European Union (Amendment) Bill

I have hon. Friends with me today, which is welcome. Parliament should be involved in the balance of decision making between the UK and the EU. Today, we must consider the details of Parliament's role, including how many and which decisions should be addressed by Parliament. At the same time, we should not impose a huge bureaucratic burden that stalls any kind of process both in this House and the EU. We also need to consider how Parliament should decide such matters. The discussion on how it should decide such matters will be addressed by the second group of amendments, so I do not intend to stray into that territory. Suffice to say, there is some merit in the suggestions about greater scrutiny. Indeed, the proposal on passing an Act of Parliament might allay the concerns expressed by various hon. Members that the Bill would give us weaker controls than are currently allowed for. Many hon. Members have expressed concerns about the passerelle clause. In particular, the right hon. Members for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) and for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) have warned us that the clause is not benign. They gave us the history of previous treaties on which it was stated that there would be parliamentary approval. Although I do not agree with the extent of their scare stories, I think that Parliament should have the right to decide. I therefore welcome the Government's recognition of that point in clause 6(1)(a), which states:"““A Minister of the Crown may not vote in favour of or otherwise support a decision under any of the following unless Parliamentary approval has been given in accordance with this section””." That is followed by a long list of the different areas to which that provision will apply. Some of those areas are sensitive, particularly clause 6(1)(c), which concerns"““Common and Foreign Security Policy””." When parliamentary approval is sought in such cases in the future, it will be incumbent on Ministers to make a strong case as to why further moves to qualified majority voting would be appropriate. I reiterate that, particularly in less sensitive areas, we do not want to create such a bureaucratic burden that progress is stalled within the European Union, although I suspect that that is the motivation behind some of the amendments. In particular, amendment No. 48, which was tabled by the right hon. Member for Wells, proposes that every decision in the Council should be subject to approval in this place. That is a recipe for paralysis, which some hon. Members may want to see, although I for one do not. Amendment No. 48 makes no sense, because it seeks to establish parliamentary approval for decisions that are currently subject to qualified majority voting. That would effectively reinstate the veto in those areas, which is clearly nonsense and would wreck the treaty. Amendment No. 286 was tabled by the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett). I suspect that he and I have different views about the benefits of market liberalisation—I am not a fan of protection—but the provisions in his amendment on health services and social housing concern matters where we do not necessarily want European interference. However, we are in a single market, and when it comes to issues such as postal services and transport, we need to recognise that that can be beneficial. We do not want this House to second-guess every decision in those areas. The hon. Gentleman did not take my intervention. I wish he had—he was only too keen to take one from the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper); I am not sure what that hon. Gentleman has that I do not. If the hon. Member for Hemsworth had taken my intervention, I would have told him that, unlike some hon. Members, I do not think that we can blame the EU for what has happened to the Post Office in this country. He would be far better off if he directed his comments to his own Front Benchers and at their undermining of post offices through the scrapping of the pension book, the removal of Government services and the heavy-handed way in which they have been forcing benefit claimants to receive direct payments instead of using post offices. The hon. Gentleman's amendment was interesting in that it suggested at various points that a statement on the negotiating mandate should be laid before Parliament. There have been genuinely interesting exchanges on the merits or otherwise of that proposal. Like the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, when I first read the amendment I was very much of the view that if we were negotiating a position, the last thing that we would want to do would be to lay out all our negotiating points in public on the internet so that others in the European decision-making process could see exactly where our lines were. There are such potential problems with the amendment, although I have to say that I like the concept of the democratic link; it is important to try to ensure that there is proper scrutiny in the House and that decisions are therefore closer to our constituents. There was a suggestion that, although having the negotiating statements in public would be problematic, some other House procedure—perhaps having the discussion in a private sitting of the European Scrutiny Committee—might be a way around that issue. However, I did not detect a great deal of enthusiasm for the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) to be receiving telephone calls from the Prime Minister at 3 am as various aspects of EU policy were negotiated. Perhaps that is not the best way forward. I am sure that, given the brains in the House and their knowledge of different parliamentary procedures, there is some way of finding an opportunity for greater scrutiny without laying all our cards on the table so that our EU partners know exactly what we are going to do. Initially, when I read amendment No. 47, I thought that the change in wording from"““may not vote in favour of or otherwise support””" to"““shall vote against or otherwise reject””," was an issue of slight semantics and that the two wordings essentially meant the same thing. Obviously, the issue is whether an abstention would allow something through. I confess that I am no lawyer, but to my mind if abstaining led to something being implemented into law, would that not be conceived as ““otherwise supporting””? However, even if that is the case—as I say, I am no lawyer—the amendment at least makes the issue crystal clear and so is perhaps worthy of support. Furthermore, let us face it—if the amendment listed areas that the Government already recognise should be proceeded with only under parliamentary approval, I would be intrigued to know the Government's objections.