EEC MINISTERIAL MEETINGS (Hansard, 25 July 1974)

§ The Secretary of State for Trade and President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Peter Shore)
With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the Council of Foreign Ministers' meeting in Brussels on 22nd and 23rd July. There were three main items of business, the negotiations with Mediterranean countries, negotiations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific States and energy policy.
As regards the first item, the Council adopted a new mandate for the negotiations with Mediterranean countries. This should make it possible for the negotiations with the Mediterranean countries concerned to be carried to an early conclusion.
This should mean improved access for our exporters to the important and fast-growing markets of Spain and Israel. In 1973, our exports to these two countries were valued at £227 million and £187 million respectively. In both cases we would by 1st July 1977 enjoy the same advantages in the two markets as the Six. With Spain we would have completely free entry into their market for most industrial products by 1980. In the case of Israel the timetable is somewhat slower, but we would have free entry over 60 per cent. of Israel's industrial imports by that year. At the same time, in the important area of imports of foodstuffs from Spain, Israel and the other Mediterranean countries concerned, we have secured an outcome under which, over the larger part of our imports, we shall be able to maintain a tariff no higher than or below our pre-accession rate.
As regards the negotiations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific States, the Council prepared the way for the Ministerial Conference with those States at Kingston on 25th and 26th July. The Council was able to agree on the line which the President of the Council should take at the conference on the size of the European Development Fund and the question of trade reciprocity. On the last point it was agreed that reciprocity should not be required from the developing countries. The agreement on this point meets the views of Her Majesty's Government and will, we believe, be welcomed by 1826 the ACP countries, including the Commonwealth countries.
It was not, however, possible to reach agreement on the arrangements to be made on imports of sugar. Nor was it possible to agree on means of mitigating the instability of ACP States' exports to the Community of primary commodities. It is hoped that EEC Ministers will be able to pursue these questions further at Kingston.
Finally, the Council of Ministers had a preliminary discussion of the Commission's proposals for a new Community energy policy. We were invited to approve a draft resolution setting the broad guidelines for such a policy but I was unable to agree to the draft in front of us since it seemed to me to be premature. I explained that we are certainly not opposed to the development of a sensible Community energy policy, but we believe that there are specific aspects of it which require much further discussion between experts of member States. The Council will resume its discussion of energy policy at its meeting on 16th-17th September.

§ Mr. Rippon
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his statement. May I welcome the progress that has been made in the negotiations with the Mediterranean countries which, as the Minister says, will open up new markets for our exporters in Spain, Israel and elsewhere. As his enthusiasm for reaching these agreements is sometimes doubted, no doubt unfairly, will the right hon. Gentleman take the opportunity of confirming that he is negotiating in all these matters in good faith for an early and successful result and that he is in favour in principle of British membership of the Community?
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I welcome his confirmation that the Government fully support the idea of working towards a sensible Community energy policy? Will he explain why it is that so little progress has been made, because it is over two months since the Commission's report was presented? What consultations have been taking place since? Will the right hon. Gentleman also explain exactly what timings he thinks are premature and what aspects of the targets are over-ambitious?
Is he aware that there is a general feeling that his rather unhelpful attitude towards energy policy, or so it appears 1827 from reports—although I am sure that they are not true—appears to have damaged the negotiations on sugar and the agreements with the developing countries? I know that the right hon. Gentleman will understand when I say that part of his statement was disappointing apart from the welcome agreement on reciprocity. Will he confirm that both the Commission and the European Parliament have endorsed the 1.4 million tons of sugar? Will he accept that both sides of the House are well aware of the specific and moral commitments given by the Community and that we expect it to hold to those commitments?
In the changed world situation, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to say something about the position with regard to Australian sugar? Will he say whether the Government are invoking the provisions of Protocol No. 16 with regard to markets in agricultural products from developed countries? Bearing in mind the discussions that will be taking place in Jamaica, may I ask the Secretary of State to confirm and perhaps expand the Government's attitude towards a Community stabilisation fund in the new association agreements and towards the other matters on which he says it has not been possible to arrive at a satisfactory solution?
Finally—and this is central to his activities—will he make clear his unequivocal acceptance of collective Cabinet responsibility in these matters and his determination to secure, if he can, continued British membership of the Community?

§ Mr. Shore
I do not think the right hon. and learned Gentleman expects me to reply to all of the insults which he has traded across the Box. What I will do is to answer the serious questions he put to me. I will deal first with the Mediterranean mandate. There should be no question in anyone's mind but that we are in favour, and always have been, of any serious negotiations which have the effect of enlarging the area of freedom of trade between this country and other countries. It is in that spirit and against that general background that the agreement—we hope that it will become an agreement—should be seen and judged.
I come to this question of sugar. When the right hon. and learned Gentleman asks 1828 me whether I am negotiating in good faith, I have to tell him that what I was concerned about for the greater part of the debate we had on sugar was to rescue his good faith. That was what the issue was about. The House should know that I found, to my great amazement and disappointment, that those "bankable assurances", the specific and moral commitments about which the right hon. and learned Gentleman assured this House, the country, and the ACP countries on 17th May 1971, were not accepted within the Community. It is because they were not accepted that I would agree to a mandate on sugar. To do so without that acceptance would have been to put me in the position not only of breaking faith with those countries but of breaking what we assumed to be the good faith of the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his colleagues. I hope that that point can be fully registered.
I come to the energy policy. Let there be no question of there being any connection between this subject and the sugar issue. As it happens, in the sequence of events at Brussels, it was the sugar and ACP question of Protocol 22 that preceded the Council discussion on energy matters. It was the difficulty on sugar that preceded the difficulties on the energy policy. All I need to say about energy policy is that it does not seem that two months is a long time, with a serious subject such as this, in which to consider the kind of propositions, some very far-reaching, which the Commission had put forward.
I hold to the view that it is wrong to subscribe to broad principles, underdefined in their application, until we have a clear view about that is involved. We therefore believe that these matters should be much more seriously examined than we have been able to examine them so far.

§ Mr. Jay
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that other members of the EEC were unwilling to accept what were described as "bankable assurances" by the right hon. and learned Gentleman and the Leader of the Opposition and that therefore these bankable assurances were just another parliamentary deceit?

§ Mr. Shore
I try to avoid bandying insults across the Box. I win not comment on whether the right hon. and 1829 learned Gentleman was misled. I think that this was partly the case.
It is true, as emerged in our long discussion on this subject—and I spent many hours on it—that the other Community countries maintained that no promise had ever been made by the Community in respect of the 1.4 million tons which this House has debated and about which hon. Members have spoken so much. Because of the uncertainties on this matter, I must make it plain that we have not abandoned our efforts to persuade them to accept the 1.4 million. I certainly gave, I hope on behalf of the whole House, an undertaking that we would fulfil our pledge.

§ Mr. Maudling
Would the right hon. Gentleman give an answer to one specific question asked by my right hon. and learned Friend? Does he or does he not share the desire of the Foreign Secretary to bring the current negotiations to successful conclusion, as the result of which he can recommend to the country that we remain within the Common Market?

§ Mr. Shore
I share the view of my colleagues and, I think, the greater part of the country that we should bring these matters to a conclusion at the earliest moment, that we should attain that fundamental renegotiation of the terms of entry to which we are committed and that we should then, if that be the case, look to the consent of our own people.

§ Mr. Grimond
Is the Secretary of State aware that we welcome the arrangements which he has made for increasing trade with the third world? May I ask a little more about energy policy? Can he confirm, as was stated, I think, by George Thomson, that the Community do not claim any rights of any sort over North Sea oil? Further, can he give some indication—I do not ask for details—as to particular aspects of this policy which he thinks need further examination?

§ Mr. Shore
It is a very long and complicated memorandum which the Commission has put forward and I think there are ambiguities as regards the interpretation of it. But for my part I certainly would take it that there could be no such claim, and therefore that point has to be made absolutely clear both here and, of course, in the Common Market.
1830 Beyond the two general principles, to which the House, I think, would subscribe, that all of us in Western Europe, and indeed elsewhere, need to diminish our dependence on imported fuel supplies, and that all of us are working for a balanced fuel economy, there are, seriously, enormous areas to cover before we begin to agree to anything beyond formal declarations.

§ Dr. Dickson Mabon
Would my right hon. Friend convey the regret of the House to the Foreign Minister, who was understandably on business concerning Cyprus yesterday and Tuesday, that he was not able personally to attend the Council of Foreign Ministers on Tuesday? Can he confirm that the Continental beet sugar producers and cane sugar producers reached agreement prior to the endorsement of the Council of Ministers? Will he also confirm that another opportunity will arise in September of securing the endorsement of the Ministers of the principle of entry of 1.4 million tons of cane sugar, as agreed in Protocol 22? Is the meeting of EEC Ministers at Kingston today empowered, in fact, to take that decision?
May I ask, without any personal rancour at all, how he reconciles his public speech at lunchtime yesterday with membership of a Government seeking in good faith to renegotiate the terms of entry?

§ Mr. Shore
The speeches I may have made yesterday or on any other occasion are not before the House at the present time. I am entirely happy to be cross-examined on them and indeed on many other matters. I have no difficulty whatever in reconciling what I say in public with my collective responsibility.
The hon. Gentleman asked me a specific question whether the Council of Ministers is empowered to take a decision. We all hope that there will be an opportunity in Kingston—I cannot put it higher than that—to exchange further views on this question of sugar and I am still hoping very much, as, I am sure, is the whole House, for a better outcome.

§ Mr. Marten
Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that before we entered the Common Market the House was given a very firm assurance on this sugar question? Therefore the allegation which 1831 he has made—I use the word allegation" carefully—against my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon) impugns the honour of that right hon. and learned Gentleman. In view of the seriousness of what he has said, should he not prepare a White Paper setting out all the facts of the whole argument?

§ Mr. Shore
I take account of what the hon. Gentleman has said. Perhaps on some suitable occasion we should produce more information about the course of negotiations and events, but I must not be pressed at the moment for any clear or positive reply.

§ Mr. Arthur Lewis
The Secretary of State will know that I have an interest to declare in sugar cane—from a constituency, not a partaking, point of view. Now that we appear to be getting almost daily information from the EEC that this House was deliberately misled on a number of vital issues, and that the country was definitely not only misled but not even given an opportunity of knowing what was going on, can he give an assurance that he will consult the unions, the workers, Tate and Lyle, the sugar refiners and all who are connected with this issue so that they are not led up the garden as this House was led up the garden by the right hon. and learned Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon)?

Mr. Short
It is no secret from the House that I think that the country was substantially misled on the whole negotiation and on the benefit that there might be to Britain, and so on. I have never disguised that view, and I hold it today. But I am not impugning in any way the honour of the right hon. and learned Gentleman in the sense of suggesting that there was any deliberate or particular deception. That is not my charge at all. I think the Government of that day put the whole case, backed, above all, by their own wish that certain events would come true. They gave an optimistic interpretation of things which I fear events have not justified.
As for the particular interests of cane sugar workers and sugar growers generally, I will bring this point to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

§ Mr. Rippon
May I urge the Secretary of State not to weaken Britain's negotiating position by trying to undermine the validity of firm commitments entered into, by which I regard the Community as bound? May I therefore reiterate the support I gave him in the stand he was taking about sugar? All I said was that the Commission—and I hope he will confirm this—had endorsed the figure of 1.4 million and so had the European Parliament. The Commission and the European Parliament have both used that figure. But will he accept that in the changed world conditions the distribution among producers of that quota is a matter for discussion? Will he also answer my question about Australian sugar and whether he is invoking Protocol 16 to deal with that situation? Finally, will he answer the question on the stabilisation fund and the association agreement?

§ Mr. Shore
On the question of Australia, we are indeed considering the prospective deficit in our total sugar supply and we shall certainly be discussing this matter with the Australian Government. But that is a question for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
I come back to the point about 1.4 million tons. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said a moment ago that the figure of 1.4 million had been endorsed by the Commission. Indeed it was in the Commission's document which they presented last July. That is so. The Commission has been helpful in this whole matter, certainly in the discussions we had this week. The European Assembly may have passed an opinion in favour of the 1.4 million, and if the right hon. and learned Gentleman is right on that point, that is fine.
But I must bring home to him—I am sure that it has not escaped his attention—that the key organ of the EEC, the one that makes decisions, and the only one that in the end can make a commitment, is the Council of Ministers. It is specifically the fact that that commitment has not yet been endorsed in specific terms—to quote the words used by the right hon. and learned Gentleman over three years ago—and precisely because the Council of Ministers has not confirmed that commitment and did not confirm that commitment, that we were 1833 in the difficulty in which we found ourselves two days ago.

Several Hon. Members
rose—

Mr. Speaker
Order. I must protect the rights of the Opposition. This is Opposition Supply time and 25 Opposition Members wish to speak in the debate.