European Union (Accessions) Bill

I am afraid that my hon. Friend did speak a little too soon. Having listened to representatives from Bulgaria and the Czech Republic, and given events in Hungary concerning the excessive deficit procedure, my feeling is that—notwithstanding those of us who are in favour of enlargement—some people are living in complete cloud cuckoo land on the question of the kind of Europe that we need to develop. I will not go into that issue in detail now as I hope to make a speech on it later, but we need to be very cautious in assuming that, by absorbing the whole of the existing legal framework of the European treaties, we can maintain the consensus that enlargement is a good idea. That is to say nothing of the question of Turkey.