EU Council June 2014

Lord Kinnock Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I will have a go, although I suspect I may need to write further to be more accurate. My noble friend took the Bill through and enacted it, and I am sure he knows it far better than I do.

My understanding is that the Act applies to changes in the rules that transfer power from Westminster to Brussels. Under the EU treaties, the European Council, acting by qualified majority, shall propose to the European Parliament a candidate for president of the European Commission. In this instance, we believe that the existing rules were pushed to shift power from the European Council to the European Parliament rather than any fresh transfer of power from Westminster to Brussels. That is the distinction. It did not represent a further transfer of power from Westminster. If I have got that wrong, I will make that clear to my noble friend in a letter that I will circulate to the House and place in the Library.

[Lord Kinnock (Lab)]

The Leader of the House has spoken of policy and by the use of that word has inferred a strategy in the mind and conduct of the Prime Minister. Was it policy that produced the withdrawal of the Conservatives from the EPP in 2005—thus relinquishing, as they were warned, any degree of influence over the largest group in the European Parliament? Was it policy that made the Prime Minister proclaim his opposition to an individual candidate very early on in this procedure, thus removing any room for Chancellor Merkel or others to negotiate about the final resolution of the position? When the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament to varying degrees all favour reform, does the Leader of the House think that that mission is propelled forward by allowing one of his Cabinet colleagues to describe a heroine—a genuine heroine since her earliest years—Angela Merkel as a coward? If these are all policies, what hope is there for the Prime Minister to be the man to negotiate the change that is necessary and welcome in the European Union?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

The point I was trying to make was that on policy grounds it was the view of the Prime Minister and others within the European Council that the decision about the next President of the Commission should be taken by the Council rather than by the European Parliament. That was the principled point that he was seeking to pursue. More broadly, in answer to the noble Lord’s question about the policy, if one looks back, the Prime Minister as a matter of policy has sought to influence and move the agenda of the European Union towards growth, jobs and trade deals with the United States, Canada and other countries. One can see, in progress on deregulation and all the rest of it, a shift over a number of years which reflects the policy that he has been seeking to pursue.