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Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham): Not a lot of you.
Mr. Collins: The hon. Gentleman only ever speaks from a sedentary position. It is very sad that he is not able--or perhaps he is not permitted--to stand up and make a speech. He is a free Member of Parliament, despite what the Whips may tell him. Perhaps he could occasionally contribute from a standing position.
As the hon. Gentleman says that not many of us were elected, let us consider the mandate that the Government secured. They got 42 per cent. of the vote, which is exactly the percentage that I secured in my constituency, so if the Government have a mandate, so do I. On the share of the vote, we did better, even in this dreadful
election year for us, than the Labour party did in 1983. I do not remember the Labour party saying that it had no mandate to speak in Parliament between 1983 and 1987 and would remain silent. The mandate argument does not work.
Mr. Bermingham:
I do not know whether the rule of rewriting history now applies, but I seem to remember participating in the 1983 general election, in which we got 200-plus seats--it was a pretty poor year for us--and the Conservative majority was about 144, whereas we now have a majority of goodness knows what, in the region of 170, with about 418 seats. The hon. Gentleman may have been a bit young in those days, but those of us who were around then know that his figures are wrong. Let us face it: one cannot prove anything by twisting statistics to back up a very poor case.
Mr. Collins:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing out that he has indeed been knocking around for rather longer than I have, but I should point out that our share of the vote in the general election was 31 per cent., while his party's share in 1983 was 28 per cent.
The Foreign Secretary had an even more interesting argument on the mandate. He said that every single person who voted Labour on 1 May knew perfectly well that the Labour party intended to take us into the social chapter on precisely the basis encased in the Bill, with all the consequent implications for the extension of qualified majority voting.
That would have come as a surprise to those who read articles in the Daily Mail and other newspapers earlier this year saying that the Prime Minister--then the Leader of the Opposition--would take us in only on the basis that we could pick and choose individual measures entirely on their merits. That is not the basis on which the Bill has been introduced, and that is not the treaty that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary brought back from Amsterdam.
The Foreign Secretary argued that there was simply no alternative to the Bill, and that it was a matter of consistency. He said that because Conservative Members had supported guillotines in the past, it was necessary for us to support them now.
If ever a man was on dangerous territory in making an argument about the virtue of consistency, it is the Foreign Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman used to have a moral objection to nuclear weapons. He now serves as Foreign Secretary in a Government who are deploying Trident. The Foreign Secretary used to have an objection on the ground of sovereignty to the United Kingdom being a member of the European Economic Community. The right hon. Gentleman objected to being in the Common Market. He is now a starry-eyed enthusiast for an ever more federal Europe.
Mr. Gary Streeter (South-West Devon):
On 13 January 1994, an experienced Member stood at the Opposition Dispatch Box and complained that in introducing a timetable motion the then Government showed
The sad feature is that that background will not trouble the Minister in the slightest--to say one thing one day and do precisely the opposite a little while later. Some might say that such a capacity is a necessary precondition for joining the Government, who are without values and principles.
Mr. Mike Hall (Weaver Vale):
Will the hon. Gentleman tell us how he voted on the guillotine motion on 13 January 1994?
Mr. Streeter:
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will allow me to develop my argument. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) said, it is not our case that it is always wrong for a Government to introduce a guillotine motion. However, when a Government are dealing with a constitutional issue they should proceed with the utmost caution. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will allow me to develop my argument.
Some would say that it is a necessary precondition for a Member joining the Government, an Administration without values and principles, to learn quickly to say one thing one day and do the opposite just a while later. Ministers say one thing and do another. Policies that they opposed in opposition are adopted in government. Parliament is treated with that contempt.
We should not even be debating the motion. The Amsterdam treaty is an important constitutional treaty; that is why it has been debated on the Floor of the House. It makes important changes to our relationship with the European Union. It makes changes that cannot easily be undone. As so many of my right hon. and hon. Friends have said, it will give more power to the European Parliament.
It provides for an extension of qualified majority voting. It includes the social chapter and a new employment chapter, which will impose new regulations on British people. It makes new arrangements for border controls and moves us closer to an integrated foreign and security policy. It changes the law on subsidiarity and it gives more power to Presidents of the Commission. All those things, and many more besides, are surely worth more than a cursory glance from the House. We are, after all, elected as a check on the Executive.
Mr. Menzies Campbell:
I wish to apologise to the shadow Foreign Secretary, to whom I inaccurately attributed a reference to the position of the high representative, as covered by one of the articles of the Amsterdam treaty. I was wrong to do so and I have apologised to him informally; it is only right that I should put the record straight formally.
The hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) has given an eloquent, in his terms, justification for his opposition to the guillotine on the Bill on the ground that it raises constitutional issues. Did not the Single European Act raise the same constitutional issues?
Mr. Streeter:
The hon. and learned Gentleman apologises in his usual gracious way. He makes an important point, but there are at least two features that distinguish this measure from the Single European Act.
After all that I have said about the importance of the Bill, after only three days the Government have tabled a guillotine motion. It was not even three full days. The first day's debate started not at 3.30 pm but at 5.55 pm; the second at 5.30 pm; the third at 5.50 pm. On each day, at least two hours of debate was lost to Government statements. What should have been 18 hours of debates became 12. We have not had three days but a mere 12 hours.
"a callous disregard for our democratic procedures".
The hon. Gentleman protested:
"The way in which the Government have tried to force through the business is a contempt of the House."
He added:
"The procedure that we are now discussing is completely unnecessary. We are using time to discuss the guillotine motion that we could have used to discuss aspects of the Bill which are important to hon. Members."
The hon. Gentleman described the then Government's approach as an "affront to democracy". He attacked the Government's conduct, saying that it had
"been wholly reprehensible and unacceptable".--[Official Report, 13 January 1994; Vol. 235, c. 384-87.]
That hon. Gentleman was the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson), the very person who will respond to the debate on behalf of the Government and force the guillotine on us. On 13 January 1994, the hon. Gentleman was talking about a domestic Bill that could be set aside by later Parliaments; we are talking about an international treaty that cannot be set aside by a subsequent Parliament. What was an "affront to democracy" and a contempt of the House only three years ago is now the very policy that the Minister adopts.
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