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The Minister for Europe (Mr. Denis MacShane): We have had an enjoyable debate. I share the concern of the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring) about Cyprus. I assure him that we will do our best, as will Members from all parties with good contacts with and knowledge of Cyprus, to try to move it towards membership of the European Union on the basis of being a united island.
"clearly believe on this side of the House that, if we have the confidence and the determination to play a full part in this European Union, we can build a Union in which this House and this country can feel at home."—[Official Report, 16 May 1994; Vol. 243, c. 647.]
Those are not my words, but those of the right hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory) in a debate on 16 May 1994, when he was the Minister with responsibility for Europe. That debate is dear to me—it also took place before a Council of Ministers meeting—because it was the occasion of my maiden speech. Earlier in that debate, the right hon. Gentleman said:
"We believe in creating a people's Europe"—
I thought that that was a Labour phrase. He continued:
"That means responding to people's day-to-day concerns . . . That has meant patient work in the Council of Ministers with other member states that share our aims in particular areas of policy . . . That means that decisions will be taken by member states unless the policy objectives require action at Community level, as was the case with the GATT negotiations. To give effect to that principle, last year the British and French Governments submitted a joint list of directives to be withdrawn, amended or repealed. Most of them were accepted and the Commission is now working up details for implementation."—[Official Report, 16 May 1994; Vol. 243, c. 557.]
It is useful to revisit some of our past debates. In the debate that I cited, we heard a powerful speech from Sir Edward Heath. My right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Denzil Davies) and the late Peter Shore made powerful speeches against the European Union, and several Conservative Members spoke in favour of it. Tonight, alas, only one Conservative Member, the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry), spoke strongly in favour of the European Union.
Any foreign observer who listened to our debate would have been surprised by the oozing pessimism, defeatism, derision, scorn, indifference and hostility shown towards the European Union by Conservative
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Members. The situation is not the same across the channel. An article in the French newspaper Le Figaro on 21 April 2004 said:
"the draft Constitution will seal the victory of the nation-states over the European 'super-state'."
Several speakers told us that there was a Franco-German conspiracy to drive forward an integrationist Europe, but the new President of Germany, Mr. Horst Kohler, has said:
"I do not believe that current developments are going to give rise to a European federal state."
"a revival of the nation-state principle again."
Mrs. Browning: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. MacShane: May I make a little progress? I will try to address all hon. Members' speeches, but if I start giving way now, I will not have time to talk about the hon. Lady's excellent speech.
Mr. MacShane: Well, as the hon. Lady made the best speech, I shall give way.
Mrs. Browning: The Minister is very kind. Although I mentioned the Franco-German project, I did not suggest that it was a conspiracy. I was trying to point out that those countries have always been open about what the objectives were, whereas this country's Government have constantly denied what was on the agenda.
Mr. MacShane: The hon. Lady makes her point, but perhaps we should invite several French commentators to pack some shirts and do a day shift on the Daily Mail or The Sun. Mr. Alain Duhamel, who is probably the leading French political commentator, says:
"Giscard has created a great British Europe".
Wherever I travel on the continent as part of my job, I hear comments, and often complaints, that during the constitutional treaty negotiations, the British way and British ideas and values broke through and were widely accepted.
Everywhere I go, I find—this point was made by the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon—that many countries in Europe turn to Britain and want us to be a leading partner in the EU under the constitution, if it is finally agreed at the end of this week. That is because our ideas, whether on liberal market economics or investing in social Britain, are those that make the most sense to the rest of Europe.
The speech of the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), was defeatist and isolationist. It was an invitation to retreat to the era of the beef war and of turning our back on Brussels. He said that there was no reference to the current process in Labour's 2001 manifesto, and as usual his researchers have not done their work. The manifesto says:
"Labour wants the next Inter-Governmental Conference in 2004 spelling out in a clear statement of principles what should and should not be done at European level"
"Labour supports a stronger role for national Parliaments in European affairs."
Mr. Ancram: The hon. Gentleman will remember that what I said was that there was no mention of a constitution, but that is what is now being offered to the House. Perhaps he could look again at his manifesto before he accuses me of being wrong.
In a wonderful document to which he added his name, the hon. Gentleman signed up to this phrase:
"We must eliminate all unfair competition between the national social security systems of our member states."
Mr. MacShane: What we are dealing with at the moment is an intergovernmental conference. If I may reveal an exchange from a meeting at the Council of Ministers on Monday, in which British Ministers were not involved, I can tell the House that one of the colleagues there, who is from quite a big state, said that he wanted the constitution to start with, "We, the people". The President, from Ireland, who was chairing the meeting, said, "I'm sorry, but it's a treaty, so it will start, 'The President of France, the President of Germany, the Queen of England, et cetera.'"
Mr. Spring: I refer the Minister to article 10.1 of the constitution, on Union law:
"The Constitution, and law adopted by the Union's Institutions in exercising competences conferred on it, shall have primacy over the law of the Member States."
I do not know what a constitution is meant to be if it is not written as a constitution in this particular publication.
Mr. MacShane: Well, let me deal with that. If the hon. Gentleman had contained himself, I would have come to it. I shall provide a helpful quote from a report presented in a debate in the other place on 21 May, my birthday, by that distinguished judge, Lord Scott:
"It is not surprising that . . . the Constitutional Treaty includes a statement of the primacy of Union law. The doctrine is a well established and key element of the Community's legal order."
I am not prepared to enter into a debate with the noble Lord, but the point is that he refers to a constitutional treaty, and in our manifesto we talked about the IGC, which is 25 sovereign member states coming together to create a constitutional treaty—a rule book—that brings together existing constitutional treaties to allow the Europe of 25 to proceed.
The right hon. and learned Member for Devizes prayed in aid Ben Bot, the excellent Foreign Minister of the Netherlands. In his Humboldt lecture, to which I think the right hon. and learned Member was referring, he said:
"I believe the draft treaty proposes real improvements on a number of points in the existing treaty text. For instance, it takes more account of citizens' views and includes a charter of fundamental rights."
One will not find anti-constitutional treaty statements by our friends in the Netherlands.
Colleagues have referred to last week's election result. In the beautiful county of Devon, where the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) has
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her constituency, the greatest number of votes went to UKIP. I am glad to say that in the great city of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle), the Labour vote outnumbered the Conservative and UKIP vote combined, which just goes to show what good Labour leadership can provide. Of course, many people are likely to vote UKIP—they have been fed myths and propaganda by the Conservative party and the absent gentlemen of the press about what Europe and the new constitution are all about. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition has to decide where he stands. He said in his letter to the shadow Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Maldon and Chelmsford, East (Mr Whittingdale), that if negotiations do not succeed on the repatriation of the fisheries policy, which has been a common policy of the EU since the 1970s:
"it remains the case . . . that the British Parliament is supreme and we would introduce the necessary legislation to bring about full national . . . control."
If words have meaning, actions and consequences, and the only way to restore "full . . . national control" of our fisheries policy if negotiations do not succeed would be either to be in permanent breach of our treaty obligations or to leave the EU—let us be clear about that. That is the position of all of UKIP.
On the BBC on Monday there was an interesting interview with one of the stars of the new European Parliament, Mr. Roger Helmer, who headed the list.
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