European Union (Amendment) Bill

No, I want to make a little progress. Liberal Democrats argued during the parliamentary scrutiny of the Amsterdam and Nice treaties that those treaties did not go far enough to prepare the EU for enlargement because they failed to streamline the EU's institutions and to make the EU more accountable and transparent. We therefore naturally welcome the treaty and will vote for the Bill's Second Reading. To be fair to the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks, the main intellectual thrust of his speech was that the treaty was unnecessary, and he deserves an answer on that point. He argued that the EU has worked quite well since the 2004 enlargement—the point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston—and seemed to be relying on some academic work that has been released recently. I have to tell him that I have read that work and spoken to the authors, and they do not draw the conclusions that he claims. Let us take Professor Helen Wallace. She does say in her paper that the EU has not suffered from gridlock owing to enlargement, and she does say that non-treaty reforms have helped, yet she is absolutely clear that the treaty reforms are needed to develop the EU in areas that have long proved difficult, including foreign policy co-operation and immigration, and that reforms making the EU more accountable and transparent are good in themselves and ever more necessary in an enlarged and growing EU. Moreover, the right hon. Gentleman is in no position to say that enlargement does not need Lisbon given that he led the opposition to Amsterdam and Nice, without which enlargement would not have been possible. The Conservatives remain in the most ludicrous position of any political party in Europe—always willing the enlargement end and always opposing the enlargement means. Members wanting to vote against Second Reading have a tough case to make, based on what is actually in the Bill and in the treaty, for they are, in my view, voting against the national interest. A treaty that increases the UK's voting power in the Council of Ministers is in the national interest. A treaty that allows this Parliament, working with other Parliaments, to have EU proposals reviewed and, indeed, stopped is in our interests. A treaty that, for the first time, sets out the right and the process for a member state to secede from the EU can hardly be said by Eurosceptics to be against the national interest. More positively, a treaty that, for the first time, explicitly makes one of the EU's objectives tackling climate change must be in all our interests. A treaty that makes the EU more accountable and responsive to citizens, voluntary groups and civil society as a whole, with citizens' initiatives and a new requirement for the EU's institutions to engage with the public, must be in the interests of the public. The Conservatives are in the faintly ridiculous position of voting against a reduction in the number of EU Commissioners, against the EU being able to dispatch aid more effectively to parts of the world devastated by natural catastrophe, and against making it easier for countries to co-operate on the exchange of information about sex offenders. Is that what they are against?