2014 JHA Opt-out Decision

Debate between Chris Bryant and Martin Horwood

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I have read it only in Spanish. It is obviously a little bit more difficult when dealing not just with one coalition partner but with 26 of them.

[Martin Horwood]

I would like to say that I rather agree with the hon. Gentleman about the Command Paper, which could do with some treatment from the Plain English Campaign. As regards scrutiny by Select Committees, however, I am rather puzzled by the hon. Gentleman’s assertion. The Lords European Union Committee has been able to consider these matters in great detail and has produced a weighty report—an option that was open to the other Select Committees as well.

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, but the Lords Select Committee makes exactly the same condemnation of the Government’s process as all the House of Commons Committees and it reached the same conclusion, which I will come on to. I would argue that scrutiny is important and is not quite as simple as some Members have suggested. The process of opting back in is complex in itself, but as Commissioner Reding said earlier this year, one measure sometimes impacts on another. Whether or not the Government choose eventually to seek to opt into the precise set of measures that they listed in the Command Paper, their choice will not necessarily be deliverable.

As I have said, the Command Paper is pretty impenetrable, but it makes some pretty bold assertions. On child pornography, it states:

“If the UK were to exercise the opt-out and decide not to rejoin this measure, there would be little practical impact”.

Is that true? Can we not at least test it in Committee—or, for that matter, test the Government’s assertions on the investigation and prosecution of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes? [Interruption.] I can hear what the Home Secretary is saying. She must bear in mind that what we are discussing now is not the amendment that has been accepted, but her motion. That is all that is on the table at the moment.

Should we not also be able to test the Command Paper’s assertion on the European arrest warrant? I should have thought that the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and many others would want to do that. According to the paper,

“If the UK were to decide not to participate in this measure, we believe the UK would revert to the ECE”

—that is, the European convention on extradition. It continues that

“work would need to be taken bilaterally, but there is no guarantee this would be possible where Constitutional barriers exist.”

As the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) pointed out, an important process of negotiation must be undertaken with the devolved Administrations in Northern Ireland in particular—because of the relationship with the Republic of Ireland—and in Scotland to ensure that there are no unintended consequences.

Let me now turn to whether the motion is necessary. It is absolutely clear that it is not necessary for discussions to take place with the Commission and with other member states. Indeed, the Government told the Commission in no uncertain terms that even if a motion in this House or in another place were voted down, they would reserve to themselves the right to proceed with the process of opting out. It is true that protocol 36 —which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Stone —sets out a formal process, but we all know that the process that will actually be engaged in will be complex and political, and that there will be plenty of “behind doors” conversations.

What concerns me is that without indications about the opt-ins and without knowing whether we will be able to secure them at the same time as the opt-outs, we cannot genuinely weigh the risk of opting out against what we stand to gain. That is why we tabled our amendment, on which we still intend to divide the House. The amendment does something very simple: it insists that we should have guarantees of what we can opt into before choosing formally to opt out.

The hon. Member for Stone said earlier that our idea was nonsensical, but where did we get it? It comes directly from the Command Paper, page 5 of which states that

“there is nothing preventing the Commission giving an immediate response, nor to agreement being reached informally ahead of the UK’s formal application.“

In other words, the motion is completely unnecessary, and potentially dangerous.

Succession to the Crown Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Martin Horwood

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman, as I have given way rather too often already.

I would quite like to change things as I think there are many different ways of being an established Church. I do not want to disestablish the Church of England, but I think that it could be established in a different way.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I am not going to give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Let me move on to the Royal Marriages Act. The Act came into being because George III’s brother, Henry, Duke of Cumberland, had in 1771 married a woman, Mrs Anne Horton, who was not only a widow but a commoner. Horace Walpole thought that

“her coquetry was so active, so varied and yet so habitual, that it was difficult not to see through it and…difficult to resist it.”

It was on those lines, broadly speaking, that the King was opposed to his brother’s marriage. Once the Act was introduced, he learned that his other brother, William, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, had married Maria Walpole, daughter of Sir Edward Walpole and granddaughter of Sir Robert, who was also a widow and, in addition to all the other problems she might have had, was illegitimate.

The King was somewhat scandalised by all that and the Act was brought in, but it was a phenomenal failure as a piece of legislation because in 1785 the Prince of Wales, George III’s son, married Maria Fitzherbert, who was not only a Roman Catholic but the aunt of a cardinal and who was twice widowed. The King was furious and refused to give consent; the marriage was consequently declared null and void, although even at the moment of his death the former Prince of Wales insisted on having the portrait of Maria Fitzherbert around his neck. In 1793, another relative, Prince Augustus Frederick, had his marriage to Lady Augusta Murray declared invalid. When she died, he married illegally yet again without permission of the throne.

The Act has been a phenomenally unsuccessful piece of legislation and I do not understand why we are keeping any element of it. Why should the monarch decide who their next of kin and the five others who come afterwards should be able to marry and on what basis will they make that decision? All the previous decisions have related to whether someone was a commoner, an actress or illegitimate, and I do not think that any of those issues would concern the British people today. In other countries that still have a similar provision it is not the decision of the monarch—it is the decision of Parliament. Indeed, in the Netherlands, it was decided that one person would be excluded from the succession because of their marriage. Personally, I do not think that we should make those decisions at all.

It is bizarre to insist on six members of the royal family in the line of succession, rather than two, five, 25 or whatever. I urge the Minister to explain why she feels that it is important to keep that provision. If we are going to keep it, there should be a role for Ministers to advise the monarch on whether to refuse consent. Otherwise, someone who was No. 7 will suddenly become No. 6, or someone who was No. 6 may suddenly become No. 7—as will happen later this year. Those people would be free to marry in whatever way they wanted if they were not No. 6.

I warmly support the broad thrust of the two main measures in the Bill, but I am worried that where the Government are going will unpick other things that we should look at in the round, not just in a short Bill.

Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance

Debate between Chris Bryant and Martin Horwood

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a delight to follow the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), even though we were in English classes together at school and I still bear grudges about that. He was broadly right in his analysis—I appreciate that my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (Mr Spellar) will worry that I am praising a Liberal Democrat—and I agree with him. I agree, too, with all those who said that it is a shame that we had to use the Standing Order No. 24 procedure to secure a debate on one of the biggest issues affecting parliamentary sovereignty, our economic future and our relationship with some of our biggest allies in Europe. In addition, we do not usually get to hear enough from the Minister for Europe.

If the Government take away one thing from today’s debate, I hope it is the fact that we need properly structured debates before European Council meetings, so that they have a strong mandate from us and we are able to inform what they take to the meetings.

It is a shame that the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) is no longer in her place. I gather she is often referred to nowadays as the new iron lady—although I do not know who will get an Oscar for playing her in the future. I profoundly disagree with her that a multi-tier Europe is a good idea. During my four and a half seconds as Minister for Europe the BRIC economies—Brazil, Russia, India and China, and for that matter, Mexico—repeatedly told me, “It is essential that we know that we are dealing with a single market.” If we decide to cut up the single market, with lots of different tiers of different elements of legislative proposals, it will do us damage with the growing economies of the world. China is not interested in dealing with 27 different countries in Europe; it is interested in doing business in Europe. If it is going to be more difficult to do business in Europe, it will do business elsewhere—and we will have cut off our nose to spite our face.

I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) about the danger of technocratic Governments being imposed on other European countries. There has always been an element of democratic deficit within the European Union. In a sense, it is almost inevitable—unless we choose to elect a single President and Government of Europe, to which I would be wholeheartedly opposed because I do not think that there is a single people of Europe. That is why we will always have a strange mixture of elected Governments in member states working alongside a European Commission and a European Parliament. It will never be perfect, but I would say that this House is not perfect in different regards either. The historical process of parliamentary democratic reform in this country has always been a matter of trying to improve on what we had last year—not some golden ideal, but improving on what we had and have last year and this year.

Of course there need to be changes in Europe, but if the economic solutions effectively being enforced on some European countries have so little support within those countries, there is a danger not only that the individual Governments will face riots and significant civil disturbance, but that the whole European Union could face big problems.

I agree with the hon. Member for Stone in his analysis of Germany, too. That country has tended to suggest to the world that it is paying for rescuing the countries in trouble. That is far from the truth. The honest truth is that Germany is making an awful lot of money out of the present arrangements and intends to make even more money out of the arrangements on the table in the near future. We sometimes need to push back to the Germans and say, “Actually, you need to be little bit more honest about exactly where your economic and financial interests lie in all of this.”

The broad position is that there are two choices. We can try to make the euro work because the UK believes that if it were to fall apart it would lead to significant dangers, particularly given that we are the banker and the financial powerhouse of Europe. I believe that that is the right approach for us. There were problems with the initial creation of the euro, particularly when there was no enforced audit, and countries could simply make up the numbers, sometimes even employing extremely expensive accountants to help them to do so. Some big countries in the EU wanted to turn a blind eye to it because they themselves worried about the enforcement of the stability and growth pact, so they allowed some countries to do that. It is important that we rectify some of those inherent problems in the creation of the euro, which is why, broadly speaking, advancing towards some kind of fiscal union, as adumbrated in the treaty, is the right direction for us to take, although there might be some details about which I would be worried.

There is an alternative route, however, which is essentially to dismantle the euro. I know that some Conservative Members believe, for perfectly legitimate reasons, that that is the right course to take. They believe that we cannot have a single currency with a single interest rate for the very different labour markets across the whole of the EU. I just think that that they are wrong on that. I believe, and I suspect I will be proved right, that not a single country will leave the euro this year or next year; in fact, a couple more might join it.

There were problems with the UK veto exercised before Christmas. It has, to coin a term, left us with a Bulgarian muddle. In truth, we have neither an EU treaty nor a not-EU treaty; we have a sort of European treaty that is a halfway house with legal dubiety at its centre. That is where the hon. Member for Stone is absolutely right. I think it would have been better if we had stayed at the table and made sure that we had an EU treaty that was right for Britain. I disagree with those who say that this is a question of more Europe or less Europe—

[Martin Horwood]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I cannot; I have all of one second—I am finished.

Iran

Debate between Chris Bryant and Martin Horwood

Monday 20th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, sort of. I will come back to the hon. Gentleman’s point in a moment. We must analyse whether there are better means of achieving the end that we want. As the Foreign Secretary and the shadow Foreign Secretary said, there clearly still are better means that we have not yet exhausted and that we need to pursue to their logical end.

Would there be a clear goal if military action were to be taken against Iran? It is difficult to see what that clear goal would look like. Similarly, would it be achievable if we knew what that goal was? As the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) said, it is difficult to see how it would be possible to achieve that secure goal. Would it be proportionate, not only to the aggression being shown, but to the action that we choose to take in other cases, because otherwise we might be accused of hypocrisy? That is undoubtedly true for many countries when they look at how we choose not to force the implementation of UN resolutions in relation to Israel but force their implementation in relation to others. Similarly, is there a danger that the outcome of military action might be even worse than the result of not engaging in military action? That is always the toughest question. We look at what is happening in Syria at the moment, and our heart goes out to the people there, but would military intervention from the west make for a better or a worse situation? It is still uncertain whether our intervention in Libya and elsewhere will produce the goods that we always hoped for.

I have a real worry about what I would call the ratchet effect. Today we are forceful in our language. Tomorrow forceful is not enough, so we have got to be assertive. The next time we have got to be aggressive, then we have to be pugnacious, then belligerent, then bellicose, and then we find ourselves at the doorstep of war. That is in part what happened in relation to the step up towards military intervention in Iraq. We have to be careful. The Foreign Secretary is a very persuasive man in many cases, but sometimes he is so eloquent that his language ratchets things up.

[Martin Horwood]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, because I have taken two interventions and others wish to speak.

I worry that like a spanner that one can use to ratchet up but not down, if we use language that is exorbitant and goes too far, we will end up in a situation where, from no real decision of our own, we may be at the doorstep of war. [Interruption.] I understand that they ratchet up as well, but this is true also of the Falklands. The Argentines can huff and puff all they want, but quite often it is best to leave them huffing and puffing, rather than to rattle the sabre back at them.

I would say two things in closing. First, we must put considerable trust in the European Union process. This is one of the areas where going it alone for the UK is unlikely to achieve great success. Not that anyone is proposing that. Just going it alone with Israel and the United States or a coalition of the willing, or whatever one wants to call it, would not be a good idea. Binding in the E3 plus 3 has thus far been an extremely successful process and has avoided war.

Finally, I believe that the Israelis, contrary to what the hon. Member for Gainsborough said, would be wholly wrong to take unilateral action. I do not think that they would be able to do so or that they would be successful if they tried. If they were to take from our decision tonight the message that we believe that they should take military action, they would be wrong.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Martin Horwood

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman may be overestimating the complexity of this task. Gloucestershire has six MPs and almost exactly the right population for six MPs under the new system, so very little adjustment will be needed there. That could also be true in large parts of the country, and he may be extrapolating too much from the Rhondda valley.

[Chris Bryant]

That smacked a little of “I’m all right, Jack” to me. The problem is not only what happens in Gloucestershire and the boundary commissions cannot bear in mind only what happens there. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) are united on the proposal that Gloucestershire should retain six seats. The point is that neighbouring counties may not have sufficient numbers and may have to nick population from somewhere else. When we come to the divvying up of boundaries, that is one of the issues to which I wish to refer, and I have some examples. However, just as we should not look at the whole country on the basis of what will happen in the Rhondda, nor should we look at it in relation to what happens in Cheltenham.