European Union (Amendment) Bill

Expendable: that is what the fishing industry was in 1970. The shameful policy of equal access to a common resource was put together, regardless of the interests of fishing, and particularly those of the inshore fishermen who opposed the whole business—the distant-water fishermen were making rich catches in Iceland at the time, so they did not care much and were not bothered about European or British waters. Effectively, the interests of the British and Norwegian fishermen were expendable under this system. Therefore, without an attempt to renegotiate it and to say that it could not be part of the treaty, and without an attempt to say we must make other provisions when we extended our territorial limits, the Prime Minister at the time, Edward Heath, shamefully accepted the common fisheries policy. Geoffrey Rippon, then a Minister, told the House that these were just transitional arrangements that automatically ceased at the end of a fixed period. That is what he said. Lady Tweedsmuir in the Lords got it slightly wrong, because she assured the other place that the whole business would be renegotiated in 1892; but although she was 100 years out, she too indicated that it would be renegotiated. On the basis of that, we accepted the common fisheries policy and Ted Heath sold the fishing industry down the river, as the fishing industry saw it at the time and has seen it ever since. Norway did not accept that, and it stayed out for that very reason—it had no intention of being sold down the river. Because the common fisheries policy was not really a policy at all, it had subsequently to be written into the Maastricht treaty to give it a post hoc legal basis. That was done: an attempt was made to put it on a legal basis by writing it into the treaty. That was then taken further by Giscard D'Estaing's abortive constitution. The British Government had not had the guts or the gumption to challenge its legality. It is clear, however, that the Commission was worried about that legality, which is why it got the policy written into the Maastricht treaty and tried to write it in further in the constitution. The constitution stated that it would give the Commission exclusive competence of"““the conservation of marine biological resources under the common fisheries policy””." That was an historic first: it was the first time that fish were included in any constitution and it was the first time that marine biological resources, which presumably include seaweed, dolphins and presumably anything that goes into marine areas, were included as a crucial part or arch of a constitution. I suggested at the time that had the provision been written in some of the magnificent language of the American constitution, it would have said, ““We, the marine biological resources and fish of the Union, regard these truths to be self-evident. We are a common resource and may be caught by any country. That is a basic right for us and for them.”” The wording from the constitution has just been transferred into the treaty of Lisbon; it is almost identical. The Government tell us that it is a treaty and not a constitution. I believe them implicitly to be wrong, because it is de facto a constitution—it defines the way in which the European Union will work. Writing provisions into the treaty is more effective than entrenching them in a constitution, because a constitution with entrenched rights will need some way to dig those rights in and ensure that they cannot suddenly be reversed by a small majority in the House of Commons. That does not need to be done with a treaty because once provisions are in a treaty they are entrenched for ever. They can be modified or removed only by another treaty, which must have the support of 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 or 33 member states—however many are in the Union at the time. That approach is more effective than constitutional entrenchment, and it is the one that we are taking if we allow the current words to remain in the treaty of Lisbon.