European Union (Amendment) Bill

I have three points. First, historians will have an interesting time analysing the processes by which the intergovernmental mandate came into being at the end of the previous Prime Minister's time in office. Secondly, the Government have had a veto on many of the provisions that now appear in the treaty. There is a long list of examples of the Government's opposing what has gone into the treaty, but such things have gone into the treaty none the less. That happened even though the Government did, in effect, have a veto; they had the arguments, but lost them as part of the overall process. That has happened time and again, including with the provisions I referred to which took place between the IGC mandate being agreed in June and the IGC in November. The only changes made to the treaty were ones that could only be adverse to this country, because they included penalty clauses on what would otherwise have been an exercise of free will by this country—that is a triumph of negotiation. If any businessman were to bring back only a series of penalty clauses from a negotiation, he would soon be looking for another job. That illustrates the level of failure. The final and most important point to make in response to the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk builds on one of my earlier interventions. He needs to recognise the overall change that is taking place in how the European Union does business, because it sends a signal throughout the European Union about how business will be done in future. We will simply have to get used to the approach. He knows as well as I do how often Ministers come back to the European Scrutiny Committee saying, ““We had to reach an agreement on this to make a compromise on the other.”” That is the way in which business is done in the European Union.