identify
that information before issuing the
communication?
Mr.
Murphy: The Commission has a responsibility to identify
solutions to identified problems. In putting forward its proposals, it
has not identified in a coherent way the problem that it feels needs to
be resolved.
On resources,
the right hon. Member for Wells said that the current arrangement is an
odd allocation of resources. I believe that it would be an odd
allocation of resources for us to search across the nearly 200 postings
we have around the globe or to ask EU member states to do a similar
thing, when we reflect on the fact that fewer than 100 people are
involved. The
right hon. Gentleman spoke about anger being generated by perceptions
of “free riders”. That was his phrase, not mine. We are
talking about people in desperate situations. If there is a financial
transaction, we claim the money from their Government. It is
unfortunate to call people in desperate situations free riders. For
example, when we talk about our nationals being evacuated from Chad by
the brave forces of the French Republic, we are not talking about free
riders. Those were people in desperate
need. Let
me put this gently. I am certain that the right hon. Gentleman will not
agree with me, but I believe this is another example of how our being
positively engaged with Europe brings support and benefits to our
citizens. Instead of trying to negotiate a series of 26 bilateral
arrangements with other member states at a time of a national crisis or
man-made tragedy, we can say, “Would you please evacuate our
citizens, and we will sort out resource accounting at some point in the
future?” That mutual support, which is an important protection,
was signed up to by his Government before he was Europe
Minister.
Mr.
Hands: Will the Minister give
way?
Mr.
Murphy: I will give way one more time, but I am under
encouragement to make some final
progress.
Mr.
Hands: From the Minister’s description, it sounds
as though we need these arrangements to be able to deal with national
disasters, but that simply is not the case. We are doing perfectly
well, as far as I can tell, with national disasters and citizens in
distress. He is somewhat overstating the case. We have already
established that the status quo seems to work perfectly
well.
Mr.
Murphy: That is the case that I am making. I am not
advocating the Commission’s position. I am simply saying that
the current system of mutual support for EU nationals in countries
where their country is not represented is an important principle of
solidarity. To
conclude, we do not see merit in many of the proposals contained in the
Commission’s communication. Things can be done to simplify
processes, exchange information and learn from best practice, but such
matters must remain the competence of member states. We are very clear
about that.
Finally, the
hon. Member for Rayleigh has indicated that he wishes to press the
matter to a Division on the spurious basis that I do not have the
wording for a stamp in a 2010 passport. The lesson is: stick to
one’s brief precisely. I simply suggested that the current
wording of article 20 would not be as enlightening to our citizens as
it should be, and that those six and a half lines of carefully crafted
legalese should be simplified with a set of words that our citizens
could read and understand when they went on holiday or away to work. I
did not stick to the exact wording, and I suspect that it would have to
be negotiated across the UK Government and every other EU member state
so that it was in every member state’s passports and there was a
clear signal to every citizen of the European Union of the level of
support. Some 490 million such people travel around the globe on a
daily and weekly business, but the fact that today I do not have a
clear English definition of those five and a half lines of legal text
has more to do with the hon. Gentleman perpetually seeking ways to
polish his anti-European credentials than with my rather open
observation that we would have to turn those lines into something
closer to the English language so that UK nationals might benefit from
the support that could be available to them at a time of pressing and
personal need.
Question
put:— The
Committee divided: Ayes 7, Noes
5.
Division
No.
1] Heathcoat-Amory,
rh Mr.
David Question
accordingly agreed to.
Resolved,
That
the Committee takes note of European Union Document No. 5947/08 and
Addenda 1 and 2, European Commission Communication, Diplomatic and
consular protection of union citizens in third countries; recalls that
such Communications are not legally binding; underlines that the
provision of consular assistance remains a matter for Member States;
and in this context, welcomes the Commission's Communication as a
contribution to continuing reflections on promoting consular
co-operation among EU Member
States. Committee
rose at seven minutes to Six
o’clock.
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