Speech to Scottish Conservative Party Conference, Perth

September 1, 2001

The Conservatives won the European elections on their pledge to be "In Europe but not run by Europe." That policy chimed with the vast majority of UK voters who regard all things European with growing scepticism. However, when the EU tells Tony Blair to jump, his immediate response is "how high?" Blair claims that New Labour is leaving the old Socialist past behind. He claims they are moving away from heavy-handed state intervention and regulation. But in Brussels his MEPs and their Socialist allies in the European Parliament, vote again and again for more red tape, more intervention and more centralised control.

The Socialist vision for Europe is for more harmonisation, deeper integration and a "one-size-fits-all" approach. Such policies simply pile burdens on business and industry, destroying, rather than creating jobs. But such policies are enthusiastically endorsed not only by Blair, but by Chirac, Jospin, Schröder and, of course, Romano Prodi.

This is hardly surprising, coming from a Council of Ministers where 11 of the fifteen Member States are dominated by left-wing governments. Our American cousins now regard Europe as a museum of socialism.

So now we see European legislation like the waste water directive which has destroyed jobs in our fish processing sector, the water extraction directive which has hit the whisky industry for six, the working time directive which is having a huge impact on our industrial and commercial sector, and a new welter of legislation in the wake of the BSE and foot and mouth epidemics, destroying jobs in rural Scotland. No wonder the people of Scotland and the UK believe there is too much red tape, too much bureaucracy and too much interference from Brussels.

There was a recent example of this kind of petty-fogging bureaucratic nonsense that causes outrage in Britain with a piece of legislation known as the Safety of Workers at Work Directive. This loony left idiocy set out to legislate across the whole of Europe on the question of rickety ladders.

Under these proposals, even a window cleaner will need to get a health & safety inspector to inspect his ladder, inspect the job he intends to carry out and issue a certificate of approval, but only after the window cleaner has produced his own certificate of competence, showing that he has been properly trained to climb a ladder. After all this ridiculous bureaucracy has been gone through, the window cleaner will be prohibited from carrying a bucket and sponge up the ladder, rendering the whole exercise pointless and the window cleaner jobless.

Sadly this type of lunacy is not unique. Far from it. We have six hundred pieces of legislation going through the European Parliament just now and at least half of them are utter rubbish. Indeed, we even have a Commission proposal dealing with farmyard manure before the Environment Committee at the present time. Believe it or not, the Commission have decided that all dung is a high-risk material. They have therefore decided that any farmer taking a load of dung onto a public road must sheet it over and have signs affixed to the side of the trailer stating "This product is not for human consumption."

FARMING IN FREEFALL

But this is only the tip of the iceberg that threatens to sink our once great agricultural industry. Net farm incomes have fallen disastrously during the past year to an average of around £3,800 a year, with many hill farmers earning nothing at all. The BSE crisis and the disastrous foot and mouth outbreak, coupled with the strong British pound and the weak Euro, have wrecked the UK farming sector. Even so, we might have been able to look ahead to better times, but for the sheer incompetence and naked antipathy of the Labour government. Labour and their Lib/Dem collaborators are more interested in protecting foxes and preposterous land access rights, than in providing meaningful assistance to our beleaguered rural areas.

Our only hope is to reform the CAP. The CAP is a monolith. It currently devours more than half of the entire funding of the European Union, around £32 billion a year and accounts for roughly 80% of all agricultural subsidies world-wide. Yet it has left a trail of destruction and impoverishment in its wake. 50 years of manic regulation, red tape, market distortion and grand illusion has ended in the blazing bonfires of diseased livestock which we have seen in Britain, France, The Netherlands and Ireland. The CAP is a cartel, more reminiscent of an old Soviet 5-year plan, but even more bureaucratic. It all has to change. EU farming will need to become lean and mean to thrive and prosper in the new competitive marketplace.

FISHING INDUSTRY IN CRISIS

And the CFP is every bit as bad. Our fishermen are also suffering their worst crisis ever. Back in 1970, our once proud Scottish fleet was landing around 400,000 tons of cod a year in Scottish ports. Following the recent savage cuts in TACs and quotas, we will be allowed to land only 20,000 tons this year. Since Britain signed up to the EU we have lost over 3000 vessels from our fleet and many thousands of jobs have been destroyed at sea and on shore. The core objectives of the Common Fisheries Policy - to protect the livelihood of fishermen and to sustain fish stocks - have failed. Madcap policies imposed by desk-jockeys in Brussels have ensured the ruin of our fishing sector. The quota system, which forbids the landing of fish for which a skipper has no licence, has led to the dumping of over 2 million tons of healthy fish each year in the EU. 25% of all the fish caught in the EU are simply dumped dead over the side, back into the sea, because skippers would face hefty penalties if they tried to land them. This catastrophic waste, at a time when fish stocks have fallen to unsustainable levels, beggars belief.

Now the Spanish, with their huge, modernised fleet of 18,000 trawlers, much of it paid for by British taxpayers, wants to abolish our 6 and 12 mile limits and fish right up to our shore-line. Holyrood meanwhile sits idly by. Having presided over the bankruptcy of our farmers they are now keen to do the same to the fishermen. The Labour/Lib-Dem coalition won't be happy until we are all city dwelling, vegetarian social workers.

NO TO A FEDERAL SUPERSTATE

So it's no wonder we get frustrated with Europe. But let us remember that it is Socialist Europe that we are fed up with not Europe per se. We want no truck with the Socialist vision of an integrated Federal Super State with a single currency, a single system of taxation, a single judicial system, a single European Army and a single constitution. That's not a recipe for harmony, it's a recipe for disaster.

British Conservatives want to be in Europe but not run by Europe. We want a smaller, more efficient Commission and a reformed Parliament, doing fewer things and doing them better. We want the principle of subsidiarity to be paramount, with many more matters being dealt with at Member State level, rather than in Brussels and Strasbourg. Above all, we want more flexibility.

BENEFITS OF EU MEMBERSHIP

But let us examine why we want to remain "In Europe". The Tories are not an anti-European Party as our opponents pretend. Indeed, let us not forget that we were campaigning for the UK to be at the heart of Europe when Tony Blair and Labour were standing on an anti-EU platform. It is Labour who changed not us.

The key reason for supporting the EU is because it guarantees our future peace and stability. 380 million European citizens have lived in harmony for more than half a century. This is no mean achievement in a continent that has been destroyed by war time and again in recent history. With the imminent enlargement of the EU to embrace countries from central and Eastern Europe, we can now extend this benefit to those accession states and to a population of 500 million people.

Conservatives firmly believe in the concept of enlargement and believe that we have a moral duty to reinstate the countries of Central and Eastern Europe within a reunited European continent. With numerous conflicts and tensions in areas immediately bordering and even within the European continent itself, the rapid enlargement of the EU must be a top priority. Only enlargement can ensure, by means of economic and political co-operation, the peace, stability and prosperity of the region through shared democratic systems and values.

Countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary were historically and culturally an integral part of the Euro-Atlantic community, until ripped apart by the post-war Soviet empire and isolated by the Cold War. For these Central and Eastern European states, accession to the EU means closing the chapter of history which was opened at Yalta. However, we must not allow these countries to swap one system of centralised, bureaucratic control for another.

It is worth remembering, for instance, that the first five countries to join the EU will increase the current population by more than 30% while only increasing GDP by around 6%. The scale of the challenge is therefore significant. However, just as our grants and subsidies will drift from the west to the east to bring the accession states up to our standard of living, so will demand for goods and services flow from the east to the west. The opportunities for selling goods, services and intellectual property in a new community of 500 million people will be profound. Indeed, if enlargement is to be an economic success and not simply a drain on our resources, trade and an expanded market must be the way forward.

Europe offers huge opportunities for trade. The Single Market is one of the biggest global trading areas on the planet. The EU now represents the world's largest group of affluent consumers and, with enlargement, we will soon have a larger GDP than the U.S. This is what provides the cornerstone of our peace and prosperity.

But that's not the only reason why we shouldn't shun Europe. There are also many global issues that recognise no boundaries or border controls. Issues such as world trade, agriculture, environmental protection, transport & energy networks, the movement of people and goods and the international fight against crime and terrorism. These are issues that are properly dealt with on an EU-wide basis, rather than at Member State level.

OUR SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH AMERICA

But just as we support our trading relationship with the EU, as Conservatives, we deplore the steady erosion of our special relationship with America. We benefit hugely from American inward investment into the UK. Tens of thousands of UK jobs rely on this inward investment and our membership of the EU.

The Americans regard the UK as an ideal springboard into Europe. They understand that we are 'In Europe but not run by Europe'. They see that we are part of the Common Market but not (yet) encumbered by the massive social costs and regulatory controls which shackle our neighbours on the Continent.

Americans understand where Conservatives are coming from on Europe. They know that Conservatives offer a vision where Britain can play to its strengths as a global trading nation in an expanded Europe of independent Nation-States. Of course, as Conservatives, we want to develop trade and prosperity in Europe. Of course we want to co-operate with our European partners.

But we also want to nurture our traditional links, not only with the United States, but with Asia and the Commonwealth. We want to be a focus for enterprise and investment. We want productivity, growth, wealth-creation and high employment. We want to be an offshore power-house, a beacon for free trade, democracy and liberal economics.

So the challenge which confronts Scottish Conservatives in the months ahead is the fight to preserve our independence as a nation, to preserve the union which forms the bedrock of our political philosophy and to preserve the right to control our own economic destiny in a reformed EU. This will be central to our fight against the Socialists, the Lib/Dems and the SNP at the next Holyrood Elections. All of them are besotted with the Euro. All of them would willingly sell out Britain's interests for a seat at the Eurozone top table. The political pundits told us during the General Election that Europe doesn't matter. Well by God it matters to us.