European Affairs

No, that is not my reading of the results at all. Rejectionist parties made a clear advance in other member states. In this country, overwhelmingly, the majority vote was for parties that want to leave the EU altogether or that want at least to reject the treaty of Lisbon. According to the conclusions, the Council has nothing to say about that at all. It is business as usual. Let me make a suggestion to the Under-Secretary, who apparently now speaks for Europe in this House—although I welcome him to his new position, I greatly regret the fact that we do not have the Minister for Europe in the democratic House. If he wants at one stroke dramatically to show that he has learnt the lessons of this disillusionment, will he keep the promise that his party and the Liberal Democrats made before they were elected to have a referendum on the Lisbon treaty? We have a constitutional crisis in this country. It is a crisis of self-government that is undermined by the progressive transfer of powers to another jurisdiction. The Prime Minister talks about devolution, but he means the opposite. He talks about accountability, but he means or does the opposite. He talks about openness, but we have a culture of secrecy and a refusal to listen to democratic outcomes.