European Union (Amendment) Bill

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, because he has directed us away from detail—although this is Committee—to what he called the ““big idea””. He may be broadly accurate in his idea of what the big idea originally was. However, it has been clear to most people for considerably more than a decade that the big idea as he defined it was not going to happen. If the big idea was going to be carried into effect, the Commission would be in the driving seat. It would not simply be proposing and executing; it would be deciding. But the whole point and essence of the European Union as it has evolved is that that is not so: the driving seat is occupied by the Council of Ministers. The noble Lord briefly and rather hurriedly mentioned that there was such a thing as the Council of Ministers, but he gave us the impression that it was more or less being squeezed and abolished. But that is not so. One can speak only from one’s own experience. Having been to dozens, or hundreds, of Council meetings, my worry during them, as the afternoons wore into the evenings, was not whether the compromise that might emerge would suit or please the Commission—that was a secondary emotion in my mind—but what my colleagues in the Cabinet, the Prime Minister and, above all, the House of Commons would think, and what would happen at 3.30 pm the next afternoon if I had to make a statement on the compromise which I had reached. That was my worry, and I suspect that it is still the worry of Ministers who come and go to Brussels. This argument is familiar, particularly to someone who helped take the Maastricht treaty through the House of Commons. We were constantly warned by the noble Lord’s predecessors, who were not equal to him in eloquence or persistence but, nevertheless, did not make a bad job of it. It was perfectly clear from everything they predicted about the treaty of Maastricht that all our laws would be made by the Commission and basic sovereign policies would be swept away, into the maw of Brussels. This was predicted during the Maastricht debates by people with great passion and conviction. I observe today that, contrary to their expectations, the Queen is still safe and happy on her throne; British taxes are put up by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with the approval of the Prime Minister; British interest rates are fixed by the Bank of England; and we go to war at the behest of the Americans, and not of Brussels. This is all absolutely contrary to the predictions so confidently made by the noble Lord’s predecessors. That is the situation at present, and would be the situation if the present treaty were ratified into effect. The real, basic points, which ordinary people associate with political decision-taking, would and will remain with the Council of Ministers and, above all, in most of these matters, with the British Parliament and Government.