Speech by Rt Hon Denis MacShane MP in House of Commons on 2nd Reading of European Communities Finance Bill, 19th November 2007
Former Europe Minister Denis MacShane, and MP for Rotherham gave a sterling speech to the House of Commons when discussing the European Communities Finance Bill, arguing that Britain should not be afraid of contributing more to Europe and should continue to battle for reform of the CAP.
Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab) I am disappointed by the mean-minded approach that we have heard from Opposition Members so far on that matter. We need to go back into parliamentary history, although not as far as Lord Palmerston. When Baroness Thatcher brought back the rebate in 1984, one MP asked:
“Does she agree that, compared with the target that she set four and a half years ago, yesterday's settlement is a humiliating failure for Britain, in which the only flag that she raised for Britain was not the Union Jack but the white flag of surrender? If that is not so, will she confirm that despite all the sabre-rattling about rebates, Britain's net contributions in the past five years of Tory Government have been £100 million per year higher in real terms than they were under the Labour Government?”—[ Official Report , 27 June 1984; Vol. 62, c. 1005.]
That was my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), now the Secretary of State for Justice, who is a distinguished friend of all Labour Members and a stunningly successful Minister.
The then Prime Minister was also taken on by the then leader of the Labour party, who is now Lord Kinnock. In the same debate, he said:
“the right hon. Lady agreed to a 40 per cent. increase in VAT contributions to the Common Market. Will she confirm that the Government's public expenditure plans make no provision for that addition beginning from 1986? Therefore, where will that extra 40 per cent. come from?”—[ Official Report , 27 June 1984; Vol. 62, c. 995.]
I think that Conservative Front Benchers will do me the courtesy of saying that there is a little similarity between the points that they have made and the points made in that debate 23 years ago. During the debate that I mentioned, senior members of my party—its leader and one of its brightest young stars—were roaring with Europhobic and mathematically illiterate nonsense at the good deal that the then Prime Minister had brought back. Later in the debate, she was challenged about why she was not spending the money on British priorities—a point that was also made today by the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Lady Thatcher said, “Are you saying that we should not help the poor people of Portugal?” She stood there and told the Labour party to be generous to poor countries in Europe. In effect, she agreed to a significant increase in the overall budget—to 1.4 per cent. of European GDP, an increase of about 40 per cent. The EU budget is now lower as a share of European GDP. Again, I salute Margaret Thatcher; there are things in Europe that can be done better collectively than through the mechanisms of 27 national states. She was right then, and this Government are right now. I invite Conservative Members and Front Benchers to become a little more Thatcherite; it will not do them any damage at all.
The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) has left his place; he wants us to quit the European Union, and some other hon. Members are joining him. The hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) has quit his place, probably to prepare for the longer debates that will take place when the ratification treaty comes back to this House. We are left with the cream and core of the intelligent Conservative party, who understand the figures, and I am sure will make wise contributions.
So far, we have seen from its Members' interventions the Conservative party that we know and love: right-wing, reactionary, righteous, rabid and utterly contemptuous of the notion that Britain should lend any help to countries and people to whom we owe a debt of honour—and not only that. Playing his usual surrogate accountant's role, the Chief Secretary went on and on about how much money we make from Poland and other such countries. That is true, by the way, but Britain is achieving a nobler ambition through this Bill and its proposals on EU financing—to discharge a debt of honour, which we owe particularly to Poland.
The hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham and I share a concern and a family connection with Poland; he is welcome to make an intervention later. In the past century or so, British history has not been generous vis-à-vis Poland. Tory appeasement betrayed Poland to the Russians and the Nazis in 1939, and at Yalta Churchill allowed the division of Europe, and allowed the communists to take control of Poland. In the 1970s a Labour Government even objected to the raising in Gunnersbury of a memorial statue to the victims of the NKVD executions in Katyn in 1940.
As a Government, we have discharged some of that debt by leading the encouragement to Poland to join the EU. To give it credit, in 2004 the Conservative party did not join the rabid tabloid press and its campaign to stop Poles from coming to work here. There were some remarks, but the party did not vote against the Bill in question. I think that the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham was the shadow spokesman on Europe at the time; we worked together on the issues.
When I was Minister for Europe, something upset me considerably as I went round the eastern European countries and spoke to people. I was asked why they—the people of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic—were signing cheques, for €50 million or €74 million, directly to Her Majesty's Treasury to pay for the British rebate. I could talk about France and the common agricultural policy, but it was not cutting much mustard; such countries were signing cheques to HMT as part of the rebate.
That is how the rebate works; it is not an aggregate sum of money, some of which we do not pay, although that is what people think; it is paid directly by national Governments. I did not have an answer for those countries. After the stunning success of Labour Governments who, after the disastrous economic policies of the preceding Government, have seen national wealth more than double in the past 10 years, how could we, one of the richest nations—not only in Europe, but in the world—say to eastern European Governments, “Your poor people have to pay money to our rich nation”?
Daniel Kawczynski: I agree that Britain has helped Poland and other eastern European countries tremendously. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned Margaret Thatcher. In 1990 she was instrumental, in the Paris club of lending nations, in getting rid of Poland's debts. However, the way to help countries such as Poland in future is through increased trade and helping British companies trade liberally with Poland, not constantly giving it handouts, as the Bill purports to do.
Mr. MacShane: I do not want to make this a Polish-Polish debate, but I ask the hon. Gentleman to reflect a little on what he has said. In 1982, the communist secret police in Poland put me in prison for taking money to the underground Solidarity union. The following year, Britain imposed swingeing visa controls against allowing Poles to come into the United Kingdom. The year after that, Mrs. Thatcher was
talking about that faded communist hack Gorbachev as a man with whom she could do business. I accept that once the Poles had won their freedom, Mrs. Thatcher came round to accepting that that was a good thing. However, I wish that she had been a bit stronger in her support when I was in prison, and when the Poles needed to come to this country a bit more easily.
Thanks to the joint work of the Labour and Conservative parties in facing down the anti-eastern-European tabloid press, Poles have been able to come here. However, the tabloids are once again screaming against the eastern European ladies and gentlemen working here.
Yes, I accept that Britain will now pay a bit more. I have no problem with that, because we have had a good deal from the rebate in the past 24 years. Despite what the shadow Chief Secretary said, we are not, in per-capita terms, the largest or second largest contributor to the EU budget. Page 32 of the very good Library report shows that we paid 68 euros per head last year. The Netherlands pays four times as much, at 241 euros per head; Denmark pays twice as much at 127 euros per head; Sweden pays 124 euros per head, while Germany pays 100 euros per head. France and Austria pay 50 and 40 euros per head respectively. Those countries, too, are pretty fed up with the assumption that Britain does not have to pay its fair share.
Mr. Cash: I should like to take this opportunity with regard to a point—not exactly an allegation—that I made earlier. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) for correcting himself to a certain extent just now. He specifically mentioned France, which brought me to my feet earlier. Per head, we pay considerably more than France and Italy, but that is without prejudice to the fact that I had said that we contributed much more than we do. I wanted to correct that for the record.
Mr. MacShane: The Francophobia that always infects these debates is jolly good fun, but there are 25 other member states apart from France and the United Kingdom, in the European Union, and the figures vary. I fully accept that there are grotesque anomalies such as Luxembourg. I am getting into some gruesome detail which I would not want to inflict on the House, but the plain fact is that the Netherlands—our trusty old Protestant ally for 300 years—pays four times, pro rata, what we pay. Why on earth should the Dutch always have to pay part of the British bill? That is how they will see it—ditto the Swedes and the Germans. The Germans have spent 4 per cent. of their gross domestic product, year on year, on East Germany following unification. That is twice to two and a half times what the United States put into western Europe under the Marshall plan. The Germans, with a much bigger problem to solve than we have ever had to face—the incorporation of a bankrupt third-world country, the German Democratic Republic, into the western German Federal Republic—have made huge personal sacrifices as a nation, yet still pay proportionately far more, 35 per cent. more, on last year's figures, than we do. The figures against us are much worse, in terms of Germany, the Netherlands and some of the Nordic countries, during the recent past. If we get into arguments that simply state that whatever happens we must pay less than everybody else, the European Union might as well pack up shop. I fully accept the shadow Chief Secretary's point about the common agricultural policy. I do not deny that for one second. The figure is coming down as a share. Let me read more—I might even be tempted to do it in French this time—from today's Le Figaro , which says in the course of a long article: “France now accepts that there will have to be a reduction in European Union agricultural expenditure. The debate among the 27 member states will start under the French presidency in the second half of next year. That is when the next pluriannual budget, 2013-2020, will be adopted.” I would love the Conservatives to address this issue, as well as my own Government, because we are not good enough at explaining to partners with sufficient force and vigour that the way in which the European Union budget is constructed is not necessarily the best way for Europeans.
The biggest defenders of the CAP are not the French but the Irish. Ireland—an English-speaking country with a centre-right conservative party, Fianna Fáil, in power—is passionate in defending the CAP. I would invite the Conservatives to talk to Fianna Fáil; I cannot do it, because it is not in the same political family as the Labour party. I would even ask my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench to create a special EU CAP reform persuasion budget that could be given to the Conservatives, so that they could go to talk to all the ruling centre-right parties in Germany, Poland, the Nordic countries, Netherlands, and France—but, as we know, the Conservatives want to effect a total rupture with the EU's other centre-right ruling parties. The UK is extremely badly served by a neo-isolationist attitude whereby they will not go and network politically for the common goals that most people in Britain, across parties, would support.
Hon. Members have spoken as if Britain were a net contributor to the EU in all areas and we got nothing back in return. In fact, last year's structural fund expenditure figures show that the UK gets a third more than France, 20 per cent. more than Belgium and nearly twice as much as the Netherlands. We get more than Slovenia, one of the accession member states, and—the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham might want to listen to this point—only €1 per head less than Poland. The world's fourth largest economy gets from the EU only €1 per head less in structural funds than Poland, which, despite its enormous economic progress, is still a not very rich EU country.
I want reform of the CAP. What we are debating was, in effect, set in stone in 2002 with the agreement between the then French President, Jacques Chirac, and the then German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, to maintain CAP expenditure at a fixed amount, not as a percentage amount. That was in the context of the Iraq conflict and, frankly, a deep worsening of relations and divisions within the EU. If we want to achieve desired British goals of getting some reduction as regards the CAP, we will have to look at linking up, making networks, making the argument and going out to persuade people. These decisions are not taken in some closed caballing session in Brussels. They are taken by parliamentarians like ourselves in Paris, Dublin, Germany and Rome, and we need to talk and network far more with them ahead of decisions being taken.
We might also decide that the common agricultural policy could focus its attention on the poorer farmers in Britain—the hill farmers, the sheep farmers and those with a very small income—and increase the support that goes to rural development. But what did I read yesterday in The Observer ? It was suggested that the richest recipients of CAP aid, such as the Duke of Marlborough and all the Tory-supporting ex-aristocracy, are receiving hundreds of thousands of euros. The British Government, who like a duke when they see one, will try to defend outrageous payments to the richest cereal and agro-industrial companies in Europe, as well as to some very rich individuals in our country. We have to consider motes and beams before we lecture other countries on those issues.
My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) mentioned Ireland, which has become very rich since it joined the EU. I welcome that. I went on holiday to Ireland as a small boy, and it was a very poor country then. I saw cattle driven through the streets of rather big towns. In the 1950s, almost every second Irish male had to emigrate to find a job.
Mr. Cash: I would like to draw to the right hon. Gentleman's attention an extremely interesting book by Roy Foster called “Luck and the Irish”. I heard Roy Foster on “Today” or the Andrew Marr programme the other day, explaining that although there is no doubt that the EU contributed to the manner in which the Irish have become far more wealthy, which I greatly enthuse about, it was to do with the American money that was invested and the cutting of tax rates.
Mr. Angus MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP): Independence: that's the word.
Mr. MacShane: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman really thinks that the Ireland of the 1920s, 30s and 40s, or even the 1950s, was a rich and successful country. The kind of ultra-nationalistic independence that he believes in usually bankrupts and impoverishes a country very quickly.
Mr. MacNeil: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who has such a fine Scottish surname, or perhaps it is Irish. Does he think that Ireland would be as successful today if it were not independent?
Mr. MacShane: Ireland is successful today because it plays a full role in the European Union. Were Scotland to quit the Union, I would be interested to see the price it would have to pay to enter the EU, because it would be a tricky renegotiation. However, we are veering way off the subject.
What counts is that the Irish used the moneys that they got from the EU better than almost any other country. They were combined with enormous investment in education and a sensible taxation policy—a point that I concede to the hon. Member for Stone. None the less, are we saying that after 1973, Britain should not, to
a lesser degree than Germany or the Netherlands, have made significant fiscal transfers that have allowed Ireland as a nation during the past 33 years to become richer and happier than it ever was when it was an independent state before it joined the EU, or when under English control? I do not think so. It must have been in our interests to do so. It is why Ireland today is a country of immigration, not emigration. Immigration brings its own problems, as we know, but it is far better to be a country that is so successful it needs to attract workers to do jobs that nationals are not prepared to do.
That ought to be our ambition for the rest of Europe. Many hon. Members will remember travelling to Spain, southern Italy or even bits of France not so long ago and being able to see rural and social poverty. It was quaint, and it was nice for the British ex-pats who could buy houses and drinks that did not cost very much, but now it is far better that Italians and Spaniards can, in contrast to their position in the 1950s and 1960s, stay in their own countries, and that those countries are rich enough to attract people to work in them. That is my ambition for Poland and the Baltic states. In order to achieve that ambition, some generosity on our part, and some lessening of the assumption that it is only the Germans, Dutch and Swedes that should pay, would be welcome.
We can see the success that membership of the European Union brings to all countries. I have explained why it makes us all more wealthy, and I hope that the figures are not in question. In 1960, about 14.6 per cent. of GDP was in exports to what are now EU member states. That figure is now closer to 60 per cent. Britain's wealth has doubled in the past 10 years, principally on account of our membership of the EU.
As well as making us more wealthy, it transpires that membership of the EU makes us more healthy. A new book that has just become available in the Library, in the new arrivals section, contains a marvellous statistic showing that between 1965 and 2004, the life expectancy of the British male increased by 13 years. In the United States over the same period it increased by only eight years; in France, it increased by 10 years and in Norway by just seven years. Membership of the European Union is allowing us to live longer; I would have thought that all hon. Members would welcome that.
This modest Bill will allow financing of the European Union that has been negotiated, agreed and signed, and on which our word has been pledged. The shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury is quite right to say that we can veto it and reject it, but he would have a hard time explaining to the Poles, Hungarians, Czechs and other eastern Europeans who are the principal beneficiaries why we should continue the current practice, which will come to an end once the Bill becomes law, of their sending large cheques to Her Majesty's Treasury. It is not worthy or honourable. The Conservative party is not anti-Polish or anti-European, but it seems to be absolutely locked into a philosophy of rejecting anything that helps the EU to grow.
This time last week, the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) made endless appeals in a fine and effective speech for more European Union action. He said that EU Foreign Ministers had wasted opportunities and that they ought to do more on Iraq. I agree with him. On Burma, he says that the EU should tighten
I cannot disagree with him. He also said that EU Ministers need to show collective strength over Zimbabwe. I agree with him, but if he wants those desired goals to be achieved, there is a problem. It is not possible to demand more action from partners in Europe—I might add the case of Afghanistan or one or two other places—at the Dispatch Box while allowing members of one's party to campaign openly for withdrawal from the EU, or while writing articles and making the bulk of one's speeches utterly contemptuous of our partners. When the Leader of the Opposition talks about one-legged Lithuanians, the Opposition have a problem. When members of the Public Accounts Committee say, “We're going to have to get tough—these guys coming in to talk to us are foreigners”, we see the subconscious xenophobia deep at the heart of the Conservative party.
To conclude, the Bill gives a legal mechanism to discharge a debt of honour to many friends in eastern Europe. We shall not be paying as much per capita as some other countries. France and to a lesser extent Italy will significantly increase their contributions under the new regime. Were this debate taking place in the French National Assembly, many deputies would be arguing that the Brits were again getting off scot-free and that the French were paying a massive increase in the bills for Europe— [ Interruption. ] The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, speaking for the Scots nats, seems again to be joining up with the rabid anti-Europeans slightly to his right, in arguing— [ Interruption. ] The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) keeps making remarks from a sedentary position. He is entitled to do that, but if he wants—
Mr. Walker rose—
Mr. MacShane: Oh good!
Mr. Walker: Does the right hon. Gentleman not recognise that it is this type of speech that gives debates about Europe such a bad name? He has spoken for 37 minutes, two minutes of which has been worth listening to and 35 minutes of which has been utter drivel. Please can he spare us any more of this torture?
Mr. MacShane: After 13 years I am torturing a Conservative MP. There we are—happiness is mine. When the hon. Gentleman has been here a bit longer, he will realise how utterly focused, short, relevant and to the point my speech has been.
It is time to return to the debate of 1984, when Margaret Thatcher brought back a similar deal and was bitterly attacked by the then Opposition, who were gripped by a paranoid Euroscepticism of bile and hostility to the notion of being generous to poorer nations in Europe, and stayed in opposition for another 13 years. I commend to the House the Opposition's opposition to the Bill. |
