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European Affairs

It has been an excellent debate, in which we have heard 13 speeches. The hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) was the unlucky 13th, but he delivered an excellent, witty, off-the-cuff speech. The House was privileged to hear it; it was well worth waiting for. I should apologise for the fact that my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) is not in his place. He is currently visiting Pakistan, as the Minister knows, so he is unable to be here this evening. I am delighted to see the Minister for Europe in his place. A month ago at Foreign Office questions, we were all slightly worried that he had taken on the vows of a Trappist monk, not being allowed to speak on Europe. So worried did I get that I took up the matter further with the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s Question Time. On 1 November, the Prime Minister said:"““What my right hon. Friend is doing on behalf of this country in Europe is absolutely excellent.””—[Official Report, 1 November 2006; Vol. 451, c. 295.]" Obviously, relations have been repaired, as he went off to Riga and is in his place tonight answering this debate. We are delighted to see him and even more delighted than usual as I gather it is his birthday—[Interruption.] No, I am not going to say how old he is; he would not want me to do so. The Foreign Secretary correctly summed up current European challenges when he defined them at the Finnish embassy lunch on 28 November as"““counter-terrorism, climate change, nuclear proliferation, jobs and growth in a globalised world, organised crime, drugs, securing the energy we need to power our economies””." I doubt whether anyone could have summed them up better than that, but we have had 13 excellent speeches today so I shall try to mention some of them. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) spoke at length about the carbon emissions trading scheme. I totally agree that we want to make that scheme work. We want to ensure that it works fairly towards British companies and that other companies, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) said in a timely intervention, do not issue too many permits, thereby forcing our companies to purchase them at an excess price. I also wholly agree with the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North about the need for a forward-looking EU policy on biofuels and clean-coal technology, which will be vital in future if we are to reduce our carbon emissions. We then heard from my old friend the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), and I agree with him that the EU affects a vast amount of our constituents’ lives—it certainly does—and that EU policy on co-operation is being tested in a number of areas of the world, not least in Iraq, the middle east and Sudan, and we need to co-operate more closely with them on that. His amendment to the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill—which, as he said, was supported by Conservative Front Benchers—was an innovative solution to which, I am sure, we will wish to return. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who, sadly, is not in her seat—[Hon. Members: ““She is.””] Oh, she is. I am very sorry. She has moved seats, and I apologise to her. Of course, she did an excellent job on the convention last year. She mentioned the very important problems of Kosovo, which the hon. Member for Thurrock has just mentioned, and the possible implications for Russia of the independence movements in the Caucasus states. We all need to concentrate carefully on that very important issue. The hon. Lady mentioned the European Defence Agency, as did a number of other hon. Members, and I want to say something about it this evening. I do not agree with her. When NATO secured the peace all through the cold war; when NATO played a major part in Kosovo and elsewhere in the Balkans to secure the peace; when we have been invited into Afghanistan, under a United Nations resolution, to try to secure peace, infrastructure building and democracy; and when some European countries are not prepared to play their full part—even if they do play their full part, they do not do so with the flexibility of troops needed by the commanders on the ground—I do not understand in those circumstances why we need a separate European Defence Agency. As has been mentioned, when most European countries spend less than, or about, 1 per cent. of the gross domestic product on defence, the problem is that they need to spend more on defence, so that we can share the burden of defence more equally than we do at present. My hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring) made one of the most telling speeches in the debate. Of course, like other hon. Members, he was very supportive of EU enlargement. The Conservative party is particularly keen on enlargement, and many Members have spoken either in favour of or against Turkish membership. I want to say one or two things about Turkish membership. Turkey is, of course, a very large country, with a population of about 80 million, which is set to grow towards 100 million in the near future, and we all recognise the immigration problems that that could create. We all recognise the problems that Turkey has with different religious and political minorities. We recognise the problem of the green line in Cyprus. I visited Cyprus earlier this year. As my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) said, we recognise the difficulty of property rights in northern Cyprus. Of course we wish to see Turkey making progress on entry into the ports and airports in the north of Cyprus. All those things are difficulties; but as I said in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk, if having encouraged Turkey to open negotiations, the EU were to turn its back on Turkey and as result it became an Islamic state, the whole EU would rue that day. We must be very careful about that. The hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins)—I regret that I was not here when he made his speech—said that regional PR led to risky euro-enthusiastic MEPs. That may well be the case, and it may well be that we do not like the PR system and the open list system for elections to the European Parliament and we wish that the European Parliament had better scrutiny of the Commission’s affairs, but the European Parliament is nevertheless some form of democratically elected body. I totally agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie): we want the EU to be an open, trading non-bureaucratic body. We want it to succeed in world trade. As the Chancellor said today in his pre-Budget statement, we must look outwards to the rest of the world. We must look at what is going on in China and India and in the countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations. I attended the ASEAN gala dinner on Monday, and it is delightful to know that Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation is getting together in Vietnam—Vietnam of all countries, one of the most suppressed countries in the world emerging on to the world stage. Those are the challenges that the EU must face. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) made his traditional call for withdrawal from the EU. I have to say to him, in the gentlest and nicest terms—he is a good chap—that that is not official Opposition policy. We want to work within the EU. We want to see a reformed EU; but we do not wish to leave the EU. Let me tell him why. The EU has been amazing in embracing some of the most oppressed countries in the world—some of the former Commonwealth of Independent States countries. The whole EU, including this country, has benefited from the enlargement of the membership of the EU. NATO has benefited from the increased membership of the Baltic states, Ukraine and others. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) was also sceptical about the European experiment. We all have reservations about the European experiment. He talked about mission creep, and meddling and interfering. I have that fear about the new human rights body in Vienna. Human rights should be a matter that each individual state is proud to uphold and to have an excellent record on. We do not need an overarching body to tell us what to do in that respect. My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin graphically described some of the problems of Turkish membership. I have mentioned that. He also looked forward and considered what might have been in relation to the European constitution. With the advent of the French and the Dutch referendums, let us hope that the constitution is well and truly buried. I hope that, when the Minister for Europe sums up, he will tell us something about that. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend: we do not wish to see an external diplomatic service. We want to see the Government keeping British embassies open throughout the world and having the highest standards of ethics, morals and effectiveness. The British diplomatic service has been renowned for that in this and the last century. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Carswell), in the sort of robust speech that he is renowned for, pointed to the fact that there are much higher tariff barriers for some African countries. That is a real worry. It is a real concern in terms of the failure of the WTO Doha round of trade talks. We all want to see progress on the Doha round. The Government could do more to press their friend the Trade Commissioner to make sure that we are not continually protecting agricultural subsidies and farmers who are not competing in the real world. I say that as a farmer myself—I have declared that in the Register of Members’ Interests. It is shameful that the APEC countries that met in Vietnam last week said that they were prepared to break the deadlock on the WTO round provided that others did the same. The European Union could have done more. A successful Doha round, as my hon. Friend said, would be of enormous benefit to some of the poorest countries in the world. We should not shut them out from our markets. That is what is happening in far too many cases—by means not just of tariff barriers, but of non-tariff barriers and a whole range of other bureaucratic mechanisms for keeping them out of our market. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) made a typically robust speech. He, too, mentioned the problems of NATO and a separate European defence agency. I thoroughly agree with him. It has been a great privilege to sum up in this debate. The EU has expanded from the original six members when we joined it in 1973, to nine as it was then, to 27 now—looking forward to 30 with the advent of Croatia, Montenegro and Turkey. It is a very different Union from the one that existed in the original days of the European Economic Community. We need to look for continual reform. We look for inspired leadership. When the Prime Minister came to office, he said that he would give us that inspired leadership as far as Europe is concerned. We are still waiting. We very much hope that, at next week’s summit, he will show some of that inspired leadership and make sure that the European Union is pointed in the direction that we want to see it go in—a full, open, non-bureaucratic, trading organisation that creates employment and wealth for its citizens.