European Affairs

HC Deb 23 November 2000 vol 357 cc481-540

Question again proposed, That this House do now adjourn.

3.4 pm

Madam Deputy Speaker

I remind hon. Members that Mr. Speaker has imposed a time limit of 15 minutes on Back-Benchers' speeches.

Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test)

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) may have inadvertently misled the House in his comments about Baroness Thatcher's support for German reunification. Her memoirs make her views clear. She wrote: I sent a message to President Bush reiterating my view that the priority should be to see genuine democracy established in East Germany and that German reunification was not something to be addressed at present. She further noted: If there was any hope now of stopping or slowing down reunification it would only come from an Anglo-French initiative. In the light of that, Madam Deputy Speaker, when the right hon. Gentleman resumes his place, will he withdraw his statement?

Madam Deputy Speaker

That is actually not a point of order, but a point for debate.

3.5 pm

Mr. Denzil Davies (Llanelli)

Reference has been made to the Prime Minister's speech in Warsaw on 6 October, when he made bold and clear statements as to the British Government's attitude and his attitude towards the European Union. I shall devote some time to a discussion of parts of his speech, as they are relevant to the debate and to the deliberations on the treaty of Nice.

The Prime Minister made clear his vision of the EU; it is a bold one—that of a super-power. A super-power needs some of the basic characteristics of statehood; it must have central institutions that are powerful enough to take economic and military decisions quickly and effectively. Within its jurisdiction, there must be no seriously competing centres of power. It must have a currency, an army, a navy and an air force. Probably, it should have a flag and an anthem. It needs a fairly harmonised system of justice. And it needs law enforcement and perhaps a constitution.

If we apply some of those characteristics to the EU over the past 50 years, the EU is not doing too badly. It is moving along nicely towards the super-power of the Prime Minister's ambition. The EU has central institutions; it has a Commission, which acts as the imperial civil service. Indeed, the Prime Minister paid tribute to the Commission and extolled its virtues in his speech; he said that

it allows Europe to overcome purely sectional interests.

I take it that by "sectional interests" he meant the interests of the member states.

The EU has a Parliament. We tend to scoff at it and to be scornful of it, but as I have watched treaty negotiations over the past 30 years, I have noticed that the Parliament usually comes out of each negotiation with slightly enhanced powers.

The EU has a central bank. In effect, it has a supreme court. The only central institution that is a bit suspect is the Council of Ministers itself—a point to which I may return. The EU has a flag and an anthem. It has citizens—we are all EU citizens. It does not yet have a common system of justice or law enforcement, but there is an organisation called Europol and there will even be one called Eurojust—which will have not just one grand prosecutor, but a number of prosecutors.

Mr. Wilkinson

Will not the development of a super-power be profoundly dangerous for Europe? Do not super—powers tend to throw their weight around? Do they not normally have a preponderant military might? In the European context, is it not true that, from Bonaparte to the central powers, the third reich and the USSR, all super-powers have been extremely dangerous and aggressive?

Mr. Davies

There is much in what the hon. Gentleman says. I approach the subject simply as a Welsh constitutional lawyer, however, so I shall carry on.

There is something rather pompously called a European area of justice. I understand that it is designed to deal with cross—border crimes—the type of crimes that are referred to in the United States as federal.

As we know, the EU has a single currency and a centralised monetary system. In fiscal policy, it has considerable jurisdiction over the expenditure side; on taxation—the revenue side—it is a little weaker. However, as we were reminded, it covers VAT, which is one of the two taxes that raise the most revenue in Britain. I could not go to the electorate of Llanelli and promise them that, as a Member of the House, I would want to repeal or substantially change VAT.

Of course, the EU is not there yet in relation to taxation; I do not expect that the vetoes will be given up at Nice. However, the pressures of a single market and a single

economy and the need to prop up the euro and make it more respectable on the foreign exchanges will, no doubt, lead to pressure to harmonise and co-ordinate direct taxation—as VAT is co-ordinated.

Then, of course, we have the European army. I use that term only as shorthand; there is no ideological reason why I call it an army. Basically, the French have won. I have sat on these Benches for years, admiring the way in which the French negotiate in the European Union. I have admired their intellectual power and their civil servants' ability. With a combination of charm and considerable intellectual ability, they have achieved their objective in the end, as they did with the single currency.

The question of the European army started when de Gaulle pulled out of the military committee of NATO and the French decided that they wanted an alternative. They worked and worked at their policy. They pretended that they wanted to go back into NATO, but of course they never did—they did not want to. They have won in the end because of a British Prime Minister. I do not know whether it was the heady Celtic winds at St. Malo, but the Prime Minister did what previous ones had refused to do: he went along with the French. There could be no European army without the British Prime Minister's agreement.

Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was extremely enthusiastic about the military capabilities. In his very interesting speech, he said: Whatever its origins, Europe today is not just about peace—it is about projecting power. I first heard the phrase "projecting power" years ago, when I was the Labour party's defence spokesman. I think that it was used by the captain of the USS Saratoga—an 85,000-tonne American aircraft carrier, then sailing through the Mediterranean. The Americans had 18 such ships then, but I think that they are down to 12 now. The phrase "projecting power" is part of the language of a military super-power. Super-powers with considerable military capability project power.

The Prime Minister is quite clear that he wants a European army, navy and air force to project power. We are not just talking about blue helmets and peacekeeping; we are using the expressions of a super-power with considerable military capabilities. I do not know where that power will be projected—we can leave that for another debate—but, no doubt, enemies can be found all over the place if need be. However, I know where the power comes from-the accumulated power of nation states. The power comes from the Parliaments and peoples of those nation states, because the centre will have to be strengthened to create the super-power. In effect, the nation state will have to become provinces.

Romano Prodi said that one could not have competing centres of power. Well, he knows all about provinces. I should imagine that he learned about them at his mother's knee. He was quite right because, if the centre is to have more power, the competing centres of power—the nation states—will have to give up their power to enable the super-power to be created. That returns me to the Council of Ministers, the draft treaty of Nice and the veto.

Once upon a time, far more policy matters were covered by vetoes, but the number has gradually reduced. The veto is the main weapon to protect the democracy of the nation states—certainly in international organisations. Security Council members have a veto, as do those of the World Trade Organisation. The veto exists to protect their democracy in those international organisations, but the European Union is not an international organisation in that way; it has gone way beyond that.

The veto is no longer consonant with a move towards the central decision making that is needed to create the sort of super-power that the Prime Minister wants, so the veto will gradually have to go. Not all the vetoes will go at the treaty of Nice. The treaty lists 47 matters covered by the veto, and no doubt 15 or 20 will go, but most of them will disappear next time or the time after that.

A few weeks ago, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary railed against the Euro-sceptics. I do not criticise him for not being present now—no doubt he will read the report of the debate. [Interruption.] The Whip is certainly present. I understand that the Foreign Secretary was a Euro-sceptic at one time, although he has, as they say, moved on since then. I remind him that Euroscepticism has a long tradition in Britain. The House will not be surprised to hear that the first Euro-sceptics were Welshmen—going back as far as the Welsh bishops of the fifth and sixth centuries, who were a pretty stroppy lot. If I were so bold as to coin a phrase, I would say that they were of Rome, but not run by Rome.

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is not, and has never been, a Euro-sceptic. I commend him on the speech that he gave in Warsaw; it was a clear expression of his purpose and objective. In that speech, he went further along the road of European integration than any other British Prime Minister since the days of the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath).

I apologise for all this history, but I shall make one more historical allusion. In Warsaw, the Prime Minister crossed his own rubicon—that of European integration. It seems that he took the Government with him; perhaps he took the Army with him as well, but whether he will ever be able to take the British public with him across that fateful stream only time will tell.

3.17 pm

Mr. Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe)

In my opinion, the most important European issue that we shall face during the next few years is the enlargement of the European Union, which I wish to be carried forward as quickly and successfully as is reasonably possible. We have a very overcrowded European agenda now. We have made some progress towards completing the single market; we are on the way to enlargement; and we have also just heard the announcement of the European rapid reaction force. I shall comment on yesterday's announcement.

I shall take up the points that I am glad to say my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) described as being motherhood and apple pie for the Conservative party. I trust that they are motherhood and apple pie for the vast majority of Members. Those principles are that our basic defence is founded on our NATO commitments. NATO is at the heart of this country's security and that of the other countries of the western alliance. The second principle is that we firmly believe that the European ability to contribute to the NATO alliance should be strengthened. There has been a long-standing weakness in the NATO line-up. On the other side of the Atlantic, Americans have long said that the European contribution to the defence of the alliance is inadequate and that something more like a dumb-bell and less like the current dependency arrangement is desirable, so strengthening the European arm of NATO has always been a policy aim.

Although we have made significant sacrifices in sovereignty to enter into the NATO treaty, the third backbone of our policy is that, apart from our NATO obligations, the deployment of British forces in pursuit of foreign policy objectives should always remain under the control of the British Government, answerable to Parliament, and that we do not commit our forces without British political decision making. That is the starting point, and it has been the basis of the serious way in which the Conservative party has approached defence and security policy for as long as I have been a member of it.

Mr. Cash

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

Mr. Clarke

No, because I know from experience that I am almost physically incapable of completing a speech in 15 minutes. However, I am glad to say that I am obliged to do so.

In 1992, we also embarked on a process of changing the nature of the NATO alliance. The end of the cold war produced an obvious change of circumstances and the previous Government, of whom I was proud to be a member, embarked on the process of evolving NATO towards a different shape. That also involved strengthening the European element. I regard yesterday's announcement as the latest stage in a protracted process of deciding how NATO should be shaped in future and how the members of NATO and some of its non-members in the European Community should contemplate contributing to their own security in different ways from those that we thought of at the time of the cold war.

My recollection and judgment of events is slightly different—I regret to say—from that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major). There has been a certain continuity of policy since we embarked on the changes, most notably in the Maastricht treaty. I always think that the House is at its best when there is a cross—party continuity on foreign affairs and defence. That is very difficult to achieve on European matters nowadays, but, given that the Conservative party takes defence so seriously, we should take a constructive view of what is happening.

The foundations that I mentioned were best secured by the Maastricht treaty, which I still think was one of the triumphs of my right hon. Friend's Administration. It clearly committed us to the development of a European foreign and security policy. One of the treaty's great achievements was that it was based on what we then called the pillared approach. Foreign and security policy would not be made subordinate to the European Union or the initiating powers of the Commission and it would not be subject to the European Parliament. That remains the case, and it is the basis on which policy has proceeded. That is why the developments today can be described as intergovernmental, with each Government perfectly entitled to decide whether they will contribute to the rapid reaction force that is being proposed.

I was in government throughout that period and we always contemplated producing something of this kind. I was not present at the Petersberg hotel in 1992 when the Petersberg commitments were first discussed. However, it was obvious that we immediately embarked on discussing the circumstances in which European countries could maintain their own defence activity. They would do that if it was not in conflict with the approach of the Americans and in circumstances in which the American Government did not wish to participate.

European defence without American participation has been discussed fairly continuously ever since. The process was taken further by the St. Malo declaration, which is one that I think most of my colleagues would have liked to have made when we were in government. It plainly had to be an Anglo-French project, because the relationship of the French outside NATO was always a key problem. The process went further at the Amsterdam treaty, and at the Helsinki summit we took another step.

I do not complain about the time constraint on my speech, but it prevents me from outlining the history any further. However, history is a guide to how we should react to the latest turn of events. The views of my friend Lord Hurd of Westwell have already been cited and my views coincide with those that he voiced in February this year when he gave a lecture to the department of war studies at King's college, London. That was after the Helsinki summit, but before the recent commitment conference. In summarising the events, he said: So what we are seeing now is an evolution of thinking which began to take shape eight years ago. The proposals are fraught with problems and we have a long way to go. More evolution must take place, and the proposals will be fairly pointless unless there is a commitment to increasing the resources deployed in defence by many western European countries. However, I advise those interested in the issue to consider the proposals more constructively than some of the popular newspapers or my other former boss, Lady Thatcher, have been prepared to do. If there are weaknesses, let us address them. However, if we are preparing for government, I am rather alarmed by the idea that our first reaction is, "Up with this we will not put, and no more will we participate."

In a few months' time, I want there to be a Conservative Foreign Secretary and a Conservative Secretary of State for Defence. I wish them to be taken seriously and to have an influence on the foreign and security policy of the western alliance. The present proposals for a rapid reaction force are supported by the United States Administration, by our chief of staff, all our NATO allies, all our European Union allies who are not in NATO and some non-European Union NATO allies, too. When we take office, will we say that we shall withdraw from the commitment?

I do not want to depart too much from the views of my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham, and I accept that problems need to be addressed. There is a straight "tis-tisn't" argument about whether if we go ahead, it will duplicate the planning arrangements that already exist in NATO. There is no point in duplicating in an autonomous fashion NATO, planning and logistical arrangements. However, if there are problems, they should be tackled. That means engaging constructively so that a Conservative Government can be sure that whatever emerges is consistent with NATO, and that we contemplate action only when NATO has decided, following its normal rule of unanimity, that it does not want to be directly involved and when an American Administration do not want to commit troops.

Those circumstances could easily arise. They came near to arising over and over again during the Bosnian crisis that occurred when the previous Government were in office. The Balkans is an obvious example. It is not impossible that at any time—none of us knows when—fresh problems could arise in the Balkans. There could be civil war in Albania or Macedonia or a breakdown of law and order anywhere in that part of Europe. It is not certain that an American Administration of whatever colour would be willing to commit themselves again to that area of Europe. They would much prefer the Europeans to provide their own reaction forces. As we all know, the Europeans could not possibly do that without a great deal more investment and a great deal of American logistical support. However, that is the way we are going.

It is no good saying that President Bush might take office and the present Administration, which supports the proposal, may no longer be in place. I am not certain that a Republican Administration in Washington would be more averse to the proposal than the present one—quite the reverse. It is no good listening to all the hard-right, cold war warriors in America. The general message is clear: a Republican Administration would want Europeans to do more for themselves and they would be more reluctant to commit American troops to western European defence. They would expect us to behave accordingly.

I have left myself five minutes for what I regard as the most important issue—enlargement of the European Union. It is the big historic decision of our times. The most important event that has taken place on the continent since the war has already been mentioned. It was the end of the division, the collapse of the Berlin wall and the reunification—up to a point—of Europe. It is essential that our generation consolidates that by putting in place institutions that firmly bind in the nations of central and eastern Europe to parliamentary democracy, free-market economics and the political integration of western Europe that the European Union has represented until now.

We need to make progress. Although the Balkans is the most dangerous place in Europe, there are large areas of central and eastern Europe where we cannot rely just on the enduring nature of parliamentary democracy, liberal values, law and order and peace. We must do something to consolidate them.

As we have pressed towards enlargement, we have always contemplated treaty changes. Changes have to be made now because it will be impossible to achieve them once the number of states in the EU increases. Fortunately, there seems to be widespread agreement about that. An understanding that the size of the Commission will ultimately be constrained is inevitable. I cannot believe that any Member would oppose constraints on the growth of the Commission.

A reordering of qualified majority voting—so that the votes of the large nations, including ourselves, more accurately reflect our relations with the others—is essential. Indeed, I remember my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon pressing for that at a Greek summit, where we were driven off it owing to the desire to get on with admitting the Swedes, Finns and Austrians. This time, we must achieve reweighting of qualified majority voting.

I agree with some of the criticism that other matters could be put off. I do not think much of this charter of human rights; it is quite unnecessary. It is a needless diversion, and I hope that we can get rid of it in every effective way.

There is a case for a major discussion about the future shape of the EU. Many people—not just Joschka Fischer, President Chirac and the Prime Minister, but Jacques Delors, Lord Hurd and plenty of others—have said that we need to define the competence of Europe and of nation states. All those people believe in a union of nation states. Somebody cited President Chirac—he is more vehemently in favour of the nation state than anybody in this Chamber, but firmly believes, as I do, in a union of nation states. The idea that he signs up to rapid reaction forces or to enlargement in order to create a super-state is quite bizarre. I know of no right-of-centre politicians across western Europe who want a super-state or see enlargement as paving the way for it.

I agree that the present Governments of the European Union have not addressed the key issues that will affect enlargement because they are too difficult—such as money, agricultural policy and structural policies. When I was Chancellor, I used to insist that we got on with enlargement but that the budget must be within 1.27 per cent. of gross domestic product. I do not want an enlarged European Union budget. Such matters are being ducked. I hope that our major effort will be to achieve all that and enlargement by 2003.

Are we to stand against all that if there is some minuscule extension of qualified majority voting? Do we not see the dangers of a Maltese veto, a Bulgarian veto or a Polish veto being added to the Greek veto and the French veto, which has frustrated me so often in the past? I hope that my Front-Bench team will reconsider the policy that any extension of QMV requires a referendum—while enlargement is held up and we give up constraints on the Commission and QMV. I personally hope that when we get into office, we will show that warm-hearted internationalism that my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham said we always represent, and we will make a constructive contribution to the future of Europe and the western alliance.

3.32 pm

Mr. Roger Casale (Wimbledon)

I start by making an observation that when European Union Heads of Government meet in Nice next week, they will be able to look back on 50 years of unprecedented peace, stability and prosperity in Europe. I say that because given the tone and substance of much of what we have heard from Conservative Members, with the notable exception of the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), we can easily lose sight of the huge, positive role that the EU has played, and continues to play, in stabilising the post-war settlement in Europe.

To listen to Conservative Members, one would think that there is nothing good to say about the EU—today or in the past. However, if we look back over the broad historical sweep, from post-war reconstruction, throughout the cold war and during the post-Soviet transition since 1989, we see that the institutional architecture, which has included NATO, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and, crucially, the EU, has worked. It has played a crucial role in stabilising the international situation across Europe.

Against such huge EU achievements, Conservative party views will seem to many petty, opportunistic, ignorant of history and lacking any positive idea about the future. The image in my mind of Tory policy makers on Europe is of those standing on the shoreline, peering through the fog, isolated from Europe. The only thing that distinguishes them from King Canute is that they seem unable to determine whether the tide is coming in or going out.

Unlike the Conservative party, this Government and those meeting in Nice will recognise the role that the EU has played in promoting co-operation between European nation states and in producing 50 years of stability, peace and rising prosperity in Europe—a stability that is the result of peace; a prosperity that is the result of stability. There is no prosperity without stability, no stability without peace.

As well as that common understanding, those in Nice will meet in a common climate of constructive engagement, which is based on relationships that have been developed and worked on throughout the year. Governments of the centre left—there are many in Europe today—or of the centre right would be bemused by the tone, content and approach of the Conservative party, which has put itself outside the European mainstream and would not be seen as a credible or serious negotiator, should it ever be returned to power in this country.

So, let us be absolutely clear about the EU's achievements. That can give us great confidence in what it can achieve in future. Let us also be clear that the EU institutions of today are in urgent need of reform. EU enlargement makes reform both a practical and a political necessity.

We cannot celebrate more than 10 years since the fall of the Berlin wall without seizing the opportunity to unite the whole of Europe. Equally, we cannot say that we are in favour of enlargement without favouring the changes necessary to allow it. The Nice summit is the last opportunity to make the institutional changes necessary for enlargement without breaking the momentum for it, with all the consequent damage that would cause to the EU's relations with applicant states. Nice will be a test of member states' resolve to open up the EU to a wider membership and to introduce new members on equal terms to the EU fraternity of nation states. That is why it is so important that the Nice summit succeeds.

It is also important for the existing member states that there should be institutional reform at Nice and that the summit should succeed. Very often, in our rather parochial British debates, focused exclusively, it seems, on the relationship between the EU and Britain, we lose sight of the role that the EU plays in the wider international arena and the importance of giving the EU greater political weight in that arena—not so that that weight can be used against Britain, but so that the EU can play a positive and more forceful role in the international arena, be more powerful in our trading negotiations with the US, and be more influential in the necessary contribution that Europe must make to the reshaping of international institutions such as the World Trade Organisation, the United Nations, the World Bank and others. I want an EU that is more powerful in terms of its ability to act in international crises, with a common foreign and security policy that is backed up by its own defence capability. If we are to achieve that, the EU must be reformed, not just for the sake of enlargement but so that it can succeed in the future in what it has been so well able to do in the past.

Part of the reform process concerns what happens in Brussels and Strasbourg. That is why the issues of the size of the Commission, qualified majority voting and the reweighting of votes are so important. We want change in those areas.

The British approach to the negotiations has been rational and discriminating. We accept that the Commission must not become too unwieldy. We are prepared to give up one of our Commissioners so that there are not too many following the admission of new member states. We want to encourage other large countries to do the same. We recognise the need for the reweighting of votes in the Council of Ministers, so that the majorities in it more accurately reflect member states' populations. In this enterprise, an important democratic principle is at stake.

We want the extension of QMV, but not willy-nilly. We take a discriminating approach to that issue, too. In areas related to transport and the environment, for example, QMV must be extended, although we have said clearly that we will not give up the veto on taxation, border controls, social security and defence.

In other areas, the Government's approach has also borne fruit. We are not to have a binding charter of fundamental rights. We argued that it should be of a declaratory nature—a way to standardise people's existing rights as EU citizens. The British approach seems to be prevailing. Given the comments of the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe at the end of his speech, I am sure that that will give him heart. We should co-operate flexibly and be able to work together in shifting alliances within the EU framework to make progress in areas of particular interest and concern to Britain.

Mr. Redwood

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not an insult to the House that for a long time there has been no member of the Foreign Office ministerial team on the Treasury Bench? Can you invite the Minister to come here and fulfil his responsibilities to the House?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord)

Whether or not Ministers attend these debates is entirely a matter for them.

Mr. Casale

All these institutional changes are necessary, both to make the EU more efficient and better at achieving results, and to prepare the way for enlargement. I have tilked about institutional reform because much change is necessary at the heart of the EU in Brussels and Strasbourg.

Mr. Bercow

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Casale

I am keen to make progress because I still have a lot to say.

The EU's strength and stability come not just from what happens in Brussels and Strasbourg, but from the network of bilateral relationships in Europe and the intergovernmental aspect of the European institutional architecture. It is simply wrong to say that Europe is only

about what happens in Brussels and Strasbourg when many of the key decisions that affect Europe's future are being made in Paris, Madrid, Berlin, London and Rome. The Conservative party paints a completely false picture of the decision-making process in that respect.

Ideas such as the European defence initiative were not cooked up in Brussels, but have been a feature of Britain's bilateral relations with other countries in Europe, notably Italy, for some time. The defence initiative and the headline goal for defence capabilities in Europe were important features of the statement that was made at the end of the British-Italian bilateral Heads of Government summit last year. Our policy is that countries in Europe should make a greater contribution to Europe's defence and to joint defence efforts. Very often Britain contributes the lion's share, puts the most soldiers on the ground and picks up the tab. If enhancing defence co-operation achieves that objective of greater contributions from other countries, it must be viewed as good for Britain.

The European Union has been a unique and successful historical experiment. It continues to be a success. In the future, it can become a vehicle for the unification of Europe and a serious contender to share international leadership with the United States. It can continue to be a source of security and benefit for citizens of Europe, which is why I should like the social policy agenda, which will be discussed at the Nice summit, to be strengthened, particularly in industrial relations matters such as information for, and consultation of, employees.

The EU is in need of reform, and enlargement is turning that need into a practical imperative. None of us will deny the role that it has played in the past and its huge potential for good in future. I am delighted that our Government are playing such a strong, constructive role in reshaping the EU, making sure that its role in enhancing peace, stability and prosperity in Europe will be just as important in the years to come.

3.43 pm

Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham)

One of the Foreign Secretary's assertions is that the treaty and the negotiations in the run-up to Nice are not about extending the competence of the European Union. I hope that when the Minister for Europe replies he will answer my points.

Has the Foreign Secretary not read any of the papers? Has he not been to any of the discussions? He told the House that he wishes to block the proposals to take away our veto on taxation. Why does he need to say that? It is because our partners and the European Commission want to get much more power for the EU over our tax matters. He tells us that he wants to block certain social security proposals. Why does he have to tell us that? Again, because some of our partners and many in the Commission want more control over our social security matters.

The Foreign Secretary tells us that he wants to block proposals for common borders, a common frontiers policy and a common asylum policy. Again, why does he need to give us that reassurance, which is probably worthless? It is because he knows that the Commission wants much more power over those areas. He tells us that he will block any proposal to remove our veto over treaty changes. Even treaty changes are up for discussion in these important negotiations. Some of the leading members of the EU on the continent and certainly in the Commission believe that even treaty changes should no longer be subject to the veto.

I hope that the Minister heard those points, because he will need to apologise for the Foreign Secretary, who dared to tell us that the debates in Nice are not about extending the EU's competence, whereas with their own words Ministers had to accept that our partners on the continent and the Commission believe that it is about extending the EU's powers and competence, which is why the Government may be forced into blocking some of the more outrageous proposals.

One of the things to which I most object in the Government's handling of the negotiations is the contempt that they show for the House and for anyone, inside or outside the House, who tries to ask them civil questions to elicit simple information about what, among the many proposals on the agenda, they think is in Britain's national interest and what is not. The Minister and his boss, the Foreign Secretary, declined to answer 50 questions that I tabled identifying each a the vetoes which the Commission and some of our partners think should be sacrificed, asking them what was the Government's position on each veto. Why is that a secret?

The Government say that there are some vetoes that we must give up in the national interest. Why will they not come clean with the House, and go through the 50 questions and tell us where they believe it is in our national interest to give up the veto? Why will they not come clean with the House about the vetoes that they rule out giving up? There are 50 proposals on the table. I was given a silly answer the first time that I asked the questions, and I was blocked from even tabling them when I tried to get clarification on the Government's approach.

Worse still, when I talked to a leading journalist from The Sunday Times, I was told that the newspaper had already been informed that the Government had conceded 17 of the 50 vetoes. A leading newspaper has been taken into that confidence, yet the House and the British public have not.

Mr. Rammell

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Redwood

I am afraid that I do not have time because of the limitation on speeches. The hon. Gentleman knows that I normally give way because I like debate—if only we got rather more of it from the Government.

The Government have refused to explain how it can ever be in the national interest to surrender more vetoes in the sensitive areas now up for grabs. It is no argument to say that because previous Governments surrendered vetoes in less contentious areas—which the Labour party certainly agreed with—it is now right to surrender vetoes in many more difficult and very contentious areas.

I urge the Minister to think a little about his experience of negotiating in the European Union. Many Conservative Members have had a lot of experience of negotiating in the Council of Ministers. The Minister must know, as we discovered, that if we have a veto in our pocket, we can often win for Britain. We either get what we want in the proposal, or we do not have a proposal at all, because we turn it down or block it. Partners often then say, "Well, if it matters so much to you, we will go along with what you want." Otherwise, the proposal falls. It is better to have no proposal than to have the wrong proposal.

I well remember that if one is operating under qualified majority voting, one has to spend endless time and public money on lobbying, ringing people up and visiting them in the capitals of Europe, trying to build a blocking minority to stop an ill-thought-out proposal being passed. All that law is made behind closed doors; the cameras and the public cannot go in. Why is it done in that way? It is because Ministers do not want it to be exposed to public light.

Given the importance of these issues, and the fact that Ministers are legislating for 55 million or 60 million people in this country or for 350 million in the EU as a whole, that process should be opened up to public scrutiny. The public should be able to see what their directly or indirectly elected representatives are up to. The Government are legislating by stealth.

Creeping competence to Brussels has been happening over many years as a result of decisions made unilaterally by the Commission and the European Court and the Government's failure to engage against the power grab. However, since this Government have been going to Brussels, we have been witnessing not creeping competence but galloping competence. The EU is now advancing on every front. The plot is obvious for all to see. Only the Government refuse to see what is going on; everyone else understands clearly.

The leading politicians on the continent fully understand that the process is about creating not only a super-power, but a super-state to back up that power. They are honestly stating in their speeches that they want to create a political union; that they want that political union to have much more power over taxation in individual member states than it already has; that they want that union to have an army to project its power two and a half thousand miles away from Brussels to start with, and perhaps around the whole world as soon as they have the courage to take that step further. They are saying that they want common frontiers, common visas, common passports and a common immigration policy because it is a feature of a unified state that it decides who can come in, who must go and who can stay.

Those politicians are in favour of a single judicial system very unlike British common law and the system of civil justice in this country. They want to get rid of habeas corpus and trial by jury and change to a continental Napoleonic system of justice, with a European prosecutor and a European system of courts. The treaty of Nice includes making all British courts entirely subservient to the European Court of Justice and the European Court of First Instance. So full of themselves are they and so sure that they either have the power that they need or that they are about to get it, that the draft treaty even proposes that the European Court should do less and less—that Britain as a member state will no longer have the automatic right to go to the European Court of Justice itself, because all of the courts in Britain will be clearly subservient and will have to follow the words of the treaty and overall guidance laid down by the European Court.

I see Labour Members not wanting to understand that that is what is going on. I urge them to go and read the copious documentation about the proposals that appears on other nations Government websites throughout the EU. Why is there nothing on the British Government website about which of the proposals they want and which they intend to get rid of? The Government are taking us into a super-state by stealth. They are deeply angry this week because they have been rumbled. Now, they are lashing out against the press because they cannot stand the truth. They do not like the fact that, even before they have sold out at Nice, people have read the documents and understood them all too clearly.

Everything is there in the speeches of President Chirac and of Mr. Fischer, the German Foreign Minister. It is all there in the speeches of successive Chancellors of Germany, both the late Chancellor Kohl—late in the political sense—and Chancellor Schröder. They want to have a political union and they want it to be a big power on the stage, so of course they want to go on to take away the remaining vetoes, even though they accept that they will not get all of them now. We all know, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) said, that the British Government will, no doubt, veto or remove something from the agenda, then come back to claim a great Euro-sceptic success. The British Government know that the British public do not like the current pace of integration, they think that it has gone too far already and they do not want it to go further. I am sure that Ministers will not return from Nice and claim a mighty triumph against further integration.

Another of the Foreign Secretary's remarks was particularly dangerous and misleading to the House. He said that there has to be a substantial sacrifice of power in the treaty of Nice so that enlargement can proceed. He went on to say something that is clearly false: that the Conservative party does not want enlargement. As has already been said, we all want enlargement, but we happen to believe that it is more sensible to lower the hurdles to admission by reducing the amount of law and regulation that new member states have to accept than to raise the hurdles ever higher. We think that it is more sensible to say to new member states, let us first try to bring together a few spheres—the Common Market matters—than it is to tell them that they have to agree to bringing together matters such as borders, foreign policy, armies, currency and economic policy as well.

We believe that the treaty of Nice is not about enlargement. It would be quite easy to agree voting patterns in the Council and the number of Commissioners—the two things that might need some adjustment on enlargement—without going through that massive agenda, getting rid of 50 vetoes and going through all the items in the parallel negotiations on the single army and the single European Government that European politicians are trying to build. We think that those efforts are getting in the way of enlargement and that if there had not been such a complicated agenda for Nice, we could have enlarged the Community by now. The delay has been caused by the Government falling for the proposition that a massive expansion of central power in Brussels—a big expansion of European government—is needed to enlarge the community. That is simply untrue—in fact, it makes enlargement that much more difficult.

We want to belong to a Britain that is global and modern in outlook—a Britain that understands that we need to be friends with and trade with not only EU countries, but the Americas, Asia, Africa and all the continents and principal countries of the world. We believe that the treaty of Nice and the related proposals—the draft constitution called the charter and the European army—are the beginning of very big wedge in the friendship between Britain and the United States of America. That wedge will be driven ever deeper if the Government go along with the proposals. We believe that, far from helping enlargement, the treaty of Nice makes it more difficult for new applicant countries to meet the entry requirements. I believe that some in the EU have deliberately delayed the entry of those countries, because they think that it is not about free trade, but about grabbing power and territory from existing richer, western members.

I hope that the Minister will tell us what arrangements the Government are going to agree with our partners for the financing of the new enlarged union. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) said, it is most important that the own resources ceiling is not increased. It is also important that we do not lose the benefit of the significant and handsome budget rebate won by the former Prime Minister but one, Baroness Thatcher. Without that rebate, our membership of the club would have been extremely expensive. I hope that the Minister tells us how, in a world in which he has given away the veto on structural funds and thus our ability to determine any major aspect of structural funds and regional aid policy in this country, he intends to guarantee that we will still get a reasonable return of our money that goes into the Community, given that many poorer countries are joining and he does not appear to have done a good job of reforming the common agricultural policy.

The Government are already isolated on big economic issues because they have, rightly, kept us out of the euro so far—I wish I believed that they will always do so. They are not engaged in the big issues: they are not getting our fish back, nor solving agricultural and budget problems. They cravenly go along with the Commission's wishes, then try to mislead the British people into believing that they are not. There is no point in our saving the pound if we lose the country that goes with it. I hope that the Minister will do a better job at Nice than he has done so far.

3.57 pm

Mr. Bill Rammell (Harlow)

I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate. Members of Parliament always wants to speak on the key topic of the moment, and that is certainly true of the subject of today's debate. I hoped that we would be able to have a rational and sensible debate, but I have just heard the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) citing foreign politicians from capital cities around the European Union who have a great integrationist agenda. He said that we should read Jacques Chirac's speeches. Well, I read a recent speech by Mr. Chirac in which he said:

I do not think that one can have a federal Europe—the creation of a United States of Europe is not realistic, because not a single nation is prepared to give up its identity.

That is the reality of the debate taking place in Europe. Whereas in the heyday of Francois Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl, there was a huge momentum toward political integration, that has gone off the boil. Now, there is a different vision of a Europe of nation states, which is what we are trying to develop. Conservative Members have to face up to that reality.

Over the past few weeks, on the subject of Europe, we have witnessed our national newspapers publish misinformation, lies and distortion on a scale that seems designed to whip up mass hysteria. That sort of thing never ceases to amaze me, but I should have ceased to be amazed by now, because that is what happens in the run-up to every European summit, especially intergovernmental conferences. I believe that, even in their own terms, some of the anti-European newspapers, such as the Daily Mail, The Sun and The Daily Telegraph, go too far for their own good. At some stage the general public will say: The lady doth protest too much, methinks. They will rumble that more and more newspapers are partisan, blinkered and misleading propaganda sheets. It was not for nothing that Michael Foot once called the Daily Mail the forgers' gazette. Having got that off my chest, I will move on to the substance of the debate.

We are discussing the substance of the intergovernmental conference at Nice, especially the key challenge of enlargement. Apparently, an enlargement policy is supported by every political party represented in the Chamber. That is for two reasons: first, the policy is morally right—the countries of the former eastern bloc have gone through huge change and they should therefore be welcomed into the European Union; and, secondly, there is economic self-interest—moving from a single market of 370 million people to one approaching 500 million is clearly in the interests of British exporters and British jobs.

Given that there is consensus on enlargement, it is crucial that we introduce some momentum into the process. There is a real and palpable danger of massive disillusion within some of the former eastern bloc countries, which have gone through a process of economic transformation amounting almost to economic revolution. Massive sacrifices have been associated with that. There is a real danger that the peoples of those countries will feel that, having played by the rules and done what has been asked of them, the process of enlargement is being held up.

I am particularly concerned about the stance of the French and German Governments, who appear to be dragging their feet. I hope that the Minister for Europe will take that point on board. I hope that from the Nice IGC, or the Swedish summit in the middle of next year, we can arrive at a specific target date for the first of the former eastern bloc countries to join the EU. Without that, the process could slip off the agenda.

If we are to enlarge, we need a change in the decision-making procedures within the EU, which undoubtedly means an extension of qualified majority voting. That is not in key areas where we believe that the national prerogative of a national Parliament should apply, but in areas where we believe that QMV would be in our national interests. The point has been made by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. Unfortunately, it is one that all too often does not come out in these debates.

Britain has a proud and successful record of winning the argument on QMV. My right hon. Friend said that, under the current QMV procedures, had the veto existed. in 80 of the past 85 qualified majority votes, the British position would have been lost. The position that we were pursuing in our national interests would have been blocked by a smaller EU country. Those statistics have not been mentioned in the past week. That point needs to be made powerfully and clearly.

I am sick and tired of Euro-sceptics or anti-Europeans parading themselves as sole defenders of the British national interest. I believe passionately that their belief in isolationism and the constant no, no, no ill-serves the British national interest and the needs of British people, British jobs and British industry.

As for reweighting, the Nice IGC is presented as something that is catastrophically against the British national interest, yet under current voting procedures it is possible for the majority population within an enlarged EU not to be able to muster a blocking minority. That is unsustainable and undemocratic. As a result of the proposals that will be made at Nice, for the first time since 1973 there will be a relative change in voting strengths in the interests of Britain. There is no mention of those issues in our national newspapers and in our debate with the Conservative party.

Mr. Richard Spring (West Suffolk)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Rammell

No. Other Members have not given way because we are subject to time limitation.

I shall move on to the European security and defence co-operation policy. The reaction of some of our national newspapers and that of the Conservative party during the past week has been astonishing and a complete misrepresentation of the facts. It is crucial that we revisit the facts. We are talking not about an instrument of collective defence, but about a peacekeeping humanitarian operation. We are talking only of the peacekeeping force being engaged when NATO and the Americans do not wish to be involved.

That is especially important given the evidence that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary gave yesterday to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. The right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Mailing (Sir J. Stanley) asked him what would happen if the rapid reaction force was committed in a certain part of Europe and there was then a major international crisis and NATO required our troops. Could we unilaterally withdraw our peacekeeping operation from the rapid reaction force and deploy it for NATO purposes? The answer to that question was an emphatic yes. That underlines more clearly than anything else that the rapid reaction force is hostile neither to Britain's membership of NATO nor to the security that NATO brings us.

NATO welcomes defence co-operation within Europe, as do senior, sensible and eminent Conservatives. Lord Hurd, the former Conservative Foreign Secretary, has already been quoted in support of the proposition—I do not remember him as the most fanatically Europhile Conservative politician—and his support has been echoed by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke). The initiative has been supported also by the Americans. Madeleine Albright has supported explicitly what the Government and the EU propose. Recently, William Cohen, the US Defence Secretary, who is a Republican, said explicitly—there was no equivocation: Let me he clear on America's position. We agree with this goal—not grudgingly, not with resignation, but with wholehearted conviction. That is important. Over the past few days, I have heard Conservative politicians on the airwaves denying that that is where the American Administration stand. That point needs to be made.

There must be some honesty in this debate. Labour may be wrong on European defence co-operation, but I do not believe that we are. However, to suggest, as the Conservative party does, and as many national newspapers do, that we are imperilling the country's defence and security is beneath contempt. That suggestion ill-serves the important public debate that we should be having on the issue.

European defence co-operation is far from being contradictory to our membership of NATO. Without such an initiative, we would put the future holistic entity of NATO at risk. In the United States, whether we have a Bush or a Gore presidency, an increasing number of politicians are questioning the role of the US as the world's peacekeeper. They question why the US must constantly step in and sort out problems in Europe's backyard. There are certainly people in the US Administration and beyond it who are undertaking a strategic analysis that suggests that American priorities should be elsewhere in the world, and not within Europe. If we do not bolster our defence capability to police humanitarian operations, the Americans will be far less willing to support and help us through the NATO alliance.

Lady Thatcher has intervened in the debate over the past few days. That was put on the front page of The Sun yesterday and it was highlighted by the Daily Mail as something that was startling and unusual. A former Conservative leader attacking a Labour Government on Europe in the run-up to a general election does not strike me as shocking, amazing or surprising. We need to get real. With the intervention of people such as Lady Thatcher, we are seeing raw and not particularly enterprising party politics. It has nothing to do with Britain's national interests.

I should have thought that if there were any issues on which Lady Thatcher would lecture the Government, Britain's leadership on Europe would be the last of them. Let us not forget that her leadership on Europe was the key issue that led to her Conservative colleagues removing her from office—that is the historical reality—and she was undermined by Geoffrey Howe and other Conservatives on many occasions. If anyone is to lecture us on any issue, it certainly should not be Margaret Thatcher on what Britain ought to do to pursue its national interest in the European Union.

What is the condition of the Conservative party in the debate? I am not one of those politicians who believes that the Labour Government will be in power for ever—10, 15 or 20 years perhaps, but at some stage the Government will lose office. Were we to be replaced by a Conservative

party in such a condition over Europe, God help us all. The splits are still present and still fundamental. That was emphasised recently by Leon Brittan, who said that the

Conservatives have adopted policies that would gradually pull Britain out of the EU

and that those are "hazardous in the extreme."

The policy changes and lurches incoherently—from issue to issue, from day to day, from week to week. First we hear that every existing EU treaty is up for renegotiation, but the debate moves on when it is made clear that no EU Government supports that. Then we hear that there is to be a referendum on the outcome of the Nice summit. Although I listened carefully to the shadow Foreign Secretary, who spoke on the issue for five minutes, I am still not clear what is Conservative party policy and whether the Conservatives would commit themselves to holding a referendum on Nice.

Although the rhetoric is about moving into isolation and out of the EU, the reality is that, were a Conservative Government returned to office, they would not pull out into complete isolation, but would acquiesce grudgingly and have no influence whatever in the EU. We tried that. We tested it. It did not work.

4.12 pm

Sir Peter Emery (East Devon)

With some sadness, I rise to speak. I deeply regret how many—too many—members of my party seem to be massively anti-European and against any advance on what is best for Britain in Europe. They seem to have forgotten that it has been Conservative party policy since the end of the 1939–45 war to press forward to a peacefully united Europe.

The continuation of that policy is easy to substantiate. Winston Churchill said: We must aim at nothing less than the union of Europe as a whole, and we look forward with confidence to the day when that union will be achieved. Harold Macmillan said: We in Britain are Europeans.

With much more foresight, he said: The talk about loss of sovereignty becomes all the more meaningless when one remembers that practically every nation, including our own, has already been forced by the pressures of the modern world to abandon large areas of sovereignty and to realise that were are now all inter-dependent. No country today, not even the giants of America or Russia, can pursue purely independent policies in defence, foreign affairs or the economic sphere. Lastly, the previous Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), rightly said that Britain has to be at the heart of Europe, playing a major role in trying to ensure that Europe and European policy will work best for Britain.

I am worried about areas of what appears to be Conservative policy. Let us consider economic and financial matters. Surely any Government of any political standing try to ensure that they pursue a policy that will strengthen the financial and economic structure of this country and do so by making a judgment, at any time, that such a policy would work to the benefit of the United Kingdom. Therefore, to claim that one must take no action at all for a limited number of years, even though taking action might to be Britain's advantage, is absolutely crazy.

One should consider the condemnation of the euro. Just before I came into the Chamber, I was given two sets of figures. At the end of January, the pound sterling stood against the dollar at 1.64. Today, it stands at 1.41, which is a 14 per cent. decrease. The euro has gone down against the pound from 61 to 59.7, which is a 2.1 per cent. decrease. That is not part of the argument that one often hears from Conservative Members. That condemnation suggests that all of Europe wants to work for a vast European state. That is so wrong as to show an absence of both understanding and any contact with the major parliamentarians whom one sees at so many international conferences.

I have just returned from a Berlin meeting of the North Atlantic Assembly, and there is no way that German Members of Parliament will give up their country or have their financial and economic policies run by either the European Union in Brussels or the European bank. They would laugh at anyone who suggested that that is what Germany wants. Exactly the same is true of those parliamentarians who attend meetings of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and of the French.

Only the other day, as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I was with Mr. Védrine, the French Foreign Minister. I said to him, "How will the French like being just Europeans?" He said, "Don't be absurd. We will not give up being French. We can be French Europeans; you can be British Europeans. We will not ask Britain to stop being British." Somehow, those arguments are thrust to one side, and that worries me when I think of all that I have seen over my 41 years as a Member of the House. We have worked for greater co-operation in Europe, even though that was not obtained or established over centuries. Therefore, I must briefly discuss the European security and defence initiative. I shall try not to use all my 15 minutes.

Why dismiss the ESDI out of hand? European nations—supposedly our friends and allies—have spent much time working with Britain to see whether the ESDI might work. I am not saying that I know that it would, nor am I saying that I know that it would not. The ESDI should form an integrated part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and must be seen to be working within NATO. Indeed, my information is that those who represent the British Army on many of the NATO committees are exactly the people who will be nominated to work on the ESDI. Therefore, let us ask questions.

How will the burden be shared? Will France and Germany combined contribute only the same number of troops as Britain? If that is so, we must re-examine the matter. How is the finance to be broken down? We must examine that carefully. On more than one occasion on the Floor of the House, I have asked how the heavy lift of those troops will be organised so that they can play an active role.

There are sensible questions to be asked, which will not make our European allies and friends think that we are anti-European in everything that we do, but when we condemn out of hand everything European, they wonder what we are up to. I believe that they have a right to do so.

On the matter of Nice, of course I understand the need to retain the veto. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) was right to say that if he has a power of veto, he is in a stronger position to negotiate. Of course I understand that, but if a major enlargement of the European Union is to take place, so that it will include up to 27 nations, no one can believe that that can be done under the terms and conditions of Maastricht.

The idea that at any time a veto can be exercised by two or three nations against the wishes of the vast majority of the European Union does not make sense. We must find some way round, just as we must find some way round the number of Commissioners. The idea that Brussels can be run by 27 Commissioners all sitting at one time is nonsensical.

Aspects of the Nice treaty must be negotiated sensibly. I want the party of which I am so proud to be involved and attempting to assist in order to bring that about, rather than just knocking the Government because they are the Government. There are times in politics when one must rise above being on one side or the other and opposing everything. That is not what I have stood for in the House, nor would I advise that to any of the leaders of my party.

There are times when one must work for what is best for Britain. I believe that we must work, as I am positive is the wish of all the politicians whom I know in Europe, for a Europe of member states, not a Europe of one Government. That is not what is wanted. Anyone who believes that is on the wrong track.

4.22 pm

Mr. Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby)

I shall not follow the right hon. Member for East Devon (Sir P. Emery) in his passionate declaration of support for the Labour Government and their policies on Europe, although that is interesting to hear. I shall strike a rather different note.

Our debates on six-monthly progress in the European Union are like intermittent meetings of the Sealed Knot society, fighting the battles of 1972, 1975, enlargement, the euro, the Maastricht treaty and so on. Sometimes we swap uniforms. Sometimes each side stands on its head and fights on the opposite side to the one on which it was fighting just a few years ago. The arguments that we hear now from the Opposition would have been advanced by my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench only 10 or 15 years ago—more effectively, of course.

It is nice to play a game of musical uniforms from time to time, but I do not want to go over old ground. I want to express my concern about the effect of the euro debate on my own party and the Government, and on British politics generally. The debate is like a Sealed Knot society event in a sealed Chamber—it does not produce strong echoes outside.

We are demonstrating a culture not of lies, but of half-truths, evasions and doublespeak, which destroy the credibility of the Government who articulate them and, at the sides, of the people who articulate them. We are giving people a diet of arguments that they know not to be true.

I do not think that the Government expected the hostile reaction to the proposed European army, so we are now engaged in a debate about when is an army not an army, and when is it Thunderbirds, perhaps with Lady Penelope saying in a guttural German accent, "Achtung, achtung!" It could be an international rescue force, not an army at all.

We move on to the argument about when is a Bill of Rights not a Bill of Rights—when does it have a purpose and when is it just a leaflet to be read and taken into account; when does a Bill of Rights have force, when is a constitution binding and when is it not?

When is economic damage a gain? People are told what they know instinctively is not true. That has been the nature of the euro argument for a long time, and if it goes on, people disbelieve everything that politicians say to them. The argument springs from the origins of our commitment to the European Union. We went in because the British ruling class felt that the country was ungovernable. It had failed to deliver the economic growth that other nations were enjoying, so it might as well hitch itself to the bandwagon of Europe.

The Foreign Office particularly, always seeking a stage to strut on, from which to lecture the world and demonstrate its own effortless superiority, saw Europe as providing that stage. A grateful European peasantry would defer to our superior trade mantle. Things did not quite work out like that, and the institution did not suit us. We entered on terms that were disadvantageous.

The recent memoirs of Sir Con O'Neill—an appropriate name, as far as I can see—made it clear that the purpose of the negotiation was to get in at all costs and ignore every difficulty. That meant that we accepted an extremely disadvantageous settlement and we have been negotiating uphill all the way since, trying to make good ground that we should never have abandoned in the first place, and dealing with an institution in which there is a remorseless drive to ever-closer unity.

We are reluctantly dragged behind, grumbling and explaining, and the electorate get fed up of the spectacle. They do not like it. It offends their sense of national dignity that we should always be in that situation and always be persuaded to go along by the diet of half-truths. Every Government come in committed to a new start, a new relationship with Europe. After the 1975 referendum, Harold Wilson promised a new start. Even Margaret Thatcher came in promising a new start in 1979. John Major came in promising to put us at the heart of Europe, and we came in 1997 with a naive enthusiasm for Europe. It always turns to disappointment, because of the balance of the situation.

Now I see my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, who, in another incarnation, was a stalwart defender of Euro safeguards and a stalwart opponent of the euro, becoming the euro's strongest supporter and deploying the full economic expertise of the Foreign Office—I am being sarcastic—to tell us how good the euro will be.

The euro is a classic example of the process. We are told that it will offer economic advantages, but clearly it will not, because Britain's trading patterns are different, we are out of kilter and our cycle is different. The euro is undemocratic because it substitutes oligarchy—rule by a central bank—for democratic choice by the electorate, the ability to throw out the Government and the ability to manage our own economy for our purposes. Clearly, we could not go in at the present exchange rate or valuation, yet the argument is still put as a matter of religion.

Euro-enthusiasts must present membership of the euro as a benefit. It will bring stability, we are told. The only instability, however, is the continuous and remorseless decline of the euro. Sterling has been remarkably steady, while the euro has declined against it in what amounts to

a competitive devaluation that benefits the economy and industry of the countries that have adopted it. We are told that 3.5 million jobs depend on continued membership and that, if we do not join the euro, member countries will discriminate against us and inward investment will stop. It is curious that inward investment remains so high. Current investment into European markets could go to any other country, including those with the euro, but it does not; it is still coming here.

We are given arguments that present the direct opposite of the reality. Euro supporters, finding that they are losing the argument, say that its critics want to come out of Europe altogether. When presented with that argument, we should make a cool appraisal of the enormous benefits of joining, but we are never told what they are. Over the years, I have tabled questions asking to be informed of them in quantifiable terms. The cost is about £4 billion net against us each year and the trade deficit has been constant since we joined. It is narrowing now only because the oil price has trebled. We face the burden of agricultural protectionism and the incubus of French positions on every international trade negotiation that we enter.

The common fisheries policy is now reaching its full fruition in the decimation of stocks by over-fishing. That happened because it is a political policy, not a conservation policy, which has been deeply damaging to our fish stocks. We face also the threat of carousel retaliation from the Americans because of a policy that we do not support—indeed, we are opposed to it.

What are the benefits of the organisation? As the common external tariff is now only about 4 per cent. and could easily be overleaped if we were out, being out might have the advantage of giving us control of our own policies. However, I do not want to stray into such arguments. My point is that yet another set of fallacious arguments has been produced by the euro enthusiasts, so the electorate is fed a diet of double-talk and deceit.

What is the difference between a super-state and a super-power? One is not possible without the other, but we are expected to believe that there is a difference. What is an army? Is the European army an army or not? Mr. Prodi seems to think that it is an army, but the Government tell us that it is not, and that it involves merely a few troops on holiday from time to time, wearing stars on their uniforms. Is the declaration of rights enforceable? It will certainly be taken into account by the European Court.

Should European countries proceed with a narrower union for a few, and, if so, should a price be exacted? Such a union would recreate the old distinction between the Common Market and the European Free Trade Association. We shall be on the EFTA side of that argument. In such a position, we should be able to negotiate rights and agreements in respect of arrangements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. Why are we not negotiating or insisting on reciprocal benefits for ourselves if the inner core is going to proceed?

I am an enthusiast for enlargement as it would weaken the European institution. We are even told, however, that we cannot have it without the Nice treaty. Is a European public prosecutor, a European constitution or monetary union necessary for enlargement? That is the machinery of nation building and of constructing a super-nation and is unnecessary for enlargement. We would be only a peripheral influence in such a Europe—we always are. There have been some changes, but the Franco-German coalition is still dominant in Europe. Even if we agreed to all those concessions in order to gain enlargement, its achievement would be uncertain. The German Lander are turning against it in a big way. Germany is reconsidering the policy and France has never been enthusiastic, so if concessions are made as a gateway to enlargement, it will remain doubtful whether that will be achieved.

The burden of my complaint is that we are always asked to believe that the evidence of our own eyes, instincts and knowledge is wrong. We are asked to believe that damage is benefit, that the European army is not an army, that a super-power is not a super-state and that a surrender of the veto is not a loss of power. All that nonsense is being fed to an electorate who are instinctively cool to sceptical and very doubtful about the project. That makes the diet of rubbish even more strenuous, because, when the assertions fail to convince the electorate, they become louder, bigger and ever more damaging. I believe in truth in advertising, marketing and sales, but I would like to see some truth in the euro argument, from which it has so far been completely excluded.

That brings me to my worry about the effects on government and politics. I do not like to see the euro argument become a stalking horse for personal disagreements in Cabinet. That discredits the party. I do not like the fact that we are now reaching a point when easy charm is no longer enough when hard decisions have to be made and sold to the people. I am especially worried about the diet of half truths. The Government are a force for good, for change, for building a better society and for redressing social imbalances. Any Government have only a limited degree of credibility to enable them to carry out their mission. If we damage our credibility by using a diet of half truths and distortions to justify a policy that is comparatively unimportant and does so little to advance the lot of the people of this country, we will damage the achievement, future prospects and credibility of the Government. That I do not want to do.

4.37 pm

Mr. David Curry (Skipton and Ripon)

I have heard repeatedly this afternoon the expressions "super-state" and "super-power", both of which I believe to be largely mythical. The problem is that, in many ways, Europe is not capable of being a super-state. People talk about an unremitting, purposeful action towards a common goal, but what I see when I look at Europe in practice is far too often incoherence and incapacity, failure to reconcile conflicting ambitions and the fudging of aims. That is Europe in practice and not the Europe of myth.

Europe today has a weak Commission that lacks credibility. Many member states have coalition-ridden Governments and find it difficult to declare lines of action. France has a problem dealing with the cohabitation of a President and Prime Minister of opposite and competing parties, both of whom want to be the next President. Germany has a federal system in the real sense of the word, and the Länder jealously guard their power. That does not make up the recipe of ingredients that is required for a super-state. Kohl, Mitterand and Delors are either dead or politically buried. We do not have such giants now; we have third-way minnows. They are not the stuff of which super-states are made and I do not think that their ambitions reach to such heights.

Of course, speeches and recommendations can be laid side by side or end to end to give the impression of a strategy. However, we forget that, while it is good politics in Britain to sound as euro-sceptical as possible, it is good politics on the continent to sound as pro-European as possible. That means that the declamatory differences often hide practical approaches that are much closer together in reality than from the rhetorical point of view. If people are judged by what they do as opposed to what they say—we have heard a great deal today about what people say that they want to do—we will find that some of the differences narrow.

If Europe is seeking to act as a super-state, the recent sugar proposals demonstrate that it is doing so in a jolly hamfisted way. There is hopeless incoherence between proposals made by the agricultural directorate and those from the external trade directorate, and that causes problems for everybody. If that is not incoherence, then it is difficult to find an adequate definition of the word.

It is equally daft to talk about a super-power. Super-power comes from states. However, the EU is not a state, but a permanent negotiation between states. The United States can, to use a phrase that has been used in this Chamber, project the forces across the world. The President does not have to do that after a debate with a conference of Republican or Democratic governors. EU decision making is protracted, slow and even dislocated.

Mr. Denzil Davies

I do not wish to labour the point, but my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister used the phrases "super-power" and "projecting power".

Mr. Curry

I am objecting to that silly expression. Where the EU has a common policy and a mandate, it has a powerful role to play. However, its super-power status is limited, specific and occasional.

We need to think about how the EU develops and with what mechanisms. There is a real opportunity for ideas that put the market at the forefront and insist that institutions should enable the market to function as the driver of competitiveness and opportunity. My own Front Bench is missing a trick on market opportunity because policies based on the concept of rolling back rather than defining a different way of advancing will not be listened to.

There is an obsession with building a Maginot line or ne plus ultra. The terms of almost pathological dislike in which our policy is couched suggest that Europe is not far short of the evil empire but, unlike it, presumably incapable of redemption, which makes it inevitable that we will be seen as wholly reactive and largely destructive. In other words, there is a market opportunity for defining a different way forward on Europe. However, we are not taking that opportunity because we are not attempting to make an intelligent definition.

The market is driving the European Union in a way that would have been inconceivable 20 or even 10 years ago. French industry is a global player and German restructuring is now wide open, as the single currency has helped to unleash a market-driven revolution. We need to embrace that market-led liberalisation and renounce the curious mentality that portrays an obviously successful country such as the UK as besieged, blockaded and threatened in some form of neurotic lack of confidence.

That is my main objection to what some Opposition Members say, which does not reflect the Britain that I see when I look about me. The proposal to pick and choose among EU measures is particularly unhappy. In any case, any treaty changes must be ratified by the House before they apply. The same mechanism reproduced across Europe would bring the single market—which, after all, is the thing that we claim to care about most—to the point of disintegration. I agree that that market is a crucial ingredient, perhaps even the most important thing in Europe. French competition policy on energy, German exposure of industry to restructuring, and takeover policies are crucially important, and would make it easy for member states to say, "Sorry, we do not like your policies."

If people do not like the federal vision of Europe, they should stop it, not by putting sleepers on the railway track, but by providing an alternative. The federal vision will persist if it is not offered competition, but it has got to be capable of commanding the understanding of all the partners in that negotiation. The Government have a huge responsibility for that because of their persistent failure to confront the issues. It is no good whingeing about the press, which only holds a mirror to the Government's own hesitations and dissensions.

The Government have a policy of relentless drift. Their "Don't mention the euro" comes from the "Fawlty Towers" school of political leadership, and the Government's engagement is as minimalist as the taste in home decoration of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. In the Chamber, debate in Europe is all too often a case of Basil Fawlty meets Dan Dare.

Mr. Cash

Who is the Mekon?

Mr. Curry

Discretion forbids me to answer that. Reality tends to be the loser when we have comic strip exchanges across the Chamber.

What are the priorities for the European Union? Enlargement, of course, followed by liberalisation and competitiveness. Enlargement matters the most and, more than anything else, the EU should stand for liberal, political and economic values. Of course, we could enlarge without treaty changes. However, the EU needs to function after enlargement, which is what those treaties are about that. There is a perfectly good case for extending qualified majority voting. I cannot conceive that, on the basis of changes in qualified majority voting—perhaps even negotiated and accepted by a Conservative Government, since there would not be a treaty to put before the people had we not accepted such voting—we would then say that we were going to go to a referendum and risk having that work overthrown. Those in opposition must be careful that people believe that, when in government, they would do what they say. I have an inkling that this issue is one that might not be so acceptable in government as it is in opposition, and for that I am profoundly grateful.

Of course, there are big issues that are not being addressed at Nice. Agricultural policy is in desperate need of reform and, although there is a process for doing that, it is too slow. I agree with my right hon. and learned

Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) that we should not touch the old resources ceiling, which imposes an important discipline on reform and retrenchment. We need to reform the arithmetic of qualified majority voting. The qualified majority now represents 58 per cent. of the population of the EU—I think that I am right about that. When the treaty of Rome was made, that majority was 70 per cent. At the very least, one needs to be sure of a comfortable majority of population and states to command a qualified majority.

I am not impressed with the proposals for a new chamber for national Parliaments, which would add to institutions and limp along pathetically and ineffectively. It is ironic that, in this Chamber in a national Parliament, we have spent most of the past two weeks lamenting the loss of parliamentary authority and the growth of direct action. However, we seem to think that, by adding another parliamentary institution to the European Union, we would address what we keep describing as a democratic deficit. I do not believe that that would work.

We must be careful to acknowledge the case for strong institutions in Europe, as we have a vested interest in making sure that they are strong. Markets need gendarmes to keep them free. We have a big interest in a Commission committed to driving forward liberalisation in areas such as e-commerce, local loop unbundling and competition policy. It is interesting to note that, although Mario Monti, the Competition Commissioner, suggested the repatriation—if I dare to use that word—of certain decision-making areas in competition policy, the Confederation of British Industry said that that is an exceedingly bad idea. That make me think that, when one starts to look at individual policies, reactions are different from when they are seen as part of a collective project.

If we are not going to create new institutions, it would be wonderful if the EU could occasionally abolish institutions. The Economic and Social Committee is utterly useless in every regard. Its abolition would save a large sum of money and have no negative effect. The Committee of the Regions is a more recent creation, but disappeared to the far side of the moon, and no one has heard a word on anything about it since it came into being. Its loss would not be noticed for a considerable period. Abolishing those Committees would be a wonderful gesture to show that Europe is capable of reducing as well as simply adding to its institutional galaxy.

We talk about unelected dictators, thinking about what, at the moment, is a fairly weak and demoralised Commission. However, we must remember that the Councils, with their elected politicians, often do the most damage. I have two proposals, one of which is modestly ambitious and one genuinely modest. I am tempted by the notion that we have to find a way of defining or producing an answer to the question "Where does it end?" I hesitate to use the word constitution, but we must consider the relationship between member states, central authority and national authorities. However, negotiating that would simply be a microcosm of the whole negotiation on Europe and there would be different purposes and objectives. Whether we like it or not, the EU is work of progress. It is difficult to answer the question "Where does it end?" because so much depends on need and circumstances and it is difficult to define a fixed destination. Given the nature of the debate in Britain, we should give some thought to that matter.

My other proposal is much more modest. In a week or two's time, we will debate the Queen's Speech. We will parade into the other place and the Queen will deliver her speech. We will come back to this Chamber and we will debate it. There is no equivalent to that in Europe. I believe that the Commission should annually set out a draft programme of major proposals—the equivalent of primary legislation: a President's programme if you like. That should be sent to national Parliaments for comment and advice. They should give their comments and advice before the Commission publishes the proposals as a definitive programme of work.

National politicians in their own Parliaments—not transferred to some new super-Parliament—need a stake in the process. They would be obliged to confront the reality of individual proposals and European activity. I am convinced that, if national politicians were to examine the merits of individual programmes in the light of the concerns of their own country and their own constituents, they would rapidly identify areas on which there was consensus and in which European action made sense and was necessary, just as they would rapidly identify areas in which they felt that the case for European action had not been made. That would give us a stake in the process.

Such a system would enable us to have an intellectual and policy relationship with the central organisms of the European Union. It would be a positive way of creating a new body of stakeholders in the process with an interest in making things work. They would see Europe in a pragmatic way—the United Kingdom has sometimes been condemned for that, but it is genetically inevitable—rather than dismiss the whole because they dislike some parts of it, as a result of which we give an impression that is sometimes false and different to that which we intend to convey when we consider the details.

4.51 pm

Mr. Kelvin Hopkins (Luton, North)

Whatever else is true about the European Union, there is certainly continuing pressure to speed up and intensify economic integration. Unfortunately for the European Union, some of the wheels are coming off the euro currency project at this very moment. Surely when wheels are coming off it is time to slow down or stop and think again possibly about the direction but certainly about the machine.

No doubt such heresies will not be aired at Nice, at least publicly, but in private discussions in the bars and restaurants some people will surely discuss the problem. The negotiators cannot all be so self-deluding as to pretend or believe that there is no problem.

The euro was flawed from the start. It has fallen in value by a third against the dollar since inauguration, and attempts to prop it up have failed. There are no signs of recovery. Then there was the Danish referendum. In spite of overwhelming political and media pressure and an 88 per cent. turnout, the Danish people voted to stay out of the euro, and rightly so in my view. Their political leaders glossed over that defeat by saying that in any case the Danish krone was shadowing the euro. That is the crucial point. The Danes are choosing and managing the value of their currency. They can change their policy when they wish, according to the needs of their economy. They can appreciate or depreciate their currency—perhaps with difficulty, but they can do that outside the euro, whereas they could not do so inside it. Denmark has one of the strongest economies in Europe, with an excellent welfare state to which we in Britain would do well to aspire.

Ireland plunged into the euro with enthusiasm, and has ridden a roller coaster since then. It now has an overheated economy with an uncomfortable rate of inflation. I am not by nature a deflationist, but Ireland's economy could well do with a little cooling at this point. Higher interest rates and a small currency appreciation would be helpful, but those options are closed off by euro membership. Ireland is staring heavy fiscal deflation in the face. That is not a happy prospect for the Irish people and the Irish Government. I imagine that the Irish economy is not helped by substantial net transfers to its economy, which give an added kick to domestic demand.

Perhaps the most significant country inside the euro is Germany, which entered the single currency at an overvalued parity. It needs to devalue a little against fellow member states to promote economic growth, but it cannot now do so.

A year or so ago, Janet Bush, writing in The Times, speculated that Germany might even leave the euro temporarily, devalue and go back in at a later stage. I do not think that that would be terribly popular with other member states, but it was a suggestion. At that time I thought it was highly unlikely, but things have moved on.

The Danish referendum result has also boosted opposition to euro membership in Sweden and Britain. Both have promised a referendum to their people, who are unlikely to support euro membership in the foreseeable future. There is also substantial scepticism about the single currency even inside the euro zone. Apparently, many Germans are upset that they were not permitted a referendum on the euro.

I have had the pleasure of meeting groups of Finnish journalists, and we have discussed Europe at great length. 1 asked, among other things, why the Finns did not have a referendum. One of the journalists said with amusement, "Well, we couldn't give them a referendum because they would have voted the wrong way." I suspect that may be true, although views change over time.

Most interesting of all is that the strongest economies in the European Union—Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom—are outside the eurozone. Is it not time to examine the whole euro project? Lord Desai, a euro enthusiast, has said: The euro is collapsing before our eyes. Those are his words, not mine. He suggests that the European central bank should suspend all trading in the euro, and the separate currencies should be floated against each other for some time before reuniting in an attempt to relaunch the euro at some point in the future. I agree with the first part of his suggestion, but I think that the second is highly unlikely. If the euro unravels, as it may do, we could see the end of the euro project as we now know it, and we should be looking at alternative economic arrangements between EU member states.

The euro is a very sick duck—if it is not yet a dead duck, it is moving in that direction. It is time intelligently to consider alternative economic arrangements in Europe, and I hope that our Ministers and others will discuss, privately at least, what those alternatives might be.

4.56 pm

Mr. David Atkinson (Bournemouth, East)

I want to raise two matters: first, the proposed EU charter of fundamental rights, and, secondly, the Europe we should foresee in the longer term, given the ambitions of a growing number of countries to join the EU.

I wholly share the concerns of my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) that the charter would represent an extra burden on British businesses and would threaten jobs. That would happen whether or not the charter were incorporated into a treaty. Even if it were not legally binding—as the Minister for Europe assured the House it would not be in yesterday's debate in Westminster Hall—it would, as many experts have said, inspire and influence the European Court of Justice and domestic courts.

My right hon. Friend and others have quoted a large number of people, including President Prodi and the Minister's French counterpart, Mr. Moscovici—I can spell his name as well as pronounce it—who have a completely different interpretation of the charter to the Minister.

My concerns go wider than the effect of the charter on business. It would unnecessarily complicate the working of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, as it would surely do to our own courts as they take on the monumental task of implementing the Human Rights Act 1998, which incorporates the European convention into British law, as the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) has said.

The Committee of Ministers in the Council of Europe fears that, as a result of the charter, there will be two rival systems of human rights protection in Europe. Because Europe will always be larger than the Union, and will include a certain number of non-member states, the Committee of Ministers warns against new dividing lines in Europe. However, it proposes a solution to the problem—accession to the European convention by the European Union.

That approach has repeatedly been backed by the other institutions involved: the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Court of Human Rights. It would allow the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg to apply the convention without being inspired by the proposed EU charter.

When the Minister replies, will he make it clear that the Prime Minister will veto any attempt to make the charter legally binding? Were the charter to be agreed as a political document that would influence the courts—the Foreign Secretary suggested that that would happen at Nice—would the Prime Minister insist that the EU accede to the European convention, as has been proposed by the Committee of Ministers, of which he is a member?

That leads me to my second point. It is clear that, in the foreseeable future, the EU will include more than half the countries of Europe, given the applications that it has now accepted. That is bound to lead to questioning of the need for, and the future of, the other pan-continental institutions. Indeed, one—the Western European Union—is already being amalgamated into the EU. It must also be said, however, that both the enlargement of the EU and the incorporation of the WEU are taking place without much thought about the overall European architecture of the 21st century. There is no clear vision of how we

should—let me use the title of a report endorsed by the Council of Europe in January last year—be "Building a Greater Europe Without Dividing Lines".

Europe today has six pan-continental institutions. Five were established as a result of the last world war, or in response to the cold war: the Council of Europe, the WEU, NATO, the EU and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The sixth, the Commonwealth of Independent States—which still exists, without being very effective—emerged from the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Each of those institutions is either composed entirely of Council of Europe member states, or composed of a majority of them. Each is committed to the principles of the Council of Europe: parliamentary democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Two of them exist to secure and defend those principles by force. I refer to NATO and the WEU, although now the EU will be involved. Each is served by its own parliamentary assembly, composed—except in the case of the European Parliament—of delegates from the Parliaments of member states.

At the beginning of the 21st century, it is unlikely that the existence of those institutions will continue indefinitely. Given that the next inter-governmental conference will not take place for several years, next month's Nice summit should embark on a debate about the future institutional architecture of Europe.

I believe that the Council of Europe has already proposed a framework for that debate, and for the design of the common European home that we should be envisaging. As I said, in January last year the Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a report entitled "Building a Greater Europe Without Dividing Lines". It emphasised the need for the European Union to be recognised as the natural partner of the Council of Europe.

During the same session, the Assembly adopted two other reports. One, entitled "Europe: a Continental Design", emphasised the pre-eminent role of the Council of Europe, and said that it provided the most appropriate political framework as the pan-European forum of the future. The other report, entitled "The European Political Project", stressed the importance of the parliamentary dimension in the increasing co-operation and integration between European states in which the Council of Europe and the European Union are the main institutions. It pointed out that a democratic deficit exists in the work of the European Parliament.

To his credit, the Prime Minister has recently acknowledged the existence of that democratic deficit. In his speech in Warsaw, he referred to the need for a second chamber for the European Parliament. My right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) did not like that idea. Last week, the German Foreign Minister also called for a European Parliament of two chambers, one elected and the other comprising representatives of national Parliaments.

The concept of a second chamber composed of members of national Parliaments is one that several of us have advocated for some years. Some are now giving it prominence today, suggesting that it is the key to maintaining the WEU Assembly as the parliamentary dimension of the new European security and defence identity—something that the European Parliament cannot, of course, assume. In that case, the upper chamber of the European Parliament would have to include MPs from 13 states that are not members of the EU, but that are associated with the WEU. It does not need much foresight to overcome that obstacle, as most of them are applying for membership and are likely to join the EU in due course.

Much work is being undertaken in Europe to promote democracy, free elections and human rights in pursuit of a more stable and secure continent and the avoidance of conflict, but it is being done in duplicate, in parallel and, sometimes, in confusion by several institutions: NATO, the EU, the Council of Europe and the OSCE. Even the CIS has its own convention on human rights and provides peacekeeping forces in several areas of past and potential conflict. Therefore, it is no longer good enough to say that all those institutions have complementary and useful roles to play and that some could not be merged because they include non-European states such as the United States of America, Canada and five Asian republics of the former Soviet Union.

The time has come to consider how two or three of those institutions can be more effective than six. I see no reason why the European Union should not eventually be open to all Europe, including Russia and the Ukraine. We should have the vision to say that, but because it is the Council of Europe that Winston Churchill had in mind when he referred to a kind of United States of Europe; because it is the Council of Europe that is the home of the European Court of Human Rights, which is already Europe's supreme court; because it is the Council of Europe that is the home of the European convention on human rights, which is, in effect, the constitution of Europe—it is accepted by 43 member states—the Council of Europe should be the pre-eminent pan-continental institution, and its Assembly, made up of Members of national Parliaments, should be the second chamber of the European Parliament. I hope that that debate can be commenced under "any other business" in Nice next month.

5.7 pm

Sir Raymond Whitney (Wycombe)

My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) makes some interesting suggestions on the institutional structure of Europe, based on his long experience. Those proposals should be carefully considered by the Government and, indeed, by our party.

For 40 years or more, my party has been the one that has promoted Britain's active and positive participation in what we now call the European Union. The role played by my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath), the Father of the House, is well known and needs no embellishment. The contribution of Baroness Thatcher—which has not been properly recognised, certainly by Labour Members—for example in advancing the single market, deserves full recognition. Then there was the contribution of my right hon.

Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), not least with his introduction of the concept of subsidiarity, which should be important to all of us. The important point I draw from that brief history is that, within the ranks of our party, throughout those 40 or so years there has been dissent. Although the mainstream had a positive and constructive disposition towards the European project, we have always had within our ranks those who were hostile. However, in those years a number of those who were hostile enjoyed Front-Bench positions, be it in opposition or in government.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asserts very strongly that he too is very much in favour of Britain being in Europe, and we are all familiar with the "In Europe, not run by Europe" slogan. I certainly accept the case that he makes. Sadly, however, that does not seem to be true of the country generally, for reasons that are very familiar to all hon. Members who regularly attend what sometimes seem to be a weekly performance from the House's repertory of European debates.

Within the ranks of Conservative Members, as in the ranks of Labour Members, there are those who wish that we had never entered the European Union in the first place and want us to get out as quickly as possible. Although not many hon. Members will admit to it, that is the truth. The trouble—which I should like to dwell on in a moment—is that they make so much noise, and so much fire and brimstone comes from them, that the electorate is in danger of perceiving that the Conservative party is full of and dominated by those who are hostile to our membership of Europe.

The anti-Europeans are encouraged by, and play, the anti-European press—about which many hon. Members have spoken—just as the anti-European press plays them. Silly stories are written about the abolition of this or that, the straightening of bananas, the squaring of tomatoes, and all the rest. Such stories play in village halls across the country, and so the spiral continues, causing great damage to the Conservative party and to the country. It is a very dispiriting and negative alliance.

We have reached the dangerous point at which we seem to be suggesting that everything that comes out of Europe, whatever its objective, is bad. We also seem to be giving the impression that we think that continental Europeans are stupid, evil and dedicated to doing down the United Kingdom. Some people seem to be giving the impression that they believe all three of those propositions, none of which is true. It is certainly damaging that such an impression should be given abroad.

We also give the impression that we think that Europe is populated by politicians who want to hand over political control of their country to some exterior force or superior entity based in Brussels or somewhere else, and that they cannot wait to extinguish their own countries' identities. Although I accept that that view is held by only a minority, as I said, the smoke, fire and mirrors that they use enable them to give the impression that it is a majority opinion within the Conservative party.

The great majority of people in Europe share the type of pragmatic vision that the Conservative party—as a group, not every member—has held for 40 years. The vision is of nation states collaborating when it is in their interests to do so, and retaining national autonomy in spheres in which that is much more appropriate. We all know that that is a new and a difficult concept, and that the nature of the concept is one of the problems faced by those of us who are positive about Europe.

Anti-Europeans always try to compare the new concept of Europe with developments in the United States and the former Soviet Union. We cannot, however, find the answers in those places. We have a different situation in Europe, where we have very ancient and deep-rooted nations, with all the good things and all the horrible things in their history. As nothing like this has ever been attempted before, it really is not surprising that there is not a blueprint or template telling us how to put together the pieces so that it all comes right in the end. There are problems in Europe that we should certainly challenge. However, although people who share my viewpoint should not say, "Everything is right about Europe", it is a sad fact that the impression given by those on the other side—that everything about Europe is wrong—is so prevalent and so damaging to our party.

Debates such as this often end up taking place only on our side of the House, because Labour fields a few traditional anti-Europeans and everyone else keeps quiet. Would that we were debating the matter over on the other side of the Chamber.

I make a plea to my party to ensure that, henceforth, this Pavlovian anti-European reaction is dropped. We must approach issues such as the rapid reaction force, the deliberations at Nice, qualified majority voting, or the composition of the Council of Ministers or the Commission calmly and constructively. We must not assume that all our European colleagues are out to score off us and to do us down. It would be of great benefit to our party if we could get our minds round that, and get the message across to the country.

Although appearing to be little Englanders bashing Johnny foreigner—because they all begin at Calais—might appeal to a small number of people, such an approach does not win elections. My hon. Friends will remember that the elections that the Conservative party won were won on the basis of our being a positive European party, by contrast with the oscillating, vacillating history of the Labour party. I submit, therefore, that a constructive approach would be good not only for our party, but, more importantly, for the country, because Britain must play its part in Europe for the sake of Europe and of Britain.

5.17 pm

Mr. Christopher Gill (Ludlow)

The Foreign Secretary made his position and that of the Government clear in an article in The Daily Telegraph last Friday and at the Dispatch Box today. Similarly, my own position is transparently clear—and as the House will recognise, I have been somewhat more consistent in my views than certain Labour Members, not least the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister.

I am a long-standing opponent not of Europe or things European, nor of European people, but of political union. I voted no in the 1975 referendum. I fought every inch of the way against the treaty on European union, and voted against the Amsterdam treaty just as surely as I shall vote against the Nice treaty. It will be apparent that I speak in this debate not as a spokesman for the official Opposition. I do, however, speak for the millions of British people who believe that the United Kingdom would be better off out of the European Union, and who are effectively disfranchised because not one party represented in Parliament today—my own included—has the courage to represent that point of view.

I quote the ancient Greek statesman, Pericles: Remember that prosperity can only be for the free and that freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it. I shall also remind my Conservative colleagues of the words of our party chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), who said, when addressing the Conservative party spring forum in Harrogate on 1 April, that

our greatest weapon must be truth: plain, simple and blunt.

As someone who has never been afraid of the truth, I welcome that statement and consider it high time the debate in Britain about Europe was conducted on that basis. Sadly, it has not been so conducted to date. The record is that, over the past 25 years or more, senior politicians have been, shall we say, economical with the truth. To this day, there is a reluctance on the part of British politicians to accept what has long been recognised by continental politicians—that the European Union, as it is now called, is all about European integration.

The House need not take my word for it. Perhaps hon. Members will heed the words of Joschka Fischer, delivered in Berlin on 12 May. He described his speech that day as

a contribution to a debate long begun in the public arena about the "finality" of European integration.

He left no doubt that that was the end game. He described the process of European integration as probably the "biggest political challenge" facing the states and peoples of Europe. He said that we must put into place the last brick in the building of European integration—namely, political integration. Having posed the question, "Quo vadis, Europa?", Mr. Fischer answered it as follows: Onwards to the completion of European integration. Only last week, he used the same analogy, likening Nice to the keystone in the edifice of European integration.

The German Foreign Minister is not alone, however. To a conference 12 months ago on "Progressive Governance in the 21st Century", European Commission President Romano Prodi stated unequivocally that

European unity was, first and foremost, a political concept.

There is no lack of evidence or witnesses to show that the European Union was never—and was never intended to be—what successive British politicians have tried to con the British public into believing.

As far as the rest of Europe is concerned, the EU is not about economics. Only the British choose to believe that. It is about politics and political integration. The sooner we acknowledge that plain and simple fact, the better. However, despite all the evidence to the contrary, in Berlin in June my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) looked forward to

an open Europe of free, democratic and independent Kingdoms and republics stretching from Brest to Brest-Litovsk.

It was as though he had never heard of Romano Prodi, or had never seen COM2000154Final, the paper that sets out the "strategic objectives" of the European Union for 2000–05.

What my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham aspires to does not even begin to connect with anything that Prodi and the European Commission are talking about. He asserted: Nations once bound up … in the shackles of Soviet control see European Union membership as the end point of their journey to freedom and free enterprise. He did not stop to consider that, in real terms, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Estonia today enjoy greater political freedom than we who have placed ourselves in the straitjacket of Brussels.

As far as those countries of central and eastern Europe are concerned, the proposition that exchanging Soviet-style communism for European Union-style collectivism represents a qualitative improvement beggars belief. It inevitably calls into question the judgment of those who can make such flights of fancy with such apparent ease.

Hon. Members would do well to recognise that the European Union collective exists to supplant the nation state. It follows, therefore, that continued membership of the European Union is incompatible with our on-going existence as an independent nation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham said this afternoon that the British people do not want a European super-state. However, does he not recognise that that is the only sort of Europe that is on offer?

In Berlin, my right hon. Friend talked about a fork in the road, but he used the wrong metaphor. We are not on a road and there are no turnings. We are on a conveyor belt, or perhaps even a railway. It makes no difference—the destination is the same whichever analogy is used, and that destination is political integration.

My right hon. Friend spoke of agriculture and fisheries policies that belong to a bygone era, but stopped short of saying that he would scrap both collectivist policies and return the powers to the nation states, where they rightfully belong—although to be fair to him, he has latterly accepted that the common agricultural policy and the common fisheries policy are collectivist. On the contrary, he has studiously avoided using the word "repatriation", for fear, I suggest, of upsetting the treaties. The logic of his position is presumably that by the time reform of the policies is achieved, it will be of no more than academic interest to the thousands of British farmers who will, in the meantime, have been forced to leave the land their families have farmed for generations; or to the hundreds of British fishermen who will have been driven off the waters that their forebears have fished since time immemorial.

With all due respect, I must point out to my right hon. Friend that we are elected to this place not by the treaties but by the voters in our constituencies. His priority may be adherence to the treaties, but mine most certainly is not.

My right hon. Friend spoke of our long history of dogged support for British membership of the European Union. If I am to be remembered for my dogged support of anything, I would rather it was for my dogged support of the best interests of my country and the best interests of my constituents in the Ludlow division. Those are the people who sent me to this Parliament and those are the people to whom I am answerable—not the European Commission, not the Council of Ministers, not even the Conservative party, but the 60,000 voters in the Ludlow constituency.

To his credit, my right hon. Friend acknowledged: the tide of federalism on the continent of Europe is still inexorably rising …

He said: I think it is time in Britain we accepted that among much of the political class on the continent the federalist drive towards full political union is alive and well … In that, there is not one iota of difference between us. Where we part company, however, is on the method by which we will return this country to the situation that people thought they were voting for when they voted yes in the 1975 referendum. My right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) is on record as saying: Come with me and I will give you back your country … That is where I and millions like me would like to be, but that highly desirable goal cannot be reached through the normal process of negotiation. Only by making it clear to our European Union partners that we are determined to reassert the supremacy of Parliament, that sovereignty belongs to the people of this country and is not negotiable, and that British law will no longer be overridden by European law can the commendable aspiration of my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks be achieved.

That is not the language used in these debates. In relation to the forthcoming treaty of Nice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham has committed the Conservative party to revisiting its provisions if it fails to gain popular support. Rather than state that he will reject the treaty outright, he contents himself with saying that he will oppose it if it appears to be integrationist. In all sincerity, I ask my right hon. Friend whether he can name any European treaty that has not been integrationist. Does he not recognise that achieving the position hinted at by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition requires unanimity, just as any meaningful reform of the CAP or the CFP requires unanimity, and that unanimity simply is not in prospect?

If unanimity for radical reform is not likely to be forthcoming, how are all the aspirations held out by my party to be achieved? Is not the reality that we have signed up to the equivalent of a full repairing lease for an infinite term on conditions that we no longer find acceptable and at a rent that some would say we can no longer afford?

My right hon. Friend the Member for Devizes said that our greatest weapon must be truth. Is not the truth plain, simple and blunt, as he would have it—that nothing short of an irreducible ultimatum will take us out of the situation in which we find ourselves today and into the position that our rhetoric implies?

How can my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham expect to achieve, by means of the normal channels, the fundamental modernisation and loosening of the CAP that he wants, when France—as has been demonstrated recently—torpedoes agricultural reforms, just as Spain would almost certainly veto any dilution of the principle of

equal access to the common resource

in relation to fisheries? How can other shadow Ministers hold out the promise of cutting back on the regulatory burden, when both the volume and content of EU regulations, directives, decisions and recommendations are beyond the control of the Westminster Parliament?

How will my party convince the nation that it will never accept, for example, the European constitution implicit in the charter of fundamental rights or the adoption of a continental legal system by way of corpus juris, when all the signs are that it is reluctant to make the repatriation of control over two of our most basic industries a precondition of progress in other directions? To put it plainly, simply and bluntly, the question is: how?

How will the rhetoric be turned into reality? How are slogans to be translated into policy? For how much longer can the answer to these questions be delayed before it is overtaken by a general election and the inexorable advance towards "ever closer union"?

My loyalty has been strained to the limit. In all conscience, I cannot go to the hustings as candidate for a party that maintains that one can be in Europe, but not run by Europe. I have therefore announced that I shall not seek re-election.

That is my decision; I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends are happy with theirs. It is still not too late for my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks to say that there will be no single currency while he remains leader of the Conservative party and that, under his premiership, control over agriculture and fisheries would be repatriated. That message would resonate with the people of this country; it is the very least that he must do to ensure that socialism is defeated at the next general election.

5.32 pm

Mr. William Cash (Stone)

1 have a strange feeling as I listen to the debate. I hear the words of some of my colleagues, but they bear little relationship to what is being done under the treaties. That is one of the most extraordinary aspects not only of this debate but of all debates on European matters. Anyone with eyes to see can read the treaties.

It is extraordinary that the impression has been created that the common foreign and security policy—as it has emerged—was not rooted in the Maastricht treaty. I put down about 240 amendments to that treaty—many on foreign and security policy and on defence. It is astonishing that anyone could have imagined that we did not subscribe to the policy, or that it would not have resulted in the consequences evident in newspaper headlines during the past few days.

I was deeply disturbed by the Amsterdam treaty debates, when I put down about 100 amendments. Some grand speeches were made, from both the Conservative Front Bench and elsewhere; there were some Divisions; and the House of Lords—which, at that time, we could rely on—could have made amendments that would have forced the issue. The House of Lords could have combined the issue of its own constitutional position with the massively important questions contained in the Amsterdam treaty, and forced through amendments. We would have won the amendments in the Lords and returned the measure to the House of Commons, where we could have debated increased integration under the treaty under the Parliament Acts and concluded the matter. But nothing of the kind took place.

I am delighted by the shift and movement in the atmosphere and rhetoric, but when I look at the facts, I become concerned about the extent to which we will actually do something when it comes to the crunch, as compared to simply saying that we will do certain things. I have grave doubts about the substance of much of my party's policy on this subject.

I am concerned that the Prime Minister has explicitly refused my request for a White Paper on the constitutional and political implications three times in the past year on the Floor of the House. Using one's time in Prime Minister's Question Time on three separate occasions to

request a constitutional White Paper on Europe may be thought to be overdoing it, but if the Government attempt to describe in a White Paper the difficulties inherent in the constitutional and political implications of this bizarre adventure they will be completely and utterly unseated. I am glad that the Daily Mail is taking up that issue with great vigour. The Government will never be able to answer the questions that would arise from such a document, so they dare not write it.

I shall return to my theme and ask my Front Benchers to take the step of saying that they would insist on a White Paper on the constitutional and political implications. After all, we cannot simply say, "Oh well, we wrote one ourselves on certain aspects of the previous treaties", because the real problems, which were considered in the 1972 White Paper, were disguised to the British people. As a matter of honour to our country, we must go back to what was said in 1971, gear it up to the present day and give an honest appraisal of the situation so that no one will be deceived in future.

We have heard much talk about super-powers and super-states. I made my point in Prime Minister's questions the other day. I asked him whether he could explain how his European super-power would not be a super-state, but of course he could not answer. Many colleagues have made similar points today. However, a much bigger problem will come up in the Nice treaty because the Government are presenting an argument that is coloured not only by confusion, but by deceit. It is about time that the British people were offered an opportunity to make a choice not merely about different destinations, but about the different spheres in Europe.

I have just written a pamphlet entitled "Associated, but not absorbed", quoting Winston Churchill who used those very words. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir P. Emery) quoted Churchill selectively. At Zurich in 1946, Churchill not only spoke about a kind of united states of Europe, but on another occasion used the words "associated, but not absorbed". I think in May 1953, he rejected the notion of a federal system.

Mr. Redwood

Sir Winston Churchill made it very clear at Fulton, Missouri and in his Zurich speech that he wanted a united states of Europe, but Britain would not be a member. He thought Britain should be a member of an English-speaking union, the details of which would become clear later.

Mr. Cash

Such debates are characterised by the misquoting of Churchill, who was, after all, one of this country's greatest Prime Ministers. It is a disgrace that people should attempt to subvert his meaning.

I have referred to two different spheres. We know that we do not want European government. I have often said as a slogan: "European trade and political co-operation yes: European government no". We know that the proposals to create European government came out of the Maastricht treaty, which was endorsed in Amsterdam. The proposals will be extended in the prospective treaty of Nice.

What are we do to do about that? If the Conservative party is against the idea of European government, we cannot go on giving the impression that we do not like it and talk about not being ruled by Europe. We have to bite the bullet. To do that, we must go for a policy of renegotiation, because it is possible for any member state to table amendments to any treaty at the intergovernmental conference and demand that those amendments are taken.

If the amendments are rejected by the other member states—I accept that many would argue that that would be inevitable—at least we would have gone through the right process. We would then appeal to the other countries—applicant as well as Scandinavian countries—and ask them to join us in a separate treaty. We could agree to remain in the single market, but would repudiate all those aspects of the treaties that came out of the Maastricht and Amsterdam provisions relating to European government.

If we do not do that, despite all the rhetoric we shall end up with a continual progression to more and more integration. We shall look as if we are doing something, but, in practice, we will not be. It is clear to me and I suspect to many colleagues that, if we were to tighten our policy so that we said never to the single currency or said no to it in principle, the British people would know exactly where we stood. I fear that, when we appear in television broadcasts during the election campaign, it is probable that questions relating to our policy of saying no for the duration of only one Parliament will be asked for the famous 14 times until our policy is made to look extremely thin. That would be in the middle of the general election campaign.

We have to tighten our policy and we must have a clear sense of the direction in which we are prepared to allow the Government to go. I endorse the remarks of many colleagues who said that we had an absolute duty to maintain, on behalf of our constituents, the supremacy of the British Parliament without necessarily going as far as to suggest that we should withdraw from the European Union. We must have an alternative process in mind. We must have a clear idea on where we are going and a policy of renegotiation. We also need a referendum.

I do not think that it is possible to have a referendum simply on the Nice treaty. We should have had a referendum on the Maastricht treaty because that raised the principle of European government. Colleagues may remember that I set up the MARC referendum campaign and we obtained 500,000 signatures from the British people. The petition was presented to Parliament for a referendum on Maastricht.

We should have had a referendum on the combination of the Maastricht and the Amsterdam treaties, and, before the next treaty is ratified, we should have one on the combined effect of the three treaties. It should not simply be a referendum on the single currency, but on the broader political and constitutional implications of Europe. I made that clear in my Referendum Bill in 1996. I got into hot water at that time, but the present situation in the Conservative party is very conducive to many of my ideas. However, it has not gone far enough.

I deeply resent the idea that we heard yesterday that somehow this Government created the common foreign security and defence policy. I have some sympathy with the Defence Secretary's comments yesterday.

One sees in the Maastricht treaty that there is qualified majority voting for matters relating to joint action. When one examines the combat role in the Petersberg tasks in the context of what I said earlier about the Nuremberg declaration, and considers the totality, confused and vague as it may be—and deliberately so—one sees the reality. As the Foreign Secretary said on 22 May 1997, in reply to a question that I asked: On defence, the French and Germans want the Western European Union to be merged into the European Union. This would undermine NATO. He did not deny that when I put it to him earlier; he knows that that is what he said. It does undermine NATO.

We can add to that point what has happened since in St. Malo, Cologne, Helsinki and Feira. With Nice to come, the position as set out by the Foreign Secretary on 22 May 1997 has been multiplied many times over. The policy that he was criticising as undermining NATO will not only, by definition, undermine NATO but damage it beyond repair.

In order to be able to work towards a Europe with which we can live, we must modify the acquis communautaire, using political will to do so. In order to achieve enlargement, politicians will need to convince the people in central and eastern Europe far more effectively than they are at the moment. I am talking about the people and not the elite. What happened in Denmark is a good example of what could happen. Indeed, on "Today" this morning, we heard that there were rumblings in the Czech Republic—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst)

Order. The hon. Gentleman has had his time.

5.47 pm

Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough)

I warmly applaud the concept of greater friendship and co-operation among the peoples of Europe. The treaty of Nice could enhance that vision by, in the words of the Foreign Secretary today, reuniting Europe and welcoming back the states of central and eastern Europe that were lost to communism and the cause of freedom. The treaty of Nice could make that possible by promoting a multifaceted and flexible approach. The description of that by my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) was excellent. That part of his speech deserves reading. Such an approach recognises that the sovereign nation state is, and should be, the fundamental building block of a better world. However, I doubt whether the treaty of Nice will produce such a result. It is true that Europe will emerge wider, but it will also emerge deeper.

I wish that we could have a more honest debate in this country. There is no European plot. Politicians on the continent have no difficulty in being honest about what they want to create. They are perfectly good and high-minded ladies and gentlemen who wish to create a Europe with one currency, based on a single market. They want an ever closer union, in tune with the treaties that they have signed. I agree that the process is often inefficient— even, perhaps, chaotic—but they are united in their aims and perfectly entitled so to be.

Leading politicians in this country, however, pretend that they can ride this tiger yet pretend that the tiger does not exist. It does. I believe that the only honest approach for this country is to renegotiate our relationship with Europe, returning agriculture and fisheries to the control of this Parliament and recognising our sovereignty.

Mr. John Gummer (Suffolk, Coastal)

Will my hon. Friend explain how there can be national control over fisheries, which are by their nature international? We have never had national control over fisheries; we have always had to have international control because of the nature of the fish. Why does my hon. Friend suggest national control when no reputable organisation in the fishing industry thinks that it is sensible?

Mr. Leigh

My right hon. Friend is a member of a reputable organisation, namely the Conservative party, which does propose that. It does so because if national control of our fishing policy were returned to us, we could engage in bilateral negotiations with other countries, and instead of seeing the gradual destruction of our fishing stocks, we could perhaps see greater conservation of them. I do not accept his point.

Mr. Gummer

How can we have bilateral negotiations over fishing grounds that are shared not by two countries but often by four or five? Why is my hon. Friend proposing that we should replace a perfectly sensible system with another system, when we should be changing the policy so that we protect the fish?

I was referring to reputable organisations that are involved in the fishing industry, such as the one that I chair—the Marine Stewardship Council.

Mr. Leigh

My right hon. Friend is entitled to make his point. My point is that the current policy, which I understand was signed up to in the dying hours of negotiation of our entry into the European Economic Community in the early 1970s, has been a disaster for our country. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) spoke with great passion on this issue, and my constituency abuts his. I wish that my right hon. Friend could go to Grimsby and see how our fishing industry has been depleted and destroyed by vast Spanish fleets and others. I believe that there is a better way, but I want to move on because my right hon. Friend is trying to lead me down paths and make me sound more controversial than I want to be. I want to reach out to him and others in my party.

We need to reaffirm our sovereignty over the essential matters of the nation state: foreign policy, defence, border controls and currency. If we are honest about those matters, we could lead a core of nations in Europe that believe in the single market, world free trade and co-operation on such issues as environmental protection. That policy is perfectly sensible and moderate, not extremist, and people who advocate it are not little Englanders or nationalists who decry the points of view of foreigners. Those people simply believe that there are some matters on which it is best to assert the rights of sovereign nations. On other issues, such as trade, environmental protection and perhaps even transport links, it is possible to have a wider dimension, whether in the EU or elsewhere. The same argument can apply to defence, NATO and other such areas.

During the debate, my Front-Bench colleagues have come in for a lot of criticism from hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber. However, the policy that I have described is that of the official Opposition, and it is completely in tune with what the British public want. They do not want to surrender their currency, foreign policy, defence policy or border controls, yet they are not ready to say that we will march out of the European Union. They want co-operation and friendship with other countries in Europe. That policy is a perfectly sensible, moderate middle way, which can receive the support of the British people.

After making those general remarks, I have more detailed observations to make about a specific aspect of EU policy that closely affects my agricultural and rural constituency: the everything but arms initiative. The initiative is designed to help the least developed countries; it will give them unrestricted access to the EU markets and allow their economies to expand. Those are good things. It will include many of the poorest African, Caribbean and Pacific—ACP—countries, helping them by abolishing the duties and quotas that currently operate when produce is imported into the EU. The plan is to implement the initiative by the end of 2001. Quotas have recently been set up under the Cotonou agreement to allow ACP countries time to adjust and diversify their markets.

The laudable principle of allowing free trade with the least-developed countries is one with which we all agree. There is no problem with that. However, I believe that the proposals are misguided because their effect will be detrimental to the very countries they are designed to help. In addition, there might be severe implications for United Kingdom farming, which is already in a state of crisis. Farm incomes are at their lowest since the 1930s, having dropped by 75 per cent. in recent years. Farms throughout the UK are going bust and farmers are committing suicide at a rate of more than one a week—that is probably a conservative figure. Farming families are struggling with unbearable pressure and action needs to be taken to help them.

The reasons that farming is in such a state of crisis are well known. They include the strong pound, high exchange rates, the reduction of the real value of subsidies from the common agricultural policy, and an exhausting and seemingly endless stream of red tape with which farming families have to deal. The increased power of retailers allows them to dictate prices to smaller farmers. Other factors include cheap imports, the pressures of globalisation, high indirect taxes and the suspicion that the stringent welfare standards that our farmers have to meet are not being as stringently enforced in other EU states, let alone the rest of the world.

Sugar beet was one of the few crops in the UK that offered any hope to farming families; in recent years, it was making a profit. However, the implementation of the EU everything but arms reforms after only a short period of debate will lead to the collapse of the price of sugar beet. That will deliver another hammer blow to UK farming, which is not to be given sufficient time to adapt under current plans.

The EBA agreement will have an equally detrimental effect on agriculture in ACP countries. We should be concerned about those countries, which are among the poorest in the world. Many are members of the Commonwealth. The abolition of quotas and tariffs will result in the flooding of the EU market for the crops in question, as supply outstrips demand. That will inevitably lead to the collapse of prices for those products—although that is unlikely to be passed on to the consumer—and the collapse of many ACP countries economies. Many ACP countries are dependent on cash crops for an unhealthy proportion of their economy—in some cases, as much as 25 per cent. Their economies will be severely undermined and the very people whom the Government and the European Commission are trying to help will be harmed.

A good example of the likely effects of unlimited access to the markets is the rum industry in ACP countries. To remain competitive within the EU, producers need to move from bulk rum production towards an ACP-branded value-added product. An agreement to help the rum industry to develop in that way was reached after the Lomé negotiations, to allow producers time to boost their competitiveness and build their markets abroad. The timetable was set to extend until 2008, but all the hard work will have been for nothing if the everything but arms proposal is allowed to go ahead unchanged. It will take effect in 2003 at the latest—a full five years before the original deadline. Therefore, even those whom the EBA proposal is designed to help do not want it to be implemented. The Government must take note of those problems and not plough on with an ill thought out plan that ignores the plight of farmers in the UK and ACP countries.

We are still waiting for answers from the Government, but there is complete confusion. I have attended all the debates on the subject, both in Westminster Hall and in this Chamber. Earlier this week, the Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who responded to the debate in Westminster Hall, was so confused that she had to retract what she had said. The Secretary of State for International Development stated that she strongly supported the proposal; then, the Prime Minister stated that he was concerned about it—obviously, he had not been briefed to respond to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway). What is going on?

It is a serious matter, especially for farmers, who are going through the worst agricultural depression since the 1930s. The hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who understands the economies of Caribbean countries, was present during the Westminster Hall debate. She asked, "What is the logic in bringing forward a proposal that is designed to try to help the least-developed countries in the world, when it will lead to the collapse of the economies of many of the poorest countries?"

What is the Government's reaction? We are still waiting for it. The Foreign Secretary did not comment on these matters this afternoon. I plead with the Minister to receive briefing and to inform the House exactly of the Government's attitude. It would be a disaster, given all the other pressures that are hitting farmers from all quarters, if we were to see a collapse of the sugar beet economy. I am pleased to see that the Minister is nodding. He knows that we have one of the worst sugar beet quota regimes in the EU.

When the Minister responds, many of us who represent farming areas, whatever our views about the EU —whether we are enthusiastic, sceptical or realistic—will look to him to represent our interests in the EU, to defend the interests of sugar beet growers and to defend the interests of those countries that have loyally supported us in the past, some of the poorest countries in the world which are in the Caribbean. They rely on the Treasury Front Bench to stand firm on these matters.

6.1 pm

Mr. John Wilkinson (Ruislip-Northwood)

I wish, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you had assumed the Chair in time to hear the brave speeches the right hon. Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) and of the hon. Members for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) and for Luton, North (Mr. Hopkins). They demonstrated that the best traditions of British parliamentary democracy endure. They were fighting against established orthodoxies. The right hon. Gentleman pointed out the dangers of a super-power for the security of Europe and for the maintenance of democracy. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby observed how the use of Euro terminology has debased the political debate so that politics as such is no longer trusted by the British people. The hon. Member for Luton, North talked about the failure of the euro and the implications for British politics of that debacle.

I shall talk about the European defence initiative. First, I challenge the Foreign Secretary. He said that the Euro force would be deployed only if NATO were not engaged. Is that not in itself a recipe for the alienation of the United States? Presumably, if an operation does not have the approbation of the United States, it would go ahead on a European basis. We did so over Suez, and it was disastrous.

Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman said that there would be no question of deployment of British troops without "the approval of this Chamber". Does that mean that the royal prerogative, in terms of the deployment of British troops on a Euro operation, is suspended? If approval is required, will we have votes in the House—not just a ministerial statement—before British troops can be deployed, or is it merely another example of Euro terminology, which is confusing and not to be trusted?

The exercise and deployment of troops on peace-keeping operations is not to be lightly undertaken. As my gallant hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) knows above all, in Northern Ireland we have lost more than 2.000 members of the security forces. The poor Spanish people are undergoing the horrors of a terrorist campaign at the hands of ETA. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, many allied troops lost their lives. In Kosovo, we sustained an air campaign of great intensity. Royal Air Force air crews did not suffer casualties, but they gained more awards for gallantry than in any military operation since the second world war.

In other words, the 60,000 men, the six squadrons of aircraft and the 72 naval vessels that are to be deployed for up to a year and up to a range of 2,000 miles—or 2,000 km; I cannot remember which—from Brussels will be engaged in operations that will often be dangerous, difficult, hazardous and life threatening. People are prepared to make sacrifices to defend their country, their way of life and the values that they hold dear, but I doubt whether they will be prepared to risk their lives for the common fisheries policy, which has decimated communities around our coast, or the common agricultural policy, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) made absolutely plain, has been disastrous for British agriculture and the housewife.

People will not lay down their lives for the supremacy of European law over our own or for continuing the British net contribution to the European Union, but they will note how different an organisation is the EU compared with other collaborative and free-trading bodies such as the Association of South East Asian Nations and Mercosur and arrangements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. None of those has a centralised bureaucracy; none aspires to super-power status; none wants to throw its military weight around.

The great difference between NATO and the new European rapid reaction force organisation is that NATO was always a voluntary association of sovereign independent states. That was its strength, and the strength of Western European Union as well. WEU and NATO had at their foundation—at their heart—a mutual security guarantee. The EU has forsworn that, and the Brussels treaty commitment will not be a prerequisite to participation in the Euro intervention force. As a consequence, the force will not be effective. Indeed, the neutrals will be involved.

Yesterday, I put it to the Secretary of State for Defence that it was important that the neutrals sign the Brussels treaty. They will not do so. As a consequence, the organisation will be weak and divisive. We all know how alienated the non-EU members of NATO feel. They may not be fully involved in the decision-making process—indeed, that is perfectly plain. Otherwise, why would their leading politicians and leading diplomats express their reservations in public?

My anxiety is simple: the aspiration to create a super-power by means of the European security and defence initiative will polarise and divide our continent. Over time, it will make it much harder to achieve accommodation with the Russians, who have always been anxious that the EU may acquire a military dimension—especially if that dimension involves nuclear power. 1 presume that the French nuclear deterrent will, over time, become an instrument available to the EU. We should consider such a development with the greatest caution.

Some say that Conservative Members have no vision, are xenophobic and mistrust fundamentally those who have for so long been our allies and partners on the continent. That is utterly false—it is typical election sloganising. We have a vision of a genuine community—the European Community as it set out—of free-trading, democratic and sovereign states and nations working together on the basis of mutual respect and for their common good. The vision is wholly worthy and wholly compatible with today's economic realities, which were so well described by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood).

Why is it that, alone among the world's free trade organisations, the EU has such an added bureaucratic dimension? Because it has ambitions for aggrandisement and for an accretion of power. Were it a democratic institution, one would be less anxious, but we should consider its manifestations—not least its abuses, its fraud and its corruption as well as the life style of the Eurocrats, which is so removed from and utterly alien to that of our working people, who lead hard but decent ordinary lives far away from the photo opportunities, the Euro lunches and the Mercedes that glide to and from meetings in agreeable locations. That is why the forces of our country will have misgivings about laying down their lives for the Euro force and the European Union. I ask the Government to think again.

A further point must be made. If there is a crisis, there will be two military staffs, will there not—those under Javier Solana of the European Union, the high chief representative or whatever he is called, and those under Lord Robertson of NATO? They may have quite different interpretations of an emerging crisis, how it should be dealt with, which forces should be deployed and how. It is a recipe for indecision and delay. I urge the Government to think long and hard before they go too far down the road.

If there is no parliamentary dimension and proper oversight, it will perpetuate the democratic deficit that is endemic in all European institutions. I urge the Government to continue with the Assembly of the Western European Union, which has the great merit of bringing in parliamentarians from all over Europe, not just European Union parliamentarians. Those representatives sit in their own parliaments, take part in their own national debates, vote the funds, scrutinise the policies and question their defence Ministers.

Those are the people who should be involved, not the MEPs who just go to Brussels and Strasbourg with huge majorities on the list, who are removed from their electorate and have no role in the decision making on defence policy in their national Parliaments.

The Government are, in the words of Lady Thatcher, capable of committing a "monumental folly". Whether they will or not is up to them. I believe in European co-operation. I have worked for it in the defence field all my working life. But it does not mean that the way in which it is being undertaken by the present Administration is wise or that it will have a happy outcome.

6.11 pm

Mr. John Maples (Stratford-on-Avon)

I agree with much that my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson) said about European defence, but first I shall deal with some of the other issues that will face us at Nice.

I am perfectly happy with the various proposals for dealing with the blocking minority and the size of the Commission. We must deal with those if enlargement is to take place. One of the scandals of the European Union over the past 11 years is that we have been so slow in admitting the countries of central and eastern Europe. All of us want the process speeded up. There are far more substantive and fundamental issues than numbers of Commissioners and blocking minorities to settle, but I hope that those will get settled too.

On qualified majority voting, the list in the draft treaty produced by the French presidency contains 50 proposals for substituting qualified majority voting for the veto. With some of those, I have no problem—for example, the rules for the Court of Auditors or including intellectual property in trade negotiations. Those are clearly matters on which there ought to be qualified majority voting.

However, our interest in QMV is not some narrow obsession about national sovereignty. There are two fundamental reasons for it, and I hope that the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz), will address them in his reply.

One reason is that if the Government want to introduce legislation in the House, they can do so. They can get it passed. If they lose the next election, we can repeal the legislation, just as they can repeal legislation that we passed in the 18 years that we were in power. However, once European directives or regulations have been passed, we cannot do that. There is no longer a democratically accountable way of changing those regulations.

In cases in which it is important to us what that consequence may be, it is vital that there remains a national veto. Some of the legislation that has been passed under the social chapter, for instance, falls absolutely into that category. I can see the argument for it. I can see that the Government may well want to pass such legislation, but they should not do so through European Union directives which, if they lose an election, cannot be repealed.

The second point about QMV is that there is a fundamental view shared by many of my right hon. and hon. Friends that some matters, such as trade negotiations and the single market, are quite properly the business of the European Union, and qualified majority voting should apply to those if we are ever to get anywhere. There are other matters in which the European Union should never be involved and which should not even be within the competence of the treaty.

There is a third category, in which there is clearly some European Community interest and ought to be some competence, but where the issue is so serious to us as a nation state that the veto must remain.

Many of the 50 items that are proposed for qualified majority voting fall slap bang into the six areas on which the Government do not want it. The first is the appointment of the representative for common foreign and security policy, which comes under defence. Another is the Commission's ability to take action to combat discrimination based on, for example, sex or race. The European Union should have nothing to do with that. We all have different problems with that subject, and we should all be free to approach them in our different ways.

It is proposed that we should move from unanimity to qualified majority voting on social security, and insert in article 42 of the treaty the following words: for the coordination of national laws in the field of social security.

It is extremely dangerous, and the thin end of the wedge, to apply to Britain some of the lavish and generous social security arrangements through which many of our European partners are about to go bankrupt. It is undesirable to allow for a system whereby qualified majority voting could force such expensive systems on us, and attach the same ball and chain to our feet.

Another example is the free movement of persons, and immigration and border controls. It is proposed to subject a raft of measures in articles 62 and 63—for example, visas, border controls and treatment of asylum seekers—to qualified majority voting.

Perhaps the most important example is tax. Article 93 allows the Community to make rules by unanimity for the approximation of indirect taxes. It is now proposed not only to subject that to qualified majority voting—a dangerous move—but to introduce for the first time competence in direct taxation. I appreciate that that will remain subject to unanimity for the time being. However, we know how such matters proceed. First, they become a vague proposal about which nothing will happen, then they are subject to veto. The next time a treaty is drawn up, they are subject to qualified majority voting. I hope that the Government will not allow the inclusion of competence in direct taxation in the treaty of Nice because pressure will be applied eventually to subject it to qualified majority voting.

All those issues are important. The Government will be in difficulties because they oppose many of the proposals. They will find themselves in the same position as the Administrations of Lady Thatcher and of my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major). Most of our partners in the European Union have an agenda to integrate much further than we want to integrate. Lady Thatcher and my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon found that, and I believe that the Government are also finding it. One gets dragged down a road, and one has to make concessions in order to exclude the little bits that the Government do not like.

Earlier, I mentioned six article amendments. It falls slap bang into the area over which the Foreign Secretary wants to retain a veto, as he told the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs and Parliament. To do that, the Government will have to make concessions. They are making the biggest concessions in defence policy. I believe that we are witnessing a series of pre-emptive concessions on defence. That is a negotiating mistake in the European Union, which banks pre-emptive concessions. We then have to start with a blank sheet of paper because there is no credit for good actions in the past. Thus concessions will not give the Government much mileage at Nice. Such concessions are dangerous.

In the discussion on yesterday's statement on defence, I said what I thought of European defence identity. However, I want to make a couple of further points. There has been much misquoting of foreign opinion. I listened to the American ambassador on the radio this morning. The Americans use language that is extremely carefully constructed. Labour Members keep quoting their words on supporting goals. However, the goals that they identify are the enhancement of European military capability and its co-ordination. They do not support, and they are extremely worried about the establishment of a military structure, with staff, command control and intelligence communications arrangements outside NATO. I keep asking Ministers why we cannot do that within NATO, but I never receive a satisfactory answer.

The 1996 Berlin summit agreed a European security and defence identity. The phrase comes from NATO, not the European Union. The arrangements can achieve nothing that could not be achieved within NATO. I wholly agree that we need to enhance European military capability and better co-ordination. Our planes should be able to land on French carriers and vice versa. However, making those arrangements outside NATO presents some potentially serious dangers.

We must recognise what the French agenda is. The French are perfectly entitled to their own agenda, but on this, their foreign policy is very different from ours and the Americans. On the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall last year, President Chirac made a major speech. He resented US global dominance and called for the European Union to work for a multipolar world that contained US military power. He said that the European Union could flourish by seeking to supplant the United States. The French Foreign Minister, Mr. Vedrine, said that he held up the EU as an example of international co-operation to compete with the United States on international issues.

That is the French agenda. It is all very well for the Government to say that the Americans are perfectly happy, that the force cannot operate without NATO being offered a veto and that it will undertake only peacekeeping. They talk about peacekeeping, but then use Kosovo, which involved high-intensity warfare, as an example of the sort of thing that we should be able to do. Which is it to be? The Germans want to the force to be able to travel 4,000 km, which would take it to Baghdad, Cairo or Libya. Do we really want to go there or is this about peacekeeping in the Balkans after peace has been established?

Those issues have been muddied. The Government have made concessions so that the Prime Minister appears to be a good European, whereas in fact he does not want to go along with the EU on a series of issues. He has chosen to make concessions in this particular area, which is a dangerous route to take.

I shall briefly address enhanced co-operation, which is another aspect of the proposals. Enhanced co-operation procedures are set out in the Amsterdam treaty, although they have never been used. As far as I know, no one has ever tried to use them, so once again we are trying to run before we can walk, which is typical of the EU. There are two provisions in the treaty which the Government, including the Minister, thought important when it was made. First, it should be possible to have a national veto on enhanced co-operation between a group of states. Article 40 of the treaty—or its equivalent in the revised treaty—says that if any nation feels that its vital interests are at stake, it can stop enhanced co-operation between other states going ahead.

Secondly, any state that was not part of the original group would be free to join afterwards.

Those provisions have been changed. There is no longer a proposal for a national veto, which is being removed, even—as I understand it—in the area of common foreign and security policy. There is no automatic right to join NATO, although there is a right to ask the Commission to look into the matter. The objectives for enhanced co-operation now include something completely new, as the treaty is aimed at furthering the objectives of the Union… and at reinforcing its process of integration.

There has been a radical departure. In his winding-up speech, will the Minister say how the Government view that? I may be the only person in the House who believes this, but we should be prepared to concede enhanced co-operation at some point and remove our veto on it. That is the only way that we will get the flexible Europe that I want to see.

We should trade that only for something extremely big in the other direction. If the EU wants enhanced co-operation without a veto so that some groups of states can go ahead faster than others, that is fine. Europe should be flexible but, in return, countries such as ours should be allowed the flexibility to say that we do not want the same trade union regulations, rules on racial discrimination and arrangements on pensions as other states because we want to settle our own. The EU should coalesce around a hard core of free trade, the single market and the free movement of people and goods. We love all that, and want it to be properly developed, although the single market has not yet been completed. However, we do not want to be compelled to go into those other areas. We should have two-way flexibility and be prepared to concede enhanced co-operation in exchange for flexibility in the other direction.

For the sake of being good Europeans, the Government seem to be prepared to go along with almost anything proposed by our partners, some of whom clearly want a much more integrated Europe. To parody Mr. Prodi, one can call it a federal Europe, a super-state or even Mary Ann.

Mr. Vaz

Eunice.

Mr. Maples

The Minister wants to call it Eunice after his bus. We are heading for a united states of Europe. At a certain point, this country will have to draw a line on that. The big danger in the Government getting sucked down the road of bringing in defence and taxation is that those people who are mild Euro-sceptics—which is most of the people in Britain—who want and value the EU but who do not want a united states of Europe, will vote not to be in Europe at all, if the alternative is a united states of Europe. We should recognise that, and go no further down the dangerous road that the Government have taken. We should seek a flexible Europe around which we can all agree.

6.25 pm

Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby)

I resent it when I am accused of being anti-European, because apart from anything else I am self-evidently European. Not only that, I happen to like the French, which is a trait that the British are not meant to have. I like Europeans, and I am pro-Europe. However, I am not pro the direction in which the European Union is going, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) has just spoken about.

It is distressing that experience teaches us so little. I went to Brussels in early 1993 when subsidiarity was all the rage. I heard a British President of the Commission say, "Subsidiarity has been so over-played. Everyone knows that it is not even worth talking about." At the same time, the Minister welcomed the result of the first Danish referendum. I am delighted that he was then a Euro-sceptic, even though he is not prepared to say anything about that now.

During the Maastricht debate, I listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) and others, and I realised that they won all the arguments. There was no question about that, and for that reason I voted against the treaty on Third Reading, although not beforehand I am ashamed to say.

In Westminster Hall this afternoon, we were discussing EU development aid. It is a shambles, and the Government admit it. It is corrupt and not effective. They want more money so that they can do it better. What nonsense.

The Foreign Secretary said how useful it was to get an agreement on filament size for fishing nets. That is valuable, but it is not much use to most of our fishermen because they have gone out of business. They have left fishing because of the common fisheries policy. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) is wittering away, but I shall discuss the matter with him later.

The common agricultural policy is the biggest and the best example of what I am talking about. My father-in-law was a farmer until, I am delighted to say, he retired recently. I asked him, "If when you went into farming 40 years ago someone had told you that you would be paid to leave your fields fallow, would you have said they were nuts?" That is what happened with set aside.

How about quotas? That is even better. My father-in-law almost became bankrupt because of quotas, but he managed to come out of dairy farming and rent his quota. He made more money lying in bed than he had ever made milking because of quotas. I am delighted that the Government now realise that quotas must go, because they are nonsense.

The CAP has been bad for consumers and for the environment and disastrous for farming. How can Brussels fix a common agricultural policy for the reindeer herders of northern Sweden, the olive growers of Portugal and the tobacco growers of Greece? It is laughable. It does not work, so let us admit that and consider how to proceed.

I am constrained by time, but I want to deal briefly with the European army. I am pro-European and have worked with European armies. I have worked with the Germans and the French, and enjoyed it very much. We are different, but we get on well and we have co-operated well. What is the motivation behind the European army? It is quite clear. The French have been trying to decouple America from Europe ever since de Gaulle left the military structure, I think in 1968. The French are quite open about that. My hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon gave an excellent quote on this issue. The French want to have more influence over Europe. In a letter in The Daily Telegraph today, Caspar Weinberger states what many in America feel, but I do not want to labour that point given the time.

What is the experience of EU countries working together on defence? The French disagreed radically with our Iraqi policy, which the Minister should be pretty clear on. They were accused of being deceptive and totally outrageous because of their policy on Iraq. They do not have the same interests, and do not react in the same way. It is not anti-French or anti-European to say that: it is quite straightforward. Rwanda is suffering terribly, and it is partly because of the attitude of the French that we cannot agree on an aid and sanctions policy for that country. But what is worst of all about the European army proposals is that the result would be ineffective. We would not have the heavy lift, the command and control or the communications and intelligence support that we get from NATO.

As we know, the defence veto is on the table at Nice. I understand that the French would like it to go. The Government say that they will veto it, and I am delighted, but it will be back on the table at the next summit. It is no good the Minister yawning, because this is rather important. The veto will come back, and our experience of the inexorable drift tells us that it will continue to come back until, finally, the aspirations and the agenda of our continental partners catch up with us.

We know what many people in Europe intend, because they have told us. We should believe what they say. Why do we dismiss it with such gay abandon? When Joschka Fischer talks about wanting to elect a president, that is what he wants: he means it. They are honest about the issue on the continent. They say, "Of course we want political integration. That is what the euro is all about, and that is what a European army—a European standing force—is all about." We should believe them.

I shall not compare Joschka Fischer or anyone else to Hitler, but let us consider what happened in the 1930s. Hitler wrote "Mein Kampf', which described his grandiose plans. Everyone said, "Ha, what nonsense." The Germans said, "We have hired Hitler", because they believed that they could control him. But he meant what he said, and look how we suffered.

I am not suggesting that things will go the same way now. I do say, however, that when people tell us something we should believe what they say—unless, perhaps, the people concerned are some of the Ministers in the present Government.

6.31 pm

Mr. Richard Spring (West Suffolk)

We have heard some excellent and spirited speeches from hon. Members on both sides of the House, expressing genuinely held and diverse views. I congratulate all who have spoken.

The debate has featured contrasting visions of Europe, reflected in the contrasting agendas for Nice and beyond. We have heard about the programme for reform and greater flexibility, endorsed by the Opposition. We have also heard about the drive towards integration supported by the Government and the Liberal Democrats, involving the charter of fundamental rights, the EU defence policy and the further loss of the national veto.

The Labour vision of Europe as a super-power, which drives relentlessly towards integration, is not the only vision on offer. It is a recipe for neither harmony nor unity in Europe. Rather, it will produce conflicts and dissatisfaction as national interests are overridden. As The Economist has said: A Europe in which all must converge and co-operate on all sorts of subjects, heading dreamily for "ever closer union", is not likely to be either happy or sustainable. Those virtues are likelier to arise if different groups of members can co-operate on different topics, forming a multi-system Europe. Contrary to the view of the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson), the last thing that Labour's move towards economic and political integration will do is assist the process of enlargement. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) spoke about that passionately, and I agree with him. The requirements of a diverse, enlarged Europe should cause us to focus on the need for greater flexibility. Labour, however, seems to be stuck in the bloc integrationist thinking of the 1950s.

Other EU leaders have painted a clear picture of the direction in which they want the EU to go, but our Prime Minister's epoch-shattering explanation of why so many EU citizens feel alienated from EU institutions was expressed in his proposal for a second chamber. Perhaps he was emboldened by the mind-boggling success of his reforms of the House of Lords.

The year 2004 will mark the passing of a full decade and a half since the fall of the Berlin wall, but a recent Commission communication led us to believe that that estimate might be overly optimistic, and that late 2004 or even 2005 might be a more realistic date for accession. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) is absolutely right: the accession process is far too dirigiste.

The Government would have us believe that delays in enlargement have been caused by an unwillingness to extend qualified majority voting. That is the logic of their position—our opposition to a further loss of the veto would block enlargement. The delay has been caused by nothing of the sort. It has been caused by the total failure of leadership in Europe by the Government, particularly over the need for financial reform.

Let us turn to agriculture, not a subject dear to the heart of the Government, who so truly despise rural Britain. Recently, we had a major statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Perhaps I missed it, but I do not think that I heard the word "farming" anywhere in the statement. Perhaps it was because he was embarrassed that farmers' earnings have fallen by 90 per cent.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) referred to the sugar beet industry. We wait for the Minister's comments on that. He will be aware of the threat to the industry because of the two proposals emanating from the European Commission, which appear to imply both quota and price cuts, on top of a 30 per cent. cut in beet and sugar prices in the past four years.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) talked about farming. He is right: there is a clear and absolute need for substantial reform of the common agricultural policy. We have called repeatedly for reforms that allow more decisions to be made at a national level, yet the issue that is most responsible for delaying enlargement is not even on the IGC agenda.

On Tuesday, the Foreign Secretary told the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs that he hoped further reform would be discussed in 2004, for the financial perspective starting in 2006. He maintained his stance that the Berlin agreement was sufficient for enlargement. Patently, it is not. The Berlin reforms involved a watering down of proposals that were already inadequate. Since then, true reform has not even been discussed, yet the plain truth is that, if the CAP were extended in its current form to eastern Europe, it would bankrupt the EU. The EU's unwillingness to apply uniform subsidy rules is behind much of the dissatisfaction, legitimately, in applicant states. Therefore, the Government have failed to grapple with the problem not only of farming in this country, but of agriculture throughout an enlarged European Union. It is a disgraceful abdication of leadership which imperils the very process of enlargement.

Another obstacle in the way of enlargement is the absence of real flexibility, and the attempt to shoehorn the applicant states into rigid conformity with a plethora of needless red tape and regulation. Commission President Prodi recently admitted that it was in areas such as social policy that the biggest delays in adopting the acquis had occurred. Both accession states and existing states should have more freedom to decide whether such measures meet their national interests. Therefore, whereas the Labour party says that our insistence on CAP reform and flexibility would hold up enlargement, the opposite is true. It is the lack of common agriculture reform and the lack of flexibility that will hold up successful enlargement.

The tragic result of Labour's failure of leadership and its willingness to accept an integrationist agenda is that that agenda is encouraged even more. As the right hon. Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) pointed out, talking about a super-power, as the Prime Minister did, encourages that. Is it any wonder that a Prime Minister who continues to move towards his super-power, or super-state, while saying one thing in Britain and doing another in Europe, gives that impression? Is not that direction highly damaging to Britain and to Europe as a whole?

At Nice, the charter of fundamental rights will be proclaimed. As the Commission and many others have indicated, it will impact our domestic law, as was spelled out by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson). The whole system of British justice based on common law and practice will give way to more and more judge-led laws. Parliament will become increasingly marginalised, yet senior politicians within the EU do not disguise their desire for that to be the basis for a written constitution for the EU and legally enforceable. Just as the British people have viewed with hilarity the Minister's bus trips across the country, so his European counterparts heard with utter disbelief that he regarded that hugely significant document as on a par with the Beano magazine. Where is the reality?

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) said, the issue of the number of Commissioners and the weighting of votes in the Council of Ministers is a pragmatic one. Of course resolving it is necessary for enlargement, but that certainly does not require a treaty of Nice.

After he came into office, the Prime Minister made it clear that he opposed absorption of the Western European Union into the European Union. So, what has prompted the change of heart? Was it loyal NATO member countries, such as Norway and Turkey, pleading for a European Union defence effort? Was it the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary beating a path to No. 10 Downing street demanding an EU rapid reaction force? Was it senior members of our armed forces, past and present, demanding it? Was it a whole series of former Defence and Foreign Secretaries, of both parties, saying that it would strengthen our defence efforts? Of course it was not.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson) said it all and so well. The Government's defence commitment in the European Union has aroused massive disquiet in the United Kingdom. Let Labour Members understand why that is—although I appreciate that it is difficult for almost any Minister to understand it.

No institution is more valued in our country than our armed forces. Remembrance Sunday is truly a moment in our national calendar when the entire nation comes together. What has affronted the British people is the way in which politics—and certainly not a desire to improve our defence capability—have so blatantly been at the heart of the decision. Because the Government have failed so miserably to persuade the British people on the single currency, the Prime Minister is using the decision to demonstrate his European credentials.

Did I really hear someone say that the French and the Germans would have gone ahead with the creation of the EU army regardless? Does the Minister believe that the EU army could possibly have been created without a British presence? I have the privilege to have more than 20,000 American service personnel living in my constituency who have, for decades, with selfless generosity, protected us and western Europe. Particularly at a time when the new United States President will be reviewing his global strategy, the Government's commitment to the EU army is wrong in principle, wrong in timing and imperils the very structure that has helped to preserve our freedom and democracy.

Before the previous general election, the Prime Minister wrote an article entitled "My Love for £", in which he said: I know exactly what the British people feel when they see the Queen's head on a £10 note. I feel it too. There's a very strong emotional tie to the Pound which I fully understand. Of course there are emotional issues involved in the single currency. It's not just a question of economics. It's about the sovereignty of Britain and constitutional issues, too. Yet, in this very Chamber, we heard the Prime Minister say that the constitutional obstacles to our joining the single currency had been resolved—the implications of which were referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash). What is going on here? Just the other day, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland claimed that the political and constitutional issues surrounding the single currency should be aired. Clearly, he would like to swap Hillsborough for Chevening.

The Foreign Secretary has rattled on about the hostile press and patriotism while quarrelling with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. However, every hon. Member knows, and every European Union Foreign Minister views with incredulity, the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer effectively has control of the policy. His five tests for entry are totally subjective and make him master of ceremonies at the single currency venture to which all the other countries are signed up.

The Minister for Europe has been touring Britain seeking to persuade the British people of the virtues of the single currency. We encourage him to do so. Every time that either he or the Foreign Secretary appears on television defending the Government's policy on Europe, another 10,000 people reject it. Ever since the Minister of State started his epic tour of Britain, support for the single currency has plunged. I invite him to keep up the good work.

Ours is a forward-looking vision for the future of Europe; ours is a positive approach; ours is the path to harmony and unity in Europe. The Government are pursuing a policy on Europe in this country that goes against the grain of the British people, who actually cherish being subjects of the United Kingdom and want to stay that way. The Foreign Secretary and the Minister for Europe reflect no vision and no clarity about what the EU should look like or our role in it. Given their credibility and political stature, Britain's failure of leadership in Europe is in the interests of neither Britain nor the EU itself.

6.45 pm

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Keith Vaz)

This has been the traditional pre-Council debate and we have had a number of traditional speeches from Conservative Members, such as the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) and the hon. Members for Ludlow (Mr. Gill), for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Wilkinson) and for Stone (Mr. Cash). Sadly, we did not hear from the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow), although we have had the opportunity of hearing his views on this subject every single time we debate European Council meetings.

Normally at these traditional debates, we do not hear very much new. Sadly, today we heard the news that the hon. Member for Ludlow has decided to step down and will not be contesting the next election. I am sorry that I was not in the Chamber to hear that. Whatever our views on Europe may be, I have enormous respect for the hon. Gentleman, who kept his views consistent over many years—unlike other Conservative Members. He has decided to withdraw from Parliament because he disagrees strongly with the Conservative party's line on Europe. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) may disagree, but that is what the hon. Member for Ludlow said; that is why he has decided to step down.

We heard from the hon. Member for Stone that he has published a pamphlet called "Associated, but not absorbed"; that could be a name for his autobiography, as it represents his attitude to the policy espoused by some of his right hon. and hon. Friends.

We heard excellent speeches from the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), the right hon. Members for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) and for East Devon (Sir P. Emery)—who is not in his place—and the hon. Member for Wycombe (Sir R. Whitney). I did not agree with everything that he said, but the views put forward by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe—not mentioned by the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring) just now—were pertinent.

Opposition Members need a reminder that, as a result of the decision by the General Affairs Council on Monday and the statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence this week, we are not creating a European army. Conservative Members know this, yet they persist in pushing such myths around the Chamber and out in the country—and they are myths.

NATO remains the bedrock of our defence policy and the EU arrangement on troops—the headline goal—will be used only where NATO does not act. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe did not know which Minister attended the meeting when the Petersberg tasks were agreed. We should reveal that the Minister who attended the meeting and signed up the then Government to the Petersberg tasks was Sir Malcolm Rifkind; the very person who has written in today's newspapers to say that he opposes these matters. Let us have no more hypocrisy about a European army. We have an arrangement that has been the subject of discussions over many years. I was glad to hear from the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe that that was the case under the previous Government, as it is under this one.

The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) raised the issue of the charter of rights; another myth peddled by the right hon. Member for Horsham. The right hon. Gentleman was up early to catch "Today", saying that the charter of rights was going to be justiciable, binding in law and put in the treaties—all kinds of horrible things were going to happen as a result. He will be pleased to know that in 10 days' time, the charter of rights will be proclaimed at Nice as a declaration, not as a binding document. That is because of the work done by the excellent all-party delegation sent by this House. It consisted of Lords Goldsmith and Bowness—the latter is a member of the Conservative party—the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mr. Chidgey), and my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths). They fought extremely hard to ensure that we had a good text to which we could sign up. I reassure the House that that will be a political declaration.

Mr. Maude

Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Vaz

No. The right hon. Gentleman was out of the Chamber for most of the debate.

I will answer the points made by the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East, who asked whether the charter of rights would be a burden on business. I can reassure him that there is no question of that. The CBI's director general, Mr. Digby Jones, said that the CBI was happy and satisfied with the proposed text. There is therefore no reason for the hon. Gentleman to worry about it.

Mr. Maude

The Minister says that the declaration will not be justiciable because it is not in the treaty. The formal submission from the Commission explicitly states that it will be mandatory in effect because of the way in which the European Court of Justice interprets it. Is he saying that the Commission is wrong about that?

Mr. Vaz

I am so sorry to have to explain such matters to the shadow Foreign Secretary—who is the man who signed the Maastricht treaty, a special copy of which I have brought with me today. He will know that there is a big difference between what the Commission would like to happen and what member states will decide to do. Of course the Commission is entitled to its view, but the declaration will be made by the member states.

The right hon. Member for Horsham tells us that he knows a great deal about the EU, but I was present at the conclave in Brussels on Sunday night. Half the countries present at that meeting supported the United Kingdom's view that the declaration should be a political declaration.

I have known the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) for many years, as he used to be the Greater London council councillor for Richmond. I am sorry that I did not vote for him, but he can reassure his constituents with what the Prime Minister said only yesterday. That was that we support the proposals, but we have concerns about them too. More work needs to be done before we are happy with the text.

A delegation recently came to see me on the very issue that the hon. Gentleman raised. If he would like to bring a delegation of his farmers to meet my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, I am sure that I can arrange a meeting. The hon. Gentleman would then have an opportunity to put his views forward, if he thought fit to do so.

Mr. Bercow

Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Vaz

As he did not speak in the debate, I give way to the hon. Gentleman, who brings to four and a half the number of horsemen of the anti-European apocalypse.

Mr. Bercow

The Minister's answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) a moment ago was truly risible. Is he not aware that article 6.2 of the Maastricht treaty suggests that human rights and fundamental freedoms are grounded and enshrined in the principles of Community law? It is on that basis that we assert that the charter will be justiciable. If the Minister is mistaken, will he resign?

Mr. Vaz

Opposition Members call for resignations as often as they call for the veto to be used. I confirm that I like article 6.2, because it is in the Maastricht treaty, which the shadow Foreign Secretary signed. It is nothing new. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Buckingham was not present at the conclave on Sunday night, but he does not represent a country. We took a decision then that no reference in the text would be made to article 6.2. The hon. Gentleman can be reassured that article 6.2 will not be mentioned in the text of the declaration.

I shall now move on to the other aspects of Nice. The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maples) raised some serious points about qualified majority voting. I am sorry to remind the House that the gentleman who signed up for 30 extra additions to qualified majority voting under the Maastricht treaty was the right hon. Member for Horsham. Thirty times did he agree to do so. We have heard of people repenting after three occasions, but he did it 30 times, and he did it proudly. He did it without even a referendum, which the hon. Member for Stone asked for. The right hon. Gentleman signed up to that because he believed that it was in the national interest.

We will do as we said in our White Paper and look at qualified majority voting on a case-by-case basis. I do not think that it will simply be the European Court. We have made it clear that on those red-line areas we are not prepared to accept qualified majority voting. Of course, our negotiators have studied qualified majority voting very carefully. I pay tribute to Sir Stephen Wall, who has been our chief negotiator on these matters. The decisions that we make in a few days will be based on what is in our interests, in exactly the same way that the right hon. Gentleman—St. Francis of Maastricht—decided to do when he signed up to the Maastricht treaty. What he did on those 30 occasions, plus the 12 during the passage of the Single European Act, was designed to do things that were in Britain's interests.

We come now to two final items that will be discussed at Nice. One is the size of the Commission. Of course it is important that the Commission is efficient, transparent and accountable. It is extremely important that we realise what the Government's agenda is in Europe. It is to create a Europe that is capable of being reformed. We are therefore pro-Europe but also pro-reform. Of course we need to reform the Commission because when the applicant countries come in—13 have applied to join in Helsinki, and under our presidency—the Commission should act efficiently. That is why we are prepared to give up our second Commissioner, provided that there is a substantial reweighting of votes on the European Council.

We will get a better deal for this country on the extension of votes on the European Council than the right hon. Member for Horsham or any other Government ever managed to achieve before we came to power. We believe, exactly as the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe said, that it is important to redress the balance. We have lost influence as a result of votes over the past 20 years, and it is extremely important to ensure that the balance is redressed. So we will come out with more votes because we believe that that is important.

Mr. Redwood

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Does he understand that if he gives away the right to enhanced co-operation to France and Germany and the other leading continental powers, Britain loses her main opportunity to get something that we want in perpetuity? What will he demand in return for giving away that massive power?

Mr. Vaz

Let me reassure the right hon. Gentleman, who is very passionate about this issue and speaks in all these debates. When our negotiators are out there, fighting for Britain, we will not give things away without ensuring that we get the best possible deal. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman did the same on the few occasions when he went to European Council meetings as Secretary of State and as a Minister at the Department of Trade and Industry. When he went there, he wanted to make sure that he got the best possible deal. That is exactly what the Prime Minister and other Ministers do.

It is interesting that the right hon. Gentleman mentions enhanced co-operation. The right hon. Member for Horsham, so eager to issue his press releases before he realises what decisions have been taken—I am sure that when we arrive at Nice, we will find the "Francis Maude press releases", condemning everything that the Government have done—will know that a year ago he was calling for more flexibility.

We have said that we will accept enhanced co-operation provided that it does not create a two-speed Europe, exactly as the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) said. We will not accept it if it creates a situation in which some applicants are not moving as fast as we are. We will not create a two-speed Europe; we want to ensure that the single market is not undermined.

Mr. Cash

What about the emergency brake?

Mr. Vaz

That will remain our position on the emergency brake, the veto and all other issues. The Government are positively engaged in Europe. We have to be right there at the centre, making those decisions and at Nice, we will make sure that our agenda is accepted.

Mr. Tony McNulty (Harrow, East)

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.