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Treaty of Lisbon (No. 4)

The single market is central to the European Union. We know that in the 1950s the forerunner of the European Union grew out of the agreements between France and Germany for the benefit of their coal and steel industries. Fast-forwarding to the early 1990s, we eagerly anticipated the advent of the single market, with its principles of the free movement of people, goods, capital and services. Inevitably, that cannot be achieved Harry Potter-style by the wave of a magic wand on a single date. It is a process of slow evolution, and the treaty that we are debating today is one further step in that process of evolution. I remind the House how much we depend on the single market—3.2 million UK jobs are dependent on exports to the rest of the EU, and some £550 million-worth of goods and services are exported every day to other EU countries. Some 63 per cent. of our exported goods go to other EU countries. Without the customs union that the EU single market provides, those markets would be much more difficult to access. The creation of the single market has cut companies' overheads and much of the red tape, especially if one compares the difficulties of exporting to non-EU markets. It also ensures that EU countries recognise one another's product standards. That means that UK manufacturers can save on the considerable costs involved in retesting and modifying products to meet specific standards required in non-EU countries. One would expect more services to be marketed to people in their home countries; nevertheless, some 40 per cent of services exported by the UK go to the rest of the EU. A large amount of foreign investment from other EU countries also comes into the UK. The EU provides a better deal for consumers—we have lower prices and less red tape, we have full consumer rights when we go shopping in another EU country, and we have fairer competition. Of course things are not always right, and there will always be details that we want to work on further. For example, we know that work is being done on roaming charges for mobile phones. We know, too, about the energy market in which there has been some liberalisation but where some aspects are still not right. One domestic problem that we have is the tremendous disparity between what a poorer household pays for electricity and what a richer household pays, based on the difference between payment for electricity on a meter and payment by direct debit. There will always be problems that we need to put right, but the structures are in place to allow a pan-European approach to resolving them. We hear a good deal about migration. We hear about the thousands of EU migrant workers who have come to the UK and who make a valuable contribution to our economy, but we often forget about the 1.6 million Britons who are living in other parts of the EU. They go there for various reasons—for work opportunities, to travel and broaden the mind, because of family ties, or simply because they enjoy the climate. The main countries that they like to go to are France and Spain. We may have an image of such people being rather privileged—possibly top company executives—but travelling back by boat from northern Spain on a stormy Christmas eve one year, I met numerous people who were working in Spain and coming home for Christmas. What were they doing out there? They were plumbers, painters, builders and all manner of small business people who were making a good living in another EU country. They were immensely helped by the single market in so many aspects of their working lives. Even though they encountered Spanish bureaucracy, which is a law unto itself, they were grateful for the many issues that they were able to sort out much more easily because of the single market. All together, we make 51 million journeys to other EU countries, and 21 million visitors come to the UK. Tourism is an immense source of income for us. People criticise EU legislation but we have benefited from it. Without legislation from Brussels, we would have to legislate about the same issues in this place, so it is a help to us and it can even out the differences and the competitive disadvantages between EU countries. We have the right to 20 days' annual leave. Our pensioners can claim their pensions in mainland Europe. We have minimum standards of paternity and maternity leave, and equal pay and protection against discrimination in the workplace. All those important advances have been brought to us through the single market and EU structures. Objective 1 status has been a tremendous help to us in Wales. It represents the principle of resourcing less advantaged areas that are often disadvantaged precisely because of their geographical location on the periphery of the EU, as opposed to the motor regions of France, Germany, northern Spain, northern Italy and the southern part of the UK, which are nearer the centre. Objective 1 money has provided immense benefits to Wales. For example, more than £3.2 billion of investment has been made in west Wales and the valleys in all sorts of projects, such as the techniums, which attract and nurture small businesses and provide opportunities for local people to develop their own businesses or attract investment from outside. In Llanelli the extraordinary task of clearing away a huge coastal area of derelict industrial ground, cleaning and restoring it and preparing it for new state-of-the-art factories has been possible with the use of EU funds. I conclude with a few words from Giscard d'Estaing, who has not yet been quoted in today's debate.