European Union (Amendment) Bill

I preface my remarks on the amendment with a few remarks about how we conduct ourselves in Committee. We are in Committee. I hope that we will now be able to make progress in Committee style. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is not in his place, but I think that he should have carefully read and absorbed the words of Standing Order 33 about asperity of speech. I felt that he was not only making a Second Reading speech in Committee, but raising the level of passion beyond what we should be doing when attempting to follow the words of the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and examining the Bill—that is what he said, but it has to be the treaty and its implications—line by line. Perhaps I should also say a little about the intentions of these Benches. We strongly support continuing scrutiny of our engagement in the European Union. That is what this Parliament should be doing and what this Chamber has been doing rather well, and I hope will continue to do. We are very happy with the detailed work which committees of this House have conducted in examining the implications of this treaty. That is a little different from what we do, sometimes rather more messily, on the Floor of the Chamber. I feel that the amendments are very unconservative. Conservatism, as I learnt about it, is about practice and pragmatism but accepting that politics flows; it is not about theories, structures and absolutes. It seems to me that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, is asking us to know exactly where we will end up before we have started. He says that what we need from this is proper parliamentary scrutiny. However, I refer him to the very wise words that he used when we discussed the previous amendment, when he said that he knew the intention was there but whether it worked in practice was another matter. I agree strongly with that remark, which he made about parliamentary scrutiny, but it is also true of how these new procedures will work. We do not yet know how the President of the European Council will operate. I think this is a better procedure for an EU of 27, moving from a situation in which for six months the Prime Minister of Malta will chair the European Council and then the Prime Minister of wherever else it may be will chair it. This is a useful improvement for an enlarged European Union. The United Kingdom is in favour of the enlargement of the European Union and that has implications. Part of the argument for this treaty is precisely to deal with a European Union which has grown in the last decade from 15 to 25 to 27, and some of the adjustments are to allow for that. But how these various new adjustments will work in practice depends on who is appointed and how well they work with others. We do not yet know that. We have to avoid the politics of ““stop the world, I want to get off”” in this. Britain is involved in the European Union. Through our officials and sometimes through our Ministers, we play an active role in shaping the European Union. I very much hope that we will continue to do so. When this treaty is ratified, I trust that our Government—getting over their great hang-up about what Rupert Murdoch wants us to do—will play a very active role in shaping where we go from here. I hope that the Conservative Opposition will not spend too much time bumping along behind, trying to pull them back at every stage, so that we can continue to have active scrutiny and an open and honest debate at last about Britain’s engagement in the European Union. For those reasons these Benches do not support these amendments.