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European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but in a spirit of amity with my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal, who I find to be a most engaging person, and because he went to church this morning—even though he did not repent—let me say how glad I am to move back to the issue of exclusive competence. If we carried on any further with our current topic of debate, I suspect that the Chairman might well intervene and encourage us to return to the issue of exclusive competence. As I was saying before I was diverted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal, the Union will grab and maintain new areas of exclusive competence. In particular, the Union will dictate competition rules, misleadingly justified under the functioning of the internal market as an exclusive competence. Currently, article 5 of the treaty on the European Union stresses that in areas that do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Community shall take action in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity"““only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States and can therefore by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved by the Community””." That represents a big problem, because it makes certain assumptions. First, it assumes that subsidiarity can be applied, but as I have said in previous debates, I simply do not believe that it ever has been. Secondly, there is the problem that somebody has to judge what is being ““better achieved””. Indeed, it has not been determined in which areas the Community has exclusive competence, which has inevitably led to legal disputes. The European Court of Justice has been recognising the exclusive power of the Community within certain areas where it had not previously had competence. Now it has those competences and the new article is a reflection of ECJ practices and existing case law. The European Community common policy approach will take greater precedence than British obligations to third countries and Commonwealth countries, for example. That matter relates to what the hon. Member for Elmet (Colin Burgon) said a few moments ago about third and Commonwealth countries and the representations of non-governmental organisations. I take a great interest in matters pertaining to aid, as does my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal and my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), who chairs one of our policy groups on international aid. We should take very careful note of the way in which economic partnership agreements are working and of the damage that that is doing. As I was saying, European Community common policy will take greater precedence than British obligations to third and Commonwealth countries, and the European Court of Justice has said that we would"““no longer have the right””" to maintain existing relations. That is the seriousness of the situation. The European Court has said, in relation to our obligations to third countries and Commonwealth countries, at the very time when we should expand our interest in the globalised economy—particularly in relation to India and its new-found opportunities, Malaysia, the all-party group on which I chair, and all the other Commonwealth countries with which we have a common heritage—that we will no longer have the right to maintain our existing relations. Control over the customs union, establishing the competition rules necessary for the functioning of the internal market, monetary policy, common commercial policy, the conservation of marine biological resources under the common fisheries policy—all are locked into the Union. On the last of those, the Union will be allowed further to regulate catches or ban fishing in several areas. To conserve stocks, therefore, fishing quotas will be further reduced. Moreover, the Lisbon treaty introduces the Union's exclusive competence to conclude an international agreement when"““its conclusion is provided for in a legislative act of the Union or is necessary to enable the Union to exercise its internal competence, or insofar as its conclusion may affect common rules or alter their scope.””" Against that background, this is not a game. In relation to the realities of competition, it involves the whole question of the extent to which we are able to succeed as a country. As I said in an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal, I simply do not agree that the whole of the European Union has been a success. As many statistics and figures demonstrate, regrettably, the European Union is dropping down the league. The predictions are that, largely because of over-regulation, the failure of initiatives such as the Lisbon agenda, and the failure of the integration process, by 2020 the EU'S actual GDP will take us even further down the league table. That will affect our constituents. We must therefore spring the trap and start renegotiating the treaties, and get ourselves into a relationship of an association of nation states. I would strongly recommend to Members a fascinating book that has just come out by Professor Paul Taylor, recently a professor of international relations and director of the European Institute at the London School of Economics. He has written about the failure of the European Union integration process. He gives examples of how the European Union has failed in relation to trade and other matters, and effectively argues that that failure has demonstrated that the Eurosceptic arguments, which have been developed over the past 20 years, have been proved right. Do I take great satisfaction from that? Twenty years ago, I did make this speech on the Single European Act, and I have not repented of the speech but I have repented of the vote. I take no satisfaction, and never have done, from the failings in the European Community or the European Union. In its origins, it was a good idea. In 1945, people probably would have thought that the European Coal and Steel Community and all the rest of it was the right thing to do. The bottom line, however, is that it has gone in the wrong direction. For example, on the question of exclusive competence, I would refer to another European Court of Justice case, Commission v. Council, case 22-70, concerning a European agreement on road transport, better known as the ERTA case, in which the ECJ delineated the concept of exclusive competence. It stressed that"““each time the Community, with a view to implementing a common policy envisaged by the Treaty, adopts provisions laying down common rules, whatever form these may take… the Member States no longer have the right, acting individually or even collectively, to undertake obligations with third countries which affect those rules or alter their scope.””" This provision in the treaty, with the single personality, will remove from the member states most of their current treaty-making powers in those areas. The Lisbon treaty has formalised the idea that member states' competences will be limited once the Union has acted. Article 2C includes the internal market as an area of shared competence. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wells and my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean touched on these issues. The article lists as areas of shared competence the internal market; social policy; economic, social and territorial cohesion; agriculture and fisheries; environment; consumer protection; transport; trans-European networks; energy; the area of freedom; security and justice; common safety concerns in public health matters; research; technology development and space; development co-operation; and humanitarian aid. Energy and space are new Union competences. A vast range of activity that should be in the remit of this Parliament and this Government will be handed over to European control. I believe, in a nutshell, that the European Union as a customs union will continue to prevent us from pursuing an independent trade policy. I believe that the rules establishing the internal market will remain the same and that an uncompetitive Europe will continue, with very serious consequences of the kind illustrated by my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean. The internal-market question is being internalised, and it is not being understood that we live in a global economy in which India, China, Malaysia and other countries are developing just as we developed in the 18th century. We want to work with them in a peaceable fashion. Free trade is the essence of peace and prosperity, as Cobden and Bright demonstrated in the mid-19th century. This is the key: we should understand that the rules that are being developed—involving the concentration of power, the apex of decision making being taken away from the free markets and the decisions becoming the arid, dry, desiccated decisions of the European Court of Justice—are not the way to go. They will not allow us to secure the flexibility in trade that I know is desired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron). He wants economic competitiveness, and I wholeheartedly support him in that aspiration. That and the sovereignty issue are two of the reasons why I voted for him in the leadership election. We must put our money where our mouth is. We will only secure that economic competitiveness if we change the basis on which the European Union functions, alter the rules relating to the customs union and the internal market, and return to the EFTA system. That has not yet been mentioned today. We should bring back the European Free Trade Association in a modified form. We need an association of nation states working peaceably together, within a framework that enables us to trade not only among ourselves but throughout the global order, as I said in my speech in April 1986. My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Sir Michael Spicer) has just entered the Chamber. In 1996, with great prescience, he wrote a book about all these issues and the necessity to maintain free trade. He and I had such a firm alliance with others during the entire Maastricht proposals, in part because we eschewed the idea of a European Government and we wanted free trade, liberalised markets and to ensure that the internal market did not become protectionist. That is why we fought that battle. The politics of the treaty of Lisbon, the deceit that lay behind its origins, and the manner in which the mandate was imposed upon the people of this country and other European states in defiance of referendums in France and Holland, demonstrate that the politics has been leading the economics. I believe that democracy and freedom of choice must lead, and that this House represents the democracy of this country through its representatives. The politics of choice in politics must, however, be paralleled by the politics of choice in economics. That is what this debate is really about, and I totally agree with the exceptional speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean, because he identified the real problem that we must face up to in this globalised world.