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Mr. Randall : Essentially, the article is about co-operation between member states and with the third world to encourage diversity. That is a wonderful aim, which I wholly support, because culture transcends national boundaries. The article extends the Community's powers to cover culture, and that is welcome. The private sector, not just the Government, has an important role in funding the arts and culture. I was devastated by the way in which the funding of the Royal Shakespeare Company meant that some important productions had to be terminated. There was no scope for cutting costs, other than by reducing quality, and joint funding was essential. The co-operative involvement of all Community countries as outlined in the article will benefit culture not only in this country but throughout the Community. Some such structure is needed because current co-operation is far too limited and needs to be extended. The arts and culture involve minority interests that cannot be funded by the market, because insufficient money is collected at the kiosks of theatres and other establishments. Therefore, there must be some subsidy.

Article 128 contains some worthwhile elements, and I am pleased that my party supports it. My hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) said that we would not vote against it, but one's voting intentions on the treaty as a whole do not show whether one supports or is against an article. That is why I intervened on my hon. Friend.

The co-operative improvement of knowledge of European culture and its conservation would be excellent. The notion of exchanges of artistic and literary creations would strengthen the arts and culture. The article would encourage national diversity : if it did not do that, but sought to create homogeneous cultures, I would have great reservations about it.

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Dr. Godman : Article 128 would give the Commission far more competence on cultural matters. Is my hon. Friend relaxed about such a development?

6.30 pm

Mr. Randall : Yes, I am--for the main reason that, when it comes to decision-making, recommendations will be made but there will be a question of unanimity, so I believe that there is protection if one has a feeling of horror about the power of the Commission. That is a powerful argument.

We are not talking about harmonisation at all. We are not saying that each national Government has to have the same legislation on this and that we are going to create art and culture like sausage out of a sausages machine. I am convinced that the will will exist throughout the Community and in our own Government and Opposition to ensure that that richness in our society would not be swept away. I believe that, although it is easy to put over the cynical argument that this is the Commission with Delors marching through and tearing our paintings off the wall and stamping on them and carrying out all that kind of nonsense, that cynical argument does not stand up because of the importance of this whole thing.

We are talking of the whole character and personality of our country expressed through this medium. That is all I wanted to say. Article 128 is worth while if one looks at it in isolation, as we must do in Committee. It is comprehensive and encouraging. The notion of the countries of Europe co- operating in this way is something which I find exciting ; I am convinced that it will enrich the culture of our society and of Europe in a shared way which is utterly exciting.

Mr. Richard Shepherd : This culture article--article 128--reads like an article in the constitution of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It enjoys all the same sort of ad hominem goodwill, such as :

"while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore." It has a series of aspirational claims. However I am grateful to the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) who led for the Opposition in characteristic form, showing the true colours of this debate. She moved an amendment to remove article 128 from the treaty, and I intend to speak in favour of that amendment. The hon. Lady suggested that she was probing, but I could not identify one probing comment in her remarks. She indicated, however, that she did not intend to oppose the article. I am disappointed about that, and I will give my reasons.

My hon. Friend the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) gave the essential concept of the nature of what is stated : art and culture are often used for the purposes of aggrandisement. I am very conscious of that aspect because in some of the instances that have been mooted and floated around the House--the great ruling families such as the Hapsburgs and the Medicis--it was to be an adornment for the state. That brings me to the point that I think has informed these debates the whole way through the examination of the Bill in Committee--that this is a constitution that we are considering. The right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) tried, under title I, to identify whether this did not have the elements of the state, of the executive, of their powers and

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competetences and so on. One acknowledges that this small article 128 is an instance which lays claim to a common policy.

The hon. Member for Cynon Valley noted that the article added a new legal competence to the Community, and said that additionally it was under a single institutional framework. Why is this necessary? The Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones) was cautious under title I to say that this House need only legislate for that which is necessary. What is necessary about legislation within the United Kingdom to enforce the objectives of this article? What is wrong with working as we have always worked--intergovernmentally--to establish the objectives and ideals that we seek?

We can go through the words, but what is diversity of culture and "flowering of cultures"? What is European culture? I suggest that European culture is the sum total of all the constituent elements in it, no more and no less. When we say "culture", it includes all the elements of those things to which we respond. Opposition Members identify what is meant by the distinction that is often made in a popular sense : popular culture, high culture and middle-brow culture.

All these are competing elements, and many of the objects now identified as culture grew from the popular activities of the people of individual nations. Over the years, they fade or come into glory as they are : the insistent drum-beat, that everything now needs subsidisation or the transfer of funds from one area to another, is to keep what in being? I think of all the thousands of artefacts from ancient Greece that have been destroyed. Part of life is a remembrance of things past ; part of it is the echo through the lines of culture that we have. What hon. Members have said is quite right : our culture is a common culture in one particular--that it draws from all the strengths and beacons of light, of intelligence, of spirit and soul that have illuminated the ages. Yet none of this has required a central European organisation to identify it.

Who is the best custodian of culture? If it will not flower from within ourselves or the people, surely it is the national Government who have the greatest regard. Has French culture failed to flourish because there is no European central commission initiating proposals for the survival of French culture? The proposition is ridiculous. France, vigilant as always to its honour, its integrity, and the regard in which it is held in the world, consigns a third of its public revenues to the maintenance of its cultural objectives. It recognises in culture that the prestige, the association and the grandeur which comes from that are part of its standing in the world as a whole.

It is because the French as a nation state within the European Community identify that, that others do so. We see in Germany the huge level of subsidies poured into state opera companies, and God bless them for it. They must direct their resources where they want and identify the elements of culture that are theirs.

The hon. Member for Cynon Valley opened by saying that she was in harmony with our Front Bench, thus emphasising that we are now living under a Con- Lab Government in respect of Maastricht and there is resentment clearly emanating from Labour Front-Bench

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Members that they are not sitting with their colleagues in this matter, on the Government Front Bench. That illustrates the tensions involved.

No one, not even the Minister of State, explained why the matter needed a single institutional framework, nor why it needed a legal competence. If I understood his rather dismissive argument, it was that the Community extends its competences anyway and that putting some new competence in and giving it a legal life would limit its natural instinct to expand into other areas. That is a most extraordinary argument and a very confused one. If we are saying that we are all at risk without giving greater competences to the Community, that it will have them anyway, and that by giving them greater competences we are limiting this one, that is a very curious argument. Yet that is the sort of low-level, shallow argument of lies and deceit to be forced on the nation to tide us through on this Bill.

There has been no candid examination of any clause that I have heard in terms of what it is intended to accomplish. Why does it require a single institutional framework? Why does it need adjudication by the European Court of Justice? How do we democratically effect the objectives? We have talked about subsidy. Opera is a particular identity of Italy. The Italian state and the regional governments pour sums into opera houses that we do not even begin to understand. Does that require subvention from the centre, "acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission"? Notice the insidious way in which the Commission must propose, because the proposer holds the agenda and controls the directions to which the Community looks.

That assault on such things as our culture has caused the Danes to pause and hesitate, because linked with culture is another matter that we shall debate later citizenship and all the linking elements of the state. The treaty is driving us towards a conclusion that, of the whole Community, only the British Government in association, of course, with Labour Front- Bench spokesmen--wish to hide and conceal from the British people. Ours is the only Government in the Community who do not believe that the treaty is a centralising treaty. Every other leader has said, "Hallelujah--we are now marching towards a more central, single identity."

Mr. Garel-Jones rose --

Mr. Shepherd : I shall give way to my right hon. Friend, who would not give way to me.

Mr. Garel-Jones : I have given way to my hon. Friend on other occasions ; I am sorry that I did not do so today. Does he think that the Dutch Government, whose unitary text was defeated, went back saying that this was a great success?

Mr. Shepherd : I said that every other Government believed that Maastricht is a centralising treaty.

Mr. Garel-Jones rose --

Mr. Shepherd : Let me finish my point. If my right hon. Friend the Minister of State had had the courtesy to listen to the points and arguments advanced by Members across the Committee he would have been able to respond to them. It is difficult to put an argument when the response has already been given. The Dutch Government did not

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get as federalist and centralising a measure as they would wish. Nevertheless, they recognised that the treaty is a centralising measure and told their people that.

Mr. Garel-Jones : When?

Mr. Shepherd : Several times--press reports have shown that.

Mr. Garel-Jones : My hon. Friend is making a series of assertions. The fact is that the Dutch Government were openly disappointed about the defeat of their text. I am not aware--if my hon. Friend is so confident, perhaps he can give an instance--that they have said that they regard Maastricht as a centralising treaty.

Mr. Shepherd : It is a consolidating measure. My right hon. Friend will have to accept my recollection from press reports. I assure him that assertions have been made across the Community that Maastricht is essentially a centralising treaty, that the elements of the state are coming into place and that competences are being extended. The parrot chant of the new Con-Lab Front Bench is that the treaty is held back by a concept of subsidiarity, but no legal judgment has given flesh to confidence, in a juridical sense, in the belief that that means anything.

Sir Nicholas Bonsor (Upminster) : Has my hon. Friend noticed the insidious wording of paragraph 1 of article 128, which says : "The Community shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore."

Does my hon. Friend agree that, when there is conflict between the two, as there is bound to be, the Community will emphasise the common culture at the expense of the national culture?

Mr. Shepherd : My hon. Friend identifies one of the central concerns. I add the concern that a common anything is a homogenisation. The criticism of American culture made by many people on the continent of Europe is that it insidiously infects and diminishes European culture. The violence of American films and the crassness of American civilisation and culture are often cited. We all affect each other, but I fear that a central institutional framework will homogenise, reduce and diminish. Ministers have not argued why the French need protection for their diversity and the flowering of their own culture.

The second concept that has not been dealt with in the debate is "Action by the Community shall be aimed at encouraging co-operation between Member States and, if necessary, supporting and supplementing their action in the following areas".

The first is

"improvement of the knowledge and dissemination of the culture and history of the European peoples."

Again, I do not know what that means or why each individual nation, which is responsible for the custody and safeguarding of its historic traditions, cannot argue its own perception.

What is a European history with a common perspective? The one glory of life, civilisation and culture is that we stand on different hillocks, perhaps looking at the same distant horizon, but because the angle of perception is different, our interpretation of the view is also different. That is an intimate part of the culture and

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diversities of the people of Europe. The institutional framework set out in the article contradicts the objective that it claims to seek.

6.45 pm

Mr. Marlow : My hon. Friend may be living under some misconceptions, which the article will help to put right. For example, he may believe that King Harold was a great English patriot trying to keep the French at bay and that Edward the Confessor was a traitor because he asked those dreadful Frenchmen to come here. The reality is that Edward the Confessor was a great European patriot, and what he did when he ceded his kingdom to William the Conqueror was a precursor for the Maastricht treaty. When the Commission takes over the writing of the European history that our children are taught in school, that new reality will be very much the truth.

Mr. Shepherd : I am grateful for that. I am always in awe of the perspective from Northamptonshire.

The dissemination of the culture and history of the culture of European people is a major debate on what constitutes history and what is history. Every hon. Member reads--other than the Home Secretary in connection with this treaty and public interest immunity certificates. Aragon was asked, "What is history?" His response was, "First you have to invent it." That is the argument that I am trying to put. We look from different perspectives and each of us has a particular recollection : that of the nation state, by language, unites a view. We fight over the interpretation of history, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education has shown. We are very particular in our understanding of what it is. My fear is the homogenisation of all these matters.

The last thing that I want to say is about

"artistic and literary creation, including in the audiovisual sector".

Let us remember what art and culture was about. It was a popular expression of who we are, but now we have to subsidise it. I recall a directive on the proportion of television programmes which could be devoted to matters emanating from the United States. The European Commission wanted to protect what it regarded as the European concept.

We genuinely have a difficulty : English is our language. Churchill's "History of the English-Speaking Peoples" reaches around the world. We will always have a difficulty in that the accessibility of ideas, thoughts and spirit is communicated in a tongue that we understand. The United States will always be a great influence on us--and we, hopefully, on it--because of the commonality of our language. Our language reaches Canada, Australia and New Zealand. At the heart of all cultural, historical perceptions and so on, stands the fact that, no matter how rich or poor or what colour people are, we are united by our language. We speak the intimacy of our thoughts and experiences each to the other in our language.

All this nonsense, which is an endeavour to destroy the character of communities, of countries and of languages--all this tries to strike at the one great deception of Europe : it is not equal as regards public opinion, knowledge or understanding because it is not common in language. What do we do about that? Do we do something about it through this measure or through educational measures seeking some sort of Esperanto? In what direction are we heading?

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Glory be to our diversity. What was it, that wonderful thing? "Glory be to God for dappled things."

We are a "dappled thing". Let us have glory for what we are and reject the nonsense of homogeneity in this treaty insidiously undermining our institutions and opening up a gulf between both Front Benches and the people. How can the people have respect for the House when we are marched through the Lobbies and forbidden to speak? We cannot even return to a question. Every application for closure is accepted. We have had no free speech on this measure.

What do all the dumb journalists in the Hallelujah Chorus up in the Gallery think they do with their absurd commentaries on the British process of making and unmaking laws? Not one stays to listen to the detail of debate. "Yesterday in Parliament" is now in the business of mere sketch-writing. I listened to it this morning and I did not know what were the matters being discussed in Parliament in respect of the greatest constitutional settlement of the past 200 years, taking away our ability to change what Commission officials--Eurocrats--determine is in the interests or nature of European civilisation, culture and history.

We are it, we are part of it, and our constituents are part of it. So long as we can hold Ministers accountable for their actions, we can change the laws under which we live. We can direct all the funds that we wish to any objective that the British people deem appropriate. But by these arrangements, sneakily put through by conniving Front Benches, the Con-Lab alliance on this matter intends to try to take away that right.

If I speak passionately on this, it is because I feel passionate about it. If I hear people ask why we have not got through the debate, as some foolish hon. Members do, I will tell them that this was the method by which other countries of Europe lost their freedom : good men sat on their hands. Good men--and women, too--said that it would not work, that our fingerprints must not be on the treaty, and all the rest of it. Yet here are the fingerprints, embedding themselves into our very vitals, demonstrating what is the spirit of it. Across the continent of Europe, there have been moments when each of us has had to turn to the other for the survival of things in which we believe. We have seen atrocities, but so long as there are beacons for freedom, so long as there are Parliaments such as this which can express the views and will of the people, we can stand against the tyrannies which face the ordinary person in this world. The Comptroller of Her Majesty's Household (Mr. David Lightbown) rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question put, That the Question be now put :--

The Committee divided : Ayes 296, Noes 257.

Division No. 115] [6.53 pm

AYES

Adley, Robert

Ainsworth, Peter (East Surrey)

Aitken, Jonathan

Alexander, Richard

Alison, Rt Hon Michael (Selby)

Alton, David

Amess, David

Ancram, Michael

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

Arnold, Sir Thomas (Hazel Grv)

Ashby, David

Aspinwall, Jack

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Atkins, Robert

Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset North)

Baldry, Tony

Banks, Matthew (Southport)

Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

Bates, Michael

Batiste, Spencer

Beith, Rt Hon A. J.

Bellingham, Henry

Beresford, Sir Paul

Blackburn, Dr John G.

Booth, Hartley

Boswell, Tim

Bottomley, Peter (Eltham)

Bottomley, Rt Hon Virginia

Bowden, Andrew

Bowis, John

Brandreth, Gyles

Brazier, Julian

Bright, Graham

Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thorpes)

Browning, Mrs. Angela

Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)

Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

Burns, Simon

Burt, Alistair

Butler, Peter

Butterfill, John

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Carlile, Alexander (Montgomry)

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Carrington, Matthew

Channon, Rt Hon Paul

Chaplin, Mrs Judith

Chapman, Sydney

Clappison, James

Clarke, Rt Hon Kenneth (Ruclif)

Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey

Coe, Sebastian

Colvin, Michael

Congdon, David

Conway, Derek

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre For'st)

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

Cormack, Patrick

Couchman, James

Currie, Mrs Edwina (S D'by'ire)

Curry, David (Skipton & Ripon)

Dafis, Cynog

Davies, Quentin (Stamford)

Davis, David (Boothferry)

Day, Stephen

Deva, Nirj Joseph

Devlin, Tim

Dicks, Terry

Dorrell, Stephen

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Dover, Den

Duncan, Alan

Dunn, Bob

Durant, Sir Anthony

Dykes, Hugh

Eggar, Tim

Elletson, Harold

Emery, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Evans, David (Welwyn Hatfield)

Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)

Evans, Nigel (Ribble Valley)

Evans, Roger (Monmouth)

Evennett, David

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