I shall just make the point that I was going to put to the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) in an intervention. This idea about all Europeans caring about one another is fine—I love all my continental colleagues very much—but my identity is as a part of the British demos, not of a European demos, which I do not think exists. I think that was the point that the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) was making.
I am pleased to support my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds), who spoke extremely well. I agree with everything she said, even though there might be a smidgen of difference between our views on the European Union generally. Even more happily, we both seem to be in agreement with the Minister and the Government. That makes this a rare event, but a happy occasion.
We must absolutely not have parties at European Union level. Even at national level, party elites are sometimes too far removed from their activists and their voters. Having party groupings at international level acting as parties would make the gap between the voters at the grass roots and those who govern us even greater. That would be completely unacceptable.
Another problem involves finding political parties to bond with. The Conservatives have understandably had problems finding a home. If I were in their position, I would be happy to stand separately, but I know that that would create a problem of securing positions on committees and so on. So far as Labour is concerned, we could be linked with Pasok in Greece, yet Pasok is now cemented together with New Democracy and inflicting appalling austerity on the working people of that country. I do not want to be seen to be supporting Pasok in what it is now doing. It should be standing up for working people and against austerity. Indeed, that is what we should all be doing. We can have links and, occasionally, loose friendships with other parties when seeking convenient political groupings, but forming single political parties across Europe would be another step on the way to creating a state of Europe—which some people clearly want—with the Commission and perhaps the European Parliament forming the European Government. That would be a giant step in the wrong direction.
Another giant step in that direction wasthe introduction of a system of proportional representation for elections to the European Parliament. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East also mentioned this point. I have opposed such proposals before, and called in this Chamber for a return to first past the post and single Member constituencies. I hold to that position today. People would take the view that Europe was much more democratic if Members of the European
Parliament represented a genuine constituency rather than an enormous region or even, in the case of Scotland and Wales, a country.
I oppose PR. I have opposed PR proposals for our own elections in Britain and for those in the European Parliament. Sadly, it has been used as a means of getting rid of the Eurosceptic left from the European parliamentary Labour party. Some 50% of the party’s 60 members were wiped out simply by being placed lower down the list, when the list system came out. They disappeared en masse. That certainly damaged our party, and it was very disappointing for the wing of the party that I belong to.
Another problem with the idea of having political parties at European level is that in many European countries there are two or three parties occupying the area that one party occupies in Britain. I recently visited Holland with the European Scrutiny Committee. It has a Socialist party and a Labour party whose Members sit next to each other, but in Britain they would easily be accommodated in our Labour party. If I were in Holland, it is conceivable that I would be in the Socialist party, but I would have to talk to them carefully about that.
There is a democratic deficit and, much as I deplore much of what Mrs Thatcher did, I think she was right to say that if we give too much democratic legitimacy to the European Union, democracy will start to leach away from our own national Parliaments, which would not be good. I want to see the democratic deficit addressed by restoring powers to national Parliaments, particularly the British Parliament. I want to see the restoration of effective power to the grass roots, including within parties. I am sure that all parties want that, but I want to see it in my party in particular.