Britannia Radio

JOHN REDWOOD’S Blog            28.5.09
Power to the people
    Published by John Redwood at 7:05 am

It is good news that David Cameron wants to tackle the feeling of  
alienation from politics and government that so many people share. He  
is right to say we need power back from Brussels, we need to transfer  
more power to people away from bureaucracies, and need a stronger  
Parliament to challenge and influence government.

Dan Hannan and Douglas Carswell set out a radical agenda for much of  
this earlier in this Parliament. I praised it at the time, and many  
of you thought their agenda contained good things. It is time to them  
to get it down from the shelves and use it to inform debate, as they  
are doing. I wish them every success.

I myself have set out an agenda for less government on this website,  
in the Economic Policy Review, and elsewhere. Today I will look at  
how we could transfer power from Brussels. Tomorrow I will look at  
how we can reduce the power of UK government and make it more  
accountable.

The origins of greater EU power came through the introduction of  
qualified majority voting. If we still enjoyed a veto on every  
measure Brussels proposed, a sensible UK government could avoid all  
new EU law that was damaging or unwanted. The first task is to make  
clear the UK will not accept any more erosion of the veto, and that  
the veto does have to apply to all Foreign Affairs, defence and  
taxation as a bare minimum.

This government has given away so many vetoes, that simply stopping  
the rot is not sufficient. We need our veto back over employment and  
social law, over immigration and Home affairs, and over other areas  
central to the tasks of self government.

Restoring the veto for future laws is no longer sufficient, as too  
many laws of a kind we do not want have been passed already. A  
renegotiation for powers back has to encompass the right to remove EU  
laws we do not like in areas where the veto has been restored.

Two big areas of spending are fishing and agriculture. Neither of  
these policies have worked well. We need our own control of our  
fishing grounds, as I have often argued. We need agricultural reform,  
which should include more being done nationally and locally.

The loss of part of our rebate was one of the worst features of  
recent hopeless negotiating by the UK government. If we cannot reach  
general agreement on a lower budget for the EU overall, we willl need  
to raise again the issue of our contribution.

Some of you will have items of your own you want to add to the list  
for renegotiaiton. Some of you just want to pull out of the whole  
thing. That would still require negotiation, as the UK is now so  
interwoven with the EU that all sorts of issues would need to be  
decided for a new bilateral relaitonship between the EU and an  
independent UK. Those who think it best to call for immediate  
withdrawal need to tell us what kind of arrangements they would want  
on tariffs, market access, transport links and rights, competition  
policy and other areas requiring agreement across borders and how  
these can best be secured.  [The utterly despicable UKIP always  
ignore this -cs]

I think it best to have a renegotiation, and then to put the results  
to the people. It is high time the people could express a view on the  
value of our relationship with the EU. We might get that on Lisbon,  
if it remains unratified and there is a change of government. If not,  
let’s have a referendum on any renegotiation. That will concentrate  
Brussels minds on the need to give us real power back, if the people  
are going to judge the outcome. As a minimum we need full control of  
our social and employment policies, taxation, foreign and defence  
policy, and of Home affairs.