................................................................................ ON THE RECORD MICHAEL HOWARD INTERVIEW RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 18.10.98 ................................................................................ JOHN HUMPHRYS: Next weekend, Tony Blair will attend a summit of European leaders, where he will be calling for decisions in the European Union to be made closer to the people. Only a week ago, ministers were insisting that whatever anyone else in Europe might be thinking, the British rebate from the European Union was not negotiable. This weekend the government's doing battle with the European Commission over the Social Chapter. It all sounds rather familiar, rather like the days when Mrs Thatcher was at the helm and swinging her handbag in Brussels. Earlier this morning, I talked to the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Michael Howard, from our Chatham studio. I suggested to him that he must be very happy to see the government defending British interests in Europe with such vigour. MICHAEL HOWARD MP: Well they're doing it with one hand tied behind their back and they've tied their hand behind their back. If you look at the Social Chapter, they're protesting a great deal about the Commission's plans but they have no power to resist those plans. They're going to be decided by majority voting which this government agreed to and signed up to when it signed up to the Social Chapter. We wouldn't have had any of these battles with a Conservative Government, we would never have signed up to the Social Chapter, the question wouldn't have arisen. HUMPHRYS: Well, what Mr Mandelson said this morning on one aspect of the Social Chapter, that's the directive that says: all companies should consult their workers before big decisions are made. He said: 'we are not going to wear that, I hope the Commission won't be silly enough to defy national opinion', was what he said. HOWARD: But those are just empty words. He has absolutely no power to say no. If the other countries agree on a majority he's got to accept it. That was precisely why we didn't want to sign up to the Social Chapter. It was precisely why we've criticised the government for doing so. He can say things like that till the cows come home but if the other countries decide that is what's to be done, he's got to accept it. We've got to accept it. HUMPHRYS: On the rebate, of course we do have a veto and they're fully prepared to use that veto. Now you must applaud that surely. HOWARD: Well of course. It's absolutely essential that the veto is used on that. But what this whole argument demonstrates is the complete fallacy of what we were told constantly by Mr Blair and Mr Brown and indeed Mr Mandelson, that if we were nice to the Europeans, they'd be nice to us. We made huge concessions at the Amsterdam Summit, huge concessions at the Amsterdam Treaty giving away power to other countries, to the European Parliament, signing up to what the other countries wanted. But it's all been one-way traffic and so far from helping us on the things which matter to us like the rebate, won by a Conservative Government and worth over twenty billion pounds to this country since we first obtained it, they are attacking it and the government is having to fight hard to maintain it. HUMPHRYS: That's exactly what you did in that particular case. But in other cases you say they're trying to be nice to them in the hope they'll be nice back, you blustered and made..your colleagues made a great deal of fuss about various things and then gave in. I mean not on the rebate certainly but on other things, the Working Time Directive for instance. You signed up to that even though you didn't like it, you now say what a terrible thing it is. HOWARD: Well, it is indeed a very damaging directive and we made it clear that if we had gone to Amsterdam, if we had been negotiating at Amsterdam the Working Time Directive would have been at the top of the list because that was a directive that was introduced under health and safety legislation, we always felt it was a complete abuse of health and safety legislation and we would have put that at the top of the agenda for the Amsterdam Summit. HUMPHRYS: And powerless to do anything about it. HOWARD: Well Labour didn't try and do anything about it at the Amsterdam Summit. The Amsterdam Summit was where the treaty was considered, that was the opportunity which existed and of course the Labour Government didn't attempt to do anything about it. HUMPHRYS: But you'd have not been able to do anything about it either. HOWARD: Well it would have been..when we got to Amsterdam that was the time to negotiate all these things. That was the occasion for changing the treaty and that would have been high on the kind of thing that we wanted to achieve. And I think we would have had a reasonable prospect of achieving it, but they didn't even try. HUMPHRYS: But what they are trying to do is to build allies rather than made enemies in Europe and that has to be a sensible way of going about things doesn't it. HOWARD: Well of course and we did that too and we played a constructive part too. But what we have heard from the government is this claptrap of: we're going to create a new mood in Europe, we're going to be much more cosy with the other European countries and that is going to benefit Britain because in return they are going to give us all sorts of things. Well that just simply hasn't happened. Quite the contrary has happened. We've seen that Gordon Brown is beset by requests to eliminate the rebate. We've seen the commission persisting in its attempts to ignore what Mr Mandelson says about the new proposals under the Social Chapter, that approach simply doesn't work. Of course you have got to be constructive and co-operate and we did that, but when it's against Britain's interests, you've got to fight your corner and we did that too and we didn't tie our hands behind our backs by accepting things like the Social Chapter in the way in which the present government have done. HUMPHRYS: We have a summit coming up at the weekend and now we've got Tony Blair saying what we want is more subsidiarity,
dreadful word but we all know what it means I suppose by now, bringing the people closer into the whole decision making process. Now that's got to be a good thing hasn't it? HOWARD: Well I'm not against subsidiarity of course but the summit's going to be a waste of time. The summit was the great achievement of the last summit and one of the main things on its agenda is that there should be more summits, rather like Robin Cook's suggestion that more foreign ministers should go to European meetings and then failing to turn up himself. There's nothing much going to be achieved at this summit. Chancellor Kohl isn't going to be there. Gerhard Schroder is not yet Chancellor of Germany. I don't believe anything of any significance will be achieved. But what they should be talking about are the threat to jobs in Europe, the threat to the prosperity of Europe, the difficult financial climate in which we now find ourselves and the way in which government should react to that. HUMPHRYS: Now what about the Euro? There's got to be a referendum before we join up to economic and monetary union. Lord Neill said in his report on funding the political parties this past week that the government wouldn't be able to spend taxpayers' money effectively on delivering its own propaganda. Peter Mandelson said this morning that the government wouldn't necessarily have to accept all of Neill's recomendations. What do you make of that? HOWARD: I think that's a matter of deep concern. That demonstrates that what the government want to do is to fight these referendums with loaded dice. They want to be able to use the taxpayers' money to put their point of view and they won't therefore have the level playing field which the Neill Committee thought was so important. And the Neill Committee gave the example of what happened in the Welsh Referendum when the 'YES' vote won by the tiniest of majorities having been heavily financed by the taxpayer when the'NO' campaign was run on an absolute shoestring and as Neill said, if there had been a level playing field there, then the result is very likely to have been different. Now I think we've got to insist that if the government is serious about removing sleaze from politics and about enabling referendums to be conducted on a level playing field, that those proposals of the Neill Committee together with the others are accepted. HUMPHRYS: But it would be ludicrous if the government was not able to argue forcibly and publicly for its own policies? HOWARD: Well no-one is saying that the people concerned, the ministers concerned shouldn't argue for their own policies. The question is should that campaign be financed by the taxpayer when the 'NO' campaign would not be so financed by the taxpayer. That is what is at issue and that is a very important principle. HUMPHRIES: Let me turn to a different subject, General Pinochet, as we all know by now is in this country and he's been arrested. Is that right? HOWARD: Well if there's evidence that he's committed extraditable crimes and if an extradition request is made, the normal processes and procedures should be followed, the rule of law must be obeyed.
What is worrying about all this is the fact that it's been suggested all over the place that this is not a result of the normal procedures being followed but a result of pressure from lobby groups and from Labour MPs. And you take that with a number of other recent developments and a kind of picture emerges. In the last few days we've had the astonishing intervention by the Attorney General in stopping the prosecution of a judge accused of fraud. We've had the Lord Chancellor yesterday saying there no longer needed to be political balance for magistrates. Now this is a very arrogant government. It's already displayed its utter contempt for parliament. I hope it's not now displaying its utter contempt for our legal system and for the rule of law in this country. HUMPHRYS: Are you saying that in this case they should have resisted? You say there was a lot of pressure, they should have resisted that pressure and said, no we won't have Pinochet arrested. HOWARD: I am saying that the normal procedures
should be followed. HUMPHRYS: Perhaps they were. HOWARD: Well, if they were then there's no problem, but this story's being spun as a great triumph for Robin Cook's ethical foreign policy. We hear that what has happened is in response to what Labour MPs and lobby groups have said. That is not the way to deal with these decisions. These decisions should be dealt with according to law, the appropriate procedures should be followed. That is what I am concerned about. HUMPHRYS: Should he have been given a visa to come here in the first place? HOWARD: Indeed, and ... HUMPHRYS: You say yes, he should have been. HOWARD: I .. well, he was given a visa.. HUMPHRYS: And was that right is what I'm asking you. HOWARD: I've no reason to quarrel with that decision. And as I say, if it's the case that there's evidence that he's committed extraditable crimes then the appropriate procedures should be followed, but the rule of law must prevail. We can't have decisions of this kind taken in response to pressure from lobby groups or backbench members of parliament. HUMPHRYS: The reality is of course that had it been a Conservative Government you certainly wouldn't have refused a visa would you, because after all the Conservatives sold arms to Pinochet when he was running Chile in his rather nasty way. HOWARD: I'm not criticising the grant of a visa, and I don't think there's been any significant policy change in terms of trade with Chile since the present government took over, and I'm not criticising the grant of a visa. What I'm concerned about is that we may be beginning to see a pattern in which an arrogant government which has already displayed its contempt for parliament is now beginning to display a contempt for the rule of law and for our legal system. HUMPHRYS: Michael Howard, many thanks. HOWARD: Thank you very much. HUMPHRYS: And I was talking to Mr Howard earlier this morning, before that interview with Alun Michael. ...oooOooo...