During a debate on the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance - the ‘fiscal compact’ between 25 EU states excluding the UK - Anne Main raises concerns of “mission creep” and the incresing powers of the European courts.

Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak in the debate. I have to leave at 3.30 pm, as I have advised you, but I have been here for the entire debate. I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) but must say that I disagree with just about every word that he said. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) on securing the debate, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud observed, we have had only a day’s notice of it. That was because my hon. Friend the Member for Stone was so fleet-footed and secured it through Standing Order No. 24. Should we not have had that emergency measure, we would have had no discussion whatsoever.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud said that we have not had enough time to contemplate the matter, but we should contemplate the impact of this form of legislation even if we do not get debates on it. My hon. Friends the Members for Stone and for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison), who is not here at the moment, have spent many long years studying the implications of what goes on in Europe for our economy and our legislature. It is extremely important that we do so. This is not about navel gazing.

I was somewhat disappointed in my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland), who seemed to feel that by studying the matter we are somehow being disloyal. It is not disloyalty. We are doing just service to our constituents, because although there may be the political will or ambition in Europe, the impact will be very much on us as a democratically elected Parliament. I, like many other colleagues, have been extremely disappointed by the mission creep throughout Europe, which has in effect led to imposition on a democratic country by people who were never elected by that country but who now make decisions about it—such as Greece.

Mr Buckland: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to correct a misapprehension. I apologise if I created the impression to which she refers, because it was not my intention at all. I think that we are all patriots in this House—we should be—and that although we may agree on the ends, we may differ on the means by which we achieve them. I should not for a moment question my hon. Friend’s integrity or her sincere devotion to her country.

Mrs Main: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I end this part of the debate on that conciliatory note.

I have sincere concerns, however, that the mission creep that I mentioned in an intervention has led us to the point at which a democratic country can have something imposed upon it, leading to riots and civil unrest, because it is not willing to take the necessary pain that the EU must inflict on it. Although we are not today debating whether Greece should leave the EU, we all should heed the warning that when Greece signed up to being a full member of the EU it did not sign up to have something imposed upon it, as it has had.

Martin Horwood: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs Main: No; the hon. Gentleman has made many speeches and many interventions, and I am sure that as the lone representative of the Liberal Democrats today he has had more than his fair share of the debate. I shall not take interventions from him.

I am extremely concerned that we will find ourselves dancing on the head of the same pin as that in the previous Parliament. The hon. Gentleman was a Member then, so he will remember the Liberal Democrats saying, “We need to have a full EU in/out vote on this, and we will give you a genuine vote,” whereas the Conservatives, in opposition at the time, said that we needed to have a vote because there was a treaty. We were assured, “Oh, no, no, it is not a treaty. It is just something we don’t need to have a referendum on.” Such dancing on the head of a pin is what most of us on the more Eurosceptic side of our party find worrying about this particular treaty-that-is-not-a-treaty, into which we supposedly do not need to have any form of input.

Mark Reckless: Does my hon. Friend accept that the difference between our commitment to a referendum on the Lisbon treaty and the Liberal Democrat commitment to an in/out referendum is that theirs is still possible?

Mrs Main: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. As we know, Liberal Democrats tend to change their minds, so they can always change their minds and retain that possibility. He is absolutely right—

Martin Horwood: Will the hon. Lady give way, as she is attacking us directly?

Mrs Main: I am not attacking any Liberal Democrat; I am just saying that they are quite within their rights to change their minds, and have been known to do so.

Martin Horwood: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs Main: No, I am not giving way to the hon. Gentleman. I have made my views clear about why I will not. He has had plenty of opportunity.

I am extremely concerned also that the package under discussion could be incorporated into EU law within five years, because this situation is very much like our bleating on the Lisbon treaty, when we kept saying, “It does have a big effect, it does have a big effect,” and we were constantly told that it did not. The treaty under discussion has a potentially big effect, and that is why I offer my encouragement to the Minister, which I am sure he has been offered by many hon. Members today, including my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland). The Minister has the huge support of the House and the political will of this Parliament, and the Prime Minister had the support of the majority of the House in using the veto. He had robust support, which I believe he has also among the public, for exercising the veto, but, despite the fact that we are not ultimately part of the process, what we do not want is to become a part of it because of mission creep.

So I say to the Minister, who is going along to discuss those matters, that we could be affected by them, despite the fact that they are not designed to affect us. They are designed to affect those countries that are happily allowing themselves to be influenced in that way, but my fear is that, like all the other treaties that have come our way over the years, including Maastricht, ultimately five years down the line, when this one is incorporated, we will somehow feel its chilling effects.

I felt the need to jump up and down when my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon said, “What does the EU make us do that we don’t wish to do?” Well, I should like to deport Abu Qatada, but I cannot. I should like not to be fined or pursued in the European Court of Justice for trying to introduce a means of not allowing people who have never paid into our benefits pot to claim—a habitual residence test—which was overturned on the ground that we are somehow being discriminatory. Those are just two examples of our regularly being made to feel that we must do something, and, what is more, the European courts now have a punitive nature, whereby they routinely fine countries that are non-compliant and say, “If you don’t do so we will place people in your country to make whatever we want delivered, delivered.”

The European courts are intent on getting their own way, and they have found a new method of getting around the rather difficult matter of our veto. They have decided to ignore us, inasmuch as they have said, “This agreement isn’t to do with you,” but ultimately it will be because we will feel its effects. So I encourage the Minister to go along to the discussions with a truly sceptical mind, based on his long and distinguished career in the House, during which time he has seen these arguments made again and again, and seen how in reality the situation has translated into something very different further down the line.

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Earlier intervention in the same debate

Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con): Does my hon. Friend agree that mission creep over the years means that we are right to be sceptical now?

Mr Clappison: My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and the apposite point is that this treaty is a new form of mission creep by the European Union. We need to be clear that something new and important is happening in the European Union, as has been suggested by learned legal opinion submitted to the European Scrutiny Committee. We have seen in the past, under our European Union treaty obligations, that notwithstanding the promises made to us, there has been a massive erosion of the United Kingdom veto and a substantial extension of EU competences—but at least we have always known that that has been done within the framework of the treaties themselves and that we have conferred power to the EU within that framework.

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