European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) even though I think he accused me—or Select Committees in general, perhaps—of giving the finger to the Government. I deny the charge, even though I do not deny the temptation. I recall that the right hon. Gentleman received an award at the end of last year, and that I received one on the same day. I said something then that, funnily enough, he has stolen; I said that I was not a Eurosceptic, but a Government sceptic. That is a healthy thing to be on the Government Benches as well as on the Opposition Benches. The problem with a lot of these debates is that people make arguments for parliamentary democracy at the highest level—the right hon. Gentleman made a good speech about that—while also saying that we should abandon it and let people have a referendum run by the tabloid press and certain prejudiced people who have such power in this land because of their ownership of multimedia. Such people would distort anything and take things away from parliamentary democracy, which is why I am pleased that we have had so many days of debate on the treaty. Hon. Members keep coming back to simplified speeches that they can doubtless make to their constituents, but I ask them to read the consolidated treaty, a copy of which I have here. It shows how the treaty on the functioning of the European Union will work. If they did that, they would not be opposed to allowing clause 3 to stand part of the Bill. I commend the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) for his thoughtful amendment. I also commend some of the speeches made about it. We heard discussions about how the Government should bring to the Floor of the House a procedure that would give confidence that Parliament would be engaged in deciding not only whether the right terminology is being used—for example, ensuring that ““EC”” becomes ““EU””—but whether a power should be given away by an opt-in or a decision to opt out. I have put that matter again and again to my Front Bench team from these Benches and in my Committee’s report, and the point has been echoed by contributions by members of the Public Administration Committee. I hope that before the Government finish this procedure they will lay before us clear regulations that we can approve. Let us consider the origin of much of clause 3. Paragraph 42 of the European Scrutiny Committee’s 35th report of Session 2006-07 states:"““The White Paper…refers to…‘simplified treaty revision’””." It also mentioned a simplified revision procedure, which should be the substance of our concern. We detailed how the original"““articles IV-444 and 445 of the Constitutional Treaty””" provided for that ““simplified revision procedure””. We called it a constitutional treaty, but it was the treaty for a constitution. The Committee went on to say:"““The simplified revision procedure would allow a change from unanimity to QMV (except in relation to decisions with military implications or in the area of defence).””" I must point that out to hon. Members who were worried about defence. Neither the treaty for a constitution nor this treaty intended to hand over defence to anything other than a unanimity procedure; there was no intention to go to QMV, and that position remains firm. I found it strange that the hon. Member for North Essex (Mr. Jenkin) spoke about defence, because I had expected him to discuss institutions. The Chair was open to letting him speak. He argued, incorrectly—I tried to intervene on him, but he would not let me—that defence was going to be compromised by this treaty.