| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Jimmy Hood (Clydesdale): I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement. I welcome also what I hope was an open-ended commitment by the Government to parliamentary scrutiny, be it in the Chamber, in Select Committees or in the Standing Committee on the Inter-Governmental Conference, which he reported to the House today. The European Scrutiny Committee is looking forward to my right hon. Friend giving evidence to us tomorrow on his White Paper, and I look forward to welcoming him.
I offer one word of caution, and it refers to the Standing Committee on the treaty. Will my right hon. Friend have a word with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House about consulting colleagues who
were members of the Standing Committee to learn from the lessons that clearly helped to improve the scrutiny of the Convention? I am sure that those lessons will serve the House well if we consult before the Standing Committee is set up.
Mr. Straw: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he said. I have always believed in open-ended scrutiny of Ministers. I look forward to submitting myself to that process, including before my hon. Friend's Committee tomorrow.
Scrutiny will need to take place at three sets of levels. One of those levels should be Select Committees, including the one that my hon. Friend chairs. In some specific areas, I do not doubt that subject departmental Select Committees will wish to be involved in examining carefully how various drafts of the text are likely to operate. I anticipate that that will be the case especially in relation to foreign policy and defence. Secondly, there should be scrutiny on the Floor of the House, and thirdly in Standing Committee. As I was not a parliamentary representative on the Convention, I obviously did not attend Standing Committee. However, I understand the point that my hon. Friend is making. I accept the need to consult him and his colleagues and, indeed, Mr. Speaker, the chairman of the Committee and yourself, to ensure that the process operates effectively.
Mr. Menzies Campbell (North-East Fife): The Foreign Secretary was right to shake us out of our domestic introspection by reminding us of the significance of enlargement and the consequences for those countries that have thrown off the yoke of communism and embraced liberal democracy. It is right that we should remember that when we consider the detail as far as it affects ourselves.
I had no difficulty reading the 60 pages in the time allotted. If I have a criticism of the White Paper, it is that it does not contain much that I have not heard before. Of the 60 pages, only 12 were devoted to the Government's opinion of the Convention text. May we take it that elsewhere will we see a detailed critique by the Government of the terms of the text?
I agree about the areas that are sometimes described as red lines—for example, tax, social security, defence and own resources. I agree that they should remain the exclusive responsibility of the House. They are a necessary part of the sovereignty of the Parliament to which we are elected.
As for the charter of fundamental rights, paragraph 103 reads:
- "The Government will make a final decision on incorporation of the Charter into the draft Constitutional Treaty only in the light of the overall picture at the IGC."
Why is it that the Government set themselves so implacably against the idea of a referendum on a treaty that in my judgment raises constitutional implications,
not least in relation to the charter of fundamental rights? Surely a Government confident of their own position would be comfortable in seeking the endorsement of the people of the United Kingdom.
Mr. Straw: On that last point, it is not a question of being comfortable. I am very comfortable with the position that I and the Government have adopted. It is about what is appropriate. I have already said that in this country we have had, and will have in future, referendums when we are joining or, in one case, voting to leave an institution. In a European Union context, it was right to have a referendum in 1975. We should have had one in 1972 or 1973 as we were joining but, as I said, we had one in 1975. It is obviously right that when faced with a new economic institutional proposal—that of whether to join the euro or not—there should be a referendum on the issue.
The House needs to have some confidence in its own judgments. We have dealt with European Union constitutional treaties—my party has taken a consistent view on them, and I think that even the right hon. and learned Gentleman's party has in the past—by the parliamentary process. I believe that that is the appropriate way forward.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman says that the White Paper does not contain much that we have not heard before. I take it as a compliment that we have at least been consistent in the negotiating approach that we have adopted.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): Consistently wrong.
Mr. Straw: Consistently right. I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) will catch your eye later, Mr. Speaker.
As the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) will recall, there were four occasions before the summer break when we discussed these matters in great detail. Further detail will be provided about our negotiating position, not least in cross-examination by various Select Committees. I am glad that he endorses our position on the red lines.
There is nothing particularly delphic about paragraph 103. Given the nature of the charter of fundamental rights, we must ensure that the text properly protects what we want it to protect. We will not be able to make the final judgment on that until we have seen the rest of the text. In other words—the right hon. and learned Gentleman asked me about the veto—nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
Mr. George Stevenson (Stoke-on-Trent, South): There is much in the Government's approach to the IGC and the Convention that I want to support. However, there is an equal number of issues that I have serious concerns about. The weakest arguments that I find in the Government's approach are those that are deployed against having a referendum. The White Paper is clear that the Convention and the IGC will affect the lives of every man, woman and child in this country and will impact on the way in which we govern ourselves. In these circumstances, and given the fact that many other member states have decided to hold referendums, why
are the Government so insistent that the people of this country should not be consulted on the way in which they are governed?
Mr. Straw: It is a question of judgment whether the changes in the draft, if they were agreed, would fundamentally change the nature of the relationship between this Parliament, this country and the European Union, and I do not believe that they would. In the White Paper, we have not used the language that he suggested about how the changes will fundamentally affect the lives of people in the United Kingdom.
It is certainly true that an enlarged Union will fundamentally affect people's lives here, and that is why all parties in the House have been committed to it. It needs to be understood that the argument for the changes is to make enlargement work. However, if it happened that the Convention process ran into the ground and one country or another did not ratify it, then, to put it bluntly, it would not be the end of the world. We would have to get by with Nice. My objection to Nice is that it is unsatisfactory and inefficient, but it is not that there is a different level in terms of the relationship between member states and the European Union and between Nice and what is now proposed, except that under these proposals the European Council Heads of Government will in practice gain more authority with a small "a" because they will have a full-time president who will be able better to match the European Commission. In addition, we have the important proposals in respect of subsidiarity.
Mr. William Hague (Richmond, Yorks): Does the Foreign Secretary recognise that, by holding a large number of referendums over the past six years, the Government have already changed the constitution of this country? Would not other countries have taken more seriously some of the positions that he has now had to abandon if the Government took more seriously the views of the people of this country and were prepared to hold a referendum? Given that the Prime Minister has instead called for parliamentary scrutiny of the treaty—a statement in itself sufficiently remarkable from the Prime Minister that it betrays the absence of other arguments—will the Foreign Secretary commit himself to that treaty being scrutinised clause by clause on the Floor of the House by all right hon. and hon. Members?
Mr. Straw: The question of the scrutiny of any treaty proposals will proceed in the normal way and, of course, constitutional matters will be considered in the way that applies to any European Union treaty. I am not going to anticipate the precise nature of the arrangements for that—[Hon. Members: "Ah!"] The House knows that, but I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman is committed to proper and effective parliamentary scrutiny.
We put our approach to the intergovernmental conference to the British people at the last election. We said in our manifesto:
- "Labour wants the next Inter-governmental Conference in 2004"—
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |