COMMON MARKET (Hansard, 11 April 1961)

§ Mr. Woodrow Wyatt (Bosworth)
I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the United Kingdom's membership of the European Economic Community. My proposed Bill has only one Clause. It lays down that Her Majesty's Government should apply to join the European Economic Community—or the Common Market, as it is better known—by 15th July. Why the urgency? It is because, as that great authority, Lord Gladwyn, said in another place, on 9th February: … in this matter … time is working not for us, but against us."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 9th February, 1961; Vol. 228, c. 562.] This was reinforced very sharply last week when President Kennedy talked to our Prime Minister.
Eventually, we shall have to join the Common Market. The longer we wait, the worse will be the terms we will have to accept and the less chance we will have of influencing the economic and political shape of the Common Market. Already it is solidifying fast. Tariffs inside it are down by 30 per cent. now; by the end of the year the tariffs within the Common Market will be down by 50 per cent.
Alarmed by this process—however quiet he may look now—the Lord Privy Seal, at the end of February, told the Six that we would consider a common tariff if they would meet our difficulties on the Commonwealth and agriculture. But, as usual, we were making concessions too late. Two years ago the Six might have considered such proposals. Now they feel themselves so strongly established that they are prepared to get along without Britain if Britain will not, like the other members of the Common Market, embrace the concept first and then proceed to negotiate the details. There is no danger in this. There are ample provisions in the articles of the Rome Treaty for negotiating our difficulties.
British industry is today realising the urgency of getting into Europe, while the Government still hesitate. I.C.I. has just invested, or has announced that it plans to invest, £100 million in building new chemical plants in Holland, and other 37 British firms are also investing in a large way in the Common Market. American industry is stepping up the rate of its investment in Europe. This means that much-needed capital investment is now being diverted from Britain, and that cannot fail, in the long run, to have a damaging effect on our policy of full employment. It will also be an increasing factor in holding back rises in our production, keeping us permanently with the worst production record in Europe.
Investment is pouring into the Common Market because it is the fastest expanding economy in the world. Two world wars and international barriers held Western Europe back. Now its energy and its technical skills are released. The hugeness of the market being created, with its capacity to contain immense competitive units within it, gives it the greatest potential growth the world has ever known, while we and the Government sit sluggishly staring at this economic phenomenon only 21 miles away from us. If we do not join it, and take a part in leading it, and profit from its benefits, we shall become a relatively poor and impotent country.
We cling hopefully to our special relationship with America. It will not be long before the economic strength of Western Europe will be so great that in the free world the effective partnership will be between America and the Common Market, not with us. We may keep our special relationship with America. It will be like the special relationship between Dublin and Whitehall.
The inescapable modern trend is for great industrial enterprises to become larger and larger to increase their efficiency of operation. But these vast industrial units are only maintained at a high peak of competitive efficiency if they are thrust forward by the need to emulate other large enterprises in the same field. That is what happens in America. That is what is happening now in the Common Market.
The area and market available to us in Britain is so small that we are reaching the position where there is a giant in each branch of industry without a rival giant to keep it on its toes. The advantage gained by merging small units together is lost by there being no competitor for the resultant mass. Our industrial octopuses can only 38 get the competitive stimulus that they need by having to compete on level terms with other vast organisations. Otherwise, the stagnation from which British industry suffers today will settle ever more heavily upon us.
A major objection always raised has been the Commonwealth, but this objection is rapidly disappearing. There is no difficulty in negotiating quota systems to protect special Commonwealth export markets, such as New Zealand butter.
The new members of the Commonwealth need economic aid. If we stay out of the Common Market, Western Europe will be in a far better position to provide it than we shall be. What influence we have with the newer members of the Commonwealth will then pass to the Common Market, because that will be the only source, apart from America, from which they can get large scale help. But, in any case, it will be of no comfort to the Commonwealth if Britain grows relatively weaker, as she will if we stay out of the Common Market. The stronger Britain is, the better for the Commonwealth.
British agriculture has understandable fears, but, only on 20th March, Dr. Mansholt, Vice-President of the Common Market Commission, who is in charge of agriculture, explained that British agriculture's difficulties could easily be met. A compromise could be found by which the Continent lowered its tariffs and introduced subsidies while we lowered our subsidies and had small import levies, without the British farmer being one whit the worse off.
It is said that the French do not want us. Fundamentally, this is, I believe, untrue. The French Foreign Secretary recently urged Britain to accept the Rome Treaty. But, even if it were true, it is no reason for our not presenting the French with a situation in which they could not refuse to allow us in.
The longer we delay, the more chance there is of vested interests growing up to prevent our joining the Common Market. We cannot afford to see a huge economic and political unit built up a few miles away from us in which we have no say whatever. It will be a power bigger than Napoleon's, bigger than Khrushchev's, bigger than the United States. We can 39 either take a part in directing it, or be one of its insignificant offshore islands.
Our entry into the Common Market will both stimulate our industry at home and give political stability and a wholesome political shape to whatever emerges in Western Europe. Some of the members of the Common Market have not in the past had a very good record in the matter of totalitarianism. Britain is the country most likely to be able to counteract any such tendencies in the future and prevent any likelihood of a huge totalitarian Western Europe developing which would utterly destroy us.
In Boston last Friday, the Prime Minister said that we need to think not so much nationally as in terms of wider groupings, For". he said, the advantages of size, of large areas transcending national boundaries, where capital, labour and goods can move without impediment, are surely more manifest to us year by year It seems extraordinary that a Prime Minister of Britain, always so prolific of great ideas in the past, should have to be edged into making such a statement by a young man of 44, the President of the United States. It is obvious that America wants us to join the Common Market, and, if this helps, I welcome the inspiration.
It is no good the British Government continuing to proffer insignificant concessions long after they are likely to be effective. There is only one course possible—to take the leap which would convince Europe of our sincerity and of our belief in the future of the Common-Market. Our problems can easily be ironed out, as have been all the others which have existed between the members of the Common Market.
The Prime Minister is for it, even if he states his position with his usual ambiguity. The Lord Privy Seal is for it. Most of the Cabinet are for it, even if the Leader of the House is not. All those who hope that the world will make progress towards world government are for it. Even the Financial Times, in a 40 remarkable leading article this morning, is for it.
Who is against our going ahead? Only those who cling to a mystical, nostalgic belief that, somehow, Britain's great past enables us to disregard the unfolding of history. If these sentimentalists triumph, they will condemn Britain to the lowest rôle in international affairs that she has occupied for many centuries, and each day that passes makes the situation less malleable and more threatening.

§ Viscount Hinchingbrooke (Dorset, South)
I oppose the Motion. I will not trouble the House by calling a Division. I do not think that the representations made by the hon. Member for Bosworth (Mr. Wyatt) are worthy of it. I contend that the hon. Gentleman's Motion and his speech are a misuse of Parliamentary procedure. He knows the rules very well. Bills introduced under the Ten Minutes Rule are, by custom, reserved for technical subjects and for honest, praiseworthy Bills which escape other treatment. To attempt to introduce a highly polemical topic—this is not the first occasion on which the hon. Member has attempted it—is a grave misuse of Parliamentary procedure, and I hope that the hon. Member will be dissuaded from returning to it in the future, if not by his own thinking, then by the actions of his right hon. Friend the Leader of his party.
Secondly, in case the Press should draw the conclusion from the hon. Gentleman's speech, if it is not followed by any other statement, that the House and the country acquiesce in the statement reputed to have been made by the President of the United States urging Britain to join the Common Market, I wish to say that the hon. Member's speech was a tissue of misrepresentations from one end to the other. I hope that, at the proper time, the House will have a full opportunity to debate this most urgent topic.

§ Mr. Leslie Hale (Oldham, West)
May I ask for your guidance, Mr. Speaker? A little over twelve months ago I sought leave to introduce a Bill to deal with an urgent social problem relating to the London Library, the Royal College of Music and several highly important institutions which were suffering very grave difficulty by reason of a curious interpretation of the old rating system.
At a certain point in the negotiations, the Minister of Housing and Local Government was good enough to tell me, in private, but with permission to make a brief statement about it—which I made with his complete approval—that the matter was under consideration and that, on the whole, further pursuance of the Bill would serve no useful purpose because other matters were under consideration.
I thought it right, after consideration and, indeed, after advice, to ask for leave to introduce the Bill in order to permit me to explain the reasons why the Bill was being introduced and why I did not then seek the immediate approval of the House to the Measure.
You were good enough to say, Mr. Speaker, that your considered opinion was that that was an abuse of the process of the House, and that one ought not to seek leave to introduce a Measure unless one intended to seek the approval of the House for it.
In the circumstances, I ask for your observations upon the procedure we have just witnessed. Is it not an abuse of the process of the House to move for leave to introduce a Bill, which was opposed by the noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke), in terms of which I did not disapprove, but Which were slightly contemptuous—I do not use that expression controversially—and then not to ask for the approval of the House and not to appoint Tellers? I was subjected to some rebuke for seeking on an issue of first importance to put fairly to the House the reasons why I wished to introduce the Bill and the reasons why, after consultation with the right hon. Gentleman, I came to the conclusion that I ought not to ask the House to vote on it.

§ Mr. Speaker
I remember the hon. Gentleman's case. I am obliged to him for the courteous way in which he refers to what he calls a rebuke. My view is—I hope that it is the view of the House as I seek only to interpret it—that an hon. Member is not entitled to make a speech under this Standing Order unless he intends to move the Motion. The hon. Gentleman has explained why he made his speech on the occasion to which he has referred, but I considered it an abuse of the rules of the House because he would not have had leave from the Chair to make it had the Chair known that in the last sentence he proposed to say that he did not wish to move the Motion after all.
In this instance, I am in this difficulty. I suppose that it is just possible that the hon. Gentleman who has been asking leave was unable to get anyone to tell with him. Subject to that, it would appear, prima facie, although I have not investigated the circumstances, that there is something wrong in an hon. Member using this Standing Order to ask for leave if he is not prepared to tell in favour of the proposition. I do not think it desirable that I should say any more.

§ Mr. Wyatt
On this occasion, I hope that the House will unanimously give leave to introduce the Bill, as it has done in other cases before. Since I first tabled the Motion for debate there have been so many changes in Government policy that everyone is now feeling in an embarrassed situation because it is clear that the Government are about to change their policy on the Common Market.

§ Mr. Speaker
I was not inviting the hon. Gentleman to make a speech of that character. I thought it proper to give him an opportunity of explaining why he had abused the procedure.

§ Mr. Hale
I am grateful for that explanation—

§ Mr. Speaker
I think that the hon. Member for Bosworth (Mr. Wyatt) should be allowed to speak.

§ Mr. Wyatt
If there are Tellers for the proposition, I am content to vote for 43 it. I did not wish to follow the proposition to an embarrassing length which might prevent rather than promote the object that I had in mind.

§ Mr. Speaker
The House will have heard what the hon. Gentleman has said.

§ Mr. Hale
I am grateful for this almost politically posthumous recognition of my character. I gather that the only thing imputed to me was excessive integrity and frankness.

§ Mr. Speaker
I am not sure that I necessarily associate myself with those observations.