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Mr. William Hague (Richmond, Yorks): We welcome the progress made at Tampere on co-operation between EU member states in the fight against drug trafficking, organised crime, money laundering, fraud and theft. Clearly, progress was also made on improving co-operation on asylum procedures and the creation of a European police chiefs task force. Where such co-operation takes place between nation states within the European Union, we welcome it. The mutual recognition of court decisions agreed at Tampere obviously has merits and we await further details of that.
Is it not important to ensure that, with such co-operation, we do not give away the right of this country to make its own decisions? The Home Secretary tells us that we are not moving towards a single system of justice, but, these days, when the Home Secretary has been to visit, we all start counting the spoons. In the light of this, can the Government guarantee that none of the
measures to which they have signed up will undermine our own system of justice or lead to a corpus juris in Europe--something to which we should be implacably opposed?
The Prime Minister referred to the continuing ban on British beef in France. Can we ask him to try a new tactic to get France to lift the ban? Why does he not show his confidence in British beef by lifting his ban on beef on the bone here in Britain? What does he say to the French Prime Minister? "Please lift the ban on our beef? Mind you, I don't touch it myself if it has a bone attached to it." What a stupid position to be in.
We welcome the commitment to enlargement. Everyone acknowledges that this will require changes in the way in which Europe operates. The important question is what those changes will be. Is it not in the interests of Britain and of Europe to argue the case for a more flexible Europe of nation states co-operating together?Government committed to that vision would be pressing for treaty amendments at the next intergovernmental conference that would allow nations greater flexibility. Is that not necessary to make an enlarged Europe work? Is it not necessary to protect the great strength that nation states bring to Europe?
Is it not Britain's responsibility to stand firm for this vision of a flexible Europe? Is not the truth that, instead, our Prime Minister is going along with, and encouraging, a more centralised, more bureaucratic, more interfering Europe? Did we not see yesterday that agenda unfolding as his so-called wise men, including his own former Minister and current adviser Lord Simon of Highbury, published their report? It included a massive increase in qualified majority voting, the abolition of the national veto in key areas including even changes to existing treaties, a separate European defence capability, a written constitution for Europe, and substantial new powers to be taken from national Governments and given to the unelected Commission.
Is it not the right position for the Prime Minister of this country, in the interests of Britain and Europe as a whole, to put forward the alternative to those ideas rather than welcoming them and persisting with his fraudulent insistence that the advancement of any alternative proposals means withdrawal from the European Union? He would have told anyone arguing for the British rebate, for opt-outs from the single currency or for the social chapter that they wanted to withdraw from the European Union. Perhaps we should remind the Prime Minister that the only one of the two of us ever to have fought an election on a platform of withdrawal from Europe is him.
Does the Prime Minister recall that Romano Prodi was meant to concentrate on the heroic task of cleaning up the Commission? Now, he is spending his time saying that, for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire, we have the opportunity to unite Europe. Talk about delusions of grandeur--from hero to Nero in a few short months. Why is the Prime Minister so content to be carried along with the tide to a single European state? What the great majority of the British public want from Europe is very straightforward. They want co-operation with other European nations on issues such as fighting drugs and many of the other issues rightly discussed at Tampere, but what they do not want is for ever more rights and powers of this country to be taken away slice by slice with our own Prime Minister wielding the knife. That is why the party that stands for being in Europe,
not run by Europe, defeated his party at the European elections a few months ago. Is it not time that he listened to that majority? He is not listening to the British people, so it falls to us to speak with clarity and consistency, and to speak up for the people of Britain.
The Prime Minister:
It is no wonder that Norman Tebbit said that he had never felt happier in the Conservative party than today. The Thatcherites have won, have they not? They have taken it over. Not the back-seat driver any more, she has kicked the right hon. Gentleman out of the front seat. Now, she is going to be driving that flat-back lorry as it goes around the country. The only chance that the right hon. Gentleman will get to have a spin is when his L-plates are on.
I shall come back to that rant in a moment. First of all, in so far as the right hon. Gentleman had any substantial points on Tampere, let me answer those points. Will the agreement undermine--[Interruption.] Calm down. Will the agreement undermine the justice system of Great Britain? No, of course it will not; it is a very sensible set of proposals. I point out to the right hon. Gentleman that he actually opposed all those proposals when we negotiated this at Amsterdam. He opposed the very things that we have now agreed at Tampere, but I thank him for his welcome.
In relation to enlargement, and the wise men's report, let me point out, as the right hon. Gentleman attacks the President of the Commission, that the President was talking about uniting Europe and about enlargement. He was saying how good it was that eastern Europe, which used to be divided from western Europe, is now part of the European family of nations again. I would have thought that Conservatives could welcome that.
The report itself is an advisory report to the President of the European Commission, not a statement of the European Council. As we enlarge the European Union, from 15 to 20, or to 25, we shall have to look at the ways in which we take decisions in the European Union to make it more streamlined.--[Hon. Members: "Ah!"]--There is no hidden agenda. It is a sensible debate to have. The experts on qualified majority voting are the Conservatives in power. They agreed 42 different changes, allowing qualified majority voting. I do not criticise them for that. We could not even argue that the ban on British beef should be lifted were it not for qualified majority voting. We shall not agree to any lifting of the veto in areas such as tax, defence, or our border controls--again, something that we secured at Amsterdam, but I am perfectly prepared to look at it in other areas, if it is in the country's interest. That is a sensible position--not the sort of hysterical rant that we got from the right hon. Gentleman a moment or two ago.
As for the right hon. Gentleman's actual policy, there are two points. First, he is saying that he will renegotiate the terms of entry for Britain into the European Union, and will block--[Hon. Members: "No!"]--Oh, yes. He is saying that, unless he is allowed to choose which areas he agrees to--other than free trade, or the internal market--he will block all European Union change. That is his policy; it cannot have changed just in the past two weeks. If the rest of Europe says no, then he will have no option but to leave. That is why his policy puts us on a conveyor
belt to withdrawal. [Interruption.] Do not take my word for it. This is what the former Chancellor, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), said. He said:
Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East):
Who is he?
The Prime Minister:
Who is he? Well, some of us are not going to airbrush the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) out of history. He said that the Conservative party
"The Eurosceptics in my party have been given a free rein. They have taken advantage of that to try and force the Conservative party to take more extreme anti-European views."
The former Deputy Prime Minister--
"is being taken down a road where the Eurosceptics have got a hidden agenda, which is beginning to emerge, called 'Britain Out'."
Chris Patten said:
"The Conservative policy now appears to stop enlargement unless we get our own way on opt-outs from everything that moves. I just don't understand where we have got to."
The former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), said:
"The acid test of whether we go into the euro will, at the end of the day, be an economic test: are we being damaged by staying out?"
He called the sceptics policy "politically crazy". Douglas Hurd said:
"Judging from last week's speeches in Blackpool, Conservative policy in Europe is increasingly based on caricature, not on reality."
Malcolm Rifkind said that the Conservative policy is
"a call which is little more than a euphemism for us to quit Europe."
The Conservatives do not agree with any of those remarks, so let me tell the House what they do agree with--[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow), who is the new Conservative spokesman on education and employment shouts, but this is what he said previously:
"Renegotiation should start from the premise that we will stay in the European Union if we can strike a deal that is in our interests and pull out if we cannot."
As someone once said, "game, set and match".
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