House of Commons Hansard Debates for 26 Jun 1991

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worse than in most comparable economies. The position, in all those respects, has been worse than that in the United States and the EFTA countries. Europe's record has been even worse than the pathetic record of our Government. Europe has become the deflationary blackspot of the advanced industrial world--and this has been only the first stage of economic and monetary union.

We have now embarked on the second stage. Britain's experience of the exchange rate mechanism, since the present Prime Minister forced it on his wilting, submissive, nervous predecessor, has been disastrous. We have been locked into a deflation process that has become inescapable. The Government say that, if we get inflation down, interest rates will fall. That simply is not true ; interest rates will fall only when the level of the pound permits it. Our control over our interest rates, which we need to manage the economy, has been subordinated to the need to keep the pound in the currency band. It is like trying to improve the weather by nailing the needle on the barometer.

Last October, when we entered the ERM, the level was

over-valued--more than 20 per cent. up against the deutschmark, in real terms, on the level in the last quarter of 1986. That will have exactly the same consequences as those described by Keynes in 1925, when Churchill returned to the gold standard with an over-valued level.

We are now locked into a depression--a deflation--that is the preliminary to a sustained deflation of the kind that France experienced in the 1980s. That still awaits us, but we shall experience it at the end of the present ordeal. Economic and monetary union would compound the problem. It could work in only two sets of circumstances. The first is an absolute convergence of growth, productivity and industrial power. Without that, we get the strong draining the weak, as is happening in east Germany, or there needs to be a massive machinery of redistribution--the McDougall committee suggested about a tenth of European gross domestic product--to offset the consequences. Neither is proposed. If we say not whether but when, we abandon the attempt to get either of those two preconditions, which will be disastrous for this country.

In the absence of control over our interest rates and exchange rates and our budget and tax policies, we will be unable to rebuild the economy. The role of this Parliament will then change. Traditionally, the role has been to bring our grievances first to the monarch, then to the Executive and now to the party in power. We shall continue to bring those grievances--there will be many more of them--but there will be nobody here to bring them to.

9.20 pm

Mr. George Robertson (Hamilton) : This memorable debate has spectactularly shown that grand passions are rightly and properly excited by the European debate. This is far from being the first time when Europe has dominated the headlines and produced wildly differing but equally strong felt opinions.

As so many hon. Members have emphasised and underlined in the debate, this is a momentous time for our country and our continent. At this time, therefore, of all times, with the intergovernmental conferences under way and, behind closed doors going into the details of arrangements that will last for a generation and beyond, for our Government to appear to have as their principal

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and overriding objective the impossible task of holding together their own warring factions is the most foolish and unproductive of all negotiating techniques. It represents a genuine tragedy for this country.

I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) that the issues that we are debating today are so basic to our nation's future that we must and should be clear about our objectives. My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) made clear the Labour party's objectives in the intergovernmental conferences. Hon. Members who were not listening will be able to read the details in Hansard tomorrow.

Let me make it perfectly clear that the Labour party believes in Europe, broad and deep, as a community, not just as a market. We believe that closer co-operation on monetary policy between the European Community countries is both inevitable and desirable. We believe, too, that our European Community partners are intent on economic and monetary union. That was the objective of the Single European Act that Conservative members endorsed in the Lobby. Our partners want a European central bank, leading, if possible, to a single European currency. The Labour party believes that it would not be in the national interest if Britain allowed itself to be excluded from such developments, but have our own conditions for that process.

First, accountability must be at the heart of the process, with the Council of Finance Ministers having the task of providing strategic guidance for the union. Secondly, there must be convergence between the economies. That will be necessary, not just for this country but for any system to operate. In distinction to the Government on the issue of convergence, we believe that there should be instruments that will make that convergence happen. That means strengthened regional and other structural funds.

The Financial Secretary to The Treasury (Mr. Francis Maude) : Will the hon. Gentleman tell us, because I am sure that he and his right hon. and hon. Friends have worked this out very carefully and done their sums very carefully, what sum they propose should be added to the Community's budget for this additonal regional structural policy and what effect it would have on the net contributions to be paid by British taxpayers to our colleagues and partners elsewhere in the Community ?

Mr. Robertson : I was coming to that, but I shall deal with it now. Unless the Government change the rules on the regional funds, any increase- -there will be an increase in regional funds, whether the Government like it or not--will mean that we will be larger net contributors to the budget. The rules must be changed to allow inter-regional transfers. We are not in a position to give-- Mr. Maude rose --

Mr. Robertson : I have little time to make my speech. I cannot give way to the Minister, who keeps bouncing up and down all the time. I make clear and repeat what my right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton said this afternoon, amidst the hubbub of Conservative members. Our objectives for the political union IGC are clear. We support the social charter and the social action programme. We favour majority voting in the Council of Ministers on social and environmental matters. We favour some extension of

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power to the European Parliament and early enlargement of the Community by its immediately welcoming Austria and Sweden, which have applications on or about to lie on the table.

That places Labour firmly in the mainstream of European thinking and in a strong position to negotiate with sensitivity and good will on the other matters that are being suggested.

Mr. Nicholas Budgen (Wolverhampton, South-West) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Robertson : I shall make progress with my speech.

It would be impossible to wind up the debate without mentioning the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher). [ Hon. Members-- : "Where is she?"] I understand that the right hon. Lady informed the Chair that she would be slightly delayed in returning for the wind-up speeches because she is attending a dinner in honour of the late Ian Gow--a friend and an individual for whom I had enormous respect. I forgive her and hope that these views will be communicated to her. Speaking last Monday to friends of mine--and of the Government Chief Whip--on Chicago Council about foreign relations, she said : "a little less silence might be called for."

We got full value this afternoon, when the right hon. Lady outlined five principles, with the implied, perhaps even explicit, threat of going critical if the Prime Minister does not stick to them. She said that she was in favour of the broad band of the exchange rate mechanism and that,

"it is not necessary to go beyond that."

The Prime Minister has said that we shall soon move into the narrow band of the ERM. He told The Daily Telegraph last week : "We accept the principle of a single currency."

Clearly, war is declared between the Treasury Bench and the Conservative Back Benches. I urge the Prime Minister, in his interests and those of the country, to ignore and defy the instructions and advice from the Finchley bunker.

I understand that the Prime Minister is a cricket fan. Like me, he attended the second test last week. It was the first cricket match I had seen ; it took me only an hour to find out who was batting! When I heard that the Prime Minister was there, I thought that he must have been thinking back to the memorable words that were uttered in the House last year by the right hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Sir G. Howe). Speaking of the previous Prime Minister's tactics on Europe, he said :

"It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain."--[ Official Report, 13 November 1990 ; Vol. 180, c. 464.]

The right hon. Lady still seems to be breaking bats. In the interests of our country, the Prime Minister would be wise to avoid that.

Divided at home, isolated in Europe, the Government continue cynically to put party before country in these vital negotiations. Because of that and because, unique among our debates on this formula since 1983, the Government have not had the courage to table a motion, we will vote against them at 10 pm.

The greatest evidence of the Government's confusion was revealed in their obsession with the "F" word--federal. It appeared last week in the latest of three draft treaties produced by the Luxembourg presidency. I remind

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my colleagues who quoted copiously from that draft that it is simply a draft and that many changes have been made in the various documents.

The latest draft was tabled last Monday by the Luxembourg presidency, and our Foreign Secretary promptly pressed every panic button in sight. He ignored the discussions on the three pillars and the substance of the final form of the treaties. He ignored the suggested new competences of the Community that were tabled at the same meeting and the sections about majority voting and the powers of the European Parliament. At his press conference afterwards, it appeared that nothing mattered more to Her Britannic Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs than the inclusion of the word "federal".

Mr. Hurd : That is entirely wrong. I did not even mention the matter at my press conference until I was asked. I mentioned all the other matters which the hon. Gentleman said that I failed to mention. He has got it exactly the wrong way round.

Mr. Robertson : Sources close to the Foreign Secretary said that he was slightly agitated by a comment from Jacques Delors, who was not even a member of the intergovernmental conference.

As has been said in the debate, "federal" is a trigger word which is confusing and heavy with conflicting symbolism signifying different things to different people. That is why it does not appear in any of the declarations of the confederation of Socialist parties of the European Community--not because we are afraid of the word, but because it obscures rather than illuminates the issues at stake. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East said, when the chairman of the Conservative party applied for membership of the European People's party in April, he made it absolutely clear that the application enjoyed his full support and that of the "Prime Minister as Leader of the Conservative Party."

Sir Christopher Prout, the leader of the Conservative Members of the European Parliament, was clear and unambiguous in his letter backing that application. He wrote :

"I should like to emphasise that my colleagues fully support, inter alia :

The institutional development of the Community into a European Union of a federal type".

He went on to say that they believed in the development of a common foreign and security policy within Europe. He then stated that he and his colleagues believed in

"the establishment of an Economic and Monetary Union with an independent European Central Banking System and the ultimate goal of a single currency."

That application came not with the imprimatur of an obscure Member of the European Parliament, but in the name of the chairman of the Conservative party and the Prime Minister. When we hear so much noise about the word federal and what it means and how important it is to the British Government, we must bear that carefully in mind. In a week of desperate, demeaning and pleading visits around European leaders, the Prime Minister has claimed a so-called triumph-- [Interruption.] The Foreign Secretary may hum and hah. Is he going to pretend that

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there are no divisions of opinion or a stark and obvious contrast between the Prime Minister's words and those uttered by his predecessor even this afternoon?

The triumph that has been achieved in a week of meetings has been the exorcism of one word and a little extra time before the Government must fall into line and capitulate with the majority. That is a ludicrous semantic juggling act which simply postpones the inevitable--as inevitable as the tactic of the right hon. Member for Finchley of very noisy opposition followed by abject surrender. It is a point of national importance that the Government's form of negotiation is uniquely unproductive. They stand out against the imposition of a single currency when they know that it cannot be imposed. They stand for an opt-out clause on the EMU when they know that the only alternative that is involved is a guaranteed second division status for this country. They stand for the rights of the British Parliament, but the same party drove through the Single European Act on three-line Whips and on a whipped guillotine motion. They may have a victory on the withdrawal of the "F" word, but on the key matters in Europe they are marginalised. Only on a common foreign and security policy, which in itself is a minority pipe dream, to which we certainly do not subscribe either, can they count on the fact that no pressure will be put on them. On all the rest, this last-legs Government are out of line and out of touch and, pretty soon, will be out of time.

The Government set themselves against all the rest on an increase in majority voting in the Council of Ministers. They set themselves against fast-track decision-making on social and environmental affairs to accompany and complement decisions that were taken on the single market for the commercial and business world. They set themselves against the powers of scrutiny for the European Parliament that are designed at least to put back some accountability to areas that have already been ceded to European level and have now been left without any scrutiny by elected representatives.

We see the European Parliament having power to supplement but not to replace the work of scrutiny on what is being done in our name in Europe. The Government set themselves against a targeted regional policy when they know that it will be necessary to make the convergence about which they talk actually work. They set themselves against the social action programme and look sillier and sillier as they become more and more isolated.

The Secretary of State for Employment--an expert on unemployment since, of course, we have the fastest rising rate of unemployment for the second time in a decade--tells us that the regulations that will come forward are a guarantee of more joblessness. However, the ordinary voter will ask the architects of unemployment in this country whether, if that kind of regulation and those kinds of proposed standards have produced the benefits enjoyed by workers in Germany, Denmark, France and Belgium, that is not a better risk to take than staying in the jobless, growthless paradise being created by this Government. The social charter makes simple, basic, elementary common sense to our partners, even the right-wing partners in Europe, who recognise that a framework of rights for working people within which the social partners can continue their own detailed arrangements is necessary to make the single market fair and effective.

The Government know that they will have to give way on some of those key issues if any agreement is to be

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reached--the sort of agreement that the Foreign Secretary so reasonably explained was the outcome of any negotiations. However, the future of Britain in the new Europe is far too important to be relegated to third place behind binding Tory wounds and their faint hope of an election win some time next year. The negotiations have to be played with vision and purpose and with some idea of what role Britain needs in Europe and what we have to do to obtain it. No other country seems to be so hopelessly preoccupied with semantics and symbolism as we are and as our Government are. The Government increasingly resemble Japanese soldiers who were left behind in island jungles, unaware that the war was long over.

Won or lost, like it or loathe it, the Common Market war is over and it is no longer a matter for any of us to be in or out, cool or warm, or pro or anti-Europe or European integration. European politics is now British politics, as the previous Prime Minister knows only too well. What is at issue now is not if, but how, we fully participate in the affairs of the European Community. Instead of emulating our endless and self-indulgent guerrilla war over words, the other countries in Europe are engaged and succeeding in the substance of what Europe is all about : in the reform of the common agricultural policy with all its impregnable lunacies ; in developing a Community industry policy that will enable Europe to compete effectively with Japan and the USA ; in research and technology ; and in looking to the enlargement of the Community, towards embracing with enthusiasm the vibrant economies of the EFTA countries and providing realisable targets for Europe's new democracies, the countries of central and eastern Europe. In the week when Germany's capital has moved 500 miles to the east, Britain has moved even further to the periphery of the Community. We should be looking forward to the opportunities of Britain's presidency of the Community in the last half of next year, establishing what our priorities will be for the post-1992 Community. That is what is preoccupying Opposition Members, because that is looking forward.

If the Government were less interested in saving their own skins and more interested in the national interest, they would be doing the same. What can Britain do for Europe and what can Europe do for the people of Britain? Those are worthy and proper questions for our country to have the answers to. Sadly, the country will get genuine leaders who are willing to answer them only when they have a new Government--a Labour Government--and the sooner the better.

9.40 pm

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Francis Maude) : This is the fourth of these debates that I have had the privilege to take part in in the past two years. Since I have been a Minister, I have taken part in a great many European debates and, if it is not too trite to say it, it is on such occasions above all that the House rises above party political point scoring. In general, there is an adversarial system in the House--the Chamber reflects that system, unlike those of many of our counterparts who have hemispherical chambers which perhaps reflect a less adversarial system. It is ironic that a less adversarial and less partisan approach is reflected in European debates.

Of all the European debates in which I have taken part, none has been as great or as serious or has been graced by

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so many distinguished parliamentarians as this one. I counted two former Prime Ministers, two former Chancellors, one former Foreign Secretary, and a number of former Cabinet Ministers, and many other distinguished right hon. and hon. Friends and Opposition Back Benchers, who have a good deal of experience in these matters and have participated in such debates for many years.

Mr. Devlin : Like my hon. Friend, I feel that this is an important occasion and that the House should have been able to express its views. Given the large number of former Prime Ministers and Privy Councillors who have spoken today, would not it have been better to schedule a two-day debate for the subject so that the whole House could take part?

Mr. Maude : Those are not matters for such as I to decide. I would have had no regrets about a longer debate--it is valuable. The seriousness of the debate reflects the fact that the issues involved go to the heart of what the House of Commons is about.

The debate has lifted us above and beyond the narrow short-term perspectives of party political politics, with one or two exceptions. The vacuum that most of us perceived in the early part of the debate came from the Opposition Front Bench. I except from that comment those Liberal Democrats and Labour Back Benchers whose speeches were distinguished by seriousness, thought and independence.

The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) signally failed to rise to this parliamentary occasion. I feel inclined to buy shares in the press cutting service to which he subscribes--he must be comfortably its best customer. I am gratified that one of my modest offerings found its way into his speech. I do not think that the press cutting service received a fee for that, because it was left over from a previous speech. This was at least the eighth time that that quotation has been used in such debates, and I am becoming very fond of it. It is nice to have it repeated on these occasions. There was a serious vacuum in the Opposition Front Bench. The right hon. Member for Gorton signally failed to answer the questions that he was asked, and the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson), when I asked him a couple of simple questions, gave an inadequate answer and then refused to amplify.

The European Community is now a powerful force in the world, especially in economic terms. It and its members were the first to provide help for the reforming countries of eastern and central Europe, and it is forging strong and flexible bonds with those countries through the association agreements now being discussed to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Sir R. Luce) referred. It is correct that it was a British plan that was readily accepted by our partners in the Community, and we hope that the discussions will be brought to fruition later this year.

As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said, in the discussions being conducted with the countries of the European Free Trade Association, we seek to create the largest single market that there has ever been. It is now not controversial to predict that both sets of discussions are likely to be preliminaries to a substantial enlargement of the Community in the coming decade.

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If I judge the sense of the House correctly, that development is regarded as desirable and inevitable by a majority of hon. Members, if not by a consensus. As it grows and as its economic weight develops, the Community will have its special duty reinforced as the world's largest trading bloc and it must exercise its power responsibly. The Community must be sure that it leads the discussions in the general agreement on tariffs and trade towards a liberal free-trade solution. The day the European Community seems more interested in its internal debates and in its internal evolution than in its relationship with the wider world will be the day the Community begins to die.

The single market has most enhanced the Community's status in the eyes of the world. That cause has been passionately espoused by Britain. We have urged it with our rhetoric, driven it in the negotiations and implemented it in practice. I was interested to learn that yesterday one of the Commissioners, Mr. van Miert, said at a conference in London that, once a directive has been agreed, Britain was better than any other country at translating it into national law. He contrasted Britain with Italy where, he said, they were good at making fine European speeches, but had a poor record at turning European law into Italian law. He said that he was not content with the Italian record of living up to their European commitments.

No member state has a better record of compliance and implementation than Britain. It is right that we should recognise that certain consequences flow from that. If a member state dislikes a proposal and judges its effects to be harmful, two courses are open to it. The first is to agree to the measure but subsequently not to implement or enforce it, thus leaving it a dead letter. The second course is to seek changes in negotiation to render it acceptable, and to reject it if such changes cannot be achieved. We take the second course, and we usually achieve the changes that we seek. It is very rare, where there is qualified majority voting, for Britain to be outvoted. However, it must be clear that the extension of qualified majority voting is less acceptable to a country that religiously implements agreed measures than to countries that take a more relaxed view of their legal obligations.

We cannot go along with the Opposition and the Liberal Democrats in their headlong rush down that track. Those who advocate it must be prepared to answer the question : do they believe that Britain should abandon its rigorous approach to implementation, or are they content that Britain's businesses should be disadvantaged relative to their competitors in more relaxed regimes abroad? That is an important question which has to be answered if those proposals are to be pursued.

Two measures under discussion illustrate the dangers--the directive on part -time and temporary work, and the directive on working time. Both would reverse growing flexibilities in the labour market. Many have pointed to the growing benefits of part-time--what is known in the Community as "atypical"--work. I quote from the European Commission's own annual economic report. It says :

"Rising wage pressure in a context of still high level of unemployment points to the need for more fundamental structural reform in labour markets to strengthen employment creating investment Further obstacles to employment creation should be removed and wage setting

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procedures should allow a fuller reflection of differences in productivity so as to improve adjustment of demand and supply of labour."

Those directives would run directly counter to that spirit, and they would carry huge costs in the United Kingdom alone. As we are the country which, history suggests, is most likely to implement such directives, if agreed, it seems to me that we have an overwhelming case for resisting them. Equally, we have an overwhelming case for resisting the extension of qualified majority voting to other similar measures.

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary dealt comprehensively with the discussions on political union at the outset, and I have little to add. The debate shows how the Government's approach carries overwhelming support in the House and, I believe, in the country. It must surely be right to seek improvements to the treaty of Rome. It must surely be right to develop more and better means to co-operate closely to do those things together that cannot effectively be done separately. That was the approach of my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) in her speech at Bruges and it is an approach which, with support elsewhere in the Community, we shall continue to press. Again, if I judge the sense of the debate correctly, that is what hon. Members of all parties would like us to pursue. Essentially, the House would want us to press improvements in co- operation between Governments.

Mr. Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) : The Foreign Secretary said that he would leave to the Financial Secretary the debate on economic and monetary union, and on the hard ecu. It would be useful for the House if the hon. Gentleman could dwell on that.

Mr. Maude : I will come to that in a moment. On the political union discussions, it must be right for us to urge our approach, to seek progress on these fronts from within the negotiations and to be, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said, at "the heart of Europe". The House would expect that, and I believe that the House would support it.

But the House would not expect us to agree, nor would the House support, the adoption of a federal goal for Europe. It may be as my right hon. Friend said, that the phrase has different meanings for different people. It may be that those who urge a federal goal are visionaries with their eyes cast forward to an inevitable federal destiny, but I do not believe that it is a destiny which the country desires or that the House would accept. I say again to the House that we shall not ask it to do so.

I turn now as the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) suggested I should, the discussions on economic and monetary union. Those discussions have been disappointing in many ways--but only to those commentators who promised themselves blood, conflict, drama and division. Week after week they have waited, fingers poised over the pre-programmed key of their word processors which prints "Britain isolated". I fear that they may be disappointed yet. Some have urged that we should seek conflict by declaring in advance that we will use our veto, as if we were faced with an unalterable text which had either to be accepted, or rejected. This is not how it works. The right hon. Member for Gorton demonstrated his clear failure to understand how the process of negotiation in the European Community operates. He jeered at the Foreign Secretary's description of negotiations, which was

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that one argues and argues and then agrees if the outcome is acceptable. That seems a pretty accurate description of negotiations. I do not know what the right hon. Gentleman would suggest in its place--perhaps he would agree and agree and then argue if the result were unacceptable.

We are talking about a process of negotiation. Treaty changes can be agreed only by unanimity. The negotiation is to establish what it is that all 12 member states are agreed upon. Some have said that we should set out what we will agree to in detail and in advance. It is not fudging the issue or being evasive to say that it would be premature to do that. We are only halfway through the negotiations. The propositions are not yet fully formulated.

We can say, and we have said, that there are some things that the treaty should not contain. We will not, for example, accept treaty changes that commit the United Kingdom to take part in a single currency. To answer the point raised by the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), I accept that that includes an irrevocably fixed exchange rate. They both amount to full currency union. We will not accept treaty changes that commit us to take part in that, but that is not to say that there will never be a single currency. It is not even to say that Britain will never be part of a single currency. It may be that, years hence, a future British Government and a future British Parliament will want to decide whether Britain should take part in a single currency, but that will be a decision for that British Parliament and that British Government at that time. The balance sheet of economic political and constitutional advantage and disadvantage cannot be struck until then. Those who argue that we should try to strike that balance now--and either rule it in or rule it out for definite--are submitting to a fallacy because if we were to stand aside--

Mr. Robertson rose --

Mr. Maude : If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I shall not give way to him because I have only four minutes left.

If we were to stand aside from the negotiations, we should debar a future House of Commons from making that decision.

Mr. Robertson rose --

Mr. Maude : No, I am sorry : I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman because I have only four minutes left and I want to come on to the hard ecu, which may well be the matter in which the hon. Gentleman is interested. If we were to stand aside from the negotiations and not take part in them, we should debar a future House of Commons from making that decision. Equally, if we committed ourselves now to a single currency, we would pre-empt that future decision. Both approaches are unacceptable.4

I believe that the House and the country support our approach. Indeed, that position is increasingly accepted and understood by our partners in the Community. We are really saying that, as this is not something that can be agreed at this stage, we should concentrate on those matters on which agreement can be reached.

One large and important area that was scarcely discussed until the last 12 months is stage 2 of economic and monetary union. It is now pretty clear that there will be a hardened ecu of some sort in stage 2, which will be

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much more widely used than today. However, many questions remain unanswered. No one has yet decided the route by which it should be hardened--whether it should be done by the British, Spanish or German approach or by that of the Commission. The matter of whether it should be issued in note and coin is also undecided, as is the issue of whether it should be managed by a monetary institution. Perhaps those are not matters of fundamental principle ; they are essentially technical but crucial issues which have to be decided and on which there are almost as many views as there are Governments in the Community.

The debate continues, and it is a debate which has been initiated, led and profoundly influenced by Britain. The right hon. Member for Gorton said that he would seek to divide the House because--I paraphrase--he thought that he could exploit some grubby short-term party political gain. I believe that he misjudged the mood of the House

Mr. Kaufman rose--

Mr. Maude : I know that he--[ Hon. Members :-- "Give way".] I am not going to give way to the right hon. Gentleman--

Mr. Kaufman rose--

Mr. Speaker : Order. One at a time.

Mr. Maude : I know from the expressions on the faces of his right hon. and hon. Friends when he made his speech that the right hon. Member for Gorton misjudged the mood of his party. His party wanted this matter to be taken seriously. It wanted a serious debate so that the House could express its view--

Mr. Kaufman rose--

Hon. Members : Give way.

Mr. Speaker : Order.

Mr. Maude : The right hon. Gentleman occupied 45 minutes earlier with absolutely nothing. I shall not allow him to take up my time when I have something to say.

The right hon. Gentleman promised to set out the party's proposals. He set out several things that his party would seek. Two of them are not up for grabs in this negotiation in any case. The country can be grateful that his party is not taking part in the negotiations. The Labour party's approach has been characterised by waffle, muddle, drift and deceit, and the House will be glad that this Government, this Prime Minister, this Foreign Secretary and this Chancellor of the Exchequer have conducted these important negotiations. Mr. Derek Foster (Bishop Auckland) rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to. Question put accordingly, That this House do now adjourn :-- The House divided : Ayes 158, Noes 312.

Division No. 196] [10 pm

AYES

Abbott, Ms Diane

Adams, Mrs Irene (Paisley, N.)

Allen, Graham

Anderson, Donald

Archer, Rt Hon Peter

Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

Barron, Kevin

Beckett, Margaret

Beggs, Roy

Bell, Stuart

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