European Union (Amendment) Bill

My hon. Friend is right. The wider point is that we shall simply have to get used to the fact that this is how the European Union will do business in future. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk for his integrity and independence, and for the way in which he tries to scrutinise this matter, but we will have to get used to this approach. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wells mentioned the treaty's wide range of passerelle provisions. I want to focus on three particularly important ones which relate to safeguards in the amendments. Three important additions made by way of passerelle provisions in the treaty will open the door for future incremental change. The first and most important one is the simplified revision procedure, which dispenses with intergovernmental conferences and treaties. It enables changes to be made to certain treaty provisions by a vote in the European Council, following consultation with the Commission—that is a tough provision—and the European Parliament, and approval by member states, in accordance with their constitutions. That procedure contains a number of safeguards, but it must be beyond peradventure that it is an easier way of making change and that the safeguards put in place are less significant and substantial than the existing ones. I hope that we will not hear the familiar argument, made by the Liberal Democrats in particular, that because some safeguards are still in place, we can overlook the fact that more substantial safeguards are being dispensed with. I hope that the Minister will admit that the procedure is an easier one for revising treaties. If we wanted to make the same treaty changes under the present arrangements we would have to go through the whole paraphernalia of an IGC at a Council, the agreement of a mandate, the signing of a treaty ratification and so on. The Minister has been fair throughout these proceedings, and I think he is acknowledging that the treaty's procedure is easier. The much easier procedure covers the whole of part three of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, and that is the backbone of the treaty from a policy point of view, because it covers a wide range of areas, including health, which Labour Members were most exercised about. They will have to face up to the possibility of decisions on health and changes in the treaty text to enlarge the sphere of the Union's competence in health being made by majority voting in the Council—the health measures are currently decided by the ordinary procedure—and all that that would mean for this country. That is my first example of the operation of a passerelle clause. A second way in which incremental change can be brought about under the simplified revision procedure is a separate provision that enables the Union to move from unanimity to qualified majority voting in any part of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, including part three, and in the non-defence parts of the common foreign and security policy, which are contained in the treaty on European Union as opposed to the treaty on the functioning of the European Union. That provision is a still easier way of making incremental change, whereby the move to QMV follows a vote by the European Council, which must be by unanimity, but there is no requirement for constitutional approval in individual states. Instead, a form of negative resolution procedure is provided for under which a change to QMV can be halted if an individual Parliament objects. My next point might interest the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, because it shows how effective the British Government's vetoes have been in the past. In a former role—I think he was discharging his functions as Foreign Secretary—the Secretary of State for Justice specifically told the Standing Committee on the Intergovernmental Conference at the time that the procedure was ““unacceptable and illogical””. He was talking about the specific procedure embodied in the Bill. A Government White Paper in 2003 also said that the Government were opposed in principle to the provision, yet the clause is in the Bill.