European Union (Amendment) Bill

It is a great pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer). I agree unreservedly with his comments about the time available. If he were still representing this country in international discussions, I would have no worries; I would be at home either tucked up in bed or on my way to bed. However, that is not the case. The problem is that we do not have sufficient time to debate the treaty. The intervention by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) brought that point home clearly. I would like more time to go into the detail, in the way that he suggested, but we do not have time, because it is important that we get on to the next group of amendments, on security policy. What he said completely illustrated the inadequacy of our proceedings and the farce in which we are now involved. Let me briefly tell the hon. Gentleman that he was quite right in his analysis. However, the provisions do establish qualified majority voting, subject to a purported safeguard, but safeguards do not have a very good history in the European Union. The pillar structure of the European Union was supposed to be the ultimate safeguard, to keep foreign and security policy separate from what was then the rest of the Community and to keep the Commission out of foreign and security policy. What have we got today? If I have not been the victim of a conspiracy theory, as the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) would have it, we have got a member of the Commission not only chairing the Council of Ministers when it deliberates on foreign and security policy, but representing the Union's foreign and security policy, dealing with third parties and negotiating. All that will be on a foreign and security policy that can be determined by qualified majority voting in some circumstances, subject to the provisions to which the hon. Gentleman referred, with the undoubted prospect of more qualified majority voting determining our foreign policy in future.