Commission Work Programme 2015

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

Failure would be Europe failing to give priority to job creation, economic growth and competitiveness at a time when a horrifying number of people, particularly young people, are out of work in this continent and when European competitiveness is not only slipping behind that of the United States, but is at risk because of the global shift of economic power to Asia and Latin America. The answer to those economic challenges lies in Europe raising its game dramatically as far as competitiveness is concerned.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman most warmly on lasting the whole Parliament as Minister for Europe, which must be a first. I understand that he and the Government received this Commission work programme some time ago, so why has it take so long to get it to the Floor of the House? I might be wrong about that, so will he clarify when the Government first received it?

[Mr Lidington]

I can check the precise date and let the right hon. Gentleman know. There has been a delay, which I regret, because it has taken time to get collective agreement on this and on a number of other debates that the European Scrutiny Committee has referred. Originally, we considered having this debate in Committee, but, having discussed the issue with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House after he had given evidence to the European Scrutiny Committee, the Government decided to have a debate on the Floor of the House. I am just glad that we are having this debate relatively early in 2015.

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[Mr McFadden]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Certainly in the speech that I heard last Thursday, the commissioner was not saying that there were no problems at all. He acknowledged many of the problems and said that he was determined to take a different approach in responding to them from that taken in the past. It is perfectly fair for Members to say, “We’ll see how that works out. Let’s see if he’s serious about what he says.” However, that certainly is what he says, and that is reflected in the work programme.

There has been legitimate frustration about over-regulation in the past. If the Commission is serious about weeding out proposals that are not going to go anywhere, that have been lying on the table for years without prospect of agreement or that have been bypassed by events, we should welcome that. I welcome the emphasis on growth and jobs and on regulation in the work programme.

The other measure on growth and jobs, to which the Minister referred, is the Juncker package of investment. As the right hon. Member for Wokingham said, it is a combination of real new money and the encouragement of private sector investment and loan guarantees. If the Minister has a chance to respond to the debate, will he say what bids this Government have made for any proportion of that money? What investment projects have been brought forward and where are they in the country?

Specifically, will the Minister say how that proposal is to be organised in England? There has been concern among local authorities and local enterprise partnerships that they are not permitted to put in bids and that they all have to go through Whitehall. In an environment in which we are discussing devolution to various parts of the country, it is important that areas in England get a fair crack of the whip in terms of submitting bids to this fund for their projects. I hope he will say something about that.

The Minister said that the work of the UK’s commissioner, Lord Hill, on the capital markets union was important. It has long been said that SMEs are too reliant on bank finance and that we need to encourage more forms of finance. What input can this country, with its expertise in financial services, have in those proposals and in the development of the capital markets union, not only from a Government point of view but from a private sector industry point of view? Nowhere in Europe is better placed than the UK to contribute to ideas on financial innovation and financial services.

Of course, some of the work programme does not apply to us. There are measures that apply only to the eurozone. It is important that countries outside the eurozone, such as the UK, continue to play a full part in the EU.

If the Minister responds to the debate, will he update the House on progress on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership? In the question and answer session that followed Commissioner Timmermans’ speech last week, he was asked about TTIP. He said that if it was to be done, it would have to be done by the end of this year. He did not spell this out explicitly, but I think he meant that after that, the timetable of the American presidential election would make it more difficult to negotiate an agreement. Is it the Government’s view that if TTIP is to be done, it has to be done this year? If it is, what input are we having to ensure that that happens, provided that the important concerns about public services and investor-state dispute settlement procedures are worked through and considered properly?

This debate about the work programme reminds us of the way in which we debate these things. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) asked when the Government received the programme. It always strikes me that we debate these things after they have been adopted. Parliament’s method of scrutinising European affairs is not the subject for tonight, but this debate reminds me that these things can be overtaken by events.

There is reference in the work programme to security issues. Like the Minister, I do not agree with Mr Juncker’s suggestion for a European army. However, I do believe that the issue of security is becoming more, not less, relevant, to our European relations. One need only look at the situation in Ukraine. Since the work programme was published, we have had the shootings at Charlie Hebdo, which were a terrible reminder of the common threat we face from extremism. It is therefore important when debating the programme to realise that whatever was written last year has to keep up with the changing nature of events. When he sums up, will the Minister say a few words about what action is being taken on collective security, not of the kind that Mr Juncker referred to with the European army, but in terms of sanctions against the aggression that we have seen in Ukraine?

The work programme refers to migration—that is, migration from outwith the European Union into the European Union. Last week, I met Ministers in Rome. This Minister will be aware that migration is an issue of huge concern for the Government of Italy, given the steady flow of boats from the desperate situation in Libya. The Italian Government feel, with some justification, that they are dealing with a situation that affects all of Europe. We have seen the end of the Mare Nostrum programme and the adoption of the Triton programme. That does not resolve the intense humanitarian crisis nor the political problem in Libya, where there is no Government of any coherence.

[Keith Vaz]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about illegal migration. Obviously, one of the priorities in the Commission’s programme is migration. Some 3,200 people died in the Mediterranean last year, but a quarter of a million people crossed from north Africa into the EU, so this is a serious issue. Getting a common policy to stop the people traffickers exploiting migrants ought to be at the top of the EU’s agenda.

[Mr McFadden]

I very much agree with my right hon. Friend. The Italian Foreign Minister told me that of the estimated 270,000 illegal migrants who landed in the EU last year, 170,000 landed in Italy. This cannot be a problem for just one member state, because it is broader than that. I shall be interested to hear the Minister’s views on our Government’s input in dealing with both the consequences and causes of this problem.

Concerns have been raised about what is not in the programme. The Minister wrote to the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee about the air quality package and the circular economy package. Concerns about that have been raised by Members of the European Parliament as well. A number of Select Committee Chairs have written to the Chair of the European Scrutiny Committee on the matter. It is therefore clear that there is a lot in the work programme that will concern the House.

Before I end, I want to turn to the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and his colleagues on the European Scrutiny Committee. It asks that the Government ask the Commission to develop policies relating to the free movement of citizens. That is something that the Labour party has put forward, and before Christmas my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) produced proposals that related to how free movement interacts with access to benefits and public goods. We would like the Commission to work with member states on that, because access to benefits and public goods is not an issue just for the UK but for other member states. We saw that in the recent European Court judgment on the Dano case, which was initiated in Germany and affected a lady who it was judged did not have the right to access social security benefits. We have an interplay between a founding principle of the European Union and social security systems that are national in nature, and it is right that we discuss work in that area with the Commission.

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I will be as brief as possible, Mr Deputy Speaker.

As ever, it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), who has always spoken with authority on European matters and whom I congratulate on his persistence in getting these issues debated in the House. We do not know quite how long the delay has been since the Commission decided to have its work programme—

[Mr Lidington]

The work programme was published on 17 December, the explanatory memorandum was laid before Parliament on 14 January, the European Scrutiny Committee referred it for debate on 28 January and we are debating it on 9 March. It is not as long a delay as there has, I am afraid, been with some others.

[Keith Vaz]

I am most grateful to the Minister. It might not seem long to him, but, picking up on a point made by the shadow Minister, it is good to have these matters debated in the House as quickly as possible. If Parliament is to have any influence on the Commission, it is good to have them before us as quickly as possible.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I support the right hon. Gentleman’s comments entirely. The Commission work programme is the equivalent of the Queen’s Speech, and it is inconceivable that the House would wait nearly three months before debating the Gracious Speech and then allow only 90 minutes to do so.

[Keith Vaz]

Indeed. As the hon. Gentleman says, there is the time issue. Several right hon. and hon. Members wish to speak—even if they are the usual suspects—and to give these issues our proper attention, we need longer than 90 minutes. I know how much you enjoy these European debates, Mr Deputy Speaker.

May I again congratulate the Minister for Europe on lasting five years? To get a five-year sentence under the criminal law, one has either to have been trading in firearms or to have been guilty of violent disorder. I do not know what he did right, but he is obviously the Prime Minister’s blue-eyed boy, because he has kept him tethered to the Dispatch Box as Minister for Europe. I would love to see how many stamps he has in his passport—but it is the EU so there will be no stamps. Anyway, well done to him for surviving so many of these debates.

I want to concentrate on one aspect of the five headline points in the Commission programme—migration. The hon. Member for Stone talked about legal migration and the issues confronting the British electorate—issues that we need to discuss—but I want to concentrate on illegal migration. On a recent visit to Calais, the Home Affairs Committee accepted the point made by the Mayor of Calais that once illegal migrants get there, they can see the UK and it is therefore already too late. Even the fence, like that used to surround and separate G8 leaders from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), though robust, has been blown down twice. It is too late, once the illegal migrants get to Calais; this issue needs to be dealt with by the EU and the Commission at the point of departure from north Africa.

As my right hon. Friend the shadow Minister said, the Italians are bearing the brunt of this problem. More than 250,000 people travel cross the Mediterranean every year; 3,200 have died—those are the ones we know about; and the Mare Nostrum initiative has been stopped because Frontex simply cannot deal with the problem. It is not just Italy, though. In the past five years, the Committee has also visited the border between Greece and Turkey. We know what pressure the Greeks are under, because of their economic situation, and people are flooding into Turkey from Iraq and Syria, despite the efforts of the Turkish Government. Once they arrive in Greece, they are kept in detention for up to three to four months, before being released on the border between Greece and Turkey. They end up in Athens, but their destination of choice is the UK and western Europe.

Illegal migration is the No. 1 issue facing the EU, and although it is recognised as such in the Commission’s programme, under the heading “Towards a New Policy on Migration”, actually we do not hear enough from the Commission and Ministers about this critical issue. It requires a new deal with the countries of north Africa, particularly in respect of how the Egyptians, Libyans, Algerians, and to a lesser extent the Moroccans and Tunisians, deal with the people traffickers, who take up to €10,000 each from each migrant on the boat and then leave them, sometimes without a captain, in the hope that the Italian Government will send ships to save them, which does not always happen. So although it is not necessarily on the conscience of people sitting in this House, it is certainly on the conscience of the Commission, if it has one.

Dealing with illegal migration requires an EU approach; it is not just a matter for the United Kingdom. As I have said, once the migrants have reached Calais, it is far too late. I would be keen to know from the Minister today, and from his successor—unless the Minister’s party wins the election and the Prime Minister is persuaded that the right hon. Gentleman is prepared to do another five years—what is happening in the EU with illegal migration, because it is a huge problem that needs to be resolved.

[Mr McFadden]

Before the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee finishes, will he clarify his view on burden sharing? Does he really think that if these migrants land in Italy, they stay in Italy—or is not the reality that once they get there, they will try to travel to other countries?

[Keith Vaz]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and this is not helped by the fact that the Italians, because they do not want to deal with this problem themselves, give people travel documents so that they can travel on their own to other parts of the EU. That is why we cannot simply leave it to Italy; we need to sort it out. I am not talking about burden sharing in the sense that we all say that we are going to take a similar number of people, because I am not sure that that is what the British people want. What it requires is a robust approach to a Mediterranean crisis—and it is a crisis and it does need to be resolved.