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Yeo, TimYoung, Sir George (Acton)
Tellers for the Noes :
Mr. Sydney Chapman and
Mr. Andrew MacKay.
Question accordingly negatived.
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Orders of the Day
European Communities (Amendment) Bill
Considered in Committee [Progress, 19 April]
[Mr. Michael Morris
in the Chair ]
Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [19 April], That the clause (Entry into force) be read a Second time : This Act shall come into force on a day appointed by the Secretary of State by order in a statutory instrument.'.-- [Mr. Shore.] Question again proposed.
The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr. Michael Morris) rose --
The Chairman : Before I call the first speaker, I have a short announcement to make.
In the circumstances, I think that it would be for the convenience of hon. Members generally if I were to say now that I am prepared, after the Division on new clause 8, to select for a separate Division new clause 49, in the name of the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould).
I remind the Committee that in this debate we are also considering the following :
New clause 46-- Ascertainment of national opinion (No. 2)
(1) Immediately after the passing of this Act the Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament the draft of an Order in Council making such provision as Her Majesty thinks appropriate for ascertaining, by means of a confirmatory referendum or otherwise, the preponderance of national opinion with respect to the commencement of this Act.
(2) If a draft laid before Parliament under this section is approved by a Resolution of each House, Her Majesty in Council may make an Order in the terms of the draft ; provided that the Order shall not be made unless separate provision has been made by Parliament for defraying out of public funds any expenses to be incurred by a Minister of the Crown or Government Department in carrying the Order into effect.'.
Amendment (a) to new clause 46, in subsection (1), at end insert and also the incorporation or otherwise of the United Kingdom into the Agreement annexed to the Protocol on Social Policy.'.
New clause 48-- Commencement (Opinion of the House) --
This Act shall not come into force until the House of Commons has expressed a view on the desirability of a referendum in each component nation of the United Kingdom with respect to the commencement of this Act.'.
Amendment (a) to new clause 48, at end add
and on whether such referenda should consult on the incorporation or otherwise of the United Kingdom into the Agreement annexed to the Protocol on Social Policy.'.
New clause 49-- Commencement provisions --
This Act shall take effect on the first day of January 1996 or on such earlier date as may be specified in any subsequent Act of Parliament as the date for the holding of a consultative referendum to establish whether or not majority opinion supports The Treaty on European Union.'.
Amendment (a) to new clause 49, at end add
and also the incorporation or otherwise of the United Kingdom into the Agreement annexed to the Protocol on Social Policy.'.
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New clause 50-- Referendum Motion --Within three months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State shall place a motion before Parliament which will provide the opportunity for members of both Houses to express a view on the desirability or otherwise of seeking the views of the electors of the United Kingdom on the merits of the decision taken by Parliament in relation to the Act.'.
Amendment (a) to new clause 50, at end add
and also on the incorporation or otherwise of the United Kingdom into the Agreement annexed to the Protocol on Social Policy.'. New clause 53-- Transfer of powers --
No power transferred by this Act from the United Kingdom to European institutions shall be so transferred unless and until the House of Commons has had an opportunity to assess whether it is expedient to measure, and if so by what means, the degree of support within the United Kingdom.'.
Amendment (a) to new clause 53, at end add
for the Treaty on European Union and also for the incorporation or otherwise of the United Kingdom into the Agreement annexed to the Protocol on Social Policy.'.
7.26 pm
Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) : The association between new clauses 8 and 46 is important because, without it, the result would not be as effective as new clause 46 by itself. I note that new clause 46 is headed "Ascertainment of national opinion". I suggest that the better heading would be "Trust the people". In discussing a new constitutional arrangement--there have been difficulties for the Chair and for some hon. Members--we have been addressing substantial constitutional changes that lie behind a two-clause Bill. In doing so, the intention or purpose of the Maastricht treaty has not been clear to everyone in the United Kingdom. As a result, the nation as a whole has suffered. The Government, those on the Opposition Front Bench and the Liberal Democrats have not over-exercised themselves in trying to explain in detail what is sought through the Maastricht treaty. A continuing theme of the electorate generally is to ask what Maastricht is all about--"Why are you going on about it? What is the fuss? What is going on?". Over the many days in Committee, we have tried patiently to unpick arguments and to demonstrate--this has been done by hon. Members on both sides of the House--that it is proposed that there should be a significant change in the balance of our constitution. At 50 years of age, I feel old-fashioned when I talk about old verities. Before I became a Member of the House of Commons, it was unthinkable to me that we would be arguing about a transference from democratic government to new arrangements. That is why passion, anger, apprehension and fear are felt by many right hon. and hon. Members and by many other people throughout the country.
Our constitution is founded on the democratic principle, which is government of the people, by the people, for the people, but that is not the system envisaged under the Maastricht treaty. It is, in fact, a system almost of "arrangements", whereby we transfer decisions over whole areas of life--areas that have been subject to the decisions of the House and have been absolute in that term, subject to such time as we wish to repeal or reform them.
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7.30 pmAs has been pointed out by the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) and my hon. Friends the Members for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) and for Stafford (Mr. Cash), the Bill demonstrates that the British Government are proposing that the British people enter a new political state. It is as simple as that. They give no reasons as to why this is absolutely essential. They indicate that it is in the national interest, but will not give details.
It has always been open to the Government to issue a White Paper. In the 1970s, a White Paper was issued, reassuring Members of Parliament and the country at large that the absolute principle within our conventions of ministerial accountability would remain in place and that ultimately a British Minister could exercise a veto. Maastricht has no truck with any of that nonsense. The old verity of democratic control--whereby the people, when they voted, could change Governments and thereby change laws--is lost in large measure under the provisions of the Bill.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Douglas Hurd) : Is not my hon. Friend making a critique of the European Communities Act 1972? Was it not in that Act, whereby we joined the Community, that the system of Community law--which is really what he is attacking--was instituted, approved by the House and subsequently approved by a referendum? Rather than the modifications in the Single European Act or the treaty of Maastricht, is it not that step, 20 years ago, which produced the situation that he is now attacking?
Mr. Shepherd : My right hon. Friend has made what I consider a very valid point. When I was a man of 30 and these arguments were put, I did not realise the significance of a new system of law to which the British system of law became subordinate. That did not come out to me, as an elector, during the debates. That was profoundly important. I have come to recognise the difficulties that all persons, whether of good will to these arrangements or not, have subsequently had to face as it has progressively moved on in what I think a right hon. Friend of ours called the ratchet effect, after leaving the Front Bench.
Mr. Bill Walker (Tayside, North) : My hon. Friend will recollect that between 1972 and 1975, when the referendum was held, we were told that we would be retaining the right of the veto and that that would put our Government and Ministers in a strong position ; that we would never have things forced upon us. The debate that took place at that time was largely on a false prospectus, because we did not go into the details adequately-- except those of us campaigning the other way. We were not listened to ; we were told we were wrong. Subsequently, we have been shown to be right.
Mr. Shepherd : My hon. Friend was wiser than I. I now absolutely agree with what my hon. Friend says. Like the general public at large, I could not weigh things fully then, and I voted in the referendum for the renegotiated terms of our membership. It was a judgment that I had to make because I believed in the arguments. I remember well that the basic argument that was predicted was that it was in our economic interests. The "cold bath"--I think it was called--of Europe would revitalise our fogged- up and
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fuggy processes, and the dynamism of the new competitive impetus would bring us into a new era of Elysian fields and perpetual harmony.Sir Teddy Taylor (Southend East) : Does my hon. Friend accept that when those in the "no" campaign were putting forward the accurate, clear and precise words now said by the Foreign Secretary, we were told that we were deliberately misleading the public and causing unnecessary trouble? Does he further accept that if the clear, precise and truthful words said by the Foreign Secretary had been said during the 1972 referendum, people might well have voted no, as they should have?
Mr. Shepherd : I agree entirely with my hon. Friend now. As life goes on, of course, we make different judgments as further and better particulars, experience and our own wisdom improve.
We started with a system of democratic accountable government. However imperfect it was--however much we made fools of ourselves in the eyes of the public--there was, nevertheless, a basic trust that if the people voted and expressed a view, it affected the laws and government of our country. That is--or was--fundamental to our system of government.
Mr. Stephen Milligan (Eastleigh) : Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Shepherd : No ; I want to develop my argument.
Between that period and today, we have been confronted with what effectively, behind a two-clause Bill, is the outline of a new constitution. That constitution proposes that the whole range of issues that we discuss, whether they be education, transport systems or--most important to someone like myself--citizenship, are to be secured by two clauses, and we may not change the substance of that constitution. I can think of no arrangement in the development of a free and democratic world-- certainly within the English-speaking traditions--whereby two Front Benches willingly accept the concept that we may dismiss the democratic argument.
That is why I call it the old verity. I feel old fashioned, standing here and trying to propose a new clause called "Ascertainment of national opinion"--what I would call "Trust the people." We cannot doubt that transferring control over economic and monetary policies to an unelected central bank somewhere else means that the institution of government becomes a Council of Ministers, meeting in secret, to pass laws on these matters at the sole suggestion of the centralising bureaucracy--the single institutional framework, as it is called--that permeates the new arrangements. We should use the old tests of democracy--"How do I change the law?" That is a simple question which we have taken for granted over the years. It is so evident and so obvious--you change your Member of Parliament or convince him by argument. Ultimately, if your Member of Parliament is unsympathetic to your argument, you campaign, argue and reason as part of a democratic debate, which has an outcome in the laws under which you live.
Our rule of law has that as its essential trust : it expects obedience. We in the House all expect obedience to the law, and we can demand it on the basis that there is a proper democratic route by which we can change the law. It may be Anglo-Saxon, English, Scottish or Northern
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Irish--it may be peculiar to our own islands --but, within the English-speaking world, it is the very basis of our understanding of democracy.That is at issue here. The debates on the Bill have, if they have done nothing else, demonstrated very clearly the framework of the new constitutional arrangements. I can think of no system of democratic government on earth that would take away the rights of ordinary people, without explanation, and ultimately without regard to their view in the matter.
That is the purpose behind the new clause--to return the question to our own fellow electors. None of us is different from them. We have the privilege to represent them, but the powers that we exercise are their powers. I am now a low Tory--I have had the benefit of high Toryism--but this is a people's democracy. This is our Parliament, which will determine the framework of our lives.
I listened very carefully to what was said at our party conference. There is a greater national interest. The national interest, no less, is invoked but there is no explanation of why that national interest should do away with the democratic traditions in this country secured over two or three centuries. The long, slow march of Everyman is set aside in a single Act of Parliament which is intended to be irrevocable and irreversible.
In those very phrases, we contradict the conventions of which we were so proud. We were always deemed not to need a written constitution in the United Kingdom because we were secure in who we were, and in our conventions and arrangements. Dicey, Jennings, and every constitutional writer that we have had, asserted them. Indeed, in a half-hearted way, what I now think of as a miserable tome, "Erskine May", records that. It records the moving away from democratic government. We feel the diffidence within the House now that we feel that there are so many things we can no longer challenge. That is reflected in the diffidence of hon. Members. There are so many things that we feel we cannot challenge. Gosh, what poor imitations we are of our forebears. But we are the inheritors of a great system. Therefore, my old verity--the verity on which most of us were elected to this House--ought to be proclaimed and shouted for. If we are to give away democratic government, we must be adoubt--out there is the drip, drip, drip that something ain't right about these arrangements.
When, last Thursday, the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) said that it was a stitch up, he struck a chord with the people. They are deeply dissatisfied with this measure. They are right to be dissatisfied. I have said, from the time of the last election, that I cannot vote for the passing of this measure without the issue being returned to the British people for their decision. I have not heard one word from the party that used to fight for the right to a vote, or from the Treasury Bench, as to why the surrender of democratic, accountable government is right. As historians look at the record of each day's debate, they will find that the most extraordinary feature of this one is that the great, democratic parties of the United Kingdom were unable at any time during the debate to address the question of democratic government. Democracy has gone out of fashion.
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Mr. Quentin Davies (Stamford and Spalding) : My hon. Friend speaks about the surrender of democracy. I know how strongly he feels on the subject, but does he not recognise that not just this country but the 11 other member states of the Community are deeply attached to the principle of democracy? Is my hon. Friend suggesting that all the people of Europe have been bamboozled by this extraordinary conspiracy to overthrow democracy? Even if he believes that that is credible, is it not slightly perverse of him, if he is concerned about democracy, democratic accountability and the democratic deficit in the Community, to oppose the Maastricht treaty, which incorporates a number of steps to increase democratic accountability? My hon. Friend mentioned that the Council of Ministers meets in secret, but he seems to have forgotten that at the Edinburgh summit it was agreed for the first time that those meetings should now be open. Does he not welcome that fact?
Mr. Shepherd : I have never claimed that I am well schooled, but after remarks like that I feel remarkably well schooled in the traditions and constitution of my country. I am not responsible for how other noble, great countries pursue their own systems of government. However, we have a duty to pay regard to our system of government. I was elected by the people of Aldridge-Brownhills to try to safeguard that with which I was entrusted. If my constituents' right to democratic government is to be taken away, ought they not to be asked about it?
This extraordinary legislation is predicated without a mandate. The ill schooled may suggest that there is a general mandate. As we pointed out at the last election, three parties took for granted the fact that this was to come about. I searched and waited. Where was the appeal from the party leaders--"We must have Maastricht's form of government"? But that is only one route out of many that the Community may take.
The Government now tell us that at the next intergovernmental conference the shape of the new constitution will be refined in our interests, since this one is not satisfactory. The fact is that it is not satisfactory for the whole of Europe. My case, though, is based not on what is satisfactory for the whole of Europe but on what is appropriate for Britain.
There were two copies of the Conservative party manifesto in my constituency. My agent had one ; I had the other. It was forwarded, unfortunately, after I had had the opportunity to give guidance to my electorate as to the principles by which I stood. I am told by Conservative central office that between 120,000 and 130,000 copies of the manifesto were published. I imagine that, somewhere, there is a warehouse in which they are gathering dust, awaiting the wonderful day when my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford will be able to auction them off as a lot of great constitutional significance. All that the Conservative party manifesto said about Maastricht was, "Haven't the Government done well to negotiate the Maastricht agreement?"
I have no idea what the Labour party manifesto said, because it did not seem to penetrate Aldridge-Brownhills. Some of my constituents were, no doubt, blessed with gaining possession of the Labour party's central doctrine on Maastricht. Conservative central office also advised us by means of a little leaflet--a quick guide to what the Conservative party stood for. There were many more copies of that leaflet. In fact, we used it as an election
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leaflet. We scoured it for the new form of constitution that the Government invest so much faith in. They did not discuss it during the general election campaign, but they have troubled the House of Commons with it for nearly 15 months.Let us consider the sequence. The Maastricht treaty was never available to the House of Commons. It fluttered in--the Minister of State claimed with pride some responsibility, and rightly so, for this--through the window of the Library. There were mimeographed copies of the treaty, but it was incomprehensible and difficult to read. A few Members were troubled by it, but the Government's arguments centred on what would be excluded from discussion. They secured two exclusions, but it is unsatisfactory to approach a constitutional issue in that way.
We had a debate last November in which I spoke on that matter. Although both the Treasury Bench and the Opposition Bench should have taken it on board, not one word was said about democracy. That is shameful. We ought to have greater regard for that which justifies our presence here.
7.45 pm
Mr. John Gorst (Hendon, North) : The way that my hon. Friend talks suggests that he believes that British democracy for British people can be performed only in a theatre called the House of Commons or the Palace of Westminster. Let us substitute for the word "democracy" the word "Shakespeare". If, instead of taking the view that Shakespeare can be performed only in British theatres, we took Shakespeare and democracy for the British people abroad and tried to make it work in a much larger entity, as well as trying to make it work in specific ways here, would that not be much better? Is my hon. Friend not taking far too narrow a view of the issue?
Mr. Shepherd : I am not sure what my hon. Friend is driving at. I am here by virtue of the fact of my citizenship. I am British. I was born in Scotland and represent a west midlands constituency. I have to look to those who are my ain folk, if I may use that term. I have to consider what are the best ways in which we can form a system of government. I can think of no finer and more civilised form of government that reflects the will of the people than democratic self-government through our institutions. We are capable of corrupting them, as these measures have demonstrated. We corrupt them by our lack of candour about them.
We are told that Maastricht represents a great gain. The national interest, no less, is the argument. We are told to pander to the people and tell them why their freedoms, rights and long-secured traditions, attitudes and ways of looking at life, formed within our hearts in this common society, must pass away and that they must be ruled by a Council of Ministers, still meeting in secrecy, apart from a few televised illustrations of what could come about, and by a bureaucracy under Mr. Delors--unelected, but acting as though he were the prime minister of a great state, no less--who wants to be the President of the Commission.
The treaty seeks to make us citizens of somewhere else. Slowly, the Government--or Ministers, including the Leader of the House, the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry--have come, to their surprise, to understand that the treaty makes the Queen a citizen of Europe. I make that point to
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demonstrate a profound shift in the concept of Queen and Parliament. I know that this idea is not well explained in our schools. The Secretary of State for Education should perhaps consider the introduction of a course on British democracy. That might demonstrate that we have something to be proud of and that there courses through our bones the means of control over our state. The central thrust is that we have a constitution. I am being asked to be a citizen by Act of Parliament on a matter of the most profound sentiment, but without any reference to me. How do I feel? How does any British person outside the House feel when he is told that he is now a citizen of a new political organisation in which the United Kingdom is a subordinate constituent and in which the European Court of Justice is the supreme court which will interpret the laws outside our traditions and courts?Sir Terence Higgins (Worthing) : My hon. Friend is speaking as if the referendum is the traditional form of British parliamentary democracy. The reality is that it is our representative system of democracy which forms the basis of this place, and it is the referendum which will corrupt that system. Has not my hon. Friend learnt from his mistake last time when he voted in a referendum which effectively set in concrete the arrangements made at that time and which made it far more difficult for any subsequent changes to be introduced?
Mr. Shepherd : I am slightly surprised by what my right hon. Friend says about the concept of the referendum. I am grateful that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary is here. The then Prime Minister, Edward Heath, said that these things would be achieved with the full-hearted consent of the British people and Parliament. It is a language which one does not usually associate with my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) and, as often as not, it is attributed to the Foreign Secretary. Even in those words, there is a profound understanding that, to secure the changes, one requires the whole-hearted consent not only of Parliament but of the British people. That theme has run through the history of the Conservative party in the 20th century.
I put on the record the Conservative party's constitutional amendment of 1911 moved by A. J. Balfour.
Mr. Nicholas Budgen (Wolverhampton, South-West) : My hon. Friend and I have often discussed this question. He and my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) put their arguments in almost continental terms of great principles, but our unwritten constitution has muddled its way forward not by the exposition of great abstract principles such as they suggest but by ordinary people saying in a muddling way that something is not quite right. They do not understand why it is not quite right, but they know that something should be done.
Surely one of the strongest cases for the referendum is based not on abstract principles as to whether, on the whole, we are in favour of a referendum or not--on the whole, I am much against
referendums--but on the fact that something is not quite right about the extremely authoritarian way in which the Government have dealt with their supporters. They have encouraged constituency supporters to attack sitting Members of Parliament in a way which is deeply antipathetic to the traditions of the Tory party. There is also something not quite right about the disgraceful way in which the Government have dealt with the House.
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It is because there is something not quite right that those of us who think not in terms of great principles but in pragmatic and Tory terms come to the reluctant conclusion that the only way in which the Government's disgraceful behaviour can be rectified is by dealing with it through the otherwise rather unattractive mechanism of a referendum.Mr. Shepherd : I always enjoy the interventions of my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen). I have no doubt that his course has been to protect the interests of the citizens of Wolverhampton so that they may vote on every matter with authority, and that the preservation of that principle has been central to his arguments.
Balfour ended his speech of 8 May 1911 on his constitutional amendment with these words :
"I am quite convinced the more this proposal is talked of in this House and the country the more it will receive support. There are difficulties in its application but still in the Referendum lies our one hope of getting the sort of constitutional security which every other country but our own enjoys I further believe, so far from its demoralising, that it would be a great practical education in politics. How many elections are now fought on purely personal grounds. How many give their vote blue or yellow because they have always voted so, or because their fathers voted so. How often a man is content to say, I stick to my party, I am loyal to the principles I always professed' or, like a Scotch voter who said, Tariff Reform is an excellent policy, and as soon as the Liberals bring it in, I will vote for it most heartily' "--
gone are those days.
"How many elections are decided by sentiments of that kind, and very respectable sentiments they are, too. I really think to have a controversy thrashed out in the House and then in the Second Chamber, and then refer it to the electors ... not on the merits of either the Government or the party, but on the merits of the Bill itself, that that, so far from currupting the sources of democratic life, would only be a great education for political people I am convinced whatever is done now that the controversy that has been started on this great method of constitutional reform must and will bear fruit, and that before long, and practically in the lifetime of all of us, we may see this great democratic engine brought into practice."--[ Official Report, 8 May 1911 ; Vol. XXV, c. 935.]
It took many years and my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup to introduce a referendum to the United Kingdom in the form of border polls in Northern Ireland. In that principle was the recognition that for great constitutional change one had to ask the people and that, as it was a continuing question, it should be repeated each time. We are long overdue in putting another question to the electors of Northern Ireland, but the principle has fed through Conservative politics all the years of this century. The only example I can find of a Prime Minister who has not served in a Cabinet that has recommended a referendum or has not recommended a referendum himself is the present Prime Minister. All other leaders of our party in this century have either served in Cabinets that recommended a referendum at some time or have themselves recommended it.
Mr. Hurd : Is not my hon. Friend being a little economic with history? He might not recall--but my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) will--that the principle was last discusssed in the House in relation to Europe in 1975, before my hon. Friend's recent Bill. These arguments were deployed at a time, I would argue, when the case for a referendum was strongest because it was then, or a couple of years before, that the
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House had accepted the principle of Community law, the relationship between the House and the institutions of the Community and the jurisdiction of the European Court. The things about which my hon. Friend is most disturbed were accepted then.Two or three years later, the question arose whether there should be a referendum. The Conservative party, in opposition, had to make up its mind. On that occasion, the speech of the Leader of the Opposition--Baroness Thatcher--dealt with the questions of principle but homed in on the conclusion drawn by my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) that the old-fashioned verities of which my hon. Friend speaks were reflected in the principle of representative democracy and that we owed our constituents not only our industry but our judgment. That was what we were for. On that basis, my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West, I and many others--relatively new Members--went into the House behind our leader precisely on that point of principle to vote for representative democracy and against a referendum.
Mr. Shepherd : That may be so. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will remember that, towards the end of her speech, the then Leader of the Opposition also accepted the principle that there could be referendums at some future stage when profound matters were in question. It is true that at that time the Conservative party voted against the referendum, but there is no great consistency, because in 1972 the party voted for a referendum when in government. I was merely trying to point out that this is not such a vexed question of representative government that we diminish Parliament ; I would argue that we reinforce it. I take the Balfour view and that of all our political leaders, even Winston Churchill.
I see that some of my hon. Friends now cite Attlee's response to Churchill's request for a continuation of the wartime coalition against Japan by the device of a referendum. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will perhaps recall--from his reading, as he is too young to recall it in any other way--that Attlee said then that referendums were the devices of dictators and demagogues. Indeed, one can understand why he might say that, having lived through the Europe of the 1930s, in which the Hitlers, the Mussolinis and the Francos of this world used the referendum as an instrument for just such purposes. I understand the diffidence within the usual and traditional British political culture, and the reasons why one would be wary.
However, the fundamental question is whether there are any issues that should be returned to the electorate. Dicey would have said, as he ultimately did--
8 pm
Mr. Tony Marlow (Northampton, North) : Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Shepherd : I am trying to talk about some rather important matters, and I want to develop my argument.
Are there any questions that should be returned to the electorate? I, and many other hon. Members, contend that the Bill is such an issue because the treaty purports to be
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"irrevocable" and "irreversible". Those words are used in the treaty, and that concept goes much against the political culture and tradition that my right hon. Friend identified.My right hon. Friend could say that such matters have already been disposed of, but I find it difficult to present to the British nation as a whole the facts that there is a range of laws, that there is an independent central bank elsewhere issuing currency, and that, despite all our experience, there is a drive towards the reinstatement of the exchange rate mechanism in stage 2. It is a moot point. We have legal judgment on my side of the argument ; the Government advance their own legal judgment, and the matter will be determined ultimately by the Commission and the European Court.
Mr. Marlow : Should my hon. Friend's answer to the Foreign Secretary not be as follows? Our right hon. Friend is saying that we are a representative democracy. We are a representative democracy--just. But if the Bill goes through we shall not be one, so we want a referendum before we cease to be a representative democracy.
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