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Mr. Straw: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that, in international law, this document is a treaty like any other, and that it can be revoked by this country, if that is what we wish?

Mr. Ancram: This is a treaty that sets up a constitution. We are debating the constitution that it seeks to set up, and the effect that it will have on this country's sovereignty. The Foreign Secretary is playing with words. We are talking about a constitution that will operate as such if it goes through. Unless he accepts that, we are in danger of misleading the people of this country.

Mr. Cash: My right hon. and learned Friend is making some sensible remarks but, in respect of primacy, will he accept that, if and when the UK Parliament implements this constitution, it will confer on the European Court of Justice powers to acquire jurisdiction over our constitution? In effect, through conferral, it will be asking Parliament to abdicate.

Mr. Ancram: Article I-5a states that the constitution

"shall have primacy over the law of member states."

I think that what my hon. Friend says must follow from that.

I was talking about the integrationist nature of the constitution. The Foreign Secretary recently has begun to try to argue the opposite: the other day, he talked about the constitution returning powers from the EU to nation states, and he repeated that assertion today. In fact, the constitution refers once, and obliquely, to the possibility that, in certain rare circumstances at the dispensation of the EU, shared powers might be transferred back to member states. That is all: no mechanism is provided to return powers to member states, and no powers are so returned.

If the Foreign Secretary wants a less integrationist Europe, the White Paper gives no idea of the powers that he would want to be returned. That would be the great test of his sincerity, but he is again merely playing with words because he knows that the British people are frightened of integration. He is trying to persuade them that this constitution is what it is not.

Keith Vaz (Leicester, East) (Lab): Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

Mr. Ancram: In a moment.

This is not only an integrating constitution, it is an unnecessary one. We do not need or want it. Constitutions of this nature are not for partnerships or associations, but for countries. This document is the gateway to a country called Europe, as I have said before, and we do not want to be part of that.

That it creates such a country is not just my view. It is the considered view of many leading Europeans. Romano Prodi described the constitution as
 
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"a big change from the basic concept of nation states. It is a change of centuries of history."

The Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said:

"Those who are afraid do not appear to have grasped what is happening at the moment. We are creating a political union."

In case there was any doubt, he later added:

"The European Union acquires all the instruments of a federal state. The capstone is the constitutional treaty."

That is what the leaders of Europe believe. That is the truth, and the Foreign Secretary should have the courage to come forward and argue his case on that basis.

Keith Vaz: The original position of the Conservative party was to block enlargement. The Opposition wanted a referendum on the Nice treaty, but changed their position subsequently and supported the accession of the applicant countries. How does the right hon. and learned Gentleman expect a Europe of 25 nations to cope with an organisational structure created to deal with only six member states?

Mr. Ancram: First, I remind the hon. Gentleman that it was my party that first backed the idea of enlargement in 1991. We have always backed enlargement, and the countries that acceded to the EU this year recognised that. Secondly, he is using the normal argument and asking whether we need changes as a result of enlargement. The answer is yes, we need changes, as we have always accepted. Some of our proposals are contained in our pamphlet. However, the argument for change is not one for creating something totally different—an integrated constitution as described by Guy Verhofstadt.

This constitution creates a legal personality, a President, and a Foreign Secretary. It creates a European diplomatic service, fundamental rights that will be legally enforceable, and a more coercive foreign and security policy. It creates the more explicit primacy of European law, and gives it an increasing role in criminal law, including new powers in criminal investigation. It gives the EU powers in transport and energy. It is the constitution of the European superpower that the Prime Minister has declared twice—in Warsaw, and in Cardiff in November 2002—that it is his intention to create. We want to have no part of that type of Europe.

Mr. Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op): The right hon. and learned Gentleman claims that the constitution will turn the EU into a superstate. Why does he not consider that the UN constitution makes that organisation into a global superstate? If he was opposed to the ratification of the Nice treaty—as he was—why did he push for a referendum if he was in favour of enlargement? Enlargement would not have taken place without the Nice treaty.

Mr. Ancram: The hon. Gentleman is avoiding the issue. This is a constitution of a particular type. I have just set out what it includes. I repeat that it will deliver a European superpower. I did not use the phrase "European superstate". I used the word "superpower", as that is the word that the Prime Minister used deliberately on the two occasions to which I referred
 
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earlier. Since then, the Government have tried to back away from that position because they know that it offends the British people.

As I said, I do not believe that the constitution was necessary to deal with enlargement. The Government now say that it is, but they have not always said that. In 1999, the then Foreign Secretary said:

"For the record, we are not proposing a constitution of Europe."——[Official Report, 25 May 1999; Vol. 332, c. 184.]

The following year, the Prime Minister said that the EU did not need a constitution, so what has changed? We were told that Nice was needed to make enlargement work. After that, the Prime Minister suddenly told us that the constitution was

"necessary to make accession work."——[Official Report, 14 May 2003; Vol. 405, c. 306.]

However, when the constitution appeared to hit the buffers last December, it apparently was not necessary after all. Consistency has not been the Government's strongest weapon in their battle for the constitution.

Nor has consistency been the Government's strongest card in relation to a referendum on the constitution. Last year, the Leader of the House announced that

"those who are starting off on a campaign for a referendum might as well put their placards away and stop wasting their money—because we are not going to do it."

In several debates in the House, the Foreign Secretary castigated me for supporting and promoting the concept of a referendum. In March, the Prime Minister flip-flopped and conceded one. That was not the Government's only flip-flop—nor even the greatest—on the way to this wretched constitution. Before it came to power, the Labour party said that it would keep home and foreign affairs intergovernmental and preserve the three-pillar structure on which the previous Conservative Government had insisted at Maastricht.

Today, we are told, almost with pride, that that three-pillar structure has been removed with the connivance of this Government; certainly, the constitution puts an end to it. The Prime Minister said that the charter of fundamental rights would be only a political declaration. A former Minister for Europe, sitting in his place as usual, said that it would have the legal weight of the Beano. I do not know whether he has consulted the lawyers of the Beano since then to find out how much legal weight it has in comparison to the charter of fundamental rights. Now the charter forms part II of the constitution and will be legally binding. It will have full legal status and will be enforced through the European Court of Justice.

EU lawyers have already made it clear that they intend to use the charter to change national laws. The Foreign Secretary tells us that we do not have to worry, and that the constitution covers all that. However, Vassilios Skourios, the president of the European Court of Justice, said that the constitution

"will bring new areas and new subjects under the court's jurisdiction."

He refused to confirm that the charter would not change national laws. Despite the assertions in the White Paper, the Minister for Europe boasted in Le Monde recently—I think it was last week—that the charter would strengthen British trade union rights, which is a view that is, surprisingly, supported by Professor Brian
 
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Burcusson of King's college. That is not so much trade union power by the back door, or even through Parliament, but through the pages of the European constitution. In 1997 the Prime Minister boasted that he had seen off a proposal to give the EU its own legal personality; he called it potentially damaging. Now, under the constitution, the EU has been given a legal personality.

Those are not the only flip-flops. During the constitution negotiations, the Leader of the House of Commons tabled 275 amendments and the Government succeeded in only 27. The Foreign Secretary laughs as usual at that, but those amendments were not trivial. The Government called for the deletion of the new EU power to ensure the co-ordination of member states' employment policies. The amendment was ignored, and the Government caved in, arguing that it was undemocratic for member states to keep power only in those areas where the EU did not want it. They called that the "worst of all worlds". They were ignored, and once again they caved in. The Government opposed making the charter of fundamental rights legally binding and, as we have seen, they caved in on that, too. That is not so much flip-flopping as straightforward surrender, which is why they are so keen to disguise the reality of this constitution in a thicket of weasel words and good, old-fashioned bluster.

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