European Union (Amendment) Bill

I have enjoyed today’s debate because of the new characters who have appeared in the cast of this great endeavour. Now that we are on the 11th day of our consideration, it is good that people want to get their names on the record. It would have been nice if they had read the treaty and heard the earlier debates. I disagreed with the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) when he said that this was not a matter of detail. If people take the trouble to read the original European Scrutiny Committee report of October, they will see that it was matters of detail that flared up the treaty as a major item for public debate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) said that he was loyal, ever loyal and, therefore, too loyal. That was probably the case for many who should have advised the former Prime Minister that he was making a major error when he felt that he had to call a referendum because of parliamentary considerations. I do not think that the question of a referendum was relevant to this treaty. Why did that happen? Was it a rush of blood to the head? I would say that it was probably a rush of fear in the focus groups, which seemed to have more influence on Government policies in the run-up to the election than the party’s wishes on the matter. The Government benefit from being roughed up by Parliament, and from being roughed up by their own side. Being roughed up by the European Scrutiny Committee has made the Government and the Foreign Secretary go to Europe and fight our corner hard on a number of issues. They have brought back something different from the original treaty for a constitution. That is the reality; this treaty is significantly different. There would have been a European Foreign Secretary, a president of Europe and a constitution. It was a treaty for a constitution. Aided and abetted by the Dutch and French voters, who rejected it, there was a panic, and then a two-year period of reflection. Everyone is right: it was a question of getting the treaty under the wire so that it did not cause another series of referendums, at a cost to the progress that member states wanted after Laeken and after the Convention. We deal with many things every week involving EU powers that change the law-making relationship. Those EU powers are already in place in the Single European Act, Maastricht and Amsterdam. They are in processes we have had to opt into, such as the Schengen agreement, after the treaty of Amsterdam, to make a serious attempt to stop cross-border crime, terrorism, breaches of immigration and drug trafficking. That is why I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Geraldine Smith) was wrong—we cannot opt out and have a new relationship. We have to deal with such matters within the European Union. We have to progress with what we have, and what we have is—