Treaty on Stability, Co-ordination and Governance

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Cash]

We have periodically sat in public, but then the position has been reversed. That depends on what is decided by the House as a whole, because these matters relate to the Standing Orders. I see that the Leader of the House is here. He knows how vexed this question is. We have gone backwards and forwards on it. However, the issues that we are discussing have been discussed extensively in public. My hon. Friend is more than welcome to come along if he wants to listen to any of our sessions. [Interruption.] As my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) has just indicated, if he does not want to come along, he can read the transcript. I have copies of it here if he wants to look at it. I do not think that anyone can dispute the fact that the information is out there.

The question of when action needs to be taken is highly relevant in determining whether the Government are seen to acquiesce in decisions that are being taken by other Parliaments, which, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) said, will affect us vitally.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Before the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) takes an intervention, may I say that it is always a privilege to listen to his speeches, and today is no exception, but gently point out that about a dozen people wish to speak? I therefore confidently anticipate that he is approaching the conclusion of his remarks.

[Mr Dodds]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) on securing the debate. I think that it is right and proper that the whole House considers such matters. On the Irish referendum, will he confirm that the rules have been rigged so that if 12—never mind the rest—eurozone countries approve, the pact will be deemed to be ratified?

[Mr Cash]

Absolutely. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman was in the Chamber at the time, but I referred to that in reply to another colleague. We are effectively having a new qualified majority voting system for referendums.

The catalogue of breaches of the spirit and the specific legal requirements were epitomised in Madame Lagarde’s remarks on 17 December 2010 about the first bail-out fund, otherwise known as the EFSM—the European financial stabilisation mechanism. She said:

“We violated all the rules because we wanted to close ranks and really rescue the euro zone.”

That is the objective and the method. She is now head of the International Monetary Fund, and we are faced with the prospect of the United Kingdom being expected to contribute to the IMF for what everybody knows is a back-door arrangement to underpin and guarantee the bail-outs in the European Union, which the IMF was not set up to provide, as the United States and other countries have made clear.

Indeed, Germany and France broke the stability and growth pact as it was originally instituted. Now we have a new feature in the big political landscape: in the pursuit of a tax and fiscal policy and compliance with a so-called golden rule to balance their budgets by a form of coercion, 25 member states of the European Union have now come up with an agreement to increase the powers of the stability and growth pact as it applies to them, irrespective of whether a country held a referendum and voted no, as the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) just suggested. The vote would simply be swept away by a majority vote of the other countries, which insisted on applying the golden rule. One is bound to ask what kind of golden rule it is and whether it is not possible for individual countries to balance their budgets out of self-interest and through their own democratic decisions, rather than having a rule imposed on them in pursuit of the ideology of economic and political union. Indeed, the imposition of such a rule will, of itself, not balance the budgets anyway, as has been found in the past. This is using rules of law to breach the rule of law.

The real solution to the European crisis, which is not confined to the eurozone and deeply affects the United Kingdom, is that the levels of public expenditure, which led to the breaches of the criteria in the treaties, can be solved only by generating growth and giving oxygen to small and medium-sized businesses, for example, through deregulating the massive over-regulation and multiplicity of laws, such as the working time directive, among many others. The list is vast.

Yet again, the whole treaty is a vain attempt to sacrifice practicality and democracy on the altar of ideology, just as the referendums in Ireland, France, Holland and so on were all simply thrown away.