European Union (Amendment) Bill

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash). I do not pretend to have anything like his mastery of the detail of this matter, but what shone forth from his analysis was the same underlying point as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) made in opening the debate: the need for transparency, and to ensure that points of significance are not disguised by terminology and that matters of substance are there for all to see. I think that we can make common cause on the fact that there has not been as much transparency as we would have liked in these proceedings, and in the process that led up to the intergovernmental conference mandate and then the IGC itself. It cannot be pretended that this has been a transparent process. I wonder whether the Minister can stand up and say that the process that led up to the IGC mandate in particular, which was little changed after the IGC itself, was as transparent as the Government would have wished it to be. I do not think anybody could say that it was transparent. My hon. Friend put forward one point of view and my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) properly and honourably put forward another, although I certainly do not agree entirely with his different conception of Europe, but we can make common cause on the fact that there has not been the amount of transparency that there should have been. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wells was entirely right to set all of this within the context of the overall changes that the Bill and treaty are making. We must begin by referring to the pillar structure, which we obtained from the Maastricht treaty. We were told at the time that that would be the settlement for Europe. It was said that the Maastricht treaty was the high point of European federalism: that it would put that beyond doubt and that in future matters involving our relationship with Europe would be contained within the system of the three pillars—the Community pillar and the intergovernmental pillars of justice and home affairs and common foreign and security policy. However, through the current treaty we have now seen the collapsing of those pillars. Instead we have, in effect, one treaty divided into two parts, which is why transparency is so important. My hon. Friend and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells were right to draw attention to the unifying effect of the treaty. It is there in article 1; we have gone from the three pillars to what is contained at the beginning of the treaty, which is there for all to see and which is a change from the treaty of Nice. We are told under title 1, article 1:"““The Union shall be founded on the present Treaty and on the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (hereinafter referred to as ““the Treaties””). Those two Treaties shall have the same legal value. The Union shall replace and succeed the European Community.””"