European Union (Amendment) Bill

I will certainly respect your injunction, Mrs. Heal, but your injunction underlines how lamentably short is the time that we have been given to discuss the defence aspects of the treaty. Indeed, the defence amendments were never discussed at all. We have relied on your good offices and those of your colleagues to be allowed to discuss such matters at all, but we have never had proper time to do so. The fact is that clause 3 is about establishing a clear direction of travel for the European Union. It is not about decentralising or giving more powers to member states; it is about taking powers away from member states and establishing institutions that will continue to remove policy discretion from member states and give it to the institutions of the European Union. That is why I oppose clause 3.