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Mr. Straw: I may have misheard the right hon. Gentleman, in which case I am sure that he will correct me, but I thought I heard him say that the draft makes no reference to NATO. However, article I-40 on page 29 contains many references to NATO. It states:
- "The policy of the Union . . . shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States and shall respect the obligations of certain Member States, which see their common defence realised in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, under the North Atlantic Treaty".
Mr. Straw: The passage says that the article
- "should not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy of certain Member States . . . which see their common defence realised"
Mr. Ancram: The article refers to compatibility. Later, it uses the phrase
- "to be compatible with the common security and defence policy established within that framework."
Then there are the "escalator" or "passerelle" clauses that allow the EU to expand its power or abolish QMV in a number of areas, without involving national Parliament. I heard what the Foreign Secretary had to say about opposing those proposals, but they remain in the draft for the moment. They are also integrationist.
The magazine The Economist put it well when it called the constitution a "blueprint for accelerated instability". In the end it will give power back not to people and national Parliaments, but to European judges. The proposed constitution is complex. Many of the dangers that Opposition Members see are in the small print and in the ambiguous language. It is a recipe for creeping integration.
The proposals need to be examined very carefully. I should like them to be examined line by line on the Floor of the House. Once implemented, it will be too late to complain that the impact of the detail had not been foreseen. The constitution is not some Bill which, if the House gets it wrong, can be put right by amending legislation. Constitutions are built to last, and this one would be no exception. I suspect that I will be told that line-by-line examination would not be possible because of time constraints. In that respect, I sympathise with the amendment in the name of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field).
I am delighted to hear that a White Paper will be published. That is important, but it should not deal merely with the Government's objectives, as we have heard them on many occasions. I want it to contain the Government's detailed analysis of the constitution's implications and of its impact on the life of the nation. The Government owe it to the House to explain how they see the constitution affecting the lives of ordinary citizens in this country.
The constitution must be considered by this House before the Government begin the IGC process of agreeing the treaty and the constitution. I should like them to restate the red lines, and the amendments over which they would be prepared to veto if they do not succeed in getting changes. In short, the Government must come clean with the British people.
That brings me to our amendment.
- "What is at stake is so new and big that it is right to hold a referendum."
- "I am logically in favour of a referendum. It would be the only legitimate way."
Yesterday, the Minister for Europe, whom I normally spend a lot of time castigating, suggested that we
- "listened to the voters of this country".—[Official Report, 8 July 2003; Vol. 408, c. 895.]
Mr. MacShane: What I said yesterday was that the Conservatives should begin listening to the voters of this country if they want to win back support. Their anti-European policies will not help them in that regard.
Mr. Ancram: On that basis, I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman would accept that he, too, should listen to the voters of this country. If he is so convinced that they would agree with him, let him press for a referendum so that they have the chance to do so.
What have the Government got against letting the people decide? Why do not they trust the British people? What are they afraid of?
Whatever the Foreign Secretary may say, the draft constitution prefaces a significant change in the nature of the European Union. It will have "substantial constitutional significance", as the Leader of the House was frank enough to admit to the Foreign Affairs Committee on 1 April. Whatever casuistries the Foreign Secretary may use, this matter has never been put to the British people. It did not form part of the manifesto on which Labour won the last general election. This treaty will irreversibly alter the relationships between the EU and its member states. Without seeking their consent, it will alienate the sovereignty that belongs to the British people. It is unbelievable that the British people will not be allowed to have their say.
In the House, we can and will argue—as we are doing—the issues involved in the constitution, but the people should have the final say in a referendum. We should have the courage of our convictions and let the people decide. The House should make it clear, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) has pointed out, that there should be no ratification of a constitutional treaty without a referendum. That is the position of my colleagues and I ask the House to support our amendment.
Denzil Davies (Llanelli) rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. Before I call the right hon. Gentleman, may I remind the House that the 12-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches applies from now?
3.37 pm
Denzil Davies (Llanelli): In an intervention, the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) mentioned the Greek quotation from Thucydides, which is the first sentence of the preamble to the constitution. The translation is:
- "Our Constitution . . . is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the greatest number."
Sir Patrick Cormack: Like a Trojan horse.
Denzil Davies: Well, it seems to me that the quotation demonstrates much of the humbug and hypocrisy in the way that the European Union works. As Members know, Thucydides was referring to the democracy and constitution of the small city-state of Athens. From my memory of my studies of ancient history, the Athenian citizen could walk down the high street with a pebble in his hand and put it in a pot, or an urn. If he got enough pebbles in enough pots, he could change the law of Athens.
The British citizen cannot change the laws of the EU, however. No matter how many pebbles he gathers together and no matter how many pots he fills, he cannot abolish the common agricultural policy, he cannot change the common fisheries policy and he cannot get rid of that dreadful bureaucratic tax, value added tax. Nor, indeed, can he change any of the laws in the 90,000 pages of the acquis communautaire or any of the other laws that will come about if the constitution is ratified.
The public have realised that, because at the last European election, as I understand it, the pots were pretty empty of pebbles. The turnout was 29 per cent.—the pot was less than a third full of pebbles—and, as we all know and are much concerned about, at the last general election the pots were only a little more than half empty of pebbles: about 59 per cent. So British democracy cannot change an increasing number of laws that come from Brussels. We have to pass them here, usually as directives, and they stay as they are.
As those hon. Members who have studied ancient history also know, Athens eventually became part of the country of Greece, which eventually became a rather tatty and down-at-heal province of imperial Rome. The European Union was created, as we know, by the countries of Europe, but the only way to create the Union is to transfer more and more power from the member states to the Union. As more and more power gets transferred from member states to the Union—we have all seen this happen over the years—the countries gradually lose their power of self-government and become more and more like provinces of a quasi-imperial, centralised European state. As that process happens, the democracies of the individual members states are diminished gradually, treaty by treaty, line by line.
As we all know—we have been told before and we understand it very well—that state has a flag, an anthem, citizens, a permanent bureaucracy in the Commission, a Parliament, a currency, a central bank and a supreme court. Of course, the supreme court is there to ensure that we all obey the laws of the EU. We have to obey them, but we cannot change them. We can no nothing to change EU laws, despite the fact that the supreme court is able to make us enforce them. Now, of course, we will have a constitution, which will apparently follow the flag, so we have a state.
Every negotiation in respect of a treaty is very a battle between differing institutions. As far as I can see, the greatest changes in respect of the draft constitution are those to the status of the Council of Ministers. The Council of Ministers is a Community institution, but it is different from all the others. Its main purpose was to protect and look after the interests of member states, which were, in fact, the members of the Council of Ministers. It was not just a collegiate body; it was there to represent each individual state on its own. The Council of Ministers did not have much of a bureaucracy. I remember going to Brussels a very long time ago, and the Council of Ministers obviously did not need a bureaucracy because the bureaucracies were those of the permanent representatives of the member states. Over the years, we have gradually seen an increase in the bureaucracy of the Council of Ministers.
Some time ago—this is a mark of a separate personality—the Council of Ministers acquired, I believe, a secretary-general. And with a secretary-general, something is bound to be an institution in its own right. Apparently, the secretary-general is also given the Gilbertian title of high representative. I do not know when he appears as high representative and when he appears as secretary-general, but that institution is now acquiring a personality of its own.
The six-month presidency was a recognition that the Council of Ministers was there not as a free-standing institution, but to look after the separate states. That is why there is almost a peripatetic president every six months. We know that the six-month presidency will go. It seems that the president will be elected for two and a half years, but if he wants another two and a half years, he will get it. So we are probably embarking on a five-year presidency, and the president will speak unto presidents. The president will represent the union and will be accountable to the union and its constitution. The link between the Council of Ministers—the only body that represents member states—and the member states will be weakened, and with it the democracy of member states.
Then there is the veto. Again, member states are allowed to use the veto in the Council of Ministers on certain policy matters, although they do not often do so. The veto has had a bad press, but it is the badge of the democracy of member states. In effect, it allows member states to represent their electorate. It can be obstructive and it can impede progress, but it ensures, as a last resort, that decisions in what should be a supranational body—I do not know if it is; perhaps it has gone beyond that—are taken by consensus, and that if a member state's electorate feel strongly about an issue, the member state has the opportunity to assert its democracy in certain cases. The veto is going to go.
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