European Affairs

I do indeed. Frustration is building up, which was demonstrated in the recent European election results. People are either indifferent or hostile. The more powers that the European Parliament gets, the fewer people vote for it. In each and every treaty change since the founding of what was then called the common market, the European Parliament has been given more powers, but in each and every direct election since 1979, the average turnout has fallen. When people vote, they vote for rejectionist parties or extremist parties. We have to listen to that and do something about it. The hon. Member for West Bromwich, West described at some length the transfer of powers in the area of financial regulation and I have an example to discuss further. During the passage of the Bank of England Act 1998, the Opposition criticised the fact that the regulation of banks and financial institutions would fall between the triangle of the Treasury, the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority. We were told at the time that we need not worry, because there was something called a memorandum of understanding that would sort everything out. Well, the credit crunch arrived and nobody could find the memorandum of understanding. Profound and urgent reform is needed to sort out exactly who makes the rules, who enforces them and where the lines of accountability lie. However, the EU has another idea, which is to transfer the process to the EU. That will create more confusion, because a similar problem will arise. The Commission wants to control and regulate and so does the Council of Ministers—and we also have the European Central Bank. Instead of a triangle of confusion, we will have a hexagon of confusion. Instead of reforming and changing our system for the benefit of the City of London, we will transfer the whole process to a jurisdiction that we do not control. The Government do not want that. The Committee of which I, my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) and the hon. Member for West Bromwich, West are members has taken evidence from Treasury Ministers and they resist the transfer of power upwards, although there is of course very little that they can do about it. Indeed, we had confirmation of that in a letter that we received last week from the Minister who was responsible for such matters in the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. He admitted that he objected to the setting-up of the new regulatory committees as it would""undermine the independence of the committees."" He said that there would be no check on whether or on how future committees could be set up without any national agreement and confirmed that the proposal had been adopted by the European Parliament, which does not say much for the influence that the governing party is supposed to have through the European Parliament. He also said that that""the UK will vote against"" the proposal. The only problem with that is that that is all decided by majority voting. We have a situation in which the Government and Parliament do not want something, but it is to be forced on us. The European Union is an organisation to which we pay a net sum of £6 billion a year, during a recession. We are being told what to do by an organisation that we fund. Am I alone in finding that rather bizarre? I do not think that I am, because that is the clear outcome of the European Parliament elections. People do not want this, they do not like it and something has to be done about it. It makes nonsense of talk about the devolution of power when we progressively transfer power from this House upwards. That is not just the case in financial services regulation. It also applies in other policy areas, such as immigration and asylum policy. We are losing control. The details of residency rights, access to benefits and of whether and according to what conditions we can kick people out if they have a criminal record are not decided here. They are decided by the European Union by majority voting. Of course, that plays straight into the hands of the extremist parties. A stitch-up between the main political parties in a Parliament—who pretend that they can change things when they cannot, because the decisions are rooted and entrenched in European directives that can be changed only when the Commission proposes it—hands an enormous argument to the British National party and other extremist organisations. That happened in the recent elections. The sad truth is that this Parliament is no longer self-governing in a range of policy matters and the public have discovered that. Quite apart from the rise of the BNP, which I greatly regret, anyone who has an atom of democratic sensibility in them must realise that the recent elections send a message not simply to my party but to the Government. What are the Government doing about it? First, let me say what we are doing. My hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois), who is now on the Front Bench, has a plan at least to tackle the question of powerlessness in the European Parliament. Instead of a fake division between the Socialist group and the European People's party, both of which agree on more powers for Europe and want to transfer powers away from national Parliaments to the European Union, for the first time we will have a right-of-centre grouping that gives people a choice between whether they want more or less Europe. That, of course, terrifies the European Parliament. The last thing that it wants is people to make realistic choices about the direction in which they want Europe to go. Our second policy is to repatriate social and employment policy. There is no provision in the treaty for doing that, of course—it is a one-way valve—but we will get some powers back. I call that proper devolution. I call it giving substance to what the Prime Minister merely talks about. I wish my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh well and I have great confidence in his ability to do that. It will not be easy, but he has behind him in this endeavour, demonstrably, the majority of the British people. A European Council is coming up at the end of the week. We do not know in detail what will be discussed, but I have a fairly good idea because I have a copy of the conclusions. Hon. Members might innocently think that Heads of Government arrive at the Council meetings, discuss matters, decide and then tell the world what they have done. It is not like that at all. It is all decided beforehand. I have with me a copy of the conclusions, obtained from a Danish Parliament website. The Government talk about openness and transparency, but I had to go to a website abroad to get the conclusions. They contain pages of stuff about economic and financial regulation that goes much further than what the Foreign Secretary was talking about earlier. The conclusions contain absolutely nothing about the lessons to be learned from the European Parliament elections—the disconnection between the rulers of Europe and the ruled. The only thing that they address, I am afraid, is how further to bully the Irish electorate in the forthcoming second referendum, if and when it is held.