Maastricht Treaty (Hansard, 1 July 1992)

§ 7. Mr. Byers
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans he has to renegotiate the terms of the Maastricht treaty.

§ Mr. Hurd
As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made clear in the House on 25 June and 29 June, the Maastricht treaty was negotiated in good faith by all member states and we intend to stand by it.

§ Mr. Byers
Does the Secretary of State agree with the comments made yesterday evening by the Prime Minister that the United Kingdom presidency of the Commission provides a priceless opportunity for the Government to set the European agenda? If he agrees, will he accept that that will entail positive steps being taken by the Government? One popular measure would be the endorsement by the Government of the protocol in the Maastricht treaty on the social chapter. Will the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that such popular measures are essential to stem the tide of opinion inside the House and in the country, which is clearly running against the Maastricht treaty?

§ Mr. Hurd
I disagree with the hon. Gentleman on both points. If we followed his advice, the results would certainly be unpopular and would even more certainly destroy jobs in this country.

§ Mr. Rupert Allason
Does my right hon. Friend agree that article 236 of the treaty of Rome would appear to invalidate any treaty of Maastricht that excluded the Danes? Does he agree also that there can be no question of the British Government letting anybody down over the treaty of Maastricht, and that no one could ever be accused of breaking his word, given that it is the sovereign right of this Parliament to make such a decision?

§ Mr. Hurd
Of course that is right. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister went to Maastricht with the terms that 838 he asked for and later obtained. Those terms were approved in advance by the House of Commons, and they were again approved when he returned from Maastricht.
My hon. Friend is right about article 236. I do not see how one could imagine the treaty of Maastricht entering into force without the assent of the Danes. What the Danes have done is to come to us following their referendum and to ask for time. That is their right. Time has been granted to them and we must wait until the autumn to see what suggestions and ideas they bring forward for resolving the matter.

§ Mr. George Robertson
Will the Foreign Secretary face the fact that, in so far as it relates to the United Kingdom, the Maastricht treaty is, to coin a phrase, an opt-out too far? Does he accept that if he abandoned the social chapter opt-out, which would require no renegotiation of the treaty, he could at one stroke benefit millions of British workers and, in addition, give the Danish electorate a signal of real change in the Maastricht treaty? Such a move would also have the bonus of irritating alarmingly at least one lady down the Corridor.

§ Mr. Hurd
If we did that, we should also be abandoning British business and people—

§ Mr. Robertson
No.

§ Mr. Hurd
The hon. Gentleman should ask the CBI. In particular, we should be abandoning people who are unemployed and looking for jobs and those now in employment who would lose their jobs if the regulations were applied in this country.

§ Mr. David Howell
I fully endorse my right hon. Friend's policy of building on our version of the Maastricht treaty rather than destroying it or throwing it over. But will my right hon. Friend undertake in meetings with the Commissioners, today and in future, to make it clear that, when it comes to redefining the functions of nation states and Community institutions, the nation states and not the Commissioners should do the redefining and decide who does what?

§ Mr. Hurd
That is right, and the treaties have come to pass through the agreement of member states. In the Lisbon conclusions last weekend, what we were asked to do, and what we began to do in conversations with the Commission this morning, was to take the doctrine of minimum interference or subsidiarity—whatever one likes to call it—and start putting it into practice in advance of the treaty of Maastricht and in advance of ratification. That will mean a great deal of work by the Commission and by us during the British presidency, in identifying how we can make that doctrine not just a principle in a future treaty but something that guides the daily life of the Community in terms of future proposals and decisions already on the Community statute book.