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6.30 pm

Mr. Richard Spring (West Suffolk): We certainly have had a fine debate with some excellent speeches. We heard a variety of views that all reflected a common sense of concern about where this is all leading us. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) has just arrived and I pay tribute to her. She has done a lot of work that we value on the role of national Parliaments. I think that we can all draw some encouragement from what the Foreign Secretary said this afternoon about turning her yellow cards into red cards. We need to explore that and I hope that the Government will do so assertively in the coming months. We shall certainly support them if they do that in a way that really returns powers to national Parliaments.

That echoes the argument of the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell), who said yes to subsidiarity, but posed the question of how we effect it. It is an essential point. We have put forward plans to do it. Unless we assert subsidiarity, instead of just talking about it, the disconnection between the peoples of Europe and its institutions will only grow.

We heard an excellent speech from the hon. Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall). Among other things, he touched on how important it is that NATO and the transatlantic relationship are maintained and nurtured in these difficult times.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) made an outstanding speech. He said that the constitution has been set in stone, which is correct: it is obvious what it will be. He also talked about the so-called escalator clause, which would again diminish the role of our national Parliament. He mentioned the European Union legal personality, with the impact that its security, defence and policing policies would have—all important areas. I entirely agree with

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him about the rotating presidency. It is hugely important that the smaller countries feel part of this and that the permanent presidency is not some stitch-up by the larger countries for some former Prime Minister or President.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) talked about the role that the European Court of Justice will play in foreign affairs as well as that of the proposed minister for foreign affairs and the impact on diminishing national Parliaments.

The hon. Member for Glasgow, Pollok (Mr. Davidson) said that one of the difficulties with the attitude of the British people towards the European Union is that there has been no sense of finality; I absolutely agree. As people do not know where the process will end and there has been a ratchet effect over the years, of course there has been a suspension of belief in what politicians are saying. Where it will end must be defined.

The hon. Member for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins) talked about the euro. He warned of the dangers and cited the problems in Germany. My hon. Friend the Member for Upminster (Angela Watkinson) very tellingly took up that point. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) talked of the cost of the European Union and the need for us to appraise objectively trade flows, the net costs and the benefits to the United Kingdom.

Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) said that Laeken would bring the institutions of the European Union closer to the people. I do not believe that that has happened.

In his speech, "A Blueprint for the New Europe", which I believe the Foreign Secretary gave yesterday, he talked about the final draft treaty that emerges from the intergovernmental conference and said that it would be judged against a number of standards. He asked

"first, and above all, will the draft provide the institutional blueprint the Union needs to make EU enlargement work?"

I accept that that is a necessity. He also said that clarity should be introduced so that people have a better understanding of the European Union, about which I agree. It was telling, however, that probably the single most important thing that was left out of the checklist was returning a sense of ownership of the European Union and its institutions to the peoples of Europe. That must be at the heart of all the arrangements that he talked about. What has emerged out of the Convention, and what is most likely to emerge from the intergovernmental conference, does not satisfactorily address that point.

I pay tribute to the UK members of the Convention, particularly the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells. In the context of my comments, however, it is worth noting the observation of Lord Tomlinson, who said:

"I am also critical of the fact that the Convention gold-plated its mandate. Nothing in the Laeken mandate told the Convention that it had to draw up a constitutional treaty."

Last week, the Foreign Secretary told us that what is likely to emerge at the intergovernmental conference, based on the Convention's proposals, will not alter the fundamental constitutional balance between the European Union's institutions and the member nation

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states. He echoed implicitly the view of the Leader of the House that it had all been a tidying-up exercise. That very afternoon, in the Palace of Westminster, the two former Ministers for Europe hosted a celebration party for the accession countries. It was attended by distinguished representatives of our EU partner countries and accession states, with whom I discussed the view of the Foreign Secretary that the Maastricht treaty and the Single European Act were far more important constitutionally than the tidying-up exercise that we are now facing. Their reactions ranged from disbelief to the utterly unprintable.

On Friday last week, two days after the debate, the German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, whom we are told is a strong candidate to be the first European foreign minister, declared that it is

"the most important treaty since the formation of the European Economic Community".

I certainly know whom to believe. My right hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) and I meet dozens of politicians and political commentators from our EU partner countries, and let me tell Ministers that not one shares the view of the Foreign Secretary and the Leader of the House about the Convention and its constitutional importance.

That leads me to the point made explicitly in the House last week by my hon. Friends the Members for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) and for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples): successive Governments have sought to put a gloss on developments in the EU and have all too often been in denial of the reality of unfolding events and policies. Whatever one's view of the EU, that is a simple truth, which was a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East (Sir Teddy Taylor).

Let us look at the Government's performance in its dealings with the EU. Before Nice, a view had been expressed that the accession process could be simple, but in the event we had a major treaty. We were told that there was no need for substantial extensions of QMV, but that happened at Nice, and then we had the proclamation of the charter of fundamental rights. We had understood that the Government did not even favour a Convention. They started off being opposed to a written constitution—certainly one that included the charter of fundamental rights—but, typically, they changed their mind, being carried along in the slipstream by others.

The simple truth is that in the build-up to the enlargement, our Government, unlike other Governments, never set out a clear view of what the European Union's architecture should look like. I very much agree with the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife that we should have a White Paper setting out the implications of the proposed changes in the constitutional relationships within the European Union. We have had speeches from the Foreign Secretary and the Leader of the House correctly analysing the disconnection between the peoples of Europe and EU institutions, and endlessly talking about how elites were running the show, but never producing policies to address those challenges. The only major policy commitment that we have ever heard from the

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Government was the truly fatuous idea, proposed by the Prime Minister, that there should be a second chamber of the European Parliament.

When the charter of fundamental rights was being proclaimed at Nice we were told that it had no significance whatever, yet, even then, the European Commission told us:

"It can reasonably be expected that the Charter will become mandatory through the Court's interpretation of it as belonging to the general principles of Community law."

Indeed, it has already been invoked in court cases. The idea that the charter has no application in British law and no impact on our country is palpable and misleading nonsense.

The Commission stated that the charter would mark

"a turning-point in the integration of Europe, moving it away from the essentially economic logic of its origins to becoming a real political Union".

The incorporation of the charter is part of the European Court of Justice's jurisprudence; it affects the Court's judgments and will form part of European law. The idea that it will not apply to us is ridiculous. We shall increasingly have judge-led law in this country, and there is nothing that the British people dislike more than judge-led law over which they can have no control.

We have heard about the reform of the common agricultural policy. The reform process was hijacked from under the very nose of the Government—it was breathtaking. For all the Government's talk about their influence in Europe, the whole reform process of the CAP has been moved away from them by the French and the Germans, greatly to the disadvantage of the whole enlargement process. It is a matter of great regret that the Government had so little influence in that debate.

As we have heard, Laeken was supposed to bring European citizens closer to European institutions, but the march of centralisation and harmonisation has continued. The ratchet process has proceeded unimpeded.

In the Chamber, we heard the Foreign Secretary admit that he was wrong about the greatest geopolitical challenge in the latter half of the 20th century—how to face up to the challenge of totalitarianism in Europe. I respect him for his honesty. However, once again, the Labour party has characteristically made a fundamental misjudgment.

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