Gisela Stuart MPWorking hard for Bartley Green, Edgbaston, Harborne and Quinton

Commons debate on European affairs // June 19th, 2009 // Speeches, Articles and Interviews

European affairs were on the House of Commons agenda on Tuesday 16 June.  This is a transcript of Gisela’s contribution to the debate:

Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab): It is a great honour to follow the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague). Many of us in the Chamber have spent years debating matters European, and I hope that I will be forgiven for returning to some matters that we have talked about before, because this debate comes in the wake of the European elections.

We cannot ignore the fact that, yet again, we have had European elections in which voters have cast their vote on anything other than the matters of Europe. It was the same in the four European elections in which I took part from 1994. The electorate go out and cast their votes in dwindling numbers on something that is not on the ballot paper. This time, we should be worried about the fact that around one third of the Members who represent this country in the European Parliament have an agenda based on not co-operating in any way. None of the major political parties can be proud of what happened a couple of weeks ago.

I also hope that the Foreign Secretary or his ministerial colleague in his winding-up speech will address the fact that, were the Lisbon treaty to be ratified, it would create an extra MEP for the United Kingdom. However, I am not entirely sure how the Government intend to deal with that, if the treaty were to be ratified.

I have thought about how we could deal with the complete disengagement from Europe. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) and others keep telling us that we need to learn to love Europe, and I thought, “How do you learn to love a foreign country?” I cast my mind back to what it was like when I arrived here 30 years ago, and I remembered that three things struck me then that probably still apply to Europe. One was that when people say, “How are you?” they do not want to know how the other person is-it is a kind of ritual. It took me a long time before I realised that one does not answer; one just says, “Fine, thank you.” Similarly, European elections may be called elections, but they are not what we might think they are. They do not result in a Government whom people recognise or in a change of political direction, so although we call them elections, they are not elections. European elections are something in the democratic process that we have not yet learnt to define-they are almost like a Europe-wide opinion poll on something. We call them elections, but people simply will not engage if they do not have a definable influence.

The second thing-again, it took me a long time before I realised this-was that neither Danny La Rue nor Dame Edna Everage were what they seemed to be.  That is so obvious to the natives, but no one ever spells it out to those who come here as foreigners. Eventually, one finally realises Dame Edna ain’t no dame-and certainly no Edna either-and the European Parliament is pretty much the same. We call it a Parliament, but it does not do anything that we would recognise a parliamentary democracy as doing. The European Parliament is a caucusing body that is incredibly responsive to lobbying institutions, but it is completely unresponsive to public opinion. It may have been a long time before we got the message of what people thought about how we organise ourselves in this place, but, whatever one says about the past few months in the British Parliament, we did get the message. There were mechanisms that meant that we had to respond to the public, but the European Parliament and the Commission almost take pride in being unresponsive to what the public think.

The third thing-this one probably took me the longest-struck me while listening to Mornington Crescent on “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue”. For those who do not live in the metropolis or are unfamiliar with the tube lines, it can take a pretty long time to realise what the true rules of Mornington Crescent are.

Mr. Davey: There aren’t any.

Ms Stuart: Precisely, but everybody pretends that there are. Similarly, when one tries to explain to the British public how the European Union operates on a political level, one can explain the rules, but they are complied with only inasmuch as it suits the institutions to do so.

The Lisbon treaty is the classic example of that. A referendum is held, but we do not take any notice until people say yes. The Government say, “Well, we’re not going to get into hypothetical discussions about what will happen if it isn’t ratified,” while the Opposition say, “Well, you know, don’t trust what the Irish are going to say.” The only thing that the public out there really know is that there is a political agenda that is defined by people whom they neither elect nor can remove, but who relentlessly pursue a direction over which they feel they have no influence. [ Interruption. ] It is no good scowling-that is how it is. If it were not so, why, for 20 years-over my entire political career-have European elections not been fought on anything to do with Europe? I do not know what the political families stand for, and I certainly do not know how they vote once they are elected.

This is not a party political point, but I put it to the Foreign Secretary that it is worrying if a governing party has only 13 MEPs out of 72, as we now have. I know that in the past our MEPs have quite often not voted with the Government anyway. We have had our problems, and Opposition Members will have similar problems with their MEPs. However, there is a serious disconnect when the political shaping of those who represent us at the European level is so fundamentally out of sync with the political direction of the Government here.

Mr. Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con): The hon. Lady is making an interesting and well-thought-out argument, but I would question her on one aspect. When the European elections took place, there were two elections in most areas: a county election and a European election. Voters were voting Conservative and, to a certain extent, Labour in the county elections, but voting for the UK Independence party in the European election. The great British public were sending a message about Europe, even if in a coded manner, by voting UKIP.

Ms Stuart: I am not so convinced. We did not have local elections in my constituency, and the result was essentially 21 per cent. for Labour and 27 per cent. for the Tories. That is why I say that none of the parties should be too joyful. Our analysis was that it was not possible readily to identify where either the UKIP or BNP vote came from. It was more the case that there was a protest vote against the European Union in the previous election; but this time there was a larger vote saying: “A curse on all your houses,” with the houses being the established political parties.

Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh, North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op) rose-

Mr. Davidson rose-

Ms Stuart: I give way to my Scottish colleague.

Mr. Davidson: We are both Scottish colleagues. There are perhaps two things that we can take out of the European elections. One is the myth that proportional representation results in a greater connection with the electorate and a bigger turnout, which clearly does not apply. Secondly, my hon. Friend is downplaying the message that the electorate sent us. We cannot disregard the fact that UKIP polled astonishingly well-far better than anybody would have imagined before the elections-which surely cannot be unconnected with the hostility towards the European Union.

Ms Stuart: Certainly, but my argument is a much wider one, about the disengagement from the political processes. We have become fixated with the process of elections, but just as an exam in school comes at the end of the year, but needs a whole year of work, we need engagement and debate, so that people know what the issue is all about. We simply do not have political engagement at the European level, so when elections come every four years, people do not engage with them.

Mark Lazarowicz: As it happens, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South-West (Mr. Davidson) that the votes in the election cannot be written off as unconnected with people’s views on the European Union. My view is that many of those views are due to misleading propaganda about the European Union from the media and, indeed, Eurosceptic Members of Parliament. Leaving that aside, however, I am interested in my hon. Friend’s comments about the European Parliament. Is her conclusion that it should have more power or that we should not directly elect MEPs? What is the direction in which she is going?

Ms Stuart: First, can we please stop using the labels “Eurosceptic” and “Europhobe”? They are completely and utterly meaningless. There are very few people who would actually advocate withdrawal from the European Union. It is disingenuous and quite insulting to accuse anyone who wants a different kind of relationship with Europe of being Europhobic. It is the same as calling anyone who questions the governing party in a general election an anti-democrat. I simply do not agree with that particular model.

We have an extremely important question to face on the European Parliament: do we think that the level of engagement is at European level or at national level? I have noticed that, over the past 20 years, every time we give the European Parliament more powers, the turnout at the elections goes down. I would be prepared-not here; this is not the place-to argue the case for getting rid of the European Parliament and going back to the double mandate. I will not go down that route now because that is not the argument for today.

At the European Council, I hope that the Foreign Secretary and his colleagues will not say that the electorate simply do not understand these matters, because this is not just a British phenomenon; it is simply more prominent in the United Kingdom. I hope that they will address why the political leaders increasingly want collective solutions. Even though they might not be moving towards a federal state, they increasingly go for collective solutions at European level, and at the same time, the electorate increasingly withdraws from thinking that that is the right way forward.

Mr. Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con): I speak as a former Member of the European Parliament. There are two reasons why the electorate feel so disengaged from the European Union. The first is that, despite the answer to a question in the Bundestag revealing that 70 per cent. of our legislation is now being formed in Europe, we would be hard pressed to find any coverage of that formation process in the British press. The second is the fact that, when we discuss European legislation in this House, we do so after the horse has bolted. Perhaps we should be more proactive and discuss European legislation at its formative stage, when the Commission brings forward the proposals, rather than when everything has been done and dusted in the Council and it is too late to make any real changes.

Ms Stuart: I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but only up to a point. I would love to blame the press, but on this occasion, I do not think that that would do any good. There are institutional problems involved. For example, it would be worth seriously considering the proposal that an incoming Commission should press the delete button on any proposals from the previous Commission’s term that have not been completed. Such proposals should simply go, rather than being negotiated right to the end. We should also stop the rather dishonest system of delaying implementation. When something is politically difficult and a compromise is just about reached on it, the final dodge is to delay its implementation for a further five or 10 years. That means that no one who made the decisions is ever accountable for them.

The third problem is one that really grieves me. I know that the recent reshuffle was not the Foreign Secretary’s responsibility, although some of us might quite like him to be the person who does the reshuffling-[Hon. Members: "Ah!"] But that is neither here nor there. We now have a Europe Minister who is not in the Commons, and that is deeply unsatisfactory. I would quite like the Europe Minister to have almost the status of a Deputy Prime Minister. I would like them to have the role of UKRep-the UK permanent representative in Brussels, a political role-and to be accountable here for all the compromises and deals that we strike. That would address the problem of the deals and negotiations not being reported here. The reason that they are not reported and debated in a meaningful way here is because, first, they are very long-winded and drawn out, with some lasting well beyond the lifespan of a Parliament, and, secondly, they are usually part of a trade-off. We cannot neatly label them as being simply health matters or environment matters, for example; they are always part of a trade-off. UKRep would fulfil the role that I have described.

If we in this place are serious about these matters, we must not fool ourselves. To reassure myself that I was right, I recently attended two European Committees. One was on external services; the other was on the environment. They really are the stuff that masochists are made for! We sat there for hours, for absolutely no purpose whatever. Everything that we were told was hypothetical-these things might or might not happen-and no decisions were reached. So, just being told more would not be the answer. When the Foreign Secretary talks to his colleagues here, he needs to engage with the election result and seriously think about the question of accountability and the fact that we are going in the wrong direction.

Finally, on a separate note, we have talked about the new Pakistan council, which will be an extremely important development. However, those of us who go out to Pakistan and Afghanistan are surprised by the absolute plethora of representatives involved. There is the UK special representative, the French special representative and the Spanish special representative, as well as the EU Commission representative and the EU Council representatives. It would be really worth while for our European partners, as well as the Council and the Commission-which are often dually represented-to decide who should take the lead and to co-ordinate these arrangements much better. We have an important role to play in areas such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, but, at the moment, we are probably still speaking with too many voices.

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