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Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base

I am most grateful for the indulgence of the House in allowing me to take part in this debate, despite the fact, which I regret and for which I apologise, that I missed the speeches by the Economic Secretary to the Treasury and the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), who speaks for the Opposition. I heard my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) and the subsequent speeches, and I get the tenor of the objections that have been raised to the draft directive and the concerns, which have been very well expressed. I wish to speak not so much about the substance of the directive as about the matter that is so germane to this debate: the nature of subsidiarity—what it is, and what we mean by it. That is the issue on which the debate hangs: a plea for subsidiarity. We should remind ourselves what article 5 of the Treaty on the European Union says about subsidiarity:"““Under the principle of subsidiarity…the Union shall act only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level.””" Back in 1992-93, when the Maastricht treaty was being debated, a great deal of Hansard ink was devoted to reporting the discussion of that principle, and I might say that I majored in the topic. The advisory part of article 5 relates to the objectives of the proposed action, and subsidiarity is a purely relative concept if it relates to the objectives of the proposed action, so what are the objectives in the case before us? They are set out at the start, and this speech is, I am afraid, about the futility of depending on subsidiarity. Subsidiarity is a futile defence of the national interest. Article 1 of the preamble to the draft directive states:"““Companies which seek to do business across frontiers within the Union encounter serious obstacles and market distortions owing to the existence of 27 diverse corporate tax systems. These obstacles and distortions impede the proper functioning of the internal market.””" The proposed directive refers to ““disincentives for investment””, to the complexity in article 3 whereby the"““network of double taxation conventions between Member States does not offer an appropriate solution,””" and to the need for"““a single market for the purpose of corporate tax””."