European Affairs

I want to make a brief contribution. I would like to draw the Minister's attention to my earlier questions, two of which he failed to answer, but to which I hope he will return in his winding-up speech. The first was about why the Government chose not to fulfil their manifesto promise to give the British people a referendum on the Lisbon treaty. They, along with the other major parties in the House, promised to do that. He failed to answer that with his unfortunate, humorous remarks. Furthermore, will the Minister answer my question about the Prime Minister trumpeting the fact that Baroness Ashton is a Briton and that her promotion to High Representative will give Britain a voice in the European Council and Commission? To be fair, the Minister has not done that. In fact, he and the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) accurately pointed out that Baroness Ashton will of course represent the Commission, not Britain. He was honest enough to say that, but the Prime Minister has not been putting it in quite the same way. It would be helpful if the Minister cast his opinion on that when he winds up. My main point—I have a couple of subsidiary ones—draws attention to something that another Member has referred to already. The title of the debate is "European Affairs", but in such debates we tend to launch immediately into EU matters, forgetting that there are other countries in Europe. We also then become very introspective and focus only on our future in Europe. Conservative Members are often criticised by Labour Members—this is one of their favourite lines—for being little Englanders or, as I heard once, for not liking Europe because it has foreigners in it. My problem is that Europe is not foreign enough! It constitutes a very small part of the world's population and will increasingly represent a smaller share of the world's economy. My problem is that, if we spend too much time focusing on our economic performance relative to other members of the EU, we will lose sight of the fact that we must compete, win business and capture markets in the rest of the rapidly growing world. If our businesses and future prosperity are to be assured, we need to keep an eye on the rest of the world and not obsess about our position in the EU. That is something the Government often forget to do. I see now from looking at my notes that it was the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) who mentioned foreigners, while talking about my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans). As I said, my argument is that Europe is not foreign enough. One reason why we should consider our position from a global perspective is that our interests are not always aligned and we are often in competition with other parts of the EU. One need only look at our trade arrangements. If we look at the countries to which we export our goods, we see that our single largest trading partner is the United States of America. If we look through the trading figures of our largest European neighbours, we see that they trade with the United States to a much lesser degree and that much more of their trade is with other EU countries, so there is a significant difference there. Sometimes our interests are not aligned with our colleagues'. Owing to our history and other relationships in the world, we have many other forums in which to argue our case—for example, the Commonwealth. The Heads of Government meeting took place recently, which the Government made much of and trumpeted. That is rare for them because they often pretend that the Commonwealth does not exist. However, that is one forum in which our place in the world can be argued. Given the size of the Commonwealth, the number of people it contains and its possible significance in dealing with climate change—it contains India—it might be a more significant place than the EU in which to argue some of these matters, and it is certainly as important as the EU. When thinking about our interests and place in the world, we must not focus only on the EU; we must take a wider, more global view. The trends over the next few years are very interesting. The European Commission's research department has prepared an interesting document called "The World in 2025: Rising Asia and Socio-ecological Transition"—not a terribly catchy title, I admit. However, some of its statistics are very interesting:""In 2025, the population of the European Union will only account for 6.5 % of the world population."" The population will be much older than that elsewhere, as well. The document also says:""In 2025 world production will almost have doubled (in relation to 2005). The USA-EU-Japan triad will no longer dominate the world"," although it points out that the United States will preserve its economic leadership. One or two colleagues referred to a united states of Europe and those who are trying to create a federal state, with a President of the European Council, a Foreign Minister and other pretensions to being a single country. However, if they are trying to model that on the United States of America, the bit they are missing is the United States' economic dynamism and fast economic growth. Even in 2025, the United States will still be the largest economy in the world and still have a high per capita income. That part of the United States' record is the one we want to emulate, rather than trying to turn the countries in the European Union into a united states of Europe. The Commission's report makes it clear that""The centre of gravity of world production will move towards Asia. The group made up of China-India-Korea will weigh as much as the European Union."" As I have said, we have relations with our Commonwealth partners, and particularly close relations with India. We should be ensuring that British firms and businesses are in there winning orders from Indian consumers and businesses, to ensure that we get our fair share. As the report says, India may be""the sixth economic power of the world"" by 2025, ahead of Italy and only a little behind France. We need to ensure that we get our fair share of that business, but I am concerned that we will miss out. In my earlier remarks I touched on the settlement of the top jobs at the European summit the other week. I have already mentioned what the European High Representative is going to get paid, but the President of the European Council will earn £320,000, making him the highest paid leader, if that is the word—he is slightly more of a chairman than a chief. He will earn more than any leader of a western country, with a huge staff and a significant number of press officers to get the message out there, and will have a £5 million reserve fund to dip into as his job develops. Interestingly, the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) suggested that it was welcome that Mr. Van Rompuy had been elected as the President of the European Council because he will just be taking instructions from everybody else. However, that is not what French President Nicholas Sarkozy said. He said he had known Mr. Van Rompuy for many years, adding:""talk to those who know him well…and you'll see. I'm going to tell you something: I think he's one of the strongest personalities around the Council table."" That is quite worrying when we think, to take just one example, about what the hon. Gentleman said about Mr. Van Rompuy's views about Turkey. As one or two others have said, we are strongly in favour, as are the Government, rightly, of Turkish accession to the European Union, both from a strategic and military perspective—Turkey is a strong and close NATO ally—and, as the Minister correctly said, from the point of view of energy security.