European Affairs

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman who has an honourable history of standing up for economic self-government. I have always thought it bizarre that a left-wing party should contemplate handing over power to bankers who are not even in this country. The Government wanted a conclave of bankers meeting in private in Frankfurt to control the British economy. That is temporarily off the agenda, although it is—bizarrely—still official Labour party policy to join the euro, when economic conditions allow. I do not know when that might be, but we would be in real economic trouble if we had joined the euro. We would be being crucified by a high exchange rate that we could do nothing about. We need only look at the Republic of Ireland to realise what we are, luckily, missing. The concept of devolution of power downwards is completely contradicted by the Government's European policy. Instead of devolving power away from political elites downwards to Parliament and people, the Government's European policy would transfer power upwards, away from this place and the people whom we represent, to the most remote and centralised bureaucracy of all—the European Union. This is a continuous dynamic process. Like the hon. Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey), to whom I listened with great care, I am a member of the European Scrutiny Committee. Every week, we deal with dozens of proposals to make that transfer of power. New draft directives, regulations and decisions about defence and foreign policy all come to our Committee and there is nothing that we can do to stop them. All we can do is to try to ensure that they conform to the legal powers in the treaty—the Commission is always trying to get round those powers and take more decision-making to itself. We can also recommend some proposals for debate, and some 5 per cent. are eventually debated in Committee. Again, those Committees can do nothing to stop or amend the proposals, and nor can Ministers, because they have been agreed by majority voting. I would love to invite hon. Members to come to watch us trying to make sense of the blizzard of European proposals, but it is forbidden for them to attend our Committee. We meet behind closed doors, in private, which again contradicts what the Prime Minister said about openness and transparency. It is all talk: in practice, there is no transparency or openness. The Government are afraid of allowing anyone else to see how powerless we are.