European Union (Amendment) Bill

I was grateful for that intervention by the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), and I want to refer quickly to what the hon. Member for Elmet (Colin Burgon) said about accountability. The whole construct is not about accountability in any sense that this House, this country, this electorate or this people understand. No Minister will be responsible for the consequences of all these policies, including the health policy, in front of an electorate. That is what underlies this matter. We should therefore vote to ensure that this treaty is renegotiated. Some amendment has to be made to ensure that that happens; if not, there has to be a referendum. The savagery of this guillotine is denying the House the opportunity properly to consider propositions such as the treaty's impact on the national health service. Although I may not entirely agree with the conclusions of the hon. Member for Hemsworth, I agree with the principle that someone in this House must be accountable to the people who vote us here. Let me turn to what my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) had to say between the pancakes of yesterday and the ashes of today. He recanted, in a curious way, on the single market. Twenty years ago, the great idea was that we had to have a single market. Mrs. Thatcher believed that this would open up Europe. The distinction, of course, is between a common market and a single market. I want very rapidly, in light of the time constraints and the fact that the Minister for Europe wants yet again to reprise the same arguments that we have heard for the past few days, to show wherein lies the more dynamic model. The United States, for all its sins and everything else, is a common market. The vitality of the American economy has outshone that of the European economy over the past 20 years, and it is still an enormous engine for growth. The competition between those accountable units of government enables the dynamic of capitalism, if that is what one believes in, to flourish. We have been told that £450 billion of regulatory costs now rain down upon this structure. At the heart of all these arguments lies this question: who is accountable? We have a constitutional arrangement that means that the people of this country are sovereign in terms of the activities of this House. Within the amendment tabled by my hon. Friends, and within this group of amendments, lies the opportunity to give this Government a message about the treaty that they negotiated, despite the history. Unfortunately, the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee castigated my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) for remembering the past, but we should remember Cicero, who said that those who know nothing of the past will for ever remain a child. In a sense, this great parliamentary Chamber has collective amnesia as regards remembering to whom we are accountable and who should form our laws. A common market beats, every day, a single market as constructed by the Commission and this treaty arrangement.