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5.32 pm
Mr. William Cash (Stone): I have a strange feeling as I listen to the debate. I hear the words of some of my colleagues, but they bear little relationship to what is being done under the treaties. That is one of the most extraordinary aspects not only of this debate but of all debates on European matters. Anyone with eyes to see can read the treaties.
It is extraordinary that the impression has been created that the common foreign and security policy--as it has emerged--was not rooted in the Maastricht treaty. I put down about 240 amendments to that treaty--many on foreign and security policy and on defence. It is astonishing that anyone could have imagined that we did not subscribe to the policy, or that it would not have resulted in the consequences evident in newspaper headlines during the past few days.
I was deeply disturbed by the Amsterdam treaty debates, when I put down about 100 amendments. Some grand speeches were made, from both the Conservative Front Bench and elsewhere; there were some Divisions; and the House of Lords--which, at that time, we could rely on--could have made amendments that would have forced the issue. The House of Lords could have combined the issue of its own constitutional position with the massively important questions contained in the Amsterdam treaty, and forced through amendments. We would have won the amendments in the Lords and returned the measure to the House of Commons, where we could have debated increased integration under the treaty under the Parliament Acts and concluded the matter. But nothing of the kind took place.
I am delighted by the shift and movement in the atmosphere and rhetoric, but when I look at the facts, I become concerned about the extent to which we will actually do something when it comes to the crunch, as compared to simply saying that we will do certain things. I have grave doubts about the substance of much of my party's policy on this subject.
I am concerned that the Prime Minister has explicitly refused my request for a White Paper on the constitutional and political implications three times in the past year on the Floor of the House. Using one's time in Prime Minister's Question Time on three separate occasions to
request a constitutional White Paper on Europe may be thought to be overdoing it, but if the Government attempt to describe in a White Paper the difficulties inherent in the constitutional and political implications of this bizarre adventure they will be completely and utterly unseated. I am glad that the Daily Mail is taking up that issue with great vigour. The Government will never be able to answer the questions that would arise from such a document, so they dare not write it.I shall return to my theme and ask my Front Benchers to take the step of saying that they would insist on a White Paper on the constitutional and political implications. After all, we cannot simply say, "Oh well, we wrote one ourselves on certain aspects of the previous treaties", because the real problems, which were considered in the 1972 White Paper, were disguised to the British people. As a matter of honour to our country, we must go back to what was said in 1971, gear it up to the present day and give an honest appraisal of the situation so that no one will be deceived in future.
We have heard much talk about super-powers and super-states. I made my point in Prime Minister's questions the other day. I asked him whether he could explain how his European super-power would not be a super-state, but of course he could not answer. Many colleagues have made similar points today. However, a much bigger problem will come up in the Nice treaty because the Government are presenting an argument that is coloured not only by confusion, but by deceit. It is about time that the British people were offered an opportunity to make a choice not merely about different destinations, but about the different spheres in Europe.
I have just written a pamphlet entitled "Associated, but not absorbed", quoting Winston Churchill who used those very words. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir P. Emery) quoted Churchill selectively. At Zurich in 1946, Churchill not only spoke about a kind of united states of Europe, but on another occasion used the words "associated, but not absorbed". I think in May 1953, he rejected the notion of a federal system.
Mr. Redwood: Sir Winston Churchill made it very clear at Fulton, Missouri and in his Zurich speech that he wanted a united states of Europe, but Britain would not be a member. He thought Britain should be a member of an English-speaking union, the details of which would become clear later.
Mr. Cash: Such debates are characterised by the misquoting of Churchill, who was, after all, one of this country's greatest Prime Ministers. It is a disgrace that people should attempt to subvert his meaning.
I have referred to two different spheres. We know that we do not want European government. I have often said as a slogan: "European trade and political co-operation yes: European government no". We know that the proposals to create European government came out of the Maastricht treaty, which was endorsed in Amsterdam. The proposals will be extended in the prospective treaty of Nice.
What are we do to do about that? If the Conservative party is against the idea of European government, we cannot go on giving the impression that we do not like it
and talk about not being ruled by Europe. We have to bite the bullet. To do that, we must go for a policy of renegotiation, because it is possible for any member state to table amendments to any treaty at the intergovernmental conference and demand that those amendments are taken.If the amendments are rejected by the other member states--I accept that many would argue that that would be inevitable--at least we would have gone through the right process. We would then appeal to the other countries--applicant as well as Scandinavian countries--and ask them to join us in a separate treaty. We could agree to remain in the single market, but would repudiate all those aspects of the treaties that came out of the Maastricht and Amsterdam provisions relating to European government.
If we do not do that, despite all the rhetoric we shall end up with a continual progression to more and more integration. We shall look as if we are doing something, but, in practice, we will not be. It is clear to me and I suspect to many colleagues that, if we were to tighten our policy so that we said never to the single currency or said no to it in principle, the British people would know exactly where we stood. I fear that, when we appear in television broadcasts during the election campaign, it is probable that questions relating to our policy of saying no for the duration of only one Parliament will be asked for the famous 14 times until our policy is made to look extremely thin. That would be in the middle of the general election campaign.
We have to tighten our policy and we must have a clear sense of the direction in which we are prepared to allow the Government to go. I endorse the remarks of many colleagues who said that we had an absolute duty to maintain, on behalf of our constituents, the supremacy of the British Parliament without necessarily going as far as to suggest that we should withdraw from the European Union. We must have an alternative process in mind. We must have a clear idea on where we are going and a policy of renegotiation. We also need a referendum.
I do not think that it is possible to have a referendum simply on the Nice treaty. We should have had a referendum on the Maastricht treaty because that raised the principle of European government. Colleagues may remember that I set up the MARC referendum campaign and we obtained 500,000 signatures from the British people. The petition was presented to Parliament for a referendum on Maastricht.
We should have had a referendum on the combination of the Maastricht and the Amsterdam treaties, and, before the next treaty is ratified, we should have one on the combined effect of the three treaties. It should not simply be a referendum on the single currency, but on the broader political and constitutional implications of Europe. I made that clear in my Referendum Bill in 1996. I got into hot water at that time, but the present situation in the Conservative party is very conducive to many of my ideas. However, it has not gone far enough.
I deeply resent the idea that we heard yesterday that somehow this Government created the common foreign security and defence policy. I have some sympathy with the Defence Secretary's comments yesterday.
One sees in the Maastricht treaty that there is qualified majority voting for matters relating to joint action. When one examines the combat role in the Petersberg tasks in
the context of what I said earlier about the Nuremberg declaration, and considers the totality, confused and vague as it may be--and deliberately so--one sees the reality. As the Foreign Secretary said on 22 May 1997, in reply to a question that I asked:
- On defence, the French and Germans want the Western European Union to be merged into the European Union. This would undermine NATO.
We can add to that point what has happened since in St. Malo, Cologne, Helsinki and Feira. With Nice to come, the position as set out by the Foreign Secretary on 22 May 1997 has been multiplied many times over. The policy that he was criticising as undermining NATO will not only, by definition, undermine NATO but damage it beyond repair.
In order to be able to work towards a Europe with which we can live, we must modify the acquis communautaire, using political will to do so. In order to achieve enlargement, politicians will need to convince the people in central and eastern Europe far more effectively than they are at the moment. I am talking about the people and not the elite. What happened in Denmark is a good example of what could happen. Indeed, on "Today" this morning, we heard that there were rumblings in the Czech Republic--
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