European Affairs

My hon. Friend will have to forgive me; I will not give way, as the time is very short. We also want to see the Union strengthening further the single market and not relaxing into the protectionism that some of us fear following the recent appointments to the Commission. We want the European Union to focus on the challenges of global poverty and climate change. We also want the Union to be much more accountable than it is now. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) was right to talk about the need for better, more rigorous parliamentary scrutiny. I am sure that he will have been delighted by the Conservative party's proposals in that regard. It is also right, as a number of hon. Members on both sides of the House have argued, that Parliament should debate European Union issues more frequently and in a more timely fashion. I thought that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston was right to talk about the serious implications of the creation of the European External Action Service, and I hope that when the Minister responds he will pledge on behalf of the Government that they will allow proper time for Parliament to examine and debate the implications of that reform. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) asked specifically about Conservative policy on the referendum. I assure the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), who now represents him on the Front Bench, that the Conservative party has a very clear policy on the referendum, which will appear in our manifesto. Given what the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) has said in recent days, the same cannot be said of the Liberal Democrat party. We are saying that any treaty that proposes the transfer of further competences to the European Union from the national level should not be ratified by the United Kingdom unless it is confirmed by the British people in a referendum. We would apply that rule to any proposal from a future Government that Britain should join the euro. The other issue that troubled the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton, on which he sought to tease my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois), was the European arrest warrant. I must ask the hon. Lady to go back to the hon. Gentleman with a reading list. If she had been speaking on behalf of her party, she might not have made the same error, but it was none other than the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), the Liberal Democrats' official spokesman on home affairs, who wrote on 4 October 2008 that the European arrest warrant was""rushed through without proper thought as a knee-jerk reaction to terrorist offences."" Not only the hon. Gentleman, but Lord Burnett and Baroness Ludford, MEP, have called for the European arrest warrant to be looked at again, and for the laws concerning it to be changed. The reason why my party is worried about the warrant is that it puts citizens of this country at risk of facing trial for actions that are not criminal under the laws of the United Kingdom. It also risks the extradition of United Kingdom citizens, without prima facie evidence being demonstrated to a British court, to jurisdictions where they might face trial for offences that are not related to terrorism or to the very serious offences to which the Minister referred. That situation could lead to British citizens, for whom a prima facie case has never been presented before a court, facing considerable periods of detention without trial in jurisdictions that do not have the same traditions of habeas corpus or bail that we have here. I must say to the hon. Lady that there was once a time when people who described themselves as liberals would have stood up for the liberties and freedoms enjoyed by British citizens, and would not have sought to restrict them in the way that her colleague did today. The Minister took us through the agenda of the forthcoming European Council, but he focused much of his time on chiding my party about our allies in the European Parliament. I thought that my hon. Friend comprehensively demolished the Minister's case in his excellent speech, so I shall leave the Minister with just one thought on the subject. In the European Parliament, Conservative MEPs sit alongside Polish MEPs who were active in dissident movements and were imprisoned by the former regime for that activity, whereas Labour party MEPs sit alongside Polish MEPs who were active members of the Polish Communist party that was responsible for imprisoning those who sit with my colleagues in the European Parliament. I understand the Minister's reluctance to celebrate his Government's vision for the future of Europe, because it has become clear in the past few days that for all their claims of influence, we have seen a massive defeat for United Kingdom diplomacy. The Conservatives wish Baroness Ashton well, but the fact that no major economic portfolio in the Commission is now held by a Briton rightly causes us serious concern. We could see how uncomfortable the Government were over this matter by the way that their story kept changing. First of all, the media were briefed about the Prime Minister's epic battle to stop Monsieur Barnier getting the job of Internal Market Commissioner at all. Then the line was "adjusted", as the Business Secretary might have put it, to say that, even if Monsieur Barnier were appointed, financial services would be removed from his portfolio. Now, in the aftermath of utter defeat, the Government are trying to pretend that everything is okay and there is nothing to worry about. If we are to believe the Minister, Monsieur Barnier has probably forgotten altogether that he was ever French. However, that was not the view of the President of the Republic of France, whose words have been referred to by a number of colleagues. Frankly, it is difficult to see how the President of the Republic, short of climbing personally up the steps of Notre Dame to ring a celebratory peal, could have celebrated more conspicuously the appointment of Monsieur Barnier as a decisive triumph for France and for French interest in Europe. The truth is that this Government like to boast about their influence in Europe. We need Britain to maximise its influence in Europe, but we should measure that not by the number of times that the Government meekly assent to things proposed by others, but by whether European decisions advance our country's interests. For that to happen, however, we need a change of approach, and a change of Government.