European Union (Amendment) Bill

Of course, I want to stay in order, Mrs. Heal, but I think that the mobility of labour and the so-called protective features of the treaty are the subject of the amendments that we have tabled. The main feature of the European Union that I want to explore in the time remaining is the use of the powers in the existing treaties that establish a single market to extend European legislation into new areas of policy. That is why my hon. Friends and I have tabled a number of amendments to cut and define better those powers. I am thinking particularly of articles 94 and 95 of the existing treaty. They are increasingly being used not to establish a single market but to legislate in areas that are quite disconnected with it, because they use qualified majority voting. In a sense, everything can be traded or can cross borders. That is confirmed by a paper I was helpfully given by the Foreign Office during the Convention on the Future of Europe, which listed all the items of legislation that have been passed under the single market powers given by articles 94 and 95, of which 104 go far wider than the establishment of a single market. They deal with things such as money laundering, the art market, transnational organised crime, summer time arrangements, noise emissions, units of measurements, member states' balance of payments, combating terrorism, anti-personnel landmines, counterfeiting, civil protection, budgetary discipline and social security relating to employed persons. Of course, the same idea relates to the matter of health, which is the subject of a number of amendments in this group. The EU regards health as a legitimate area for legislation under the single market articles because health can be traded and because health care can be experienced across borders. Using the single market, the EU has expanded its powers into the new areas. That so worried the working group that I was on during the Convention that it recommended amendments to the treaties to redefine the market powers and to ensure that they are used only to bring down barriers and to enact measures that are genuinely and intimately connected with the establishment of a single market, rather than to expand EU powers into new areas by qualified majority voting in the way that I have described. Those amendments were entirely rejected by the secretariat and the presidency of the Convention on the Future of Europe. To me and others, that showed that the exercise was a sham and that there was never any intention to relinquish any powers. Even though a majority in the working group supported some amendments to restrict those powers, they were overturned and ignored. No such change ever found its way into the final document or the constitution, and so nothing to that effect is in the Lisbon treaty. I end by supporting the conclusions expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) about exclusive competence. It is quite wrong that competition policy should be made an area of exclusive competence, and I can claim in support of that contention a letter written by the right hon. Member for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt) to the European Scrutiny Committee in January 2004, when she was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. In the letter, she made the correct observation that"““competition rules under Articles 81 and 82 are an area of shared competence.””" I agree, so why are they now to become an area of exclusive competence? The distinction is very important, as the Government recognised at that time. If competition is an area of exclusive competence, member states are forbidden to legislate in respect of it, even if the aim is to promote it. Therefore, if the treaty goes through in its present form, we will not be able to have a competition policy or authority or competition laws even if they support the EU aim of encouraging greater competition.