European Union (Amendment) Bill

I hope to be brief. I am not trying to get into the ““Luvvies”” column in Private Eye, unlike the right hon. Members for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt), for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) and for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane). I oppose Third Reading, first for procedural reasons. The imposition of a tailor-made guillotine that limited, in theory, each day's debate on clause 2—the heart and guts of the Bill—to one and a half hours, which had to be amended to allow a little more time, defeated the purpose of providing the measure with legitimacy in the country and the Chamber. My right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary detailed that to some extent. On day one, we did not debate borders, visas, asylum and migration—or judicial co-operation in civil matters, which was the third grouping for that day. On day two, we did not debate difficulties in the supply of certain products, meaning energy. On day three, we had only an hour and a half to consider the charter of fundamental rights. Not all Members who were present could speak, and the subject of personal data was simply not discussed. On day four, the internal market and common commercial policy took up the allocated three hours—an amendment to the original guillotine. Not all hon. Members who wished to speak got in. Social policies, free movement of workers and establishment were not debated. Intellectual property and economic and monetary policy were not discussed. On day five, the external representation of the EU—the foreign service, or whatever one chooses to call it—took up the three hours. Not everyone could speak and the common security and defence policy, let alone other aspects of that policy, was therefore not debated. On day six, which was about aid and development, competence and policy took up the two hours so that the subject that mattered to the world outside—aid operations—was not debated. Incidentally, we got two hours instead of the hour and a half that was initially allocated. On day seven, which was about competences of the EU and its institutions, relationships with member states took up the three hours allocated. Let us remember that the Government graciously altered their guillotine to provide another hour and a half so that the debate had three hours rather than an hour and a half, but what was not debated? The operation of the institutions, the EU constitutional and treaty revision issues and legislative and decision-making procedures —three whole groupings—were not discussed. It is impossible. On day eight, the topic was the effect on Parliament—that is what I was really interested in—and it took up the allocated two hours. Again, the Government had graciously extended their guillotine to allow us an extra 60 minutes. However, we still could not discuss in that extra time ““Competences: remaining issues”” or climate change. The custom-made guillotine, introduced in the name of the Labour Chief Whip—the undertaker, as I think of him—and the Foreign Secretary as the leader on the matter, is brutal. However, the other person who signed the motion, of whom we have not seen a whit, is supposedly the Leader of the House. Where is she? Where has she been? She did not introduce the guillotine and did not attest that, on the balance of arguments, it was an appropriate way to consider what is a constitutional change if not in the European scene, then to our constitution. We have signally failed to measure the provisions against what we have and what is held out for us. New Labour's impertinence and the self-serving disdain in which it holds anyone who does not share its opinion almost disqualifies it from representative government. People have different views and there is no perfect way in this world, but most of us respect and recognise the purposes of the House. What are they? Has the treaty shifted the balance of power and decision away from us to other institutions? This is not a question of vanity; it concerns the power of the British people to hold to account those who make their laws. What has happened since the originating treaty, during the time I have been in Parliament, has been the constant slicing away at the concept that politicians, instead of a bureaucratic elite, should determine what is right for the people who sent us here. I wonder about the ridiculous right hon. Member for Leicester, East. He toured the country when he was Minister for Europe and was the only person in the country who could find only two Eurosceptics, so we know what an open mind he has. One, I recall, was called Kevin. That is how low and absurd some of the personalities of our European debate have now become. The right hon. Member for Leicester, West referred to people who spoke in these debates previously. One of them was Peter Shore, whom I want to quote because he spoke on things that matter. He represented a great tradition—I am not knocking the Labour tradition at all—and argued in a debate on a Bill that I introduced and which was the last Bill on which Mrs. Thatcher voted in the House. The Bill, which he supported, addressed two major points about referendums, the first of which was their role. I mention referendums because our amendment in that connection was defeated in the debate on the current Bill. It is for that reason I cannot support this Bill—that among a number of reasons, in fact. The first major point about my Bill, said Peter Shore, was"““the role of the referendum, which offers one of the few possibilities to remedy a fundamental weakness in our constitution. We have no written constitution and no procedures to protect and entrench features of our national and constitutional life. Everything can be changed by a simple majority. Many other countries, as we know, have quite elaborate procedures requiring a majority of two thirds for changes in constitutional matters and arrangements, often backed up with public referendums.""We have no such defence. Indeed, previously we did not need them, because only this generation of British parliamentary representatives has contemplated handing to others the great prizes of national independence, self-government and the rule of law under our own elected representatives. It would not have occurred to a previous generation to hand to others that which we prize most greatly and have given to other countries throughout the world in the past 50 years. That is the novelty of the proposition, against which, because we did not think it conceivable, we have no defences.””—[Official Report, 21 February 1992; Vol. 204, c. 590.]" That is the truth of why we are here and what has gone so badly wrong. A simple majority can impose on the House of Commons a guillotine so stringent that we cannot even discuss the contents of a major treaty properly. That is the first thing. Secondly, the Government claim that they have the authority of the British people because they are elected. We are all elected. All of us, in our own way, try muddlingly to identify that which best suits the national interest and those who sent us here. But the people know—or rather knew—that, at the end of the day, if we got it wrong, they got rid of us; and they have, as they will again. We have had certain things quoted enough—we have heard Mr. Blair's latest thought, his previous thought, his middle thought and his last thought. We have also had the Prime Minister's attestation that we would have a line-by-line consideration of the treaty and his understanding—he said this—that this treaty would be not the constitutional treaty, but the Lisbon treaty. We danced over how many hours we would get and however many days. On clause 2—the heart of the Bill—the debate amounted to 19 hours, which is less time than many of our Bills take in Committee upstairs. Yet we are talking about a constitutional measure for which the Government seek the authority of a vote in the House. It is a shallow vote. They have hollowed out the House and they have hollowed out the British people's ability to hold to account. That is what I meant when I mentioned the rule of law. What do we mean by the rule of law? We mean that we expect every citizen of this country to obey the law. They obey the law because they know that it is made by their representatives and they stand behind that; and if the law is wrong, they change it. Now we have heard the former Secretary of State for Health, the right hon. Member for Leicester, West, suggest that we do not understand the world, that somehow it has moved on and that the people out there are better served by, effectively, decisions made by a grand bureaucracy centred in Brussels. The people there are not accountable to us. Peter Shore went on to say—and it is true—that even if the European Parliament were democratic, it could not represent the British people as the basis of authority for making law. Why not? Because the people there represent other polities, other nations and other states. The European Parliament is only a congress, in that sense. That we should bear decisions that are made by a majority of others who are not accountable to the people we are sent here to represent is an argument in itself, and a defence of a constitutional arrangement. That is what this debate has been about for many of us in the House. That is why for the Government and, I must say, the Liberal Democrats to treat people out there as if they have no say in such matters is the most shocking—indeed, I shall say profoundly shocking—feature of this managed, staged debate. It was not the Government who called an end to the discussion on clause 2; it was the Deputy Speaker, who was mindful to put the Question that all the matters had been debated. The first that I ever saw of it was in the selection of amendments. Those are ways in which we reduce ourselves. It is very difficult to make a case in the House now. Everything is guillotined, but that does not matter; we will look at the essence of the treaty. It is very difficult for many outside this place not to see, as I see, that there has been a progressive withdrawal of powers from people and their ability to change them to institutions that are not accountable to them as a people—that is what I mean by polity. When I say that this is a land of liberty, I think of the declaration of Arbroath, our Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights and those marches as part of a great constitutional settlement. We went out, once upon a time, proud to be associated. Those were the people who made a constitution. I go to America now and what do I hear? There—but not in this country anymore—I hear of the Magna Carta and the great common law. That is one of the things that distinguishes the view of the European Union—the common law versus the civil legal tradition, the Napoleonic code tradition or whatever one wants to call it. I do not knock that tradition; I just observe that it looks at the moon from a different angle from us. The common law tradition gives our courts a subordinate position—I should like to remind the, I think, shadow Liberal Democrat Attorney-General that the judges can be dismissed by Parliament, the representatives of the people. That does not happen, because by and large we have confidence in the processes that have been established, not on the back of a treaty written half an hour ago or over 20 months in Europe, but over the practised evolution of our institutions. The Minister for Europe, who has giggled his way through these debates in an amiable fashion, has let those great issues go slipping under the carpet. When it came to the very sovereignty of Parliament, what did he say? He said that Dicey was the classic expression of that. If the Minister does not know, the Clerks will tell him: in the third edition, and because of the Irish problems in the 19th century, Dicey came to the conclusion that a referendum might be a device by which to secure something in which we believe, or someone such as me believes—that is, the sovereignty of Parliament, which is the sovereignty of the people. That is why I shall vote against the treaty.