European Union (Amendment) Bill

I suggest that the hon. Gentleman tries reading the different treaties. The Single European Act was, as its name describes, about market measures to try to promote a common market. I believe that a common market is created by having buyers and sellers and does not need nearly as much law as the European Union subsequently developed. The SEA was a very narrow area of work compared with a common foreign policy, a common army, a common defence policy, a common criminal justice policy, a common immigration policy, a president of Europe and a much-expanded Parliament, all of which have come under this Government's watch. At each point, the Government have claimed that they were not giving any real power away, that we would not notice the difference, that they had protected our interest and that the famous red lines were in place. We have heard all that nonsense, but we can see from the huge amount of work embedded in this revised treaty that massive powers were surrendered at Nice and Amsterdam, and that such a surrender is being proposed tonight in this crucial area of fundamental human rights. We have been told by some Opposition and Labour Members that we do not value human rights or the very good principles embodied in parts of this text—but of course we value those things. We fight, and our predecessors fought, for those rights for the British people just as surely as the Labour party has often done in the past. We believe that those rights are best expressed in British law, in the English language and in a way that is answerable to the British people. We believe they have to stay like that, so that the British people can, through their elected representatives, change, amend and improve them as circumstances and time require. This treaty is an inflexible, unaccountable and thoroughly undemocratic way of legislating. We are being asked to embody at one point in the long evolution of our national and European history, a set of principles that might make sense to some people now, but which are going to be extremely difficult to change. It will be impossible to change them in a democratic way in this Parliament, because the agreement of so many of other member states will be needed, as will a treaty amendment. As we can see, such an amendment is a complicated and difficult process. We must amend these clauses and retain these powers that the Government wish to give away. We must restore the position that this Parliament makes these crucial decisions, so that we answer to our electors. We should live or die as politicians by how well we do and by whether we answer to our electors in the correct way.