House of Commons Hansard Debates for 5 May 1993

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amendment, the Government have shown a unique facility to be able to stick their heads in the sand but still come up with egg on their faces.

Mr. Hugh Dykes (Harrow, East) : Although I concede that it is not precisely within the same framework, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the argument for pressing the amendment is displaced by the existence of clause 5 of the Bill, which was voted on as new clauses 74 and 75?

Dr. Cunningham : No, I do not agree. Throughout arguments over the statements and decisions of the Chairman of Ways and Means about the admissibility of a vote on the issue, I have always maintained that amendment No. 2--amendment No. 27 in Committee--and new clauses 74 and 75 had specific, discrete and different purposes, and different implications for the legislation. That was my position, and it remains so. Whatever else the hon. Gentleman may say, we have been completely consistent about that throughout the debate and I maintain that position today.

The Foreign Secretary went on to advise the Committee that it did not really matter whether amendment No. 2 was carried. Speaking on the advice of his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, he said that it would have no consequence. We did not accept that belated, eleventh-hour and extremely partial analysis of the consequences of amendment No. 27 on 15 February, and nor do we accept those arguments today.

The Government--in the form of the Foreign Secretary then went on to say that, even though the amendment was of no significance, it did not matter, as it should be defeated anyway. His phrase was that it should be defeated for the sake of "completeness and clarity." Whatever the right hon. Gentleman can claim for the Government's position during this long drawn- out argument, it is not clarity. Even now, as the debate on amendment No. 2 commences, there is no clarity about the Government's intentions. Perhaps the Foreign Secretary would like to rise to tell the House the exact significance of his presence.

One way or the other, the Government are bound to lose. If--in the words of the Daily Mail, which is not generally known as a supporter of the Labour party--the Government do not know whether to run or to stand and fight, that tells us something about the confusion that continues to reign.

If the Foreign Secretary proposes that the House should accept the amendment now, after all the weeks of deliberation, obfuscation, prevarication and delay, the obvious question for us to ask--and, surely, for those outside to ask--is "What has it all been about?" Why did not the Government agree to accept the amendment in the first place? Not only would that have saved the House and the Chair a good deal of unnecessary anguish and difficulty ; it would have saved perhaps thousands of metres of column inches in the national newspapers and other publications which have been picking over the entrails in an attempt to establish the Government's objectives. Our objectives, in contrast, are consistent, and benefit from the clarity to which the Foreign Secretary referred.

Mr. Stephen Milligan (Eastleigh) : The right hon. Gentleman asked the Government for clarity. Will he

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clarify what he seeks to achieve? It is clear that amendment No. 2 will not reinstate the social chapter in the treaty ; what, then, is its object?

Dr. Cunningham : I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's premise. He made an almost identical intervention when I spoke in a similar debate on 20 January. He clearly has not changed his view ; I have not changed mine either. As I said on 20 January, and have said several times today, the object of the amendment is to secure the benefits of the social chapter in the interests of the people of Britain.

The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Douglas Hurd) : How will the amendment do that? Its wording does noteven purport to do that.

Dr. Cunningham : On 20 January, I said--ah, I see that the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office has entered the Chamber. The debate is no longer "Hamlet" without the prince.

On 20 January, I said that the amendment would confront the Government with a dilemma. Either they would have to renegotiate with our 11 Community partners to fold into the treaty the benefits of the social chapter for Britain, or they would have to resolve the problem in some other way. Now, friends of the Foreign Secretary are saying that, if the amendment is carried, they will use the opportunity to take action in the courts-- perhaps to seek judicial review. I do not know--that is a matter for them.

We also believe that the amendment will give employees and trade unions, singularly or in groups, an opportunity to take their cases to the European Court to ensure that the benefits of the social chapter apply to them in exactly the same way as they will undoubtedly apply to employees of their own companies operating in other Community member states. I know what the Foreign Secretary will say : he will say that none of that will result from the amendment.

Mr. Hurd : It is not in the amendment.

Dr. Cunningham : I am talking about the amendment's consequences. Here is another attempt at obfuscation : already, the right hon. Gentleman is starting to dissemble yet again. I have no doubt that he will repeat what he said on 15 February, on the advice of the Attorney-General. Let me reiterate that that interpretation is not widely shared--not only in the House, but among legal experts elsewhere in the Community, let alone elsewhere in the United Kingdom.

As I have made clear, we will pursue our amendment. We shall ask the House to support it, unless, as I suspect--the Foreign Secretary has already refused the opportunity to make the Government's intentions clear to the House at the outset--the right hon. Gentleman now tells us that the Government are going to accept it after all.

Mr. Tony Marlow (Northampton, North) : I am a genuine seeker after truth. On four occasions the right hon. Gentleman has talked about the benefits of the social protocol. Can he tell the House what the social protocol will provide that is not in articles 118A and 118B of the Single European Act, articles which he will know well?

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4.15 pm

Dr. Cunningham : At the beginning of the debate, I took, the precaution of reading out what we thought the general benefits of the social chapter provisions would be, but I guess either that the hon. Gentleman was not here at the time or that he was not listening very carefully. I have another observation to make on his intervention. If he is a genuine seeker after truth, I put it to him that he joined the wrong political party to attain that objective.

The reasons that the Attorney-General and the Foreign Secretary have in mind have nothing to do with neatness and tidiness. They involve something more substantial, I would argue, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) has argued in the past. The Attorney-General and the Foreign Secretary still appear to be terrified of the consequences of amendment No. 27, and seek to play down its implications by saying that it will have no effect at all. The reality, however, is that they have manoeuvred over a long period to try to prevent the House from coming to a decision on the matter. The Attorney-General and the Foreign Secretary were relieved each time that the amendment temporarily seemed to disappear from the agenda of the business of the House but, thanks to our persistence and the correct ruling in the interests of the House of Commons that you eventually gave, Madam Speaker, we have that opportunity today. The Attorney-General's view--produced, as I said, quite unexpectedly--had all the hallmarks of a desperate attempt to get the Government off the hook on the issue. It is astonishing--many people share this view--that the Government, having gone through the negotiations on the Maastricht treaty and having seen the amendment on the Amendment Paper for many months--from the spring of last year--should have consistently advanced one view and then, when it became apparent that they faced defeat, should have got the Attorney-General to pop up, like a rabbit out of a hat, and say something else. The Government did not even have the grace to say that the Foreign Secretary had been wrong. They just said that they had come to a different conclusion.

I put it to Ministers and to those who sit on the Conservative Benches that that kind of procedure and action has no credibility at all, not only in this House but with people outside. Little is more calculated to bring the workings of Government into disrepute than that kind of behaviour over discussions and decisions in the House of Commons. It is our belief--that is why we have persisted with amendment No. 27, and we are confident about it--that the consequences of its inclusion in the Bill will be to the eventual benefit of the people of Britain.

The Foreign Secretary asks why we persist with it. If he believes--I am not sure what in his heart of hearts he really believes in any longer--that the amendment is likely to end in the possibility of long, complicated and expensive litigation, there is a simple answer : accept the provisions of the social chapter now and stop this reactionary isolation, thus preventing our citizens from having the advantages that everyone--except the Conservative party and, as I said on 20 January, the neo-fascist party of France--believes will flow from it.

Mrs. Edwina Currie (Derbyshire, South) : Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that many Conservative Members feel that the social chapter is a mistake not just for this country but for much of the rest of Europe, given the

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fading competitiveness of Europe vis-a-vis the United States, Japan and the far east? Does he not agree that, if we are to protect our citizens and work forces and ensure that they have jobs in future, we need to be extremely careful about introducing high-cost employment laws?

Dr. Cunningham : I do not believe that, and neither does any other democratic party of any political persuasion in any member country of the European Community. The German Christian Democrats do not believe it ; the Free Democrats do not believe it ; and nor does any political party in any of the countries that are applicants for membership of the European Community.

As I said, the only other political party that shares that view is that led by Mr. Jean-Marie Le Pen. I doubt whether even the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) is comfortable in his company. I might add that, if she is successful in her quest for a seat in the European Parliament--a subject on which there is also some doubt in my mind--she will not find that any of the parties represented there share her view.

The view taken by the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South is reminiscent of the isolation of the Conservative party over another issue--the poll tax. We all remember how, in the face of all the evidence, of all rational argument and of all sensible debate, the Conservative party alone ploughed on into the quagmire of the poll tax, with all that that meant and with all the damage it caused, not only to individuals but to the formidable and worthwhile institution of democratic local government. I do not know how Conservative Members can take comfort in their isolation--their unique position of obstinacy. Their views are completely their own and are not supported anywhere else.

Mr. Phil Gallie (Ayr) : Given that the Labour party has changed its mind so many times in recent years, is it not possible that parties in other parts of Europe will eventually see the light and join the Conservative party in taking a realistic approach?

Dr. Cunningham : The light coming from the Conservative party to which the hon. Gentleman refers is little more than one-candle power. In reality, the concentrated beams of searchlights across the rest of Europe are all focused on one issue--the need for a developing European Community to be more than just a market economy and to have a social dimension.

That is what the argument has always been about. That remains our argument. That is why we have persisted. I believe that we have done parliamentary democracy a service by making sure that we all had an opportunity to vote on the issue and that we are right, too, on the merits of the argument.

I suspect that the Foreign Secretary will say that the Government propose to accept the amendment. In that case, he will have little credibility, but it seems that this Government will do anything rather than have to face a defeat in the Division Lobbies on this issue.

Mr. Hurd : It is not very long since we discussed the substance of this matter ; it seems to be a situation comedy that runs and runs, episode by episode. I noted today that it still has its addicts among the press, but I am not sure that its popular ratings are as great as all that. Only about

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a fortnight ago, I debated with the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) the substance of the question, and I shall not do so again, except in the briefest summary.

Most of my right hon. and hon. Friends believe that one of the biggest challenges facing the European economy is declining competitiveness. Unemployment is the biggest source of poverty in this country today. If we are uncompetitive, we create unemployment. From the figures that were given in the debate on 22 April, there can be no doubt that European competitiveness is declining. My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) was right in saying that that is one of the main problems.

If that is so, the true question for those interested in the social dimension of the single market is not how to ensure, through a social chapter, precisely the same levels of social provision in each member state, but how Europe can effectively compete in the world. Competitiveness is the key to generating the necessary wealth to provide the social safety net. The social provisions of any treaty cannot by themselves generate that. That is a brief summary of the substantive argument against the social chapter which led my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to insist on the opt-out.

The debate is not a new one in the House. We have debated the issue time and again over almost a year and a half. In that time, the House has rejected on three separate occasions Opposition motions or amendments calling for the incorporation of the social agreement into the treaty. So the House of Commons is repeatedly on record on that point. In the pre- Maastricht debate on 20 and 21 November 1991, a Labour amendment, which called for, among other things, the inclusion of the social agreement in the treaty of Rome, was defeated by 191 votes. [Hon. Members :-- "That was in the previous Parliament."] I shall come to this Parliament in a moment.

In the debate on 18 and 19 December 1991, immediately after Maastricht, the Liberals tabled an amendment deploring the social opt-out. It was defeated by a majority of 364. On Second Reading of the Bill, on 20 and 21 May 1992- -in this Parliament--Labour moved that the Bill not be read a Second time, partly because of the opt-out on the social chapter. That amendment was defeated by 99 votes. There is no doubt about the judgment of the previous Parliament and of this Parliament on the question whether the treaty should or should not include the social chapter.

Nevertheless, we recognised that the House wanted yet another chance to vote on the principle. The right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) pressed that, as did other hon. Members, and we accepted new clause 74, now clause 5 of the amended Bill. That will allow a further debate and a vote after the Bill has received Royal Assent, when the opt-out can be considered on its merits. The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) is just.

What is clearly not possible, despite the arguments of the right hon. Member for Copeland, is to discuss the substance on the basis of the amendment that we are debating. It does not provide for consideration of the opt-out on its merits. What we see as a result of the manoeuvring--this is the heart of the matter--not by the Government but by the Opposition, as has been spotted by the more perceptive commentators, is two different groups in the House engaged in procedural manoeuvres which are incompatible.

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The two camps who favour the amendment do so for entirely different and contradictory reasons. First, there are those who are opposed to the social chapter but even more opposed to the treaty of Maastricht itself ; they sit on the Conservative Benches. We know that they are opposed to the social chapter. I have here the record of the Divisions in which they expressed that opposition. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow), who intervened just now, has a stalwart record of voting against the social chapter. My hon. Friends the Members for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) and for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton)--I simply draw attention to two hon. Members who are immediately prominent in the debate--have a stalwart record, such as one would expect from Conservative Members, of opposing the social chapter. They are clear about that. The only thing that is clearer is that they dislike the treaty of Maastricht even more, and they will lose no opportunity to prevent it from being ratified.

4.30 pm

Mr. Marlow : The right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) talked about the benefits of the social chapter--my right hon. Friend is talking about the dangers of the social chapter. Before my right hon. Friend goes much further, will he go into the details of the protocol and tell us precisely what the Government are frightened of that is not contained in articles 118a and 118b of the Single European Act?

Mr. Hurd : My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) pressed me on that point during the debate on new clause 74. I do not have the list of examples that I gave him. If my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North wishes to refresh his memory, he will find the answer to his question in Hansard .

My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North voted five times in debates, in one way or another rejecting the social chapter. Obviously, after his research into the matter he concluded that the social chapter was deeply undesirable. A group of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend, dislike the social chapter. They dislike the treaty even more and will swallow their scruples about the social chapter because they believe that they can prevent the treaty from being ratified by voting for this amendment. That is completely in contradiction to the larger group of Labour Members who favour the social chapter and claim to support the Maastricht treaty. We have one group of hon. Members who want the treaty-- [Interruption.] I cannot be entirely exhaustive in my catalogue of the eccentricities of opinion in the House. But, broadly speaking, one group wants the treaty and the social chapter and another group wants neither the treaty nor the social chapter. Extraordinarily, both groups-- this is the curious feature of amendment No. 2--seem to think that the amendment serves their contrary purposes. Both groups cannot be right. In fact, both are wrong, and I shall explain why we believe that to be so.

Some Conservative Members want, above all, to prevent ratification, despite their Conservative analysis and rejection of the social chapter. I explained to the House in some detail in a statement on 15 February, to which the right hon. Member for Copeland genially referred, why the present amendment--amendment No. 2 is virtually the same as amendment No. 27--would not prevent ratification-- [Interruption.] I was in sackcloth

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and ashes on that occasion and I do not intend to put them on again. I can recap the argument and the advice I received from my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General which I gave to the House on that occasion, and which he repeated in the House a week later. Clearly, I must do so.

Amendment No. 27 is the same as amendment No. 2 in that it would exclude from the scope of clause 1(1) of the Bill--that is, from incorporation in domestic law under the European Communities Act--the protocol on social policy. That is all that it would do. The amendment would not have any effect on the treaty or its protocols. Therefore, the legal question must be : can Britain ratify the treaty even if the protocol on social policy were not incorporated in domestic law? Earlier this year, the Law Officers advised--as the House was told on 15 February--that if the amendment were carried, Acts adopted under the protocol would still not apply to the United Kingdom. It follows that no rights and obligations arise from those Acts which need to be given effect in our domestic law.

While incorporation of the protocol in domestic law is desirable, it is not necessary for ratification or for implementation of the Maastricht treaty. That is what I explained to the House on 15 February. There is no change of position. That is what my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney- General explained to the House on 22 February. That is the view and the analysis to which we hold today.

Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland) : Will the Foreign Secretary explain why he takes the view that the provision on the social chapter does not require to be ratified in accordance with the procedures of Parliament set out in the European Assembly Elections Act 1978, sections 6(1) and 6(2) of which require any measures flowing from an agreement of European Community countries which affect the powers of the European Parliament to be approved by Parliament? It seems to me that that makes it a necessity for the House to approve the social chapter. If the amendment is not passed, that cannot happen.

Mr. Hurd : That point has been raised by Liberal Democrat Members previously and there has been correspondence about it. But I am advised that clause 1(2) of the Bill specifically deals with and covers that point. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman's point does not contradict the analysis that I have been given. The point has been covered previously and the hon. Gentleman has returned to it.

Sir Peter Tapsell (East Lindsey) : Will my right hon. Friend explain something which puzzles a great many laymen such as myself and has done so for many months? If the social protocol is apparently so unimportant, why was the opt-out described as the main achievement of the Maastricht negotiation when my right hon. Friend returned from Maastricht?

Mr. Hurd : My hon. Friend is, indeed--I do not blame him for this, because I have wandered through these tracks myself--showing himself to be a layman. The opt-out is in the treaty. The protocol is attached to the treaty. The protocol is part of the treaty. Its status in the treaty is not affected by the amendment. I am seeking to show,

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following the advice from my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, that the effect of the amendment is simply on the question whether the opt-out protocol should be embodied in domestic law. Its status in the treaty and its value as an opt-out are not affected by the amendment, because the opt-out remains in the treaty.

Dr. John Cunningham : Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hurd : I shall come to the right hon. Gentleman's point in a moment.

The effect of the amendment--here I repeat the answer that I have just given to my hon. Friend the Member for East Lindsey (Sir P. Tapsell)--would be to remove the social protocol from those parts of the treaty to be incorporated into domestic law. However, as no obligations on the United Kingdom which require incorporation under the 1972 Act arise from the social protocol, the amendment would not prevent ratification.

The question of administrative costs has been raised by several of my hon. Friends. My right hon. and learned Friend the

Attorney-General has already advised how that obligation, if it ever arose, could be discharged. So those of my right hon. and hon. Friends who believe that passing the amendment would prevent ratification of the treaty are, in our judgment and according to our legal advice, incorrect.

Then there is the other, completely opposite, contrary and contradictory group who support the amendment. It is a larger group and is on the Opposition Benches. It accepts that the amendment will not prevent ratification of the treaty, but argues that it will force Britain to accept the agreement annexed to the protocol on social policy. We tried in a gentle way to press the right hon. Member for Copeland on that point during his speech. He moved sharply from the supposition that the amendment would have the effect that he described to some other vague talk about the consequences that would flow from it.

We are all experts on consequences that might flow from this or that, but that is not the same as saying that a vote for the amendment is a vote to bring Britain into the social chapter. The amendment does not have that effect either. It cannot do so because it is the treaty--I repeat the reply that I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for East Lindsey--which contains Britain's opt-out from the social agreement. The treaty cannot be amended by our debates on the Bill.

It will be for the House, at the end of all these exhaustive discussions, to decide on Third Reading whether to pass the Bill and thus enable the Government to ratify the treaty when the Bill comes into force. That is a decision for this Parliament. It will relate to the whole Maastricht package--that is to say, to the treaty including the protocols. The treaty is not a package--there are other matters that the House has debated and on which it has voted against the Government, which relate not to the treaty but to peripheral matters--but the treaty is not a package from which one can pick and choose. The House must and will soon decide whether it wishes to proceed with the legislation that makes ratification possible.

Mr. Michael Lord (Suffolk, Central) : My right hon. Friend has said that some Conservative Members do not want the Maastricht treaty or the social chapter. He has explained how a vote for this amendment will not necessarily damage the treaty. Will he confirm the

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statement that he made in one of our earlier debates, that a vote for this amendment will not in any way be a vote for bringing the social chapter to this country?

Mr. Hurd : That is a point which I am now developing. The Opposition Front-Bench Members are wrong and my hon. Friend is right : it does not have that effect. It simply concerns whether the protocol which allows 11 other countries to proceed down this path should be incorporated into domestic law.

Mr. George Robertson (Hamilton) rose --

Mr. Hurd : No, if I may proceed.

Hon. Members : Oh.

Mr. Robertson : The Secretary of State has said on a number of occasions, and again today, that amendment No. 27 and now amendment No. 2 are undesirable, but he will not tell the House why they are undesirable. Previously, he said that he wanted to defeat amendment No. 27 for the sake of completeness and clarity. If the passing of amendment No. 27 is undesirable and will leave the Bill unclear and imprecise, will the Secretary of State tell the House the consequences of that? He consistently refuses to do so.

Mr. Hurd : Because I have not reached that part of my speech. I am trying to show how the whole basis on which the Labour party, and the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) in particular, has manoeuvred, with unrivalled perseverance and occasional skill, is misguided. It does not work. My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Central (Mr. Lord) is entirely right. It is a false supposition that has brought the Labour party, through all this ingenuity and this maze of amendments, to this particular position.

Mr. Nicholas Budgen (Wolverhampton, South-West) rose

Mr. Hurd : This amendment does not, and cannot be argued to, incorporate the social chapter in the treaty and therefore bind it on this country. What the House has achieved is an undertaking, soon to be embodied in law, that there will be a debate on the substance, but that debate does not flow from this amendment or from this discussion.

Mr. Budgen rose --

Mr. Hurd : I will give way to my hon. Friend before I close. 4.45 pm

In view of what the right hon. Member for Copeland said about other partners and their views, I would remind the House that all those states--

Mr. Budgen rose --

Mr. Hurd : I will give way to my hon. Friend, and then not give way later.

Mr. Budgen : In view of my right hon. Friend's answer to our hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Central (Mr. Lord), does he agree that when the Home Secretary and the chairman of the Conservative party addressed the conference at Harrogate, knowing the advicany

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Conservative Member who voted for amendment No. 27 was voting for the imposition of the social chapter on this country?

Mr. Hurd : I cannot recall the phrases or the dates on which they were used, but we shall see when we come to the debate which follows from clause 5. That will be the test because there will be no doubt then that we are voting on the substance of the social chapter. That is its purpose. So we will perhaps remember these exchanges on that occasion.

I should like to finish the point that I had started on. The right hon. Member for Copeland drew attention to our alleged isolation on the substance of this matter, but all those states that have already ratified the treaty have ratified the social protocol--that is to say, the British opt-out--along with the rest of the treaty. Despite their supposed preference that Britain should join them in the social chapter, they have not made a point of it or held up ratification on this issue. It is only the Labour party, to the constant puzzlement of its friends abroad, which persists in giving this matter priority.

The amendment, therefore, would not achieve either of the contradictory purposes of its backers. It could not possibly achieve both. It does not, in our view, achieve either.

Dr. John Cunningham : I am just wondering about the right hon. Gentleman as his speech unfolds. He has already repudiated his right hon. Friend the Minister of State in his own Department and now he has repudiated the view of his right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary. How many other colleagues' views will he repudiate in the ramshackle argument that he is advancing to the House?

Mr. Hurd : I am not sure why I gave way to the right hon. Gentleman, because I stand absolutely on the statement, the analysis and the advice which we gave on 15 February on the essence of the matter and which my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General repeated on 22 February. That is our position and our advice. The two groups advocating this amendment cannot achieve their purpose by its passage.

What would the effect of the amendment be? It would depart--and here I come to why the Bill was drafted as it was--from our consistent legislative practice, which has been to list all amendments to the treaty of Rome in the 1972 Act. That has been the practice over the years. It has not been essential, but it has been desirable, for obvious reasons, to avoid possible confusion in British law. That is why we argued against amendment No. 27 and that is why, other things being equal, it will be desirable for the Bill to proceed as originally drafted. It comes under the heading of "desirable", and we have made that position clear ever since 15 February.

Mr. John Wilkinson (Ruislip-Northwood) rose

Mr. Hurd : May I just complete this point?

That is why we have argued that this amendment, like amendment No. 27 before it, is undesirable. Although it neither forces Britain to adopt the social agreement nor prevents ratification of the Maastricht treaty, that is why we have argued that it is none the less undesirable and that it would be preferable to incorporate the protocol in our

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domestic law in the usual way. That is the reason for the original drafting of the Bill and for the way in which we have phrased the arguments ever since.

Mr. Wilkinson : In what way would it be desirable for the British people to be called upon to pay for the imposition of the social chapter to which they are not a signatory? We are already the second highest net contributor to the Community. How would it benefit the British people? Would the elimination of this protocol not at least make payment by the British people more difficult?

Mr. Hurd : If the protocol were eliminated from the treaty, that would be so, but the amendment does not and cannot have that effect. I do not know whether there will be additional administrative expenses. It is a question of dividing electric light bills and salaries. But if there were, it would be entirely legal and reasonable that, through the procedures that I have already listed, those expenses should be met.

We are faced with an alliance of opposites and we must counter that. Their purpose is not to consider the opt-out on its merits--there will be an opportunity to do that in the debate on clause 5 of the Bill. I do not doubt, relying on the good sense of my hon. Friends on the Government Benches, that when we come to the debate on substance under clause 5, the House will confirm again its support for the opt-out. The only common purpose of those favouring the amendment is to inflict a defeat on the Government, which is reasonable and understandable from the point of view of the Opposition. I do not see why, in the circumstances that I have described, we should give them that satisfaction. [Interruption.] As I have tried to show--and I think that the argument has been listened to with patience--this amendment is tiresome, undesirable, but, in practice, irrelevant.

The Government are prepared to acquiesce on the amendment-- [Interruption.] --on the basis that I have explained, rather than give our push-me pull-you opponents the entirely synthetic victory, revealed by their cackles, that they crave.

Sir Russell Johnston (Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber) : Well, well, there we are. The Foreign Secretary, in another context a few moments ago, said that the attitude to the social chapter adopted by the Opposition parties was a constant puzzlement to our friends abroad. I would have said that the Foreign Secretary's various speeches about the social chapter certainly well merit that particular description. We are now told, in the presence of the Attorney-General, that legislation is cast in a manner in which things are put in that are preferable and desirable--not necessary, but preferable and desirable. I am no lawyer, but all my lawyer friends--of whom I have, sadly, quite a number--always tell me that the essence of legislation is the words that it contains, all of which are necessary. I presume that that is why all legislation is so spare and lean.

In any event, the Liberal Democrats contend that, far from being simply preferable and desirable, the words contained in the amendment which the Government have now accepted are necessary and have certain definite effects. That is a view which the Foreign Secretary contests, but he will have to admit that it is held by a considerable number of persons of very considerable legal

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reputation. There is no doubt that, by accepting this amendment, in due course of time a legal challenge will be made and it will then be determined whether we and others are right or the Government are right. Our contention, in essence, is that the Maastricht treaty and the social protocol to it are separate legal entities. That is also made clear in clause 1(2) of the Bill. We would therefore argue--as did my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) when he intervened on the Foreign Secretary--that if amendment No. 2 is accepted, as it now is, while it will not affect ratification of the treaty about which the Foreign Secretary agrees, it will compel the Government to renegotiate the social protocol with the other 11 member states. Even if the Government deny this, it is our contention that in time a challenge to the European Court will reveal them to be wrong. That will not force the Government to accept the social chapter--in the end we cannot force them to accept it despite our various efforts.

The Foreign Secretary talked about an alliance of opposites. I agree with him ; I have said in other speeches that there was a putative alliance of opposites.

Mr. Patrick Cormack (Staffordshire, South) : An unholy alliance.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : It must be if I voted with him.

Sir Russell Johnston : The knowledge of the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) on ecclesiastical matters is greater than my own.

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