European Union (Amendment) Bill

I accept that the hon. Gentleman, many other hon. Members and many members of the public believe that. We can argue about and rattle around on whether something can be 90 per cent. the same as something else or 90 per cent. the same DNA—can someone be 90 per cent. a virgin?—but even as the hon. Gentleman says that the treaty is 90 per cent. the same he is saying that it is not the same. In two key respects, the new treaty is fundamentally different. It is much shorter in length, but we can leave that argument to one side. It does not contain references to Beethoven's ““Ode to Joy”” or to the Council of Europe flag, designed in 1954, which was adopted as the European flag, but the most important difference is that it leaves all the other treaties in place. The constitutional treaty rolled all of the existing treaties into one giant document. It was a re-founding moment for the whole of the Common Market and the European Union. The Lisbon treaty leaves all existing treaties in place. Unless we have a new doctrine that says that we must have referendums on any significant international treaty, it is not right to pray in aid a pledge given on a document that was killed in June 2005 by the Dutch and the French. The third great myth is that Britain should look to different areas of the world because Europe is passé, and that our future lies on the other side of the Atlantic, or in engaging with our global partners in the shape of the rising powers of China and India. Yet we export more to the Netherlands than we do to China; Switzerland invests more in the UK than all of the Asian powers put together. We want a powerful relationship with the United States, but I note that last year European growth was higher than that of America; inflation was lower and productivity was higher. In dollar terms, the UK now has higher GDP per capita than the United States. Thanks to British leadership, going right back to Margaret Thatcher and the Single European Act, John Major and the Maastricht treaty and Tony Blair with the treaties of Amsterdam and Nice, we have created a Europe that is a lot more confident. It could be better; growth could be stronger—of course it could—but let us recognise that Europe today serves British interests very well. Between 800,000 and a million of our citizens live in Spain, but they are not treated as unwelcome immigrants, as anyone who speaks with a foreign accent in Britain is treated by some sections of the press, or by some in our political system.