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Mr. MacShane: The right hon. Gentleman may be getting to the point at which I might just slightly disagree with something that he says, which is a rather nerve-wracking business when one is sitting on the Government Benches. In France, which he knows very well, a great deal of left-wing, trade union and worker organisations are saying that they will campaign against the constitution unless it takes into consideration the citizen's desire not for protection, but for recognition of the social dimension in employment. I want a Europe with full employment too, but if that were all that we were asking people to vote for, it might open the way to the UKIP-ism of the left. He knows full well how the Communist party, the Trotskyites and even the national front in France have mammoth support from working people in opposing Europe. Will he comment on that particular problem?

Mr. Curry: There are distinct political cultures in every member state, and the relationship with government and the concept of what it is there to do differ dramatically among member states. I have no fundamental difficulty in saying that a significant part of those cultures should be satisfied with the relationship between the citizen and the member state. If we try to enlarge that arrangement across Europe, we will almost certainly satisfy nobody, because it will not meet the British demand that Europe should not be seen to be engaged, and it will not meet the French concern that Europe is seen as a merchant's charter.
 
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I know that finding the balance is difficult. In a sense, every initiative in Europe will have contradictory elements built in to it, because it will bear the imprint of everybody's needs. Such an initiative will not be pristine, and the balance will inevitably turn out to be unsatisfactory. The virtue of Europe, however, is that whenever one is locked into a negotiation, one is condemned eventually to break the deadlock and move forward. That gets one into the next deadlock, but that is the dynamism, however halting, of the organisation.

I wish to conclude by saying a word about France. After the match on Saturday, members of the English team complained that the French team were apparently celebrating in a fairly boisterous manner in their bath. Given that the French "Marseillaise" was jeered, hooted and whistled down by thousands of English fans in the stadium during the singing of the national anthem—a practice that I am afraid is almost entirely English—I have scant sympathy for that complaint. Frankly, the fans were only re-enacting on the fields of Portugal what is re-enacted in the press in Britain almost daily. Let us be frank about that. I find such behaviour vulgar and uncivilised, and it is a great discredit to this country. I am sorry to sound so frightfully middle class and Daily Telegraph about it, but there we are. I am allowed to do so very occasionally.

If one looks at the position of Britain and France in Europe and asks who is in the better position and who should think that they are more on the winning and losing sides, to use that old military analogy, I think that one sees that the United Kingdom has much better reason than France for having confidence. The French press is full of the end of the French hegemony and the idea that things are changing and that enlargement is not a French victory. Enlargement may not even be seen to be in French interests when it is looked at in terms of the creation of a Francophile Europe.

Let us consider Britain's position. Europe is becoming more Anglo-Saxon, more English speaking, more Atlanticist, more diverse and more open. Enlargement therefore gives us a great chance. The French hegemony is over and the only way in which it can be prolonged is through our disengagement. We have a huge opportunity, which we can either take and transform the debate, thus standing a fairly good chance of transforming Europe as well, or surrender. That would be another surrender in the enormously long line of missed British opportunities.

5.50 pm

Mrs. Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con): In June 2000, President Chirac made a powerful speech to the Bundestag in which he called on Germany to join France in leading the drive towards European integration and asked for a timetable for that process to be set out. He said that there should be a European constitution in a few years and a pioneer group of European Union states that wanted to move faster than the others towards closer integration in political and economic matters. It should therefore come as no surprise, four years later, that the Government are on the eve of signing up to such a constitution.

More recently, the agenda—the project, as some have described it—was identified as the solution to the problems outlined in a report that Romano Prodi
 
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commissioned and that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) mentioned. The report was honest and detailed and described the position of the EU today. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former French Finance Minister, chaired the round table of experts who produced it. It concluded:

"The European Union has reached a turning point in its history . . . Its institutions are functioning badly: they are threatened with paralysis and challenged on the grounds of their democratic deficit. Its project has run out of steam: today no satisfactory answers are being given to the questions of why we need Europe and where it is going . . . for the first time, the Union is having to ask itself where its ultimate boundaries lie".

The report, "Building a Political Europe", offers some solutions, some of which are enshrined in the draft treaty that the Government will tackle in the coming days. Its solution, however, is not that suggested by some of my hon. Friends: examining the need for liberal markets; recognising the change in the global economy; and instituting reform in those European countries that have yet to follow the United Kingdom example of examining trade union reform and the way in which regulation, especially employment legislation and regulation, makes Europe less competitive as a trading bloc than other such blocs around the world. Europe has not grasped those challenges, many of which our national Governments, especially the previous Conservative Government, understood.

We have reached a watershed. It is no surprise that the people of this country are confused about the exact purpose of Europe today. In 1975, when the UK voted to stay in what was then known as the Common Market—the old European Economic Community—people, and I include myself, believed that they were voting for free trade, of which we could perceive the advantage, and mutual co-operation expressed by independent sovereign states.

I was born in 1946 and grew up in the aftermath of the second world war. I can understand why the political leaders of Europe in the 1940s and 1950s had reasons other than purely pragmatic trading reasons to come together. Twice in that century, the mainland of Europe was ravaged by world wars. They caused huge damage, whichever side one was on, to the youth and the well-being of countries that lost millions of their citizens. People prayed that they would never have to put their youth through that again.

I have to agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), however, that the peace argument should not be prayed in aid today as a reason for being in an organisation that we thought was to be a trading bloc but which we now see clearly from other European countries is in fact a political and economic union. Why are we afraid of recognising the reality that that is a legitimate aspiration for the people of all the European Union countries and those still seeking to join? It would not be my wish to go down that road, but I would not wish to deny any individual or country the opportunity in a free, democratic society to open negotiations, to come together and to proceed with that project.

Over the last 29 years, since we had the opportunity to say whether we wanted to stay in the Common Market, successive British Governments have tried to persuade the British people that what was happening in other
 
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European Union countries to promote and proceed with greater political and economic union was not really the agenda. It behoves all politicians, wherever we sit on the spectrum of views on the future of Europe and the United Kingdom's role in it, to remember one very important lesson. The people out there who spoke last Thursday by putting a cross on a ballot paper and recording their view—whichever side of the argument they took—are our masters. They are the people who send us here, and if we are not absolutely honest with them, and if we do not set out for them the choices and agendas involved—whether we agree or disagree with them—we do them a grave disservice.

Here we are on the eve of this constitution, having received a clear signal from the British electorate that what many of them thought was the real agenda for Europe has, over the years, become one in which they have lost confidence. They have lost confidence in their understanding of what we, as politicians, would do with the power that is already enshrined in Europe. Government after Government have signed treaty after treaty, each of which has moved us further forward into political and economic union, while declining to be totally honest with the British people that that was the real agenda for many countries in the European Union. It is folly to try to deny the reality of that to the British people.

I hope that, at this watershed on the constitution, whatever party we belong to, we shall not betray the elemental trust that the British people place in us when they send us here as their representatives. We are representatives, not delegates; we use our judgment. If we, as individuals, use our judgment wrongly on this issue—or on any other—the British people have the opportunity to call us to account at the ballot box every four or five years at a general election. Those are the terms on which we enter this Chamber. On this important issue, we now have an obligation to spell out to the British people where we are.

For the last year, I have sat in this Chamber and repeatedly heard the Prime Minister and other Ministers on the Treasury Bench deny to the House that this constitution was a constitutional matter. I shall say that again, so that people do not think that I have made a slip of the tongue. The Prime Minister has repeatedly denied to the House that the EU constitution was a constitutional matter. It was the main plank of his argument for refusing repeatedly a referendum on the matter, for which the Opposition have been arguing robustly, both inside and outside the Chamber, for nearly two years. I am pleased that he has now made this concession. When the people cast their vote in that referendum—I am sure that, red lines or no red lines, the Government are going to do a deal—it is important that they have an opportunity to hear both sides of the argument about what is at stake. This is not yet another European treaty but the last piece in the jigsaw for closer economic and political union. Many colleagues have spelt out in this long but welcome debate what the consequences are.

It is no surprise that, for many years, many people out there have paid no interest to the subject of Europe. The pollsters in the newspapers, and sometimes the pollsters who do surveys for our parties, show us that Europe is not at the top of everybody's agenda. Of course, people are more concerned about our health service if they have
 
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someone sick in hospital, about our education service if they have to pay student fees, or about what is going to happen to them in retirement if they are worried about their pension. Of course those issues dominate our political agenda, as they properly should.

It would be a grave mistake, however, were we to move into that greater political and economic union with the people out there not realising what was being done in their name. When they found out, the consequences would be dire—I would go so far as to say that the consequences would be very dangerous for this country. Others have touched on this issue. We have seen the resurgence of extremism for some years now in other countries, which should be of just as much concern to us as votes cast for, say, the British National party, as we saw at last week's election. That should sound warning bells to all of us.

At the heart of this should be the need to be absolutely clear and honest with the British people. It is no surprise that sometimes this subject is a big turn-off. It is dry. Only gadflies such as me read these treaties and have some of the literature by their beds to read late at night—[Interruption.] It is sad and suspect, but necessary. If we examine the language associated with this subject over the years, we find that it not just a turn-off but positively confusing for the British people. There are phrases such as variable geometry, which means that some forge ahead but others stay behind and move at a different pace, yet still move towards the same destination with the same objective: closer political and economic union. Other examples are concentric circles, a hard core and a three-phase system, put forward particularly by the French and the German Christian Democratic Union. If one can get to grips with that, it means another variation on moving towards the same destination.

When we have heard all that over the years, particularly from other EU countries, they have not been resistant to closer political and economic union—that is their agenda, although politicians in this country have denied that. When they look for different ways of proceeding, it is not because they are opposed to it in principle but because they are looking for flexibility and the ways in which they can achieve that objective.

It is true that treaties signed when the Conservative party was in office have added to the progress towards that destination. Even Margaret Thatcher, who was mentioned several times in Ministers' speeches, has acknowledged that, with her natural enthusiasm for free trade, the Single European Act to bring in the single market was achieved at a price that she now regrets. John Major sought to protect us by insisting on subsidiarity. That, too, was mentioned earlier.

I remember, as an agriculture Minister, receiving a letter from someone representing—I think—a food company about some European legislation that was impeding his business. Civil servants drafted a letter for me praying in aid subsidiarity. I sent it back to them asking for two examples. When it was returned to me, all references to subsidiarity had been removed. Over the years, little carrots have been dangled before us, causing us to think that perhaps, despite all these treaties, we in this Parliament can have some control over what happens when they are implemented—but the power is not with this Parliament.
 
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There was discussion earlier about whether, through this treaty, which I am sure the Government will sign, we could somehow give the House more powers through greater scrutiny. Most of the regulations about which we all complain emanate from the single market and the Single European Act. We deal with them in Committees, as statutory instruments. By the time we are scrutinising them, however, they have been signed on behalf of the British Government, whichever party is in power. That is how the system works. As for the few regulations debated in detail by Committees, the Committees are weighted in such a way that the Government have a whipped Bench to ensure that regulations are automatically endorsed. The House of Commons has no power to overturn a statutory instrument—secondary legislation from the European Union—if the Government of the day have already signed up to it.

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