European Union (Amendment) Bill

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I have spent 14 years debating these issues—my maiden speech was on Europe—and the more that I do so, the less I sense that I am absolutely 100 per cent. confident in everything I say. Some modesty and brevity is useful, and I will try to apply that lesson tonight. Another great Labour leader, Hugh Gaitskell, said in 1962 that joining the Common Market would mean"““the end of Britain as an independent nation-state.””" [Interruption.] I detect from the hon. Member for Stone some support for that position. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), who is not with us tonight, said that signing the treaty of Amsterdam would mean the end of Britain as a nation state. The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks famously said before the 2001 election that to vote for a pro-European Labour party again to be returned to power would mean that Britain would become a foreign land. That hyperbole does neither its Labour nor its Conservative articulators any good at all. I want to deal briefly with three of the myths that have been perpetrated throughout this debate—I mean the debate beyond the wide-ranging debate in the House in the past two months that has taken place more generally in recent years. The first myth is the notion of Europe as a behemoth—a giant devouring machine that is eradicating sovereignty and the power of this House of Commons. If one looks at the simple economic facts, 99 per cent. of all Europe's income—its gross national income, to use the technical phrase—stays in the hands of its nation states. Of the 1 per cent. transferred to Brussels, 85 per cent. is immediately transferred to nation states in the form of agricultural subsidies. I share the criticisms of the common agricultural policy, but if we did not have the CAP, we would have a BAP—a British agricultural policy—and all the gentlemen who get the massive subsidies that they now do from Brussels would be making life hell, particularly for Conservative Members, who tend to represent more agricultural communities than my party does, by demanding massive agricultural subsidies. One seventh—15 per cent.—of 1 per cent. of that money stays with the Commission for it to do what it wants with it. I put it to the House that the notion that one can create a super-state or a federal monster, or that one can destroy the national sovereignty of the 27 member states of Europe with just one seventh of 1 per cent. of their money, does not make sense. The second great myth is that Europe is dictating all the laws of this House. The shadow Foreign Secretary and I had an exchange during a previous debate, and he brought it up very gently and respectfully again today, quoting the Prime Minister against me, or perhaps me against the Prime Minister. Of course, all Prime Ministers at all times are infallible—they cannot be wrong. I occasionally have a kind of old-fashioned interest in the truth. That has often got in the way of successful politics, which is probably why I am not a successful politician. I asked the Library to freshen up its continuing study about the amount of legislation that we decide on in this Parliament that emanates from the European Union. I asked for the document to be sent to me last week after that exchange, but it is publicly available in the Library. It showed that so far this century approximately 10 per cent., at the highest point, of all the laws that we pass are to do with the European Union. Within that 10 per cent., 50 per cent. of trade rules to do with the single market stem from the European Union and 25 per cent. of environmental rules are to do with the European Union. I think that the Prime Minister used the word ““regulations””—I do not want to gloss what he said; he did not talk about laws—and, yes, 50 per cent. of our regulations that are to do with the single market originate from the European Union, just as they must for every other country if we want the single market to work for them. The Commission has 16,000 employees—fewer than the BBC—and one seventh of 1 per cent. of Europe's gross national income. The House of Commons is still responsible for 90 per cent. of legislation, such as taxation, health spending, education, policing, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, sending people to prison, decisions on whether to go to war, and our main foreign policy alliances. All those matters are settled in this House, as they are in the Assemblée Nationale, the Bundestag, the Sejm, the Cortes and the other national Parliaments in other European countries. The second great myth is that the new treaty is identical to the constitutional treaty. I have some knowledge of that matter as the Europe Minister responsible at the time. Conservative Members tend to pray in aid their experience of the Convention. They make interesting historical points, but the main recommendations of the Convention presided over by Giscard d'Estaing were rejected by the intergovernmental conference that followed. The constitutional treaty that emerged from the process was, in turn, rejected by the voters of France and the Netherlands, and it was declared dead here, not so much by my party, but by Conservative members. I remember well the hon. Member for Woodspring (Dr. Fox) saying, ““I am a doctor. I know death when I see it. This constitution is dead.”” The less original Opposition Members referred to the famous dead parrot of lore. We all agreed that the treaty was dead, but for the purposes of anti-European argument, it has to be brought back to life. The pledge to have a referendum on which all parties agreed in their 2005 election manifestos related to that constitutional treaty, but it was killed barely a month after the election of new Parliament, and those commitments died with it. At the end of each Session, any laws that have not been passed in this House die. Unless we are introducing a new constitutional innovation in the House that any pledge given in general terms on any issue has to be sustained throughout the eternity of successive Parliaments, I do not understand how Conservative Members can intellectually say that today's treaty is identical to the constitutional treaty that was killed, even if much of the anti-European press make that argument.