EUROPEAN COMMUNITY (COUNCIL OF MINISTERS) (Hansard, 29 October 1975)

§ The Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Roy Hattersley)
With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a statement about business to be taken in the Council of Ministers of the European Community during 1597 November. The monthly forecast for November was deposited yesterday.
At present, five meetings of the Council of Ministers are proposed for November. Foreign Ministers will meet on 5th and 6th; Agriculture Ministers on 10th and 11th; Finance Ministers on 17th; Fiscal Ministers on 24th November; and Budget Ministers on a date yet to be set. There will also be a tripartite conference, probably on 18th November, of Ministers of Employment and Economic Affairs, the Commission, and European employer and trade union organisations. In addition, there is to be a meeting of Education Ministers on 20th November.
At the Foreign Affairs Council, Ministers will discuss the consumer/producer dialogue in preparation for the conference on international economic co-operation. They are also likely to discuss preparations for the European Council meeting scheduled for early December. They will consider the extension of the fishing zones around Iceland and possibly around Norway, and will resume their consideration of the overall Mediterranean approach in the context of negotiations with the Maghreb and of the mandate for negotiation with the Mashraq.
There will also be discussion of the Community's relations with Portugal and Canada, and of long-term contracts with Egypt, and consideration will be resumed on the 1976 scheme of generalised preferences. There is also likely to be discussion of the working group's report on direct elections to the European Assembly which was commissioned by Heads of Government at their last meeting in July.
Agriculture Ministers are expected to resume consideration of the restructuring of the Community wine régime and the arrangements for United Kingdom imports of New Zealand butter after 1977. There may also be a joint meeting of Foreign and Agriculture Ministers, on a date not yet set, but likely to be near the end of the month. That meeting will discuss aspects of the CAP stocktaking report.
Finance Ministers will consider the annual report on the economic situation in the Community following the convergence decision of 18th February 1974. They will also discuss possible Swiss membership of the "snake" and perhaps Euratom loans for nuclear power stations. 1598 At the Fiscal Council, Ministers are expected to consider the draft sixth directive on value added tax, the Commission's action programme on taxation, and possibly the Commission's draft proposal on tax reliefs for small packages imported from third countries and the draft second directive on tobacco duty harmonisation.
Ministers at the Budget Council will consider the amendments and modifications proposed by the European Assembly to the draft Community budget for 1976.
The tripartite conference on 18th November stems from a decision taken at the meeting of the European Council in July following representations by the European Trade Union Confederation, and is expected to focus on the employment effects of the present economic crisis and the measures which are being or might be taken to deal with these effects.
The meeting of Education Ministers will consider a report from the Education Committee about educational co-operation in the European Community.

§ Mr. Maudling
That is a formidable programme of business. May I ask the right hon. Gentleman three questions? First, in current circumstances ought there not to be provision for a meeting of Energy Ministers in the near future? It is not mentioned here. Secondly, when there is discussion of the working group's report on direct elections, what line will Her Majesty's Government take? Thirdly, would it not be a good idea for the Foreign Ministers to keep an eye on the working out of the Helsinki agreement?

§ Mr. Hattersley
On the right hon. Gentleman's first point, he will agree on reflection, I think, that some of the more fundamental decisions about the conference to which he referred twice earlier today and to which I suspect he is referring again need to be taken in the meeting of Foreign Ministers. Then some of the more detailed applications of their decisions are appropriate for the Energy Minister's conference.
On the working out of the Helsinki Final Act, it is appropriate that there should be discussions in the political cooperation machinery of the EEC, and I am sure that that will happen. It is not the practice to report those meetings in the course of the business statement each month.
1599 As for direct elections, I remind the right hon. Gentleman again that he would hardly expect the Government to comment on a report before they had seen it. Clearly, the Government are looking for a view which represents the will of this House and the best interests of Great Britain, and that view must come out at the appropriate time.

§ Mr. Dalyell
May I direct my right hon. Friend's attention to two matters which are in no way the fault of Her Majesty's Government? Is he aware that Guido Brunner, the Commissioner for Technology, came to the Budget Committee of the EEC Assembly and described as "black comedy" the way in which the fusion programme had been slashed so that we were paying those who worked on the programme but there was no money for the projects? Will my right hon. Friend also give attention to the way in which there has been a cut-back in the research into nuclear radiation, because Western Europe is ahead of both the Russians and the Americans? At a time when, rightly, we have a major nuclear power programme, it seems crazy that this research should be cut back. Could the general point be taken that it is no good in matters like this or in the social fund, which has to do with training, imagining that it is possible suddenly to turn on a tap and equally suddenly to choke it off? This is not the way in which these Community programmes should be run.

§ Mr. Hattersley
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman will expect me to comment on the two items which he draws to my attention, nor do I think that it would be in order. But I understand his general point about the discussions of the Budget Council and the difficulties of making adjustments to the Budget when one—or more than one—country believes that they are necessary. The complications and difficulties are confirmed in every Budget Council and, I think, will be confirmed again in November. Sooner or later, the Community will have to look hard, as will the Council of Ministers, at the budget procedures, so that this sort of difficulty does not constantly arise.

§ Mr. David Steel
Since the Ministers are to be discussing relations with 1600 Portugal, will they be prepared if need be to discuss relations with Spain at the same time? On direct elections, while one would not expect the Government to commit themselves either on the timing or on the method of elections at the moment, would the right hon. Gentleman confirm that it is the Government's view that they will work with their partners to see whether they can achieve agreement on a common system of elections? Surely elections to a body by different methods in different countries would be less than satisfactory. That seems a matter of principle.

§ Mr. Hattersley
The hon. Gentleman will recall that last month the Council of Foreign Ministers took a decision about commercial relations with Spain, and I do not think that it is appropriate to discuss that again next month. However, Spain is in a fluid situation. I can imagine circumstances in which it might be appropriate to discuss the situation in that country and I think that the Ministers in the EEC would do so. On the second point, the hon. Gentleman is again tempting me, as I suppose I shall be constantly tempted for the rest of this year, to make advance judgments and comments on how elections to the European Parliament ought to be or might be held. He will understand why I shall continue to resist that temptation.

§ Mr. Spearing
My right hon. Friend has said that the Council of Foreign Ministers on 5th and 6th November will discuss arrangements for the European Council in December, which will presumably discuss the Tindemans Report. Will he request the Council of Foreign Ministers to permit that report to be printed by HMSO in English so that everyone in this country can have access to it? Second, the stocktaking document is to be discussed at the agricultural meeting on 10th and 11th. How will hon. Members know what line the Minister of Agriculture is taking? In our last debate on the stocktaking document, two hon. Members asked the Minister to request that the paper be referred back. How shall we know what his right hon. Friend will do at that meeting?

§ Mr. Hattersley
There is no doubt that at an appropriate time the Tindemans Report will have to be, and will of course be, translated into English and made 1601 available to the House and the country. It is far too important a document not to give the House and the public every possible facility to discuss it. I think that the Minister of Agriculture made our views on stocktaking very clear. We laid down at the time of the renegotiation the basic principles which we hoped would characterise the new EEC agricultural policy—such as the end of constant surpluses, a policy based on the needs and desires of the more efficient agricultural units and a desire to balance production and demand in the Community itself. Those are our established policies and those are the policies that we shall pursue during the stocktaking.

§ Sir John Rodgers
On the Helsinki agreement and its follow up, do the Government agree with the line taken by President Giscard d'Estaing in his recent visit to Moscow, when he said that it is not sufficient to have peaceful coexistence and that we must insist—which the Soviets are resisting at the moment—on ideological co-existence as well?

§ Mr. Hattersley
I must insist on some things myself. One is that I do not answer such questions during questions about EEC business.

§ Mrs. Winifred Ewing
Fishing has been a Cinderella on the Council of Ministers' agenda, but we notice that it is on the agenda this time, albeit apparently only in relation to the extension of fishing zones around Iceland and possibly Norway. Has the Minister read the recent debate in the EEC Parliament, when all parties highlighted the disaster afflicting the fishing industry of this country? Will he bear in mind the promise of the Minister of Agriculture to this House in the early summer—that the EEC common fisheries policy was due for renegotiation? Would he take account of the disastrous state of that industry and notice how ironical it is that we discuss this matter only when a small independent country seeks to protect its fishing limits? Would he ensure that provision for a proper discussion of this industry and its plight is made on the agenda, although that did not seem to be in his statement?

§ Mr. Hattersley
I hope that I do not detect in the hon. Lady's question about small independent countries protecting themselves the view that we should take 1602 a less robust attitude in our negotiations with Iceland. But I put that question aside. I must insist to the House that on many occasions we have confirmed in the House that we are trying to make appropriate adjustments to the common fisheries policy before the derogation which affects Great Britain runs out. That continues to be our policy.

§ Mr. English
Does the Minister recollect that at the Dublin Summit his Government entered a reservation about the 1978 target date for direct elections and specifically linked that reservation to the subsequent referendum in Britain? Why is my right hon. Friend then so coy about saying what our attitude to direct elections now is? Did the Foreign Office not have a contingency plan against the possibility that the referendum would be won by the "Yes" side?

§ Mr. Hattersley
No one had a contingency plan for the immediate implementation of direct elections. Were such a plan to exist, the House would be rightly outraged about it. Direct elections are an important constitutional innovation, and the country, the House and the parties must be consulted. There is no way in which that can be done quickly.

§ Mr. Blaker
Is the Minister aware that some of us are not convinced that the Foreign Secretary is right in what appears to be his assumption that the interests of the other eight members and ours over oil, and particularly oil pricing, are necessarily contradictory? Should not the Energy Ministers be pursuing this matter urgently in the coming weeks before the conference in December? Why is it being left to discussion only by the Foreign Ministers?

§ Mr. Hattersley
This is essentially a question for the Council of Foreign Ministers because, as my right hon. Friend said earlier today, the conference is concerned not with energy alone but with financial matters, aid to developing countries and a number of other matters which appropriately and properly come under the umbrella of the Council of Foreign Ministers. Of course I am aware that some hon. Members do not share my right hon. Friend's view, but others do and a vast majority of the British public will subscribe to his opinions.

§ Mr. Prescott
In view of my right hon. Friend's strong statement about fishing negotiations with Iceland and the coming discussions in the Community, does he feel that he may be getting into a contradictory position, whereby on the one hand we ask for the sharing of grounds around Iceland and then, in renegotiating the EEC fishing limits, we require in negotiations perhaps that they be kept solely for us? If we did that, would it not be hypocritical and unacceptable to the international community?

§ Mr. Hattersley
We should put this straight. We are not asking for the sharing of grounds around Iceland. We are asking for the ability to go on fishing where we have fished for a long time and where our international fishing rights are underwritten and supported by the International Court of Justice. If the day comes when there is a boundary, a limit, around all countries—including Iceland and the EEC—which makes a 200-mile exclusive economic zone, that will be a different situation and our rights, established by international law, in our zone or Iceland's zone will have to be determined differently. But that is not the situation at the moment. There is no inconsistency in our position.

§ Mr. John Davies
I am sure that both sides of the House will find satisfaction in hearing the right hon. Gentleman say that the Community should reconsider its budgetary processes, but would he assure us that, in the light of what he has said and, from time to time, his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary has said—that the budget is nothing more than an aggregation of decisions made by other Ministers—decisions of such importance as have been referred to, in relation to the research, social and regional programmes of the Community, will not become the sole right of decision within the framework of Budget Ministers, who seem singularly inappropriate to deal with the particular problems concerned? Second, at what time will consideration 1604 be resumed on the subject of an agreement of a new kind with Iran, which is of such basic interest to us all?

§ Mr. Hattersley
Progress on an agreement with Iran is not on the agenda for next month. I cannot tell the right hon. Gentleman whether it is likely to be discussed in the following month. On the first point, I very much share some of the criticisms and concerns that he has expressed. The situation which he described will be resolved only when both the budgetary procedures of the Community are improved and we have more co-ordination between the individual national Governments, who from time to time change their minds about how much money they want to spend.

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. We have a great deal to do today. We must get on.