European Union (Amendment) Bill

I shall not detain the Committee for long, but I want to say something about trust, which was mentioned a moment ago by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith). We are asking the House and the British public to trust a treaty that is a constitution in all but name. In the narrower context of our debate on whether clause 3 should stand part of the Bill, there are three aspects that I do not think either the Minister or the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), has addressed correctly. The debate on the Maastricht Bill was long drawn out, and very divisive for most parties in the House. One of the key aspects of the Maastricht treaty, however, was the existence of the pillars. We were promised that the pillars were safe, and would prevent the European Union from developing into a super-Union. Now here we are this evening, being told by the Liberal Democrat spokesman that the pillars have partially collapsed but ““Trust us, it will all be okay.”” The British public will not trust Parliament or the Government over the pillars. They will understand from the debates that have been allowed here, and from what has been said in the press, that the breakdown of the pillars means more and more open-ended powers for the European Union, as was said a moment ago. It is hugely dangerous to tamper with pillars that prevent civil servants, and those in the system within Europe, from developing the sort of Europe that they want but the people of the country almost certainly do not. The other promise made to us—here I make my point about trust even more strongly—was that we would be allowed to take part in line-by-line scrutiny of this huge document, which runs to 328 pages excluding the amendments and annexes. If any members of the general public were willing to pay £30-odd for it, most of them would not understand it. Indeed, the purpose is for the British public not to understand it. It is not open, honest and frank, as we would expect a document dealt with by a British parliamentary Chamber to be; it is massively complicated. It is fundamentally wrong that the Government are forcing it through without our being able to debate it in full, and without fulfilling the promise of all three major parliamentary parties that there would be a referendum on the constitution—which is what this document is.