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Mr. Denzil Davies (Llanelli): Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that one reform that could hardly be described as revolutionary would be to allow one dissenting judgment? It must be the only supreme court in the world, outside the old Soviet Union, where dissenting judgments are not allowed.

Mr. Howard: The right hon. Gentleman has long studied the matter in detail, and his views are always expressed with force and heard with respect.

Mr. Bernard Jenkin (North Essex): Is not the real difficulty the fact that the court has to choose between such a variety of different bits of treaties in arriving at judgments? There is no logical reason why, for example, in the Factortame case, the single market provisions should have overruled other treaty provisions which allow member states to allocate their fish stocks. Until we resolve that ambiguity, the court will be able to choose which part of the treaty to interpret as supreme for the political convenience of the majority to continue to pursue the federalist agenda.

Mr. Howard: My hon. Friend touches on a fundamental matter, but all courts often have to deal with such difficult decisions.

The reforms that the previous Government put on the agenda were a serious attempt to deal with the gravest flaws in the workings of the European Court of Justice and had the support of some other Governments, including some who wanted much deeper European integration but who wanted it on the basis of sound legal principles.

What happened when the Labour party took over from us at the negotiations? It abandoned every one of those suggestions--and why? Because in the words of the Minister, there was little support for such reform in the intergovernmental conference. That explanation goes to the root of Labour's approach to Europe: its fear of isolation, its readiness to pursue the line of least resistance, and its unwillingness to win our partners round by argument. Sometimes it is necessary to be isolated--not for its own sake, but because without being prepared to stand alone we would never have secured our opt-out

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from the single currency, won the budget rebate or been able to opt out of common policies on integration and frontiers. The present Government are happy to reap the rewards of the previous Government's readiness to be isolated when the occasion demanded, but lack the courage and conviction to stand alone themselves. That bodes ill for our long-term national interests in the EU.

Not only did the Government abandon our sensible proposals for reform, they agreed to further extensions of the court's jurisdiction. I hope that the Minister will give us details and say how they will affect our law, both civil and criminal. That is the subject of new clause 30, in which we ask for a report to the House from the Attorney-General on those matters.

We also have reservations about article F.1 of the Amsterdam treaty, which is to become article 7 of the renumbered treaty on European Union. As hon. Members will be aware, this is the article that empowers the Council of Ministers to remove the voting rights or, indeed, any other rights, from the country which it claims is breaching human rights.

It should go without saying in a democracy such as ours that every Member of Parliament supports the principles of human rights, individual freedom and the rule of law. The attempts by the Foreign Secretary to caricature our opposition to article F.1 of the treaty have not become him. In the 1980s, a unilateralist pressure group calling itself the Movement for the Preservation of Life on Earth--something that the rest of us, it implied, were supposed to be against--was in alliance with the now Foreign Secretary in its pursuit of unilateral nuclear disarmament. To present the issue as a disagreement about basic human rights is a childish tactic worthy of those 1980s peace activists who were his allies in those days.

Let me run through our concerns about clause 1. They are widely shared. First, the rights in question are vaguely defined. All of us believe in human rights, as they are traditionally understood in Britain--the right to free assembly, the right to free speech, habeas corpus and so on--but is there a basic human right to a minimum wage or to abortion on demand? Under the Amsterdam treaty, those questions will be dealt with not by any judicial body but by other politicians sitting in the Council of Ministers. I know of no precedent in diplomacy or in law for the signatory to a treaty losing its rights but not its obligations at the behest of its fellow signatories.

Mr. Roger Casale (Wimbledon): The right hon. and learned Gentleman makes the point that countries such as Britain will lose their veto under clause F.1, but he knows very well that that is not the case. The decision about whether a breach of human rights has occurred has still to be unanimous within the Council of Ministers. Only once a persistent breach of human rights has been ascertained by unanimity can sanctions be triggered. Only at that stage does qualified majority voting come into play. So the points that the right hon. and learned Gentleman lays before the Committee apply not to the triggering of sanctions but to identification of the breach, which is subject to unanimity.

Mr. Howard: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has overlooked one fundamental provision in the article. The initial decision is taken on the basis of unanimity, but not including the country against which the complaint is

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made. So that country would be at the mercy of all the other countries. That is the point. Nor will it do to claim that article F.1 is simply a precaution against the sudden collapse of democracy in a member state. If one of our fellow members were to fall into dictatorship, surely the logical response would be to end its membership of the EU. Article F.1 provides no mechanism for doing that. On the contrary, it specifies that the state in question would remain bound by all treaty obligations, while losing its rights. That is not the right way to deal with an undemocratic regime. So we are forced back to the conclusion that article F.1 could be used to disarm the national veto of any country that was holding up a measure that the other countries wanted.

I invite hon. Members to play through logically a scenario in which article F.1 would be put to the purposes for which Ministers claim that it was designed. Let us imagine that a new member state with a short tradition of democracy fell into dictatorship and took to persecuting its national minorities, arbitrarily confiscating private property or suspending the due process of law. Can anyone imagine that in those circumstances the other member states would want that state to remain within the Union? When we come across serious and persistent abuses of human rights in non-member states, as we did tragically in the former Yugoslavia, our response is not to invite the perpetrators of abuses to join the European Union, but without voting rights. Our response is to apply a series of sanctions and to make it clear that such behaviour is incompatible with an ambition to join the European Union.

6.15 pm

When the Commission delivered its opinion on the various pending applications for membership of the EU, a proven record of respect for human rights was rightly one of the prerequisites. So how do we imagine that, in a scenario such as I have outlined, article F.1 would be of the slightest use?

It is instructive to contrast the Government's attitude to article F.1 with their attitude to incorporation of the European convention on human rights. In their White Paper, the Government make much of their refusal to give judges the direct power to strike down Acts of Parliament. Such a power, they say, would be incompatible with parliamentary sovereignty. Yet in the Bill now before the Committee the power to interpret human rights is transferred from Parliament not to British judges but to European politicians. So much for the Government's supposed attachment to the sovereignty of the House of Commons and those who send us here.

Mr. Gapes: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that, if the EU is to be enlarged, it will need safeguards to ensure that all member states remain democratic? If so, should he not be a little more circumspect about his condemnation of the new articles which relate to human rights? They were introduced to ensure that the EU maintained a membership composed entirely of democratic states which respect human rights.

Mr. Howard: I have just indicated to the hon. Gentleman the way in which that is to be achieved.

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Of course he is right. Of course we have to ensure that the EU continues to be composed of fully democratic states. The way to do that is, first, to require a track record of respect for human rights before a country's application is accepted and, secondly, if--alas, and against our expectations--a country falls into dictatorship, to say that that is incompatible with continued membership and that it will have to leave the Union. That is the way to do it--not by depriving a country of its rights while holding it to obligations.

Article F.1 therefore flies in the face of precedent, and especially of our constitutional tradition. It provides a mechanism whereby the national veto could be decommissioned by other politicians without the possibility of appeal to any judicial body. With all those constitutional objections, the Government have not been able to point to a single scenario in which the power could properly be used. In agreeing to article F.1, the Government showed themselves either ignorant or disdainful of the fundamental principle of our constitution.

The Labour Government were elected on a specific promise that they would resist any dilution of the British veto in foreign affairs and defence. When the Prime Minister returned from the Amsterdam summit he claimed to have forestalled any moves towards deeper integration in those areas, but hardly were the words out of his mouth than the Dutch Government, who then held the presidency, put precisely the opposite construction on the summit, hailing it as a positive step towards a common defence policy. Who is right? One does not have to be a lawyer to see that the text of the new treaty brings an integrated European defence policy closer than before. The treaty refers explicitly to the

"progressive framing of a common defence policy."

It goes on to deal with integration of the Western European Union into the European Union.

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