Electoral Law

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 General Committees

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

May I say what a pleasure it is to be serve under your chairmanship for the first time in the new year, Mr Howarth?

The proposed Council decision, which is, I am glad to say, subject to unanimity and ratification by member states, aims to harmonise certain aspects of the conduct of European Parliament elections in member states. Initiated by the European Parliament on the basis of article 223(1) of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, its more significant measures include common deadlines for establishing lists of candidates and electoral registers; making members of regional parliaments and legislative Assemblies ineligible for election as MEPs; proposals concerning the gender equality of candidates; proposals on electronic and postal voting; some mandatory 3% to 5% thresholds for winning seats; proposals relating to voting by EU mobile citizens and their data; incorporating the spitzenkandidaten process, under which there is a pretence of electing the Commission President; and making provision for detailed implementing rules. However, it does not include aspirational proposals, only set out in the European Parliament’s resolution, such as a common minimum voting age of 16 and a common voting day.

On 13 January, the European Scrutiny Committee recommended a reasoned opinion on the proposed Council decision. The reasoned opinion procedure, introduced by the Lisbon treaty, allows national Parliaments to object to a draft legislative act if they consider that it breaches subsidiarity. That principle requires that decisions should be taken as close to the citizen as possible. National Parliaments have eight weeks from transmission of a proposal to submit a reasoned opinion. If such opinions represent one third of all votes of national Parliaments, they constitute a yellow card. The initiator of the proposal, in this case the European Parliament, must review it. The EU Committee in the House of Lords has also decided to recommend a reasoned opinion. The Government have expressed some subsidiarity concerns, saying that some aspects of the proposal are best decided at national level. Their main concern appears to be that uniform practice for European parliamentary elections would be inconsistent with domestic electoral practices, making it difficult for the UK to hold European parliamentary and local elections at the same time, resulting in further reduced turnouts for European parliamentary elections.

The European Scrutiny Committee concluded in its reasoned opinion that there is no detailed subsidiarity statement in the draft legislative act, so the European Parliament has failed to comply with an essential procedural requirement; there is, in any case, insufficient substantiation in the resolution and the European “added value” assessment; and the proposal’s objective of creating a uniform electoral procedure to enhance the European Parliament’s democratic legitimacy through electoral equality is undermined by harmonisation at a level of detail which divorces the European Parliament’s electoral procedure from well-established and recognised domestic procedures. Bearing that in mind, the European Scrutiny Committee has raised specific objections questioning the European Union’s “added value” benefits of all of the significant measures outlined, excepting the measures on spitzenkandidaten and implementing rules.

The European Scrutiny Committee was not assisted greatly in this task by the Government’s inadequate subsidiarity and financial assessment of the proposal for the reasons set out in paragraphs 1.7 and 1.8 of its report, and so asks the Minister to comment on that.

[Chair]

I call the Minister to make an opening statement.

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[The Chair]

We have until 10 am for questions to the Minister. I remind Members that they should be brief. It is open to a Member, subject to my discretion, to ask a related supplementary question.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I have only one question for my hon. Friend and neighbour. The proposal before the Commission is subject to unanimity. Will the Government undertake to veto the proposal?

[John Penrose]

I am not sure of the formal status of our reasoned opinion, but as I plan to state later on, we disagree with large chunks of the proposal, so I cannot see that we will approve it in any form.

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[Mr Rees-Mogg]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Caerphilly. Like him, I am a convinced European, but I am convinced about it as a geographic entity, rather than as a political one—I have rather more suspicions than him about that, and those suspicions are highlighted by the documents that we are considering.

The text adopted by the European Parliament is something to which all hon. Members should pay careful attention, because it sets out with great clarity and honesty the ambition of the European Parliament: how it views itself, and what it wants to get out of the process. It is a fascinating document, because although the view it expresses is the opposite of mine, that is the reality of where the European Union aims to go. It is clear in the document that the European Parliament sees itself at the forefront of creating a single European state.

Looking at the 35 reasons for why this proposal is necessary which are set out by the European Parliament, a common thread runs through them of our fundamental nature as citizens not of the United Kingdom but of a state called Europe. I promise that I will not go through all these points. Although the time is available, it would try the patience of hon. Members. Point B states that the aim is to,

“reinforce the concept of citizenship of the Union, improve the functioning of the European Parliament and the governance of the Union, make the work of the European Parliament more legitimate”.

It is about giving the European Parliament more power and more authority because of this concept of citizenship. Point E addresses voters’ lack of interest, with a particular concern for younger voters, stating that,

“voters’ lack of interest in European issues is posing a threat to the future of Europe, and whereas there is therefore”

—that is a particularly ugly construction, even considering that it must have been translated from several languages. I hate to think what the Finnish might be for “whereas there is therefore”—

“a need for ideas that will help to revive European democracy”.

I do not believe in European democracy. I believe in the democracy of the United Kingdom and of France and of Germany coming together as nation states, not in this broader concept. However, the European Parliament is quite clear about it. The document continues with a statement, as the hon. Member for Caerphilly said, of the power of the European Parliament, which,

“now has equal status as co-legislator with the Council in most of the Union’s policy areas”.

The European Parliament’s competencies have been gradually increasing, so it has got a long way towards what it wants to achieve with these advancing competencies. Point K sets out that the concept of citizenship of the Union,

“includes the right of Union citizens to participate in European and municipal elections”.

This focuses on the creation of citizenship of a single state, with the concern that electoral campaigning remains national. In this country it is entirely national, and there was hardly any mention of what was going on in continental Europe during our last European Parliamentary elections. That is because we believe in the nation state. The European Parliament is pushing again and again towards the creation of a single state. Point M states that,

“European political parties are best placed to ‘contribute to forming European political awareness’”.

Well, I am a member of the Conservative party, as people may have realised, or, if hon. Members prefer, the Tory party—that may in some ways be more suitable for me. It is technically a European party. It has a function within the geographic continent of Europe, but I must confess that I have never thought it was my role to contribute to forming European political awareness except as something to object to. The European Parliament has adopted a European awareness about Europe as a single state. This is made clear in point U, which states that,

“establishing a common European voting day would better reflect common participation by citizens across the Union, reinforce participatory democracy and help create a more coherent pan-European election”.

It is trying to create a legitimacy that is certainly not there at the moment for their scheme to create a single federal state. This is of the greatest importance. Point AI, which is the last point to which I shall refer and indeed the last point in the document, refers to,

“the principle of degressive proportionality”.

Again, I do not really know what “degressive proportionality” means. This is one of the problems with European documents. One has to get into the interstices of these documents to try to find out what they might mean in plain English, and then reveal that as far as one can in these Committees. It continues,

“the principle of degressive proportionality enshrined in the TEU has contributed significantly to the common ownership of the European project between all Member States”.

We all know what that European project is. It is about the advance to a single state in which the European Parliament is the Parliament of the European Union and we become a mere assembly within it, perhaps somewhere between a county council and the Scottish Parliament but not a proper national assembly. This document shows the route of travel of the European Union. That is where the current context is so important, because the Government are trying to paint a picture of it going our way—that over there, they are not as ambitious as they once were and they accept that closer European integration was yesterday’s story. We hear it again and again—with magnificent renegotiation, we are finally halting the tide of pro-Europeanism.

Then we have an unnumbered European document, a European Parliament resolution of 11 November 2015 on the reform of the electoral law of the European Union, that gives the game away. This is a usurping and pretending Parliament that seeks to take powers from us and is looking towards fulfilling its ambition of a single European state. The Government must oppose it by veto and we must send forth our clear concern about subsidiarity, but most importantly—above and beyond all the technicalities that we get from reading these papers—we must understand what is happening, what the aim is and what the ambition is. If we quietly discuss it in a Committee of a dozen people, and we do not make sure that it is more widely known that this is what is happening, we will find—regardless of renegotiation or referendum—that we are in a greater European state.

[Wayne David]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is important to keep things in perspective? What we have here is a view from the European Parliament, expressed—I suspect—by just a few MEPs who happened to get together in a Committee. It does not reflect the view of member state Governments or the people of Europe.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is brilliant, and it is always a pleasure to take his interventions and hear his wonderful exposition of how this is all fine. He says it is a very mild document from the European Parliament, and that the European Parliament does not really matter. I am sure that he did not say that when he was sitting in Strasbourg or going back and forth between Strasbourg and Brussels.

This is a document that has been approved by the European Parliament. The European Parliament is one of the three pillars of the European Union, alongside the Commission and the Council. The idea that this is a quiet paper put forward by a few MEPs on the European Parliament equivalent of an all-party parliamentary group, to be read in a village hall in Surbiton—if it has one—is absurd. This is a really serious document that has gone before the Council and is now a Council proposal. It is within one unanimous vote by the Council of being adopted as law across the European Union.

Fortunately, the Government have a veto and have indicated that they will use it. That is extremely good news, but it is a wonderful concoction to suggest that the document is something mild that can just be ignored. I wish it were so and that the European Parliament could be so easily dismissed, but regrettably it has become a major player in the development of the European project—understandably, because MEPs want power for themselves. That is probably why they stand for election and, as the hon. Gentleman said, Parliaments are always looking for more powers. But since Lisbon, it has a lot of them and this is a further push. What is so important about it is that it shows the reality of what is aimed for in the EU—the direction of travel has not changed. We may go down the road at a slightly slower pace—we may be on a bicycle when other members of the European Union are in Ferraris—but the destination is the same.