European Union (Amendment) Bill

I shall try to be brief. I put a message to all Europhobes on my website, saying that I intended to vote for the Lisbon treaty. I did so because I wanted to provoke a reaction from my constituents. Many words have been spoken about the great interest in the subject outside the House, but I have had only one e-mail and one letter from my constituents—[Interruption.] I am waiting for more to come. The e-mail said that the treaty was ““introducing communism by stealth”” into this country, and the letter said that because of my views, I deserved a long, lingering and painful death. That indicates the level of interest of some people. However, I have had letters from non-constituents, both before I put the message on my website and subsequently. They spoke of the German plot to take over Europe, the Pope and many other examples of the fantasies that some obsessives have about the European Union. Someone spoke of the need for honesty in politics, and I agree. We need to be honest about this treaty and about the basis of the debate that we are having. I will be honest: I have always opposed referendums. I was extremely disappointed and shocked in 2004 when our party leader bounced the party into that position. I cast no aspersions on the reasons for that move. I simply believe that it was a mistake then and has had some very serious and unfortunate consequences for the political debate. It has meant that there has been no open public debate on these European issues. For two years after the rejection of the constitutional treaty in France and the Netherlands, we did not really have a proper debate and discussion during the period of reflection. I had hoped that this debate, over the 11 interminable days, would have raised the quality of the public debate, and that our newspapers and television media would have given it detailed consideration, but sadly they are interested only in process, personalities and splits. Indeed, some of the earlier debate in Committee today reflected that. The media are not interested in the detail of why the Lisbon treaty is in Britain’s interests and how it will reform the European Union to ensure a more efficient and effective way of working after enlargement to 27 countries. I do not wish to repeat the arguments, and I also referred to the issues in the debate on the foreign policy aspects of the treaty and on Second Reading. However, it is not helpful to have a statement from the shadow Foreign Secretary that the Foreign Affairs Committee said that the Lisbon treaty was exactly the same as the constitutional treaty. That is not what it said, and I tried to intervene again, but the right hon. Gentleman would not take the intervention. I wish to place on the record that the Committee did not say that. It pointed out that the Union Minister for Foreign Affairs had been replaced with a high representative for foreign and security policy. It also pointed out that that there were two UK-inspired but non-legally binding declarations on common foreign and security policy in the text, neither of which were in the constitution. It is therefore not true to say that the treaty is exactly the same. The people who are against the Lisbon treaty are trying to argue that there is no change or significant difference. As other Committees have commented, however, there are differences in some aspects of the treaty, such as the justice and home affairs issues referred to by the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne). As has been mentioned, there are the UK Government’s red lines, which mean that the treaty is different for the UK than it is for the other 26 member states—or the other 25, because Poland has some association with the UK on some issues. That is how the debate should have been conducted.