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ON THE RECORD
NORMAN LAMONT INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 19.2.95
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Well, Norman Lamont, you're obviously
deeply worried about the depth of Britain's commitment to Europe and the way
things are going, but you were in the government, you were in the Cabinet
for years and years and - thirteen years altogether while all these
decisions were being made. Didn't you know what was going on?
NORMAN LAMONT: Well, I fought very hard for the things
I believed in and I can assure you for example, the Maastricth Treaty would
have been very different if I hadn't fought to get my view expressed in that
treaty.
HUMPHRYS: Because you helped negotiate it.
LAMONT: ......getting us an opt-out, and for
example one very significant change I made was against the advice of the Prime
Minister and Foreign Secretary, I refused to accept that membership of the
Exchange Rate Mechanism ought to be a legal obligation on this country. If I
had not deleted that by my own personal action from the treaty we would today
be absolutely committed to rejoining it. My views have been the same all the
way along. What has changed of course has been the intensification of the
process of European integration. We have more and more initiatives coming from
Europe and more and more ambitions that this should be harmonised, that should
be harmonised. One of the things that I had to resist when I was Chancellor
were very ambitious attempts to harmonise taxation throughout Europe, something
that I was passionately opposed to and something that I think is quite
unnecessary for a single market in Europe.
HUMPHRYS: So are you saying that the opt-out for
instance might not have happened if you hadn't argued for it?
LAMONT: No, I think the Prime Minister wanted to
have the opt-out as well, but there were very many variants of it. We don't
want to get lost in too much technical detail, but as a result of my own
opposition to a single currency there is no obligation on this country before
stage three takes place under the Maastricht Treaty to do anything differently
from how we would have wanted to do it.
HUMPHRYS: But you were the Dutch boy sticking his
hand in that dyke in the Cabinet during those years you're saying, when people
like Mr Major for instance were actually much more enthusiastic and prepared to
allow that dyke to crumble.
LAMONT: I have always been opposed to a single
European currency. I've never made any secret of that. I observed the
government's policy which was that we should have a choice. My view now is the
same as it's always been, but I say in addition the whole country and the party
have had ample time to consider this issue and we should make up our mind now.
HUMPHRYS: You agreed to Maastricht, opt-out
included of course, but you agreed to Maastricht, a treaty which you now seem
to find deeply flawed for all sorts of different reasons. Why did you allow
it to happen - why did you applaud Mr Major metaphorically when he came back
from Maastricht?
LAMONT: I don't find the Maastricht Treaty
flawed, I haven't said that. What I find we should not accept is the idea of
a single currency. The good thing about the Maastricht Treaty was that it
allows us to choose ourselves whether we do or do not have a single currency.
HUMPHRYS: You were Chancellor when we signed that
agreement. You're deeply worried about the way Britain is going now. The
implication is that in some way the whole process has been hijacked.
LAMONT: No. I think what is happening is that
the process of integration in Europe is intensifying. I was deeply shocked
during the whole of the Maastricht negotiations. It was actually a revelation
to me. I supported our membership of the European Community in 1972. I always
thought we were joining an economic community. I listened ...
HUMPHRYS: And that was all?
LAMONT: I thought we were joining an economic
community - we might have had a political reason for joining it but we were not
in favour of a united states of Europe or a federal Europe.
HUMPHRYS: Then you weren't listening to what
Douglas Hurd was saying at the time.
LAMONT: I listened very carefully to what
Geoffrey Howe said, and I quoted in my speech at Oxford the other day, when he
said, "The central concept that we're signing up to is an economic community",
and as Solicitor-General he said, "That is why most of the Community Law that
has a direct effect on this country is economic". Now what has been changing
is that the ambitions in Europe have got bigger and bigger. It was only a
couple of years ago that President Delors said that he envisaged that in a few
years' time seventy per cent of the laws that affected the economies of Europe
would come from Brussels. Then we had the initiative to have a single European
currency. We also have had quite separately from Maastricht a whole series of
initiatives to harmonise taxation, not just VAT, not just excise duty, but
company taxation as well, something that I resisted, because I believe that it
is the government of this country that ought to determine what sort of taxes we
have.
HUMPHRYS: But if you listen to what senior
cabinet ministers have been saying for a number of years, the last few years
and during the years when you yourself were in power, it is: we are influencing
the European debate in such a way that things in Europe are moving in our
direction - in Britain's direction. We've heard that from Mr Hurd no end of
times, we've heard it from Mr Heseltine, we've heard it from Mr Clarke. You
don't accept that?
LAMONT: No, I don't believe that that is the
case.
HUMPHRYS: So they're misleading us?
LAMONT: I'm sure they believe what they're
saying, but I actually believe that we are not winning the argument in Europe
and my experience at the time when we were negotiating the Maastricht Treaty,
and it deeply shocked me at the time, was that other heads of government had a
completely different view of what Europe was going to evolve into. I remember
having a very frank private conversation with Monsieur Beregovoy who was then
Finance Minister in France, subsequently became Prime Minister and he said
to me quite openly and I don't - didn't other than admire Monsieur Beregovoy,
but he said to me, "What I want to see is a united states of Europe".
HUMPHRYS: Well then the British Government
must have been very naive to have bought the sort of package that we have
subsequently bought into, or at least you fear we are buying in to?
LAMONT: Well we're not committed to moving along
such a road and we have an opt out from the Social Chapter, we have an opt out,
that is to say a choice over whether we go down the route of a single currency
or not....
HUMPHRYS: But you think we've already moved too
far down that road?
LAMONT: I think that we have ceded more powers
to Brussels than is actually necessary. The Chancellor the other night said in
his speech: "judge everything on its merits, does it serve Britain's
interests", I think that we have ceded sovereignty and by sovereignty I mean
the power to decide for ourselves on a policy issue, I think there are a whole
raft of things where we have gone too far. If you take the single market, I'm
in favour of the single market, but the single market is being exploited by
other European Governments in order to harmonise everything, they've tried to
move into the health and safety area, the fact that we have an opt out from the
Social Chapter hasn't actually been completely bomb proof because they have
approached through the single market route to say well we must harmonise hours
at work and employment legislation, in the area of taxation a Chancellor's
freedom of action on indirect taxation is already very circumscribed by what we
have conceded in Europe.
HUMPHRYS: Mr. Clarke doesn't agree with that, Mr.
Hurd wouldn't agree with that definition at all, I mean, they are..surely they
are good solid men who are taking us in the right direction?
LAMONT: Well Kenneth Clarke and I actually
disagreed about this at the time, I remember I told him that I didn't intend to
go along with the harmonisation of indirect taxes in Europe and....
HUMPHRYS: This didn't reach the ears of an
unsuspected British public did it...
LAMONT: But I am just explaining to you what has
been going on, I feel that we have moved too far along the direction of
harmonisation for the sake of harmonisation. It is being done in the name of a
vision, something called a united Europe. It is not being done because it is
necessary for free trade in Europe, which is a very good idea.
HUMPHRYS: Right and if that is so, there can be
only one interpretation of it and that is that we are being misled, either for
reasons of naivete of for reasons of political expediency?
LAMONT: Well I don't think we are being misled
but I thin....
HUMPHRYS: Well you can't both be right, you can't
be right and Mr. Clarke can't be right.
LAMONT: I think it would be helpful to the
general debate on Europe if people were more open about their objectives,
federalism or the united states of Europe is a policy that doesn't dare to
speak its name. There are politicians who believe that the sooner Westminster
becomes a county council the better, now I think it would be better if people
who believed that said so...
HUMPHRYS: Who are these people?
LAMONT: I am not going to name names...
HUMPHRYS: Well I mean can I assume that Mr. Clarke
is one of those people...
LAMONT: I think that it would be better if
people who wanted to argue that we need more political integration in Europe
said so and then, that is a perfectly honourable and perfectly desirable aim
for a Government to have, it's not one that I personally share, but I think
there are people who have that view.
HUMPHRYS: And can I take it that Mr. Clarke is one
of those people in your view?
LAMONT: I think you ought to put it to him, I
don't know....
HUMPHRYS: But that's clearly in your mind.
LAMONT: ...but I think there are people, I think
that is the view, for example, of Sir Edward Heath, but I sharply and strongly
disagree with it, it is a perfectly honourable objective, it is one that he has
held all his life and has argued for.
HUMPHRYS: So that if, for instance, Mr. Clarke or
Mr. Hurd takes that view, you think they ought to get up there and say so
notwithstanding what Mr. Major has said which is that they should all be silent
and stand in line as it were, stay in line?
LAMONT: Well I think the Prime Minister has a
very difficult situation to deal with because there are divisions over this
issue throughout the country, there are friends divided from each other, there
are families divided over this issue and I think all political parties are
divided. It is the supreme political issue of our time and honourable people
can take take different views, but there is no way that we are going to avoid a
great debate in this country on it, because you can't for long take the line
that whether Britain has the freedom to issue its currency is something that we
will simply decide at a later date, at some point we've actually got to
confront the arguments as an issue of principle.
HUMPHRYS: Some would say that that's exactly what
Mr. Clarke for instance, has done, I mean, he stood up then, he said I've
looked at this issue, I have decided for myself - and this is the Government's
view - at least one assumes this if it's the Chancellor speaking - that it
isn't going to take sovereignty away from Britain, it is not a matter of
sovereignty, this is a matter of economics.
LAMONT: Well I think what the Chancellor said
the other night was we are keeping our options open and he spelt out some of
the advantages as he saw it that could come from a single currency. I think he
was entitled to do that I don't criticise him...
HUMPHRYS: But you think it was wrong of course?
LAMONT: I actually disagree with him and I
particularly disagree with a view that having a single currency will not
affect, we keep using this word, sovereignty, will not affect this country
politically. Some of my strongest reservations are on grounds of politics and
the constitution and the Prime Minister himself the other day said that this
was a constitutional issue. I don't see how you can say it isn't an important
constitutional issue because the fact is that you are taking away from the
Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank Of England in this
country the right to determine monetary policy and you were saying that is
going to a European institution, that may be right, it may be wrong but by
definition it is a constitutional issue and it isn't just me who holds this
view, I happened just yesterday to be looking through Nigel Lawson's
autobiography and he spelt out very strongly and very clearly that a single
currency is a constitutional issue....I also object to it on economic grounds.
HUMPHRYS: Given that, given that it is an issue of
fundamental importance to Britain, you said yourself the most important it's
possible to conceive of in terms of our sovereignty, our constitution, what is
more important then, that or the unity of the Tory Party?
LAMONT: Well I hope that we will unite and I
think the only way that the Conservative Party can be truly united is actually
to move more towards a cautious, spectical approach towards Europe.
HUMPHRYS: But if it doesn't...if you are faced
with this choice....
LAMONT: Let me just finish, I very much agreed
with the speech the Prime Minister made the other night at the Conservative Way
Forward dinner. I very much agreed with what he said in his Economist article
that he wrote I think a year, eighteen months ago saying what we want is - not
a federal Europe - but something more like a Europe of nation states, a
confederal Europe, one where there isn't just harmonisation for harmonisation's
sake, and where there is diversity and where we widen the community.
HUMPHRYS: But if people like Kenneth Clarke try
to move in the opposite direction from that, you're saying effectively as I
understand you, they should put up or get out?
LAMONT: I hope that Kenneth Clarke is going to
stay on as Chancellor, please don't misinterpret me in any way because I think
he is doing a good job and I think he is the right man in that job, I do not
personally agree with what he says about a single currency.
HUMPHRYS: Norman Lamont, thank you very much
indeed.
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