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Mr. Maude: It is hard to see how adding any context to the statement
- We . . . congratulate you for running this story
The Prime Minister says that he wants Europe to be a super-power, not a super-state. A few weeks ago, I publicly offered a bottle of champagne to anyone who could convincingly distinguish between the two. The House may not be surprised to learn that it has not been awarded, or even claimed. I rather expected the Foreign Secretary or the Minister for Europe to claim it, but neither has done so.
We are talking about a project involving a President who describes himself as running the Government of Europe. It has its own currency, it will have an army, and it has its own anthem and flag. Commissioners plan to introduce a single passport. A European constitution is planned. It is not clear to most people how all that cannot be intended to constitute a state. They listen to what is said by others in Europe, who make no bones about their plans for a relentless further programme of political integration.
The Government should understand that most people in Britain do not want to be part of the European super-state. Those people are not anti-European, extreme or xenophobic; they are not little Englanders. The mainstream majority of the public are becoming pretty irritated by patronising, offensive Ministers who describe them as such.
Four major projects are afoot, and the Government want Britain to be committed uncritically to all four. They are the euro, the charter of fundamental rights, the European army, and a further move towards political integration at Nice. But there is a better vision than that, which is more in tune with the modern world of globalisation and networks. It is a vision of a flexible Europe, a multi-system Europe, enlarged to embrace the whole family of European nations and to heal the divide that disfigured Europe throughout the cold war and is still shamefully unhealed.
What is so disillusioning for people here in Britain who take a warm, generous, internationalist view is the discovery that the Government are not even trying to achieve that. They are still locked in a time warp--locked into the old cold war bloc mentality, and the outdated dogma of "one size fits all" uniform integration across Europe.
Mr. Redwood: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that when the Government return from Nice having sacrificed 15, 20 or more vetoes, and having accepted a dangerous charter that is a model for a constitution for Britain and for Europe--along with many other moves towards the creation of an integrated super-state--the Conservative
party will oppose all that vigorously in the House, and that we will demand a referendum because we think that the British people should have the right to decide?
Mr. Maude: Let me make it clear, as I have done before, that we will oppose a Nice treaty that is integrationist.
Mr. Maude: If the right hon. Gentleman is prepared to respond to our invitation and say that the Government will not try to ratify the treaty without seeking the consent of the British public in a referendum, I shall be happy to give way so that he can tell us what his position is. If he proposes to try to ratify the treaty before an election, without seeking public consent in either an election or a referendum, let him say so.
Mr. Cook: The treaty of Nice will be entirely consistent with the basis on which we fought the last election--the reform and enlargement of Europe. There is no case for a separate referendum. [Interruption.] There is no such case. As a matter of fact, it is our party that is going into an election offering the people of Britain a referendum on the euro. The Conservative party is denying them a choice.
Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can make one thing clear. According to his figures, the treaty may involve an increase in majority voting in 15 articles. Why does that require a referendum, given that the Maastricht treaty, which contained 30 such articles, did not?
Mr. Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green): An election has taken place between the two events.
Mr. Maude: That is true. Furthermore--in a sense, this is precisely the point that the Foreign Secretary has made--we have already lost the veto in many areas. There is no great enlightenment in that regard; it is merely a question of how much more we can lose.
I shall deal with the whole issue of qualified majority voting and its implications for European unity and harmony. Let me begin by nailing the Foreign Secretary's contention that the Nice summit, and the Nice treaty, are about enlargement. The right hon. Gentleman spoke of the need for reform of the Commission and reweighting of votes, and I agree that those things are desirable. They could easily be negotiated as a ring-fenced set of arrangements, and we would strongly support the Government if they achieved agreement on that. It is not right, however, to say that those things are essential to enlargement, and it is certainly not correct to say that the real roadblock on the way to enlargement is the lack of qualified majority voting.
This intergovernmental conference is about political integration--nakedly so--and the only Government who maintain that it is not are this Government. If it were seriously about enlargement, it would tackle the real roadblock: the common agricultural policy. We look in vain for any proposals for the radical reform that would enable enlargement to go ahead quickly. We find that the present Government, for all their protestations about enlargement, have done nothing to put it on to the agenda.
The Foreign Secretary has said again today that the Government will not accept the loss of the veto on immigration, on defence, on treaty change, on social security and on tax--although, as was pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), the European Union institutions are already asserting their ability to make tax proposals based on qualified majority voting.
The Government have--I hope--made it clear, in their February White Paper, that they will not agree to the establishment of a European public prosecutor. There is no great drama about that. Not even a Government as out of touch as ours would risk agreeing to such proposals in the months preceding a general election.
We know what will happen at Nice. There will be a carefully stage-managed row. Mr. Alastair Campbell will emerge to tell a breathlessly waiting press corps that the Prime Minister has stood up for Britain manfully, and has rejected proposals to which there was never the slightest chance of the Government's agreeing in the first place. What will happen is agreement to a significant extension of the areas decided by qualified majority voting.
The Foreign Secretary raised the whole issue of the veto over financial regulation. Is he seriously telling the House that he is prepared to contemplate allowing Europe-wide financial regulation to be imposed by qualified majority voting, and to contemplate the creation of a Euro-SEC over which we would have no veto? Does he really believe that that is in the interests of London, the pre-eminent international financial centre in the world? Is that what he is proposing?
Mr. Cook: No, and it is not in the treaty. Financial regulation in the treaty means regulation of the financial affairs of the European Union. I would have expected the right hon. Gentleman to support us in seeking tougher, stricter financial regulation.
Mr. Maude: We think that the further extension of qualified majority voting is wrong. It is wrong not just for Britain, but for Europe. If Ministers are interested in European harmony and unity, the worst thing to do in the world as it is today is to extend the areas in which a majority can impose its will on the minority. That is divisive, not unifying. Relentless political integration is the enemy of European unity, not its friend.
Mr. Giles Radice (North Durham): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Maude: No. I will carry on with my speech.
If it is so difficult to force decisions through that mincing machine, the answer is not to increase the speed of the mincer, but to try to force less through it. The agenda at Nice should not be about relentless further political integration. It should be about creating the wider, more flexible multi-system Europe that the public in Britain want.
Mr. Radice: The right hon. Gentleman has waxed eloquent about qualified majority voting, but I have just done some research. I should like to quote from him when he was a Minister, not in opposition:
- There are many lively discussions in Brussels and the number of times that we are isolated is small. We have extremely good arguments and we win most of them. The number of times that we are in the minority and are out-voted is tiny.--[Official Report, 11 June 1990; Vol. 174, c. 103.]
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That is just what the Foreign Secretary has told him. He knows it to be true. Why is he talking such nonsense in the House today?
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