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Mr. Straw: The right hon. Gentleman's first point is half serious. However, page 152 of the document that I put before the House shows that the protocol provides a far better scrutiny procedure than currently exists. I commend the European Scrutiny Committee for its work, but the problem is that it does that work only at a late stage in the legislative procedure. The protocol proposes that that should happen much earlier. I and my ministerial colleagues in the EU are determined to make the protocol a reality, and it will then be up to this House to seize the opportunity. I repeat that I have been in the vanguard of making proposals to the House to strengthen how it and the other place scrutinise our work inside the EU. That is increasingly welcomed in Brussels.
The right hon. Member for Wells made a second point in his intervention. I wonder what his women constituents will think when they hear that he objects to a straightforward declaration—which has no direct legal effect—against domestic violence across Europe. The right hon. Gentleman's position is absolutely extraordinary.
Kali Mountford (Colne Valley) (Lab):
As someone who supported with vigour the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill, I am very pleased by what my right hon. Friend had to say about domestic violence. However, does he agree that the question of a European constitution is often used by the Opposition to frighten people about a so-called European state? It is not as though only states have constitutions. The rugby and cricket clubs in my area also have constitutions, but none of them can claim to be a state. Is not the Opposition's attack designed to frighten people away from the benefits of Europe? Does it not have more to do with the Conservative party's natural
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Euroscepticism, the divisions within it and its confusion about the messages from the public than with the treaty itself?
Mr. Straw: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab): It is all very well for my right hon. Friend to say what he has said about scrutiny, but what is the point of scrutiny if, when people in this country say that they do not want something to happen here, they are unable to implement that decision by means of the veto? Will not the constitution mean that we will lose the right to exercise the veto in 42 areas? A good practical example of that is the recent problem with vitamins. Many sensible people in this country wanted to continue to use certain vitamins. We made it clear that we did not want the proposed change to happen here, but it was simply bulldozed through by an elite in Europe that does not really care about ordinary people.
Mr. Straw: The Government will continue to ensure that the veto is maintained in respect of key areas of vital national interest. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has spelled that out, as have I. The White Paper also makes that very clear. The vitamins regulations have nothing to do with what is in the draft constitutional treaty, as they arise from existing legislation passed under the Single European Act and the Maastricht treaty, for both of which the Conservatives were responsible.
Secondly, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) worked with me on justice and home affairs issues. She will remember that we dealt with them not by walking away from the touchlines and out of the stands, but by getting engaged. Time after time, when we are engaged, we win for Britain. That was the experience for the Conservatives in the early 1980s, but the experience was the exact opposite when the Leader of the Opposition was running EU policy in the early 1990s. Finally, most of the 40 or so issues to which the question of the veto is relevant are pretty obscure.
Mr. Straw: I want to provide some further reassurance for the right hon. Member for Wells. I have spelled out many of the areas in which the roles of national Governments, nation states and national Parliaments will be enhanced by the new draft constitution. I have spelled out how the draft meets one of the Leader of the Opposition's key red lines—that some member states should be able to advance faster than others. That process is called enhanced co-operation.
Another reason why some hon. Members—those who want the UK to leave the EU altogether—should vote in favour of the draft constitution is that, at present, there is no procedure that allows member states to denounce the treaties and leave. The present provisions can only produce a mess. Article 159 provides a very clear procedure for member states to leave the EU. I do not believe that to do so would be in our interest, but the
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option should be available. The draft constitutional treaty provides for that option, where existing provisions do not.
Mr. Henry Bellingham (North-West Norfolk) (Con): Will the Foreign Secretary give way?
Mr. Straw: No. I want to make progress.
One would have thought that the Opposition would welcome the benefits in the constitutional treaty most warmly. After all, they say that they want a more flexible Europe and a stronger role for member states and their Parliaments, and this treaty will deliver all that. Instead, even before we have the finalised text, the Leader of the Opposition is committed to rejecting it, whatever it says. It is no surprise that he and the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) are busying themselves, not with arguments based on the reality of this text, but with spreading myths about it that bear little or no relation to the facts.
Let us look at some of those myths. First, there is the myth raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford)—that the existence of a constitution makes the EU a country. My hon. Friend noted that plenty of organisations have constitutions. Golf clubs and the Boy Scouts have them—as does Kent county council, which covers the constituency of the Leader of the Opposition. The right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) wrote a very good piece for his local newspaper the other day. In it, he placed the argument that having a constitution makes an organisation a state into the
"bears-are-black, this-is-black-therefore-it-is-a-bear category".
It is a complete nonsense to say that the existence of an EU constitution means that the EU must be a country. Opposition Members need to produce a much more intelligent level of debate and criticism.
Every international organisation needs a rule book, including the EU. The right hon. and learned Member for Devizes knows enough about law to know very well that the legal status of the constitutional treaty would be the same as its predecessors—that is, a treaty under international law. We will judge the treaty by what it does. It will not build a superstate, but it will strengthen the nations in a modernised EU.
Mr. Bellingham: Will the Foreign Secretary give way on that point?
Mr. Straw: No, I want to make progress.
Next, the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes has claimed that the charter of fundamental rights incorporated in the treaty will stop us from running our own industrial relations policy. It will not, as article 2.28 spells out very clearly. The text makes it clear that the charter would create no EU powers, and that general rights such as the right to strike are subject to "national laws and practices". We shall ensure that we have legal certainty in the way that that is interpreted.
Next, the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes says that we will hand over control of our foreign policy, but what he objects to is already in the treaty of Maastricht, which he wholeheartedly supported. The
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present shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), wrote in The Sunday Telegraph of 7 March 1993:
"Post-Maastricht, Britain and France become the mouthpieces for the European Union at the UN."
That was the prediction but, when I appeared before the Security Council on behalf of this country, I did not get the impression that France was appearing as a mouthpiece of the EU, and neither was I there as a mouthpiece of the EU. France spoke for France, and I spoke for the UK. The prediction therefore turned out to be complete nonsense, but that has not stopped the Opposition from peddling the same myth 12 years on.
Any new treaty to which we agree will keep the national veto for foreign policy. That means that the EU will act together only when every member, including Britain, agrees to do so. There are other scare stories about the primacy of EU law, but the veto has been a fact since the EU's inception, and was part of the terms of our membership. It was written into UK law by section 2 of the European Communities Act 1972.
Today's Opposition spend a great deal of effort denigrating and demeaning the EU while suggesting, unconvincingly, that they still want Britain to remain a member. They square that circle by claiming that they would renegotiate Britain's membership. Far from representing some sort of centre ground, however, that policy of renegotiation has long been espoused by isolationist anti-Europeans both inside and outside the Conservative party. It was the rallying cry of the Maastricht rebels in the early 1990s, and it was taken on by Sir James Goldsmith in the run up to the 1997 general election. Until recently, the Conservative leadership rightly rejected it. Baroness Thatcher never touched the idea of withdrawing from EU membership. John Major called it "absurd". Even the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) refused to go there. Yet today's Conservative leadership—eager to appease the hard-liners and the Europhobes—is now committed to what the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) described a few weeks ago as a "thoroughgoing renegotiation".
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