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Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con): If my hon. Friend is in the mood, he might turn back a page and go to the preface, which is signed by three of the more pompous figures in Europe: Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Giuliano Amato and Jean-Luc Dehaene. They are three of the perpetrators of this outrage. The amount of Euro-balls in the preface is similar to that in the preamble, which my hon. Friend just quoted, and he might consider sharing it with the House, if he feels in the mood.
Mr. Maples: My right hon. Friend has done that for me.
Another interesting piece of the preamble is where it says:
"Convinced that, while remaining proud of their own national identities, the peoples of Europe are determined to transcend their ancient divisions and, united ever more closely, to forge a common destiny."
That is what these three guys, and the people who go along with them, really think.
I shall quote another telling piece, which may have escaped the attention of my right hon. Friend. Article 1, part of the treaty, refers to
"Reflecting the will of the citizens and States of Europe to build a common future".
How do we know that that represents the will of the people? The constitution was not an issue at the general election, or in the elections in any other European Union or accession country. The Government have now conceded that we will find out, but they have been fighting that for a long time. As I said, they resisted my ten-minute rule Bill, which was in almost exactly the same terms, three or four months ago. We need to find out the will of the people.
The existence of that ambitious European elite is always denied by middle-of-the-road Europhiles, who say, "No, no, no. That's not the agenda. This treaty is more intergovernmental; it weakens the power of the Commission." We were told that at Maastricht, at Amsterdam and at Nice, and we are being told it about the constitution. I heard a couple of my hon. Friends say privately the other day that the constitution weakens the power of the Commission. How does it weaken the power of the Commission to give it a role in foreign policy and the whole of the home affairs pillar? How does it weaken its power to have the Foreign Minister, dual-hatted, in the Commission? It does not weaken its power at all.
Mr. Forth: I am sticking with the preface, which says that the Convention
"establishes the necessary measures to improve the structure and enhance the role of each of the Union's three institutions".
There, again, one does not have to guess these people's motivation; it is there in black and white. In that sense they are transparent; they do not hide anything from us, but state, in black and white, what they want to do.
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Mr. Maples: I am sure that my right hon. Friend, like me, has an argument with, but no moral objection to, the people who espouse that cause. There is an argument for a united states of Europe, and there is an argument against it, which I will make during the course of my speech. What there is no argument for is pretending that the agenda does not exist, and that is what is happening.
I return to my conversation with a couple of my hon. Friends who are, by my standards at any rate—and probably by the nation's standards—Europhiles. It was a private conversation, so I will not mention their names. One of them asked me, "What are you going to do at the next IGC?" I said, "Hang on a minute. This is not the end of the road." Once we've got the constitution, we'll have another IGC, perhaps in two or three years time, and there will be an attempt to erode the few things left in the treaty which stop it being the constitution of a united states of Europe. I will come on to the detail of what will have to be done to make this the constitution of a superstate. It is not that yet; I can see that, but it is jolly close. The establishment of full-scale qualified majority voting, the inclusion of powers for harmonising direct taxes and the removal of the veto on foreign and defence affairs would do it. They are big steps, and they are three of the Government's red lines, but we are getting very close to them.
We are an awfully long way from 1956, when we signed the treaty of Rome. We lived with that, perfectly happily, for 29 years, until 1985, when we collectively decided—I was a Member of the House at that time, although, perhaps regrettably, it was not an issue to which I paid much attention—that a single market was a good idea and it needed additional powers for the European Union in the form of qualified majority voting. We were told that that would be confined to making the single market work, since when, under the Single European Act, we have had a raft of legislation about employment, health and safety and the environment. If one asked Lady Thatcher, who was Prime Minister at the time, about that, she would say—in fact, I think that she does in her memoirs—how seriously betrayed and misled she felt over undertakings that she was given at that time. It only took her one betrayal to wise up. Since then, we have had Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice: next, presumably, will be Dublin.
It is time for those of us who do not share the agenda of a united states of Europe to wise up. The Treaty of Rome was purely a customs union, a free trade area and an attempt to ensure that business could develop. It flew the free market flag in a Europe that was not at that time much in favour of the free market. The treaty of 1985 took that a bit further, but was distorted by the way the powers contained in it were used. Maastricht took the big steps, including the treaty of the European Union, the setting up of the single currency and the social chapter. It had a pillar structure. Home affairs and foreign affairs remained intergovernmental—the Commission had no role in them at all. Nevertheless, the social chapter opt-out that we secured in Maastricht was bypassed. The working time directive was passed under health and safety provisions: a different legislative basis was used to bring it into effect because we would not be bound under the social chapter. That is an example of how such provisions are distorted.
In Amsterdam we saw the partial collapse of the home affairs pillar and the extension of qualified majority voting. Nice is the least offensive of all the treaties,
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because we needed it to make provision for enlargement. When the Prime Minister sold the Nice treaty in this House—I had Front-Bench responsibility for foreign affairs at the time—he said that it was needed to make enlargement work. We were never told that we would need another intergovernmental conference, a constitution or a treaty to make it work. Not everybody was happy with the system of qualified majority voting and the nature of the Commission that came out of Nice, but nobody said at the time that another intergovernmental conference was needed. One is pocketed, then we are told two or three years later that we must have another one.
David Cairns: I recall the debate in this Chamber on the ratification of the treaty of Nice. It happened to be the debate in which I made my maiden speech, as history will recall. A series of Conservative Members said there should be a referendum on Nice. Now, the hon. Gentleman is saying that it was not that significant, but that was not the message from his Back Benchers at the time.
Mr. Maples: One of the joys of being a Back Bencher is that one has only to speak for oneself, and on that basis I think that the treaty of Nice was the least offensive of all the treaties.
Each of these treaties advances the process of ever closer union, and it will not stop advancing until we have a united states of Europe. A referendum is required at some point between the treaty of Rome and a federal superstate. One could argue that it should have been at Maastricht or at Nice, but we must have it some time. Such treaties provide an opportunity for a referendum to take place, because one can ask this very simple question: do we or do we not ratify it? We have not yet reached a superstate, but we are well on the way to it, and there has to be a referendum at some point. I suggest that now is the time.
If the constitution is ratified and put into place, and the intergovernmental conference about which my hon. Friend told me in confidence takes place in 2008, what has to be done to move from what I foresee will be the treaty of Dublin to a federal superstate? The competences are pretty much complete—the only thing that is not in there is direct taxation. On QMV, there are few areas where the veto is still applicable, but they mainly relate to the Government's red line areas of tax, social security and foreign policy.
It will be necessary for the European Court of Justice, and perhaps the supreme courts of one or two member states, to elevate the EU constitution over member states' constitutions. That is not the same as the supremacy of EU law. One of my fears about this being called a constitution is that courts may interpret it very differently from normal law that results from treaties.
The only safeguard that we are left with is the ability to leave, which is a very crude weapon. I do not want to leave the European Union, because there are many things that we need to do together, especially in business and trade—for example, in negotiating with Japan and the United States. If we did that as individual countries in World Trade Organisation negotiations, we would get absolutely nowhere. It is tremendously important to perceive that we have many common interests. The
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history of Europe has been a history of warfare and the closer we are and the stronger our business and personal relationships, the better. I do not want to have to use the nuclear weapon of leaving as a way of preventing the European Union from doing things that we do not support.
One can make an intellectually coherent case for a federal European superstate.
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