European Union (Amendment) Bill

I shall oppose the clause standing part of the Bill. We have had more chance to debate this matter than many other aspects of the Bill but, even so, the clause is tainted by the way in which the Government have sought to manipulate terminology, nomenclature, all the way through the process to try to disguise what is taking place. The way in which we describe something is important. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), speaking for the Liberal Democrats—we know that they have their problems at the moment—referred to the collapse of the pillars as being only a partial collapse. I think that that was in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), who used to be a fireman in his previous career. I do not know what a householder would have said to him if, attending a call and finding that the roof had blown off, he had said to that householder, ““Never mind. You’ve only had a partial collapse. Your garden shed is still standing.”” The Liberal Democrats have to face up to the seriousness of what is taking place here. I know that the hon. Gentleman has had his problems on this matter, but he has to face up to the fact that major changes in foreign policy have taken place and that that pillar has been completely collapsed. There is qualified majority voting on foreign policy and, increasingly, incrementally, we are going to have a European Union-determined foreign policy. The same will apply to justice and home affairs. What the hon. Gentleman said about the opt-in arrangements was true, but we also heard from the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) about all the problems surrounding the opt-in provisions on home affairs, and about the penalty clauses that this country will face if we seek to exercise those opt-in proposals. I am not even sure that it is not the Liberal Democrats’ policy to sign up wholesale to the so-called area of freedom, justice and security without an opt-in. They are not even clear on that. These are important matters. The problem for the Government is that this process has been tainted by the way in which they have conducted the negotiations, by the lack of opportunity that we had to scrutinise the proposals before the intergovernmental conference mandate was agreed, and by the way in which that negotiation was carried out by the former Prime Minister, as virtually his last act in office. Thereafter, we were saddled with the intergovernmental conference mandate, which was enacted almost wholesale at the intergovernmental conference in November, save for the provisions that were disadvantageous to the United Kingdom, which gave us penalty clauses in respect of the opt-in. That was a real triumph of negotiation for the Government. As I said earlier, what really astounds me in all this is the lack of transparency that taints this clause. I can do no better than to quote from the agreed conclusions of the European Scrutiny Committee—which is chaired by the hon. Gentleman—on the way in which the process had been tainted. It states in, I think, its most recent report, the third one of this Session, that"““we reiterate our earlier comment that the process could not have been better designed to marginalise the role of national parliaments and to curtail public debate, until it has become too late for such debate to have any effect on the agreements which have been reached.””" Our suspicions on this matter go back to before last June, because we know that a plan was set out for the Government in the questionnaire that came from the German presidency, when exactly the course that we have seen being followed was being suggested to the Government, even though they denied having received the questionnaire. The questionnaire talked about using terminology and presentational change to disguise the fact that the former constitution was being enacted. It even went so far as to ask:"““How do you assess the proposal made by some Member States concerning possible improvements/clarifications on issues related to new challenges facing the EU, for instance in the fields of energy/climate change or illegal immigration?””" Was it a coincidence, Mrs. Heal, that we spent a whole day debating the subject of climate change, which is a very important subject in itself, when there was not even a proposal about climate change in the original constitution? We find that this was put forward by the German presidency as a way of tarting up the constitution to make it more acceptable to public opinion, disguising what was really going on. The process was tainted, as I said, from beginning to end and it is a disgrace to the House in every conceivable way, as we have had no proper scrutiny on matters of such substantial importance. We cannot allow any part of this to go unchallenged, because the Government simply do not deserve our trust.