Credit Institutions and Investment Firms

I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman. The more I have heard from him over the past few years, the more I have admired his determination to speak the truth. That is the position. This is not a party game; this is serious and it is deadly. This move is determined and deliberate. That is what people need to know. Roland Vaubel, the famous economist from Mannheim university, talks about the use of the qualified majority voting system in the Council of Ministers as a form of ““regulatory collusion””, and mentions the strategy of deliberately raising rivals' costs. Particular groups of countries—there are no prizes for guessing which—enter into arrangements behind the scenes, and vote accordingly. Both France and Germany use that system to their advantage, and as I said in the Financial Times the other day, we are being outmanoeuvred. Despite all the time, money and effort being put into the Vickers report, there are, as the shadow Minister made clear, serious worries that Vickers may yet be undermined by the very proposals that we are discussing. The problem goes much further, but I do not need to enlarge upon all that any more. Some people tend to sneer at the idea, which I occasionally put forward, that our sovereignty is the most important issue of all. I say that for one reason and one reason alone—it is only by exercising the sovereignty of this House on behalf of the British people that we have any chance of being able to return and repatriate powers if the other member states are not prepared to negotiate. I am prepared to listen to the Prime Minister telling me that he will fight hard, or whatever answer he gave me yesterday, but I remain totally unconvinced. We are at risk as a result of proposals such as these, so it is absolutely essential that we get things right. When I wrote a pamphlet for him—in fact, for the general public—called ““It's the EU, Stupid””, I set all that out, so I do not need to enlarge on it any further. I have got out of the way the general points that I believe are necessary to put the whole matter in context. I see the Foreign Secretary laughing a little. I do not hold that against him, but I have to say that this is no laughing matter; it is a very serious question. We are reduced to having to argue about reasoned opinions and subsidiarity. Important though those are, as I have said, there is a dagger pointing at the City of London. Not just this particular draft regulation but an accumulated vast array of weaponry is being aimed at the heart of our economic system.