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Mr. Dalyell: The hon. Gentleman uses the words "in reality". May I ask whether in reality the hon. Gentleman would be satisfied with anything less than our country leaving the Community?
Mr. Cash: I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman made that point, because, as I have made clear time and again, and again today, my objective is not that we should leave the European Union. I am saying that the consequences of the direction in which we are being taken present a price to the British people, the electorate and the voters, which is taking us further and further towards that critical position. I am saying that, unless we renegotiate the treaties, we are set on a course that will lead us to the impossible question, which I put in the confidence motion debate, of whether we have to leave. That may be too high a price.
Mr. Randall: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that such talk is certainly not reflected in the opinion polls? The Gallup poll in The Daily Telegraph in December showed that there had been a 37 per cent. swing from the Conservative position in 1992, when we had the general election. Labour has a positive approach to Europe compared with such talk. According to the poll, the British people want us to be in Europe. There is no question but that they want us to play a positive role.
Mr. Cash: What complete rubbish the hon. Gentleman speaks. Apart from anything else, poll after poll shows that Britain wants a Europe that works within a single market, but that Britain does not want to come out. The tendency towards coming out is growing precisely because of the failure to clarify these questions. Much of the responsibility for that lies with the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends.
Mr. Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford): Is not the counter-proposal the case, because poll after poll shows that a growing number of people--still a minority, but a growing number--have determined that outright departure from the European Community is the only solution, which is worrying? Is not that my hon. Friend's
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point? People recognise that there is an agenda and they do not wish to be part of it. That will grow if it is not faced up to.
Mr. Cash: My hon. Friend, who has fought many battles with me and other hon. Members who are in the Chamber, is right. The problem is the confusion and the lack of clarity, and the refusal to face the fact that the problem cannot be resolved unless we renegotiate the arrangements that are taking us deeper into the European Union. As that proceeds, it will lead us into greater difficulties.
Mr. Charles Kennedy (Ross, Cromarty and Skye): I do not want to anticipate the hon. Gentleman's speech, but he said in reply to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, West (Mr. Randall) that repeated opinion polls had shown that people wanted Britain to remain in a single market. The Government have frequently stated that the completion of the single market to our satisfaction was made possible only by the use of the veto. In the new renegotiated relationship that the hon. Gentleman seeks, from which aspects of the current single market would he wish to reclaim the veto?
Mr. Cash: I have made it clear that some areas in the single market require reform and that those reforms cannot be achieved without treaty changes, which require unanimity. I shall come to that later. I should have thought that it was in the interests of everybody in Europe, let alone hon. Members, to try to make the European Union work effectively. That is the bottom line. I am saying not that we should come out but that we could reach the point--and we are getting close to it--where that became a serious possibility.
Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory (Wells): Perhaps I may offer the House an example. In European Standing Committee B, we shall shortly consider a particularly short-sighted proposal by the European Commission for a compulsory levy on the resale of all modern works of art. Not only is that a tax, but it will drive business away from London and the European Union to other art centres such as New York and Geneva. The tax is being imposed by the Commission on spurious single market grounds and can therefore be decided by majority voting. The issue is not only to retain the unanimity principle in central areas of taxation, but to ensure that the Commission does not try to circumvent those rules by proposing fiscal measures on single market grounds.
Mr. Cash: I am delighted by my right hon. Friend's intervention, because he has enormous experience in those matters, not least because he has been Paymaster General and Minister with responsibility for Europe, and was deputy Chief Whip during the Maastricht debates. I am delighted not only by the clarity and logic of his argument, but by his Damascene conversion, on which I offer him my heartiest congratulations.
We are being seduced into the slipstream of the critical mass of a federal Europe while claiming that we are against it. If it looks like a duck, talks like a duck and walks like a duck, it is a Euro-duck. The rejection of the word "federal" means nothing if we allow the other member states to go ahead, as we did in relation to economic and monetary union under the third stage
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It is ironic that it is we, the Euro-realists, who are often criticised by people who say that we are trying to put the United Kingdom on the sidelines. However, under the Maastricht arrangements, we were put on the sidelines by the opt-out. By failing now to insist on renegotiation, which we still have the right to undertake under article N of the treaty on European Union, we continue to sell the pass.
Renegotiation is not, as some of the more trivial commentators whom I shall not bother to mention have been stating, another way of calling for us to get out. However, renegotiation would wrong-foot the federalists. I hear siren voices claiming that we must renegotiate the treaty. I shall not mention names, because we have recently heard some of them. Stripped of all the camouflage, all that that amounts to at present is a proposal to renegotiate quota hopping or the 48-hour working week, while leaving intact the issue of economic and monetary union and the single currency, which would undermine our democracy.
We are prepared to veto the entire intergovernmental conference over issues such as quota hopping, but not on the question whether we can govern ourselves, which is what EMU and the single currency are all about. Why is that? I am afraid to say that it is simply because there has been an increasing concern that we are not admitting that we got it wrong over the disastrous exchange rate mechanism. That fed its way into our lack of credibility on tax and allowed the Opposition a field day, both on that subject, as we saw from what the right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) said a few days ago, and on the whole question of vulnerability on public expenditure. All that is tied up in the issue and in our prospects for the general election.
There is also an agreement, accepted by the Opposition, to let the other member states, including Germany, go ahead with EMU, which is driven by the Chancellor Kohl's obsession with political union. This is an issue of political principle upon which there can be no compromise, but which, far from being renegotiated, is being extended under the current proposals for the extension of the treaty on European Union, under the same flexibility arrangements that are accepted in the paper which I have here. Dated 16 January, it states that the most perfect example of flexibility is economic and monetary union. We must say no to flexibility now.
Mr. Llew Smith (Blaenau Gwent):
In the context of renegotiation, would the hon. Gentleman care to look at article 107 of the treaty? That makes it plain that virtually all the major economic decisions will be in the hands of an unelected and unaccountable European central bank. Astonishingly, that article makes it plain that it will be illegal for democratically elected Parliaments or Governments to influence that unelected European central bank. If we allow that to happen or if the matter is not renegotiated, at the general election, those who are elected
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Mr. Cash:
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. The central bank arrangements, which are within the aegis of the European Court of Justice, specifically state that the governors of the bank may not seek or take instructions from member states. That cuts across section 4 of our Bank of England Act 1946 and makes it crystal clear that the umbilical cord connecting Parliament and the electorate--the people who vote in line with their priorities, thus exercising the freedom of choice for which people in this country have fought and died--would be handed over to completely unaccountable, bureaucratic bankers with no guarantee that they will deliver. We have only to look at the mess of the exchange rate mechanism to imagine what would happen if the entire system were placed in the hands of the people who are running that.
Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge):
My hon. Friend has been generous in giving way. Does he agree that one of the most sinister aspects of the matter is that those who are not even prepared to contemplate renegotiation are effectively saying that all the facts that my hon. Friend describes are so acceptable that one should not even contemplate renegotiation? What resonance does that have in the country at large?
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