Graham's blog entry Friday 5 October 2007

Published on Fri 5th Oct 2007

I try to get across the Atlantic once a year to take the political temperature in Washington DC and in Ottawa. Last year I failed to fit in a visit, so the 48 hours I managed to squeeze out of this week's schedule were doubly important to me. I made it to Heathrow on Monday afternoon with few minutes to spare after launching a Parliamentary Outreach week in Truro together with Paul Tyler (for the Lords) and Julia Goldsworthy (for the Commons).

Politics in Washington is still dominated by the fall-out from the 9-11 terrorist bombings: civil liberties are routinely trampled on, despite huge efforts to defend them by brave Liberals like Patrick Leahy in the Senate and Jerrold Nadler in the House of Representatives, who I met. An attack on Iran cannot be ruled out. And even the Democrats, who expect to win the Presidential race next year (having won on Capitol Hill last year) are having to talk tough on security, knowing that a candidate who cannot convince the voters on security issues has no chance. Troop withdrawal from Iraq is talked about, but not before 2009 at the earliest. On climate change, however, the picture is getting better: though a bill in the House is likely to be vetoed by the President, action by individual states is gathering momentum and in some cases they are ahead of the EU.

Ottawa is a city which tugs my heart strings, not least for its Scots Gothic architecture. I did the rounds of prominent Liberals in the warm autumn sunshine and fitted in a lunchtime lecture on EU and Canadian approaches to Immigration at Carleton University. Sadly, our sister party is still in opposition after its defeat in January last year and probably has not hit the bottom yet: the day I was there saw the resignation of National Director (party chief of staff) Jamie Carroll for unguarded remarks about Quebeckers; unsurprisingly, my meeting with him and the Party President were cancelled at short notice. But the campaign to retain control of Ontario in the forthcoming provincial elections is going well, with the McGuinty brothers (premier Dalton and his younger brother David, who is the Party's shadow Environment Secretary in the House of Commons) as impressive as ever.

While I was in North America the European Parliament's environment committee voted massively (50 in favour, one abstention) to apply the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme to all air travel by 2010: the Commission had proposed 2011 for flights within the EU and 2012 for flights beyond our borders. There should be no difficulty getting this through on the floor of the House next month. Combined with the EUR450 million made available last week by the European Investment Bank to renewable energy schemes and improvements in energy efficiency, flesh is being put on the bones of Europe's climate change strategy.

Our constitutional affairs committee adopted a report on how many seats each country should have in the EP after the 2009 European elections, also with a decent majority, though the Italians are unhappy that the calculations are based on the number of residents in each member state rather than the number of citizens (many Italians live and work abroad and retain the right to vote at home). If the plans command a similar majority on the floor of the House later this month they will almost certainly be agreed by the heads of state and government at the European Council meeting ("summit") on 18-19 October.

Telecommunications ministers met in Luxembourg and agreed the calendar adopted by Parliament for full liberalisation of the EU's postal services by 2012. And on the foreign affairs front the EU has found EUR50m to support refugees from Somalia in Chad and the Central African Republic. We are also mounting a military force under UN Resolution 1778 to protect the estimated 400,000 displaced people there.

Back in Brussels on Thursday morning I was briefed on the draft text of the new EU treaty which is now complete and will be considered by the foreign ministers on 16 October and the Prime Ministers two days later. The UK still seeks to withdraw from commitments we made when Tony Blair signed the original treaty in 2004. Our government now wants an opt-out from the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which would deprive UK citizens of the protection afforded by the Charter against abuse of the EU's powers. We also want an opt out from most collective decisions in justice and home affairs or in foreign and security policy, which has led some of the German MEPs to put Europe's equivalent of the West Lothian question, ie, should British MEPs have the right to vote on policy formation if their country does not intend to apply the policy? I fear my country has completely lost its marbles about the EU; our fears are irrational and we are perceived to be behaving very strangely.

Back to Bristol on the red-eye flight this morning and straight to a photo session with Tessa Munt, our PPC for Wells. This evening I'll be at LD social functions in Torpoint and in Tavistock, tomorrow at events in Plymouth and Wells and on Sunday afternoon on a plane to Rome, for meetings there early on Monday.