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Mr. Ancram: I have given way to the right hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.]—I have given way three times—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): Order. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is clearly not prepared to give way.
Mr. Ancram: I give way to the Foreign Secretary.
Mr. Straw: I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way; I shall try to reciprocate. On fishing, let us suppose that we repatriate the powers by a decision of the House and the other place. What happens when that repatriation of fishing powers turns out to be completely inconsistent with the treaties?
Mr. Ancram: That is the negative answer that we hear all the time. My criticism is that we have had two years of the renegotiation of treaties through the Convention and the process that has led to the constitution. The Government should have been arguing the case for our fishermen during those negotiations, but they did not. We will not find ourselves in that situation when we are in government. We will argue for British interests. Our case in negotiations will be strong, and we will succeed.
We have sat back for too long as powers were leeched away from national Parliaments to Brussels. We intend to reverse the conveyor belt by restoring to Westminster powers from Brussels that can be exercised better and more efficiently here. We are not alone, although the Foreign Secretary keeps trying to suggest that we are. The Dutch Foreign Minister, Bernard Bot, called for cultural policy, parts of the common agricultural policy and the social chapter to be returned to nation states' control. When the constitution fails, as I believe that it should and will, and Europe goes back to the drawing board, we will at last have the opportunity to negotiate a Europe in which the nations matter again.
The whole weight of evidence, argument and popular opinion is ranged against this wretched constitution. The opportunity to reject it and build a more people-friendly Europe is there. I fear that due to all the deeply
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inculcated arrogance of new Labour and its contempt for democratic opinion, that opportunity will be squandered. I fear that the Prime Minister will return to the House on Monday full of tales of negotiating derring-do and red lines protected, but with an agreed and damaging constitution in his hand. If that happens, in the face of British public opinion, he should accept one valid challenge: put the constitution to the people in a referendum now. He should not wait 14 months in the hope that he can bamboozle the British people into supporting it. He should have the courage of his convictions, get on with it, and let the people decide. He could do even better by the British people by going to Brussels this weekend and rejecting the constitution now.
1.51 pm
Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab): Although this point has fortunately not flowed into the debate, I was surprised by the reaction of both major parties to the European election results because the most striking thing about them was the increase in the vote for the UK Independence party and the National—non-Jordan—Front. The reaction of the party leaders seemed to be that we should dismiss the support for UKIP and the National Front, but that would be like adopting the old Militant argument from 1983 that if people did not vote for our Trotskyite policies, we should change the electorate rather than our policies. I do not mind hearing a few jokes about how a permatan can be maintained in the European Parliament—it is quite possible to maintain one here in the British Parliament. Wondering about how my friend Robert Kilroy-Silk will maintain an income and an audience in his new role is harmless stuff. However, it would be dangerous to dismiss what the electorate told us through the vote.
I do not think that the electorate told us that they want to come out of Europe. That is not a salient issue, and we waste far too much time denouncing the possibility of withdrawal to create fear. If our only defence of the proposed constitution is that the alternative is withdrawal, it has no defence at all. The people were not making that point about Europe. Opinion polls show that British public opinion has consistently been divided, with about 40 per cent. of people thinking that our relationship with Europe is a bad thing and about 40 per cent. thinking that it is a good thing. The rest are undecided about, disinterested in, or bored by, the whole affair.
British people do not have a passionate belief in withdrawal, but they are not happy with Europe, our relationship with Europe, the stream of regulations and commitments that is handed down to us, or the projects of the Euro-enthusiastic elite for whom Europe is a matter of religion rather than national interest. The reality of the situation is that the Euro-enthusiastic elite are foisted on us, so the electorate are saying, "No more than that." However, the fact that they are saying such a thing means that it would be dangerous to rush into or propose any endorsement of the European constitution. Such an action would put an imposition on the people—they do not want that.
A pathetic argument on the front page of today's edition of The Independent predicts the horrifying consequences of withdrawal, such as national
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disintegration and dissolution. As if European countries would stop sending us manufactured goods. We are told that we do well with trade at present, but that we have constantly been in deficit, so this country would lose manufacturing jobs to Europe. As if European countries would stop forcing their overpriced food on us and stop us from buying food on the cheapest market, which is usually the world market. As if they would stop us passing social legislation for our purposes so that we may handle social provisions in our own way. All that is nonsense within the debate.
Mr. Salmond: The hon. Gentleman has great experience of these matters, so will he explain why the constitution, as proposed, has only four exclusive competences: the customs union; the commercial policy of the single market; the euro, for those who are in it; and the conservation of marine biological resources under the common fisheries policy? Why is the Foreign Secretary so reluctant to correct an obvious historical blunder that has given the fisheries policy such a status?
Mr. Mitchell: I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman's point. The constitution must be the first in the whole world to include fish. I read several constitutions during my days as a political science lecturer, but I never found one that included the marine biological resources of the sea and fish. What is the basis on which that is being done? I think that the exclusive competence will extend competences because it will apply to not only the 12-mile limit, but right up to the beaches, which was not envisaged even when the Conservative Government signed up to the common fisheries policy. The inclusion of that competence is a mystery. However, the provision is ominous because the fact that it is included implies that it has a purpose, but that would have to be damaging to our national fishing interests. That is only one aspect of the constitution that worries me.
We were told that the constitution represented a tidying-up operation to make way for new member states, but we were also told that the Nice treaty would do that job for us—it was sold to us and pushed through the House on exactly the same basis. Evidently, more tidying-up is necessary, so I have no doubt that more will come later.
The constitution is a product of the European elite. Euro-enthusiasm and commitment to the European vision were prior requirements for those who participated in the Convention that produced it. Critics and Eurosceptics formed only a pathetically tiny minority of the people involved in its production, although the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), along with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), maintained a consistently critical stance.
The arrangement shows how Brussels and its bureaucratic elite are constantly striving for an ever-closer Union. There is a constant desire to breed a 1950s-style centralising state that hands down rules and decrees along the lines of the model of the French state, which has a powerful bureaucracy to drive it. However, the time has passed for exactly that kind of state. People no longer want such states. Even the European bloc is less relevant in a world in which tariff barriers are
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falling, there is greater emphasis on corporations, globalisation makes for common standards and every barrier is coming down.
A bloc such as Europe is less and less relevant and less and less necessary, but there is still a drive from the centre to turn it into a state of a type whose time has passed. There is no need now for a European state that is constantly strengthened in that way. Enlargement sounded the death knell of that process, and this constitution is its last throe—an attempt to reverse the consequences of enlargement, which means that, as an association, Europe will be not only bigger but looser. One cannot impose the framework of a state on such a diverse, massive population or collection of nations. This is the last desperate throe of outdated centralism, but it is still dangerous and we in this country should oppose it.
We want national management of our fishery resources, and I support the desire to come out of the common fisheries policy, but it is not only on fishing that we should oppose the constitution. It will transfer more power to the centre and create a situation in which more power still can be transferred to the centre. I refer here to the excellent Fabian Society pamphlet "The Making of Europe's Constitution" by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston, in which she raises several of the dangerous points that are still implicit in the constitution. She says that
"assent for changes moves to the European institutions, without the further involvement of Westminster or other national Parliaments."
She argues further that the constitution
"gives the Commission wider powers to act where there is no specific treaty basis"
for that action. She adds that
"the draft Constitution contains no mechanism to review and return powers from the Union to Member States"
"rigid rules to determine future actions or how power is to be exercised but it also initiates processes."
"in practice the present scope of the acquis"—
the acquis communautaire that all the new members have to accept—
"is not reconcilable with the professed objective of subsidiarity and taking decisions at the lowest feasible level."
That is absolutely true. We have a massive acquis of regulations imposed from the centre. My hon. Friend goes on to say:
"The draft Constitution proposes in at least 36 separate policy areas that the national veto is to be abolished".
Finally, there is the question of the EU having its own resources, which is central to the ideas of Giscard d'Estaing. The constitution is so long, so turgid and so complex that it is like the Schleswig-Holstein question beloved of Lord Palmerston, and anyone who says that they understand it and its implications is either insane or a genius. I do not think that there are many of either calibre on either Front Bench. I therefore think that the question of own resources is an open one, but steps seem to be being taken towards providing those.
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