European Affairs

Listening to the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) and his explanation of the reason for the necessity of the European Union after the last war, I wonder, as I often do, what my mother, who is now 90, thought on the day I was born—10 May 1940, when Hitler invaded the Lowlands at Maastricht, the Government fell and Churchill became Prime Minister. It must have been a momentous day for her. On 10 May 1941—one year later—the Germans dropped a bomb on the House of Commons. It seems as though something has been following me for a long time. I wonder exactly what we think we are in Parliament. We need parliamentary reform enormously, and we must remember that approximately 75 per cent. of what happens in this place is engineered by the European Union. We went into it in 1972, and, I make no bones about it: I voted in 1975 for us to stay in. I have had serious doubts about it ever since, but at least I was prepared to give it a reasonable chance.