Lisbon Treaty (No. 3)

The problem with the right hon. Lady's assertion is that we do not yet know what the text of any accession agreement between the EU and the ECHR will be. The language that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) quoted indicates that the European treaties already contain provisions that tilt the argument in the opposite direction. The Government have done a somersault on children's rights. In the early stages, the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) tried hard to delete any mention of children's rights from the text, on the grounds that its inclusion would be an extension of EU competence. Now, Ministers hail the inclusion of a reference to children's rights as some negotiating triumph. The Government still refuse to come clean over whether the words do matter and they made a concession of some significance during negotiations, or whether they believe that the reference is innocuous and changes nothing about EU competence. In the latter case, it hardly merits the fanfares that they have been busy blowing. The Government's failure to be straight with Parliament and the British people on that point encapsulates what is wrong with their approach to this treaty and how, in particular, they have dealt with the impact of the charter of fundamental rights—the subject that will, rightly, be the focus of most of today's debate, the prime purpose of which should be to probe the Government on their answers to two questions. First, does the fact that the Lisbon treaty gives legal force to the charter of fundamental rights transfer powers, either actually or potentially, from national Parliaments and Governments to the institutions of the Union, and especially to the Court of Justice? Secondly, if the treaty does have such an effect, do the words of the protocol that the Government have secured provide the safeguards for this Parliament that Ministers claim? We know for certain that the Government fought hard to resist any incorporation of the charter in the treaty. In fact, the notes used by the right hon. Member for Neath at the time of the convention said that the objective of the British Government was to ensure that the charter was relegated from the text of the treaty into ““only a protocol””. The use of the word ““only”” in that context should lead us to question of the significance of the protocol to which the Government attach such importance today. The Government rely on three basic arguments to defend their position.