European Union (Amendment) Bill

I support the excellent amendment No. 48, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory). The issue is extremely important, and we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) about it. I wish to add simply that we are greatly extending the EU's opportunity to legislate without proper analysis. Furthermore, we are extending its ability to make legislation to matters that would otherwise require a specific treaty, and fast-tracking such legislation without the consent of the people of this country. The Lisbon treaty is like a Russian doll and has within it the genesis of its own continuation. It is part of the self-amending text that we have discussed, and it is paralleled by the passerelle, to use an alliteration. It is another example of the incubus that undermines the House's ability to legislate on its own terms, and I say to every Member of the House that it is therefore another attack on the voters of this country. Members of the Government are engaged in a direct assault on their own constituents. I have said several times to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) that bypassing the voters by allowing decisions to be taken that, under our parliamentary system, properly belong to them at the time of general elections, is the ultimate affront. Clause 6 is a reason for a referendum in itself. There are many reasons why a referendum is required, and we shall go into them tomorrow, but the clause is certainly one of them. It provides an internal mechanism for undermining our democracy. I therefore ask myself what goes on in other countries when matters of scrutiny affect their voters. I do not have time to go into the details, but the bottom line is that the arrangements in other countries are set out in a report produced by COSAC, which shows in 158 pages exactly how other member states legislate in relation to the EU. Those 158 pages give more than ample evidence that they do not examine European legislation properly. We in this House—[Interruption.] I am saying this to the Labour Members who are conducting a conversation. I had the good manners to listen to them—will they have the good manners to listen to me? The Council of Ministers makes its decisions by QMV, and when we are outvoted there on matters that will be of concern to members of the Labour party as much as to us—if we scrutinise those matters properly according to our constitutional requirements, that is; but I think that our European scrutiny reforms should bring about an improvement—we are having imposed on us legislation that, because of QMV, is not being properly considered in the other member states. I pointed out in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere that the statement in the clause that:"““A Minister of the Crown may not vote in favour of or otherwise support a decision…unless Parliamentary approval has been given in accordance with this section””" is complete nonsense with respect to decisions taken in the EU, which have legal effect without having to go through any parliamentary process. The same applies to regulations that come from the European Commission. I want the Minister to listen to this because, as Minister for Europe, he knows well the number of measures that are put on the A-list in UKRep and COREPER day by day and week by week, and introduced without his being involved in any meaningful sense. The provision that:"““A Minister may not vote in favour of or otherwise support a decision””" is therefore meaningless, because Ministers are not involved anyway. The entire clause is a total fraud against the electorate and an attack on our democracy, and it bypasses the process of amending treaties by convening an intergovernmental conference under article 48 of the existing treaty on European Union. The clause is a fraud, and when we examine the nine or 10 provisions mentioned in it and ask ourselves what they will involve, we see that they include social policy, the environment, EU finance, enhanced co-operation and common foreign and security policy—things that the Government had to put in the clause because they knew the importance of them. The next question is to what extent they have provided a satisfactory safeguard for the British people in respect of the disgraceful and fraudulent procedure that has been followed in those arrangements. The short answer appears in clause 6(2):"““Parliamentary approval is given””—" in other words, the Minister is relieved of the fact, otherwise he would not be able to vote—"““if…in each House of Parliament a Minister of the Crown moves a motion that the House approves Her Majesty's Government's intention to support the adoption of a specified draft decision, and…each House agrees to the motion without amendment.””" We therefore cannot amend a decision once it has been made. The provision is a complete fraud, because one cannot amend decisions without transgressing sections 2 and 3 of the European Communities Act 1972. The measure would be implemented regardless—and I can see the Minister shaking his head—so I would like to know whether it is supposed to override the 1972 Act. The Minister may wish to intervene to say whether it does so or not. [Interruption.] He suggests that I should make quicker progress, but I will not let him off—not a chance. In addition, an Act of Parliament would be needed or, in the case of a treaty proposal, an intergovernmental conference plus, in my opinion, a referendum if one was merited by the inclusion of constitutional requirements. For all those reasons, the fraud that lies within the proposal includes the fact that a motion would simply be whipped through. How often do we deal with motions in the House that are simply at the mercy of the Whips? There is no internal constitutional mechanism in the provision to prevent anything from happening, so it is a fraud. The very least that we should be offered is a free vote—and I do not mean just on this provision, as I want the whole thing to be thrown out. To provide a reasonable safeguard on the use of the mechanism in clause 6, I would expect a free vote to take place before approval was given to any such motion. I produced a report for the shadow Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May), when she was writing a pamphlet about the European scrutiny process. To some extent, we debated this the other day, but I said that we ought to have, in cases where 150 MPs decided—