European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am a humanist, not a confessional person, and I must say that because the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) is a member of my Committee, I feel that I have a duty of care towards him, but I can only stretch to sympathy—I cannot offer him empathy for his speech or for his views on the European Union. Judging by the Opposition Front-Bench speech, the point of amendment No. 237 is either to allow the United Kingdom to apply protectionist policies because the Opposition are afraid of the Commission carrying out the functions given under sole competence, or to allow the social structure of this country to be ripped apart by a return to the Conservative policies of the 1980s. I remember the damage done by competitive tendering, when there was an unbelievable imbalance fuelled by the fact that local authorities could not compete for services that other local authorities were providing, but only the private sector could compete to take services away from the public sector. It is a good aspect of the treaty that, along with the protocol which I shall mention later, the Commission are given a duty to secure a balance between competitiveness and the destruction of services by unfair competition. Unfortunately, often when I listen to Conservative Front-Bench Members they seem to have to drag in the negotiations on the Convention and the constitution. This is not the constitution; this is the Lisbon treaty, because many things have moved on in Europe since then. The great debate on the services directive was fought and won to exclude the destruction of public services, particularly the health service, from that directive. The protocol that has been added to the treaty was not in the constitution; those protections were not there. The debate that my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) had in the past reflected a fear of unbridled competition with no protection. It is important that we focus on what we have now, rather than praying in aid past debates and negotiations, because we are in Europe, now and in the future. Unfortunately, Opposition Front-Bench Members often fail to recognise that. I have great respect and affection for the hon. Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois), but he does keep talking about the past rather than the future. I now turn to amendment No. 195 and the Liberal Democrat amendment (a) to it, tabled by the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable). The Liberal Democrats are the Janus party—the party of the god with two faces facing in two directions at the same time. The dilemma for the Liberal Democrats is that what we are being shown tonight is the uncaring free-market face, which wants to look towards the more right-wing Conservative voters.