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European Affairs

No, we do not, but we certainly do with the European Union. If we had a system of co-operation, we could co-operate with Europe and countries beyond it. I shall leave the issue at that. There have been quite a number of comments about the economic package, and I do not need to spend more than a few seconds on that. As I said in an intervention, the economic package has failed. The attitude adopted by the Conservative party leadership is right, and the German Government have clearly taken a similar line. It is a question of a stitch in time; by borrowing more, we will get into a position of facing intolerable taxation. I am afraid that there are the issues of the private finance initiative, nuclear decommissioning, public sector pensions in relation to Network Rail and a number of other issues, and they are all relevant to the money that the Government are to borrow. On pages 91 and 98 of their own pre-Budget report, the Government clearly indicated that they would include those as contingent liabilities in their report for next year. If we add in the contingent liabilities that the Government themselves have already accepted, and include the Maastricht arrangements to which I referred in my exchange with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, we see that the correct figure is not £1 trillion but £1.258 trillion. We are getting into astronomical figures of a kind that should truly concern any Member of this House. I have not heard anybody challenge those figures, although I have heard people chuckle at the idea that anybody might actually read a pre-Budget report and quote back to the Government what they have set out in it. The figures affect the Maastricht arrangements because the level at which a country can no longer go into the euro, in terms of percentage of debt as against national income, is 60 per cent., which happens—surprise, surprise—to be a mere 3 per cent. above the 57 per cent. at which the Government have pitched their figures. That was quite a nice little coincidence. I was intrigued that almost immediately after the pre-Budget report was issued up jumped Lord Mandelson, in effect urging people—in concert with his old chum President Barroso, who certainly is not elected by us—to join the euro, and the pressure again emerged for us to do so. However, the Government will not be able to do that, on any reasonable, competent analysis of the percentage of debt as against national income, because they cannot get anywhere near what is required. A great deal of that—not all of it; I will be slightly generous—is the Government's own fault. It is unwise for Conservative Members to say that it is all the Government's fault, but I would say that it is about 75 per cent. their fault, because they induced the situation and made it worse. Let me turn to defence. I made an interjection—I call it that rather an intervention—on the Foreign Secretary when he referred to the remarks made about European defence by the NATO ambassador. Those remarks were wrong, because historically the relationship between ourselves and the United States has been built on NATO, for very sound reasons. Yes, we can and should have co-operation between ourselves and other countries in Europe, but I am bound to ask how much that has been worth given that our young lads are being killed in the south of Afghanistan when other countries—not all of them, but some—are not committing as they should in the situation in which our boys are being put at risk. The European Union must consider this before it starts grandstanding, as Nicolas Sarkozy is prone to do, about what it will do as a European defence organisation. It is a serious matter, because every week the Prime Minister has to get up at Prime Minister's Questions and tell us about the sad circumstances in which, as a matter of patriotic duty to this country and peace in the world, our young lads are going out there to fight. It is no good telling us that that can be done under the aegis of the European Union. I would strongly urge President-elect Barack Obama to consider the speech that he made in Berlin and subsequent remarks that have suggested, in effect—they may be misquotations; I make that point very strongly—that Britain should join up with this new European Union. I imagine that he would also mean, if he was not being misquoted, that it would be along the lines of the Lisbon treaty. I am sure that he is far too diplomatic to say anything directly, but I comment on it to this extent. Since 1947, United States policy on Europe has always been to encourage us to play a direct part in the integrated process. That has been proved to be wrong over an extended period. There are advantages to working within a European community or alliance. Contrary to what the Prime Minister frequently suggests when I intervene on him, which is that I am seeking withdrawal, that has not been my explicit objective at any time. I have always said that we need a renegotiation. That is implicit in the fact that this is a failing system. It is undemocratic and over-regulated. The Lisbon agenda does not work. Unemployment levels are enormous. The rise of the far right in parts of Europe is extremely disturbing. It is important to deal with this situation before becomes a crisis. The responsible approach would be for all the member states at the Council meeting that is about to take place to get together and see how they can create a new kind of Europe that would fulfil the criteria of association that I have suggested. If that is not done, I fear that the whole thing will come crashing down, and then we will get massive unemployment combined with all the circumstances that go with it, including disruption at local level that could cause no end of trouble for the people of Europe. We owe it to them to be responsible and not to allow Europe to go on turning itself into a compression chamber that will explode under the weight of the compression put into it. Over the years, the best policy that has been adopted is the kind of relationship that existed between Churchill and Roosevelt or Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. I am not going to decry the relationships between past Labour Governments and our friends in America, but we should be very clear that our advice to the United States is that we do not want to be part of a European Union along the Lisbon treaty lines or any other lines that frustrate and undermine the sovereignty of this Parliament, which was responsible, and will continue to be responsible, for standing up for the rights and freedoms of the people of Europe, as we have done in the past and will continue to do in future. I turn finally to the question of Georgia, Ossetia and Kosovo. I was deeply worried about the recognition of Kosovo. I know that I disagree with my Front-Bench colleagues about this. As far as I am aware, the matter has been referred to the International Court of Justice. Some of us who said that it was unwise are now being justified, because there is a serious problem about the way in which the European Union pressurised, organised and manipulated the arrangements that subsequently led to the declaration of independence. It is an internal problem as well as an external one. The same applied in relation to Ossetia and its neighbouring province. I am afraid that that, too, was precipitated by the actions in Kosovo. Although there may be blame on both sides, the reality is that one opens the Pandora's box of those sorts of countries at one's peril. This needs to be re-evaluated. We should not assume that merely because it has been done it will remain a matter of indifference to the people who live in those countries, because that is not so. As I understand it from a television programme that I saw, which seemed pretty convincing, the President of Georgia is being accused of war crimes, or at any rate the people under his direction or surveillance are being so accused, in relation to how they behaved in Georgia a few months ago. It seems to me that all is not well in the European Union. It would be far better if we could have a proper renegotiation at this Council. I have made the case for that on many occasions. I am not expecting it to happen; I am not holding my breath. I have to say that the situation is getting more critical. The financial package, and the financial situation, is generating more difficulties, and this is the time—[Interruption.] I am so glad that the Minister for Europe has just come in. It is such a pleasure to see her. She very wisely stayed out during my speech. None the less, I will do my best to astonish her by saying that if I were asked, despite my deepest concerns about the sovereignty of the United Kingdom and the supremacy of this Parliament, which I thought was more important, today's debate or yesterday's debate on the question whether this House was sovereign over its internal affairs, I would say—difficult as it may be to draw a distinction—that in principle, yesterday's debate, abortive as it was, was more important than the question of the supremacy of the European Union. If we do not get the matters that we debated yesterday right, and we have not yet, we will not be able to deal later on with the question of the supremacy of the United Kingdom Parliament.