................................................................................
ON THE RECORD
DOUGLAS HURD INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 22.5.94
................................................................................
JOHN HUMPHRYS: Douglas Hurd, have you become a sceptic
on Europe?
DOUGLAS HURD: Positive. Because we need to devise the
kind of Europe we would be at ease with and that means opposing some of the
things that have been going on and shaping the kind of European action, the
European policies which fit our way of doing it. I think that's realist.
Isn't that what the Prime Minister calls it? That's being a Euro-realist.
HUMPHRYS: Many would say it was sceptical.
HURD: If that means we criticise some of the
things that have happened in the past, we criticise the fact that the
Commission has gone too far into the nooks and crannies of all our lives; if
you call that being sceptical, it's now orthodox. When we started to say this
the Commission said no, no, no, not us - now they say yes, we agree and they
are bringing forward lists of existing rules which they propose to scrap so we
are making a lot of progress in what I believe is the right and realistic
direction, and that is what these elections will be about.
HUMPHRYS: Let me read you, if I may, a quote from
your most recent, I think, major speech on Europe. "In our vision we all
accept a common commitment to principles and disciplines, without which it
would not be possible to maintain a genuinely open single market, a basis of
fair competition and a framework of law in the union, but beyond that the union
should encourage maximum flexibility."
Now that's music to the ears of what we
call sceptics, isn't it?
HURD: It's what's happening. If you look at
frontiers, for example, there's some of the European countries who belong to
something called the ... group but we are an island so we and the Irish and
others are not part of that. If you look at defence, we belong to the Western
European union which alongside NATO - and very much in links with NATO - helps
with European defence. The Irish and maybe other neutrals coming in don't
belong to that so, and equally the Exchange Rate Mechanism, some people belong
to it and some don't. There's nothing new about this concept. You have a
centre, a core of ideas and principles, as I think I said, which everybody does
- like the single market.
HUMPHRYS: That's effectively what you believe
Europe now means - a single market.
HURD: No. A single market and working
together on other things. I am all in favour of working together on foreign
policy - when we can agree - there seems to be everything to be said for that,
but not by majority voting, not with the Commission having the only right to
make proposals and not under the European Court but under the arrangement we
now have under Maastricht where we work together, we co-operate. I believe
very strongly about that.
HUMPHRYS: But the core is this single market.
HURD: The core is the single market and the
right therefore to have rules to make sure that that works, to make sure that
Europe in foreign trade negotiates as one and not as twelve, the way we got the
GATT agreement with Leon Brittan, so there are certain things which flow from
that, certainly.
HUMPHRYS: But a positive European would say - they
do say very firmly indeed - that a single market will not work, cannot work
properly unless and until there is a single currency. Now you don't agree with
that position any longer, do you?
HURD: I don't think my position has changed
through the years at all. There isn't yet a proposal for a single bank and a
single currency which is actual. There are ten members of the community who
believe that when the time comes their countries should join, though the
Germans say it will have to be a parliamentary vote. There are two countries
which say let us take this decision when the time comes, and we are one of
those - that's the opt out which the Prime Minister negotiated at Maastricht.
It seems sensible to take that decision when and if you have to take it and not
four, five, six years in advance.
HUMPHRYS: You say you haven't changed your
position on that at all but let me refer to something you said a few years ago,
June 1990: "It's important for all of us engaged in building a strong, coherent
European Community that the enterprise of economic and monetary union should be
a success." Now you are not saying that any longer.
HURD: We're in stage two now. Stage one we
passed through, stage two we are in now where people co-ordinate. That was of
course ... your quotation is before the Treaty of Maastricht and before the
single bank and the single currency took the form it did. I have never argued,
in fact I haven't made up my own mind on what my view would be if in 1999 we
are faced with that decision. I am sure it is right to take it when the time
comes.
HUMPHRYS: You may be faced with it in 1996, let
alone 1999.
HURD: No, no. Because what the Treaty says,
what the Germans insisted on in the Treaty is that there should be certain
criteria, convergence criteria - what does that mean? It means that the
economies of Europe should have come together as regards inflation, as regards
budget deficits and so on. And if you ask the Germans now about a single bank
and a single currency you will find that they immediately say it depends on the
convergence criteria and of course there's no question of those being met by
1996. The economies of Europe are a long way from that.
HUMPHRYS: You say that you can't reach a decision
on this for all the reasons you've given me...
HURD: It would be foolish to do so.
HUMPHRYS: You'd be foolish to do so. Michael
Portillo reached a decision. He was asked whether he was in favour of a single
currency of monetary union and he said "no". As simple as that. Three times
he said it.
HURD: He pointed out the political obstacle
which is clearly strong in his mind but he, like all the Cabinet, are agreed on
the line which the Prime Minister obtained with some difficulty at Maastricht
which keeps freedom for the British Government and the British Parliament at
that time to decide. That is a rather important right - freedom which we have
retained. Let us retain it and let us keep it. I think it's foolish of the
parties - the opposition parties - to say now that they would wish to join a
single bank and a single currency. I think it is right to keep our freedom to
decide at the time when the decision has to be made - if it has to be made.
HUMPHRYS: But Michael Portillo took all those
factors into consideration, I have no doubt. He is an intelligent man and he
was able to reach a conclusion on a basic matter of principle and he said "no".
HURD: Well, you know perfectly well that he
has rallied to and repeated the line which we all discussed...
HUMPHRYS: You mean he changed his mind?
HURD: No. We have all discussed this line
before and after and his view is the same as mine that this is a decision which
needs to be made at the time, if it comes before us. And, you know, I am sure
that this is common sense and if we took a different line at this time we might
regret it in the future. Why should we take a line at this time? The Prime
Minister has, with some skill, managed to preserve a British freedom in this
respect, let's use it.
HUMPHRYS: I'm intrigued that you say his view is
the same as yours. And he - let me repeat - he was quite clear about it: Are
you in favour of monetary union, a single currency? No.
HURD: He has made it quite clear since then
that he supports the Cabinet's line.
HUMPHRYS: He's changed his mind?
HURD: Well, that's for you to ask him. What I
know and what is perfectly clear is the Cabinet has re-established the line,
the line which the Prime Minister obtained...
HUMPHRYS: Re-established rather suggests that he
was called before the star chamber and said: "Michael, come on, this is not
tenable; you can't do that."
HURD: That's not how the Cabinet works,
though, is it. We are constantly asked to establish and re-establish the line
and we have done that and we will do that again in the manifesto on Monday and
you will find - I have read what comes in the earlier part of the programme we
are now in - you will find that a great majority of Conservatives are willing
to accept and campaign on the general line which we are taking on Europe. Of
course there have been sour and bitter arguments in the past but if you are
talking about the future, including this point about the freedom of Britain to
choose and decide on the single bank and the single currency at the right time,
to talk about the future I think you'll find that we have a winning argument as
regards our own party and if we can get it through to the public as a whole a
winning argument about Europe as compared to that of the other parties - and
that's what the next two or three weeks will be about.
HUMPHRYS: With some of your own party, because
you're making it quite clear that you have occasionally - and in the case of
Michael Portillo you have made it quite clear - to re-establish the line, in
other words to say to them come back into line.
HURD: With the overwhelming majority, with the
overwhelming majority,I think if you ask people in any party who are as it were
in the extreme of the argument - certainly in the Labour Party, you will find
differences of inflection or timing but I believe that the message we are going
to put across in the next three weeks is the message about Europe, the future
of Europe, a positive message certainly.
HUMPHRYS: But is it a positive message?
HURD: Yes it is a positive message. No, but
that's because we've got into a sort of lock. Many commentators they think
that the only good European is one who believes that you've got to take chunks
of power and at regular intervals put them into the centre in Brussels. And
that is what the Lib/Lab programmes really say and it ends up with something
like a federal European state. We don't see that. We don't see that that is
actually going to work. We don't believe in a united states of Europe and we
believe that the arguments, the facts of life, are actually moving in favour of
a Europe of nations co-operating effectively in different ways on different
issues on those things where we have to act together if it's going to work.
That's the message we will be putting across.
HUMPHRYS: Well let's look at another key issue in
that regard. The second pillar of the European union and this is something on
which positive Europeans, to use your phrase, have no problems with at all. A
common foreign and security policy.
HURD: Yes, exactly, let's take that.
HUMPHRYS: You would say no.
HURD: No. This is...and it's defined in the
Treaty exactly how you do it. Where you can agree unanimously you act
together. Where you can't you have your freedom. And this is what we do.
This is what I was doing last Monday. We were discussing Russia, Ukraine,
South Africa, Algeria. What things we needed to do together. And there was no
question of majority of voting or people being outvoted or it being under the
European court or the Commission having a monopoly of proposals. It wasn't
like that. It was co-operation between us in the parliamentary...
HUMPHRYS: Intra-government co-operation.
HURD: Yes, exactly. And that's what the
Maastricht Treaty provides for. And it would have been inconceivable a short
time ago, so many of these things, if we had proposed four or five years ago
deregulation or that foreign policies should be co-operation between
governments or that there should be minimum interference by the Commission or
that there should be a single market or that the community should expand, you
know, we started in a minority on these things and we are now winning on all of
them.
HUMPHRYS: But much of this would not have been
inconceivable years ago, because much of what you have talked about - the
Western European union for instance, membership of NATO, that predates the
European union.
HURD: But there was the assumption among the
founding fathers that in order to be a good European and prevent the nations
tearing Europe apart again you had constantly to move things towards the centre
and they certainly looked for the day when there would be a foreign policy
which came from the centre, not by co-operation between member states. Well
now we've changed that. It is moving. I don't say the argument's over but it
is moving step by step in the kind of direction that we favour and that we have
argued for through the years. Now we have allies where before we didn't.
HUMPHRYS: But the argument, you acknowledge, is
clearly not over. It's not over within your own party.
HURD: No, no, this argument goes on in all the
parties, in all the parties. But I believe that the line we are taking and
will be putting forward in the next three weeks against the centralising
tendency in favour of the kind of Europe we are supporting, is one which, well
it goes with the grain, most people want it. If we can get the message through
we shall do well. But this goes right across Europe, right across Europe.
HUMPHRYS: But then you've got to get the message
through to your own colleagues to people like Bill Newton Dunne the Chairman of
the Conservatives in the European Parliament. European Community foreign
policy should be defined jointly by the council, the council of ministers and
the European Parliament. That's his view and he's got support for that.
HURD: The European Parliament has its rights
in this but the Treaty of Maastricht is perfectly clear about this that it is a
matter for co-operation between Governments. As you say, it's one of the
pillars. This is a big advance. It makes a lot of sense and we are beginning
actually to do it. I am thoroughly in favour of that.
HUMPHRYS: But Newton Dunne is a very positive
European isn't he.
HURD: Certainly, but equally on the other
pillar, the co-operation against crime, against fraud, again that's something
which between governments is crucially important for Europeans so that's the
way it's beginning to move.
HUMPHRYS: That's the way you want it to move, you
as, if I may say so, a new born sceptic want it to move, but positive Europeans
don't want it to move that way. Positive Europeans, you mention, the
Parliament positive Europeans want more power for the European Parliament. You
don't.
HURD: I want to see the European parliament
more powerful in something which the nation states can't do. I want to see the
European parliament more powerful and exercising it's new powers in monitoring
the commission, in monitoring how the money is spent. It's got new powers
against fraud, against distortion, and I would like to see the European
parliament with a good lot of sensible Conservatives, conservative minded
people in it, concentrating on that task, rather than all the time seeking new
legislative powers. That's what the parliament should do, and it should work
... you see the House of Commons, national parliaments, can make ministers
lives difficult.
HUMPHRYS: (inaudible) the job.
HURD: That's their job, exactly, and that role
of national parliaments will remain. Another change. . . no one would have ...
the positive Europeans ten years ago would probably not have accepted that but
it's now in the treaty. But the European parliament also has a role with
national parliaments but it also has a rule in pursuing at the centre what the
money and the activities of the commission and the community, let them
concentrate on that.
HUMPHRYS: If it's right and proper as we agree
that MPs should harry people like yourselves, let's assume that people like
yourselves, the people with power who are represented in Europe, in part by the
commissioners. Now something that European members of parliament would like to
do is veto their appointment. Would you allow them that power?
HURD: Well they have a power under the treaty
over the appointment.
HUMPHRYS: (inaudible) veto power that's
irrelevant.
HURD: No, no, no, they have a new power under
Maastricht which no doubt they will exercise.
HUMPHRYS: But what they want to do is to be able -
if I may just clarify this point - if they want in a sense to have the power of
a senate committee in the United States, the senate in the United States, to
approve the appointment of individual commissioners. Now, reasonable that they
should have that isn't it, for a positive European, that's democracy in
action.
HURD: They will certainly exercise the powers
they have under the new treaty over the appointment of the commission.
HUMPHRYS: But not that far?
HURD: But the ... over the appointment of the
commission and its president. But I don't think the commission, I think the
commission is past its heyday. I think that the next president of the
commission will not be somebody who is trying to move and shape the future of
Europe, it will be somebody ... I mean I hope it will be Leon Brittan, because
I think he's the best qualified, but I think the nature of the commission is
changing, and if you listen even to Jacques Delors now, compared to Jacques
Delors four or five years ago, you see the difference. There is a change.
HUMPHRYS: Quite reasonable in that case to give
more power to the European parliament, to the MEP's.
HURD: They have powers under the treaty,
that's what they're talking about.
HUMPHRYS: But there is this particular power to
which I referred and they do not have at the moment, and that is to veto the
appointment of individual commissioners. They feel strongly about that. I'd
have thought from everything you're saying on this subject you'd agree with
them.
HURD: They have a power as regards the
president of the commission as regards the commission as a whole. Let them get
on and use the powers they've got. They should concentrate on the commission,
on the work of the commission, on the activities of the commission. Not in a
hostile way, but just making sure, just as the House of Commons does over our
policies and our spending, that the thing goes well, and indeed better than it
does now.
HUMPHRYS: And if they wanted for instance to be
represented at the next IGC, what would you say to that?
HURD: No. They've a right to have their views
known, when we have ... when there's a summit, the first thing that happens is
that the president of the parliament comes, explains his views ...
HUMPHRYS: And goes away again.
HURD: And goes away again.
HUMPHRYS: Exactly.
HURD: And that is right. No, the conference
of '96, which is what you're talking about, is a conference between
governments, that's why it's called an inter-governmental conference, and
that's what ... how it should remain. They have views, lots of people have
views, changing the treaty is a matter initially and essentially between
governments.
HUMPHRYS: John Major attacked the late John Smith
for being the man who liked to say yes in Europe, you sound very much like the
man who likes to say no.
HURD: But that's because you're still ...
HUMPHRYS: (inaudible) no, no, no.
HURD: You're still hankering after the old
fashioned notion of Europe.
HUMPHRYS: No, I'm suggesting that your position
has changed.
HURD: No, no it hasn't. Yes to enlargement,
yes to subsidiarity, or minimum interference, yes to deregulation, which the
Germans will be concentrating on in the second half of this year. Yes to the
single market, yes to the GATT agreement. These are all things which when we
started on them, we were in a minority. Commission would have said,
deregulation, minimum interference, that's very anti-European. Now it is
European to say that, and the Commission themselves are doing it. That's where
I mean the thing is changing, and it is positive, positive, to argue for the
kind of Europe that I'm trying to sketch to you.
HUMPHRYS: But it is positive as well, let's take a
look at the veto for instance. You believe in no further weakening at all, of
Britain's veto, in any circumstances, as I understand it.
HURD: We believe in keeping the national veto
for the essential matters.
HUMPHRYS: And that is it, no give at all?
HURD: On the national veto, on the right of
veto, we don't believe that there should be areas now covered by the veto in
which the veto shouldn't apply.
HUMPHRYS: And on that you are absolutely adamant,
no further ... no further weakening?
HURD: I can see no case for a further
weakening. I mean I'm not ever saying ... it's always a mistake to say never,
but we believe in the national veto as an essential part of the kind of Europe
we are talking about, and that is a big difference between us and the Lib/Labs.
HUMPHRYS: And that is based on your desire to see
the preservation of our sovereignty putting it (inaudible)?
HURD: It's based on experience of what makes
sense. I mean, I know most about the foreign affairs field, and I know the
proposals which I've rejected in the past for majority voting in this, it
doesn't, it doesn't make sense. Where we can be effective we shall be
effective because we agree, and there are big areas where that ought to be in
our dealings with Russia, and our dealings in Bosnia and so on. It ought not
to be, and it is not, a matter of a majority voting. It's a matter of getting
together, agreeing and acting, and that's the way it ought to work in these
matters.
HUMPHRYS: But your attacks on the Labour position
on this subject are based on Labour and indeed the Liberal Democrats,
especially the Liberal Democrats, being prepared to hand over British
sovereignty.
HURD: That's right. They've said, the Labour
party's said, that majority voting should be the rule, and Paddy Ashdown has
said that he would like ministers to take decisions in public without national
vetos. And we think this is the wrong approach, this is not going to work, it
will be bad for Britain, and it's not actually the way to make Europe
effective.
HUMPHRYS: But positive Europeans, and I return to
that phrase which you used right at the beginning of this interview, are happy
to pool sovereignty. You're saying no, we're not going to give another inch.
HURD: There is this old fashioned idea which
the ... many of the founding fathers had, and which I would say old fashioned
people would still have across Europe, because the argument isn't over, and
they do believe that steadily, exactly as you say, chunks of power should be
put into the centre. We don't believe that, we think that that has gone far
enough. It's achieved its purpose. The rest of it, the rest of it should not
be done by giving power on the commission to get into what I once called the
nooks and crannies, or to say that they alone should have power to make foreign
policy decisions, as Paddy Ashdown would propose, and that this should be done
by majority voting. We believe in these separate pillars, where we work
together as governments, but don't collapse those pillars into the institutions
of the community. This is a crucial point.
HUMPHRYS: You say we, and I'm not quite sure what
you mean by we, because Edward Macmillan Scott, a very senior MEP...
HURD: By we I mean the overwhelming majority of
the party, and that will be set out in the manifesto on which all our
candidates will fight, and it puts us in harsh contrast with the Labs and Libs
who hold the other view, who would like to do away gradually with co-operation
between governments and put everything into a central committee.
HUMPHRYS: It puts you in harsh contrast with
people like Edward Macmillan Scott: closer integration will inevitably mean a
transfer of sovereignty, of which he is in favour. A very senior member of
your own parliament...of your own party of the European parliament.
HURD: He ... all those concerned with fighting
for the Conservative cause will be fighting on a Conservative manifesto, which
the Prime Minister will unveil on Monday. It is positive, it believes in
working together in Europe, it accepts that there is a community, that there
are . . . there is shared sovereignty, that there is majority voting, which we
accepted because you wouldn't have got the single market working without
majority voting, so we accept all that, but we believe that in these new areas
set out in the Treaty of Maastricht, of foreign policy, of home affairs, the
secret is not to all go off and do different things but to co-operate as
Europeans between governments. And that's our position.
HUMPHRYS: But Macmillan Scott's is a positive view
of Europe, isn't it? Your's is a sceptical.
HURD: I entirely reject that label. It's not
a matter of being positive or sceptical, it's a matter of what kind of Europe
is actually going to work. Seventy three percent of the people's of Europe in
the Mori poll published yesterday, are against the united states of Europe.
Chancellor Kohl . . .
HUMPHRYS: I'm not using that phrase at all
throughout this whole interview.
HURD: But you are, you're edging round it,
Chancellor Kohl who used to campaign for a united states of Europe has now been
explaining in public why he doesn't.
HUMPHRYS: It's a straw dog, I didn't put it there.
HURD: It's not a straw dog, because what you
were saying, you keep on harking back to the idea that the only positive
European is one who believes in steadily putting powers into the centre.
HUMPHRYS: No I keep quoting out to you members of
your own party, who've been saying things what they . . .
HURD: And I keep telling you, that the
candidates in this election will campaign on the manifesto which is . . . on
which they've been very widely consulted, and I believe that the approach we'll
be putting forward, as I've said, is a winning message if we can get it
through.
HUMPHRYS: You used to disparage what many people
called, I think you yourself used the phrase, a two speed Europe. You are now
talking approvingly of a multi track, multi speed, even multi layered approach,
and the implication seems to be from everything you're saying today that we are
very much in the slow lane, indeed in the bicycle lane.
HURD: Absolutely not, it already happens. I
don't understand the agitation about the speeches where I've been talking about
this. It's already there. It's there on defence, where we're in the middle.
We're central but there are some neutral countries which aren't. It's there in
foreign policy where we are central. It's there on the ERM, but we're not in.
It's there on Shengan (phon) on the frontier things where because we're an
island where we're not in, so on some things we're . . . in the things which we
believe are crucial, we're there, on other things we're not there, and that's
the way it's going to happen. It's the same with Danes, it's the same with the
Irish. This is the way Europe's going to develop, it's going to be flexible,
it has to be, and not a straightjacket.
HUMPHRYS: But you see, in that last speech you
made, you mentioned four sort of groupings as it were. Three of them we're not
in, we're not, as you say yourself, we're not in the Shengan (phon), we're not
in the social chapter, we're not in the ERM, and things that we are in are
those things which existed before the formation of the European Union.
HURD: I believe that on each of the ones that
you mention we've taken the right decision.
HUMPHRYS: The sceptical decision.
HURD: The right decision. Because we're an
island, it doesn't make sense that we should have exactly the same frontier
arrangement as Belgium and Holland, and so that's, you know, this an old
argument, but I think we're absolutely right. On the ERM, we've been through
all that. On the defence I'm sure we're right to be in. I am absolutely
certain that this is the way Europe is going to develop. Twelve, now moving to
sixteen, and in your lifetime and mine, will I think be twenty or twenty four.
It is no good supposing, in my view, that that is going to be a one speed
inflexible centralised Europe. Europe is not America, it's not Australia, it's
not Canada, that's why the parallel with the United States of America is a
false one. This is why Europe, and positive Europeans, are going to evolve in
a different way, and what politicians are beginning to say, Italy, France,
Spain, what public opinion research is beginning to show is that this approach,
which needs a lot more work on it, I would accept that, is actually more
acceptable, is going to work better than what I would call the old fashioned
approach.
HUMPHRYS: You fought the last European elections
under Mrs Thatcher with the slogan 'strong Britain in a strong Europe'. Now we
know what Mrs Thatcher, Lady Thatcher, meant by a strong Europe. It seems
pretty much what you mean by it.
HURD: I think there's a lot of continuity, a
lot of the things she started, like the single market, like qualifying majority
voting, we continue with. She had her style, she argued and then she signed,
that's the record, I was her Foreign Secretary, I know exactly what happened,
and we argue and then we agree if we can agree. So there is certainly
continuity there.
HUMPHRYS: I saw you sitting in the House of
Commons shaking your head when she was saying no, no, no.
HURD: I didn't always agree with her style,
and I'm quite clear she was wrong about . . .
HUMPHRYS: You didn't agree with her vision of
Europe then, did you?
HURD: I have never been an integrationist, I
have never believed that you can only be a good European if you shove power
steadily into the centre. I think we've reached now in the arrangements we are
now working on foreign policy, on defence, on home affairs, with something like
the right balance, and I believe we need to make that effective, make that
work, before we go out and start altering everything all over again. I didn't
always agree with Margaret Thatcher's style, but I was her Foreign Secretary,
and I know that in fact at the end of the day, when she got the best bargain
she thought she could she agreed, and that's what every country does, and
that's perfectly reasonable. It will go on being a Europe of nations. The
question is whether it can work effectively together where it has to. I think
it can, but it won't if people try and create an unnatural straightjacket, and
that's, I repeat, is what the argument over the next two or three weeks is
going to be about.
HUMPHRYS: Foreign Secretary, thank you very much.
HURD: Thank you.
.....oooOooo.....
|