European Union (Amendment) Bill

For some of us, this debate and what it presages impart a degree of nostalgia. Those of us who went through the nightmare experience of Maastricht and the ratification process—I was a Europe spokesman for our party at the time—are returning, 15 years later, to something that may be similar but which we hope will not be too similar, in terms of both political drama and the hours involved. I have two recollections from that period. One is of the emergence of the so-called night watchmen. Some are still with us, fellow survivors. I think of the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), who is sitting at the back of the Chamber now, and of others such as Sir Teddy Taylor, the up-and-coming young right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith), and Jonathan Aitken. The procedures of the House at the time meant that we sat literally throughout the night. My other recollection is of emerging, blinking, into the morning to observe the passage of the seasons as the process unfolded over the months and months that it took. I think that parliamentary procedures have changed for the better since then. Let us hope that the general tenor of our discussion over the coming weeks will also have improved over the intervening decade and a half, and that we do not experience another debate in which the indefatigable meets the interminable. I do not want to make my brief speech in any particular party-political context, because that has already been done. I want to say a few words in the context of my position as president of the European Movement, an all-party organisation that also contains many individuals of non-party-political affiliation.