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Mr. Mitchell:
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is going to explain the issue to me; I will be very grateful if he does.
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Mr. Salmond: The hon. Gentleman is mad and I have forgotten. I agree that a long document is capable of different interpretations, but, in my interpretation, on anything that is a shared competence we have the protection of article 1.11, which the Foreign Secretary specified, and we are covered by subsidiarity, but anything that is an exclusive competence has neither of those protections. That is why I am so concerned—as, I know, is the hon. Gentleman—that fisheries have ended up in the wrong category.
Mr. Mitchell: That may well be the position, and since we are dealing with abnormal psychology here, in which I am not an expert, although I accept that the Scottish National party may be, I will have to accept that explanation.
Our interests in Europe lie not with this constitution but in a looser association in which we can, if we want, pick and mix. There are proposals for strengthening the constitution's central core, but there are no proposals for allowing the kind of pick-and-mix process that is in our interests. All parties have been saying for decades that we will fundamentally reform the common agricultural policy, but it never happens. The CAP goes on costing more. It is a declining proportion of the Community's expenditure but a bigger total, and it is never effectively reformed. It is a drag on trade negotiations, particularly for this country, all over the world. We need to come out of that policy, but if the constitution is accepted there will be no possibility of doing so or of coming out of the common fisheries policy. It is interesting, is it not, that all the common policies of this European monster—the CFP, the CAP and the common economic policy—are the most disastrous areas of Europe's machinations.
We do not want to be subject to endless regulations about how many or what mixture of vitamins pills we can take. What use is it to regulate all that from the centre and impose it on the British market? Yet that is a classic example of the lunacy of this centralisation process.
John Robertson (Glasgow, Anniesland) (Lab): What would be the situation, particularly for the CAP, if we did not participate at the centre of the EU and try to mould what is happening? Does my hon. Friend agree that the alternative to participation is total withdrawal from the EU? We cannot try to change anything from the periphery; we must either be in the middle or out of the EU completely.
Mr. Mitchell:
I had hoped that my hon. Friend was going to intervene on the question of vitamin pills, which I am sure we both take. What he said is absolutely wrong. I remember the classic reforms proposed for the CAP in Agenda 2000. Reform was agreed, and we went along to the Council in Berlin. Giscard simply walked into the negotiations and said no, and all the reforms that we had agreed were scrapped. Our presence had no influence and we could not stop that. Our interest lies in allowing states to contribute what they want to their own agricultural policy and in our buying in the cheapest market. It is ridiculous to say that the alternative to reforming the CAP is to come out of Europe altogether. That is palpably absurd, and it would palsy the hand of Government in trying to secure
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any reform in anything. To say, "If we reform this, we'll be out" is no negotiating position for a British Government to take. That is the kind of despair that I want no truck with.
The problem that the Government face is deciding whether we should accept the constitution. If we do, we will have a weaker base from which to resist further depredations, regulations and impositions of central control. The threats that are held out if we do not accept it—that we will be on our own and out of Europe—are totally unrealistic. We face a simple question of whether or not we accept it. I do not expect the Prime Minister to be so bold as to take his courage in his hands and veto the constitution, saying "Up with this we will not put." However, he might attempt, as Pope put it, to
"Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer",
providing a rallying post for those nations, mostly the smaller ones, who need support, who are unhappy with the provisions and want to oppose it and certainly to stick to the red lines. My position on the constitution is
"Thou shalt not kill"—
and perhaps I may not be able to kill—
"but need'st not strive
Officiously to keep"—
"alive."
There is no need for the constitution and the British people do not want it. If my Prime Minister comes back from Europe and, like his Conservative predecessor, proclaims "Game, set and match", which is what everyone comes back from European Councils triumphantly proclaiming, I have to tell him and my Front-Bench colleagues that the British people will simply not believe it.
2.10 pm
Sir Menzies Campbell (North-East Fife) (LD): It is instructive to look around the Chamber. I do not exempt my party from this criticism, but one would hardly believe that the debate is taking place only a few days after European elections in which one party achieved 12 Members of the European Parliament for the United Kingdom and 16 per cent. of the vote on the thesis that Britain should withdraw from the EU. Perhaps the proper argument about the EU and Britain's role in it should start in the Chamber, with a greater attendance of Members from all parties.
The right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) said that the debate was timely. I hope that he will not think it churlish of me to say that I am not so sure about that on this occasion, because we have mainly heard—I suspect that we will continue to hear, and I do not exempt myself from this criticism—a rehearsal of old lines by the same actors.
That makes me think, to continue the theatrical theme, that the debate is rather like the porter's scene in Macbeth. We are an interruption to the dramatic narrative, but there is little likelihood of our having any impact on the plot. We need to know, to inform this debate and the debate in the country, the outcome of the negotiations over the weekend and what, if anything, the Prime Minister will bring back.
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I hope, therefore, that there will be an opportunity if not for a reprise, at least for the chance to examine in some detail, as soon as decisions have been made, what took place over that weekend and what the United Kingdom may be invited to endorse in a referendum.
Mr. Redwood: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman tell us what policy changes the Liberal Democrats will make in the light of the strong Eurosceptic opinion expressed in the election?
Sir Menzies Campbell: We shall continue to reflect our policy in the terms of the manifesto on which we stood. In the most recent European elections we increased our number of Members of the European Parliament and we increased our percentage of the popular vote. I think that was a reasonable endorsement of our position. I wish we had been third rather than fourth, second rather than third and first rather than second but, unhappily, my wishes do not always prevail in these matters. I am confident that the position that we took was entirely legitimate. We shall not do anything other than stand on the manifesto on which we fought the election campaign.
Mr. David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab): I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would agree that access to the Liberal Democrat manifesto, or its summary, was not present in many election leaflets in the east midlands. The probable reason for the slight increase in the vote was the smokescreen of promoting Iraq as the prime issue on which people should elect Liberal Democrat MEPs. There was little about Europe in the leaflet that we received in the east midlands.
Sir Menzies Campbell: If the hon. Gentleman thinks that Iraq was not significant in the debate about Europe, let me try to help him. There is no doubt that the stand taken by the Government, and endorsed by a vote in the House, was one of staying close to the position of the Bush-White House Administration. In my view, that was not justified. My scepticism and that of my party is well known on this matter. If we had a properly formed common foreign and security policy in Europe, it is extremely unlikely that the United Kingdom would have allied itself with the Bush Administration. One of the compelling arguments for a common foreign and security policy is that Europe should operate together but, if necessary, independently of the United States on such issues. I therefore believe that Iraq has an important significance in the context of a debate about Europe.
I also say to the hon. Gentleman that as the European elections were the first universal test of public opinion in the United Kingdom since the decision to take military action against Iraq, it was inevitable that Iraq would feature in the minds of electors. To conduct a campaign and to say, "This is a campaign about Europe, but we are not going to allow you to talk about Iraq and we are not going to talk about Iraq", would have seemed to many people to be an abrogation of responsibility.
I have quite a lot of sympathy with some of the preliminary observations of the hon. Member for Great
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Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell). He was right to say that the events of the election are of significance. I would argue that what came out of last weekend was, in truth, a warning for proponents of the European case that, without leadership in Europe, voters will hear only one side of the story on Europe, which will inevitably be in negative terms.
These have become questions of belief. I suspect that the debate has reflected that so far, and that that will continue as it proceeds. Opinions are almost preordained. Members enter the Chamber with a view about Europe and a view about the legal instrument that may or may not be called a constitution. I shall be surprised if any Member who takes part in the debate changes his or her mind as a result of what they hear during the day. I believe strongly, as I have said in many debates on this subject, that there is a case for a legal instrument, that it should be called a constitution and that, without a document of the sort that is contemplated, to seek to organise the EU on the basis of the four existing treaties—Rome, Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice—and the Single European Act would become increasingly difficult. In my view, it would be a twin recipe for instability and sclerosis. Some action must therefore be taken to reflect the fact that we have gone from six to 25 member states.
I accept—in my judgment, those of my persuasion on these matters would be wise to do so—that there will be little hope of an affirmative vote in a referendum campaign unless the campaign to achieve that begins now. As reflected in the votes of last Thursday, there is a substantial amount of anxiety about Europe and about Britain's role within the EU. One would be right to acknowledge that the campaign for a negative vote in the referendum has to some extent already begun, and can claim some early success.
Otherwise, why else within a month after the much-celebrated enlargement of the EU should the United Kingdom have elected 12 Members of the European Parliament who are pledged to wreck it? For the states that have just joined—for example, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania—that must be a bleak message. The future of the EU itself will be bleak unless those of us in all parties who believe that Britain should be at the heart of Europe—in the language used by Mr. John Major and more recently by the Prime Minister—argue that case with much greater vigour than has been experienced in this country since perhaps 1975.
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