European Union (Amendment) Bill

I disagree with my hon. Friend; he and I have never really seen entirely eye to eye on this issue. I do not believe that this treaty represents a massive further transfer of powers, and I can only refer my hon. Friend to earlier debates in which I have taken part and got involved in those arguments. I was actively involved at the British end of the Single European Act. I discussed the British position with the then Prime Minister as we tried to move towards the single market. That was a massive transfer of power—the biggest since the original European Communities Act 1972, when we openly talked about pooling our sovereignty, and stood at the election to defend that decision. The Single European Act was the context in which we went in for qualified majority voting on a grand scale, because it was in British interests to do so. That is where the passerelle provisions came in; they are a sensible way of dealing with routine matters without having to go through the whole rigmarole of having an intergovernmental conference and all the rest of it. There have been no new arguments in this debate. All the way through the debates on this treaty, I have been reminded either of Maastricht or of the Single European Act, the only difference being that even bigger issues were involved in the previous treaties than in this one—[Interruption.] I said that I would not go on about the merits much further—