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Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) : Ha !

Mr. Home Robertson : Let me remind my hon. Friend of the deliberations that took place at the Labour party conference, which resoundingly supported and endorsed a resolution that stated : "This Conference reaffirms Labour's vision of Europe with Britain's future at the heart of a European Community which is economically prosperous and which has high standards of social and environmental protection and citizens' rights Conference believes that the Maastricht Treaty, while not perfect, is the best agreement that can currently be achieved."

That resolution was overwhelmingly supported. Another draft resolution, which stated :

"This Conference calls on the Parliamentary Labour Party to oppose ratification of the Maastricht Treaty",

was overwhelmingly rejected.

As I have said, the treaty is not perfect, and we must vote for improvements to the Bill. That is the approach that we should adopt, and I am confident that the official Opposition will adopt it. If it is appropriate, I intend in due course to vote for the Bill's Third Reading.

If the motion had been genuinely and substantively about Europe, I would have voted with the Government in the Aye Lobby ; but it is not. It is a paving motion--a gimmick. According to our procedures it is completely redundant. Indeed, in response to a point of order, Madam Speaker specifically clarified that point earlier.


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There is no need for the motion, because there is nothing to stop the Government from going ahead with the ratification of the treaty. When they do so they will find that I, and most Opposition Members, approach it in a constructive and positive manner.

This is not a paving motion about Europe ; it is a detour round some of the obscure back alleys of the Conservative party. Tonight we are dealing with the stepping stones by means of which the Prime Minister is trying to paddle through the morasses of Southend and elsewhere. It is no part of our job to help the Conservative party through such problems.

The motion is clearly one of confidence in the Government. We are told, "Yes, it is," and "No, it isn't," as different messages come out of different sectors of the Cabinet and the Conservative party--but to all intents and purposes we are dealing with a motion of confidence in the Government.

If, in my 14 years in the House, there were ever a Government which was not worthy of anyone's confidence, it is this Government. We could have argued that we had no confidence in the previous Prime Minister, but we always had confidence that she knew where she was going and what her policies were. Nobody can possibly have any confidence, in the strict literal meaning of the word, in the present Government. They do not know what is going on. Cabinet Ministers do not even have confidence in themselves. That is why the House should reject any notion of any kind of confidence in the Government. We certainly should not help them to plod their way through the morass that they have created for themselves with the motion.

I repeat that when the Bill comes back before the House I shall view it constructively, and I am likely to support its Third Reading. However, the motion before us has nothing to do with that. It is designed to save the neck of a discredited Prime Minister, and I sincerely hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will vote in that spirit.

6.41 pm

Mr. David Howell (Guildford) : The speech of the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) was the speech of a very clever lawyer with a very bad case. If his mood had been a little less ungenerous, and if the Labour party were in a less uncertain and ambiguous position, he would have given credit where it was due, and acknowledged what has happened right from the start of the Maastricht debate.

I am talking about what has happened not only since the treaty was signed, but way back, when there was first pressure for the intergovernmental conference--which this country resisted--and then for the conference to give birth to the treaty text--about which this country had doubts--and then when the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary went to Maastricht with a mandate to warn against excesses and to secure what they could for this country--which they did brilliantly. All that time, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the House of Commons--let us, as a House of Commons, take credit for this--have called it right about the unfolding Maastricht programme.


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We are the ones who warned that there were excess elements, and dangers, in going full out for an imposed timetable, monetary union and a high political union. And now we are hearing the voices of pro-Europeans all round the continent, both inside and outside the Community, saying that we were right, and that the foot flat on the accelerator was the wrong approach, whereas the British stance, and our example, was right.

Mr. Derek Enright (Hemsworth) : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Howell : No, unfortunately I cannot give way, because of the 10- minute rule. Otherwise, I should be happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman.

Having reached the point at which this country is protected from some of the excesses of Maastricht, we are now in a strong position to move forward in Europe and to work for two aims. My personal view is that we should get over the hurdle and ratify the treaty, because we have work to do in formulating a new treaty.

I am sorry to burden my right hon. and hon. Friends with the prospect of a new treaty, but we need one to provide for the new priorities in Europe, which were not entirely foreseen at Maastricht but which are becoming clearer all the time.

Let us be clear about the goals we are fighting for. One of those lies before us, only eight weeks away. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Renton) has said, a gigantic market, the largest single free trading area ever created by trade negotiators in history, is about to come into being. It will include not only the Community but the European Free Trade Association countries as well--and, I hope, thereafter the Visegrad countries.

On 1 January, in only eight weeks' time, there will be a consumer mass market of 375 million people, covering 46 per cent. of all world trade, with a GNP of about $7,000 billion--I am afraid that that sum is worth more pounds now than it was last week. That is a fantastic achievement, and a high road to great prosperity and opportunity for all the nations in that great economic space--the Community countries plus the European economic area signatories.

Our task in drawing up a new treaty will be to defend and maintain that huge trading operation, that huge economy dominating world trade, in a way that does not allow it to be eroded by protectionism or centralism, and does not allow political busybodies and interferers of every kind to undermine that colossal achievement. We must get on past the Maastricht treaty and begin to design the kind of treaty needed to maintain and strengthen that huge achievement in totally new conditions, which are different from those which existed when the Community began and which hold grave new threats, especially from instability in eastern Europe.

For that reason we, the British--after all, we have called it right all along--must begin to shape the new treaty. I want to see us get over the Maastricht problem, accept the ratification of the treaty while recognising its many inadequacies, and move on to the new tasks ahead.

First, we want a Europe in balance and equilibrium. We do not want a Europe of trains, buses, momentum and destinations, of blueprints and inevitable destiny. We need powers in a treaty--a constitution of Europe--to prevent that. As the Prime Minister said, that is needed to overcome people's deep worries that there will be a


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continuous slippery slope down which all the powers tumble into the spin drier of the Community. We do not want that, and we need a treaty which can lock in the brakes and barriers to prevent it. The word with which we conjure to achieve that end is "subsidiarity"-- and we have only just started on that. The seed is in the Maastricht treaty, but it is a tiny seed, hardly fertilised. An enormous amount of work is required. We need subsidiarity-plus, and that will not be secured entirely even by taking matters forward in Edinburgh--which I am sure will happen. A new treaty will be required to entrench genuine forces of subsidiarity, and a real reverse thrust into the Community structure to prevent it from going the wrong way. The Select Committee on Foreign Affairs has recently been advised on subsidiarity by a great many lawyers. I am afraid that the lawyers all agree--it is usually a matter for alarm when lawyers all agree--that subsidiarity is not a precise legal concept. Indeed, the Counsel to the Speaker, in an excellent document which I believe was submitted to the Scrutiny Committee, concluded that subsidiarity was "a principle of policy which is far too imprecise to have any clear legal effect. The fact of unanimity among lawyers would ordinarily cause great apprehension to the public at large ; but here it is having a constructive effect. Non-lawyers are having to make the best they can of proposed Article 3b".

In other words, it all falls upon the politicians--us--to make the best we can, or more than that, of making the political concept of decentralisation, subsidiarity or whatever one likes to call it, work.

That will require not only establishing subsidiarity as a political convention in the workings and processes of the Community, but backing it with new procedures, which will require legal force, and will have to be binding. By new procedures I mean, for example, ensuring that the House, our national Parliament--indeed, all national parliaments--can give a view on, and indeed check, all new initiatives, whether they come from the Commission or the Council.

It is important that the next treaty should provide for our Parliament to have a much earlier say on proposals before they reach the legislative stage--before the Council of Ministers decides on them, or before the Commission initiates them. The Maastricht treaty does not provide that ; we must go beyond it and build on it. We must deliver safeguards which will lock in the process of building a flexible, diffuse Europe instead of a centralised Europe. Maastricht was sadly deficient. We must build on it. It was inadequate to deal with the problems of eastern and central Europe. It has been suggested that we should have a commissioner for eastern Europe. I have no doubt that the priority task of Europe should be to prevent the countries of eastern and central Europe from disappearing into fascism and militarism, of which there is great danger. That will require huge political effort, which will not be sufficiently sustained by Maastricht. We must build on the treaty to ensure that eastern and central European countries do not slide into militarism. We shall need new institutions to cope with enlargement of the Community. We speak glibly about our desire to see Switzerland, Austria, Sweden and so on in the Community. However, to enlarge the Community will require new institutions. The work has to be done. The treaty and the constitutional procedures must be established.


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We shall need to complete the single market, which we think is all in the bag. It will come into effect on 1 January, but we have only just begun. It will be a vast new task to complete to make that single market operate genuinely. Even greater tasks will be required to ensure that the whole thing is not destroyed by the breakdown of the GATT negotiations. There could be no greater catastrophe than such a breakdown at a time when the planet is beginning to slip and slide into deflation. It would be an utter disaster, for which those who say that we can settle for Maastricht could never be forgiven. I have described the tasks which a new treaty requires. The question is, who will take the initiative in pushing forward those ideas? Will we be dragged along unwillingly while others make progress? I hope not. I hope that we will recognise what has to be done.

People talk about being at the heart of Europe, but we always have been. This nation has spilt a great deal of blood over the centuries and in recent times. Many families have lost relatives. Their lives were given up by Britain being at the heart of Europe, preventing it from destroying itself yet again and turning to yet more new blueprints and sinister destinies.

So do not let us be told that we are not at the heart of Europe or that it is a new idea for us to be so. We have always been at the heart of Europe. Britain has played a fundamental role in ensuring that Europe remains a balanced, free and open democracy. Where we have failed, catastrophe has resulted.

From the beginning none of us--neither Conservative nor Opposition Members- -wanted the Maastricht process

Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. Ten minutes is ten minutes.

6.51 pm

Mr. Peter Shore (Bethnal Green and Stepney) : I agree entirely with the concluding words of the right hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell). None of us ever wanted the Maastricht treaty. It is a good thing that the House has an opportunity today to discuss the issues connected with that treaty. I remind the House that the reason why we are having the debate is the sea change that has occurred and the events that have taken place since the Danes had the courage to say no.

No one should deny that the Danish referendum had a remarkable effect. It got rid of the sense of inevitability and helplessness which most people in most of the countries of Europe felt. People felt that their political elites were doing things over their heads. People did not believe that they had any chance of arresting the process. However, the Danes succeeded in arresting the process. It is interesting that Mr. Mitterrand's immediate reaction to the Danish result was to announce a French referendum. He believed that he would bury the Danish no in an avalanche of French yeses. Three months later, Maastricht was put to the test of French opinion, and the French gave their consent by a similarly narrow margin. Of course, the French are the founders of the treaties.

Just before the French referendum, Britain had the brutal shock of the pound being forced out of the exchange rate mechanism. Such events made people, not only in Denmark and France but in Britain, think. The plain truth


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is that there is now far more knowledge and far more criticism about what is in the treaty among people not only in Britain but elsewhere.

One of the Prime Minister's most important remarks this afternoon was when he asked what sort of Europe we were developing through the Maastricht treaty. I agree that that is probably the most important question. In spite of the Prime Minister's assertions and the reservations which the British Government wrung from our reluctant partners in the European Community, the commanding text of the treaty remains.

I remind hon. Members on both sides of the House of the opening declaration of the treaty on European union. It said that the member states were

"Resolved to mark a new stage in the process of European integration

Resolved to establish an economic and monetary union including, in accordance with the provisions of this Treaty, a single and stable currency,

Resolved to establish a citizenship common to nationals of their countries,

Resolved to implement a common foreign and security policy including the eventual framing of a common defence policy". Those are not small matters. They are the essence of national sovereignty. To be a self-governing nation is to make decisions in those areas.

I have never heard of a sovereign independent country which did not have its own currency. Yet a declared objective of the treaty is to establish a European state. Who can doubt that the purpose is to establish a European state? The Prime Minister dismissed those matters as European guff. I hope that he was misreported. Those matters are written into the treaty. If he said that they were European guff, he made precisely the same error as his predecessor made with the Single European Act. She did not read the text sufficiently clearly, closely or seriously.

Mr. Cash : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Shore : No, I cannot, much as I would like to.

I draw attention to a point which has not attracted sufficient attention. Mr. Bangemann made a speech in Berlin yesterday in which he spoke about what virtually everyone on the European continent takes for granted in political circles. The speech was not an ambush of the British Government. He simply took it for granted that there was nothing interesting in what he had to say. He said that, in the Maastricht treaty,

"the goal of a federal European state was spelt out for the first time,"

and that "subsidiarity presupposed the idea of a federal European state".

I have always found that entirely convincing. It is implicit in all the speeches made by the more fanatical pro-Europeans in the Chamber.

Dealing with the idea that subsidiarity might lead to the return of some of the powers that Governments had previously exercised, Mr. Bangemann said that the inadequacies of Community decision-making could not be remedied by returning power to the member states, and that the subsidiarity debate must not lead to a "rolling back". It is too bad. There is an awful lot of disappointment implicit in those words. He also said that more and more decisions could be taken only at European level.


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Lastly, to encourage us, Mr. Bangemann siad that the next step after Maastricht's ratification should be the evolution of the EC treaties into a European constitution. Drafts of such a European constitution are already talked about in the European Parliament. The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) understands all this. He revealed in the debate on 24 September his understanding that a single currency leads to a single government and a single country. Do not let us deceive ourselves about what we face. The Prime Minister showed some skill in finding a little space between the trunk of the Rome treaty and all that has sprung from it, and the pillars of foreign and defence policy, immigration and home affairs. A little space could be found there, but it is my belief--this is certainly the understanding throughout Europe--that those pillars will merge into the trunk at the very next intergovernmental conference in 1996, which specifically refers to the revision of the treaty, taking account of the objectives expressed in A and B of the common and general clauses.

So there we are. Against this background, subsidiarity is a figleaf. It does not deal with the return of powers or the prevention of powers leaving the United Kingdom. It refers only to the methods by which the European state can implement its policies in the member states--perhaps in a slightly more agreeable way. Perhaps the regulations, to take an obvious example, will become directives. Perhaps we could find some even looser form of directive than has yet been legally defined. As long as the nation state does what the Community wants, then the forms that it adopts to do so can be a matter for subsidiarity.

In the end, it will not be the Government who decide what powers belong to the nation state and what powers belong to the Community. That is all decided by the treaties, and the interpreter of the treaties is the European Court.

So much for subsidiarity, one of the issues that was to be clarified by the Prime Minister and his colleagues before the Bill returned to the House. What about the Danes ? They are asking for major derogations. They do not want economic and monetary union, or citizenship, or anything to do with defence. They want a legally binding derogation. That is possible only if it takes the form of a protocol or an amendment to the treaty. A declaration will not do. Of course, Mr. Delors immediately told the Danes that that was not on. He told them that they could not have a change in the treaty--they could only have a declaration. We have not yet got very far with solving the Danish question--

Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. I call Mr. Devlin.

7.2 pm

Mr. Tim Devlin (Stockton, South) : It is appropriate that we take part in this debate with poppies in our lapels. As we watched the unfolding tragedy in Yugoslavia this summer, it would have done no harm to reflect that it was the prospect of further wars in Europe that led to the foundation of the European Community.

From the very start, the Community has been a political, not merely an economic, entity. It has been designed to stitch together the fabric of our separate nations so as to prevent them from being rent asunder by Europe's age-old rivalries, which are now beginning to


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resurface. It was foreseen by the founders of the Community that the cold war would not always divide Europe.

Britain, an island, has always been suspicious of continental combinations. Our geography has traditionally allowed us to stand aloof from our European neighbours and to concentrate on trading with the wider world on preferential terms bought by military might. Those days are over now, and our small country must look to the future. It has taken nearly 30 years for Britain to come to terms with our changed circumstances, and to catch up with the unfolding European Community. Being late entrants, we have not had the opportunity to steer the Community away from its more disastrous policies, such as the common agricultural policy. But we now have the best opportunity to lead the continent since Churchill's call for unity in 1946.

There is no point in our being reluctant members. If all we do is criticise, we throw away the opportunity to shape Europe. If all we do is complain, no one will listen to us. The Prime Minister declared in his acceptance speech that he wanted us to be at the heart of Europe. He has shown that the best way to steer ourselves away from greater centralisation in Brussels is to be one of the big players in the negotiating process. That was how, in the case of the Maastricht treaty, he was able to secure a deal dismissed by many beforehand as impossible.

Now, for the first time in any European Community treaty, Maastricht contains an article specifically remitting anything best done at national level to national Governments. Britain opted out of the social chapter and reserved the right to decide later on a single currency. It was thus that the Council of Ministers agreed in Oslo on 4 June to proceed with ratification.

It is not our way to renege on an agreement negotiated in good faith. Moreover, it is an agreement which for the first time gives us weapons against the centralisation in Brussels. It creates a union, but not one that supersedes nation states. Foreign policy and home affairs are specifically reserved as national pillars.

If this treaty is delayed in its ratification, as the Opposition want, that puts at risk our new role in Europe. We would have to fight all over again the battles that we have won in the past two or three years, or be consigned to the slow lane of a two-speed Community. The Government have worked hard to propose a new and effective agenda that is in the best interests of this country. First, the Community must be good for British business and British jobs. Coming as I do from the northern region, which has been one of the greatest recipients of inward investment resulting from this forward-looking policy, I know the benefits that it has brought. So it must be a Europe of free trade, where our goods can compete on equal terms.

Secondly, we must ensure that only decisions which need to be taken at European level are taken there, and that we do not become overburdened with the minutiae of unnecessary regulations. Indeed, we want rid of some of the existing ones.

Thirdly, we need to encourage new members such as Austria, Switzerland and Finland to join as soon as possible, not least because they will be net contributors to the Community. That will lessen the burden on our own hard- pressed economy. We also want the east European countries to become members as soon as their economies are in a fit state to enable them to do so.


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Travelling extensively through Europe this summer, I found many people in Austria and Sweden asking when we were going to ratify the treaty, because they wanted to join the Community at the earliest opportunity and they wanted to be part of the new, closer union that is to be brought about.

If we do not bring in eastern Europe in the near future, we will find that its citizens vote with their feet and cross the borders into the countries of the west. Travelling through Europe, one could not help noticing either, especially in eastern Europe, the emergence of a new German super-power on our doorstep--an economic power permeating the whole of central and eastern Europe. It will become ever stronger as it overcomes its own domestic difficulties. With Europe in a state of flux following the collapse of communism, never has there been a greater opportunity or need for British leadership. Never have we stood to gain more from this challenge. At this crucial time in Europe's history, I hope that hon. Members will agree that it would be wrong to retreat to the sidelines. I ask all Members to look at the text of the motion on the Order Paper. What will be achieved by the Government's failure to carry their motion? An overwhelming majority in this House is in favour of the Maastricht treaty. The treaty and the process will go on in Europe, and that will affect this country. If the motion is not carried, we will merely repeat the mistakes of the past and ensure that any new leader or new Government coming into the breach will have to pursue the same policies from a much weaker position. That cannot be good for our country. I urge the House to support the Government. 7.8 pm

Mr. Andrew Faulds (Warley, East) : Reluctantly I have to admit that there was not much in the speech by the hon. Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin) with which I disagreed. I have long been a staunch supporter of Britain's involvement in the EEC. I was one of those who voted for our entry in October 1971 when a lot of these youngsters were not around, and I maintained that position by breaking ranks with my party early in 1972. I, along with my right hon., learned and revered Friend the Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith), am one of the six parliamentary survivors of that happy band. My support has not wavered over many many years, and I was never open to the "Shall we, shan't we?" casuistry of the party over the years. My support is such that, as the House will recall, I--along with my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell)--voted a few months ago for the Second Reading. My hon. Friend and I were the only two Labour Members to do that.

Then came this little oddity, the paving motion--an innocuous little thing with no word of which I can disagree. It lacks the word "Maastricht", which I would rather it had contained, but the ways of Prime Ministers are devious and, in the case of the present Prime Minister, timorous.

Had the motion contained that naughty word "Maastricht" I might have been constrained to vote for it--yes, I am a staunch supporter of the Maastricht treaty even though the Government have mucked it up--but then politicians on both sides of the House started to exercise their imaginations on the motion. Lo and behold, the issue became a vote of confidence. Although I cannot find those


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words in the Government's innocuous motion, I am assured by hon. Gentlemen with greater political nous than I--and with perhaps slightly less political integrity--that such it is, or has become with skilful manipulation and some considerable misrepresentation. So in my innocence, which I have maintained over 26 years in this place, they have convinced me that this is, indeed, an issue of confidence. I do not usually go along with the mob, especially when it is an excitable mob. I have voted against my party on Vietnam, on arms for Israel in 1973, on east-African Asians and on the EC, and on each issue I was absolutely right, as the House will now realise. I must confess that I do not relish the prospect of being skinned alive on Parliament green if the Prime Minister were to win by one vote and I had abstained.

I must say to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench, however, that, for an old timer like me, enough is really enough. As we fought the election as ardent Europeans and our conference heartily endorsed that stance--which perhaps some of my colleagues ought occasionally to remember- -I now expect the parliamentary Labour party, and its Front-Bench spokesmen in particular, to support strongly the progress of the Maastricht Bill. There must be no erosion of our European position. There must be no obstructionism in Committee. [Laughter.] The laughing would suggest that some berks--I mean, some hon. Members--are going to try it. I hope that they will be roundly defeated. There must be no abstention on Third Reading. As a pro-European I shall certainly vote for Third Reading-- regardless of what devious position the party may by then have adopted. What will be interesting at that Third Reading will be to know under which Prime Minister we are then serving.

7.14 pm

Mr. Michael Carttiss (Great Yarmouth) : The hon. Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds) made an admirable speech, and I honour him for that, even if I do not agree with much of what he said.

The Leader of the Opposition opened his speech by congratulating Governor Clinton on becoming President-elect of the United States. As I watched the American election results in the early hours of this morning and saw the celebrations of the Democrats' victory, I recalled our own election night on 9 April. When my result was declared at Great Yarmouth town hall, I told those who had elected me that I could not celebrate that victory while so many people in my constituency continued to be out of work.

The message that came from the United States via our television screens last night was clear and strong : President Bush had not addressed the jobs problem ; he had seemed to leave the recession to sort itself out and had had no coherent economic programme ; and he had lost touch with the people of America. I have to say to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that, if he does not address the problem of jobs, establish a coherent economic programme and regain touch with the people of this country, he will go the same way as George Bush--only quicker. I do not want to see that happen, but I feel that


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this Maastricht Bill, and the debate on it, is monstrously irrelevant to the real issues that face the Government and the country.

Various right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken--including my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, whose remarks will no doubt be reiterated by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary--have said that the Maastricht Bill is a means of establishing a climate in which jobs will be created. I see no evidence of that, except that there will be jobs for the boys--the boys in Brussels and Strasbourg. I admired my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister's opening speech, but I wish that the Government had told us exactly what benefits Maastricht, if ratified, would bring to Britain. Those of us on the Conservative Benches who have doubts about Maastricht have heard ourselves described by the Home Secretary and the chairman of the Conservative party on the radio and television as

"the tail wagging the dog".

My vote is as good as my right hon. Friends' votes.

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, for whom I have the greatest respect, and whom I believe to be a most distinguished occupant of that great office--even if, with typical modesty, he is not listening to what I am saying--cannot reduce honourable and deeply held convictions that go across the party divide to what he has described as "internal squabbles". He demeans himself by using that epithet to describe views that are contrary to his own but that are held with a sincerity and conviction equal to his own.

I am told that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister says that we must trust him. Of course I trust him. I do not have the same trust in President Mitterrand, Chancellor Kohl, Mr. Delors and the rest of the Euro-elite. I do not mean that those statesmen are any less or more trustworthy than statesmen in any other country. What I mean is that their interpretation of what the Maastricht treaty means cannot be relied upon to coincide with my right hon. Friends' interpretation, or--more important--with judgments made by the European Court when the Commission seeks to enforce a decision in the United Kingdom in years to come.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) said, no one has mentioned one German whom I trust implicitly and whose assessment of the Maastricht treaty was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore). His assessment of what the treaty really means is the same as the assessment that I made when I voted against Second Reading in May. That man is Mr. Bangemann. It is no good the Prime Minister saying that that eminent Vice-President of the European Commission was being silly and ill-informed--although perhaps he was silly to let the cat out of the bag at a time of considerable inconvenience to my right hon. Friends.

The Prime Minister tells us that Mr. Bangemann, in interpreting the Maastricht agreement as a step towards a federal Europe, cannot know that because he was not in Maastricht at the discussions when the treaty was negotiated. When the European Court in Luxembourg is required to adjudicate on some issue relevant to the United Kingdom and the judges find that we have not interpreted the treaty correctly, and therefore find against us, will we be told that their judgment is silly and ill-informed because they were not present when the treaty was agreed?


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Subsidiarity is the fundamental issue. We all know that it means different things to different people, even when they speak the same language. It is a sure thing that it means different things when they speak 12 different languages. Lord Mackenzie-Stuart, the President of the European Court from 1984 to 1988, described the treaty definition of subsidiarity as

"a prime example of gobbledegook, embracing simultaneously two opposed concepts."

He was President of the European Court for four years and called it "gobbledegook", but he suffers from an enormous disadvantage as he was not present at Maastricht when the treaty was agreed. Due to the short time available, I must confine myself to fewer remarks than I had intended to make. When we made a mess of the exchange rate mechanism--I told my right hon. Friend Lady Thatcher that we should not have joined--and things did not work out, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that the scales had fallen from his eyes--or at least I read that he said so. I may be wrong, in which case someone will correct me. The scales fell from my eyes some months ago. That is why I voted against the Second Reading of the European Communities (Amendment) Bill in May. In two years' time, when something in the treaty has been interpreted as lawyers say it should be, but in a way that my right hon. Friend does not accept, will he say that the scales have fallen from his eyes?

My hon. Friends have urged me to vote with the Government and not to let my right hon. Friend down, although the Government motion, and the debate, is of his making. The hon. Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) made it crystal clear from the Labour Benches that he and his fellows view this as a vote of confidence in the Government and I cannot join them, since I have no confidence in the Labour party to handle the United Kingdom's affairs in Europe, out of Europe or wherever we happen to be in 10 years. I cannot join them in the Division Lobby in their squalid attempt to--

Mr. Allan Rogers (Rhondda) : The hon. Gentleman has chickened out.

Mr. Carttiss : I do not care. The Opposition are a classic case of chickening out. They have been talking Europe, promoting Europe and wanting Europe, yet tonight they intend to record a vote against Europe. I shall vote against them and against the Government and for a referendum-- [Hon. Members :-- "Hear, hear!"]--so that the people of this country can decide.

7.23 pm

Mr. John D. Taylor (Strangford) : This has been an excellent debate on the position of the United Kingdom in Europe. I stress that because we are now in Europe and we must make the best of it for all the United Kingdom.

There has been only one sour note during the debate, which unfortunately came from the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), in his offensive and arrogant personal attack on the Leader of the Opposition. At one stage, I had to check that the new Leader was not a woman, such was the vigour of his personal attack.

Hon. Members who have served in the European Parliament for many years have had to endure many boring resolutions. Hon. Members present who were there will recall them. We went through a list of meaningless statements such as, "This Parliament accepts that the earth


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goes around the sun," that "The Single European Act was passed in 1986," and recognising that "Today is Wednesday 4 November 1992," and so on. Judging from the Government's motion, they have become very European in their thinking, because it is anodyne and mundane--a truly European motion.

Unfortunately, the motion is unnecessary. There is no good reason for this debate. Denmark's position has not been clarified. The Danes have come up with proposals, but they have already been shot down by the President of the European Commission. We now know that subsidiarity will not be made clear until after the Edinburgh Council meeting. The two provisos which were to be clarified before we could make progress have not been resolved.

The Prime Minister seems determined to make Maastricht a personal issue and so we are forced to vote on the motion. The Ulster Unionist party has been consistent in its attitude towards the Maastricht agreement. In the recent general election campaign we were the only party which stated clearly in its manifesto that we were opposed to the agreement. Let us not forget that it is a treaty for European union. That is spelt out in detail in the agreement, and for the Government to pretend otherwise is to avoid the truth facing us in this debate. It creates European citizenship, which is also defined in the agreement. It goes further and it extends Community control over our security, immigration and, eventually, defence policies and will extend major control over our economic policy. The Maastricht agreement is another step towards a federal Europe, which many Europeans in the 12 countries of the Community want.

I served with Martin Bangemann in the European Parliament, and I know him well. What he said yesterday is true. I was surprised to hear the Prime Minister say that the Commission had dissociated itself from Herr Bangemann's statement. I looked in the press today and there did not seem to be any rejection of his statement by the Commission. I should like a further clarification that the Commission has not condemned him for what he said yesterday.

I notice that our Liberal colleagues are nodding in agreement with the statement that Herr Bangemann was reflecting the real thinking within the European Community, and the final objective of a united states of Europe--a federal Europe. We must face that in this Parliament.

Of course, the opt-out clauses in the agreement have been praised, but they would isolate the United Kingdom within the Community. Opting out isolates us, so it is not the answer for those people who say that we do not want to be isolated in Europe.

Some people say that they do not want a two-tier Europe but, once again, the Maastricht agreement lays down the formula for creating that, because it will lay down which countries will join monetary union and which ones will stay outside. There will be two systems within the Community.

Subsidiarity still has to be clarified in Edinburgh. Some business men, but not the majority, and some business organisations--in Northern Ireland most business men would not identify with the comments of some business organisations--fear that if Maastricht is rejected we shall lose a market of 340 million people, but that is nothing. If Maastricht disappeared tonight, which it will not, there would still be a European Community and 340 million


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