Letters - March 2008

10th March 2008
By William Hague, Edward Davey, David Heathcoat-Amory, Gisela Stuart, Lembit Opik and Kate Jopling

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‘A tragic, foolish and wholly avoidable mistake...’

SIR: It will not surprise your readers that I take a less rosy view of the Lisbon Treaty’s provisions than your contributors to Parliamentary Brief’s last edition. Where I think we agree is that while the Lisbon Treaty differs from the EU Constitution in form it is in substance nearly identical.

Two points from the contributions stand out. First, Brian Crowe’s point that the new EU Council President’s foreign policy role is highly likely to cut across the High Representative’s. It is the nature of political posts that their holders seek to aggrandise their power and it is inevitable that this will be the case with the EU Council President. Far too little thought has been given to how this new role will work out in practice. Far from making the EU more efficient the Lisbon Treaty sets the scene for inter-institutional turf wars.

Secondly, I respectfully but strongly disagree with Michael Dougan’s take on the UK’s position on the area of freedom, security and justice. While decision-making can be slow the current third pillar arrangement strikes the right balance between the need for European co-operation and the need to respect democratic accountability through national institutions in the very sensitive area of criminal justice and policing. Making this area a Community competence, notwithstanding the opt-in, is a fundamental change that shifts that delicate balance in the wrong direction.

The essential problem with all the changes in the Lisbon Treaty as far as Britain is concerned is that, regardless of whether one considered them beneficial or detrimental, no party sought a democratic mandate to agree to them without a referendum at the last election.

By seeking to whip this Treaty through parliament without the promised referendum the government is actually weakening the European Union’s democratic legitimacy in Britain, the opposite of their intent. This is a tragic, foolish and wholly avoidable mistake, a result less of the politics of conviction than partisan calculation.

William Hague MP, Shadow Foreign Secretary

Sane Analysis...

SIR: I congratulate Parliamentary Brief on your special edition on the Lisbon Treaty. There are regrettably few sources of objective analysis on the impact of the Lisbon Treaty and the abandoned Constitution.

Brian Crowe’s analysis of the changes to the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy is particularly welcome.

Readers should contrast his sane analysis of the relatively modest changes that will be introduced by the Lisbon Treaty with the camp-fire ghost stories of the Conservative front-bench in recent Commons debates. There is no threat to the UK’s place on the UN Security Council, and the changes such as a new High Representative and External Action Service will extend British influence in the world rather than frustrate or endanger it.

These modest changes are typical of a treaty that is by no means as revolutionary as the Single European Act, Maastricht or the now-defunct Constitutional Treaty. Calls for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty are entirely misplaced, as were calls for referenda on Amsterdam and Nice.

The only sensible referendum that can take place is an ‘in-out’ referendum. That’s the closest to the election promises of a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty, as that replaced all past treaties with one document, and did not contain Britain’s opt-ins on Justice and Home Affairs. Better still, it would publicly out the myths that the Conservatives and Eurosceptics continue to peddle about Britain’s place in Europe.

Edward Davey MP, Liberal Democrat, Shadow Foreign Secretary

SIR: The articles on the Treaty of Lisbon show no understanding of the crisis of confidence facing the EU. The five authors make no reference to democracy, legitimacy or even the public.

Yet when the reform process started in 2001, the Laeken Declaration was adamant: the EU had to become simpler, more democratic and ‘closer to the citizen’.

None of this happened. The European Constitution transferred more powers from member states to the EU, thus taking decisions even further from the public. When rejected in the French and Dutch referendums, the same provisions were rolled into a new Treaty which differs only in structure. Meanwhile, the notoriously inefficient EU budget gets larger, and has failed the audit test for the 12th consecutive year.

There is no case for centralising more powers, particularly in sensitive areas like policing and criminal justice. EU decision-making has not become paralysed by enlargement. Foreign policy co-operation requires more political will, not more institutions. Let us go back to the Laeken Declaration and this time take its instructions seriously.

David Heathcoat-Amory MP, Parliamentary Delegate, Convention on the Future of Europe

Back-door politics

SIR: The range of articles you published on the EU Treaty raise a whole host of questions, but one thing is clear: the terms of reference set out at Laeken which instructed the Convention to examine the allocation of powers between the Union and Member States were not delivered. Nor did it succeed in bringing the people closer to the Union and its institutions.

Politicians are now putting through the back door what they couldn’t get through the front. In the EU, power and competence has a habit of going only one way. The EU can now affect almost every area of life. Parliamentary debate on the Treaty is no substitute for seeking the consent of the people. The last 30 years have seen fundamental changes in the constitutional relationship between the UK and the EU. A referendum asking the people is the only way overcome the lack of democratic accountability.

GISELA STUART MP Member, Foreign Affairs Committee, Happy renting

SIR, I agree with Professor Martin Partington’s ambition to give rented accommodation a new lease of life (February edition). For some reason, Britain has become obsessed with the concept of purchasing property instead of renting it. It’s as though you’re not a proper family if you can’t buy your house.

While property is generally regarded as a good investment, I rarely see a person’s quality of life visibly improved with the knowledge they ‘own’ their home. In addition, ‘social housing’, a phrase virtually stigmatised as relating to the ‘poor,’ is actually the most sensible way to live for those who don’t wish to be enslaved by a mortgage.

The sooner we consider affordable accommodation a prudent option rather than an admission of financial poverty, the sooner we begin to rebalance an economy top-heavy with debt, thanks to the fashion of house ownership and all the pain that goes with it.

Lembit Öpik MP Liberal-Democrat, Shadow Housing Minister, Better Pensions Now

SIR: Noel Whiteside (February edition) argues persuasively about the electoral imperative behind improving pensions, but in doing so she rather suggests that reform should wait until we are the other side of a general election.

At Help the Aged we believe pensioner poverty is such an acute problem that it simply cannot wait and we have highlighted a number of relatively low-cost, simple reforms which we believe could make a real difference. Moving to a system of automatic payment of pensioner benefits would require relatively small investment in infrastructure, but could immediately lift 500,000 pensioners out of poverty in England alone. With £4.5bn of pensioner benefits currently going unclaimed, surely this must be a priority?

Similarly, re-linking the basic state pension to average earnings now, rather than waiting until 2012 could lift a further 100,000 out of poverty. Prof Whiteside is right that no politician who would be prime minister can afford to ignore the outrage of pensioner poverty, but we believe that no pensioner could forgive a party which had the opportunity to make change now, and did not seize it.

Kate Jopling, Head of Public Affairs, Help the Aged

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