European Union Bill

I was unable to be in the Chamber for the first part of the debate because I was detained on House business elsewhere. I came in to listen to some fine speeches—and I have certainly heard some—but I did not plan to speak myself. However, I have been provoked once again into saying a few words. As I have said time and again in the Chamber, the European Union is not Europe. They are two separate concepts, one of which is a continent of countries that I love very much. I would wish to go nowhere else. Europe is my home—it is where my history is and where my ancestors came from. We are a group of splendid nations with wonderful histories, and we have made great contributions to the world. In contrast, the EU is a recent invention, a political construct imposed on the peoples of Europe, and not always with their consent. In recent years, there has been a drift towards a majority opposing the EU—the regular Eurobarometer test shows sinking support for the EU. The EU is not Europe; it is a political construct with which I have always had strong disagreements. The Labour party makes the point time and again that those who oppose or are critical of the EU are of the right, and those who support it are of the left. That is strange, because it was actually the Conservatives who led us into the EU and the majority of the Labour party who opposed it in the 1975 referendum. I was the agent for the no vote in Bedfordshire, and a Conservative Member for a Bedfordshire constituency was the agent for the yes vote. I reminded him of that when I met him recently—he has passed away now—and he was horribly embarrassed because he had changed his view. I have not changed mine. The referendums held recently in European nations have been won by my standards—lost by the standards of the Euro-enthusiasts—by people of the left, including trade unionists and working class people who did not feel that this machine would be to their benefit. That was true in France despite the leadership of the French Socialist party balloting its membership to get a yes vote. In Holland, again, it was trade unionists and people of the left who voted no; it was people who thought that some of the rights they had achieved in the post-war democratic world might be taken away by the EU. In Sweden, too, there was a referendum on the euro, and again it was the left who opposed it, because they could see that being bolted to a single currency would remove the flexibility that all economies need from time to time to be able to adjust. I am broadly in favour of stable currency regimes, although not a complete floating currency rate. We had one after the second world war, between 1945 and 1970-ish, and it worked: we had full employment, growth, rising prosperity and greater equality than we had ever seen, and welfare states developed all over Europe. Somehow, however, we gave it all away, and now we have gone for a neo-liberal, free market view of the world with which I completely disagree and which has brought us close to disaster in recent years. I think that the social democratic world of Europe after the second world war was a good world and one that worked. That is why I so strongly oppose most of what the EU is doing. It is trying consistently to take all that away and to create a world of competition and free markets with which I do not agree. It has brought us close to disaster. My record on opposing the single currency goes back a long way. In 1979, I worked as a research officer for a then trade union called NALGO. I wrote a brief on the ““snake””. Hon. Members with long memories will remember the ““snake””—the European monetary system—and whether we should join it under Denis Healey. I wrote a brief to our general secretary saying, ““This will be a disaster. It's the first step on the way to a single currency and will do us no good.”” Geoffrey Drain, our then general secretary, went to the TUC, taking my brief with him, and he argued strongly against joining the ““snake””. The TUC then went to Denis Healey and again argued strongly against joining the ““snake””, and he agreed not to join it. I am not sure whether it was just down to me, but we all agreed anyway. Subsequently, however, we made the great mistake of joining the exchange rate mechanism, which did the Conservative party no good, I fear. Had it not joined it and had we not suffered the depression, the negative equity, the housing market collapse and the rise in interest rates in 1992, or had it not been ejected from or left the ERM, it might not have lost the 1997 general election. That was the cause of its loss, and many Conservatives rue the day they were persuaded to support joining the ERM. I opposed the ERM before we joined. I wrote a paper saying what would happen, and I was proved right—I said that the money markets would speculate against it and that it would break. That proved to be correct. Since then, I have opposed a European single currency. I was a founder member, with several good comrades on the Labour Benches, of a group called first ““Labour against the euro”” and now ““Labour for a European referendum””. They consisted of the same people, including my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell), who made a fine speech today. We now have the single currency, and the elephant in the room is the crisis in the eurozone. Members only have to read the Financial Times leader every day. I am not saying that the Financial Times is all-knowing and all-wise, but it is not yet convinced that the euro will survive. Indeed, sensible people are suggesting that we should be trying to find an orderly way to deconstruct the euro using these vast funds to do it in the most pain-free way possible. It might not be very pain free, but at least it would be better than ploughing on into a massive crisis when things get out of control. Perhaps we need a controlled deconstruction of the euro for those countries that cannot sustain membership, and a new eurozone consisting of a smaller group of member states based around Germany, or indeed two or three different currencies for countries that can afford to work with each other. Our former Prime Minister and Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), had the great wisdom to stay out of the euro in the late 1990s. I cheered him then because he was absolutely right, and has been proved to be right. Had we not been able to depreciate by 25% or so, we would now be in the same state as Ireland—but probably worse. Single currencies are essential shock absorbers. They should not be used lightly. I do not agree with volatile exchange rates, but we need stable ones, as we had after the war, with the possibility of depreciation from time to time, and indeed appreciation if a currency is undervalued. Germany's currency, for example, was under-valued for a long time, which gave it a tremendous competitive advantage. The eurozone is the elephant in the room. Sovereignty is important. I would like a stronger Bill than this one in which we can re-establish support for the democratic state and our own national sovereignty, not in a nationalistic way but because that is the basis of our democracy. I want the same degree of sovereignty for other nation states as well. I think that the nation state is the natural order of things, and trying to impose arrangements that bind nation states rigidly together will be fraught with problems and lead to disaster. I use this example time and again: Argentina effectively tried to join the dollar zone, and it almost destroyed its economy. In the end, it had to recreate the peso and devalue massively. Having been the strongest economy in south America, Argentina went through terrible times and still has not quite recovered. Single currencies imposed on different economies are always mistakes, and that is what has happened in the eurozone. Edward Heath, when in opposition, sat where I sit in the Chamber. He argued strongly against enlargement—I am not suggesting I agreed or disagreed with him—because he thought that countries that were too different would not be able co-operate within the EU.He wanted to stay in a smaller group of richer, western European nations. That is what Edward Heath was in favour of; he was not in favour of the much larger organisation that is now developing, involving countries with very different economies and, indeed, different traditions. He will perhaps be looking down with interest from wherever he is now and saying, ““Well, I was right after all, wasn't I?”” It does not work if we try to impose things on very different economies. Those are the points that ought to be borne in mind, and the major problem that the European Union has at the moment.