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European Affairs

None more patient than me, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I dare say that an inference can be drawn from what the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) says. I am thinking where I might hear such machinations outside this House, and I have to say that the hon. Gentleman is suggesting a level of considered conspiracy that I would usually associate only with the Liberal Democrat annual conference, where the leadership is concerned! The hon. Gentleman should take that as a compliment, because we have some of the best in the business when it comes to judging someone's motives at any given time. Matters move on. When the euro was introduced—without, of course, British participation—one un-named Eurosceptic currency trader, to cite someone whom the hon. Member for Stone might approve of, described the euro as ““a toilet currency””. That rather reminded me of the Scottish politician who, when the late Donald Dewar published the original devolution proposals, described the envisaged blueprint for Scotland as ““a pygmy Parliament””. Times move on, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and the politician who came out with that is as we speak serving as the First Minister in that so-called pygmy Parliament, as he chose to characterise it. I do not know what has happened to the Eurosceptic currency trader, but I suspect that recent events might well have flushed him away, because the euro has certainly not been flushed away. One is reminded of the leader of the Conservative party during the general election of 2001, when I was leader of my party, too. That former leader spoke, of course, as shadow Foreign Secretary this afternoon. However, the recurrent and repeated slogan of the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), as each day passed during the 2001 general election, was that there were only x number of days left to save the pound. Here we are at the end of 2008, and although I have been on a different side of the argument from the right hon. Gentleman since 2001, the pound is still very much with us. The shadow Foreign Secretary rather reminded me at the time of the 40 or so days of the 2001 campaign—and he certainly has in the eight or so years since—of one of the fanatical groups that go up to the top of mountains to say that the world is coming to an end at a certain time one afternoon, only to have to go back down the mountain rather shame-facedly when, funnily enough, the sun keeps rising in the east and setting in the west. The right hon. Gentleman no longer speaks about saving the pound, because it has not gone away, but his comments and predictions today should be taken in that context—his track record is not at all persuasive. The euro, then, is still with us and I think it can be judged to have been a success. The verdict may be mixed overall, but it remains a success. It has certainly not been the terrible failure that was predicted, any more than those who predicted the end of the pound have proved to be correct. If we recall some of the arguments against joining the euro at the time, we can see that some of the arguments have moved on. Time does not allow me to get into a great debate to disprove some of the arguments, but we were told, for example, about the housing market and mortgage finance and how different they were from the rest of Europe's. Well, how dramatically different is all that now and how much more different will it become in the period ahead, as we know from the scale and speed of recent events in that sector! We were also told about the funded nature of British pensions in comparison with continental Europe, but where lies that argument today? Suddenly, there has been a gross realisation within British society of the vast underfunding in our pensions sector. Great emphasis was understandably laid on the importance of the financial services industry. I agree: that is a correct and valid point, but everybody is now singing from the same hymn sheet to the effect that the financial services sector will have to change its ways and conduct itself and its business quite differently from what would have been assumed to be the case only a few years ago. Then there was the UK's dependence on oil. Oil production peaked in 1999 and it has almost halved since then. Once again, those economic calculations have moved on. Not one of those—still less taken together, or even if we added more still—makes a case for membership of the euro. That is not my argument. What they do make a case for, however, is to keep it under consistent rolling review and to prepare better for a more informed public discussion and debate as and when it becomes appropriate to do so—probably a few years hence. There are reasons why it makes no sense to join the euro quickly—obviously, in a recession, it would be ludicrous to start pegging our currency to fixed rates or targets at a time of uncertainty in the currency markets. Moreover, there is that great court of opinion out there that is still to be won over. We know that public opinion is deeply sceptical and cynical about any such move, which presents a huge job to those of a pro-European intent of whatever political persuasion even to get the facts of the case across. That is why joining the euro cannot be a policy, but it should remain a strategy and it should remain a legitimate aspiration for better times, years down the line, whatever Government are in power, underpinned by a confident vote from the British public as a whole. The more we can move the debate in that direction, the better it will be. It is sad that it has taken such calamitous circumstances for the debate to begin to make its way back to the desired level, but, for all the reasons I have given, it has done so. It now behoves the House and all other participants to contribute in a constructive and informing manner for the benefit of those who will be most affected by it, and, at the end of the day, those are our fellow citizens.