Sitting of 18 December 1991

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRAYERS
  MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN

    INCOME TAX
    The Vice-Chamberlain of the Householdreported Her Majesty's Answer to the Addresses, as follows:
    I have received your Addresses praying that the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Isle of Man) Order 1991; the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) ( Morocco) Order 1991; the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) ( Papua New Guinea) Order 1991; the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Czechoslovakia) Order 1991; the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Iceland) Order 1991; the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Finland) Order 1991 and the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) ( Denmark ) Order 1991 be made in the form of draft laid before your House.
    I will comply with your request.

Oral Answers to Questions
  FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

    Maastricht
    Mr. John Greenway: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what assessment he has made of the implications for United Kingdom foreign policy of the outcome of the intergovernmental conference at Maastricht.
    The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Douglas Hurd): We welcome the agreement reached at Maastricht on a common foreign and security policy. This will remain outside Community competence and therefore a matter for intergovernmental co-operation, with all substantive decisions being made by unanimity.
    Mr. Greenway: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his formidable and invaluable contribution to the outcome of the Maastricht negotiations. Does he agree that perhaps the most significant development in regard to foreign policy was the clear and unambiguous agreement to widen the Community to embrace the emergent democracies in eastern Europe, and will he make that one of the key aims of the British presidency under the next Conservative Government?
    Mr. Hurd: Yes. As the House knows, we have long believed that the Community should be open to European countries who want to join and can take on the responsibilities of membership. I am glad that at our
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    initiative the summit at Maastricht reaffirmed that principle, and that it was agreed that negotiations could start in 1992. We look forward to giving further impetus to the process when we take on the presidency of the Community in the second half of the year.
    More immediately, it was very good to see the Prime Ministers of Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and the acting Prime Minister of Poland, in Brussels on Monday, signing the association agreements between those countries and the Community and thus bringing to fruition an initiative begun by my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher).
    Mr. John D. Taylor: At Maastricht, the Germans argued for a common foreign policy for the European Community. Within 48 hours of the agreement, Germany announced that, irrespective of the Community, it was going to recognise Croatia before Christmas. Does the Foreign Secretary see any inconsistency in the German foreign policy approach to Europe?
    Mr. Hurd: I shall be taking two questions about Yugoslavia a little later. There are now no legal obligations arising out of joint action, which will remain until the new treaty is effective.
    Mr. Latham: In regard to widening the Community, does my right hon. Friend accept that there is now a powerful case for the admission of Austria and Scandinavian countries that are members of the European Free Trade Association? Would they not act as an invaluable bridge extending to the Baltic states and other parts of central and eastern Europe? Will my right hon. Friend try to speed up that process in every possible way?
    Mr. Hurd: Several countries have already applied, and have strong cases for membership. Those cases will need to be examined individually, but, in principle, my hon. Friend is entirely right.
    Mr. Ernie Ross: When the Secretary of State was helping to draft the declaration on the middle east peace process, did he have in mind the curfew that has been placed on the Nablus and Hebron areas and on the Al-Birch area and did he have in mind the illegal occupation of the houses in the Silwan area of Jerusalem? Will he confirm that the occupation is illegal and that all settlements on the west bank are illegal? Will he confirm that curfews constitute collective punishment, which is punishable under article 33 of the fourth Geneva convention?
    Mr. Hurd: Within government and through the Community we have often expressed our views and, sometimes our protests, about the nature of the Israeli military occupation of the west bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we believe that the policy of settlements on the west bank is illegal and deeply unhelpful to the peace process.
    Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Will my right hon. Friend ensure that when the United Kingdom assumes the presidency of the EC the other Scandinavian countries, as well as Sweden, are encouraged to join as full voting members at the earliest possible date?
    Mr. Hurd: Some of them have active debates within their countries on that matter. We believe that the

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    Community should welcome all European countries that want to join and can take on the responsibilities of membership.

    Syria and Iran
    Dr. Godman: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he last discussed with the Foreign Ministers of other member states of the European Community matters relating to relationships between the European Community and the nations of Syria and Iran.
    Mr. Hurd: I last discussed Iran in the Foreign Affairs Council on 15 April. The last discussion of Syria, apart from discussions in the peace process, was on 10 July at a meeting of EC Ministers, which my hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State attended.
    Dr. Godman: When next they meet will the Foreign Secretary urge upon his European Community colleagues the need for detachment and restraint in their dealings with Iran? That detachment must surely remain while the murderous fatwa inflicted upon Mr. Salman Rushdie remains in place. Until that evil burden is lifted from Mr. Rushdie's shoulders, the Government and the European Community should have nothing to do with Iran and its Government.
    Mr. Hurd: There will be no dramatic or immediate change in our political relationship with Iran. I would not want to rule out closer contacts with the Iranians at the right time. Such contacts can reinforce the effectiveness of our views on the point made by the hon. Gentleman, which is that the death sentence on Salman Rushdie is an unacceptable infringement of his rights as a British citizen.
    Mr. Adley: Can my right hon. Friend confirm that part of Syrian territory—the Golan heights—is still illegally occupied by the Israelis as are southern Lebanon and the occupied territories? That being so, will my right hon. Friend seek with his Community partners to reactivate the Venice declaration which seems to many of us to be the only likely forum within which positive political action can be taken?
    Mr. Hurd: That point is being discussed' now directly between Israel and Syria in the bilateral discussions in Washington. That is the best forum for that to be thrashed out and, I hope, in the end resolved.

    Ukraine
    Mr. David Evans: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what information he has on how the nuclear weapons in Ukraine are going to be controlled by the Soviet Union following the independence vote.
    The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Douglas Hogg): We welcome assurances from the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia that they intend that effective unified control is maintained over the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons. We are discussing with the relevant authorities how this will be taken forward in practice, and consulting closely with our NATO allies.
    Mr. Evans: I thank my hon. and learned Friend for that reply. Is he aware that the people of Welwyn and Hatfield
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    are concerned that three republics have a larger nuclear capability than the United Kingdom? Does he agree that British people should he told that if the Labour party were in control and there was a nuclear attack on Britain, there would be no response because the Leader of the Opposition has said that he would not push the button? Is not that the true face of the Labour party—no heart, no brains and a leader who is not only a joke but a jerk?
    Mr. Speaker: A what? That was overdone again, I am afraid.
    Mr. Hogg: In deference to you, Mr. Speaker, perhaps I had better not respond to the last part of my hon. Friend's question, but I entirely agree with the spirit of his comments. On the first part of his question, we are anxious to ensure that the republics of Ukraine, Byelorussia, Russia and—my goodness, I have forgotten the other one ——
    Mr. Tony Banks: Kazakhstan.
    Mr. Hogg: Kazakhstan—enter into the nonproliferation treaty as non-nuclear states, if that can be achieved.
    Mr. Tony Banks: The Minister obviously does not know his head from his Kazakhstan. Given the need to rid the world of nuclear weapons, is not this a wonderful opportunity to approach the republics, particularly those that want to declare themselves nuclear-free zones—something that used to be sneered at by Conservative Members—in order to eliminate those weapons from the world? Should not the Government grasp that opportunity?
    Mr. Hogg: It is indeed an opportunity. The Republic of Russia will probably seek to remain a nuclear state, but there is a reasonable prospect that the other three republics —Kazakhstan, Byelorussia and Ukraine—will be prepared to accept non-nuclear status. The western powers have an interest in seeing how we can assist with dismantling the nuclear arsenals of those three republics. One thing is plain: they do not wish to return the nuclear arsenals to the Republic of Russia.
    Mr. Shersby: Is my hon. and learned Friend aware that it is the wish of many Ukrainian people that the nuclear weapons on their soil be dismantled and destroyed? What discussions is he having with President Kravchuk on that matter?
    Mr. Hogg: I am aware that the President of Ukraine has made the point that he would like his republic to be a non-nuclear state and that he would like the west to assist with the process of dismantling and destruction. We should like to be constructive and we shall consider with our allies how best we can respond. There is, however, a problem: the judgment of the republics of, for example, Byelorussia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan may alter if the Republic of Russia chooses to remain a nuclear state. We cannot regard the present statements as necessarily being set in concrete.
    Mr. Robertson: Does the Minister agree that perhaps a more urgent problem than the control of nuclear weapons in the republics of the former Soviet Union could be the vast amounts of conventional weapons that are in the hands of highly discontented and underpaid armed forces that have serious problems? Will the Minister assure us

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    that the Government will give the maximum assistance with those weapons as well as with nuclear weapons and that in granting full diplomatic recognition to those republics the acceptance of full international obligations, including the Helsinki process and those features that relate specifically to human rights, will be a priority'?
    Mr. Hogg: On the latter part of the hon. Gentleman's question, he will know that the Foreign Ministers of the European Community considered the subject earlier this week and made it plain that, when considering recognition, regard would be had to the extent to which the republics were ready to undertake the treaty obligations to which the hon. Gentleman referred. The most worrying problem about conventional weaponry relates to the implementation of the conventional forces in Europe treaty, because, as the hon. Gentleman will know, there is a mismatch between the military districts as defined in the CFE and the republics. We hope that the republics will be willing to ratify the treaty and implement its terms. But there is a serious problem here.
    Mr. Sillars: Does the Minister agree that to resolve the problem it is very important to engage those countries in the United Nations and that as Byelorussia and Ukraine are already members of the United Nations it becomes imperative—in view of his earlier answer about Russia remaining a nuclear power—for them to obtain membership of the United Nations and of the Security Council in their own right?
    Mr. Hogg: I shall not deal with the second part of the hon. Gentleman's question because it raises difficult issues which will no doubt be the subject of discussion later. Clearly, these republics will apply for admission into the United Nations in due time and we shall define our views at that time. However, the most recent statement of our approach to the question of recognition, which is also likely to guide our attitude to the adherence of these countries to the United Nations, was that set out in the meeting of Foreign Affairs Ministers earlier this week.
    Miss Emma Nicholson: Does the Minister agree that Chernobyl probably happened because of incompetence rather than by a deliberate action? Will he assure the House that proper British expertise in all matters—in the provision of food as well as nuclear issues—will be made available to the republics to help them towards full and truly free independence?
    Mr. Hogg: I cannot answer in the unconstrained sense in which my hon. Friend asked the question, but, clearly, we are prepared to play our part—bilaterally through the provision of know-how and technical assistance in appropriate matters and, of course, through the European Community to which we are a substantial subscriber.

    Brazil
    Mr. Battle: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many United Kingdom staff there are at the British embassy and consulates in Brazil; and how many have specific duties with regard to (a) human rights and (b) trade.
    The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Tristan Garel-Jones): There are 19 United Kingdom-based staff at the British embassy and
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    consulates in Brazil. Five are engaged in trade promotion. Six report on political and economic issues, including human rights.
    Mr. Battle: Is the Minister aware of the continuing violence against rural workers' leaders and their supporters in Brazil and of the fact that according to recent evidence from the Brazilian Church's Pastoral Land Commission since 1964, 1,667 rural workers have been murdered, that there have been 23 trials and only 13 sentences? That is in areas in which the British Government have an environmental programme in conjunction with the Brazilian authorities. Is there any way that our embassy staff can positively support the efforts of the procurator general in Brazil to tackle that terrible situation?
    Mr. Garel-Jones: Yes, we are in close contact with non-governmental organisations, lawyers and Brazilian authorities involved in cases relating to rural violence. Indeed, the embassy will certainly be represented at the forthcoming trials to which I think the hon. Gentleman is referring. For some time our policy towards Latin America and, indeed, towards other parts of the developing world, has been guided by a speech made by my right hon. Friend some months ago on good government. We seek to ensure that our reporting staff focus especially on human rights and in Latin America where democracy is now the norm, a great deal of our effort goes towards assisting those democracies in reinforcing human rights and, in particular, in upholding the rule of law and justice.
    Mr. Jacques Arnold: How many of our diplomatic officers in Brazil are concerned with the environment? Have they noticed the recent decision of the federal Government of Brazil to allocate 94,000 sq kilometres of tropical rain forest as a preserve for the Yanomami Indians?
    Mr. Garel-Jones: The Overseas Development Administration—under my right hon. Friend the Minister for Overseas Development—has two officers in Brazil who are concerned with our environmental projects and our embassy of course keeps a running brief. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Brazilian Government have recently declared that 94,000 sq kilometres will be set aside for the Yanomami Indians. That is a good response by the Brazilian Government to the concerns that have been expressed on both sides of the House.

    Yugoslavia
    Mr. Douglas: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans he has to recognise further states as a consequence of developments in the Union of Sovereign States and Yugoslavia.
    Mr. Hurd: On 16 December we and our Community partners set out guidelines to inform our decisions on the recognition of new states in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. We have not yet taken decisions on the recognition of the republics of the Soviet Union—apart from the Baltic states—as they are still discussing among themselves their future relations.
    The Foreign Ministers agreed to recognise Yugoslav republics who meet certain conditions. The arbitration commission of the conference on Yugoslavia, chaired by

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    Lord Carrington, will advise whether republics meet those conditions. A final decision on implementation will be taken on 15 January, after advice from the arbitration commission.
    Mr. Douglas: Does the Foreign Secretary accept that there should be general acceptance of the criteria laid down by the European Community on recognition, but that there might be some stricture about the speed of recognition, especially for Yugoslavia? Delay might give a spurious temptation to the so-called Yugoslavian army to exercise certain initiatives that could be detrimental to the freedom of other republics. Will the right hon. Gentleman pay particular attention to human rights, to the rights of ethnic minorities, and——
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Brief questions, please.
    Mr. Douglas: I understand, Mr. Speaker.
    Will the Foreign Secretary keep the House informed and perhaps make a statement when the House returns after the recess?
    Mr. Hurd: I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's first remark. As I have made clear, for some time the question of recognising Yugoslav republics, especially Croatia and Slovenia, has not been a matter of principle—clearly they will not be willing to go back into any entity called Yugoslavia. Recognition has been a matter of timing and judgment—a phrase that I have often used before.
    The hon. Gentleman thinks that the timing is a bit slow; others may feel that it is a bit fast. That is a matter of judgment, and on 16 December it was a matter of compromise.
    Mr. Wells: Is it not like throwing petrol on a bonfire to promise to recognise Croatia and Slovenia? Does my right hon. Friend know about Lord Carrington's advice that such recognition would encourage Herzegovina to claim independence too, and thus excite the Serbs to fight?
    Mr. Hurd: Lord Carrington's view has been that premature recognition would be a mistake, and Mr. Cyrus Vance—the Secretary-General's representative—has made the same point. I have been in touch with Lord Carrington since the EC decision. He is very much in action, and so is Mr. Cyrus Vance. They will both work hard and urgently to carry to a successful conclusion, if they can, the two processes of which they are in charge—the peace conference at The Hague and the prospects for a UN peacekeeping force.
    Mr. Rees: Is the Secretary of State aware that those of us who recall the area 40 years ago believe that the German-led policy is the height of folly? The Germans should recall their experiences in the area, when the fighting tied down seven German divisions. Can we be sure that if this goes wrong and there is military involvement —as there might well be—we will not be involved on the coat-tails of the Germans?
    Mr. Hurd: One thing is certain: there is no question of German military involvement in any of the republics of Yugoslavia.
    Mr. Favell: It has been suggested in several media reports today that if my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary were free to pursue an independent foreign policy, he would not now consider recognising Slovenia and Croatia. Is that correct?
    Mr. Hurd: For us, as for the Community, it would have been a matter of timing. There is a tradition of the main states of western Europe splitting in rivalry on Balkan questions. There is quite a history of individual countries backing a particular group, taking a particular line, and it all ending up on the battlefield. I do not believe that the history of that tradition is a good one. It is better to thrash out such differences round a table rather than—eventually —on the battlefield.
    Mr. Kaufman: When the deadline for judging whether the republics should be recognised arrives in January, will the 12 Foreign Ministers meet again to decide collectively whether the criteria have been met and whether all of them will recognise or not recognise the republics? If not, and if there are to be individual assessments of the criteria, will the Foreign Secretary assure the House that if Germany decides that the criteria have been met and recognises the republics but Britain decides that the criteria have not been met, the United Kingdom will reserve the right not to recognise the republics?
    Mr. Hurd: The decision asks for advice from the Arbitration Commission and from Mr. Badinter. If that advice suggests that the republics which have applied meet the conditions set out in the decision of 16 December, there will be recognition by all 12 Governments. If the Arbitration Commission expresses a negative view about any one of the republics, there is no collective decision to implement, and countries will be able to make their own assessment.
    Mr. Cormack: Does my right hon. Friend accept that those of us who have watched the terrible destruction in Croatia are disturbed by the amount of killing time between now and 15 January? Does he also agree that one state which does not meet the generally accepted criteria for recognition is the federal state of Yugoslavia, which has lost control of its own army?
    Mr. Hurd: I know my hon. Friend's view and I believe that he had an Adjournment debate on the subject last week. He must not create the impression that recognition will stop the killing. The main hopes for stopping the killing are, first, the peace conference and, secondly, the prospect—ot yet a certainty—of United Nations peace keeping. I very much welcome the fact that the Security Council authorised the dispatch of a preliminary team. I hope that Mr. Vance, with whom we have been in touch in the past 24 hours, will feel able in the light of his further explorations to suggest to the Security Council that a peace-keeping force should be sent. The Foreign Ministers, on 16 December, warmly endorsed that effort.
    Mr. Galloway: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent representations he has made to the Government of Yugoslavia on the situation of the Albanian population in that country; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Douglas Hogg: We strongly condemn Serbian abuse of human rights in the Kosovo. It is clear that any lasting solution for Yugoslavia must incorporate guarantees for minority communities such as the Kosovo Albanians.
    Mr. Galloway: The Albanians in Yugoslavia are not a minority population, but the third largest national group in the country; there are more than 3 million of them, but

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    their national rights have long been abolished by the Yugoslavian Government. The Minister must know that if Croatia and Slovenia are allowed to become internationally recognised next month, the Albanian population—and Albania itself, just across the border—will not sit quietly while the brutal reign of terror imposed by the Serbian authorities in the Kosovo continues. More than 600,000 people have passed through the rough hands of the Serbian authorities since the Parliament was abolished, and have been arrested and interrogated. Some 90,000 have been dismissed from their jobs for political reasons and thousands have been imprisoned for long sentences. Scores have been killed or are missing. What can the British Government do, both bilaterally and in the European Community, to ensure that the national rights of the Albanians and of the other nations in Yugoslavia are fully taken into account in the whole bloody mess?
    Mr. Hogg: The safeguarding of national and minority rights is one of the most important issues which need to be addressed in the quest for an overall settlement. The Albanians are in a huge majority in the Kosovo—well over 90 per cent. of the total population. There is also a substantial minority of Albanians in Macedonia. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the draft treaty that my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Carrington has prepared identifies a range of safeguards which should be extended to the ethnic minorities in Yugoslavia. The Serbian Government must recognise that they should extend to the Albanians exactly the rights and privileges that they seek to secure on behalf of the Serbs in, for example, Croatia.
    Mrs. Currie: Does my hon. and learned Friend recognise that, whatever the concern in this country about the mess in Yugoslavia, there would be even more concern if we started sending in British troops, whether as part of a peace-keeping force or anything else? Will he ensure that, before any consideration is given to such a development, we are quite clear in Britain how long such troops would stay, what exactly they would be setting out to achieve, and how they would cope with the aftermath? The last thing I would want to have to sell to my constituents is the idea that they should go into that bloody mess and be shot at by the bandits on both sides.
    Mr. Hogg: My hon. Friend makes a serious point. with which I largely agree. It is very important that a peace-keeping force should not be sent to Yugoslavia until there is a peace to keep, and until it is clear that all the warring parties both invite and allow that peace-keeping force to operate. At the same time, the United Nations is clearly contemplating the circumstances in which a peace-keeping force might be sent and I can well conceive of circumstances in which, in order to underpin a peace, a peace-keeping force should be in place. Nevertheless, there are perils associated with the matter, and my hon. Friend has identified a number of them.

    Israel
    Mr. Watson: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he intends to make to the Government of Israel following their decision to continue the closure of Bir Zeit university for a further three months.
    Mr. Douglas Hogg: Together with European Community partners, we have already made strong representations on this issue.
    Mr. Watson: Is the Minister aware that, by 9 January, Bir Zeit university will have been closed continuously for a period of four years and that a generation of young Palestinians will have been denied the right to higher education, which is surely one of the basic fundamental human rights? Is that not just one of the many human rights being denied to Palestinians in the occupied territories, which have been illegally occupied by Israel for 24 years? When will the Minister and the Foreign Secretary get together with their European colleagues, call Israel in, and say, "That is it—so far and no further; no more Mr. Nice Guy," because the soft-soaping approach simply has not worked?
    Mr. Hogg: That is the first time I have, by implication, been described as Mr. Nice Guy. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I can assure him that, in whatever role he cares to characterise me, I have spoken clearly to the Israeli ambassador on this. Moreover, both directly and through the medium of the European Community, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has made it plain to the Government of Israel that we deplore the closure decision and that we believe that the universities, colleges and schools should remain open. We are deeply concerned by what is happening in the occupied territories and we are urging the Government of Israel to negotiate sensibly with the Palestinians within the occupied territories.
    Sir Dennis Walters: As my hon. and learned Friend has accepted the closure of Bir Zeit is part of the systematic infringement of the Geneva convention by Israel which has been going on for years, should not a more robust approach therefore be taken, both by our Government and by the European Community, and should not economic measures at some stage be taken in relation to Israel to prevent the continuation of such unacceptable violations of human rights and of the Geneva convention?
    Mr. Hogg: We regard a number of the acts taking place within the occupied territories as illegal—most obviously the policy of settlement, which we believe stands in the way of the peace process. It is a great thing, however, that all the parties have now sat down to negotiate and I wish the negotiations well. We shall do all that we can to support and encourage the process of negotiation. For the moment, at least, I should prefer to rely on that process of negotiation rather than on anything else.
    Mr. Janner: Does the Minister accept that when universities and other educational institutions are used as centres for terrorist activity—[Horn. MEMBERS: "Disgraceful."] However much some people may groan, that is the way in which Bir Zeit was being used, and that is why it was closed. With our own understanding of terrorist problems, we should understand what is happening——
    Mr. Galloway: You should be ashamed of yourself.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman's hon. and learned Friend has as much right to express his views as the hon. Gentleman had.
    Mr. Janner: May I say how much I appreciate the Minister's approach—that if, and only if, through patience and good will the present peace negotiations succeed, there is hope for an end to terrorism in that part of the world?
    Mr. Hogg: We are strong supporters of the peace process, but I hope that the House will recognise that it will be a long and difficult road. I hope, too, that all the parties will adhere to it, however bleak the prospect may sometimes be. On the question of closures of universities, schools and colleges, I am against that.
    Mr. Latham: When my hon. and learned Friend speaks to the Israeli ambassador, in the interests of fairness, does he also discuss with him how much freedom of speech there is in universities in Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia?
    Mr. Hogg: As I have often said, I believe that Israel within her pre-1967 frontiers is a democracy, which is not true of many, if any, other states in that part of the world, but she is not a democracy in so far as the occupied territories are concerned.

    Yugoslavia
    Mr. Bill Michie: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he plans to have with the United Nations Secretary General about a United Nations peace-keeping force in Yugoslavia.
    Mr. Hurd: We expect to discuss that and other matters with the new secretary general when he visits London I hope, next month. Meanwhile, the British mission in New York is in constant touch with the secretary general and his staff and I have alredy told the House of Sir David Hannay's helpful discussion with Mr. Vance yesterday.
    Mr. Michie: While the Secretary of State has tried to assure the House about the problems and implications of recognition of Croatia, will he try once more to reassure us about that recognition? Does it refer to territory already held by the Croatians or does it apply to old frontiers which are up for grabs? If it is the latter, how will Britain ensure or guarantee that the old or new boundaries are enforced?
    Mr. Hurd: The decision of the day before yesterday related to any Yugoslav republics which fulfilled certain conditions that we set out. There was no mention of any particular republic. Obviously, recognition does not carry with it any guarantee of military protection. However, long before this immediate question arose, we and our partners—and, I believe, the whole world—made it clear that we are not prepared to recognise the alteration of boundaries by force.
    Mr. Marlow: On Monday, we had a distinct and coherent policy with regard to Yugoslavia. Today we have an undistinguished and incoherent policy. If it is inevitable that the over-mighty Hun is to be in the driving seat of European security and defence policies, would it not be more honest and dignified if these matters were decided by a majority vote as we could then at least honestly state our position?
    Mr. Hurd: I entirely disagree with that. I am sure that the right way forward in these matters is to discuss differences around the table for however long it takes,
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    reach an agreement if that is possible, and act on it if we can. And that is what we do. If at any stage in the discussions on Monday, or in all the other discussions that I have attended in the past two years, it had been a question of majority vote, there would have been much less agreement, and to the extent that decisions had been imposed by a majority, they would have been much less effective. Everything that happened on Monday reinforced that view.
    Mr. Alton: Instead of an obsession with Germany's position, should we not be obsessed with what is happening in Croatia, where one in eight of the population has been displaced, we have provided only £77,000 in humanitarian aid and the people are being pounded into the ground? Will the Secretary of State consider ways of ensuring that a sky shield can be erected by the international powers over Croatian air space to stop the aerial bombardment of Dubrovnik and Vukovar and also find ways to increase humanitarian aid to people who will otherwise continue to die over Christmas?
    Mr. Hurd: I do not think that an air shield is feasible or would be effective. I have already stated my view of the best way to stop the fighting. The hon. Gentleman is right about the principle of humanitarian aid, although he is wrong about the details. Via the British Red Cross, we have committed 425,000 blankets at a cost of £1·5 million, and £250,000 in transport costs. Most of that has gone to Croatia. There is also substantial aid from the European Community, amounting to £9·1 million, of which our share is £1·5 million. If the hon. Gentleman is going to talk about humanitarian aid, I hope that he will get his facts right.
    Mr. Wilkinson: If Her Majesty's Government have, at least in principle, accorded official recognition to Croatia if certain conditions are met, would it not be very difficult for Her Majesty's Government or the European Community to deny Croatia the legitimate UN-recognised right of self-defence? In that regard, the United Nations surely has a peace enforcement role as well as a peace-keeping role. Unless the United Nations is prepared actually physically to keep the peace, the federal forces have every incentive to maintain military operations against Croatia.
    Mr. Hurd: As I have told my hon. Friend before, I do not think that there has ever been any prospect of any member of the European Community or of the United Nations believing that a United Nations or a Western European Union peace-keeping force could force its way into Yugoslavia against the opposition either of the Yugoslav national army—the JNA—or of any armed force. The proposition has always been that a peace-keeping force should enforce and keep a ceasefire which already existed. That remains the position, and it remains the position quite independently of any questions of recognition.

    Kenya
    Sir David Steel: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he has had in Kenya with President Moi on Her Majesty's Government's policy on good government.
    The Minister for Overseas Development (Mrs. Lynda Chalker): My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary had extensive and frank discussions with President Moi and senior Ministers during his visit to Nairobi on 11 and 12 September. The Prime Minister also met President Moi at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Harare.
    Sir David Steel: Does the Minister recognise that those of us who are friends of Kenya have been concerned for some time that that country has been slipping from the flagship position of good and open government in Africa? Will she therefore welcome the repeal last week of section 2 of the Kenyan constitution, as that action seems to pave the way for the introduction of multi-party democracy? Will Her Majesty's Government continue to press for an orderly transfer to open elections on a free and fair basis?
    Mrs. Chalker: Yes, and yes, directly in answer to the right hon. Gentleman's question. We also very much welcome the fact that President Moi has announced that he will go forward with multi-party elections, and we hope that he will also enter discussions with opposition groups about the way forward. That is the way to achieve a peaceful transition. We all wish to see a peaceful transition. We believe that everything that is now beginning to happen can lead to that result, provided that there is good will on all sides. We shall do all that we can to encourage it.
    Mr. Colvin: May I ask my right hon. Friend to endorse the hope that the multi-party system that President Moi will formally introduce this week will not be based on the tribal backgrounds of those taking part, as that would be a possible recipe for disaster? As Her Majesty's Government have based their aid to Kenya on progress being made on the political front, presumably there is now scope for increasing that aid to a country which is an island of stability in a troubled area. Aid can have a knock-on effect in neighbouring countries which are also in great need.
    Mrs. Chalker: My hon. Friend knows that we warmly welcome the moves that have been made. They are a crucial step on the road to democracy, but there are a lot of steps to go down that road yet. I believe that what we are seeing from President Moi and members of his Government is all going in the right direction. We understand their concern to avoid tribally based parties. We know that the opposition parties will need time to form and organise. However, I believe that as we keep pace with progress month by month we can reconsider further aid on top of the very substantial aid which continues to be well used in Kenya.
    Mr. Anderson: The Minister will be aware of the long-standing concern of the Labour party and friends of Kenya about human rights in that country. Now that we are proceeding to the welcome elections in the near future, what steps will the Government take in co-operation with the Kenyan Government in the hope that those elections will be free and fair? I am thinking in particular of the return of those who have been forced to flee abroad, such as Mr. Oginga Odinga, free access to the press, access to the media generally during the campaign, and some form of international supervision by monitors such as those under the auspices of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.
    Mrs. Chalker: The hon. Gentleman knows that although we believe that Kenya should proceed with all speed to multi-party elections, there is much preparatory work to be done. The Commonwealth and, indeed, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association can play a major role in that. We pay tribute to the action of the Commonwealth in assisting Zambia to obtain a peaceful outcome to its elections. We hope that the elections in Kenya will likewise be peaceful, swift and positive.
    I fully accept what the hon. Gentleman says about human rights and the need for people to return from abroad. I also accept that the media must be free if there is to be proper debate of the issues. The hon. Gentleman will understand that it is not for us to tie the hands of the Government of Kenya but to encourage, offer help and point the way whenever we possibly can. That we shall do.
    Mr. Alexander: It is clear from this afternoon's exchanges that Kenya has many friends in all parts of the House. Will my right hon. Friend undertake that when she next talks to the leaders of Kenya she will communicate the grave anxiety felt in the House about human rights in Kenya and the way in which some opposition politicians are being treated and have been treated in the past few years?
    Mrs. Chalker: My hon. Friend may know that I have made the views of the Government and of Members of Parliament well known to the Kenyan Government for a long time. We were greatly angered by the arrest last month of proponents of a multi-party system. Representations were made then to the representatives of the Kenyan Government in both London and Nairobi. There could be no doubt in their minds of the view of the House. I am glad that those arrested have been released and that the charges have been dropped. However, we shall be satisfied only when no more such arrests are made, so that we do not have to go through the same business all over again. There are many things to be done to assist Kenya, but we know that we can help it best by keeping quietly in constant discussion with it.

    Burma
    Mr. Edwards: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on relations with the Government of Burma.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Mark Lennox-Boyd): We and our European Community partners have repeatedly condemned the Burmese military junta for its failure to respond to the unequivocal outcome of the May 1990 elections, as well as its continuing disregard for human rights, notably demonstrated by the house arrest of 1991 Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
    Mr. Edwards: While the measures taken by Britain in conjunction with our European partners to isolate the Burmese Government are welcome, the military dictators are still in power, they have no intention of handing over power to the democratically elected Government, and the appalling abuse of human rights continues. Bearing in mind that the United States introduced trade sanctions last July, is it not time for Britain to impose a comprehensive trade embargo against Burma?
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: We have made many representations. At least four official statements have been made by the United Kingdom. A further four have been made by the European Community and through the United Nations. However, a general trade embargo would not be effective and would require international support, which is not in prospect at present.
    Mr. Lester: Will my hon. Friend consider approaching the new Secretary-General to ask him to appoint a special representative to go to Myanmar? We are most worried that the Burmese Government have disregarded not only the United Nations Commission on Human Rights but the foreign minister of the Philippines who went to Burma on behalf of the Association of South-East Asian Nations but was allowed to make representations only on his own behalf. In view of the United Nations resolution passed this year, it is a question of taking the matter to the highest level at the United Nations and appointing a special representative.
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: The Government of Burma continue to disregard all pressure put upon them, but I am pleased that on 30 November the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution on Burma, in which we were co-sponsors, which called for an improvement in the human rights situation and for progress towards democratic government. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has begun a scrutiny of Burma, under the confidential 1503 procedure. The special rapporteur visited Rangoon last month and will be presenting his report to the Commission in Geneva in February next year.
    Mr. Foulkes: Will the Minister join me and the whole House in paying great tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi as the most worthy recipient of the Nobel peace prize for her courageous struggle against the brutal regime in Burma? As Britain has a special responsibility towards her and her country, can the Minister tell the House what action our ambassador is taking to get access to her and to secure her release? Will the Government now say that we shall initiate urgent discussions with both the United States and our European partners to isolate Burma—[Interruption.]. This is a serious matter, whatever Conservative Members may think. What action will the Government take to isolate Burma until the military relinquish power, and democracy is installed?
    Mr. Lennox-Boyd: In my earlier reply I told the House what action the United Kingdom Government have taken, in concert with our partners in the European Community and other civilised countries, to condemn utterly the conduct of the Burmese Government and to call for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. I understand that not even her husband is given access to her, but that he has recently been allowed to write letters to her.

    African States
    Mr. Andrew MacKay: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what recent discussions he has had with leaders of African states concerning progress towards democracy.
    Mrs. Chalker: My right hon. Friend met most Commonwealth African Foreign Ministers at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Harare
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    in October. At this, and most of the many other meetings that he and I have had with African leaders, progress towards democracy and good governance has been discussed.
    Mr. MacKay: While recent developments in Zambia must be welcomed as the first occasion on which art African Commonwealth head of state has left office because of the ballot box, are there not all too many countries in Africa which are not moving towards democracy? What further pressure can my right hon. Friend place upon them?
    Mrs. Chalker: As I said, we welcome the peaceful way in which the elections were conducted in Zambia, which now has a new and democractic Government. Many countries are already proceeding towards democracy. In an answer to the hon. Member for Londonderry, East (Mr. Ross) on 12 December, I listed those multi-party democracies. Many other countries have announced that they expect to proceed towards democratic elections in the coming year—Angola, Cameroon, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Seychelles and Sierra Leone. Progress is also likely in Tanzania. I hope that more countries will join that number in the coming months.

    Middle East
    Mrs. Dunwoody: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what steps he is taking to ensure that known international terrorists do not receive any support from countries in the middle east with which the United Kingdom maintains diplomatic relations.
    Mr. Douglas Hogg: We have repeatedly made clear our condemnation of terrorism and we attach much importance to international efforts to counter it. We maintain a dialogue with a range of countries with the aim of discouraging any form of support for terrorist groups.
    Mrs. Dunwoody: When the Minister made it clear a little more than a year ago that he was changing his attitude towards the Government of Syria, he said that he was able to do so because there was no known connection with terrorist organisations, such as that involving the appalling man, Jibril. Since other Governments, such as the American Government, still have Syria on their terrorist list, is the Minister certain that no evidence exists of any link between any terrorist organisation and the Syrian Government?
    Mr. Hogg: As the hon. Lady will know, when we resumed diplomatic relations with Syria at the end of last year we discussed that type of question with them and received reassurances which were sufficient to enable us to resume diplomatic relations.
    Mr. Kilfedder: Has Colonel Gaddafi yet provided information about the explosives and armaments that he supplied to the IRA? Will the Government seek compensation for the slaughter and mutilation of British citizens which have resulted from the arms and Semtex that he has provided?
    Mr. Hogg: My hon. Friend will know that at the end of November we made a number of requests to the Government of Libya. They included the delivering up of the two named individuals for trial, recognition of
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    responsibility for acts, willingness to pay compensation, the disclosure of information relating to the IRA and renunciation of terrorism. Colonel Gaddafi has not complied with any of those requests.

Homicide (Amendment)
3.30 pm
Mr. Jack Ashley: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Homicide Act 1957 in respect of the defence of provocation.
I appreciate that the Maastricht treaty has wide-ranging implications for people, but my Bill has far-reaching implications for the individuals whom it will affect: it is a matter of great moment to them. My main reason for introducing the Bill is that those women who are the victims of domestic violence, who are driven to despair and provoked into killing their spouses, may find that the defence of provocation is useless when it is used in a court of law. This is a grave injustice to those women. [Interruption.] The clearest example is that of the case of Mrs. Sara Thornton—a woman who suffered a great deal of brutality. [Interruption.]
Ms. Dawn Primarolo: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt, but my right hon. Friend is talking about a subject—domestic violence —that is vital to the women of this country and, rather than listening, hon. Members are having conversations.
Mr. Speaker: I am listening.
Mr. Ashley: If some hon. Members wish to play the chauvinistic role, I do not mind. I assure them that I have had letters from many of their constituents asking for support. If they want to chat and talk among themselves, and disregard this, fine—I will just go on talking.
The issue is of profound importance both to women and to men, but especially to women. Sara Thornton suffered great brutality and then she killed her husband, but in a court of law it was found that she was not provoked. Sara Thornton took a knife, sharpened it and stabbed her husband. When he died, she was arrested and taken to court. The court found that she was not provoked, because the law says that she had no provocation for killing her husband. The years of brutality were brushed aside.
How did this work out? To understand what happened, we have to recognise that the defence of provocation could not help her, because some time had elapsed between the provocation and the killing. To understand that, we have to go back to 1949, when Mr. Justice Devlin, as he was then known, made a significant ruling: that, to be successful in a court of law, provocation has to cause a sudden and temporary loss of self-control—a sudden loss of self-control. He said that, if there were a time gap, there was time for reason to be restored. If reason is restored, then the act is deliberate, and is murder.
The view adumbrated by Mr. Justice Devlin, that reason could quickly be restored after great brutality, was acceptable once. It was acceptable in the 1914–18 war,
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when we shot shell-shocked young men. It may have been acceptable in 1949, when we did not really appreciate the effect of violence upon the human mind. However, it bears no relation to what we know in 1991 about the effects of violence.
The fallacy at the heart of Mr. Justice Devlin's dictum is that it failed to appreciate that many people cannot regain normal self-control soon after brutality. We recognised that with the American troops in Vietnam. They were given full consideration. We recognised that with the British troops when they fought in the Gulf. We recognised that with the hostages in the middle east—we recognised the effect of brutality and captivity on their minds, whose balance could not quickly be restored. There is no reason why we cannot have the same consideration for battered and brutalised women that we have for soldiers and captives. The same consideration should apply. However, case law states that loss of control in women must be sudden.
My Bill would simply remove the word "sudden". It includes the requirement that cumulative violence be taken into account. I am well aware some lawyers oppose the Bill on the grounds that it would allow revenge killing, would make killing easier and would induce women to kill. Those are preposterous suggestions, which I hope will not sway the House. Surely we are far too sensible to accept revenge killing; it is not possible. Those women who kill are oblivious to the law. They are desperate and they have been driven by brutality to kill. They are not aware of the fine points of the law.
A similar Bill was enacted in New South Wales in 1982, but there has been no increase in killings by women. The claim that there would be increased killings has not been supported by the facts.
I have spoken long enough, and I simply put a plea to the House. The Home Secretary has promised to consider my plea for a change in the law. He has every right to disregard it and instead to pay attention to the pedantic meddling of the lawyers. If the Home Secretary were to take on the Bill, which is launched in all modesty, he would take a massive step forward in giving the victims of domestic violence a far better deal and a much fairer trial in British courts of law.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Jack Ashley, Mr. Merlyn Rees, Ms. Jo Richardson, Mr. Nicholas Winterton, Mr. Don Dixon, Mr. Neil Thorne, Mr. Bruce Grocott, Mr. Barry Field, Mrs. Teresa Gorman and Mr. Archy Kirkwood.

Homicide (Amendment)
  HOMICIDE (AMENDMENT) BILL
  Mr. Jack Ashley accordingly presented a Bill to amend the Homicide Act 1957 in respect of the defence of provocation: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon 17 January 1992, and to be printed. [Bill 46.]
Orders of the Day

  Maastricht
  Mr. Speaker: I must announce to the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) and his hon. Friends——
  Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) rose——
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Sit down, please.
  I must also tell the House that I have received no fewer than 75 applications to speak in this debate today, and about the same number for tomorrow. It will not help the Chair if hon. Members come to find out whether they are going to be called today—indeed, it will be counter-productive. I hope that it may be of some comfort to those who were not called in the debate in November to know that I shall give precedence to them today. I shall put a limit of 10 minutes on speeches between 7 and 9 pm, and I hope that every Member called before that time and up to 2 am will bear it in mind—including Privy Councillors.
  Mr. Skinner: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. On previous occasions you have deplored the fact that written questions concerning other Members' constituencies have been tabled——
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that we ought to move on to the debate.
  Mr. Skinner: Let me finish.
  Mr. Speaker: Raise it with me tomorrow; I shall deal with it then.
  Mr. Skinner: This is about a question on today's Order Paper, Mr. Speaker.
  Question 129 is in the name of the hon. Member for Berkshire, East (Mr. MacKay), who has never raised the matter of dioxines in Bolsover during the past six months —yet he has a written question about that on today's Order Paper. It was deliberately planted to offset the Minister's answer to my question tomorrow. If you deplore this sort of activity when Labour Members do it, it is about time you deplored it when Conservative Members do it.
  Mr. Speaker: I have no knowledge of allegedly planted questions, nor have I seen the relevant question, but I do know—the whole House knows—that the hon. Gentleman has raised this matter many times.
  We move on now to the European Community debate. I call the Prime Minister.
  3.41 pm
  The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): I beg to move,
  That this House congratulates the Prime Minister on achieving all the negotiating objectives set out in the motion that was supported by the House on 21st November; and warmly endorses the agreement secured by the Government at Maastricht.
  In no other country of the Community have the issues that were decided at Maastricht been as hotly debated as they have been in this country. I have found in discussions with fellow Heads of Government that they have been frankly astonished by the amount of coverage in our media
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  and by the intensity of the debate that we have had in this country over many months. I think that that coverage is not just a reflection of the measure of controversy; it reflects also the Government's determination to ensure that the fullest information was available to the House and the country before the European Council. It is perhaps also a reflection of a national characteristic—it is by no means a new one.
  After meeting Macmillan in Bermuda in 1957, Eisenhower wrote:
  "Any conference with the British requires the most detailed discussion. They do not like to sign any generalisations in a hurry, no matter how plausible or attractive they may be, but once their signature is appended to a document, complete confidence can be placed in their performance."
  He went on, rather unkindly the House may think, to say:
  "French negotiators sometimes seem to prefer to sign first and then to begin discussion."
  In this country, every detail of the negotiations has been pored over both by hon. Members and by the press, and not only by them. I have had letters in recent weeks from the public—from schoolchildren, very well informed—on the pros and cons of a single currency, but I suspect that in a number of other Community countries the real debate is only just beginning.
  Last month, I set out the issues that would be argued
  over at Maastricht. No one here or elsewhere in Europe could have been unaware of what we were arguing for. I explicitly said that we would not change our position at the very end of the negotiations. We did not, but we did achieve our objectives.
  A full text of the treaty on European union is in the Library of the House. Jurists and linguists will ensure that the text is ready for signature at the beginning of February, but the treaty will enter into force only once all 12 member states have ratified it. The Luxembourg European Council last June agreed that this process should take place during 1992 so that the treaty can enter into force on 1 January 1993.
  Before we shall be able to ratify the treaty, it will need to be incorporated into United Kingdom law by amending the European Communities Act 1972. As I assured the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) last week, it would not be right to carry through that legislation in the remainder of this Parliament. It will properly be a matter for the next Parliament.
  This afternoon, I should like to set out what the agreement means and how I see the future development of the European Community. The misleading and controversial word "federal" has now been removed from the text of the treaty. Our partners agreed to return to the words of the original treaty of Rome—
  "ever closer union among the peoples of Europe".
  That has a different connotation. It means that the interests of the Community's citizens must come first and foremost.
  That has always been the Government's approach. That is why Britain drove the creation of a single European market to the top of the Community agenda. It is why we have argued for reform of the common agricultural policy, and it is why my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) fought for and won a fair budget settlement for this country.
  I believe that the Community——
  Mr. Bob Cryer: Will the Prime Minister give way?
  The Prime Minister: Later.
  I believe that the Community has made a unique contribution to the development of post-war Europe. Our future is as a European power, albeit as one with continuing responsibilities in many parts of the world. The balance of national interests lies clearly in making a success of our membership of the Community, so we must work with the Community to make sure that the Community works for the whole of Europe, and especially in the interests of the people of Britain.
  The Community can fulfil its role properly only if it responds to the needs of its European citizens. It must respect national identity and national traditions. It must not, in the name of some wider European ambition, override the democratic wishes of the people of any one of its member states.
  That is why the treaties now agreed at Maastricht were so hard-fought. Real British national interests were at stake in those discussions. The Government's job was to safeguard and to advance those interests. It was not to sign up, without critical examination, to anything that was presented to us with a European label.
  I set out to the House a month ago exactly what our goals would be and what we could and could not accept. The outcome matches up to those goals and commitments in every respect. The most significant agreement of the Maastricht treaties is the agreement to co-operate in a legally binding but intergovernmental framework in the three key areas of law and order, foreign policy, and defence policy.
  Many of our partners would have preferred to conduct that co-operation through the institutions of the Community. That was not acceptable to us; nor, in my judgment, would it have worked. We have been able to draw a crucial distinction between those areas, such as the single market, where the Community institutions are the best tools for the job, and other areas, such as foreign policy and the fight against crime, where direct co-operation between national capitals is likely to produce the best result.
  However, despite that satisfactory outcome, no one in the House should assume that that argument has been settled for all time. Some Community member states will go on pressing for a united states of Europe, with all co-operation within one institutional framework. We shall continue to argue forcefully against that proposition, and I believe that we will win the argument in the future as we have thus far.
  The treaty on political union was a challenge as well as an opportunity. The challenge was to ensure that we checked the encroachment of the Community's institutions. The opportunity was to make the Community work better. In the event, a large number of the agreements that were reached stemmed specifically from proposals that were put forward by the United Kingdom. It is worth stating the extent of those proposals. Our proposals were for stronger European security and defence co-operation, making the Western European Union the defence pillar of the European union, while preserving the primacy of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. For us, the prime importance of NATO was a vital national interest, and that has been secured.
  Our proposals were also for a common foreign and security policy going beyond the Single European Act, but remaining outside the treaty of Rome and beyond the reach of the European Court. They were for co-operation
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  on interior and justice matters, but also for co-operation outside the treaty of Rome and the jurisdiction of the European Court. They were also for co-operation for greater financial accountability, for a treaty article on subsidiarity—an article that specifically enshrines the crucial concept that the Community should undertake only those measures that could not be achieved at a national level—and for the right of the European Court of Justice to impose fines on those member states that fail to comply with its judgments, or with Community law, having previously signed up to it.
  We won agreement to all those proposals, and it was vital to the interests of this country that we did.
  Mr. Tony Benn: Will the Prime Minister help with this paradox concerning the future of Europe? The west is moving towards union; the east is moving towards a looser association—a commonwealth idea. Is it not possible that the harmonisation of the interests of individual member states along commonwealth lines rather than by means of a union would offer a more durable future, given that the break-up in the east came about because centralisation occurred without the consent of the peoples of the countries involved?
  The Prime Minister: I have much sympathy with what the right hon. Gentleman has said. It is for that reason that I regard the innovation of the pillared structure operating on a co-operative basis outside the Community institutions as a very desirable development in the negotiations at Maastricht. I believe that it opens up new opportunities in the future for a European co-operation, which I believe is in all our interests—but outside the centralising institutions of the Commission, and outside the influence of the European Court of Justice. It is because of the extent of my sympathy with the right hon. Gentleman—although I would not, I believe, go as far as he would in that regard—that I believe that the agreement at Maastricht is so important.
  Mr. Nigel Spearing: I am grateful to the Prime Minister for allowing me to intervene on the subject of centralised institutions. He mentioned subsidiarity, and article 3b of the treaty of union. Does he not agree that that unclear principle, on which it is very difficult to adjudicate, is totally limited by a phrase in the article? It applies to the Community only when the Community does not have matters "within its exclusive jurisdiction".
  Given that, by virtue of its powers of regulation, the Community has a very wide area of exclusive jurisdiction, does not that limit subsidiarity, whatever it be, to a very narrow range of topics?
  The Prime Minister: Any action taken by the Community must not reach the level necessary to infringe the principle of subsidiarity. In essense, if it can better be done at national level, it ought not to be done at Community level. That is the principle that we have enshrined in the treaty. I shall return to that point in a few moments.
  Mr. James Wallace: Will the Prime Minister give way?
  The Prime Minister: I will make a little progress. I shall return to that point; I ask the hon. Gentleman to be patient.

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  Had it not been for Britain's arguments, we would have had last week a treaty which brought foreign policy and interior and justice matters within the treaty of Rome. We would have had a Community setting itself up as a rival defence organisation to NATO. We would have lost our independent right to decide foreign policy. The European Parliament would have had equal rights with the Governments of member states to decide on the policies and laws of the Community, and the Community's competence would have extended into virtually every area of our national life.
  I do not believe that it would have been right to agree to all that. It would not have been acceptable to this House or this country, and it would have been a betrayal of our national interests.
  Let me turn to social issues, and set out in detail the reasons why we could not agree to the social chapter in the treaty. Let me first remove a misunderstanding. The issue with the Community is not the quality of social provision in the countries of the Community. In Britain, we have a national health service free at the point of use—[Interruption.] It is free at the point of use, and it is the envy of Europe. Only one other European country is in a position to say that.
  We have a benefits safety net that puts many European socialist Governments to shame, and the issue before us is whether social policy should be dictated by Brussels or determined in this country. We have long accepted that there should he a social dimension to the activities of the Community. It makes sense, for example, to ensure that common standards of health and safety at work are observed. There are already agreed Community measures in the social area covering freedom of movement, collective redundancy arrangements and equal treatment for men and women in pay and social security.
  Ms. Dawn Primarolo: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  The Prime Minister: Not at the moment, if the hon. Lady will forgive me.
  They all help to make a reality of people's freedom to seek a job anywhere in the Community, widening the opportunities open to all our citizens.
  We have not only agreed those measures; unlike some of our partners, we have implemented them. With Germany, we are the only member state that has implemented all the 18 directives so far adopted by the Community. We have made it clear that we will adopt and implement the majority of the proposals in the Community's existing social action programme. Nineteen of the 33 measures so far published have been agreed by the Council of Ministers, and the United Kingdom has not blocked a single one of them. We have played a full part in the social dimensions of the Community, and no one has gone further.
  Mr. Tony Banks: Will the Prime Minister make clear to the House and, perhaps therefore, the country something that is not understood? How is it that countries such as Greece, Portugal and Spain could put their names to the social chapter but the United Kingdom could riot? Does the Prime Minister really want to be the leader of the "little boys up chimneys" party?
  The Prime Minister: If the hon. Gentleman had been patient, I would have turned from the social dimension to the social chapter about which he is talking.
  The social dimension exists under present Community competence. It is a matter in which we have been fully involved, and I have listed many of the areas of legislation that we have accepted, with a better record than anyone else in the Community.
  Several Hon. Members rose——
  The Prime Minister: The social chapter covers the point raised by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks), and the point that others may have wished to raise. We have refused to accept that, in addition, the Community should intrude into aspects of social policy best decided nationally.
  Ms. Joan Ruddock: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  The Prime Minister: If the hon. Lady will let me finish my argument, she may not have to intervene.
  The Government will not support proposals that would destroy jobs by imposing damaging costs on British industry. Companies know best how much they can afford in relation to their competitors, not the social affairs directorate in Brussels. That is why we are resisting the proposed working time directive, which would cost British employers up to £5 billion in the first year alone. There is also the part-time working directive, which would require up to 1·75 millon part-time workers to pay national insurance contributions. The effect of that directive would be to impose extra costs on those workers at modest levels of earnings whose contributions burden the House lightened as recently as 1989.
  That single illustration gives the lie to the absurd notion that all proposals from Brussels are socially enlightened, and all resistance to them is from the dark ages. Who in this House wants higher national insurance contributions on low-paid workers? That is what the directive proposes. If the Opposition support that, let them say so. If they do not want to do so, let them support us in resisting its imposition.
  Those are directives that the European Commission is endeavouring to make, even under its existing competence. That makes it abundantly clear why I was not prepared to accept a further massive extension of competence in this field.
  Mr. Stuart Bell: The Prime Minister is telling the House that he totally misunderstands the social charter and the social chapter. Europeans regard the social dimension, the social chapter and the social charter as one and the same. Will the Prime Minister tell me and the House how he will feel when he signs the treaty, and the protocol that deals with the social charter? He will not sign, but will exclude Britain from the institutions of the Community, from all its mechanisms and from every aspect of this policy. How will he feel when he does not sign that page?
  The Prime Minister: The protocol is not in the treaty; it is adjacent to the treaty, but it is not in it. The protocol will not apply to us. It will not impose damaging costs on British industry and workers. I feel, as so many employers

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  in this country and abroad feel, that it will give a competitive advantage to this country, not a competitive disadvantage.
  Mr. John Battle: Will the Prime Minister give way?
  The Prime Minister: I have given way twice, so, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I shall now make progress.
  The social chapter would have implied that laws could have been imposed on the United Kingdom, by a qualified majority vote of member states, on working conditions, rights of information and consultation—including that of unions to block essential business decisions—and any action related to the provision of jobs for unemployed people. These would have ceased to be a matter for decision by this House and by British employers and employees, according to the needs of this country.
  The Community's ambitions would not have ended with those matters: social security and protection, union rights to representation of workers, union involvement in company management and the conditions of employment of non-resident workers from outside the Community would all have been explicit Community responsibilities. That, without a shred of doubt, would have been a recipe for a centralised Community social policy, which could not possibly have taken account of wide variations in traditional practice, culture and experience. It is clear that it would have enabled costly laws to be imposed, irrespective of the needs of our economy and our jobs, and I was not prepared to accept that.
  Ms. Ruddock: Will the Prime Minister confirm that Britain has the lowest maternity pay of any country in the Community and, in the context of the remarks that he has just made, is he satisfied with that state of affairs?
  The Prime Minister: Britain has the longest maternity leave, as the hon. Lady may know, of any country in Europe: this House decided that, and the hon. Lady has to recognise that point. It is for the House to determine that.
  Let me turn to article 118b in the agreement of the 11, of which the Opposition are so fond. Let me explain to the House what the agreement that I rejected says about the role of collective agreements at Community level, rather than what some have led us to believe in recent days. It provides for such agreements between Community-level representatives of management and labour. That means, principally, the Union of Industrial and Employers Confederations of Europe and the European Trades Union Congress—a body whose combined membership is no more than one in four employees in the Community. It provides that such agreements shall be implemented in member states in one of two ways.
  The first is to require such agreements to be implemented directly in member states according to their own procedures. Such agreements could cover any matter, including pay, the right to join a union and the right to strike. The only exclusions from those provisions are what Community-led employers and unions fail to agree on.
  The second way is to require the Council, at the request of these employers and unions, to implement these agreements through Community law, enforceable through the European Court. In this case all the matters within the
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  huge range of Community competence that I have described could come within the scope of such agreements. Only pay, the right to join a union and the right to strike would be excluded.
  The Opposition told us the exclusions, but they failed to mention the list of inclusions. The matters included run to union law as well as the laws affecting individuals—rights of recognition and negotiation, the right to block company decisions—and nowhere in the proposals tabled are collective rights excluded from action, and laws could be imposed on this country without the agreement not only of its Government but without the agreement of its Government, its employers and its employees. That is not acceptable.
  The Opposition cannot credibly claim that such extraordinary provisions would not recreate precisely the kind of national bargaining—but now at a Community level—which created what was called the "British disease" of the 1960s and 1970s, so I rejected those proposals.
  Mr. Frank Cook rose——
  The Prime Minister: I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman.
  I shall not turn back the clock to the failure of the corporatism of the 1960s and 1970s. I do not believe that the British people want to see Europe trying as national Governments tried in the 1960s and 1970s——
  Mr. Tony Blair: Will the Prime Minister confirm that, in relation to the first way that he mentioned, the declaration attached to article 118 states that none of the agreements can impose
  "any obligation to amend national legislation in order to facilitate their implementation."?
  Will he also confirm that, in relation to the second way, they are all covered by article 118b, which specifically exempts the right to strike and union legislation?
  The Prime Minister: The hon Gentleman is wrong on his second point. There is the possibility, the probability and even the certainty of supranational agreements being imposed on this country as a result of these agreements. I am not prepared to accept that on behalf of this country. Neither—on the basis of the experience of what is happening under the existing social provisions—was I prepared to trust the Commission not to stretch the new definitions of the proposed social chapter. We have seen what the Commission is doing with the working time directive under the health and safety article—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I ask the House to settle down.
  The Prime Minister: We have seen what the Commission is doing in terms of the present health and safety article, and I am not prepared to take the risk of that happening again, with the Commission stretching its responsibilities.
  Finally, I am not prepared to envisage a situation in which labour regulation——
  Mr. Merlyn Rees rose——
  The Prime Minister: If the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I shall continue.
  I am not prepared to envisage a situation in which labour regulation could be imposed on the United Kingdom even if the Government of the United Kingdom, the Confederation of British Industry in the United

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  Kingdom and the Trades Union Congress in the United Kingdom had all voted against it, yet that is what the Opposition wish to support.
  Mr. Rees rose——
  The Prime Minister: I told the House on 20 Novembe—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. There are many people outside the House who are very interested in the debate and who want to know what the Prime Minister has to say. I ask the House to settle down.
  Mr. Rees: On such an important issue, on which the Prime Minister went three ways, would it not be a good idea if he were to ask the learned Attorney-General to give his view to the House?
  The Prime Minister: The learned Attorney-General's view is that which I have expressed to the House.
  The proposal is unacceptable, and that is why we rejected it. It is also the view of British industry and commerce and of other people all around Europe that we have made the right decision. Perhaps the Opposition would be interested to hear what the rest of the world says. The Environment Commissioner, Mr. Carlo Ripa di Meana, said that the agreements that we have reached would make Britain
  "the most attractive country for foreign investment."
  The Japanese equivalent of the CBI has expressed concern about the consequences of the social chapter on labour flexibility and wage costs—we know how proud the Leader of the Opposition is of the Japanese investment in his constituency.
  The director general of the CBI has said that the agreement has achieved "exactly what business needs". The director general of the Institute of Directors has described the outcome as
  "a triumph for British business".
  The chairman of British Petroleum has said that he is "delighted", and the chairman of ICI that this is probably as good an outcome as could have been hoped for.
  All those people with direct experience of industry are right, and the Opposition are wrong.
  I told the House——
  Mr. Bruce Grocott rose——
  Mr. Derek Fatchett rose——
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentlemen who are seeking to intervene are Front-Bench spokesmen and know from their own experience that, if the Prime Minister does not give way, they must sit down.
  The Prime Minister: I told the House on 20 November that, on economic and monetary union, there must be a provision to allow this country to decide whether—not just when—to join a single currency. That is what we have achieved—precisely, and in legally binding form. As a result, we are uniquely well placed to make a sensible judgment on this important question at the right time. If we do not wish to join, we are in no way obliged to do so. If we wish to join a single currency, it will be open to Parliament to decide to do so at exactly the same time as any of our partners.
  Let there be no doubt: Britain is among those who will meet the strict convergence conditions. We took the lead in
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  setting them and will continue to be involved at every stage leading up to the decision whether to launch a single currency.
  Mr. Frank Cook rose——
  The Prime Minister: There are some who argue that the treaty creates such a strong momentum towards a single currency that, whatever our doubts, we shall be compelled by economic pressure to join when the time comes. I do not believe that. The balance of economic advantage will depend heavily on the circumstances in which a single currency is created—how many member states are involved, and whether the Community has met the convergence conditions. No one can judge now what the situation will be in five or six years' time. No economic pressure could compel this country to join a single currency if Parliament judged the political disadvantages to be too great.
  Mr. Alex Salmond: Will the Prime Minister give way?
  The Prime Minister: I believe that it has been right for this country to maintain, as we have done, a two-way option—to go in if we judge it right to do so, but to stay out if we judge it right to do so.
  The debate about the European Community is littered——
  Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Does the Prime Minister believe that the existence of the two-way option will help Britain to attract the central bank to the United Kingdom?
  The Prime Minister: I think that it will do no harm whatever to our prospects. Many other countries believe that we are wise to have this option. We have all the advantages of determining the conditions up to entry and —uniquely—the right to go in or not, depending on whether it is right for our country.
  Mr. Robert N. Wareing: Will the Prime Minister give way?
  The Prime Minister: I have already given way nine or 10 times. The hon. Gentleman must let me make progress.
  The debate about the European Community is littered with labels for people—anti-European, pro-European, Euro-fanatic, Euro-sceptic or Europhobe. Those labels are echoes of a healthy debate, but they should not destroy our sense of purpose.
  No country has a greater capacity than ours to commit itself to a cause that it believes to be right—the history of this century clearly shows that. Many people in this country have committed themselves to membership of the Community with a similar sense of dedication. They made a commitment to an organisation which they believed would be a powerful force for good. I believe that they were right to do so.
  It was right to join, not just for the opportunities that the Community offers as a common market, not even for the economic strength of the Community collectively, but for the collective power of the European democracies to improve the general weight, politically and economically, of European opinion throughout the world. Nothing that has happened in the almost 20 years of our membership causes me to doubt the rightness of the original decision to join the Community.
  Mr. Frank Cook: Will the Prime Minister please, please, please give way?
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Will the hon. Gentleman please sit down?
  The Prime Minister: I have given way on nine or possibly even 10 occasions. I suspect that there are more than 600 hon. Members to whom I have not given way, and the hon. Member for Stockton, North (Mr. Cook) is one of them.
  As I said earlier, we attach great importance to the principle of subsidiarity. It is not only a defence of our national freedom of action but a statement of our willingness to co-operate. Such co-operation does not mean compromising our national traditions or institutions —far from it. It means not allowing sentiment to stand in the way of real interests. It is right to be hard-headed in our dealings with Europe, and that was our approach in the negotiations.
  At Maastricht, we ensured a safer Europe, and we reaffirmed the primacy of NATO. We set the framework of a stronger and more coherent European foreign policy, in which our national independence of action is assured. We strengthened the rule of law in the Community. We established more efficient and more effective institutions, with stronger arrangements for budgetary control.
  We gave the European Parliament a greater role in monitoring the Commission. We obliged the Community to respond more directly to the needs of the citizen. We equipped ourselves to fight international crime, terrorism and drug trafficking. We secured provisions that will be good for British industry, and a Community that will be open to the rest of the world.
  Our role consistently has been to ensure that the Community does not become self-regardng, inward-looking and over-regulatory. Brussels is a means to an end; it is not the end itself—[Interruption.] From their policies and comments, Opposition Members clearly feel differently. In their view, if Brussels says it, it must be right irrespective of the national interest.
  There is one critical agreement among the Twelve, which is outside the treaty but in the presidency conclusions, and which I believe is vital for the future of Europe. As we reach the end of the century, it becomes even clearer that the Community does not end with the Twelve. I do not accept—[Laughter.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. These are not matters of hilarity, as many people outside would agree.
  The Prime Minister: I do not accept the conflict, which is often referred to, between deepening the Community and widening it. If the Community ignores what is happening beyond its boundaries and simply concentrates on internal development, it will not become deeper; it will just become shallower. We must broaden it and open its doors.
  It would be a tragedy if historians could look back and say that the Community had been sleepwalking through a year of revolutions elsewhere. That tragedy would be compounded if historians were to look back and say that, if only the Community had reached out to the fragile democracies of the east, disasters in those democracies could have been averted.
  At Maastricht, the Community committed itself to further enlargement. It did so at Britain's initiative. That
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  commitment will be seen as one of the most significant of the agreements to which we signed up last week. In six months' time, Britain will hold the presidency of the Community. In that six months, we hope to start negotiations leading to membership of the Community for Austria and Sweden, and other European Free Trade Association countries. We shall start to pave the way for the eventual membership of the countries of eastern Europe. We shall put in place the last measures needed to complete the single market—a single market that will extend way beyond the borders of the Twelve, even before the new member states join.
  In the treaty of Rome, the free countries of Europe wove their own lifeline. We now have a responsibility to the other countries of Europe to throw that same lifeline to those countries now embarking on a perilous journey towards stability and democracy. If we were to fail in that endeavour, we should put at risk all the achievements of post-war Europe. The prize if we succeed in that endeavour is enormous.
  I see the main task of our presidency next year as being to ensure that the Community matches up to this, its greatest challenge and opportunity—the achievement of a Community open to all the democratic countries of Europe and reducing, perhaps even eliminating, the risk of conflict within the whole of our continent from one end to the other.
  That was the kind of Community that we fought for at Maastricht. That is the kind of Community that we wish to build. We can take pride in achieving our goals in this negotiation, and I commend the outcome to the House.
  4.20 pm
  Mr. Neil Kinnock: The Prime Minister and I are obviously in agreement about the fact that the European Council at Maastricht was historic. We are obviously agreed that the decisions constitute a beginning, not an end, and that, as a result of those decisions, the European Community will continue to develop economically, politically, socially and culturally. It is also clear that it is our shared hope that the Community will not only enlarge itself but will use its relative prosperity and its democracy to improve its collective efforts to assist in the development of the economies and new democracies of central and eastern Europe. On those, and on other matters on which consensus was reached in the Community, there is broad agreement here.
  But the Government have returned from the Maastricht Council with a pair of opt-outs on the most vital matters of economic and monetary union and the social chapter. Their duty was to exert maximum influence on those fundamental issues. That required involvement; they have chosen isolation.
  Sir Anthony Grant: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Kinnock: Later.
  The Government's duty was to resist the development of a two-speed Community. Instead, they have contrived to get a two-speed Community, and they have put Britain in the slow lane. A Prime Minister who said that he wanted Britain at the heart of Europe spent his whole time at the Council getting two escape clauses. That is not the action

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  of a Prime Minister who wants to be at the heart of Europe but the action of a Prime Minister who wants Britain at the tail of Europe.
  Sir Anthony Grant: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Robert Adley: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Kinnock: Later.
  On monetary union, the Prime Minister is proud, as he said again today, of the arrangements which he told us last Wednesday ensure that
  "unlike other Governments, we have not bound ourselves to join regardless of whether it makes economic or political sense."—[Official Report, 11 December 1991; Vol. 200, c. 859.]
  That is the Prime Minister's justification for the apt-out. The core of the Government's argument is that, while leaders of other countries are taking their people in a gathering stampede to union, our Prime Minister alone stands aloof and unbound with his opt-out.
  Sir Anthony Grant: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Kinnock: Let me develop my speech a little further; then I shall give way.
  Is any country in the Community "bound"—I use the Prime Minister's word—regardless of economic sense? That is an important question and one that is best answered by examining the treaty procedure for moving to monetary union. In 1996, the Commission and the European Monetary Institute will report to the European Council on whether the third stage of economic and monetary union—the creation of a single currency—can begin. That is not automatic. It depends entirely, as the treaty clearly specifies, on whether the strict conditions for convergence relating to inflation, budget deficits, long-term interest rates and currency stability have been met. The Council must then decide whether to proceed to monetary union. Such a decision can be taken only if a majority of states meet the criteria for convergence. If that convergence is not achieved, the next key date is the end of 1997. If, by then, no date has been set, monetary union will not go ahead, because a majority of states will not have passed the test of convergence.
  The treaty then specifies that monetary union will begin on I January 1999. However, it will obviously begin only for those countries that have achieved the convergence conditions. It is clear that at every stage of that stringent process nothing will be done—and nothing can be done——"regardless", to use the Prime Minister's words "of economic sense". On the contrary, whether it is done at all depends entirely on economic sense and on the test of practical economics—whether or not the conditions for economic convergence are met. Every country will have to face that.
  Mr. David Sumberg: In view of the right hon. Gentleman's passion for European unity, will he explain to the House and the country why he voted against the Single European Act?
  Mr. Kinnock: The reason is straightforward and if the hon. Gentleman examined the proceedings in respect of that legislation, he would very easily discover the answer.
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  There was absolutely no commitment on behalf of the Government to the strength of social dimension that we want for the British people.
  Several Hon. Members rose——
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Many of the hon. Members who are trying to intervene want to participate in the debate. Trying to intervene now may not be very happy for them later.
  Mr. Kinnock: As I was making clear——
  Sir Anthony Grant: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way now?
  Mr. Kinnock: I will give way in due course.
  I was making it clear that every country must face that basic test which ensures that they must make economic sense in terms of convergence. No one can act regardless of that consideration.
  Mr. Nicholas Budgen: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Adley: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Kinnock: I have said that I will give way in due course.
  The position of the Tory party and of the Prime Minister is unique, because even if the terms of convergence are satisfied, and even if monetary union goes ahead, they are still prepared, they tell us, to opt Britain out of monetary union. The consequences of such a decision would be very severe for the United Kingdom. They would be so severe that they would inflict great disadvantage on our country and on our people. That is why we believe that it would be wrong for Britain to opt out if the convergence conditions were achieved.
  Mr. Adley: The right hon. Gentleman seems to have enunciated an interesting new doctrine that no cake is better than half a cake. I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman a straightforward question: will he name one specific proposal from Brussels that he finds unacceptable?
  Mr. Kinnock: There are several. For example, the very long dated and hitherto insufficiently reformed proposal from Brussels—the common agricultural policy in its present form—is totally unacceptable. [Interruption.] The thing to do is not to opt out, but to stay in and fight one's corner.
  Mr. Budgen: Give way.
  Mr. Kinnock: I will give way in due course. I have been speaking for only a few moments and I have already given way twice. I have given undertakings that I will give way and I will do that in due course.
  I was beginning to tell the House why it would be very disadvantageous for our country to use the Prime Minister's opt-out clause at the point of formation of union and given that convergence conditions had been satisfied. First, if the opt-out was exercised, our country would certainly stand to lose inward investment. Inevitably—[Interruption.] He is at his mother-in-law's funeral. Will you stop that stupid nonsense? [Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order.
  Mr. Kinnock: Our country would certainly stand to lose inward investment because investors inevitably would choose to put their resources in the countries that were part of the monetary union rather than in one that was outside it and subject to continual currency risks. Secondly, of course, the United Kingdom would stand to lose British investment, because to gain access to the European single market with a single currency and no foreign exchange costs serviced, British companies would choose to invest in the monetary union countries. Thirdly, if the Prime Minister opted out, the City of London could not maintain its pre-eminence. A banking centre such as Frankfurt that was inside the monetary union would become the European financial capital, with all the obvious consequences for finance, earnings and employment in Britain.
  Mr. Anthony Nelson: As the right hon. Gentleman has already said, the agreement at Maastricht imposes strict disciplines on Governments, on the amount that they can borrow in order to finance their public expenditure. As he supports that so wholeheartedly, what calculation has the right hon. Gentleman made of the extent to which taxes would have to be raised under a Labour Government to pay for their expenditure programme?
  Mr. Kinnock: The current Government are running, on their own estimates, toward a £20 billion public service borrowing requirement. They have raised taxes to the point at which they levy the highest tax burden on the citizens of this country of any Government in history. They have sensibly got extra flexibility into the fiscal deficit requirements in the Maastricht treaty, and that is extremely useful, but monetary disciplines are, of course, essential. What is important is that the domestic and the Community policies of all of the countries in the Community operate in such a way as to ensure that we do not arrive at the situation that we in Britain are in at present, where by perpetual deflation the Government have lower inflation, but at the cost of raising the fiscal deficit. Why does not the hon. Gentleman learn the lessons?
  Mr. Budgen: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Kinnock: I will give way in due course.
  Despite those disadvantages in terms of inward investment, in terms of domestic investment and in terms of the City of London, the Prime Minister would still think that all that was worth paying as a necessary price, as he put it three weeks ago, to keep control of monetary policy. But if there was monetary union, what real control of monetary policy would there be? If our neighbours formed a single currency area within which we had free capital movement and with which we did 60 per cent. of our trade, what control of monetary policy would exist in reality? None is the truthful answer to that question. The United Kingdom would be a satellite of the monetary union, exerting no pull, no power and no leverage. Our country would drag alongside the monetary union, pinioned to it by economic realities.
  Mr. Budgen: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that many influential people in Europe believe that coherence or convergence can be achieved only by very considerable increases in expenditure on regional and social funds and upon the cohesion fund? Will he be good enough to give
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  the House some idea of what sort of expenditure will be in place or whether, perhaps, it would be funded by an increase in VAT or by a general increase in taxation? We would like to know what the cost of the pre-conditions of monetary union would be.
  Mr. Kinnock: As we make clear in our policy documents, we consider that funding of the common agricultural policy is so large and misapplied in terms of the needs of the European Community that it must be the major source of reorientated finance for the development of cohesion in the Community. That must be so. If the Government really had in mind the welfare of the whole United Kingdom and, indeed, a proper contribution to the development of the Community, that is what they would have battled for not only at Maastricht but on all previous occasions.
  As we know' that Britain will have the possibility of opting out at the time of monetary union, given its convergence with the performance of the remainder of the Community, the practical question that must be asked is: what would be the meaning of the Prime Minister's opt-out clause at that point? Indeed, what is its validity now? Either the clause means that even if we achieved convergence the Prime Minister would still opt out for some reason, despite the huge disadvantages to industry, investment, finance and jobs, or it means that, because the convergence conditions had been met and the practical penalties of staying out were obvious, the opt-out clause would be redundant. We would be in exactly the same position as every other Community country capable of joining the monetary union.
  The Prime Minister should tell us now what could be the reason, other than failure to achieve convergence, for not recommending entry to a monetary union that was being formed. He should answer that question. He would have to give a very good reason, because there is a heavy price to be paid for the Prime Minister's opt-out. That price has to be paid not at some vague date in the future but soon. First, by the end of 1992, the vital decisions on the location of the European monetary institute and the European central bank must be taken. Those decisions will clearly depend directly on whether the country where the bodies are located will continue to be part of the union process. A country that had opted out could not and would not even be considered.
  Mr. Jim Sillars: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Kinnock: I know that the hon. Gentleman wants Scotland to opt out of everything, even the real world.
  So long as the Prime Minister's approach on opt-out prevails, neither the institute nor the bank will be located here, despite the risks that will result for Britain's financial services industry, which earns £14 billion every year for Britain.
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Norman Lamont): The significance of the opt-in clause—[Interruption.] The significance of the clause is that we believe that it is right in principle that Parliament should be able to make the decision. The right hon. Gentleman has said that he does not like the arrangements for the central bank: it is too powerful, too independent and he does not like it. If that is his view, why is he prepared to say now that so long as convergence is achieved—that is

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  what he is saying—he will give the commitment now irreversibly to join a single currency? Why does he not want Parliament to have the right to decide?
  Mr. Kinnock: Opt-in, opt-out, shake it all about. It is obviously the hokey-cokey clause. On the Chancellor's first point, I repeat what I said in the previous debate that we had on this subject. Of course, barely a month and certainly not a Council will go by without Parliament being consulted and certainly no basic decision about our well-being in the Community will be taken without the assent of Parliament. That is the fact of the matter.
  Secondly, on the European central bank, we have repeatedly proposed—as the right hon. Gentleman may have heard, some of his colleagues in the Community support our proposal—a relationship between ECOFIN—the representative body—and the independent central bank closely modelled on the German system that has developed with such success. Indeed, we want to bring the proposals that are before the Community now closer to that German system. I would have hoped that the Chancellor would campaign for that. I would have hoped that he would see the sense of it.
  I would have thought that, as Chancellor, the right hon. Gentleman would seek to ensure that the general requirements on the proposed European central bank to conform to the general economic policies of the Community would be taken seriously and applied literally.
  Mr. Norman Lamont: I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman is wrong about the bank. The arrangements in the treaty and the treaty amendments are precisely those which the Germans wanted and precisely those modelled on the Bundesbank. That is the whole point of it. Why does not the right hon. Gentleman answer the question? Why is he not prepared to admit that he is committing his party irrevocably to move to a single currency?
  Mr. Kinnock: Is the Chancellor of the Exchequer going to stand at the Dispatch Box and tell the world of finance and industry that there are circumstances in which, despite the achievements of convergence, despite the establishment of monetary union by our neighbours, he would come to the House and recommend that we still stayed out?
  Several Hon. Members: Answer.
  Mr. Lamont: We believe that it should be decided by this House of Commons.
  Mr. Kinnock: What would the right hon. Gentleman do?
  Mr. Lamont: The right hon. Gentleman may remember that his own shadow Chancellor said that he did not believe that that matter should be decided until 1997, and that Parliament should be involved. That is what we say and that is the view which commands the support of the country.
  Mr. Kinnock: For the second time in two weeks a member of the Cabinet has grossly misrepresented my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith). Let me read what my right hon and learned Friend said, instead of the contorted version produced by the Prime Minister, dishonourably, last week—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Would the right hon. Gentleman withdraw "dishonourably", please?
  Mr. Kinnock: I meant, of course, Mr. Speaker, inaccurately.
  The Prime Minister said, exactly as the Chancellor just has, that my right hon. and learned Friend said that we should not commit ourselves in advance of 1997 to enter into a single currency. That is the point of agreement that all sensible people will have.
  What my right hon. and learned Friend said on the Walden programme was:
  "We should not commit ourselves now, in advance of 1997, to enter a single currency irrespective of what the state of the economy was—[Interruption.]—
  irrespective, clearly, of whether convergence had been achieved or not.
  No one is being asked anywhere in the European Community to take such a decision and make such a step —indeed they cannot—unless convergence has been achieved. So I hope that the Chancellor will still feel able to answer candidly the question that I asked him: in the circumstances of convergence being achieved and the union going ahead, what would he say to the House? Would he recommend that we did not join that union? Yes or no? Come on.
  Several Hon. Members: Answer. Come on. Sir Peter Tapsell (East Lindsey) rose——
  Mr. Kinnock: I shall give way in a moment. I must get on—[Interruption.]
  Several Hon. Members rose——
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The Leader of the Opposition has given way a good deal. I think that he should get on.
  Mr. Kinnock: I was drawing the attention of the House to the first price of the policy being followed by the Government—if their policies were to prevail, which thankfully they will not—which is to put in the gravest jeopardy the possibility of the European central bank being located in Britain. There is a second price——
  Sir Peter Tapsell rose——
  Mr. Kinnock: No, I shall give way in a moment. I think that you would be the first to agree, Mr. Speaker, that there have been a number of responses, but there have also been prolonged distractions, and I had better get on. I shall give way later on if I may first develop this argument.
  The second price of the opt-out strategy—if it can be called that—is uncertainty. If international or British companies are doubtful about whether Britain will opt out, is it not obvious that they would be less, rather than more, likely to make their investment here? It has to be asked whether Britain's best interests can ever be served by a Government whose policies create that doubt among those planning their future investment for the next five, seven or 10 years.
  Of course, it was not Britain's best interests which guided the Prime Minister at Maastricht, but the desire to hold the Conservative party together. The European monetary union opt-out was part of the price for that. The social chapter opt-out was the rest of the fee. Together those opt-outs are the Danegeld, paid by the Prime Minister to the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher).

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  The social chapter opt-out deserts the interests of employees in Britain. It was a declaration by the Government that they want a down-market economy at the fringe of Europe. Every other Government in the Community accepts the idea that, as trade barriers come down and monetary co-operation increases, there should be a development of basic social rights and common employment standards throughout the Community.
  All the Prime Minister's fellow Conservative Heads of Government in the Community take the view that, as Herr Kohl put it:
  "Our community is not only an Economic Community, it is a Social Community too."
  For the Government to be against those social protections and minimum employment conditions as a matter of principle is to be not just outside the mainstream of the Community, but outside the mainstream of conservatism in the Community.
  The Government have advanced a number of claims —the Prime Minister did so again this afternoon—to try to justify their opposition to giving the British people the same rights and minimum standards as those awarded to people in other countries of the Community. The Prime Minister repeatedly claimed——
  Sir Teddy Taylor rose——
  Mr. Kinnock: I shall give way at the conclusion of this passage.
  Last week the Prime Minister repeatedly claimed that acceptance of the social chapter would mean accepting "militancy", and "strike-torn days" and much more in the same vein. We heard it again this afternoon. It just is not true.
  The social protocol explicitly states that it
  "shall not apply to pay, the right of association, the right to strike, or the right to impose lock-outs".
  Community legislation in those areas is effectively not possible.
  When asked why other countries, such as Germany, could accept the social protocol while he could not, the Prime Minister has repeatedly said that other countries have a
  "different structure of labour laws".
  But he said that knowing that the social protocol specifically lays down the requirement that
  "the Community and its Member States shall implement measures which take account of the diverse forms of national practices".
  So there is no proof of imposition.
  We have heard the Prime Minister repeatedly assert that support for the social protocol would mean
  "accepting new trade union powers … handing over government to trade unions abroad"
  and that it would mean
  "the imposition of damaging labour laws".
  That is not true either.
  Mrs. Edwina Currie: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Kinnock: I shall not give way for the moment.
  The Prime Minister must know that the section of the social protocol dealing with collective agreements between trade unions and employers' organisations could not result
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  in the alteration of British industrial relations legislation —good, bad or indifferent. The declaration attached to the section, which has the same force, clearly states:
  "this arrangement implies no obligation on the Member States to apply the agreements directly or to work out rules for their transposition, nor any obligation to amend national legislation in force to facilitate their implementation."
  So there is no power of imposition there.
  The Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Michael Howard): Is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that the declaration to which he has referred refers only to the first method of compelling those collective agreements to be implemented and not to the second, and that it is absolutely clear that the effect of article 118b is to enable collective agreements to be reached at European level, to which British employers, employees and the British Government do not agree, but which would have the force of law in this country?
  Mr. Kinnock: Methinks the right hon. and learned Gentleman doth protest too much. He knows very well that both on the first and on the second there are belt and braces arrangements in the protocol to ensure that there shall be no imposition.
  Mr. Howard: The text of the declaration to which the right hon. Gentleman referred reads:
  "The High Contracting parties declare that the first of the arrangements for application of the agreements"
  will be limited in the way that he suggested. That does not apply to the second of those arrangements.
  Mr. Kinnock: The right hon. and learned Gentleman knows very well that all of the provision to which he has referred falls under the requirements of unanimity, and each Government can exercise their veto.
  Mr. Howard: I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman simply confirms the extent to which his understanding of this vital agreement is inadequate and inaccurate. The decisions of the Council of Ministers that provide the second way to implement those agreements will be taken on the basis of qualified majority voting. The right hon. Gentleman does not understand what he is talking about. He would have committed this country to the most damaging obligations without the faintest understanding of what they mean.
  Mr. Kinnock: As he speaks, the right hon. and learned Gentleman is depriving himself of any excuse for opting out of the social chapter, for the simple reason that clause 6 of article 118 says:
  "The provision of this Article shall not apply to pay, the right of association, the right to strike or the right to impose lock-outs."
  I am certain that we shall return to this subject, and that we shall return to it——
  Mr. Howard rose——
  Mr. Kinnock: No, I shall not give way.
  Mr. Howard rose——
  Mr. Speaker: Order. This is not a Committee stage.
  Mr. Kinnock: We shall return to this subject with great relish. Meanwhile, I must resist the efforts of the right hon. and learned Gentleman, because I rather suspect that what

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  he is doing now is what, in his home town of Llanelli, would be called attempting some spoiling play. We shall have to come back to this on another occasion.
  One after another, the Prime Minister's misrepresentations about the social chapter are negated by the provisions of the protocol. He made great play of the fact that the social chapter included provision to ensure imposition of other people's directions in a number of areas, including, not least, social security and collective agreements. The only section of the social protocol that relates to the collective defence of the interests of workers and employers is subject to veto. Therefore, it cannot be imposed.
  So if it is the case, as it so clearly is, that in every single one of the areas where the Prime Minister has made allegations his claims have turned out to be false and he has misrepresented the social charter, I have to ask him whether he was misinformed or whether he knew that he was repeatedly being misleading. The only parts of the protocol that are the subject of qualified majority voting and would therefore he capable of being extended to Britain against the wishes of a British Government refer to individual employees' rights. They do not refer to collective or trade union rights.
  Those individual rights are very basic, not to say rudimentary. They provide for improvement in health and safety provisions, in working conditions, in the information and consultation of workers, equality of opportunity between men and women, and the integration into the labour force of the long-term unemployed, including disabled workers. Every other Government in the Community can accept those provisions, but they are rejected by our Government because, they say, the provision of such basic rights to British workers would make Britain uncompetitive.
  Would improvements in health and safety make us uncompetitive? Do the Government not accept the fundamental truth of industrial practice—that industrial accidents and disasters are not only tragic but are monumentally expensive? Did they not see the report of their own Health and Safety Executive last week, Maastricht week, which estimated that the real cost of industrial accidents and diseases could be up to £15 billion a year? Do the Government not know that the executive estimates that work-related accidents and ill-health are probably costing 30 million days off work a year—10 times as many as are lost through strikes? Do they not heed the director general of the executive, who said:
  "incidents that are usually preventable could be costing"
  companies
  "well over 10 per cent. of"
  their
  "operating margins".
  Mr. Howard: Does the right hon. Gentleman not understand that these important health and safety provisions are included in the present treaty and are covered by qualified majority voting as a result of legislation against which the Labour party voted?
  Mr. Kinnock: So why cannot the Government accept the social charter?
  Hon. Members: Hear, hear.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. This is taking a lot of time.
  Mr. Kinnock: Improved conditions for health and safety in the working environment do not diminish competitiveness; they add to efficiency and reduce costs and they are part of competitiveness. The Government consider that the improvement in the arrangements for information and consultation of workers provided for in the social chapter would make Britain uncompetitive. How could that be when the message of all managers worth their salt—certainly the managers of successful enterprises, both British and foreign owned—is that good information and consultation procedures are an asset, a source of efficiency and essential to team effort?
  When the Government resist the social chapter because of its references to the integration of long-term unemployed, it is easy to see why. There are now 654,000 people in Britain who have been unemployed for more than a year. The number has increased by 146,000–30 per cent.—in the past 12 months as a result of the Government's policies. When that scale of unemployment costs nearly £4 billion, it does not do much for competitiveness.
  Perhaps it is the provision in the social chapter for equality between men and women in labour market opportunities and in treatment at work that persuades the Government that acceptance of this chapter would be ruinous. Did we not hear somone who described himself as a major employer of women saying two months ago how essential it was to
  "remove the barriers that make it harder for women to realise their full potential"?
  Did not that employer ask, in ringing progressive tones,
  "Why should half our population go through life like a hobbled horse in a steeplechase"?
  If the employer in question, the Prime Minister, thought it essential to take account of what he called
  "the social revolution in the role of women"
  when he spoke at the launch of Opportunity 2000 in October, why is he denying basic rights to women by opting out of the social chapter?
  There can be only one reason for the Prime Minister's attitude. It is that the commitment that he made to widening opportunities is for occasional grand display, but his commitment to bad conditions, inequality and unfairness is for daily use. The Prime Minister's message of aspiration and opportunity for women is for public consumption. For low-paid women workers, for part-time women workers, for women working in lousy conditions, the message is put up with it and shut up about it.
  The Prime Minister: Will the right hon. Gentleman join us in opposing the part-time working directive that would impose national insurance contributions on low-paid women and men, or will he continue to support it?
  Mr. Kinnock: There is no obligation to pay national insurance—the matter deals with entitlements. Many women in part-time work are supremely conscious of the fact that, because they are not part of the national insurance arrangements, their rights to sick pay, to maternity pay and so on are greatly diminished.
  The Prime Minister: My question was quite straightforward. Will the right hon. Gentleman now answer it? Will he support us in opposing the part-time working directive, which would impose national insurance contributions on low-paid workers, many of them women? Yes or no?
  Mr. Kinnock: The Prime Minister should get a grip on the facts—there is no obligation, except where there is the same social security entitlement as for full-time employees. The Prime Minister should check the directive.
  The Prime Minister is so frightened of the pressures, so ready to depart from the undertakings he gave in his Opportunity 2000 speech, that he will not accept the social chapter relating to equal treatment of women in work. The Government insist that the British economy depends on resisting decent minimum conditions and employment rights for British workers. They have spent 12 years following that dogma and taking away even basic protections. At the end of that 12 years, Britain is a country with high and rising unemployment, with the balance of payments in deficit—even in a recession—and with negative growth, reduced investment, spreading poverty, rundown public services, a housing crisis and record bankruptcies. Whatever else cuts in provisions and rights do, they certainly do not produce economic success, and they never will.
  Modern competitiveness depends on competing in quality—competing up-market. It depends on a highly educated, well-trained work force—[Laughter.] I know why Conservative Members are laughing—they want a sweatshop in Britain. Economic success depends on a well-informed work force, with highly motivated men and women. Modern Governments have a duty to contribute towards that by making the proper investment and by insisting on good conditions. In 12 years, the Government have never done that and they never will. That is why, after 12 years, we have economic recession and underperformance.
  The Government have compounded that failure with the "turn your back" policy that they adopted at Maastricht. That policy might be relatively harmless if the other countries in the Community were standing still, but they are not. They are getting on, as full participants, with the monetary union process and with building one community. British influence over both has now diminished; the gap has widened. After the passage of stage 2, Britain will be faced with a structure that others have fashioned. That cannot be in British interests. This Government are not only allowing that to happen, they are causing it to happen. Such a Government are no longer fit to lead Britain. The British people know that and, come the election, they will show it. [Interruption.]
  Mr. Speaker: Order. We do not have clapping here.
  5.3 pm
  Sir Richard Luce: Having listened to the speech of the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock), I came to two conclusions about the debate and about the agreement at Maastricht last week. First, the right hon. Gentleman does not understand the agreement. Indeed, I can summarise his speech as all wind and no substance. The second conclusion is that, because of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister's statesmanship and the leadership that he gave last week—together with my right hon. Friends the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer—he has returned with an agreement that is not only in Europe's interest, but equally in Britain's interests. He should be warmly congratulated on his statesmanship during the past few days.
  When I voted in favour of joining the European Commu nity in 1972, like so many other hon. Members I
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  felt that, first, it was the only way to ensure that we would never again have to fight a world war in Europe. Secondly, I felt that it was the best means to create economic prosperity for all the members of the European Community. Thirdly, I felt that it was the best way to underpin democracy, and therefore stability, in Europe.
  I envisaged a Europe that would be free of socialism and free of central direction; a Europe that would be outward-looking—something on which we need to focus our minds in this debate; a Europe that would be diverse in its strength, both at national and regional levels. I envisaged that Scotland, Bavaria and Catalonia, for example, would be as important a part of the Community as would co-operation at international level. I envisaged a community that would build closer co-operation brick by brick and step by step.
  I exercised my right to vote in favour of the Community almost 20 years ago. Against the background that I have outlined, we should warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend and the Government on taking constructive steps forward at Maastricht last week. After all, there may be, as there should be, plenty of argument within the Community—there was at Maastricht—but arguing is far better than fighting, as we have done twice this century. The Government's approach was pragmatic and constructive, and that is badly needed in the Community.
  The other aspects of the agreement should also be warmly welcomed. The Commission is to become more accountable and democratic—previously a failure in it that came about largely because Britain was not a member of the Community when the Commission was created. Now, we are taking steps to put that right. There are to be important new procedures for intergovernmental co-operation on law and order, crime, foreign policy and defence. Those are vital steps towards good progress within the Community.
  With Britain's record, like that of Denmark, being good and effective on the implementation of agreements, the crucial decision was taken to introduce procedures to impose fines on those Governments who fail to implement them. The Community cannot develop effectively unless there is some understanding along those lines.
  The Government demonstrated last week that we are fully committed partners in Europe. The old saying of Dean Acheson in the 1960s that we had lost our empire but not yet found a role has been reversed: we are part of the Community, and it would be unacceptable to think in any other terms.
  The one issue on which I wish to speak is the international aspects of what happened at Maastricht. The lessons of the traumatic events of the last few months and years in central and eastern Europe and in other parts of the world show that we cannot impose unions, federations or more centralisation unless that is done democratically, peacefully and in a way that is acceptable to the people of the countries concerned. That is one quite clear lesson that we must learn. We know perfectly well that, when the lid comes off an imposed centralised regime or federation, it explodes, as witness Yugoslavia and many other parts of eastern Europe. Even in the western world, countries such as Belgium and Canada are under intense pressure. The process must be democratic and peaceful.
  The lessons for the Community are that we must bring about the evolution of more co-operation by consent, pragmatic discussion and democratic progress. That is why the role of this Parliament is so crucial.

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  The second lesson to be learned from international events is that, in an unstable world, the Community must be outward-looking. It must be constructive in its foreign policy; and one way in which we can become more outward looking and helpful to the rest of the world would be to do away with some of the protectionism in the Community. Few things could be more important than the GATT talks, because if the world moves towards more protectionism, there will be dire consequences. The Community should take a lead, and one of the areas in which to do so is the common agricultural policy.
  I welcome most warmly the emphasis that my right hon. Friend placed on the importance of enlarging the Community. The Government—it will be a Conservative Government—will have the presidency next year and will focus on the need to enlarge the Community and on the implications of such an enlargement. After all, the members of the Community do not constitute an island that can afford to turn its back on the outside world. We do that at our peril.
  In a vulnerable world, we are secure within our boundaries while mayhem reigns in many parts of Europe. The best way to contribute to stability is for the European Community to adopt a positive policy towards eastern and central Europe so as to achieve a measure of stability for those countries through collaboration in trade and aid and by their eventually joining the Community on conditions acceptable to the Community.
  Another priority for the Community is to focus on how, during the 1990s, other members can join—for instance, members of the European Free Trade Association that want to join and Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland. We must decide at what speed that should happen and what its implications for the Community will be. By the end of this decade, it is probable that at least 24 countries will be members of the European Community—a radical change.
  We must always remember the lessons of that clay in 1938 when a former Prime Minister said that Czechoslovakia was a far-off country of which we knew little. We paid a heavy price for that, and the most important aspect of our work now is to embrace these countries as quickly as we can, at a measured speed, so as to contribute to stability in central Europe and——
  Mr. Norman Tebbit: I share my right hon. Friend's view on enlargement. Does he think that the creation of a single currency among some or all of the existing Twelve would facilitate or make more difficult the process of enlargement?
  Sir Richard Luce: We do not have to take a clear view on that at this stage. We can await developments in the next few years, when we have the freedom to decide what to do. We must accept that, if the Community is to grow, there will be different speeds and tiers of co-operation. That is why I welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is to take the lead in working out the implications of such a move.
  I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister believes that closer collaboration between the Community and central and eastern Europe is essential for the stability of Europe. We cannot escape that fact, and it should be the Government's mission to take a lead in helping to enlarge the Community and to assess the implications of doing just that. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the
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  statesmanship that he has shown. This is the right Government to lead Britain through to the next stage of the development of the Community.
  5.14 pm
  Mr. Paddy Ashdown: I beg to move, to leave out from 'House' to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
  'whilst welcoming the fact that the United Kingdom became a signatory at Maastricht to an agreement which represents an historic step towards a federal Europe, regrets that the Prime Minister, by insisting on opt-out arrangements for the United Kingdom on Economic and Monetary Union and the Social Chapter, rather than negotiating improvements, has left Britain semi-detached from Europe, obliged every citizen to pay a price for the divisions within the Conservative Party and damaged the prospects for Britain's long-term economic and political success.'.
  Although I am delighted that it is our amendment that will be called tomorrow, it is extraordinary that the Labour party has not been able to move an amendment to the motion. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) who is sitting in front of me has revealed the reason—it is the only course of action that can unite Labour Members in the Lobbies as they are as divided on this as the Government have been revealed to be.
  Mr. Skinner: I am interested in the amendment moved by the leader of the Liberal Democrats as it mentions the Government's views on the social chapter. I heard the right hon. Gentleman on the "Walden" show a fortnight ago, when he instructed the Prime Minister to vote against the social chapter. Today he has tabled an amendment which states the opposite. No wonder they call him Paddy Backdown.
  Mr. Ashdown: I assure the hon. Gentleman, whose intervention I know was made in a spirit of good will, that I shall come to that later in my speech—[Laughter.] I certainly will. He will then know precisely what we objected to in some elements of the social chapter. I do not wish to betray any confidences, but the hon. Member for Bolsover told us earlier that this fix among Labour Members was his work. He called himself the Earl of Warwick in this context—a strange earl indeed—but things have come to a pretty pass when cohesion in the Labour party has to be arranged by the hon. Member for Bolsover——
  Mr. Skinner: I have done it many a time.
  Mr. Ashdown: For the European Community, Maastricht marks a decisive and irreversible step towards integration and unity. It could have been a decisive moment for Britain, too: the moment when Britain decided to end 40 years of indecision and ambivalence—aspects which have dogged our policy towards Europe and done so much damage to our success as a nation. Maastricht could have been the moment when we learned the lessons of our past mistakes: first staying out of Europe, then having to join later, and ending up submitting to institutions and policies which had been shaped without us.
  I was fascinated to hear the Prime Minister mention the need to reform the common agricultural policy. It certainly needs reform, and one of the reasons is that when it was drawn up we had opted out. Now we have to deal with the consequences.

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  Maastricht could have been the moment when Britain declared without qualification, once and for all, that our future belongs to a united and dynamic Europe. It could have been an historic week for Britain as well as for Europe, but it was not.
  The most interesting part of the Prime Minister's speech was the unscripted portion, following the fascinating question by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) about his agreement with the concept of a commonwealth in Europe. His only slightly qualified agreement with that model of Europe gave us an insight into the Prime Minister's mind, which for the past six months he has denied us in order to hold his party together. Now the Prime Minister's real vision—if that word is not too offensive to him—of the future stands revealed. In that moment he opened up the division between his view of Europe and that of the Foreign Secretary, who clearly does not feel the same way. He also showed his isolation from every other leader throughout Europe. That is his vision. But no other nation at Maastricht shared that vision. It is a classic example of the isolation into which the Prime Minister now wants to lead our country.
  The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Tristan Garel-Jones): If that is so, why was the draft treaty text put forward by the Dutch—sporting what one might call "the other vision"—rejected by 10 of the 12 member states?
  Mr. Ashdown: I know that the Minister has a different view from that which the Prime Minister has expressed on such matters. I invite him to read the Prime Minister's response to the right hon. Member for Chesterfield, which was far and away the most interesting part of the debate—[Interruption.] Amended text or not, it reveals the muddle to which the other 11 nations of Europe do not subscribe. It is a model towards which they are moving away from——
  Mr. Skinner: What does that mean?
  Mr. Ashdown: It is a model away from which they are now moving. They are moving towards increasing integration and increasing unity. That part of the Prime Minister's speech will he studied carefully because it reveals his intentions, although I do not believe that they are shared by the Minister.
  The Prime Minister declared again today that Maastricht was a good deal. Maybe it was a good deal for the Conservative party, but it was a very bad deal for this country. Every citizen in Britain in due course—in my judgment, it will be sooner rather than later—will pay a real, direct and personal price for what the Prime Minister negotiated at Maastricht. People will pay first in higher mortgages, lost jobs and diminished economic opportunities because of the uncertainty caused by the opt-out clause on the single currency. That uncertainty means higher interest rates if the pound comes under pressure and has to be supported again. It means more doubtful inward investment. Whatever comments were made in the heat of the negotiations at Maastricht, there can be no doubt that those who wish to invest in Europe will want to invest in countries that will be part of the economic and monetary union and not in countries outside it. It will mean more
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  doubtful inward investment at the very moment when this country needs such investment most, as we come out of the recession. It means the end of any realistic possibility of bringing the new European central bank to London. It means that London's position as Europe's main financial centre has been weakened and that that of Frankfurt has been strengthened.
  Mrs. Currie: I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman has read last week's edition of The Economist, which investigated which European Community countries conformed with the convergence conditions set in the treaty. The right hon. Gentleman is worried about uncertainty, but is he aware that the United Kingdom is already included in four of the five lists of items which create convergence and that only the fifth—the narrow band of the ERM—separates us? We are a lot closer than Germany, Italy and the vast majority of the Community. Where is the uncertainty in that?
  Mr. Ashdown: I am grateful to the hon. Lady because she makes the point that I was coming to. In those circumstances, why on earth stay out? The hon. Lady is right—the tragedy is that Britain is one of the few member states which could have met the convergence conditions of the EMU almost immediately. This country has paid a high price for that in lost jobs, lost homes and bankrupt businesses because of the effects of the Government's economic policy. The Government now risk throwing it all away because of the conditions to which the hon. Lady referred. Instead of playing a leading role in the new monetary union, we shall be semi-detached from it—robbed of our full chance to shape its institutions, suffering economically because of the uncertainty, and condemned always to follow monetary union, never to lead it. That is what the uncertainty created by the Prime Minister's opt-out will cost us.
  That uncertainty would continue under Labour. We have studied the Labour party's recent pronouncements and we now know that Labour proposes to renegotiate the whole deal. In last Friday's edition of The Times, the shadow Foreign Secretary stated that Labour would "review" the
  "role and powers … of the European Commission … work for conditions to make … the single currency … possible and attractive".
  By the by, those conditions are wholly unacceptable to our partners and would destroy the whole purpose and form of a central bank. The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) also said that Labour would "negotiate … for revision" of the social protocol. Come back Harold Wilson—all is forgiven. The Tories would like to repeat the mistakes of the 1950s, while Labour are determinted to repeat the mistake of renegotiation in the 1970s.
  The second way in which Britian will pay for the deal is in lost influence in Europe. At Maastricht the Prime Minister reinforced Britain's wretched reputation as the chief roadblock of Europe. We are not the partners who must be consulted—we are now the obstacle around which the rest of Europe must find a way. Other member states bypassed us on the single currency by giving us an opt-out, for which the Prime Minister had to pay at Maastricht—and for which the British people will have to pay even more in the months ahead—and they bypassed us on the social chapter by simply going ahead without us.

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  The rest of Europe will now construct the social institutions of Europe with Britain excluded—but we shall not be excluded from being influenced by what they do in the short term. No doubt we shall, once again, want to join them in the end. Britain proves yet again that those who will not learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat the mistakes of history. That is exactly what we have done twice before in this half century.
  As is well known—the hon. Member for Bolsover has referred to this—the Liberal Democrat party was not content with all the provisions in the social chapter of the Maastricht drafts. For the benefit of Mr. Ian Aitken and The Guardian, and others, our objection was not to the social charter which was, of course, not even under discussion at Maastricht—although the Leader of the Opposition did not seem to know that. Our objection was to elements of the social chapter in the treaty——
  Mr. Skinner: That is not what the right hon. Gentleman said to Walden.
  Mr. Ashdown: That is exactly what I said both then and subsequently. Article 118/3 of the social chapter opens the way, as the Prime Minister said, to European-wide collective bargaining. In Britain, we have moved away from such arrangements. They are wrong for this country's future and contrary to this party's belief in decentralised wage bargaining. Again, the Leader of the Opposition seemed not to grasp the fact that, in article 118B, the social chapter provided for circumstances in which, if European businesses and trade unions agreed, they could take Europe-wide action through the Council without reference to the European Parliament, let alone this one. That is simply inimical to this party's commitment to a democratic, powerful and responsible European Parliament. Fortunately, both those clauses enjoy the protection of unanimous voting or could be changed when they came to practical application into law. However, we would have wished to see those clauses altered. Indeed, they could have been altered if the Government had not wasted their bargaining power in attempts to defend the indefensible, attack the trivial and obtain the illusory.
  Therefore, when it came to the social charter, when we really would have liked to influence events, Britain was left with no negotiating power, few friends and only one course of action—to opt out of the social dimension altogether. That was not game, set and match for Britain; it was a lousy piece of negotiation which left Britain on the sidelines of Europe.
  Perhaps more regrettable is the fact that a real opportunity has been missed. If there is one area in which Britain is ahead of Europe, it is in the liberalisation of our markets and the dismantling of the systems of the corporate state. At present, our partners in Europe tend to follow an old-fashioned prescriptive approach to social policy. That is very familiar to the Labour party. Labour Members like the idea that one can formulate the blueprint in Brussels and hand it down to be followed in every corner of the Community. That is the kind of approach that they would like to have again at Westminster. It is, however, an approach that failed in the 1970s, and one that will not work in the 1990s. It is too inflexible, too costly, and too rigid.
  We need not a "blueprint" approach but an "entitlements" approach to rights at work and in society. Europe should be built around the concept of European
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  citizenship, with each citizen entitled to certain defined basic rights—political rights, rights of ownership, rights at work and social entitlements. It is for the European institutions to define those "floor-level" rights, but it is not for Brussels to say how they will be observed. It is up to each individual state and each individual workplace to decide that for itself—subject, ultimately, to the decisions of the courts.
  Incidentally, if our Government really believed in the principle of subsidiarity, they would have ensured that decision-making would be decentralised within the United Kingdom as well as within the Community. The new treaty tells us that decisions will be
  "taken as closely as possible to the citizens".
  I say "Yes, please—and why not start in Scotland and Wales?"
  The third great deficiency of the Maastricht treaty—again one that Britain, to its discredit, helped to create—is its entirely inadequate response to the democratic deficit in Europe. Here is the Government's big lie: the claim that an increase in the power of the European Parliament would mean a decrease in the power of the Westminster Parliament. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that in European affairs it would be difficult to diminish further the power of this Parliament.
  Our Parliament does not hold the Commission to account. We do not even hold our own Ministers to account. We do not scrutinise European legislation properly; indeed, we allow the Executive to carry on very much as it pleases. That is the democratic deficit. We need the European Parliament to repair it, but in that regard the Maastricht treaty has comprehensively failed.
  The European Parliament remains far too weak. In the end, it will have to be strengthened to play a full democratic part in the Community. In the end, we shall have to ensure that all laws passed by the Council must also be passed by the Parliament. That is what co-decision, democracy and accountability actually mean.
  Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: I agree that it is important for our Parliament to examine EC legislation closely. The House has two very effective European Committees, but there seems to be an astonishing dearth of Liberal Democrats prepared to sit on them, although they have the right to do so.
  Mr. Ashdown: That is a perfectly reasonable point. I will explain the position. As there are only 20 Liberal Democrats in the House—although we are supported by 23 per cent. of the electorate—it is impossible for my colleagues and me to involve ourselves in all the work of the House.
  Until the European Parliament is strengthened, the events about which the Government and the European separatists most like to complain—those brought about by an interfering and inappropriate Brussels—are likely to continue, because the Government missed the opportunity to make the Community more democratic and accountable. Perhaps that is what they want, but it is not good for either Britain or Europe.
  Mr. Harry Barnes: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Ashdown: I think that I have already given way a reasonable number of times.
  Fortunately, we in this Parliament have never seen Maastricht as an end. We have always seen it as a

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  milestone on the road to closer integration and closer unity. There are those in the House who pretend that that is not so. The Prime Minister, to appease members of his own party, pretends to be one of them, but he knows the truth. He knows that, although Maastricht may mark a watershed in the process of integration, it does not mark the end of the process. With or without Britain, the rest of Europe will continue along the road.
  Of course, we cannot be certain that Europe will succeed. There are huge problems—economic, historical and social. Perhaps those problems will ultimately prove too great. Perhaps Europe's leadership will prove too weak. Perhaps the essential task of bringing in the new democracies of eastern Europe will founder on economic collapse, ethnic unrest and social upheaval. I am certain of one thing, however: we must do all in our power to ensure that none of that happens.
  Europe cannot stand still. There is no refuge for us in simply maintaining the level of integration at which we have now arrived. If Europe does not go forward, it will start to go back—back to a Europe given to confrontation and not co-operation, back to a Europe where Germany exploits its economic power and its position as broker between east and west, and back to a Europe where instability in the east is matched by impotence and indecision in the west. That cannot be in any of our interests, especially at this time.
  Ministers pride themselves on their attention to detail, but I ask them to lift their eyes and survey a broader picture. They should look at the Europe that will exist in five or 10 years' time, at a Community with 18 or 20 members and perhaps even more, and at the interests that we have in common—security, defence, foreign policy, the environment, prosperity and peace in the world. That Europe must be more united, more effective and more far-sighted. It will view the events of Maastricht as important, but as yesterday's agenda, and it will marvel at the failure of countries and their leaders to grasp the opportunities for progress.
  I am certain of something else, too. It is in Britain's interest for us to be at the heart of that Europe—where the Prime Minister said that he wanted us, but where he signally failed to put us at Maastricht. We should be helping to shape the democratic institutions on which Europe will depend. We should be providing leadership in the new economic institutions that Europe will need. We should be making available our experience of world affairs, which will be essential to the outward-looking Europe that we must create.
  That was the opportunity that Maastricht could have given us. The Prime Minister failed to grasp that opportunity. He put the short-term interests of the Conservative party before the long-term interests of this country. Sadly, Maastricht represents the third occasion in half a century on which Britain has been given the chance to face its European future and, I regret to say, the third occasion in that time on which we have chosen to seek refuge in the past. For that failure the country will, in due course, pay a heavy price.
  5.37 pm
  Mr. Nigel Forman: I pay warm tribute to the Leader of the Opposition for his fine debating speech. His debating technique, however, disguised some fatal flaws and internal contradictions in Labour policy. Not the least of those was highlighted capably by my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen), who pointed out that, if the right hon. Gentleman was to achieve any of his aims in regard to European monetary union and convergence, he would be required to support policies that would inevitably increase the country's tax burden considerably.
  The right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown), the leader of the Liberal Democrats, presented what appeared to be a coherent policy on Europe. He has adhered to that policy consistently for several years. I feel, however, that it takes insufficient account of the natural caution and pragmatism of the British people, which was admirably reflected in the negotiating approach of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and his colleagues in the Cabinet.
  I congratulate my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor on their negotiations leading up to Maastricht and at the conference itself. Their approach was in great contrast to what might have been the position had the official Opposition been in government. In case the House doubts the substance behind that view, it has only to consider a Gallup opinion poll that appeared recently in The Daily Telegraph. It showed that by a ratio of 2:1 the electorate preferred to have my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in charge of the policy than the Leader of the Opposition. Liberal Democrat supporters shared that view by about 4:1. Clearly, the British people know when the policy is in safe hands.
  Looking back, we can see that the Maastricht summit was the culmination of a long process—a significant stage in the development of the European Community. It was the stage at which the 12 member states did a good deal more to clarify their long-term goals. I am referring particularly to European monetary union with a social dimension, coupled with aspirations towards European political union which, as can be seen from the debates that we have had in the House and those on the continent, means many different things to many different people. It was also the stage at which the Twelve addressed the critical questions of structure and procedure for the future development of Europe: whether the Community and Europe as a whole wish its design to be more or less monolithic, whether it wants to be more or less supranational, whether it wants to have more or less qualified majority voting and more or less jurisdiction for the European Court of Justice.
  Mr. Nicholas Soames: Does my hon. Friend agree that the pillared structure that has been negotiated by our right hon. Friends is more likely to provide the sort of flexibility that the institutions will need, bearing in mind that Europe is standing, to some extent, on shifting sands and that none of the situations extant in the 1950s, at the birth of the Community, remains the same today? It may be that there will have to be extensive changes in those institutions in the years to come.
  Mr. Forman: I agree with my hon. Friend, but I go further. The 1990s provide a great opportunity for Her Majesty's Government to demonstrate to our Community partners the validity of the new hybrid approach that the Government have pioneered.
  It is interesting to note that, in attempting to answer the questions at Maastricht, most of our Community partners said that they wanted to go faster and further forward. The Government correctly understood and successfully argued that in most of the new areas of competence the approach should be largely intergovernmental—as was suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames)—thus introducing a greater element of flexibility into the future institutional arrangements of the Community. That must make sense in the policy areas to which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister referred—foreign policy, security and home affairs. We now have the opportunity to demonstrate in practice that our more hybrid approach is better suited to the needs of the next decade.
  The new methods of European co-operation will prove increasingly relevant and useful in the enlargement of the Community, which will carry on apace from about the mid-1990s and—this has not yet been mentioned in the debate—in the awakening of public opinion in France and Germany where they are beginning to realise some of the implications of what their political leaders have signed. On the eve of 1992, we must encourage our partners to focus in sensible ways on the real challenges of the coming 10 years. What do I mean by that?
  Sir Russell Johnston: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the intergovernmental co-operation which was a characteristic of the European Free Trade Association was not successful? To suggest that that is the way forward for the future must be objected to by the fact that Sweden, Austria and the EFTA countries now want to join the supranational Community.
  Mr. Forman: I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I understand his point from an historical perspective. However, the Community has always had variable depth in its integration—in some areas it has been deeply integrated and in others there has been shallower integration. It is appropriate that the areas of policy now being pushed forward on an intergovernmental basis should be done in that way because that is how we carry with us consent in our national Parliaments and public opinion.
  The programme for the next 10 years should be based on a clear recognition of the need for an early enlargement to include the aspiring EFTA countries, to which the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) referred, and the three central European countries—Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia—to the east of the Community. That would make irreversible the shift to democracy, market economics and social pluralism in the former communist states. In its wisdom, the Community felt able to do that for the Iberian peninsula a few years ago and it would be right and proper for it to do something analogous for the central European countries.
  I hope that the Community will concentrate on providing within its borders only those things that it does best—a common legal framework for a large liberal market economy with a social dimension. That is the formula and it is what I believe will prove most successful.
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  In so far as it is necessary to have new political institutions, the Community should cherish rather than threaten the rich diversity of nations and regions within it.
  On external relationships, we must use all our influence within the Community to see that it is not just a magnet for new members, which it clearly is already, but an influence for global free trade and payments. If the Community can take constructive and urgent action, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Sir R. Luce) said, to bring the Uruguay round of the GATT negotiations to a successful conclusion, it will have done something of value for its members and the global economy generally. Assisting with the creation of a viable payments union in the area that used to be described as the Soviet Union would be the single most important contribution that the Twelve could make to that unstable and dangerous part of the world. By stabilising that part of the world, we would be making our contribution as a building block to better world monetary arrangements which will be important once the ecu is a means of exchange and a currency that can look the yen and the dollar in the face.
  As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said many times, we should work as hard as we can in the heart of Europe to lead our partners away from the cause of Euro-dirigism and Euro-protectionism, which if allowed to develop under the influence of Madame Cresson and such people would render the entire Community less competitive in global markets and blight the prospects of the developing countries to the south and east of the existing Community.
  Once we have incorporated the Maastricht treaty into our law—presumably, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said, in the first Session of the new Parliament—we must press on in the second half of 1992, when we have the presidency of the Community, to set out more clearly our vision of a common European future. In this brief speech, it is not appropriate for me to attempt that task but I shall give the House three examples of the sort of arrangements for which the Government should press in the second half of 1992 when we have an opportunity to carry them forward.
  We should encourage a growing body of Community practice that builds upon the excellent subsidiarity article 3b in the Maastricht treaty. That is critical and I am delighted that it has found its way into the treaty with powerful German support. At a future review conference—such conferences will occur every few years in the Community—it might be desirable to go even further and press for a clause in the Community body of law that makes it crystal clear that all powers that are not specifically allocated to the Community should remain as of right with the member states, as is the case in the American constitution.
  My right hon. Friend the Chancellor and his counterparts ably negotiated amendments in the documents on economic and monetary union. I should like to see Her Majesty's Government using all their influence in an attempt to ensure that article 104A is implemented to the letter. For hon. Members who are not conversant with every last article, that is the guarantee of a no-bail-out rule, which is important if we are to contain the development of economic and monetary union to sensible proportions. It will be vital if we are to ensure our objective of developing a European monetary union while

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  retaining the bulk of fiscal powers unadulterated in national hands—in the hands of national Governments and Parliaments, where they should remain.
  I was struck by the words of Graham Bishop of Salomon Brothers in a recent publication on the importance of the no-bail-out rule. He said:
  "The purpose of the rule is clear: It is the circuit breaker between monetary union and the back-door creation of a 'United States of Europe', where a centralised government takes control over domestic public expenditure as the price of a bail-out. If the rule is credible, EMU should involve only the lightest fiscal interference when budgetary policies are sound, because the debt of EMU members will be of the highest grade."
  If we achieved such development of economic monetary union, we would be doing it on a sound basis.
  I strongly welcome the text that was negotiated at Maastricht on the European system of central banks in stage 2 and the European bank in stage 3. Article 2 stresses the primary objective of price stability and article 7 enshrines the guaranteed independence of the European central bank. The full benefits of price stability and statutory independence for the European central bank, and indeed for the Bank of England—that must be a necessary institutional corollary—will be enjoyed only if a future Government and Parliament agree in good time to adopt a single European currency. In today's European capital markets, the freedom of exchange rates, to which some of my hon. Friends are so attached, means only the freedom to devalue—a course of action that would prove to be as futile as it is nugatory in modern conditions.
  In a recent article in the Financial Times, Sam Brittan pointed out quite succinctly:
  "At present the UK already has, as a member of the hard ERM, most of the obligations of a single currency without all the advantages. There would be little to be lost from going the whole hog."
  I agree with him, and there would be much to be gained at the appropriate time. The full benefits of a single currency will come through, which will benefit Britain and the entire Community.
  I hope that the Government will draw the logical conclusions and lessons from their earlier correct decisions and lead this country forward, at the appropriate time, to a single currency and ever-closer union of the peoples of Europe.
  5.51 pm
  Mr. Denis Healey: People have short memories, and it may be useful to remind the House that in 1972 President Pompidou announced on French television that there would be a European common currency by 31 December 1980. The Werner plan, from which that prediction was drawn, was wrecked by events outside Europe—the Nixon shocks and partly the effects of the OPEC increase in the oil price—but no hon. Member seems able to recall that it ever existed.
  Maastricht could suffer the same fate. I agree with hon. Members who have said that it may prove to be a major step towards the valuable goal of greater unity in Europe, but let us face the fact that it changes nothing in today's world. The summit did not even attempt to close any of the yawning gaps in the single market, which must come into effect at the end of next year. It simply agreed a timetable for producing a single currency by, at the latest, 1999—
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  with or without Britain. Even in this area, nothing significant will change in the real world until phase 2 of European monetary union takes effect in 1994—more than two years from now.
  I want to start by asking what are the risks that the Delors plan—the origin of European economic and monetary union—will suffer the same fate as the Werner plan did 20 years ago. Let us remind ourselves, as the Prime Minister wisely did in his opening speech, that the Maastricht treaty does not come into force for more than 12 months—at the beginning of 1993—and only if every one of the 12 Governments who initialled it get it ratified by their Parliaments. The real debate is only beginning. As the Prime Minister said, only the British and Danish Parliaments have considered European monetary union, as it is now defined, or European political union.
  If we look at the initial response to Maastricht, the omens are not wholly encouraging. There is growing opposition in Germany to giving up the deutschmark without any real return in political union, which Chancellor Kohl had said was a precondition of moving to a single currency. I see from today's Financial Times that a leading member of the board of the Bundesbank said yesterday that the Maastricht summit was a failure and might prove to be "a suicidal failure"—serious words from a key member of the body that drew up the detailed proposals for European economic and monetary union.
  I cannot resist the feeling that the Government's extraordinary surrender yesterday to German bullying over the recognition of Croatia had something to do with the need to appease German public opinion, which is turning nasty on the whole process—or perhaps it was just sucking up to the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), who has succeeded in abandoning her resistance to German blandishments and has formed a common front with Chancellor Kohl in demanding the immediate and unconditional recognition of Croatia. But then, it is, of course, a funny old world.
  French ratification is little more certain, because the extreme right, under Le Pen, is campaigning hard against what it inelegantly calls the "federasts" of the European movement. Le Pen may succeed in winning allies on this issue from the more moderate right wing, as he already has on the issue of immigration and race in France, which is a depressing prospect.
  The ratification of the Mediterranean countries is no more certain. The Spanish Prime Minister has already said—it was said also by the Portugese at Maastricht—that their ratification will depend on more money for what is called cohesion and structural funds. They are talking of sums far higher than France, Germany or Britain seem prepared to provide. I am interested to see that the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, with his deep knowledge of the Spanish people and countryside, seems to agree with me on that.
  But the biggest challenges to Maastricht will come, as they came to the Werner plan, in developments outside the European Community. It is clear that almost all the European Free Trade Association countries, except perhaps Iceland, will want to join the Community. They will probably all be members well before 1996, which is the earliest date for phase 3 of EMU. That will mean an enormous shift in the centre of gravity in Europe towards the north—something that we in Britain should heartily

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  welcome, because on many issues, our approach, or at least, that of Labour Members, has much in common with the countries of northern Europe.
  If things go well, it seems that, certainly by the end of the century if not by the earlier date of 1997, it may be possible to form a single currency to which Germany, France, the Benelux countries, Denmark and the EFTA countries will belong. In such a case, it seems inconceivable and well nigh insane to imagine that Britain would stand out. All of us must have been deeply disturbed by the Chancellor's refusal to answer the question this afternoon—yes, we agree that Parliament must take the final decision, but what decision will he recommend in those circumstances?
  Mr. Giles Radice: He does not know.
  Mr. Healey: He knows very well, because he is against a single currency in principle, like his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson), who clearly expressed his views—which, I think, are shared by the present Chancellor—in an article in one of the tabloid newspapers. I believe it was the Evening Standard.
  Mr. Radice: My right hon. Friend referred to the Chancellor's views but, when we asked him that question in the Select Committee, it became clear that he was not so much against it in principle as uncertain in his own mind what he should do.
  Mr. Tony Banks: Sounds like a Liberal.
  Mr. Healey: He does sound like a Liberal, but I do not like to explore the murky recesses of the Chancellor's mind. However, I must confess that his failure to give an answer—even that answer—to the question this afternoon was very significant.
  The EFTA countries are not alone. I agree with all the right hon. and hon. Members who said—I think that almost all who have spoken so far made this point—that it is very important to give Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland the prospect of joining the Community at least by the end of the decade, and to give them every possible assistance in meeting the economic and political conditions for membership as soon as possible.
  Of course, that will mean a big shift of gravity inside the Community to the east. By the end of the decade, power will have shifted to central and north-east Europe from its present location, which I suppose is somewhere between London, France and Rome.
  Mr. Tony Marlow: And Berlin.
  Mr. Healey: I accept that, although I gather that even the German Parliament is deeply divided on how much of it and how much of the Government should move from Bonn to Berlin.
  I think that the biggest challenges to the Maastricht process will come, as they did before, from outside Europe. The United States is clearly already becoming much more self-centred. If, partly because of Europe's obduracy over the common agricultural policy, the GATT talks break down, the process of disengagement from external responsibilities may move very much faster than anyone expects or hopes, both from Europe and from the west Pacific area.
  The most important single factor is the disappearance of the Soviet Union from the world stage. Lenin, who does not often get a kind word these days, was right in at least
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  one of his prophecies. He prophesied that the triumph of communism would lead to the withering away of the state. I do not think that anyone has ever seen a state wither away quite as fast as the Soviet state has in recent weeks.
  However, the disappearance of the Soviet Union will have very disturbing consequences. It has been replaced by a commonwealth of independent states. If, as I believe, NATO is a biological monstrosity because it is an organ without a function, the commonwealth of independent states is a political nightmare because it is a function without an organ. It has, at the moment, absolutely no institutions through which to express itself.
  It is worth remembering the lessons—even the recent lessons—of history. The disintegration of the European empires after the last war was followed by 45 years of armed conflict in the ex-colonies, in which 20 million people died in the far east, in the Indian subcontinent, in the middle east, in Africa and even in the Caribbean. All those factors are likely to be at work now that the Soviet empire has disintegrated.
  Even worse, the European empires at least left behind them working administrative structures and moderately healthy economies, which meant that most of the ex-colonial countries have managed to maintain stable states and thriving economies—although, of course, not thriving as fast as ours in the west—but the Soviet empire is leaving no administration at all, only economic catastrophe.
  It is often said that it is not very easy to turn an omelette back into eggs. Since the perestroika process began, the Soviet economy has followed a steady course downwards, and there seems no prospect at the moment of it reversing that process. We shall all be watching the success of Mr. Yeltsin's programme to form a judgment on it, if it is introduced in January.
  If economic catastrophe is added to the political disintegration, the consequences for Europe could be dire, not only in terms of the millions of refugees who are already predicted, but possibly through the sale of nuclear weapons to any body of people or any Government in the third world or elsewhere who have the hard currency to pay for them.
  I do not believe in a nuclear civil war in the Soviet Union—I think that Nazarbaev and Krawczuk want to hang on to their nuclear weapons as a defence against a Russian attack. I do not think that they have any intention of using them—nor have the Russians—but the risk that, as the system disintegrates, people may simply sell off the smaller nuclear weapons is a real one. I was glad that that was recognised by Mr. Baker on his recent visit to the Soviet Union. They pose enormous threats to western Europe and more immediate threats to eastern Europe, but there is still no obvious way in which the west can help to avoid the consequences until there is at least some clarity about where authority lies in the Soviet Union.
  I agree with the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Forman) that by far the most useful thing that we could do in the short run would be to fund a payments union among the commonwealth of independent states so that they could at least have a currency in which to trade with one another.
  Against that background—I doubt whether many hon. Members would dispute the dangers that I have outlined—the argument about who won at Maastricht is pitifully irrelevant. Maastricht was not a triumph for any Government, although each of the Governments present

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  claimed it as one. Least of all was it a triumph for the British Prime Minister. I was interested to see that the Financial Times and The Spectator picked the same phrase—they described it as a "pyrrhic victory".
  The Prime Minister has, of course, produced some novel marriages, some very strange bedfellows. The previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Finchley, said that she was "thrilled" by the Prime Minister's success at Maastricht. My dear friend—if I may so describe him—the previous Foreign Secretary, who resigned from the right hon. Lady's Government over Europe, was equally thrilled, although he did not express himself—he never does—in quite such colourful language. To complete that glorious trinity, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) joined the throng during the debate.
  I do not think that there is much for us to be proud about in the fact that the Prime Minister has relegated Britain to a second division of countries that can survive only by having low pay because they have low skills. Obviously, he sees Britain as the sweatshop of the world—he almost said as much—and, if we are unlucky enough to find him in office for more than a few more months, we may find ourselves taking the place previously occupied by the Soviet Union, as Upper Volta with rockets.
  The only significant critic—I use the word "significant" with meaning—is the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) who, in spite of everything that the Whips can say to him, apparently still intends to vote against the Government tomorrow. The right hon. Gentleman glares, or rather stares impassively, at me. He certainly did not shake his head, but then, as the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) said, he is a "ghastly man."
  Perhaps more worrying for the Government is the attitude of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who was reported by a most reliable gossip columnist called Peterborough in that impeccably Conservative newspaper The Daily Telegraph as saying that it would have been better if there had been no deal at all. I suspect that the Prime Minister and the other Ministers would agree with our great national poet, William Shakespeare, that
  "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."
  The time has come for the Prime Minister to stop playing Conservative party politics with the issues and to rise to the real level of the challenges that confront us in Britain, everyone in Europe and, indeed, every inhabitant of the planet.
  I realise that, if someone is driving a car, and sitting behind him is a lady with a handbag and a man with fangs, he may feel it wiser to drive in the slow lane. My advice is that he should pull into a lay-by, turf the others out and then hand the wheel over to firmer and safer hands.
  Hon. Members: Hear, hear.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Mr. Hugh Dykes.
  6.13 pm
  Mr. Hugh Dykes: Such was the ringing applause for the speech of the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) that I did not hear you call my name, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I am grateful to you, and also to the right hon. Member for Leeds, East. The
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  applause rang through the House. The right hon. Gentleman gave his usual vintage performance, with many justified facts and views, and it was warmly received in all parts of the House, not only for its humour but for some of his more sombre comments about the present ominous geophysical appearance of Europe.
  That, too, reinforces the lesson and message of the significance of the Maastricht summit—that greater cohesion and unity of the European Community is even more indispensable for solving its own internal economic, social and political problems and those of the rest of Europe as well.
  As chairman of the European Movement in Britain, I am gratified to observe that a treaty which I would describe as extensive and profound has at long last been signed.
  Members of Parliament and the British press have, understandably, been preoccupied with the matters about which the Government decided—with some justification, although that is a matter for debate—that there should be hesitation. The two key areas were final acceptance of the European monetary union agreement and the Government's resistance to many of the suggestions in the social programme of the additional treaty—those were not the original social suggestions in the social action programme.
  However, the press in the other European member states rightly concentrated on the long list of measures that were agreed and signed in the Maastricht treaty. There has been less debate on those here, and I guess that over the two days of the debate there will still be less. Paradoxically, I shall share that omission, refraining deliberately from referring to those many matters in order to keep my speech short. Nevertheless, they represent a considerable achievement by all the member states.
  The Bundestag had a debate on those matters last Friday. Although I have read only a summary of the one-day debate and not the full text of all the speeches, I believe that my impression is correct that the British hesitation over the two key areas was hardly referred to at all. The House of Commons, understandably—again, with some justification but not with total justification—will assume that for the other member states the double hesitation by the United Kingdom was the crucial aspect of the agreements at Maastricht, but it was not. For the Community as a whole, the Maastricht agreement and all its areas—including the social provisions, which the others will accept outside the treaty on the basis of a separate protocol to be agreed in a few months' time—were the significant aspect.
  Given the Community's capacity to help other European countries—not only the successful ones who now wish to join, and are already beginning to apply, but the east European countries, with all their problems—it is extraordinary and perverse to suggest that there should be greater disunity in the Community at the very moment when greater aid and support is called for.
  I was impressed by the way in which our Cabinet colleagues and other members of the team—the distinguished presence of the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones), prompts me to add his name—negotiated successfully on behalf of the United Kingdom. I suppose that this is a small matter to mention, but allowing for a slight extension to the 24 hours of the second day, the negotiation was completed more or less in

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  the time allotted—a remarkable feat and a testimony to the profound drafting and negotiating skills of many of the member states and many of the governmental teams. We should also pay tribute to the Dutch presidency.
  Mr. Soames: Does my hon. Friend agree that when such councils involve constitutional amendments to the treaty as well as, as always, substantial business for the Heads of Government to transact, some new formula should be produced whereby meetings could be scheduled for a longer period? The agenda was in every respect unreasonable for the time allowed and it is remarkable that what was achieved was possible at all.
  Mr. Dykes: That is a good point, and I agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, an original idea suggested informally by several people a long time ago was that there could be a two-day preliminary meeting, and then a two-day summit of the European Council. My hon. Friend was correct, too, in the implication of his remarks, in that due to lack of time or the natural delegation of functions, the European Council, the Council of Ministers and various other councils more and more frequently ask for Commission reports and proposals on matters. As a result, the Commission—still with 8,000 officials, who may be well paid but are nevertheless overworked—is dealing with more and more material not only initiated by itself in its legislative function of making proposals, but increasingly at the request of the politicians in the European Council. It is a double problem, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames) has rightly referred.
  Although many keen Europeans in this country and a significant and growing number of people outside, not only the younger generation, will naturally be disappointed that the Government chose to refrain from full commitment in two key areas, the long list of developments that were agreed is immensely encouraging. Although it may not seem much in terms of substance, part two of the treaty which deals with European citizenship raises the intriguing idea that in the one member state in which there is not a written constitution we now gain access to the treaty additions and to the written constitution which already exists in the Community. We also gain access to all the protections that will flow from that. There is also the future possibility of building some of the elements of the European convention on human rights into specific treaty additions of the European Community.
  An antediluvian handful of hon. Members, many of them retiring at the next election, are not keen on these matters, but they are a diminishing and insignificant number. There is a substantial consensus in the House for deepening the European Community, which came from the Maastricht agreements. [Interruption.] I was not referring to my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, South (Sir W. Clark). I know that he is retiring, but he need not be too sensitive. I was referring to other more prominent hon. Members. My right hon. Friend has always had his views on the matter, whereas other colleagues have changed their minds more frequently. I respect my right hon. Friend's views on these matters.
  The direction towards a true and profound European union is welcome and inexorable. It is inescapable because——
  Mr. Tony Favell: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. Dykes: I will not give way at the moment, although I may later.
  Mr. Favell: My intervention may be helpful.
  Mr. Dykes: I will not give way, although it is tempting to do so.
  The whole process is inescapable precisely because more and more people want it to be so. We may say, "Eat your heart out" to Norman, to Peter, to William, to Austin and to others, if I may use just first names. A growing number of the population, not just the younger generation and not only because of the superficial conversion of the Labour party, want that process. They want Europe to become one entity and they will rapidly reject the national frontiers of the European member countries, which are now losing their residual relevance. Socially, economically and in human terms, the citizens of the Community are coming together. That is the unstoppable reality.
  Mr. Marlow: Never mind the detail.
  Mr. Dykes: If I had time to go into detail, as my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) urges, my speech would be far longer and other colleagues would not be able to speak later.
  The pre-economic and monetary union full convergence measures are more severe in their final outturn than was anticipated several years ago when the whole debate began. We must be realistic about that. As time goes on, many of the economic and financial conditions may change significantly and the final stage of the agreement will need to be—[HON. MEMBERS: "Fudged."]—not fudged, but agreed in concrete terms on a rather different basis.
  Although the United States economy is embraced by a single currency, and although many harmonised conditions conceal the differences, one wonders how much real internal convergence there is between the economies of Illinois, Texas and North Dakota—probably far less than there seems. The internal rates of inflation of the different states are far greater than we think, but there is no way of measuring that because of the existence of a single currency. The same will happen in Europe as stage 2 of the European monetary system gets going.
  Nothing less than the aim of a full conglomeration of the living and working conditions of all European Community citizens—who will remain patriotic citizens of their own member states—will satisfy most citizens and electors in the various countries as their own national elections occur and as the European Parliament elections occur. I do not share the view that there has been a limited addition to the powers of the European Parliament. I believe that the extra powers will evolve into a significant additional step.
  Mr. Favell: My hon. Friend paints a vision that does not exactly fill me with glee. There will be another conference in 1996. Will my hon. Friend crystal ball gaze and tell us what he expects will happen there?
  Mr. Dykes: To which aspect of the conference in 1996 does my hon. Friend refer?
  Mr. Favell: Presumably we shall go further towards the vision that my hon. Friend has. Where does he expect us to be after the 1996 conference?
  Mr. Dykes: It will be best if my hon. Friend succeeds in catching your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so that he can deal with those matters himself.
  Mr. Harry Barnes: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Dykes: I will not because I am aware of the time and I wish to be fair to other hon. Members. Although our debate today will continue until 2 am, there is a long list of hon. Members who wish to speak and I promised to be brief.
  The difference between pre-Maastricht and post-Maastricht is potentially profound, exciting and striking. Until the treaty was concluded last week—it will be signed at the end of February—the provisions of the treaty of Rome had remained creaking, distorted and hard to fulfil. All that is now transformed. The new machine of European union has inexorably started to run. It will not be long before the circumstances in this country—I do not refer to a change of Government at the next election, which I profoundly do not wish to see—allow us to catch up in the two key areas which were subjected to further delay on this occasion. It will be a matter of catching up.
  As the social provisions begin to come off the production line as individual items to be separately concluded in the protocol outside the Maastricht treaty, there will be enormous debate and discussion in the press in this country about the desirability of us, after all, accepting some—I emphasise "some"—of those individual proposals. That will be an interesting stage to see, either before or after the election. It will be interesting to see the reaction of people in all parties, including the party which still fundamentally believes in one nation and in basic elements of worker protection which have nothing to do with the illicit and undesirable resuscitation of trade union rights.
  In the meantime, it is not that we are hesitating fundamentally. The Government are fully committed to the next stage of monetary union. As chairman of the European Movement in Britain, I am entitled to say that the European movement from all countries marched at Maastricht. The parades, including the gallant band from Britain, and the torchlight processions—which were not reminiscent of torchlight processions in the past, I hasten to add, in case my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North gets excited—were not in vain. I anticipate that there will be a lively and profound European Movement campaign in Britain in 1992 to persuade us to abandon some of the more hesitant stances that we have shown so far and to perceive ourselves as full exponents of European union.
  6.27 pm
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: After the deliciously witty and perceptive speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) and after the truly formidable and memorable speech by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition—[HON. MEMBERS: "Crawler."] People have said many things about me, but I have never before been called a crawler. As one who was among the 69 Labour Members who failed to crawl and who voted to go into Europe, I am delighted with party policy.
  I turn to another aspect of Maastricht. The final communiqúe says:
  "Recalling the declaration issued by the Community and its member States on 2 December, the European Council
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  takes a most serious view of accusations against Libyan nationals in connection with the bombings of flight Pan Am 103 in December 1988 and of flight UTA 722 in September 1989. The European Council reaffirms its condemnation of all acts of terrorism wherever and by whomever committed.
  The European Council has noted the demands made of the Libyan authorities by the Governments of France, the United Kingdom and the United States on 27 November.
  It fully endorses these demands and calls on the Libyans to comply promptly and in full".
  Like a number of my colleagues who, a month ago, went to visit Libya and who have taken a long-standing interest in Arab affairs, I am deeply worried about this matter. What happens if the Libyans do not comply? And, to put it bluntly, I think that it is whistling in the wind to suppose that they will.
  Are we first of all to have sanctions, because if we have sanctions, the first people who will be hit by them are the 5,500 British engineers and other workers dependent on air links, who are earning our bread and butter and theirs in Libya at present.
  If the Government do not believe me about that, they should have a word with Dick Morris, the chairman of Brown and Root, one of the 36 British companies involved out there. I may say, for the benefit of my hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes), that Mr. Morris is also the chairman of Nirex and cannot be counted on as a particular political friend of ours. I think that the Government ought to talk to him and talk to those responsible to the British nationals in Libya. It is not good enough simply to say, "They went knowing the risks and deserve anything that happens. It is up to them." We cannot behave like that.
  Mr. David Winnick: Should not we bear in mind the fact that 250 people died as a result of this act of terrorism? Is my hon. Friend arguing that we should do nothing because British nationals may be the subject of retaliation if sanctions work? Such retaliation can always be used as blackmail by criminal dictatorships. Is my hon. Friend seriously suggesting that no action should be taken to bring these people to justice?
  Mr. Dalyell: I will not be lectured by anyone on what happened at Lockerbie. I went to Lockerbie; it is relatively near to my constituency. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) knows, the Lothian police had to clear it up. I talked to Rev. Kirk, the Minister of Lochmaben, and to Father Keegan, who lives in Sherwood crescent, and they do not want vengeance.
  Mr. Winnick: Not vengeance, justice.
  Mr. Dalyell: Justice is another thing; it is a very difficult situation. We must bear in mind the fact that there are many British expatriates involved.
  Mr. Norman Tebbit: The hon. Gentleman will be on to the Belgrano next.
  Mr. Dalyell: I can say to the Member who interrupted that, in 1986, when, as a result of what happened in La Belle discotheque, Berlin, there was an attack on Tripoli by aircraft based in this country by the Americans, the terrorist attack in Germany turned out not to have been Libyan inspired at all, but to have been inspired by Syrian and Iranian groups. It is uncharacteristic of the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Dykes) to make such interventions. [HON. MEMBERS: "Not Dykes, Tebbit."] The right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) was a

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  member of the Government responsible, and they got the wrong people. The bombing of the residential centre of Benghazi on the basis of false information has created an atmosphere in the Arab world that we fail to understand. British expatriates think well of their Libyan colleagues. When one talks to them out of their Libyan colleagues' earshot, that is the general view that they express. It may surprise the House to learn that they also pointed out that the Libyan Government were, as they understood it, pretty uncorrupt, and were not feathering their own nests.
  Mr. Garel-Jones: Feathering coffins.
  Mr. Dalyell: Would the Minister of State care to intervene?
  Mr. Garel-.Jones: Naturally, I accept that the hon. Gentleman is perfectly correct in raising this matter because it was referred to in the European Council transcript. I intervened to say that the Government of Libya may not be feathering their own nests but that they seem to be feathering other people's coffins.
  Mr. Dalyell: We had better get the evidence a bit clearer. The Minister knows a lot about Europe. Does he believe that the Italians would actually implement sanctions? Bluntly, I do not believe that, whatever Mr. Andreotti may or may not sign—and it may be a question of "may not sign"—given the Italian interest in the Libyans and their connections, there would be meaningful sanctions. We are talking about people who have the largest engineering project in the western world—the great man-made river project. Vast amounts of money and numerous contracts, particularly with Italy, are involved.
  If sanctions do not work, what will we be reduced to? Frankly, we will be reduced to the possibility of another air strike. The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. and learned Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg), gave me a polite interview this afternoon and I have no personal criticism of him. He reiterated once again that the Foreign Secretary had said that an air strike was not ruled out. The House often accepts that personal experience is relevant. I can only say that my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Riverside (Mr. Parry), for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell), for Tottenham (Mr. Grant), for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) and for Clydesdale (Mr. Hood) asked ex-ambassador Khaduri, who was the engineer in charge of the northern section of the great man-made river project, whether in 1986 there was any attack on that project, and he said no. He said quietly that the attack was not on the engineering project or on military installations but on people's homes, people's old people, people's children and people's houses. That was the feeling that prevailed in the place.
  Like Jim Swire, I was greatly moved by my visit to the museum which was once Colonel Gaddafi's house. On the first floor is the bedroom of the three-year-old daughter killed in the attack. Her toys are scattered around the room and there are pictures of the operation during which she died. I do not wonder that Jim Swire gave a moving account of how he and Colonel Gaddafi held hands with the pictures of their two daughters. It is a very emotional situation. Before we go any further down the road, we must ask whether we are seriously thinking about any kind of air strike, because it would be a catastrophe for us in the Arab world.
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  Last Friday, the Lord Advocate gave me a 50-minute interview. I choose my words carefully. As the longest serving Scottish Member of Parliament and the son-in-law of a previous Lord Advocate, I think that I can say that I have a healthy respect for the law, and his office. The Lord Advocate was impeccably courteous, but I do not have complete confidence in the Lord Advocate or the Crown Office—the Lothian police, those on my Front Bench and the Law Society know why. I do not take what the Lord Advocate says as gospel, but I urge that some legal authorities should at least meet the Libyan judge in Switzerland or elsewhere, because the Libyans say that they simply do not have the information for which they have been asking for a long time in relation to the Al Megrahi and Khalifa Fhimah. Would any country surrender its own nationals, as we are asking the Libyans to do, without any diplomatic relations? I think that we would not, unless we had a great deal more information than the Libyans have been given.
  Colonel Al-Dabari, the head of intelligence, said that
  "The two Libyan persons linked by the American and British Judiciary for the Pan American plane bombing in 1988 are in custody. The real criminal is now free."
  I do not underrate the awfulness of Lockerbie or the awfulness of modern war. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) has said, we must do everything to achieve justice in the matter. As I said to Mr. Richard Prentice, the Foreign Secretary's private secretary, and as I repeated to the Minister of State this afternoon, it is high time that the Government talked seriously to the British ophthalmologist, whose name and telephone number I have given to the Government, who regularly treats Colonel Gaddafi. It is high time that there was some understanding of what happens in that country, which is rather deeper than what appears in the tabloid press.
  Colonel Al-Dabari has said:
  "There is no law which says a country has to hand over its citizens for investigation in another country."
  Is that true? If not, what is the law or legal basis upon which the Government are making their demand? I have the first question for the Attorney-General at his next oral Question Time and it is on that very subject.
  Colonel Al-Dabari is quoted as saying:
  "There is no legal basis for saying that the investigation has to take place where the incident happened."
  Is that right? If not, what is the legal basis? I hope that the Minister who replies to this debate at 1.45 am will answer those points.
  The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. and learned Member for Grantham, has said:
  "if it is a form of state crime, you really cannot expect the victims to accept that the state responsible should be playing a significant part in investigating or in trying those that we charged with the events."
  That is one point of view. However, Professor Turner of the University of Kent wrote a letter to The Guardian on 19 November in which he stated:
  "There is a long list of similar questions that could be asked. Would the US have acceded to a request by the Hung Seng government in Cambodia to hand over for trial the US officials responsible for the completely illegal in both US and international law bombing of Cambodia in the seventies that cost more than 100,000 Cambodian lives? Will the US pay compensation to the relatives of 50,000 Chileans who lost their lives in the military coup in 1972, a coup organised and financed by the CIA to overthrow a democratically elected government, in violation of every significant principle in international law?"

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  [HON. MEMBERS: "What has this got to do with Maastricht]" The issue is referred to in the communiqué, so I am entitled to raise it tonight.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley knows about the Chilean situation.
  Professor Turner asked:
  "Will the US now hand over to Libya the officials for the illegal bombing of Tripoli in 1986."
  Even I would not have been in favour of the handing over of the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) for trial in Tripoli.
  With regard to the victims to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North, referred, Jim Swire, on behalf of most of the victims, claims that he is against retaliation. That view is shared by other people involved in that tragic loss. Do the Government believe that reprisals might alienate the Arab world? What is the Government's assessment of the likely impact of action on the middle east peace process?
  The semi-official Cairo press reflects unmistakable alarm. Mahfouz al-Ansari, the editor of al-Gomhuriya and close to Mr. Mubarak's chief political adviser, warned President Bush that any shots fired at Colonel Gaddafi would ricochet against America's Arab allies. He said:
  "You delivered your blow in the Gulf war, liberated Kuwait, and maintained legitimacy. Everyone stood behind you and with you, although the punishment was directed against a dear and brotherly country. However, this time around if you try to strike a blow or hand out punishment to another brother, to Libya, believe me, you will then be punishing friends, your friends, more than you will be punishing the colonel."
  A great deal more could be asked about this. For example, why did a former Transport Minister, the right hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon), in a press briefing, make it quite clear a few months after Lockerbie that the police had done a marvellous job and knew that the people who had perpetrated the crime were from Syria or Iran? Why are the suspects now entirely different from those leaked by the right hon. Member for Southend, West to the press when he was a Minister? Those serious questions must be answered.
  If it is said that I have no friends in believing that the Libyans might not be wholly responsible, I need simply refer to many reports and in particular The Guardian of 19 November in which, under the headline
  "Israel stands by Syrian link to Lockerbie",
  the Israelis are quoted as saying:
  "'We have never said that we knew the last link in the chain—the hand that actually planted the bomb' said Yigal Carmon, the adviser on counter-terrorism to the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir."
  He went on to say that they believed that others were involved.
  I make no apology for having raised this issue today. By the end of the Christmas recess, we may be sucked into action that will have a serious effect on this country, for many of our fellow countrymen and on our relations with the Arab world. The matter was properly raised in Maastricht. Whenever, around 2 am, the Minister replies, I will be here, and I hope that I will receive a response to my questions.
  6.47 pm
  Mr. Norman Tebbit: I am sure that the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) believes that those issues are more important than any other issue that we might debate today. I believe that the most compelling part of his speech was his suggestion that an Italian Government might not stand by a sanctions policy even if they agreed to one. Many of us might believe that, and the Euro-sceptics believe that that illuminates certain of the commitments into which the Government may enter.
  Sir Russell Johnston: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Tebbit: No, I will not give way.
  For the benefit of those who are more interested in the way in which I will vote than in what I will say, I must state that I will vote for the policies of the Government who were elected in 1987 under the prime ministership of my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) when I was chairman of the Conservative party. I am a little too old or perhaps too consistent to execute the nimble footwork required for a 180 deg change of tack. I shall vote against the outcome of the Maastricht conference.
  I say that sadly, because the Prime Minister has every right to be proud of the skill and determination with which he negotiated at Maastricht. The outcome might indeed have been very much worse. Indeed, had Britain been represented by a Labour Government, it undoubtedly would have been very much worse, not least because, as we were shown again today, although the Leader of the Opposition has many sterling qualities, mastery of the detail of complex documents is not among them.
  There was a great deal of talk at times at Maastricht about Waterloo, but, of course, Maastricht was not a Waterloo. Waterloo was a decisive victory—one which put back the time, if it ever comes, of monetary, economic and political union by a very long time. Maastricht was not an offensive battle of that kind. It was a limited battle—a defensive battle-and one in which Her Majesty's Government sought to minimise the damage which would be caused not just to this kingdom but to the European Community by the federalist follies if they had been allowed to go unchecked.
  None the less, there was established at Maastricht a series of bridgeheads into our constitution, into the powers of this House, and into the lives of individuals and businesses in this country. However, I believe that, despite the extremely well orchestrated eulogies over the outcome of Maastricht, or perhaps even because of them, far too little credit has been given to the Prime Minister for the skill with which he has created a new structure for co-operation at intergovernmental level which is distanced, above all, from the Commission.
  Unhappily, I doubt whether that structure is watertight or will remain so. In some areas, the European Parliament has involvement, in others the Commission, but none the less the structure which has been created has the possibility of becoming a non-federal road to the closer co-operation between the European nations which I and many others wish to see.
  Of course, in the excitement of Maastricht, the Prime Minister declared that he had won game, set and match. With another conference scheduled for 1996, the game is

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  not yet over, let alone the set or the match. Let me quote from the official journal of the Community of 12 December. It refers to the treaty creating
  "the European Union covering the Community's existing and increased responsibilities".
  It states:
  "These are … the creation of the common foreign and security policy covering the formulation in the longer term of a common defence policy. which may in time lead to a common defence; an increase in the role of the European Parliament … the appointment of an ombudsman plus an improvement in the Parliament's legislative powers by the introduction of the co-decision procedure; redefinition or extension of Community competence in education, training, cohesion, research and development, environment, transeuropean networks, industry, health, culture, consumer protection and development cooperation".
  That is not an insignificant list, followed, by the way, by the creation of a citizenship of the union—the union which begins to sound more and more like a state in many of its aspects. I oppose all of that, so I could hardly go along with the outcome. The draft treaty sets out specific objects, and among them is the promotion of the establishment of a single currency and economic union, as well as the strengthening of social cohesion through a new line of public expenditure. It also asserts the intention to implement a common foreign security and, eventually, defence policy.
  Opt-out clauses or no opt-out clauses, within those structures, Her Majesty's Government, by signing the treaty, will be committed to working for the attainment of those policies. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister took particular pride today in recollecting how President Eisenhower commented that, when the British sign up to something, they intend to honour it. Perhaps that is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer was uncharacteristically unable to say clearly whether, if the treaty conditions of convergence were met, there could be a case for Britain remaining outside the single currency. It seems to me that, unless there is in the Government's mind a clear possibility of that, the opt-out clause is nonsense.
  Moreover, why the opt-out clause if we are committing ourselves and Her Majesty's Government to work for the attainment of a single currency? That clearly implies that Her Majesty's Government have no objections in principle to the creation of a single currency, and that their objections must be solely on possible grounds of practicality at the time. That is an extremely worrying aspect.
  We—Her Majesty's Government—have agreed, as I have said, that the union and its member states shall—I emphasise the word "shall"; it is not "may"—
  "define and implement common foreign and security policy."
  What is more, it is declared—I checked today the wording in the current draft—that
  "Member states will, with regard to Council decisions requiring unanimity, to the extent possible avoid to prevent a unanimous decision where a qualified majority exists in favour of that decision."
  Setting aside the rather unfortunate translation, it seems to me that Her Majesty's Government have bound themselves to use their best endeavours not to veto an understanding on foreign policy which may emerge by a qualified majority. If it does not mean that, perhaps my right hon. Friend the Minister will tell me what it does mean. I presume that my understanding of the matter is correct.
  Mr. Garet-Jones: I am happy to answer my right hon. Friend now. The position is clear. No decision by qualified majority voting can be taken, or no subject can be brought up for qualified majority voting, unless that is agreed by unanimity. I think that that is clear.
  Mr. Tebbit: I am not at all sure that that is what the section says. Even allowing for the excruciating English, it seems to me to be an undertaking on the part of Her Majesty's Government that, where a decision might arise by a qualified majority, Her Majesty's Government will use every endeavour not to torpedo it by insisting on making it a question of unanimity. That is what it seems to me to mean.
  I do not have the advice of the Law Officers, but presumably the Government do, so perhaps I could be as helpful as I can to my right hon. Friends and suggest that they may come back later tonight with a very clear explanation of what that clause means. I hope that they will be able to clear it with our partners in the meantime, because it sounds very much to me as though it was in operation yesterday, when my right hon. Friend left the shores of Britain totally opposed to the recognition of Croatia and Serbia and came back totally convinced that they should be recognised. Whether that decision on recognition is right or good is not the point that I argue. It seems that, within a comparatively short trip, a substantial change in the Government's position was achieved.
  Mr. Garel-Jones: Perhaps I could help my right hon. Friend a little further. A decision to recognise Croatia has already been taken by both the United Kingdom and other members of the Community. It was the timing of recognition that was under discussion yesterday. [Interruption.] I am sure that my right hon. Friend wishes to hear my reply, even if Opposition Members do not. It was agreed yesterday that if, in the opinion of the arbitration committee under Lord Carrington, certain conditions had been met, recognition would take place. If those conditions are not met, Her Majesty's Government, and, indeed, their partners in the Community, will be free to take their own decision.
  Mr. Tebbit: I am happy to have my hon. Friend's explanation, because I am sure that it comes as a great illumination not only to me but to the assembled corps of press and television journalists and everyone else who has been writing about the matter.
  Mr. William Cash: And Chancellor Kohl.
  Mr. Tebbit: And, indeed, Chancellor Kohl, as my hon. Friend says.
  Clearly, we had all got the wrong end of the stick. But I am glad that we have all been disillusioned and told that we had it completely wrong, and that the Government had a covert, unknown policy which they were too shy to explain to the world at large.
  Mr. Gerald Kaufman: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Tebbit: I am always eager to accept a little help from the right hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. Kaufman: I am afraid I am not able to provide any help to the right hon. Gentleman. I fear that I must disillusion him. What the Minister of State has just told

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  him was not what the Foreign Secretary told the House at Question Time today. The Foreign Secretary gave an entirely different set of criteria for the possible recognition of the Yugoslav republics by the United Kingdom.
  Mr. Tebbit: I am not sure whether that was helpful or not. It seemed to me to show that many of us were confused about the policy of Her Majesty's Government.
  I notice that the treaty also requires that the presidency will represent the union—this new creation—in matters which come within common foreign and security policy. It will
  "be responsible for the implementation of common measures; in that capacity it shall in principle express the position of the Union in international organisations and international conferences".
  Exactly what does that mean? Is the United Nations Security Council an international organisation or conference? If the union has a common policy on matters which are to be discussed within the Security Council, will it be represented by the presidency? Will the United Kingdom be represented by the presidency? As my right hon. Friend knows, there are two nations within the union which hold a veto in the Security Council.
  I understand that the matters which I raise are difficult, but it should not be necessary for my hon. Friend the Minister to look too far into the documents to say whether the policy that appears to be set out here—that the presidency shall represent the union for matters which come within common foreign and security policy—will make any difference to the way in which Britain is represented in the United Nations.
  Mr. Garel-Jones: I am happy to set my right hon. Friend's mind at rest. The position of the United Kingdom and the Republic of France as members of the Security Council is specifically safeguarded in the treaty.
  Mr. Tebbit: I am grateful to hear that. But what about other aspects of the United Nations? In which intergovernmental conferences and organisations will we be represented by the presidency? It is a pretty unclear piece of work. Or, indeed, it was pretty clear until my hon. Friend the Minister began to explain it.
  Ms. Clare Short: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Tebbit: No.
  While I realise that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister feels that he has hedged around the bridgeheads established by the Community and the union with good defensive positions, all experience within the Community suggests that it will expand from any bridgehead which it has been given.
  Mr. Favell: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. Tebbit: No, if my hon. Friend will excuse me.
  As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has suggested, it would not be honourable for Britain to sign up to those aims and objectives without sincerely intending to implement them.
  So now there are many other European dimensions. The treaty refers to a European dimension in education and says:
  "The Community shall implement a vocational training policy."
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  Then, under a protocol on economic and social cohesion, all 12 nations have agreed that a cohesion fund will be set up which will support
  "member states with a per capita GNP of less than 90 per cent. of Community average".
  It sounds as if there will be many beneficiaries of the fund, but not too many payers-in.
  I am glad to hear the words of my old friend Otto Lambsdorff in Germany. He questions how long people in Germany will be willing to bear the excessive costs of supporting poorer areas. I do not share the optimism of the Leader of the Opposition that all the money required could come out of the funding of the common agricultural policy. That could happen only over the dead bodies of the French, the Italians, the Bavarians, the Irish, and one or two others who would constitute something like a blocking majority.
  The treaty commits us to further policies. No one could object to being committed to ensuring prudent and rational utilisation of natural resources. Presumably it is within that envelope that the Environment Commissioner will campaign for the much-talked-about tax on hydrocarbons, while his friend the Energy Commissioner proposes to subsidise coal mining. Those two policies seem slightly incompatible, but I understand the needs of social cohesion between the German miners and the Federal Government, which coughs up an illegal subsidy of £14 billion a year to its coal-mining industry.
  The treaty also contains a definition of subsidiarity. Oh, subsidiarity is a marvellous thing. Presumably it is under the doctrine of subsidiarity that we are not to fix our own speed limits for lorries and motor coaches on our roads. They will be fixed "at the appropriate level". The appropriate level will presumably be the union, the federal or the Brussels level. How on earth can that happen under the new definition of subsidiarity? It seems to me that subsidiarity means whatever I say it should mean.
  We also find in the treaty a new commitment that
  "the Community shall contribute to the establishment and development of trans-European networks in the areas of transport, telecommunications and energy infrastructures"
  The Council may, by qualified majority, establish guidelines
  "covering the objectives, priorities and broad lines of measures envisaged in the sphere of trans-European networks".
  I ask myself whether every right hon. and hon. Member in the House knows in this context what a trans-European network is. I would love to go round the House asking hon. Members whether they have checked the definition and whether they are happy that the guidelines should be binding on us and should be reached by qualified majority voting. In order to encourage hon. Members to peruse the treaty with great care, I shall let them all go and read the relevant section—indeed, find it themselves—to discover what a trans-national network is.
  Lastly, I turn to monetary union. As I have said before, it is possible to argue that a single currency either would be of economic benefit to the Community or would not. I happen to take the second view, and to believe that, until convergence—not the measurements for the economists but real convergence, in terms of living standards and gross domestic product—is achieved, a single currency would be a disaster. It would lock into everlasting poverty in the Community those who are already in poverty. It would require the movement of massive sources of funds and of millions of people. They would both bring about

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  the resentments which are already fuelling the march of the Nazis and neo-Nazis in Germany, the National Front in France, the Lombardy Front, the Vlaams Blok and others. Those forces will be unleashed and will destroy the European Community, which has achieved so much good for Europe in the past 40 years.
  Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd): The Standing Order must now be applied and speeches must last no longer than 10 minutes.
  7.10 pm
  Mr. Robert Sheldon: The right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) mentioned the role of the central bank, which is what I wish to talk about most. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was right to try to circumscribe the work that it would do. The proposed central bank needs to be dealt with in that way.
  One tradition is common to all parties of the left and centre—there has always been a deep suspicion of banks and bankers. That suspicion has not extended merely to the socialist parties, but also to the Democratic party in America, the centre parties in Europe and social democrats elsewhere, who have all regarded the power of such banks with awe and apprehension—the literature is abundant and the cartoons remain for ever in our minds.
  The reason for that is the power of banks and bankers. If they have not been regulated, they have always been able to close companies, to withdraw support from Governments and to dominate economies. Additionally, they naturally want a high exchange rate, which provides strength for their international operations, and high interest rates to add to their profitability, which is not always in the best interests of the country concerned. That is why the nationalisation of the Bank of England received such wide support in 1945. Even Tories voted for it.
  Those people who call for independence must ask themselves why the measure to nationalise the Bank of England gained such acceptance. Those who look to the Bundesbank as a model for Britain and the Community must ask themselves how it makes its decisions. Is it always unanimous? If it makes decisions in that way, we must ask what they are. What level of inflation does it want to achieve? Is it 3 per cent., 2 per cent., 1 per cent. or zero? Do the members of the Bundesbank always come to the same conclusion, and who decides? Such matters are largely political and at a time of crisis they become even more political.
  Why has the Bundesbank been so successful? We must question whether it has been all that successful. The Bundesbank did not create the German economic miracle—it was made by companies such as Volkswagen, Bayer-Hoechst and Siemens. They owe little to the Bundesbank, but it owes everything to the success of Germany industry. Out of the devastation, the expertise and skills of the work force remained. Whatever is destroyed can be recreated and improved if the people remain. Our own greatest wasted assets are the liabilities and skills in the hands and minds of our people. Germany exploited them and we did not. That also happened in Japan. The economic miracle was not a miracle of brilliant minds within the Government or the central bank—it came from manufacturing industry. So when we consider
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  such matters—creating research teams and design offices we—must remember that it was German industry rather than the bank which produced the miracle.
  People who call for an independent central bank and for a Eurobank must look to a future in which it might have to deal not merely with a recession like the one that we have just experienced, but with slump and depression. We must not assume that we have finally eliminated all those problems which occurred so often in previous decades and centuries. It is easy to abandon Government intervention at a time of prosperity, but we must take into account the less happy situations which have been experienced in every century and which we may have to deal with again. At such times, Government intervention is required. Measures taken in the 1930s, such as Franklin Roosevelt's new deal, which was hated by bankers, could come into their own. There could be a time when Governments have to take charge of economies for the sake of their citizens, whom only they can represent.
  I used to hold the opinion that an international depression was not possible because Governments would overcome their differences when faced with such a catastrophe. I cannot be sure that they would do that and with a Eurobank I shall be even less sure.
  What do we mean when we talk about control of the central bank? The controllers would be a body of 12 Finance Ministers seeking to control the immense financial power of the Eurobank, faced with all the difficulties of language and communication. The power of the bank would rival that of national Governments. That is the monster that we could be creating.
  If all Governments, or even only the major Governments, were agreed and exercised their powers it might just work, but there could be differences of view. In a crisis, one or more of the major countries might find the situation acceptable. If there were such a division of view—one would need to be a great optimist to rule that out—those who pressed for inaction would be most likely to win. Without a decisive political viewpoint, the bankers' view would almost certainly prevail.
  It is hard to overemphasise the power of the head of the Eurobank. The day-to-day decision making provides enormous power, which to a large extent would have to be conceded. At a time of crisis, faced with a part-time group of Finance Ministers, invariably holding different viewpoints and anxious to return to their own countries, the head of the Eurobank would be almost unchallengeable.
  The right hon. Member for Chingford mentioned the problems of convergence and there are also problems of regional development. Those will always be difficult to reconcile with problems of growth. As the right hon. Gentleman said, convergence is what it is all about and there are few pointers as to how it will be achieved.
  However, all of that is subordinate to the haste with which these monumental changes are being rushed forward. The Community seems to be intent on preparing a blueprint which we are called upon to accept. There seems little place for organic growth, for co-operation leading to trust, for greater confidence leading to changes in the light of experience rather than as a result of a brainstorm. The Community should be trying to restore that process. There are enthusiasts who want to change the entire working of the Community, in contrast with the clearly nonsensical common agricultural policy, which is

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  removed from any sensible reform. What a statement of priorities: if we cannot change the CAP, let us concentrate instead on a constitutional revolution.
  Greater confidence in the workings of the Community is required. Before giving it greater powers and losing some of our own, we should examine how the existing arrangements are being administered. That is where I feel that changes need to be made.
  Let us look at the report of the Court of Auditors and the strictures that it makes. The reports which illustrate implementation of Community policies are also important. The Public Accounts Committee report on external trade measures for agricultural produce states that West Germany had 583 irregularities, the United Kingdom had 130 and Greece had two. In another report Britain had 11, Germany had 28 and Italy had none. Those figures do not stretch one's credulity because they are obvious nonsense. The auditors' report needs teeth to bring about changes. Countries which tend to abide by the laws must not be disadvantaged by those who have a more relaxed or even a corrupt approach to Community regulations. If we are to grow together, we must have a minimum of trust in the administrative competence and will of member Governments.
  I look forward to a number of actions which need to be taken. First, the Community's published accounts and financial and performance information need to be presented in a clear form. Many people who are best fitted to query financial matters cannot be expected to undertake an investigation to discover where the money went. The figures must be properly set out in the way that the National Audit Office has done so successfully.
  Secondly, there must be more effective ways to hold the Commission to account for its expenditure. Personal accountability is important. In Britain we have that. We have accounting officers who carry the responsibility. If one wants a job for the European Parliament, let us forget some of the nonsensical views which have been put forward and let the extra powers be used to investigate areas of expenditure which are clearly fraudulent. There are already some links between the National Audit Office and the Commission and I hope that these will be extended.
  What saddens me most is that the problems that I have outlined should have been appreciated by many other countries in the Community. They include the difficulties of convergence, the power of the Eurobank and the difficulties in getting control over such a body. The question before the Community is whether it has the ability and the political will to bring about the essential changes in a moving and not invariably crisis-free world.
  I want a solution. I voted for entry against a three-line Whip, and I would do it again. I do not want to he locked out, but the main debate should be about the way the Community meets the basic needs of its members, providing wider opportunities and improving prosperity, establishing greater trust between countries, encouraging compatibility while respecting distinctiveness. That is what should concern us most. We should turn our attention in that direction. Mr. Delors has been too clever by half. It is time for the realists to take control.
  7.21 pm
  Sir Peter Tapsell: When the then Conservative Prime Minister returned from the Congress of Berlin with the plaudits of the world ringing in his ears, after helpful interventions by the German Chancellor Bismarck, he arrived by train at Victoria station. He was met by the diplomatic correspondent of The Times, who asked, "Lord Beaconsfield, how does it feel to hear the cheers of the world ringing in your ears?" Dizzy, after a pause, replied, "The whole world? There is no one left." What it is generally thought that he meant was that his mother, his wife and his sister were all by then dead, but it was also a reflection of a great statesman aware of the highly ephemeral nature of human achievement.
  Our present Prime Minister has come back from another conference, again with the plaudits of the world, and certainly those of almost the whole of the Conservative party, ringing in his ears. I join in these cheers. He, together with his team—the Foreign Secretary, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office—did a brilliant negotiating job. In a difficult situation, they brought back a result that was much better than the one that I expected and feared. However, I do not share, and have never shared, the enthusiasm of those who wish to rush forward into a federal Europe.
  In the 32 years that I have been a Member of Parliament, I have always voted the pro-European ticket. I voted in favour of the original application to join the Common Market in 1961 by the then Harold Macmillan, which started our negotiations for entry. I have continued to vote the pro-European ticket at every point. The nature of the case that we have to put to our constituents has altered a great deal during my time in the House. I voted against the referendum proposal because I am against referendums in principle, but when the referendum was held in 1975, I campaigned actively in favour of Europe, making 35 speeches. In every one of those speeches, I gave the people whom I was addressing, including those in my constituency in Lincolnshire, a categorical assurance that Britain could never be forced to do anything of vital national importance to which it had not consented. I said that we would always have the right to veto anything against our fundamental national security and social desires. I meant that at the time, as did all my colleagues who campaigned along similar lines in the run up to the referendum, from the leader of my party downwards.
  A different situation has now arisen, and we must apply our minds to it. I shall confine my remarks entirely to the single currency, which is what I know most about anyway from my commercial experience, but also because it is by far the most important aspect of the matters under discussion. There are two aspects to the single currency—accountability and practicality. One of the things that astonish me about the parliamentary Labour party is that it hardly seems to worry about accountability. It is surely the case that if we have a single currency for the whole of Europe and a single central bank, we in the House of Commons will lose control over many of the key matters that so much affect our national life.
  The Labour party is making a great and understandable fuss about mortgages, but mortgages, as we all know, are intimately linked to the current rate of interest. Once

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  there is a single currency and a single central bank, the rate of interest will not be decided by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England.
  Mr. Budgen: It is not now.
  Sir Peter Tapsell: I will not go into the issue of the exchange rate mechanism, because I was not in favour of joining it in the first place. The United States is also in a serious recession, but has interest rates of 4·5 per cent. compared to ours of 10·5 per cent. Were we not members of the exchange rate mechanism, I have no doubt that our interest rates and therefore our mortgage rates would be lower. However, I do not want to get drawn into that wider argument, although it underlines the point that I am making. Just this first step—joining the ERM—has limited our economic room for manoeuvre and the further steps towards monetary union that are suggested will take it away altogether.
  The question is whether we are prepared to give up what the House has existed for 800 years to defend and for which our predecessors have fought—control of the economy and the distribution of money, and the control of taxation which stems from that. That will disappear if we become members of a single European currency. It is extraordinary that the parliamentary Labour party, which has always been critical of the European concept, has gone overboard on this. As far as one can understand from the speech of the Leader of the Opposition earlier today, he would sign, straight away, now, a commitment to join the single European currency in 1997, irrespective of the economic situation of this country, of Europe or of the world at that time. As Labour Governments have never been able to foresee what was going to happen to the economy even six weeks ahead, I do not know how the Labour party can be so confident about the situation in six years' time.
  The second aspect is practicality. I rather agree with the fear expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit), that unless there is an extraordinary economic and social convergence and a convergence of standards of living throughout Europe—by then it may stretch not just from the Atlantic to the Urals but from the Baltic to the Black sea—there will be tremendous unemployment and discontent in foreign regions.
  I know that part of the scheme is an immense transfer of wealth from the richer to the poorer countries, but we all know from our constituency experience that even such a modest scheme as the rate support grant, which was introduced by Winston Churchill in the 1920s to help the poorer parts of England by transferring to them rate income from the richer areas, caused tremendous difficulties. In my constituency, throughout my time in the House, I have always heard complaints in the shire counties that people have to pay more in rates to support the industrial poor of the north. Already, criticism is building up in Germany of this concept that huge sums of German taxpayers' money will be transferred elsewhere. The burden that the five new lander impose on west Germany is only a first example of the burden that will fall on the German taxpayer in order to fulfil those obligations. I am doubtful whether they will long be prepared to meet them.
  We should recognise that the French have been able to stay inside the exchange rate mechanism only by devaluing
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  their currency seven times. When the French have a single currency and cannot devalue, what will they do? We all know what they will do. I know because I have a French wife—they will go out into the streets and fight. Let us not put Britain and modern Europe into a position where the fate of our continent will be determined, as has been the case so often in the past, by the hurling of paving stones around the Champs Elysees.
  7.31 pm
  Mr. Tony Banks: It was rather wretched of the hon. Member for East Lindsey (Sir P. Tapsell) to criticise my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, who today gave a bravura performance. It contrasted with the Prime Minister's downbeat effort. Quite frankly, he gave us a vision of the future, and it yawns. It is obvious that he now realises that the deal that he brought back from Maastricht will not stick either in the country or with Conservative Members.
  I accept that the Prime Minister enjoyed some success at Maastricht, but it was a party political success. It was not a national success; it was not a success for Britain. As is usually the case, the interests of the Tory party were put before the interests of the country. The Prime Minister set out to get the best deal that he could for the Tory party, not for Britain. He failed to get a deal for Britain that is worth the paper on which it is written.
  Initially—and this is interesting—the right hon. Gentleman threw dust in the eyes of his party's right wing, especially the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher). As we have heard, she was thrilled by the outcome at Maastricht. The right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) gave an excellent party-pooper speech: he was more appalled than thrilled by the outcome. I know that one should not repeat private conversations, but when he was on his way to the Library, I heard him say, "I am just off to read the small print in the treaty." He obviously went to the Library and read the small print to good effect because he has revealed matters to Conservative Members that I do not think they previously knew. Certainly, the right hon. Member for Finchley did not know. She knows as little about the consequences and implications of the Maastricht treaty as she knew about the likely consequences of the Single European Act. She has revealed her ignorance on two separate occasions.
  Mr. Tebbit: In fairness to my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), when she made that remark she was referring to the Prime Minister's performance in the House of Commons earlier that day—and it was an excellent performance.
  Mr. Banks: I accept what the right hon. Gentleman says. I think that, perhaps, there is a little clever rewriting of history. When the right hon. Lady said that she was thrilled by Maastricht, I thought that her social life must be very down at the moment if she could be thrilled by that.
  The double opt-out of the single currency and the social chapter represents a sticking plaster that the Prime Minister has tried to put over Tory party divisions. It will not hold—it is already breaking up. I have time for the Prime Minister; I like him as an individual. However, he gave a terrible performance today. I think that it was

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  because he realises that he has brought back a bum deal that will not stick in the country or in the Conservative party.
  The opt-out of the single currency is politically and economically unrealistic. The right hon. Member for Chingford revealed that. Either there will not be sufficient convergence and the single currency will be delayed by the other countries, or there will be sufficient convergence and it would be economic suicide for Britain to try to opt out of the agreement to move towards a single currency.
  I thought it degrading that this country alone should not sign the social chapter. After 12 years of Thatcherism, British workers will be denied the rights of workers in Spain, Greece and Portugal. The Prime Minister said that the social chapter would destroy our competitive advantage. Does he really mean that we need a low-wage, long-hours, short-holidays, sweated-labour economy in order to be competitive in Europe and the world? If so, what an indictment that is of 12 years of Thatcherism.
  Does anyone really believe that the Germans, the French, the Dutch, the Italians, and all the others really want to destroy their competitiveness? I cannot understand it. That is a simple question and I am a simple fellow. How can 11 countries sign, and one country not? That is all I want to know. I cannot believe that there is a collective death wish among the 11 countries that are our partners in Europe. Those countries contain some of the most successful economies in the world. It was ideology and party political considerations that motivated the Prime Minister's attitude towards the social chapter—it certainly was not economic factors. He revealed himself as a Thatcherite with a grin.
  Despite the fact of the double opt-out—and again I agree with the right hon. Member for Chingford—we are still inexorably and irresistibly moving towards ever closer union in Europe—or ecu, to use the right term. Chingford has spotted it, and I welcome it very much. Although the word "federal" was omitted from the final treaty, what is in a word? We are still moving towards a federal Europe. This is an issue on which I disagree violently with my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing)—as violently as one could disagree with him. I hope that that happens and, indeed, that we go a great deal further. I want a United States of Europe, with our own independent foreign and defence policies. Of course, it must be a democratic federal Europe, and the enormous democratic deficit must be filled. It does not mean that we will be overruled by faceless bureaucrats in Brussels. We have to make sure that the Commissioners are accountable to an enlarged and empowered European Parliament.
  With all the democratic traditions of this country, have we no confidence that we can make a federal Europe as democratic as what we have achieved in this country? What is so wonderful about the nation state? Its days are numbered. It has been an interesting contrast to watch western Europe moving closer together while eastern Europe breaks up. The difference is that in eastern Europe an empire is being broken—an empire based on force and coercion. The west has mature democracies, and they are coming together voluntarily because, through their collective strength, they can achieve a great deal both individually and collectively.
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  I like what is happening and I want the process to continue. It is true that I now have a different attitude—I have managed to do a 180 deg. turn, something that the right hon. Member for Chingford said that he could not do. I have done it because circumstances have changed dramatically in eastern Europe—[Laughter.] Hon. Members may laugh, but politicians should be able to explain why they have changed their views. It is a foolish politician who pretends that he was right then, is right now, and allows no change. "I have never changed my mind," some politicians say, "I never apologise, never explain." That is the death knell of politics. We must always explain and, if necessary, apologise. Of course, I am not apologising—I am saying that my position has changed because of the momentous events in eastern Europe.
  The opportunity being presented to our generation of politicians is one of involvement in the peaceful redrawing of the map of Europe, for the first time ever. There is the possibility of a Europe that stretches from the Atlantic to the Urals. There could be a new federal structure that would take on board not just the EFTA countries—that would be easy—but the emerging democracies of eastern Europe. That is the future for this country, that is the future for Europe, and I welcome it. The right hon. Member for Chingford deplores much of what happened at Maastricht; I welcome it. However, I believe that the Prime Minister tried to do a deal for his party, not for his country.
  7.39 pm
  Mr. Jonathan Aitken: There is a great debate to be held on the Maastricht summit, although not the debate launched by the leader of the Labour party and his associates this afternoon. The hon. Member for Newham, North-West, (Mr. Banks), with an uncharacteristic touch of sycophancy, referred to the speech by the Leader of the Opposition as a bravura performance. I must say that it was the best speech that the Leader of the Opposition has made this year, but to those of us who have had to listen to all the others in the past 12 months that is hardly the ultimate accolade.
  What staggers me about the Leader of the Opposition is that when he chooses his weapons for a great debate he manages to pick boomerangs, and I am sure that his speech today will boomerang against him and his party. The cheers that he received from his Back Benchers this afternoon will end, I predict, in the jeers of the electorate because, by his ardent advocacy of the social chapter, he is going to lose the votes of 5·5 million part-time workers whose jobs will be threatened when they have to pay national insurance and whose employers will have to pay them full-time rates, as the social chapter demands. He will also lose the votes of 2·5 million overtime workers, many of whom would be denied the right to earn their overtime by the restrictions of the social chapter.
  Above all, it is extraordinary that the whole Labour party suddenly wants to embrace the social chapter and leave social affairs to Europe—one thinks of all that guff about the Health and Safety Executive. Surely, if there is one thing that this House can do well—and should, under the principle of subsidiarity—it is to devise health and safety legislation here. When we last debated the issue on 27 October 1989, when there were only four Labour Members present, they all agreed that health and safety

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  legislation in this country was superior to that proposed by Europe. I am amazed, therefore, that Opposition Members have led us off on this wild goose chase—turning the social chapter into the great issue on which they will fight the Prime Minister's stewardship at Maastricht.
  No; the debate that we ought to have is the one opened up by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit). Do these treaties as they have been negotiated set us ever more inexorably down the road to a European federal super-state, or do they offer Britain and other member states the chance to build the Europe of the future with greater flexibility, more emphasis on co-operation outside the treaty of Rome and the retention of adequate powers for national Parliaments and Governments? That is really the crucial question, and I should like to try to answer it from the viewpoint of a longstanding Euro-sceptic—one who, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford, is not usually in the business of doing 180 deg. turns.
  Those of us who have followed the European debate for the past 10 or 15 years know that the European Community, despite British protests, has been moving steadily in a federal direction. Those who drafted the Maastricht treaty were quite right to include that phrase in the preamble, or chapeau. It was a pleasant surprise that it was taken out as a result of British pressure. From 1972 to 1986 we moved in this federal direction with, in the Fabian phrase, the inevitability of gradualness; but from 1986 onwards. hastened on by the Single European Act, passed through this House under a guillotine, we stopped travelling with the inevitability of gradualness and started to travel down the federal road with the inevitability and rapidity of a train grande vitesse, with Mr. Delors as the engine driver. One of the most significant results of Maastricht may be that the runaway Delors train, destination United States of Europe on a one-track line, may have been slowed down. But we have certainly been offered some alternative routes and destinations. These alternative routes and destinations may become much more attractive to the other passengers in Europe as time goes by.
  Here I want to pick up a point made in the serious part of his entertaining speech by the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey). He highlighted the fact that ours is the only national legislature so far to have debated this issue seriously. As other national legislators in member states start to debate the Maastricht treaty there are already signs that opinion may be shifting. I do not say that closer union will not take place, but it will happen differently as a result of the German Parliament waking up to what is occurring. Other national Parliaments will also become aware of it and French political pressures may come into play—all leading to changes.
  For the first time there is a chance that these changes may turn out to be different from the original blueprint. The treaty of Rome augmented by the Single European Act was a conveyor belt to federalism. Unanimity was its watchword, the European Court was its watchdog and the Commission its driving force. But the treaties of Maastricht have allowed some different thinking to emerge. There are pillars of co-operation outside the treaty now. Subsidiarity has been defined, although somewhat imperfectly. The jurisdiction of the European Court is now severely limited and opt-outs and opt-ins have, if not been blessed, at least been introduced and allowed.
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  My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford asks the vital question: is this structure watertight? I do not know the answer, although I do not believe that it is as waterlogged as he seems to think it is. There is at least some basis for saying that new structures have become possible. If these pillars of co-operation work well there will be some stirrings towards a different sort of Europe, a Europe which would not follow these blueprints which have caused us such anguish in the past few years.
  Will this system work? What has been negotiated? Will the Western European Union start to be a significant force? Will law and order co-operation under the pillar outside the treaty of Rome start to function? Let us not forget the importance of the European-Atlantic alliance. The special relationship between Britain and the United States has been the cornerstone of our democratic values and suddenly to start, as the federalists want, to throw that out of the window is quite wrong. I am glad that that was stopped—at least I hope it was—by the continual references in the treaty to NATO and the Atlantic alliance.
  Unlike my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford, I shall go through the lobbies in support of the Government, for the following reasons. The first is common ground between us—the Prime Minister and his colleagues delivered a negotiating triumph, in the sense that they brought back more than they promised ——
  Mr. Tebbit: Less than was threatened.
  Mr. Aitken: Indeed. It was a tactical success and a considerable achievement. Certain qualities of steel were required beside mere negotiating skills. Like Horatius, the Prime Minister held the bridge.
  Was Maastricht a strategic success as well? On that, the jury is still out; time alone will tell. What is certain is that the federalists will fight back, having suffered a reverse, not a defeat. The next phase of the battle in Europe as we approach the future of the common agricultural policy and of the budget will be between centralising federalists and flexible co-operators. At the moment, the flexible co-operating party is led by a party of one : Britain. It should not worry us that Britain stands alone; we have a long and proud history of standing alone in Europe and of being proved right afterwards. There are signs, picked up by the right hon. Member for Leeds, East, that sentiment in Europe is changing. I can see a Europe with more co-operation between member states, less domination by the Commission, more a la carte dishes and more flexibility. None of these things seemed possible under the treaty of Rome and the Single European Act.
  I am waiting for events to unfold, but if Europe goes the way that I have described this evening, as I think it may because of enlargement, and because of outside events such as Soviet developments, history will be grateful to the Horatius who held the bridge for long enough so that alternative plans and schemes could evolve. The ranks of Tuscany will cheer him then. This Euro-sceptic has enough faith in him to cheer him and to vote for him tonight.
  7.49 pm
  Ms. Clare Short: I want to use my 10 minutes to explain why I am one of those who voted firmly against our remaining members of the Common Market when we had the referendum, but now believe strongly that Britain's future lies in Europe and that we should try to shape the future of Europe. I do not

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  do so for reasons of self-justification, but because much of the debate in this country has been full of confused language, misunderstandings of history and of post-imperial delusions of nationhood from the Tory party. That has confused the debate about what is really being constructed now—democratic and political institutions that are new in the history of the world.
  My vote at the time of the referendum was fairly expensively well-informed because I was working in Whitehall and spent a week in Brussels being briefed about the institutions of the Common Market. As a civil servant, I behaved non-politically, although I have always held the political views that I hold today. I have, of course, modified the way in which I think that they should be applied in the light of the movement of history. However, as a socialist, I believe that it is our job to civilise the behaviour of wealth and capital so that it can be used to improve the quality of people's lives throughout the world. That is the job of politics. It is not to rip people's lives and countries apart, but to use democracy and politics to civilise the behaviour of wealth.
  When I scrutinised the institutions of the Common Market at the time of the referendum, I saw that they were fixed for free marketeering. They excluded social regulation and entrenched the free market. Therefore, because I have always believed in the need for social regulation, I cast my vote in that referendum firmly and clearly against Britain's entry. I accept the consequence of that vote in which I held the minority view. As we live in a democratic nation, one cannot insist on a vote being retaken simply because one has lost. Those, however, were my reasons. I understood them and knew why I had taken that view.
  I take a different view now because history has moved on. The confusion about Thatcherism, Reaganism and New Right monetarist projects is that they were part of that moving on of history and of the new movement of capital, but their proponents do not seem to understand their political consequences.
  Under the right hon. Members for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) and for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit), the Tory party pressed forward with deregulation so that capital could flow across the world as it wished. The nation state lost its economic sovereignty. There was a massive, historic era shift. We are talking about a change in history that is as big as the shift from feudalism to the nation state. Given their record, I am sure that those right hon. Members would have fought today for feudalism. Funnily enough, however, they were part of the project that diminished the capacity of the nation state to be the unit of democratic organisation in the world by which humanity can try to civilise the behaviour of capital.
  I now believe that the people of the world need political institutions that go beyond nation states to strengthen the behaviour of capital as it moves beyond the nation states. That is what is going on—not only in Europe, but in America, Canada and Mexico. Our sister party in Canada, which opposed the free market, has said, "We'll go with it, but with a social charter." It has said no to the free movement of capital without any regulation to take account of people, but has added, "Yes, we can see capital reorganising like that and, if there can be a political
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  dimension of regulation for people, we'll go along with it." The same things are happening on the Pacific rim. That is where we are in history—we are in a new era.
  I believe that I am representative of my party in holding those views and very much go along with the explanation that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition gave of our shift of view on this question—[ Laughter.] No, in my view this is a matter of the history of the world. We are in a new era and silly little men—[Interruption.] Who is that silly little man?
  Mr. Tony Banks: It is the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes).
  Ms. Short: The hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) is giggling, but giggling about party-political matters is not to rise to the challenge of a shift in history. The hon. Gentleman simply wants to play silly little party-political games, which is what the leader of his party is doing, instead of talking seriously about what is happening to our nation, our future, our people and the people of Europe and of the world. I despise the tone that many, but not all, Tory Members have brought to the debate.
  Like the leader of my party, I have changed my stance, because Europe has changed and allowed in the social dimension. It therefore reconnects to my original politics in that I want to regulate the behaviour of capital and to civilise it for people, and I believe that the nation state has lost the capacity to do that job. That is why I now say that we must embrace Europe. The social charter or the social chapter is at the heart of this issue for me, because, without it, we have only the free rip of capital.
  Following our last appearance on "Question Time", the right hon. Member for Chingford and I had a conversation about this matter in which he said that he had changed his view for exactly the same reasons that I have changed mine. He was in favour of Europe in the days of the referendum because he believes in unregulated free markets and in the chance for capital to rip. He voted for Europe then, but is against it now because of social regulation. We agreed that both our views were consistent and that the reasons that I was against Community membership then but I am in favour of it now are exactly his reasons for holding the opposite view. I must advise the hon. Member for Harrow, West that this is not a matter of silly party-political games. It is about my serious political understanding of the way in which history is moving.
  I am ashamed of our country advertising itself in Europe as the sweatshop of Europe. I am ashamed that that is the only level of civilisation to which we can aspire. I am angry because of what that offers my constituents for the future in terms of their quality of life and level of income. Members of the British Tory party are saying, "Mr. Delors has said that Japan will dump its capital in Britain because our labour will be cheap." But that means that our people will live badly, have low incomes and be less well educated and trained. That is the future that the British Tory party is offering the people of Britain. If I am ashamed, they should be deeply and utterly ashamed.
  Furthermore, that view will not work, because a modern successful economy must have high levels of education, training and investment, and a co-operative and flexible work force. That is how we shall define the

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  successful economies of the future. Sweatshop Britain is not only undesirable to live in; it will fail economically, yet that is what the Tory party is offering the British people.
  I share some of the fears of those who have been criticising some of the detailed terms of the treaty on economic and monetary union. In mainland Europe, there is a desperation about the destabilisation of Europe that we do not fully share. There is fear about Germany's economic might and about a reunited Germany. We must bear in mind the memories of those who were occupied by Germany during the second world war. There is also fear about instability in eastern Europe and about the possibility of Germany turning from western Europe and starting to look to eastern Europe for its political alliances. There is, therefore, a desperation about political union and about the need to tie in Germany.
  The desperation about building a stable western Europe in the face of massive and dangerous instability in eastern Europe has led to a willingness to move towards economic and monetary union with such speed that it could be politically destructive. On that, I share the view of the right hon. Member for Chingford. If we opt for the stringent, deflationary conditions that are built into the Maastricht agreement, which allow room for flexibility in negotiations in the future, we could see a further rise in unemployment across Europe, and further rises in racist and fascist movements, making for a dangerous future.
  Therefore, although my underlying analysis is that we should go with it and that further union is inevitable, it is a joke for the Tory party to play the game of pretending that it would opt out. If economic and monetary union is to happen—and for the reasons that I have tried briefly to adumbrate, I think that it might go more slowly than is being predicted—Britain must be in or sterling and the City of London will be destroyed; but Britain will be going in without being able to influence the shape of that union. Yet again, the Tory party is doing something that is massively destructive of the future of the British nation. Britain will take such union because we shall have to—otherwise our economy will go even further down the tubes than it has in the past 12 years.
  I wish that we could elevate this debate in our country beyond party politics, because we are talking about the movement of history and about the quality of life of the people of our country and of the rest of Europe. We are talking about how Europe can use its influence to shape the future of the world. We are not talking only about eastern Europe. We must remember all the poverty on the toe of Europe, in north Africa, and that horrible mounting famine.
  I hope that this will be a progressive Europe, which can take a progressive view of the debt crisis and the international movement of capital. Let me tell the hon. Member for Harrow, West that that is what we are talking about: we are not talking about silly party-political games.
  7.59 pm
  Mr. Michael Alison: It is refreshing to hear the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short) make a virtue of the necessity of backing the new, expanding Europe, in the cause of more checks and balances.
  I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has emerged from the Maastricht negotiations as a dominant rather than a subordinate statesman,
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  manifestly capable of shaping and correcting the Community's future course. I do not mean that as a conventional piece of Back-Bench party piety; I am trying to emphasise the importance of strong national performances—or innings—by such people as my right hon. Friend. Europe is now evolving rapidly, and the British population are beginning to wonder just what their destiny is. In that context, my right hon. Friend's performance must have been immensely reassuring.
  Perhaps for the first time, large sections of our population are beginning to realise how fundamental and far reaching were the changes in their destiny that were ushered in when we acceded to the Community treaties in 1972. Perhaps one of the most vivid demonstrations of the dawning realisation of what we have let ourselves in for is provided by something utterly prosaic, but almost universally experienced: Sunday opening by shops. I am sorry to move from the sublime to the almost ridiculous.
  The Shops Bill, introduced in 1986 by my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), provided for the complete deregulation of Sunday retail trading. The House, on the whole, did not care for the Bill, and—in one of the most vivid recent demonstrations of parliamentary sovereignty and supremacy—we threw it out. None the less, deregulation has now crept in, almost by a side wind; ironically, it has done so along the lines originally proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley. The alleged sovereignty and supremacy of Parliament has gone, not with a bang but with a whimper.
  The reason lies in a combination of sections 2 and 30 of the European Communities Act, to which Britain acceded in 1972. That Act enshrined a principle described by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General last month, when he said:
  "since 1972, directly enforceable Community law has taken precedence over domestic provisions and forms part of English law."—[Official Report, 27 November 1991; Vol. 199, c. 914.]
  Sunday trading has brought home to people the shape of the revolutionary new framework of life that is emerging from those earlier decisions. I, for one, do not complain about the changes; nor, I suspect, will the millions of shoppers who, this Sunday, will quietly bless the European Court for their new-found freedom. Paradoxically, the further millions who, like me, regret the unregulated arrival of Sunday trading will look to the same European Court—perhaps by way of a different section of the legislation—to tighten Sunday trading regulations in the future.
  What emerges from the rather muddled Sunday-trading scene is the way in which public perception of the Community will develop. Provided that we maintain a tolerable degree of national identity and decision-making, the establishment of an external source of authority in the form of the European institutions to which we have voluntarily acceded—in particular, the European Court —will enhance the liberty of British subjects, and will increasingly be seen to do so.
  This is, in fact, a form of the separation of powers. That principle has always been one of the great avenues through which human freedom has advanced. To see the European institutions as alien, oppressive invaders, threatening our national rights and liberties, is to misrepresent them in a very superficial way. In truth, they have the potential to increase those rights and liberties. I believe, indeed, that popular perception is already moving firmly in that

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  direction. The ready and instinctive way in which our constituents reach out for rulings from the European Court illustrates the way in which the man in the street benefits from the principle of the separation of powers, of which the Community treaties are a manifestation.
  Mr. Spearing: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Alison: I am afraid not; I have only 10 minutes in which to speak.
  The principle of the separation of powers, which is enshrined in what we are currently negotiating, gives real scope for not less but greater freedom. The key is to maintain a reasonable balance in the evolving pattern of the separation of powers between national and supranational institutions.
  Personally, I am not haunted by the spectre of federalism—although mapping out a coherent pattern of identified and separated powers between a central and a peripheral body is precisely what federations must do. Clearly, the national spirit that still exists strongly in the ancient nation states of Europe will be a solid and effective counterweight to the powers that we voluntarily confer on the Commission. As many of my right hon. and hon. Friends have pointed out, the essence of the Prime Minister's triumph at Maastricht was the refinement of that notion of the separation of powers, in the explicit recognition and entrenching of the role of intergovernmental co-operative action as one of the two or three pillars on which the whole edifice of the European Community will be sustained.
  I am entirely persuaded that the principle of the separation of powers which we now see emerging in Europe will enhance the liberty of the subject. I believe that the notion of a federal future—sometimes it is labelled "the United States of Europe"—is grossly misleading and unrealistic. We have nothing to fear.
  "The United States of Europe" conjures up a picture of the United States of America. The point about the federal system that exists there is the way in which, originally, a congeries of small, weak states combined to resist the depredations of a world suprapower, the British. Now, a dozen or so suprapowers—as the world outside may view the European states—are coming together to try to find a way not to erect more acres of white wooden crosses on the fields of Flanders; and one way of doing that is to produce acres of prints and documents.
  The coming together of great powers will not produce a counterpart of the United States of America. It will produce an entirely different animal. As the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) made clear in his eloquent speech, there are many heavy players in the team, who will not turn themselves into mere subordinates of an overriding Brussels bureaucracy. We have before us the prospect of a productive separation of powers, and of increased liberties for our people.
  8.9 pm
  Mr. John Hume: The voices that I have heard in the House today and in public in recent weeks opposing the evolution towards what I regard as inevitable—European unity—strike me as the voices of 19th century nationalism, and I do not think that history will be too kind to 19th century nationalism, which fuelled not only
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  imperialism but two world wars. Few of the voices seem to draw attention to the Europe that European union is replacing. We should remember that the process began as far back as 1957, just after the second world war, with the first treaty of Rome.
  To look at the Europe that is being replaced, let us cast our minds back to 50 years ago this very night—18 December 1941—when millions of people across Europe were being slaughtered for the second time in a century. If anyone had stood up in the House then and said that in 50 years' time we would be discussing European union with the Germans still being German, the French still being French and the English still being English, that person might have been locked up. Yet it has happened, and it is worth considering why it has happened, particularly for those of us who have to face conflict on our own streets. The reason is quite simple. We decided at last that the answer to difference is not conflict, confrontation or war, but respect and accommodation. Europe has built institutions which respect diversity and work on the common ground of economics: sweat has been spilt, not blood. Europe has grown steadily at its own speed over the past 20 years in the natural and inevitable process of European union.
  One would imagine that anybody in the House would agree that it is worth paying a price for the rejection of the Europe of the past—the Europe of slaughter. Yet we do not have to pay a price because what we are doing is economically inevitable. We are interdependent and the world is a much smaller place today that it was 50, 100 or 200 years ago. Once upon a time we had city states, then we had nation states, and now we are moving inevitably towards a continental state. That inevitability is such that we should not be following the movement but leading it. We should want to be not just in the heart of it but at the head of it. We should be shaping it because it is such a powerful answer. Integration is economically essential if we are to survive in today's world.
  Everybody knows, if he is being truthful, that we cannot have a single market without a single currency. The harmonisation process for the single currency has been going on since we joined the Common Market. Decimalisation was the first step in the harmonisation process. We then had economic and monetary union and now the move towards a single currency. Imagine what would happen if one of the most powerful states in the United States decided that it wanted to separate from the dollar and have its own currency. What would happen to the economy? It is inevitable that we shall join the single currency and I am disturbed by the fact that it is being held up by an internal party squabble. I have no doubt that after the next election the Government, whoever they may be, will commit us to joining the single currency. Let us be truthf.
  The voices that oppose evolution towards European union also express worry about loss of identity. The right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) boasted recently about the strength of his Essexness. Is he any less an Essex man because he is an Englishman? Will he be any less an Englishman because he is a European? It sounds like a contradiction but the essence of unity is, as we have all discovered, the acceptance of diversity. There is no stable, peaceful, democratic society in the world which does not accept diversity. The moment one refuses to accept diversity and pushes difference to the point of division, one

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  is in straightforward conflict. The acceptance of diversity should reassure us all because the day that that principle is not accepted things will fall apart.
  We should be asking about the best way, politically and democratically, to give expression to that principle. To my mind, there is no better way than a federal way. By federalism Europeans mean a Europe of the regions. The first sign of that is already in the Maastricht treaty, and some people did not even notice. It set up a committee of the regions. I predict that that committee will evolve in strength and influence and the federalism that will emerge will be a Europe of the regions.
  I wish to deal with some of the practical points. Cohesion is a code word for equalising living standards between the richer and poorer regions. I am delighted that the structural funds are not only to continue but to be increased and that there will not only be fixed percentages from the centre to the poorer regions but that it will be modulated. The fact that fewer matching funds will be required should help the poorer regions to raise their living standards. From what I read, the cohesion fund, which is tied to transportation and the environment, will go to member states whose GNI' is less than 90 per cent. of the Community average. Does the fund apply to the member states or to the regions? If It applies to the member states, it means that an objective No.1 region such as Northern Ireland or some of the poorer regions of Britain such as the north-east and Scotland would not be included in the fund. That issue needs to be examined carefully. It is an important issue if cohesion is to have any meaning
  I see a positive sign for the last remaining area of conflict within western Europe—the area that I represent. "Remember 1690" is the great slogan of the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley), and it is one of the most long-lasting slogans in the politics of Northern Ireland. People tend to forget that the battle fought in 1690 was a European battle. The battle of the Boyne involved the Dutch and the Danes. The French were there on both sides, the Irish were on both sides and the English were there as well. The plantation of Ulster was England's reaction to the Irish chieftains' links with Spain. The Act of Union between England and Ireland in 1800 was England's reaction to the French invasion of Ireland in 1795 to link up with Irish republicans. In other words, the British presence in Ireland was a response to the fear that Ireland would be a back door for its European enemies. To this day, those who use guns and bombs on our streets say that their reason for doing so is that the British are in Ireland defending their own interests.
  All that has been changed by what is happening in Europe. Issues such as sovereignty and independence have changed their meaning. It is now pooled sovereignty and interdependence. Therefore, the reasons used by those people are now gone and we should never cease to tell them. There is a legacy which is that we have a divided people. Let us approach that division using the same principles as the peoples of Europe who slaughtered one another for centuries. Let us accept our differences. Let us not seek victory one over another but accommodate our differences and build institutions which respect the diversity in Ireland while allowing us to work on common ground. When the channel tunnel is built, the common ground—economics—will intensify because we shall be the only part of the new Europe without a land link with
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  the rest. Let us work together. Let us spill our sweat and not our blood and grow together towards a new Ireland, in the same way as the Europeans grew together.
  8.19 pm
  Mr. Patrick Thompson: I listened with great interest to the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume). He said that the spirit of interdependence that underlay the formation of the European Community in the 1950s and 1960s is needed today to reduce conflict between countries and within communities. I had much sympathy with the human point that he made.
  It is a pleasure for me to welcome the agreement that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister succeeded in achieving at Maastricht. There is no doubt that the summit was a success for the Prime Minister and his team. That is recognised in the House and in the country at large.
  There is not time—and anyway I am not qualified—to talk about the small print of the draft agreement. That is not my intention, but it is important to recognise that there are issues that we shall not have time to discuss this evening, such as more co-operation in Europe on research and on education and training. We might be able to debate those important issues in more detail another time.
  There is an important point that is worth making: the success that was achieved in the negotiations at Maastricht was a success for a Conservative Administration, and one of a series of successes for Conservative Administrations throughout the history of our dealings with the European Community.
  I have been involved in active politics since the 1960s and early 1970s. I hope that this will not be regarded as a petty party-political point, but I find Labour's position on Europe totally extraordinary. We heard a good explanation of it from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short), to whom I listened with much interest. She put the point well and explained Labour's conversion. I fully understand and appreciate the reasoning behind it and if there is time I shall refer to that again later, but surely it is a matter of fact and of record that if the Labour party had won the 1983 election—I first fought Norwich, North in 1983—it would have taken us out of the European Community and we would not have been negotiating at Maastricht. It is important to put that on the record, even though it has admitted that it has changed its mind.
  Many of us who favour co-operation with the European Community welcome that change, but there is no way in which we can hide Labour's history. Nor can we hide the fact that it has changed its mind six times or more on its Community policy. Those facts are worth putting on the record.
  I am trying to make the positive point that under a Conservative Government we signed the treaty of Rome, which I strongly supported at the time and still support, that under the Conservative Government led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) we signed the Single European Act, and that under a Conservative Government we reached agreement at Maastricht. We should not hide that strong point in favour of this Administration.
  Our attitudes to Europe are shaped by our personal experiences. I was brought up during the war and one's experience in war time is bound to influence one's attitudes to the continent of Europe and general events. I remember

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  my first visit to Paris when I was 11 and doing my national service in Germany in my early twenties. During my time in Germany, I became convinced that the future of this country was bound with the future of Europe. Having listened to this evening's debate and the debate before the Maastricht negotiations, there is no doubt in my mind that that is the general view of the House, although it may not have been so strong about a year ago.
  I was in Germany in 1957 when the discussion of Europe's future was at its height. I recall reading a book, which was published in 1966, written by Lord Gladwyn, in which he dealt with the problem that Britain had in the late 1950s and early 1960s of finding its identity. I shall quote briefly from what he said:
  "The fact was,we were much more exhausted by our death struggle than we knew. The abrupt ending of Lend Lease in 1945 had shown up the extent of our economic weakness and the drain on our reserves that we had been obliged to make in order to keep ourselves alive. Our very victory too had been in some ways a disadvantage in that it did not compel us to reconstruct our factories, write off our debt, work like beavers and start again (as the Germans did) from scratch. The old habits therefore persisted. We tended to think that we had done so well—as we had—in the war that the world more or less owed us a living. This particular feeling was enhanced by the mere existence of the Commonwealth and Empire which Mr. Churchill said he had not been appointed the King's First Minister to liquidate. Yet this is what we had to do."
  That shows why Europe is important to Britain's future and why I am delighted that the Prime Minister returned from Maastricht with a positive agreement. I am also delighted that there is more unanimity across the Floor of the Chamber on the future of Europe than there has been for some time. To that extent, despite what I said earlier, I welcome the apparent conversion of the Opposition on Europe.
  I should like to conclude by referring to points more concerned with East Anglia. Some time ago, I had the opportunity to read an article in "Anglia Business and Industry" written by Ron Carney. A survey was recently conducted of 1,000 companies in the United Kingdom and their attitude to Europe. Those companies could be divided into three groups—those that saw Europe as a challenge, those that saw it as a disaster and those that saw it as a non-event. I agree with the author of the article that the business men who fall into the last two categories are in for a great shock. The only way of regarding our future in Europe is as a challenge. That is the spirit in which the Government have approached Europe and the spirit in which the House is approaching it this evening.
  About a year ago, my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley opened a European information centre for East Anglia in the building of the Norwich and Norfolk chamber of commerce. I am told that inquiries from local business people in Norwich and Norfolk about the opportunities in Europe are increasing and that there is an ever-increasing list of opportunities for them to select from.
  Mr. John Garrett: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Thompson: No, there is not time for me to give way. Without the time limit, I would have been glad to give way to my colleague from Norwich, South. I must respect the time constraint.
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  Europe is an opportunity. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was right to set out his intention to negotiate at the heart of Europe. I understand that the Government achieved all the aims that they set out in the debate before the negotiations. I believe that, as a result, they will have the strong support of the House and of the people as we look to our future in Europe.
  8.29 pm
  Mr. Peter Shore: I do not share the enthusiasm of the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Thompson) for the results of the Maastricht negotiations. Indeed, for me the most remarkable and revealing fact of the whole Maastricht summit was the clear evidence that federalism is now the major issue in western Europe.
  Mr. Tony Banks indicated assent.
  Mr. Shore: My hon. Friend is nodding sagaciously because he is a recent convert to federalism and is delighted that that change has taken place. What was previously largely confined to the utterances of a minority in this country and in Europe has now become the open ambition not only of Mr. Delors but of Chancellor Kohl, of Prime Minister Andreotti, of Mr. Mitterrand and, indeed, of the Prime Ministers of Belgium and Holland. They have all sensed that and I acknowledge that some members of my party have also said so. It is crucial that we face the fact that federalism is the major issue. We can no longer bluff and say that it is perhaps a Europe de patrie or a Europe going in one direction towards ever-closer union. Those phrases are no longer appropriate and we are forced to face the major issue.
  The facts are that the 11 member states—other than the United Kingd—are now out to create a federal union and that Britain alone is reluctant to join in. That is one of the great facts that we have to face and with which we must deal. The fact that we are alone and were alone in resisting the federal impulse has led to some strange and inappropriate remarks about us such as, "Britain has been marginalised", "Britain is in the slow lane", and "Britain has been left behind". I do not accept that. There are those who think that democratic self-government is a value beyond price and is indeed the first freedom of any people. The United Kingdom's refusal to join the federal camp is a matter not for reproach but for congratulation.
  Unfortunately, however, the Government have not stopped the federal process—they have achieved only a British opt-out from the single currency and the European central bank which mark the third stage of economic and monetary union. For how long the opt-out will be sustained after the general election remains to be seen.
  Meanwhile—and this point has not been sufficiently emphasised—the British economy is trapped by the combined effects of membership of the exchange rate mechanism and our acceptance of the first two stages of EMU. Those hon. Members—and I look especially at my Front Bench, but realise that not one of our economic spokesmen is there—who had looked for helpful changes in the final draft of the Maastricht treaty will have been disappointed. On that crucial matter—the control of so-called excessive deficits or the 3 per cent. rule which is in the treaty and which is designed to limit the borrowing power of future Governments—only a small element of flexibility has been introduced. We are now told that there

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  can be a little leeway if borrowing has declined substantially and continuously and remains close to the 3 per cent. limit or, alternatively, if the excess is only
  "exceptional and temporary and the deficit remains close to the 3 per cent. reference value"
  Perhaps the House will be glad to know that from 1 January 1994 when the second stage of EMU begins—in twoyears—if our deficit exceeds 3 per cent. we shall not be fined or otherwise penalised as we would be in stage 3, but we shall have only to endure the Council making public its recommendation that we should reduce our borrowing requirement. Of course, the effect of such a public rebuke would be to undermine the standing and credit of any Government vis-à-vis the financial markets and a deliberate withdrawal of a triple A rating and of the seal of approval for good economic management. The effects of that could be very serious from 1 January 1994.
  As for the independence of the central bank and the hope of greater powers that would be given to the ECOFIN Council, on which many of my hon. Friends have placed so much importance, nothing has changed. The only power that ECOFIN has is to decide the exchange rate of the ecu against non-European currencies. Beyond that, the European central bank remains wholly independent of democratic control. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) said so eloquently and powerfully, control of the British economy is handed over to the European bank. I do not know how any hon. Members—but I refer especially to my hon. Friends—can look at themselves in the mirror and say, "I have denationalised the Bank of England and handed over all powers of economic management" and still hope to achieve for their people those things which we as a party were formed to try to create. I fear that it will lead our country and our party into great peril.
  The treaty has enshrined deflation and entrenched price stability as the principal objective of economic policy. Everything else is subordinate to it. Every country in the Community—not only Britain—will be striving to prepare for the third stage of EMU. They will be seeking to converge and in order to do that—as we know—they must, first, not break through the 3 per cent. borrowing requirement. Secondly, they must remain within the 2·5 per cent. band of ERM and, thirdly, get down their lending rates to those of the three lowest countries in the Community. All of that requires enormous constraint and further cutbacks in the economies of the European countries involved. We shall have high and continuing short-term interest rates, high unemployment and shrinking industrial output. That is the price we shall pay for being a member of the deflationary club.
  That is not only my judgment but that of most economic commentators, including those as disparate in their economic thinking as William Rees-Mogg in The Independent on Monday and William Keegan in The Observer on Sunday. William Keegan wrote:
  "Europe generally has high and rising unemployment yet the conditions for the approach to EMU are extremely deflationary, implying even more unemployment and possibly a lot more social unrest."
  William Rees-Mogg wrote in The Independent:
  "Maastricht is a deflationary currency agreement at a time of severe world recession that will either prove unworkable or catastrophic. It is the stupidest economic decision for the past 50 years."
  The threat to European and world prosperity is, of course, the most important outcome of the Maastricht
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  treaty. Frankly, in the scale of things, the opt-out from the social charter is of minor importance. I have every confidence that when the Labour party wins the next election within the next six months it will be able to introduce every bit of the social charter that it wishes and to introduce it about a year ahead of the coming into force of the treaty. I shall not weep for that—it is not the real heart of the matter.
  The federalists have not only extended their role over the economic and social policy of the member states. They have—as the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) rightly said—established a very powerful bridgehead in the whole area of foreign policy, defence policy and home affairs with regard to immigration and asylum
  The Prime Minister sought—and I am sure that Ministers from the Foreign Office would like to do the same—to draw a sharp distinction between agreements in the treaty of Rome and those in the intergovernmental arrangements. I fear that the distinction is not too strong. For example, I fear that the Commission has the right to take initiatives and to make proposals to the Council and to the heads of state. It is given the right to have continuing consultation in all that occurs under article I, and it also has other substantial powers. So here is a major problem. It will get worse and the House should face it. There will be further intergovernmental conferences in 1996, and sooner or later we shall have to face the problem: do we go into a federal union or do we say no? I very much hope that we shall have the will to say no.
  8.39 pm
  Sir David Mitchell: If anyone had said a year ago that the United Kingdom could participate fully in shaping the design for a single currency and then be free to opt out, he probably would have been laughed at. Yet that is precisely what has been achieved. It is a remarkable tribute to the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer that they have achieved that. It has come not by chance, but by regular, careful, firm and friendly explanation of the United Kingdom's approach to such matters, and the exploration of the consequences of the various alternatives that have been offered.
  The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones), who I believe is to reply to the debate, must also take a good deal of credit for the success of the negotiations.
  I shall make three points. First, the number of detailed regulations that apply throughout Europe are increasingly inappropriate on that basis. They are unsatisfactory because they are unable to take account of diversity, or of the differences not only in tradition but in practice between one part of the European Community and another.
  I agree with the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume), who drew attention to the problem. The number of such regulations has increased, is increasing, and should he diminished. The inappropriateness of blanket regulations will become more apparent as the Community is enlarged.
  I do not need to remind the House of some of the signs of that—such as the interventions over the route of United Kingdom motorways, the classification of carrots as fruit under the jam directive, the prawn-flavoured crisps fiasco and the environmental studies on the channel tunnel, some

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  of which took place while I was Minister at the Department of Transport. There is even the introduction of the Euro-size condom, to which the Italians apparently object because it is too large.
  Those are merely illustrations of a range of detailed interventions. There is an increasing reaction against them—not only in this country. The Länder in Germany are very much aware of the level of responsibility that they have within the German constitution for much of the detailed administration of their areas. They, too, feel that such a degree of detailed intervention from Brussels is eroding their responsibilities.
  In France, we have seen the rise of Mr. Le Pen—not only on immigration issues but on what are broadly known as Poujadist issues. In rural areas of France people are becoming heartily fed up with detailed interference in the smaller business community. I do not speak of Paris —Paris is not France; it is almost a separate place—but the people who are the backbone of rural France are thoroughly fed up.
  Since in many areas people object to such detailed intervention, one asks oneself why we are subjected to excessively detailed regulations. The answer, I believe, is that there is genuine work for about six Commissioners in the European Community—on cross-border trade in goods and services, finance, people, pollution, and state subsidies. The trouble is that there are 17 Commissioners, each with an office and staff, and they have to justify themselves, so they churn out regulations of one sort or another to justify their existence. We should seek to reduce the number of Commissioners whenever the opportunity arises.
  A valuable part of the answer has been brought back from Maastricht by our negotiators in the form of subsidiarity, and article 36, which says:
  "In the areas which do not fall within its exclusive jurisdiction, the Community shall take action in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity only if and insofar as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States".
  That seems an important safeguard.
  But this is only a battle won; it is not the war. I am certain that we shall have to go on grinding away month after month, with Ministers doing battle on our behalf. In this case, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and if we do not keep that vigilance up, the nationhood of which we have every right to be proud will be at risk of being merged into a Euro-state. I urge Ministers to be alert for any infringement of article 36.
  My second point concerns the social charter. The Commission's proposals would interfere in detailed working agreements on hours of work, night work, overtime, part-time work and other such matters. Many hon. Members have drawn attention to the damage that that would do to the United Kingdom, but I shall draw a different analogy. I shall draw attention to the damage that it would do to the ability of the smaller and poorer countries in Europe to raise their living standards. If they cannot do that by allowing anti-social hours, and so on, they will have to do it by subsidy and massive capital injections. Where will the money come from? Increasingly, it will come from the richest members of the Community —principally Germany.
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  He who pays the piper calls the tune, and in majority voting we shall find that the smaller and poorer countries within the Community will increasingly look to the Germans for guidance as to how they should vote. I say that not without some experience, having represented this country at the European Council of Transport Ministers. I would often say to my officials, "How will this go? Will we succeed in carrying our point?" The answer would often be, "It depends on the ringmaster", with a look at the German Transport Minister. One could see how the smaller countries were looking to him to find out how to vote, because they were financially beholden to the Germans in so many ways.
  Mr. Brian Wilson: On a matter of balance, when the hon. Gentleman considers the German and the British railway systems, which would he prefer smaller European countries to take as a model?
  Sir David Mitchell: That is wholly irrelevant, as we were then concerned with the extent to which finance was available for assistance for roads and communications in one way or another. In any case, the hon. Gentleman's slight on British Rail is not justified. It runs more trains at 100 miles per hour than German railways do. However I do not want to he diverted.
  My third point is that the new powers of the European Court to ensure that countries abide by what they have agreed to are vital. In the past seven years, the United Kingdom has been taken to the court 20 times, Germany 49 times, France 82 times and Italy 157 times for non-compliance with rules to which they had agreed. It is important that the Court has the power to fine. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to say when he winds up whether he believes that the fines will be sufficient to ensure that countries comply with the regulations to which they have agreed. Countries should be made to comply. The power to fine is important because it will have a "disinfectant" effect in ensuring that countries do not agree to decisions which they are not prepared to carry out.
  8.49 pm
  Mr. Dafydd Wigley: I have always been a passionate pro-European. Wales has been a European nation in terms of history, culture, language, religion and tradition for 2,000 years. We have European roots and we are proud of that. Many of our problems are experienced by other small nations and regions on the European mainland. In 1975, at the time of the referendum, I was the only one of the 14 Members on our Benches to vote yes in the referendum. I did so not for economic, but for political reasons. I was aware of the importance of the unity of Europe and of the political context that it offered for Wales. My arguments then are arguments that I would put forward now.
  The other side of the coin of European unity must be decentralisation. Without that balance, there is a danger of us having the United Kingdom writ large on the European level. Wales has been part of one supranational entity for four centuries. We have known what it is like to have one common currency and we have seen what it is like to have a country without frontiers. That can be justified provided that one has the right mechanisms of government to defend one's own community. The danger for Europe is to grow as a centralised state on the model of the United Kingdom. From our experience in Wales—and, I suspect,

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  from the experience of our friends in Scotland—we warn heavily against such a state. We need a strong regional economic policy to counteract the effects of centralisation, especially the effects that will come from a centralised currency. If we support the ecu, it must be on that condition.
  I have heard it argued in the House that, in the Westminster model, sovereignty came from God to the Queen, the Queen shared it with her Ministers and it came then to the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The people were somewhere down there, out of sight. That is very different from our understanding in Wales of the concept of sovereignty. If there is any meaning to sovereignty, it is that it comes from the people upwards. The people can lend their sovereignty and their authority to different tiers of decision taking for different purposes.
  The concept of subsidiarity—a horrible word, but an important idea—is vital. I have heard hon. Members refer to the talks and I have studied article 3b. There is no definition of subsidiarity in that article; there is merely a reference to it. Guenther Schaefer, in his article in Futures in September this year, said:
  "Subsidiarity is a normative recommendation, a rule for setting up institutional arrangements in such a way that decisions affecting people's lives should be taken by the lowest capable social organisation."
  That does not mean that decisions have to be taken either at the European central level or at Westminster. They must be taken at the level closest to the people, whatever that level may be. More work needs to be done on that. The Prime Minister seems to believe strongly in the concept of subsidiarity in the relationship of the United Kingdom with the European Community, but when it comes to the relationship between Wales and the United Kingdom, or between Scotland and the United Kingdom, the idea of subsidiarity goes out of the window.
  Article 198a deals with the committee of the regions. That is an important step forward and I regret that it has only an advisory status at present. I also very much regret the weakening of the original words. The original words —I have the French text at hand—referred to representatives having an elected mandate at regional level. Those words were knocked out at the behest of the United Kingdom Government. I should like to know whether that was done to facilitate the Secretary of State for Wales and the Secretary of State for Scotland being representatives on the new regional body. That is not an acceptable model.
  Welsh Members have had a letter today from the Assembly of Welsh Counties, the body which represents all county councils in Wales. The letter, calling for a 'Welsh Assembly, takes the view that
  "if Wales is to be properly represented in Europe, it must be on a democratic basis. The representative(s) must be able to speak for Wales and not for anywhere else. A Secretary of State for Wales—however able or well-intentioned he may be —is appointed by our national government whose appropriate outlet in Brussels is through the Council of Ministers."
  The draft treaty refers to that point in article 198a. It says:
  "The members of the Committee may not be bound by any mandatory instructions. They shall be completely independent in the performance of their duties, in the general interest of the Community."
  Can a member of the United Kingdom Cabinet, or a member of any other country's equivalent, go as a member
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  of a committee with such terms of reference? A Cabinet Minister will inevitably have loyalties to the Cabinet. That passage must be clarified.
  The question of how many seats Wales will have also needs to be clarified. There are 24 seats for the United Kingdom. Ireland, with the same population as Wales, will have nine seats and Luxembourg, with the population of Gwent, will have six seats. At the very least, we need to know what the number of seats will be and how they will be allocated.
  My hope is that the committee of the regions will eventually grow into being the second chamber of the European Parliament—a chamber made up of representatives from the small nations and regions of Europe, who will represent their own directly elected Parliament. Such a chamber will act as a counter-balance to the inevitable centralisation which is implicit in the directly elected first chamber. We need that counter-balance if we are to avoid the centralisation to which a number of hon. Members have referred.
  I turn to the vexed question of additionality. It does not seem to have been resolved at Maastricht, and there has been little progress made on it. There is a danger of Wales and other areas losing out because of the way in which the Treasury takes in the receipts that come from the European Community and does not pass on the money to the areas which should benefit. In today's Western Mail, there is a focus on the RECHAR programme. Some £20 million a year is in danger of being lost because of that policy. If the European Community is to be meaningful in its economic and regional policies, the benefits which come from it in the form of grants, such as RECHAR grants, must find their way to the areas for which they are intended and they must find their way there in a meaningful form.
  The definition of gross national product for the purposes of the cohesion fund is relevant here. The hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume) asked whether GNP will be defined on a so-called "national" basis—on member states—or on a regional basis. If it is defined on a state basis, many areas which deserve help under the cohesion fund will miss out. As we are not part of the social chapter, which I very much regret, is there a danger that people in Wales and elsewhere in the United Kingdom will lose the opportunity to apply for grants for women, for youth, for the long-term unemployed and for disabled people, which may arise in the context of the social chapter? There are many schemes under existing provision, such as the Now scheme, the Horizon scheme and the Petra scheme, and I presume that our entitlement to those relevant to us will continue, but is there a danger of those schemes, too, being jeopardised?
  Although many of us in the House are passionately pro-European—I am certainly in their midst—we need to sound a word of warning about the dangers of European chauvinism. There is a danger of racism growing on a European basis—on the basis of the idea that everyone within Europe is part of the "in" club and we should build walls against those outside. That worries me. The older generation saw the danger which came from Germany in that respect.
  The way to counterbalance that is to strengthen regional government—for example, through the Lander in Germany—to strengthen European unity and to reduce the powers of Bonn and Berlin, London and Paris, Madrid and Rome. That may take years, and there may be

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  relatively few hon. Members prepared to face up to that question. I believe, however, that we shall achieve long-term stability and unity in Europe only when we put behind us the 18th and 19th-century models on which the powers of cities and Parliaments such as London, Berlin, Rome, Paris and Madrid are based and when we build on the natural communities within Europe, towards a Europe that is united in its diversity.
  Several Hon. Members rose——
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Order. It may seem a long time between now and 2 am, but a very large number of hon. Members wish to speak, so I hope that we shall maintain the momentum and that hon. Members will continue to limit their speeches to 10 minutes each on a voluntary basis.
  9 pm
  Mr. Anthony Nelson: I shall endeavour to follow your strictures, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and I invite the House to shout me down if my speech exceeds 10 minutes.
  It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley), to whom I pay tribute for his consistent support for the European ideal. Unlike many Opposition Members, he has not changed his mind over the years, but has been a persistent supporter of the European Community and the part that Wales and the United Kingdom play in it.
  I, too, would claim some consistency in this regard, having tabled an early-day motion in 1978 calling for rapid moves towards economic and monetary union. That motion attracted a great deal of support among my hon. Friends, many of whom are now in the Cabinet. Although they may have kept their support quiet for many years, I am pleased to say that they are now the evangelists and advocates of the principle, in a way with which I wholly concur.
  I am delighted with the agreement that the Prime Minister brought back from Maastricht. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend, to the Foreign Secretary, to the Chancellor and to the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office for the adept negotiations that they concluded, for their sensitive handling of opinions within the Conservative party and in the country as a whole, and for the way in which, in my view, they have come back with the best of all worlds. They have given us the opportunity to participate in the future development of the economic and political union of the European Community, but, at the same time, on those issues on which our interests may be prejudiced we have an opportunity, should circumstances change, not to go all the way down the road.
  I thought that, in parliamentary terms, at least, the Leader of the Opposition made an extremely impressive speech. It was quite apparent to me that, underneath the party politics of the matter, a welcome degree of unity now exists among the Conservative and Labour parties and the Liberal Democrats in their approach to a single currency. It is a fact—indeed, it is a truism—that no Conservative Prime Minister would come forward with a motion proposing to the House that we join a single currency unless he intended to advocate it. That is perfectly
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  apparent. I do not think that it was a great political achievement for the Leader of the Opposition to draw that out of the Chancellor today.
  No Government would come forward with such a motion if they thought that they would be defeated on it. That is not to say, however, that we should not have an opt-in clause. The importance of that is that we cannot predict how events may change over the next few years. If, by some ill fortune, we were to have a Labour Government, economic circumstances might deterioriate so rapidly that our possibilities of convergence would be diminished and we would not be able to recommend to the House or the country that we take such a course. No Labour Government would be able to come forward with that proposition either. We have got the best of both worlds, and I believe that the case was made most effectively by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.
  I want to say something about the stance of the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore). I know that his speech reflects the view not only of some in his own party but of many other hon. Members in the House for whose intellect and experience in government we have the greatest respect. Let me put this question to the right hon. Gentleman and to others: what is devaluation other than high interest rates by another name? Throughout our history, debasement of the coinage has been one of the worst offences committed by Governments. To call for the ability to continue to devalue one's currency is to perpetrate a fraud upon the people who hold that currency. By reducing or devaluing the exchange value of one's currency one may believe that interest rates can be held down. However, people who have borrowed in that currency and pay lower interest rates must simply pay back a larger sum in real terms. If we do not face up to the problems that cause a devaluing currency and inflation, there will be a continuous problem of decline in the economic base.
  Currencies and economies with high inflation must have the highest rates of interest. Those with the most stable and strongest currencies with the lowest rates of inflation also have the lowest interest rates. We all want low interest rates for our constituents, our businesses and our economy. However, that will not be delivered and lower rates of inflation will not occur as a result of policies of persistent debasement of the coinage and devaluation. Such policies would simply feed inflation further into the economy through the high cost of imported goods.
  Mr. Shore: No one would claim that currency appreciation or depreciation is a panacea for economic problems. However, it is often a sine qua non for successful operation of the economy. Unless nations, as a result of their different degrees of productivity and successful economic output, can from time to time adjust their currencies one to another, there will be a massive concentration of prosperity in one part of the world and appalling suffering and deprivation elsewhere.
  Mr. Nelson: I could not disagree more. Devaluation is not a sine qua non. It is a cover-up for the failure to deal with the basic problems of the economy.
  Hon. Members on both sides of the House sometimes place too great an importance on a single currency or a multiplicity of currencies. After all, a currency is only a medium of exchange. Whether it is stable or inflationary, by itself it does not promote or necessarily reduce

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  economic growth. It should simply be a sound store of exchange on which people can plan their investments, businesses and their lives. The things that determine economic growth are quite different.
  I do not believe that we will magically transform the economic prospects of this country if we have a single currency. However, if we have a single currency which is valuable, low inflationary and does not have high interest rates, together with a single market and customs union in which goods, employment and capital can circulate freely coupled with—and this is probably the most import sine qua non—free enterprise policies adopted by member states of the European Community, policies with which I associate my party, we will have a phenomenal capacity to generate growth and prosperity within the Community.
  I am not starry-eyed. I am not an adventurist about what I want the Community to achieve. My objective is simply to deliver a better standard of living to my constituents and the bottom line of more prosperity in their pockets. Unless we deliver that, the political pillars will crumble and all that we are trying to erect will be regarded as a fraud.
  Perhaps within the next 10 years the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney and I will face each other across the Floor of the House and consider what has happened. I predict that if we follow through the contents of the treaty and the process of convergence, low inflation, the encouragement of a single market and free enterprise and so generate that growth, we will be able to look back on a period of exciting prosperity within the Community in the interests of all those whom we seek to represent.
  A phenomenon of climbing summits is that when one gets to the top there is usually a higher summit beyond. Having climbed this summit, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister sees a more important but related summit beyond it. That summit is the GATT agreement. After his chairmanship of the G7 meeting, I was struck by his statement to the House in which he said that he took personal responsibility for seeking to deliver agreement on the stalled GATT negotiations by the end of this year. I thought then that it was a considerable challenge and commitment. I have since spoken to my right hon. Friend about it, and I am encouraged to believe that he will be able to forge some agreement on that matter as well.
  Just as it is important within the European Community to have common standards of trading and finance, it is important for our world obligations as well as our self-interest to forge an agreement on GATT. I hope that the House will join me in supporting the Prime Minister and in hoping that he will be able to make such a breakthrough, but it will be necessary for us and for many hon. Members who represent agricultural constituencies to face up to some extremely difficult decisions. If we do not go along wholly with what MacSharry proposes, at least part of it will be necessary in order to pare back production domestically and throughout Europe. If the Prime Minister can deliver a breakthrough on the stalled GATT negotiations in addition to the extraordinary success that he has had in Maastricht, he will have a grateful nation at the general election.
  The agreement provides us with a great opportunity and with a conclusion to a European summit of historic proportions which meets the best aspirations of those of us who want Europe to move forward to take a positive step in the Community in the next few years and which also
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  provides the safeguards of national interest which many hon. Members seek. To that end, it is a great success, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend upon it.
  9.10 pm
  Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: On this site for hundreds of years now men have been talking about power. They have done it in different groups and they have done it with different historical backings. But the reason that we are here in Westminster is that, very early on, those who sought to tax the people of this country learned that they must have representatives who would go out, gather in those taxes and deliver them to those who were in power and who would take decisions on taxation.
  As the years passed, it became very clear to those people that they would no longer be able continually to take taxes from people who were unrepresented and whose views were not to be heard. Initially, the barons and the burgesses were sent out into the shires to get cash, but, bit by bit, power came to be translated in such a way that those who were taxed demanded a say in how those taxes were spent. [Interruption.] That is absolutely true, from mediaeval times onward. The translation of power has gone directly with the pressure of people who were taxed to have a say in what happened to the money. That has happened over many centuries, but big constitutional changes always came when the people of this country demanded a say in their affairs.
  Sometimes there were violent incidents, and sometimes great changes such as wars actually gave power to an unrepresented group such as the women of this country, but always pressure from below has brought about constitutional change. However, we are talking about a major change that would actually take away from the elected representatives in the House of Commons the right to say how the taxes that have been raised in this country from those whom we seek to represent are to be spent in future.
  It is a massive change. It is not a small movement away; it is not what we were told would happen at the beginning of the discussion about our application to join the Common Market. We were told that there would be some harmonisation, that an open market would be created without barriers, and that there would he a means by which the country, which based all its future on manufacturing, would be able sell its goods abroad and bring back enormous amounts—I was going to say "danegeld"—of any kind of geld that would help them to acquire a higher standard of living. With the Single European Act and now with, very specifically, the new treaties, we are seriously talking about letting the power of that direct connection slip away from us.
  It is only right that we should make it clear to the people of Britain exactly what is involved. It is not a question of arguing about the small print of one clause that may somehow or other give some small advantage. It is not a question of saying that together we shall build an enormous new Europe in which everyone will have representation at regional and central level. We are talking about moving towards the creation of a centralised state. That is what a central bank will mean.
  The centralised state will not be a state based on common language or common aspirations, or one in which the people of the various nations have chosen freely to

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  associate because they understand all the implications. It will be a state created by our slipping bit by bit into agreements which we find ourselves obliged to accept.
  We cannot talk any more about those who are Euro-sceptics and those who are not. Those who are elected to the House of Commons should tell the people they represent that everything discussed at Maastricht will affect them. We are seriously discussing handing over powers in areas of policy where no one has discussed with the British electorate whether that is what they want. No one has asked whether people want an involvement at central level in health. No one has said, "Do you want your decisions on major industries such as transport taken by majority vote when perhaps your case has not been fully put, or has been put in a way in which it can be accepted?"
  No one has discussed with the British people whether they require citizenship of a new European state, whether they want their educational policies decided on a majority vote, by qualified majority vote or even by unanimity by people whom they do not control. No one has asked the British people whether they want a civil service over which they do not have ultimate and effective political control.
  The House of Commons is failing in its duty if it does not point out that the real political debate is about precisely who will control our economy. I have been disappointed that my party has not seen fit to spell out the full financial implications of union if we found ourselves in government faced with the political pressures that will undoubtedly arise if the continuing recession means that important economic decisions have to be taken to regenerate industry in Britain or even to do the job in the regions about which hon. Members have spoken tonight.
  I have been saddened that my party has not chosen to say in clear terms, "Yes, we believe that we should co-operate with people, but we must do so on the basis of acceptance by the British of where they want to go and what future they want."
  Some people who come from a small region of the Community believe in a centralised structure because they believe that it will give them greater flexibility and more control. They must be living in cloud cuckoo land. The institutions of the Community are failing disastrously, because they take decisions at the top and seek to push them all the way down the system.
  The reason why the common agricultural policy is causing enormous problems is that it is based not on climate, political need or the food interests of the peoples of Europe but on the spurious idea that it is possible to create a common policy that will be adequate for a Mediterranean area and a temperate area as well as for those who produce other products elsewhere in the Community.
  The greatest political danger—greater than all the dangers that I have mentioned—is that many of the eastern European countries which find themselves outside the magic circle will be even more discomfited when they realise that enormous barriers have been raised against them. Far from being open and outward-looking, the Community is rapidly becoming a more rigid, restrained and centrally determined organisation.
  That is not in the interests of the British people, and it is certainly not in the interests of those who want the
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  economies of eastern Europe to develop. It is not even in the interests of the African, Caribbean and Pacific nations, which are being seriously damaged by the agreements that the Community is demanding. At the same time, it is keeping large areas of the third world out of the organisation.
  I hope that, when it comes to a vote, the House will bear in mind the fact that these complicated treaties, which our electorates will not see, will impinge upon their lives for many centuries. We find it difficult to get people to vote in local or parish elections or for their town councils. We ask ourselves why people will not use their precious vote for those elections while they are prepared to vote in a general election. We know instinctively that it is for one reason —because they understand that there is a connection between their vote, taxation and the Government. They clearly see that line and understand it. That is why the poll tax failed, and why such enormous political pressure was put on the Government.
  People will not accept a system that they do not clearly influence. Basically, they do not want a change. We are in a dangerous position. We are seeking to pretend that the European Community at Maastricht, far from simply holding an extremely expensive, diffuse and not especially impressive meeting, produced something which many people in this country do not understand. Where they understand it, they do not accept it and where they accept it, they have grave doubts about any elected House which takes them rapidly down the road to federal organisation —by any other name—without having consulted them.
  No one in the House has a mandate to commit the people of this country to a federal Europe. Those hon. Members who stand for office should bear that in mind.
  9.21 pm
  Sir Teddy Taylor: The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) rightly said that the basic issue at Maastricht was not the detailed clauses but democracy. She must have found it as embarrassing as I find it disturbing to watch Opposition converts behaving almost exactly as Conservatives did in 1973.
  Instead of facts and policies, we are hearing day dreams and hallelujahs. We heard the Leader of the Opposition telling us how we would have freedom from injustice, new opportunities, better deals for the regions and new challenges. Sadly, with the conversion of the Labour party, we are simply getting a pile of slogans. I am sure that Labour Members believe them, but surely experience should show them how wrong they must be.
  Exactly the opposite is happening in the Conservative party. Tired, hard-working Ministers—who obviously have to work round the clock and have to keep going to Brussels—are finding out what EEC life means in reality and what it does to our democracy.
  For example, my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) said that we might have to ask agriculture to give up a little to ensure that the general agreement on tariffs and trade talks succeed. We all know that no such concession will be made. We know that pressure is such that the cash given in protection and subsidy comes to £127,000 per farmer per year, fully indexed.
  In fact, we have heard a lot of nonsense. Therefore, we must ask ourselves about the achievements of the meeting

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  at Maastricht. First, I think that most people would accept that opt-out from the single currency is not a major achievement because, so long as we are stuck in the exchange rate mechanism, even if we decided to opt out, Britain's freedom would be the same as Scotland's freedom in having a Scottish pound note within the United Kingdom. We could pretend that it was a pound and that it was separate, but if it were linked under the ERM, we would have no freedom apart from the tiny margin which we are allowed.
  On the other hand, because opt-out has been written into the treaty for the first time, Britain is under no obligation, and at least the debate on the validity and strength of the ERM can continue within the Conservative party. There is no doubt that a growing number of people in the Conservative party realise that the EEC is becoming, more and more, a protectionist, bureaucratic racket, which is costing our taxpayers a great deal and doing damage to our people.
  The second achievement was that on the rights of workers. However, there is little value in this exemption if the Commission simply implements the social charter directives through the Single European Act. Foreign Office Ministers are well aware that, while we spent a great deal of time arguing over whether to sign the social charter, or the social chapter, that will all be irrelevant if its terms are forced through under that Act. Even the most worthy people misunderstand that.
  A former Cabinet Minister, speaking in the debate earlier, said that he was horrified to find out that we were to have new Euro speed limits for buses and lorries, and thought that this was related to subsidiarity. Britain and the other countries agreed these new speed limits on 16 November because the Commission was using the powers of the Single European Act. My hope is that what the Prime Minister has achieved will encourage the Government to question in the courts whether the EEC is correct in using the Single European Act to give it powers that were not in the original treaty.
  I hope that this time we have achieved something, rather than, as has happened time and again in the past, been conned or misled by the EEC. The biggest achievement for the Prime Minister is the fact that we have now switched sides in the political argument. Labour Members are now the Euro-enthusiasts, with one or two honourable and sensible exceptions. They are the ones who want to press on, to go ahead, to sign everything, to agree to everything that Mr. Delors suggests, after due consultation and by majority vote.
  It is clear that Labour wants to go, wham, into Europe, with great enthusiasm. There is no doubt that Labour Members have the vision and that bright look on their faces that we see with recent converts. By comparison, the Conservative party wants to take a sensible approach to the EEC. We do not want to sign up to new policies if we think that they will end up in a mess, and new debates are starting in our party.
  The increasing number of Euro-doubters must ask themselves a question. All of us in the Conservative party know that, apart from a few—I am sure honourable—exceptions, people are becoming rather fed up with the EEC, with what it is doing and with what it is spending. However, if we are not going along this road, what on earth are we going to do?
  We have to ask about costs—something that has not been mentioned tonight. I asked our splendid Library to
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  do me a paper setting out what the Government get from North sea oil, because constituents keep telling me that, with North sea oil, we should be a wealthy and successful country. On 11 December, I got a lovely letter from the Library setting out the amount that Britain gets from North sea oil, in taxes, royalties and what it calls
  "corporation tax (before ACT set-off)".
  All that comes to £2,503 million.
  What will be paid to the EEC this year as our net contribution—the cash that we hand over, which is gone and which others get? The answer is, more than £2,503 million. We are throwing away all the benefit of our oil revenues simply by giving subsidy to the EEC, and this is only part of the cost—there is much more. We also spend money on dumping food under the crazy common agricultural policy.
  I appeal to the Government, in particular to our friendly Foreign Office, to tell me, the Opposition and the public what they think this agreement will cost us, given the money that will have to go on convergence, and all that is to be spent on Portugal, Greece, Italy and the rest. We know that Governments cannot always get things right, because figures change, but we should at least have an estimate, so that we can do something about it.
  If the EEC wants to spend all this money, it will have to ask for more money. What are the Government's views on that? Do they think that Europe should get more money so that it can spend more money converging? We should hear about that, because it is important.
  The second matter is whether the Government will try hard to attain demarcation. All the talk about federalism was nonsense, because our federal position would be a step ahead of what we have now. At least when a country is federal it knows what belongs to it and what belongs to others. Now, basically everything belongs to the EEC. Will the Government try to establish demarcation?
  Where do we go from here? How do we stop the EEC constantly seizing powers? We passed the Single European Act thinking that it would be restrictive, but that did not work. We imposed financial limits, but they did not work. How will we prevent the Commission from taking more powers? How will we prevent the Councils from taking more powers? More importantly, how will we prevent the European Court from taking more powers?
  I hope that the Government will think seriously about where we go from here. Is there not a case not just for seeking exemption from the silly Euro-currency but for trying to get away from the trap of the ERM, which is forcing a decent Conservative Government to cause misery in our country simply because we do not have control of interest rates? If we pretend that the pound is worth something that it is not worth, other things have to be distorted. If people think that that will change with Euro-currency, they should ask what will happen to that Euro-currency. Will it float against the dollar and the yen? Will it be linked to something like gold? We must also ask whether Britain would benefit from getting out of the common agricultural policy.
  For the first time, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister—I commend his splendid answer to the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn)—has said no to some things. It means that we can stop and think. It is an encouraging position, because Labour Members are now the enthusiasts and we are the new thinkers. I hope that there will be a great deal of new thinking in the Conservative party and in the Government.

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  Matters are serious. People doubt, but they do not know what to do. Perhaps, as a small gesture of gratitude and good will towards the Government for what they have done in bringing about this position, it might just be possible that, for the first time on this subject since 1973, I shall even give them my vote.
  9.31 pm
  Mr. John Garrett: For what it is worth, I can claim consistency because for years I was the only member of the Tribune group who voted for membership of the EC and closer European integration. For a very long time, that was thought to be a neo-fascist aberration, but now I find myself pedalling almost comfortably in the mainstream of my party's policy. I do not like it very much, so I shall have to find some new eccentricity as soon as possible.
  Over the years, the debate about our relationship with the EC has been marked by deception—or, to be charitable, self-deception—and certainly by hypocrisy. Parliament has never been allowed to take developments in Europe as seriously as it should. It has always followed the Government in believing that the EC is a club, the rules of which we can alter at will. Until recently, Ministers pretended that the so-called Luxembourg compromise would give us a veto over anything that we did not like. We then invoked subsidiarity as a principle that would limit EC interference in our internal affairs. However, the Select Committee found that the term "subsidiarity" had no meaning and could be taken to mean the accretion of powers to the central institutions or no change at all. In fact, the legal adviser—probably giving a very expensive opinion—suggested that the matter was best left undefined.
  Now we have invoked opt-out clauses as though, while we are opted out, the EC would not continue to develop in a way that would make it more difficult for us to opt in at a later date. There is more than a little hypocrisy in the Government's horror at the mention of the word "federal", which is now conveniently interpreted as a highly centralising arrangement, yet we created federal institutions in our former dominions and in post-war West Germany to prevent centralisation. It is hypocritical to trumpet our parliamentary sovereignty when this is the land of the royal prerogative, Crown immunity and the massive use by Government of unamendable instruments, regulations and codes of practice.
  It was especially ironic that in the pre-Maastricht debate the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) trumpeted about the "supremacy of Parliament". She headed a Parliament that guillotined 66 Bills in 10 years and produced 10,000 pages a year of unamendable instruments and regulations, some of which had a profound effect on our legislation. It ill behoves us to boast of our parliamentary democracy when we consider the autocratic power of the Executive over this legislature.
  The exclusion of "federal" from the Maastricht treaty —one of the Prime Minister's victories, we are told—led to its replacement by the words "an ever closer union", interpreted throughout Europe as a move towards democratic federalism with the central institutions having competence over more and more areas of policy.
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  The Government conceded a number of competencies to the EC at Maastricht and they were not reported too loudly. One such area was immigration policy, to which in three years' time majority voting will apply. It will also apply to environmental issues and to education and training, and to powers of veto for the European Parliament—
  Mr. Garel-Jones: It is right that article 100c of the treaty includes visa lists and the format that visas will take, but if the hon. Gentleman examines the treaty carefully he will find that all matters related to immigration policy remain firmly within the intergovernmental pillar and cannot be removed from it unless it is by unanimity and the approval of each Parliament in Europe.
  Mr. Garrett: The hon. Gentleman is very sensitive about immigration. I had understood that visas were central to immigration policy and. hence, rather important. The Minister can say more about that when he winds up, if he likes.
  If we adhere to the concept of a single market the logic leads inevitably to a single currency. It was the task of the Prime Minister at Maastricht to ensure that the conditions in which a single currency might be introduced would be advantageous to businesses and ordinary people in Britain. The victory of our opt-out clause on a single currency—that this Parliament will eventually decide whether to opt in or out—is a delusion, since all member countries have reserved the right to consult their national legislatures before finally agreeing to enter a single currency. Our opt-out clause will reduce our influence on the development of European monetary union, and as all other countries have said that they did not need such a clause, we are labelled firmly as second class. It is not as if we will not have to shadow the deutschmark in any case, and so closely that it might as well be our single currency. Our freedom of action in this matter is thus illusory.
  It seems to me impossible to move to a truly common market and to European integration without legally binding social provisions held in common—not to mention the need to raise British standards in these areas. Unless there are measures to harmonise conditions of employment and benefits and rights to consultation, competition will be distorted by social dumping—the attraction of capital and enterprise to the parts of the Community where labour is cheap and industry unregulated. The Government hope that Britain will be the beneficiary of this, but there is no reason why our partners should let us get away with it under the competition regulation.
  I find it shaming that Britain should resist improvements in the hours of work of young people, in parental leave, in the rights of part-time workers, who are mostly women, and in worker consultation. There is no reason to believe that economic efficiency is incompatible with fair employment practices.
  Although we in Britain are not accustomed to the sort of declaratory statements of intent that we find in the social chapter, and earlier in the social charter, and although we may doubt the practicality of enforcement of many of these measures, they at least provide a point of reference for those affected and a set of principles against which national provision can be tested. They would help to create in Britain the general idea of having rights—an area in which we are particularly deficient.

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  In the course of reporting to this House on the Dublin summit in June 1989 the then Prime Minister described the Community's programme of social action as "piffling little powers". Now they are called, in the motion which we debated before Maastricht,
  "intrusive Community measures in social areas".
  On 16 December the Financial Times reported that only 10 per cent. of British businesses believed that the social charter would have any negative effect on their personnel management practices.
  Similarly, concerted action is essential in environmental policy, if only because pollution does not respect national boundaries. The fact that we have not carried out any proper environmental assessments of some particularly destructive road schemes is to our discredit. It is not a matter about which we should berate the Community. The Prime Minister said in October that we had no prior notice of the Environment Commissioner's interest in the four schemes. but Friends of the Earth have shown that the Department of the Environment received and replied to letters from the Commission in October 1989, January 1990, June 1990 and March 1991 about the need for environmental impact studies before the road schemes could go ahead.
  Majority voting on social and environmental matters is essential because those issues demand common action across the EC. In areas where we have already ceded competence to the Commission, democratic accountability can reside only in the European Parliament. The effective decision-making body, the Council, meets in secret, passes its laws in private and consists of Ministers who authorise legislation that cannot be challenged by the national Parliaments or judicial systems. The European Parliament should be able to veto some of the proposals from the Council. There are cases where, in the interests of raising standards, it should be able to initiate legislation also.
  However, it seems to me—I do not think that this view is widely held—that Parliament itself has an independent interest in these matters, whatever political party forms the Government. Ceding powers and sovereignty to another Parliament is a parliamentary as well as a Government matter. Therefore, the resources of this Parliament should be substantially strengthened so that we can scrutinise the EC. The present means of scrutinising EC directives and decisions is inadequate. At present, the means of considering future directives or the development of policy in Europe is absolutely non-existent. This Parliament needs a research and analytical staff to keep abreast of EC developments and proposals so that we, as a legislature, can develop alternative sources of information to the information with which we are provided by the Government, which is usually distorted and always loaded in the Government's favour. We, as a Parliament, should have an office and a staff in Brussels to keep us informed. By and large, we know only what the Government choose to tell us. There is a long-term case for a European sub-committee for virtually every Department that is given a Select Committee in the House.
  Powers will inexorably move from here to the EC institutions. The question is whether those institutions are democratically controlled. What we need is more honest discussion and openness from our Government—from any Government—on such issues as they develop. We also need new machinery in the House for better understanding and evaluating them. Here we have as great a democratic deficit as the institutions of Europe.
  Mr. Speaker: I call Mrs. Currie.
  9.42 pm
  Mrs. Edwina Currie: Mr. Speaker, you are wonderful.
  I should like first to congratulate the powers that be, the usual channels, on calling a second debate on Europe. That puts into context the remarks of the hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett). This House does matter. It has a role to play in our debates and discussions on Europe. Indeed, it has a larger role to play, even now, than many Parliaments in the rest of Europe. It took a lot of courage for the Government to call the previous debate —I am glad that they did—and I am pleased that we have the opportunity to speak on Europe today.
  I should like also to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the team that went to Maastricht on the way in which they conducted themselves. They gave sterling service—and gave a new meaning to that term of quality. They gained admiration—albeit much of it grudging—throughout Europe. In the Netherlands, the newspaper De Volkskrant reported
  "The Brits stole the show in Maastricht…it is plain the British have revealed themselves as rock-hard negotiators."
  That will stand us in good stead in all the discussions to come.
  In France, the left-wing newspaper Liberation stated that the Prime Minister had
  "demonstrated his devotion to economic liberalism."
  So he did—and Conservative Members are delighted.
  On 12 December, Le Monde pointed out that my right hon. Friend was quite right to take the approach that he did, stating:
  "It would have been premature to go much further in reinforcing Community institutions since EC institutions will have to be reformed considerably to take account of the probable enlargement of the Community."
  It continued by referring to the success of "realism and perseverance". Opposition Members have not referred to those opinions, but those are accurate and true quotations.
  Speaking to a British newspaper—The Daily Telegraph—on the same day, Chancellor Kohl said
  "such a conference"—
  the one at Maastricht, that is—
  "has by definition got to be a series of compromises".
  That is what we have got, and I think that we have ended up with a first-class deal—not only for this country but for the entire European Community as it now stands, and for the nations which we hope will join before long.
  Now we must consider how we are to make it all work. We face the completion of the single market fairly soon —officially by the end of 1992, although some parts may take a bit longer. We face the starting point of stage 2 of economic and monetary union on 1 January 1994. I think that we in this country should make an effort to make those developments work; not in a negative way—we should not simply be dragged along by events—but by adopting the most positive approach possible. None of that is news to my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones), the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office; he has heard me say the same before.
  If we are to make the new treaties function well, and gain real benefits for ourselves and for our partners, we must not only remove the obvious, visible barriers, but begin to remove the invisible ones. This country contains far too many of those, and they prevent the British from

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  playing a full part in Europe, and from showing as much enthusiasm as many of our neighbours. Let me give three examples: the dozy approach of British industry and British business to the opportunities offered by Europe, our lack of languages, and our general attitude to our history.
  We should bear it in mind that we in the House must vote on the single currency within the next five years—by 31 December 1996. That vote will probably take place in the next Parliament. If we are to make a sensible decision then—a decision based on the conditions, economic and otherwise, that prevail at the time—and if whatever decision we make is backed by the electorate and is not unduly influenced by emotion, sentiment or ill-informed or excessively narrow nationalism, our Government will have a good deal of work to do in the meantime.
  Business on this side of the channel seems to be sleep-walking. It seems to be missing a trick. Markets are opening up and developing, but we seem to be failing to adapt. We do not seem to recognise that those developments mean not only that we must go out to Europe, but that increasing competition is heading our way. Every business in the country is affected by the current changes, but are they aware of it? I sometimes wonder.
  According to figures released by the German Foreign Office, in the first seven months of 1991—as a result of German unification—there was a tremendous increase in exports from other Community countries into Germany. The figure leapt by almost 24 per cent., nearly a quarter. The highest rate of export growth, 42 per cent., was registered by Spain. Denmark was second, with 31 per cent.; Belgium and Luxembourg followed with 28 per cent., and France with 27 per cent. Britain was way below the average, with an increase of only 19 per cent. I have no doubt that every business person involved congratulated himself on that 19 per cent., but it was well below the average.
  The net result is that in trade with Germany in the first part of this year we stand not first, second or third, but fifth. Our exports of manufactured goods—and all the other exports of which we are so proud—to Germany, which desperately needs them following unification, are exceeded by those of countries such as Belgium. That is not good enough: British industry must pick up its feet.
  Much has been said about attracting foreign industry and investment. My constituency is immensely proud of the fact that it has attracted investment not only from Toyota but from Sweden, in the form of ABB, and from Switzerland in the form of Nestlé. Constituents of mine work for Pirelli in Burton-on-Trent, and for many companies owned by other countries. We are proud that we can make them welcome, and pleased that they can make us wealthy. Last year we attracted more than half of all Japanese and American investment coming into the European Community. According to Nomura, a new estimate suggests that by 1995 Japanese investment in the United Kingdom could add £4 billion to our trade balance, 2 per cent. to output and more than 400,000 new jobs.
  That is not enough. It is not enough to welcome foreign investment in our country, although our rejection of the social chapter will make that sort of investment more
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  likely. It is not enough to encourage other European nations to invest in us, as they are doing in greater numbers. Somewhere along the line British-owned business must wake up and realise that there is a huge market out there of about 340 million people and that it has access to business throughout the Community and the world.
  When the Single European Act was put on the statute book, a campaign was led by the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Lord Young of Graffham, on what was called 1992. That seems to have faded somewhat since then, but it is even more important now. I urge the Government to have a new campaign to raise British business awareness of the opportunities offered by the single market and of what will happen if it continues to behave as if Europe does not exist.
  We still act as if all foreigners speak English. They do not, but we act as if they should. That attitude is not only bad manners, but bad business. If the Japanese came to our country and sold goods with booklets in Japanese, we would not buy them. Yet we go to other countries where the majority of people speak their native language and try to sell them goods in English. Our salesmen speak English and we wonder why we retire baffled from the fray, even in a country next door such as France. We wonder why it is so difficult to penetrate their markets. It reduces drastically our chances of winning contracts overseas and it perpetuates the dislike of foreigners and the hostility to Europe that are still common in our country.
  What are we doing about that? Last year 44,000 students took an A-level in modern languages. That is only 6 per cent. of the 700,000 A-levels sat last year. Two thirds of those students took French, barely one in five took German—the main business language—and only a handful, a few hundred, took the other main languages. The students have the right idea. Between 1990 and 1991 we have seen a 13 per cent. increase in the number of students taking A-level French, a 12 per cent. increase in the number taking German and a 10 per cent. increase in those taking Spanish—I know that my hon. Friend the Minister of State will be pleased about that. We should be teaching those languages in the same way as English and other languages are taught in countries such as Denmark and Holland. They should be taught not only from the age of 11 simply as part of the national curriculum. Children should begin to learn languages when they are seven or eight, as that is when they start to learn language properly. We should teach those languages in the same way as we teach our children road safety, because that knowledge is essential for their future.
  We have a real problem in doing that because there is an extraordinary shortage of language teachers since business is employing many of the available people. My hon. Friend the Minister will know of article A in chapter 3 of title VIII on
  "Education, vocational training and youth".
  It says:
  "Community action shall be aimed at:
  —developing the European dimension in education, particularly through the teaching and dissemination of the languages of the Member States."
  My hon. Friend the Minister is nodding his head. He signed it and I hope that he means it and will do something about it.
  The worst barrier of all is that of attitudes. It is high time that we abandoned for ever the notion that we can

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  survive outside Europe. It is time for a culture switch—[HON. MEMBERS: "Time."] I have waited 26 hours to make this speech.
  We are no longer a top-dog nation telling other nations what to do. We are a partner nation, sharing., being convinced and convincing other countries—a talent that our Prime Minister has shown. The real culture change will come when we realise that we are British and Europeans, and that we are lucky to be both.
  9.54 pm
  Mr. David Winnick: Like all my colleagues, of course, I support the social chapter. In the most unlikely event of a Tory Government being in office when the programme is being implemented by the other Community countries, I am sure that there would be a challenge on legal grounds to the European Court of Justice. People in this country will not wish to be discriminated against while those changes and advances are being made by fellow members of the Community.
  As for the second so-called triumph of the Prime Minister at the summit—the proposed opting out of a single currency—although I am a Euro-sceptic I have little doubt that whatever party is in government Britain will join the single currency if it comes about. The pressure from the business community here and on the pound will be such that it will be most unlikely, to say the least, that Britain will stay out of that arrangement for long. Indeed, we joined the exchange rate mechanism under such pressure.
  Much has been made of the exclusion of the word "federal" from the treaty, but that is irrelevant. It has been agreed to continue down the federal road, and the emphasis on the words "ever closer union" shows that that is precisely what the other members of the Community want. Whether one is for a federal Europe—I certainly am not—or against, we should be clear and honest about what is being fought for in the Community. It is nonsense, therefore, to say that because "federal" has been excluded there is no need to be concerned, because a federal arrangement is in the offing and could come about within the next few years. I cannot take the view that that further erosion of national sovereignty is desirable.
  One should recall that at almost every stage of debating whether we should join the EC, and then in the 1975 referendum debate on whether we should stay in, little or no mention was made by the advocates of the substantial erosion of national sovereignty. If anything, it was played down. Those who expressed reservations about joining or staying in were told that we were exaggerating. In their statement recommending a yes vote in the referendum, the then Labour Government, with the full support of the Conservative and Liberal parties, said:
  "No important new policy can be decided in Brussels or anywhere else without the consent of a British Minister answerable to a British Government and British Parliament."
  Without any further erosion of sovereignty, Ministers often now say, "Such and such is Community policy and there is nothing that British Ministers can do about it." The House no longer has power over that. Majority voting, let alone monetary and political union, would make a nonsense of what I have just quoted.
  Paragraph 29 of the White Paper issued by the Conservative Government in July 1971, two years before Britain joined the Community, said:
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  "There is no question of any erosion of essential national sovereignty."
  I favour Britain remaining in the Community, but can any hon. Member argue that our present membership, let alone EMU and political union, will not lead to further erosion of our essential national sovereignty? If there was no question of such erosion, there would never have been the Single European Act, let alone the further steps that have been taken by the Community.
  What surprises me—I am sure that I am not the only one—is that, although much emphasis has been placed on further union by its enthusiastic advocates, when we consider what is actually happening in Europe we discover that the picture is quite different. Let us consider, for example, one or two countries outside the Community. There is the bloody civil war in Yugoslavia. The federal arrangement which has existed there and which many of us took for granted would continue—as it did for 40 years —is crumbling.
  Sir Russell Johnston: That was a federal arrangement imposed by the great powers after the great war.
  Hon. Members: So is this one.
  Mr. Winnick: I heard some of my hon. Friends say that this arrangement is also imposed. For the sake of argument, I am willing to concede that the rule of law and parliamentary democracy—which some of us are keen to retain in this country in addition to national sovereignty —did not exist in Yugoslavia. I accept that, but most people would argue that there were worse examples of communist dictatorship than that in Yugoslavia. However, that federation is crumbling, and whatever the outcome of the civil war in Yugoslavia it is certain that there will be no restoration of the federation.
  Further east, there is the continued break-up of the former Soviet Union. It could be argued, again with justification, that that union was established without a mandate, but that does not alter the fact that now that the dictatorship is disappearing the people do not want to belong to a single union—hence the independent republics which will probably be the outcome of the rather muddled political situation there. We should take those issues on board.
  Let us consider the Community itself, however. It is all very well for the Liberal Democrat spokesperson on foreign affairs to say what he did about Yugoslavia and for us to argue about the Soviet Union, but what about the Community itself? The administrative headquarters of the Community is in Belgium, and when we talk about the European Community we always associate it with Brussels. Belgium is a democracy, but there is little doubt that the federal set-up in that country is currently being seriously undermined and there is a question mark over whether Belgium will continue to exist as a state. Unfortunately—it is, indeed, unfortunate—the parties of the extreme right have been successful in the recent Belgian elections.
  In the Community countries there is mounting unemployment, recession and deflation which is helping to feed the extreme right wing and fascist movements which have had electoral success in Belgium and France, and outside the Community in Austria. Surely, instead of emphasising EMU and further political union, it would be more relevant and sensible for us to take steps within the Community to reduce unemployment and to try to reverse

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  the circumstances which cause so much economic misery within the Community as well as to help those countries —certainly the former communist countries—which are in a much worse economic plight than we are.
  We have heard a great deal about conversion today. We heard my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) say eloquently that he has been converted. I am willing to accept that on occasions one must stand up and say in all honesty that one has changed one's mind. There is nothing especially wrong or dishonourable in holding a political view and then changing it. I cannot claim—nor would I wish to do so —that in my political time I have not changed my views on one or two subjects. On the Community, however, I do not believe that any further erosion of national sovereignty is in the interests of this country. We certainly do not have a mandate to transfer even more authority overseas from this House.
  Clearly our predecessors on the Labour Benches were far more involved than we were in the process, but like the other Labour Members who argued for colonial independence—we were often harshly criticised by Conservative Members, who said that we were willing to defend every country but our own—we said that the countries which made up the empire had a right to national independence. What they made of it was up to them, but they had the right to rule themselves.
  If I passionately believed that—as I did-—it is surely consistent that I should take the same view about my own country. I believe that Britain should continue to rule itself. Of course, we can remain in the Community, although with some erosion of powers—as with NATO, it could be argued—but at the end of the day the House of Commons should decide on major political and economic issues. That is what the House of Commons is all about.
  This country has ruled itself for centuries. I cannot believe that the time has come when we should say to ourselves that the Community and the arrangements in Europe are so perfect or near-perfect that we should abdicate the ability that we have exercised throughout the centuries. I do not believe that I was selected, or elected, to do anything of the kind. I treasure the national independence that this country has had, and the sovereignty that the House has had, and I shall not be a party in any way to any further erosion of our sovereignty.
  10.1 pm
  Mr. Nicholas Soames: I agree with the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), who has just spoken with characteristic passion about people's right to change their minds on important issues. Unlike some others, I am delighted. I see it not as an object of derision but as a cause for pleasure and satisfaction that the Labour party should have changed its mind for the seventh time in 10 years, and finally come round to the European idea. It is good for the House and for Europe that it has done so.
  The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) said that he had changed his mind on the subject, and we all now know him to be an ardent supporter of Europe and of the House of Commons, and a keen student of the present and future difficulties that we will have to
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  overcome. Although we must have every suspicion of a convert, I am glad that the Labour party has thrown its weight behind the European idea.
  We need not be equivocal about it: what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has brought back from Maastricht is, by any stretch of the imagination, a remarkable achievement for him, for the Chancellor of the Exchequer and for the Foreign Secretary—and for my hon. Friend the Minister of State, too. It is also a considerable achievement for the European experts at the Foreign Office, and especially for our people in Brussels, whose technical expertise is admired throughout the Community.
  Sir Russell Johnston: Does the hon. Gentleman not think that that result was also a credit to the other European countries, which were willing to compromise with us, although they were not keen to do so?
  Mr. Soames: The hon. Gentleman makes a respectable point, In any great negotiation, if an agreement is to be reached, compromises must be made on all sides. I am glad that we find friends in different areas where before we may have been devoid of friends. That is a cause for satisfaction. Of course we had to compromise, and so did everyone else.
  The Community must now go carefully and slowly about its business. The upheaval in its structures and the dimensions of what it is about to absorb will make it a constitutional boa constrictor. It must now be careful how it proceeds. We must give time and careful thought to putting proper substance on the foundations of Maastricht. We must not close off too many of the avenues of the future by rigidly laying down the way forward through the minefields that lie ahead, through which common sense dictates that we proceed with the greatest care. No advantage will accrue to EC countries jointly or separately if the agreements reached cannot cope with the stresses and strains that are likely to arise in the future.
  There is no doubt in my mind or in the minds of the vast majority of Conservative Members that it was in our national interest to reach agreement on the treaty at Maastricht in the light of the measured and sensible package which was negotiated there. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has put Britain back at the heart of the Community, where we shall have a far greater influence and from which we can be in the vanguard in shaping the future.
  My right hon. Friends signed the union treaty having made a realistic assessment of Britain's national self-interest. They know that, with the huge upheavals taking place in eastern Europe, the debate about Europe's future is only just beginning. They know that many of the thoughts and assumptions of the past 40 years, as the hon. Member for Walsall, North rightly said, will have to be shaken off and that the European vested interests which have for the past 40 years been so much a part of European life will have to look at the facts of the modern world as it really is and respond accordingly. This weekend, the Community looked out over the future, and it has made an act of faith across all the people of Europe. For that reason alone, it was an important occasion.
  It is a matter of pleasure and pride for this country that there was such a breadth of debate before the Maastricht summit. In France, in Germany, in Spain and in Italy, there was hardly any discussion. I understand that the

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  Cortes debated the matter for half a day. In France and in Germany, countries that are instinctively so pro everything that happens within Europe because of their situation in Europe and their history, people have only just woken up to what has been done in their name at Maastricht. The right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) had some important points to make on that.
  Despite the vigorous public debate before the Council, I was sometimes saddened by the extraordinary lack of confidence that Britain seems to have in its own future. We must try to persuade our people that the treaty of union is not just about Britain—that its effects will be felt for the good, I hope, throughout the length and breadth of western Europe. We must persuade our people that it will reflect, and should reflect, the interests and commitments that are of vital significance for large sections of European industry, for agriculture and for the national policies of all the member states.
  For many people in Britain who are involved in everyday commercial life, the transactions within and across Europe are quite matter-of-fact. In that respect, industry has for many years led opinion in the House into seeking far closer ties within the Community. I am a director of a subsidiary of one of our great British corporations which this year has opened new offices in its European network in Aix-en-Provence, in Budapest, in Oporto, in Warsaw and, with great pleasure, only recently in Watford.
  Sir Trevor Skeet: Well done.
  Mr. Soames: I knew that my hon. Friend would be pleased.
  To the people who work in that company, the idea of Europe means a great deal. The agreements at Maastricht will have given great encouragement to business men and women whose everyday work is the transaction of business on the European scale. Great will be the opportunities available and accruing to the United Kingdom with the completion of the single market.
  The agreement will lead to a far greater appreciation by people in Britain of the idea that the United Kingdom is truly an integral and important part of the real Europe, by geography, by tradition, by history, by culture, by civilisation and, most importantly, by commerce and trade of every kind.
  Other urgent and vital matters for the United Kingdom arise from the agreement. The first, which was raised by the Leader of the Opposition, is the critical necessity for a swift reform of the common agricultural policy. We really must get this matter resolved in the future interests of the whole European Community.
  We and our partners must also set about the creation of a low-cost, free-trade, lightly regulated, low-taxed and high-productivity Europe. We have much work to do in that respect. We shall need more advanced technology, better education, higher investment and lower interest rates and taxation. We look to Ministers in our Government and to all the other Governments of the Community to ensure that the Community does not become an inward-looking, introspective entity; that it keeps its eye on the wider world; and that it is dedicated to the philosophy and ideal of free trade without which the Community and the world would perish. Without those
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  highly desirable industrial essentials, we shall not be able to compete in the world and provide the standard of living that our people have come to expect.
  For my own part, the argument in this respect is simple, and has been admirably put by my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson). Do we want the people of our country to be increasingly better-off or to be poor? Do we want to be rich and prosperous in Europe, or do we want to become the poor cousins, living outside it? For far too long we have ignored what my hon. Friend called the bottom line of the European calculation and our duty to all our people to secure their prosperity, safety and security. Those are some of the most important thoughts behind my right hon. Friend's thinking in the lead-up to the Maastricht summit.
  The future of Europe over the next 20 years will be one of dazzling opportunity, and I am glad that, as a result of the treaty, we are now back in a position to help to influence those opportunities for Britain's benefit. The Community will push on as the biggest single trading market in the world—bigger than the United States and Japan combined. It will attract global investment. It will develop and employ, in the most extraordinary manner, the very latest technology on offer. It will use all the skills of its many different peoples to provide goods and services to a market of nearly 380 million people.
  My constituency—as well as the United Kingdom as a whole—has already been a major recipient of such investment and, following Maastricht and the Government's absolutely correct arrangement for an opt-in on monetary union, we shall have greater and better opportunities for more inward investment over the next few years. The reason for that is not only that we shall have taken an advantageous position at Maastricht, but that Britain has an excellent entrepreneurial climate, in which people are permitted to get on with their business and take advantage of Britain's proximity to, and partnership and arrangements with, Europe.
  On defence and foreign affairs, my right hon. and hon. Friends have succeeded in developing the excellent concept of a common foreign and security policy but only for issues in respect of which we have interests in common. To my mind, the most serious matter for the Community is that the United Kingdom's freedom to act is safeguarded when we need to respond in an emergency to protect our own interests.
  The most formidable difficulties exist in eastern Europe, and they must be dealt with. I hope that the new arrangements will allow the Twelve to act more efficiently and coherently. The crucial test for the arrangements will be whether the structures of the European Community are suitable for the post-cold-war world and the way in which they can be developed to meet the needs of a Europe entirely different from that which the Communities were designed to serve.
  For example, Germany is now reunited. She has the most powerful economy in Europe, and is moving rapidly to recover her old spheres of commercial and political interest. Inevitably, Germany will replace the Soviet Union as the dominant power within Europe. Are the Community's institutions suited to such a change?
  I believe that the conference really came three years too soon; it is far too soon to assess the shape of the post-cold-war world. This Gadarene rush for defence cuts is, I believe, a change that has been made far too soon. We need a long-term, fundamental rethink of the structures of

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  political and economic co-operation in a Europe that is no longer embattled and on the defensive, and a rethink of Europe's relationship with a world in which communism has ceased to matter. That is a critical necessity for the future.
  This year, the Twelve will have to deal with famine in several republics of the Soviet Union. They will also have to deal with explosive nationalistic hatreds in many ex-communist countries. We will see whether the systems are sufficient to cope with the great strains and problems that lie ahead.
  My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has brought back a splendid package from Maastricht. Negotiations started a year ago, with Britain in a highly defensive position. However, with exhaustive and patient skill, the Government have secured an agreement which has achieved all Britain's objectives and her interests, as well as being a most important step forward for the European Community. I will have great pleasure in supporting the Government tomorrow night.
  10.20 pm
  Mr. Robert N. Wareing: Earlier in the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short) said that she had changed her mind. This debate is rather like a confessional. Hon. Members have described how they have changed their minds. However, I can tell the Government Front Bench that I have never changed my mind about the need for a united Europe, preferably one based on the principles of democratic socialism. However, I have changed my mind about what used to be called the Common Market.
  At the time of the Schumann and Monnet plans, and during the 1950s and 1960s, I honestly believed that the Common Market covered only half Europe so it was wrong to talk about being pro-Europe and anti-Europe. I believed that it was a common market of the multinational corporations. I now believe that the multinational corporations have become sovereign states and the only way in which the people represented by democratic representatives can control the activities of those corporations is through elected supranational Governments. That is the stage that we have reached.
  As late as 1975 and the referendum when I opposed our remaining in the Common Market, Britain was still a fairly substantial manufacturing power. However, since 1975 our manufacturing base has been decimated by the Government. One third of our manufacturing base has been lost despite the fact that we are the only country in the Community to have benefited from a North sea oil bonanza.
  What would the Germans or the French have done with the revenues from North sea oil? This country wasted that great asset and we are now one of the weakest manufacturing countries in the Community—so weak, indeed, that the Government do not believe that our working people can be guaranteed the same rights as those in manufacturing industry in Greece, Spain and Portugal.
  Some hon. Members have referred to opting out and oppose further loss of sovereignty, but what is that sovereignty? When I ask people on the doorsteps in my constituency about that, I find that they are not worried about sovereignty. If sovereignty means anything to them,
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  it means the right to a decent home, a decent education and a decent chance in life. They are no longer interested in the nationalist nonsense that we hear from the Government, and which was the real motive behind the way in which the Government approached Maastricht.
  I have no doubt that, once the election is out of the way, the Government will head in the direction of a single currency and the European central bank. Indeed, hon. Members have already alluded to that today. The Government have already lost the opportunity for that bank to be located in London, and that means lost job opportunities for our people—the people whom we represent.
  The Government make this country the laughing stock of the world when they talk about the European Community and its social policies being the back door to socialism. O that such policies would lead to democratic socialism as an inevitability. That is something for which people such as myself would fight in Europe—in order to bring about a decent life for our people. The Government have found themselves in an ideological cul-de-sac which is not shared by even the most conservative parties represented in the Bundestag, the French National Assembly or any country in the European Community. The Conservative party, of all political parties holding any power within the European Community, does not believe in social progress and the concept of one nation. Where is one-nation Toryism today? We have only to go less than half a mile from this House to see how our nation is divided. On one side of the street there are banks which are rich on the profit that they have made out of ordinary people, and on the other side there is cardboard city. We have only to walk along Victoria street to see what the Government's social policies mean for ordinary people —the people whom we represent.
  The Conservative party is the only major political party that is opposed to the social charter. Conservative Members are also trying to tell Mr. Kohl that the co-determination that Germany has had since 1952 is also a stepping stone to the horrors of militant strikes and trade union activity. They should ask the Germans whether co-determination has succeeded in their country. Nobody in Germany today wants to see the end of the co-determination statute. When our workers go to Germany and visit their opposite numbers, as our dock workers recently did during the passage of the Government's docks legislation, they were amazed that German workers were consulted about their place of work, production, and activity within their plants.
  A blatant lie is being told. Time and again we are told that the Government's industrial relations legislation would have to be changed to what it was before 1979. I shall not deal with the arguments about that legislation, but it is a blatant lie that anything in the social charter would entail the repeal of one piece of industrial relations legislation. I defy any Conservative Member to tell me the name of any Act that has been passed since 1979 which would have to be repealed if we signed the social charter.
  The Government talk about subsidiarity—it is the new word—and say that if a function is best performed at the national level rather than at the Community level, that is where it should be done. I do not disagree with that, but the Government denied the principle of subsidiarity to the Greater London council, the Merseyside county council,

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  the West Midlands council and the Tyne and Wear council precisely because they were elected Labour councils with whom they happened to disagree.
  The right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) has been tramping around eastern Europe and talking about democracy when she does not even believe in democracy in her own country. Let us not allow the Tories to tell us that they care about sovereignty because they are keen on the principle of parliamentary or local democracy in Britain because it is a blatant lie to suggest that that is the case.
  Unfortunately, nationalism catches on with many people. We have seen how Milosevic used the nationalist card in Kosovo and eventually entrenched his power in Serbia. Tudjman in Croatia has used the same card. The same has happened in various parts of the Soviet Union. However, one does not have to look beyond our shores to see where nationalism is being used to engender support from the electorate. As I said before, when the Government went to Maastricht to negotiate on behalf of the United Kingdom, first they were more worried about the unity of the Tory party than that of Europe and, secondly, they were more worried about wrongfooting the Labour party. They hoped that the British electorate would think of the Labour party as anti-British.
  I represent my constituents' interests and I believe that the way to achieve better conditions for them is not to opt out of Europe. Britain's manufacturing base cannot be restored outside the European scene. That is an absolute impossibility. We need the Siemens and other industrial concerns of Europe to help us build up our base.
  The hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) talked about Japanese investment, but who will control Japanese investment? Will it be controlled in Europe, London or Tokyo? I should have preferred to have the opportunity to elect a Parliament in Europe which could control the institutions of government—the Executive in Europe—and could see to it that multinational firms acted in the interests of the peoples of Europe.
  We must think in terms of being in Europe. The Government were willing to sacrifice even one of their own principles because they were worried about what would happen in the general election. They gave up the possibility of having any say whatever in determining who will be the officials of the European central bank. We have lost all chance of ensuring that London becomes the financial centre of Europe. Undoubtedly, the bank will go to Frankfurt instead.
  Nothing was so cynical in the past week as the manipulation of the news in much of the British press. Headlines about the so-called "Triumph of Major" were signposted across the cheap tabloids. It was in fact an absolute disaster for Britain. It would perhaps be better to refer to what was said in the continental press. For example, the Rheinischer Merkur said:
  "branding reasonable protection for workers as 'socialism through the back door' is throwing out the baby with the bath water."
  A Danish newspaper said that Maastricht
  "exhibits Britain as a developing country which wants to compete on cheap labour."
  That is the truth of the matter. Those newspapers are not sycophants of the Tory party: they are telling what I believe to be the truth, and the truth that my constituents will believe when we come to the general election.
  10.33 pm
  Mr. Alan Haselhurst: It worries me that our continuing debate about Britain's relations with her European Community partners is still dogged with overtones which I find unnecessary and, in some cases, unpleasant. I do not understand why the argument has reappeared that there is a political side to the enterprise which no one realised at the beginning and that, if they had done so, people's view would have been different about it.
  I go back to the time when Mr. Harold Macmillan came to the House to make a statement on 31 July 1961. He had barely paused to take breath when he said:
  "This is a political as well as an economic issue. Although the Treaty of Rome is concerned with economic matters it has an important political objective, namely, to promote unity and stability in Europe, which is so essential a factor in the struggle for freedom and progress through the world."—[Official Report, 31 July 1961; Vol. 645, c. 928.]
  How can anyone be in any doubt that that was the tone with which this whole debate began in this country and has continued since?
  In 1971, throughout the debate over our decision to attach ourselves to the treaty of Rome, there were constant references to the political dimension. Sir Alec Douglas-Home's speech on 21 October was full of references to that, including use of the "F" word. How can anyone doubt that there was a political dimension to the Community?
  In his winding up speech my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) said:
  "I want Britain as a member of a Europe which is united politically, and which will enjoy lasting peace and the greater security which would ensue."—[Official Report, 28 October 1971; Vol. 823, c. 2212.]
  Those sentiments received an endorsement in this House of 356 votes in favour to 244 against. How can it be said, in this latter day, that there was some doubt about the political dimension of the European Community?
  Mr. Winnick: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Haselhurst: No; we have only a short time available.
  The political nature of the Community has been apparent to us all right from the start, and has never been omitted from the debate. It was certainly not omitted from the referendum debate.
  I do not accept that we are the only country in the Community to obey the rules. We are very good at obeying the rules, but we only lie third in the league table of adopting and implementing Community regulations. It does not help to sneer at our Community partners because they are less good. The right approach—the approach adopted at Maastricht—is to ensure that we tighten up on implementation. Indeed, a country should face penalties if it does not obey the rules of the Community.
  Nor does it help the debate if we suggest that somehow our democracy is superior to everyone else's and are rather scornful about democracy in the Community. We are entitled to be proud of our parliamentary democracy. I am intensely proud of it, but I do not spurn democracy in our partner countries. I recognise that some of them have had to fight to reassert their democracy and we should respect that. It may be a tender plant in some countries, but it is a plant which they revere considerably.
  To suggest that if we progress to unification in Europe we shall lose our national identity is false and unreasonable. I do not detect any loss of identity among

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  the Scots after 284 years of full political union with this country. Nor do I detect any move by the French or the Italians to erase their national identity, even though they may be the most enthusiastic in the terms with which they wish to embrace the idea of a united states of Europe.
  Against that background I found the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) immensely depressing. It struck me as a speech full of bile and scorn, with hardly a respectful word for our partners in the Community, with whom, as a Minister, he must have worked closely at one time. He heard the debate in 1971. He should have known then what we were setting our names to and what he supported.
  Mr. Tebbit rose——
  Mr. Haselhurst: I shall give him an opportunity to reply in a moment. He was a member of the Cabinet in 1985 when the Single European Act was introduced and he has the gall to complain about the transport regulations, which I am happy that my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) told the House had not a little to do with the Single European Act. How can my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford say that he did not see all that coming? As he was a member of the Cabinet when those matters were discussed, how can he discover its great constitutional importance now? I do not think that it befits him well to complain to the House now.
  Mr. Tebbit: I am happy to explain to my hon. Friend. At that time, I did not believe that the doctrine of subsidiarity would require that our speed limits be dictated by Brussels. Secondly, in Cabinet I believed, as hon. Members generally believed, the then Foreign Secretary when he told us things about the Single European Act that have proved not to be true in fact. He believed it to be true at the time, but that is not the way that it worked out. Having had my fingers burnt, I am damned if I am going to put my arm in the fire.
  Furthermore, if my hon. Friend goes back to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) said when he came back from his famous meeting with President Pompidou, he will see that my right hon. Friend explained carefully to the House that the democratic line of accountability would be, exclusively, through the Council of Ministers to the national Parliaments. He further observed that the Commission was a bureaucratic organisation with limited terms of reference, and it would not have control over policy. That is why I voted for it.
  Mr. Haselhurst: Out of courtesy, I gave my right hon. Friend the opportunity to intervene, but I did not expect him to make a third speech on Europe within such a short time. He must have had amnesia during his ministerial days if he failed to understand the importance of what he was apparently happily prepared to assent to.
  Mr. Tebbit: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. Haselhurst: I think that I have heard enough from my right hon. Friend.
  Set out in the preamble of the treaty of Rome was ever-closer political union. That is what we signed for, and in the treaty of Maastricht it is repeated that we are moving towards an ever-closer union. I recognise that, as
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  we move ever closer to an ever-closer union, hon. Members may have doubts about what that implies for the future of the House and its powers, but one has to look at it realistically. To say that we shall be denuded of our sovereignty is unreal.
  Let us consider what we spend our time doing. The Order Paper shows the various matters that concern us. Our constituency mail bags show us the matters that our constituents want us to consider. We should recognise that we are not dealing with great international issues all the time. I must have had about three letters about the Maastricht treaty, but I had 10 times that number about Sunday trading and similar matters.
  The House does not deal with the great issues all the time. For example, did the House go into solemn conclave to discuss whether interest rates should go up or down? In or out of the ERM, if the Bundesbank put up its interest rates, we followed within half an hour, without any debate in the House at all. Those are the realities that we must face. We may not like them, but that is the case.
  I find the argument that democracy is under attack because of the ever-closer union with the European people difficult to understand. This argument can be raised at any level of democracy. Parish councils sometimes complain about the over-weaning power of the district councils, but we know that the power of planning, of deciding where new housing estates are to go, cannot be left to parish councils. The decisions cannot realistically be taken at that level; and so it goes on up the system.
  No wonder that we hear complaints from the people of Scotland about the government that they are getting within the United Kingdom. I am, to my fingertips, a unionist. I want to unite Scotland with the rest of us in the British Isles, and if I want to convince the Scottish people that they are right to be part of this united kingdom, I do not see why I should adopt an entirely different attitude towards ever-closer union within the European Community.
  Ms. Short: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Haselhurst: I am afraid that I must say no to the hon. Lady.
  If we are always going to settle for a narrow view, by saying that it will always be the smallest group of people who must hold sway over every decision, we shall never be capable of taking the greater decisions with the greater vision that is necessary if we are to keep apace of events. I hope that we shall move on to closer union, but I hope that we shall do it at a reasonable and sensible pace. That is the tone that the Prime Minister has adopted in his negotiations.
  If economic union and a single currency could be achieved, I should prefer that. There will be considerable difficulties, but if it did happen it would be for the benefit of British business, of British industry, and therefore of the wealth of the people of Britain.
  I welcome the important progress that was made at Maastricht. I do not complain that it was not sufficient progress, and I certainly do not complain that it was too much. I return to the words of Sir Alec Douglas-Home in the debate in 1971 when, in answer to a question from Jo Grimond, he said:
  "I said that the political processes in Europe would evolve, and that they would evolve by consent, because if one tried to

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  go too fast and impose too much the Community could break up. The change will occur by evolution and by consent"— [Official Report, 28 October 1971; Vol. 823, c. 921–22.]
  I am content with that approach. I think that we are making good progress.
  10.45 pm
  Mr. Denzil Davies: The hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) was present, as I was, during the debates in 1971 and 1972. I do not want to pursue this line, but I must say that I had a different impression of the way in which the EC was sold at that time. Being a Celt, I can smell a union wherever it may be. I was quite convinced that the matter was about union. The Prime Minister of the day, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), and others did not convey that impression, nor did many of the so-called pro-marketeers on the Labour Benches. However, many of us were convinced that it was about union, and that is what it has been about from the beginning.
  I am not sure whether the treaty of Maastricht has speeded up the conveyor belt to unionism or federalism—whatever the words mean—or whether it has slowed the process. I do not know what effect it will have. I suspect that the conveyor belt will keep moving for a while, but listening to these debates I also suspect that those on that conveyor belt—and those who cling on to it—do not know where they are going. They are not quite sure about the conveyor belt. Some of them are happy for it to go round and round and others are happy to jump on it because it is the only conveyor belt available and they think that they might get some benefit from it.
  I am not convinced about the consequences of Maastricht. I have a feeling—it is just a feeling—that Maastricht was the high water mark of what I call the old Europe:the Europe of the Schumann plan and the European Coal and Steel Community; the Europe of the bureaucratic centralism of the Commission; the Europe of the Six, huddled around Paris, Bonn and Brussels.
  I do not believe that the Europe of the Six has ever come to terms even with the Europe of the Nine. It is having even more difficulty coming to terms with the Europe of the Twelve. I have considerable doubts about how the Europe of the Six will manage the Europe of the Fifteen, the Eighteen or the Twenty. Of course, the old Europe that I have described had its roots in an older Europe, and that was the older Europe of congresses and chancelleries, of people who drew boundaries on maps and wrote irreversible treaties.
  One abiding impression I had when watching what happened at Maastricht, mainly on the television, was the arrogance of some of the leaders of the Europe of the Six—the arrogance of Chancellor Kohl, President Mitterrand, Mr. Delors and the Dutch presidency. What about the arrogance of Chancellor Kohl, who announced to the world that Europe would have a single currency by 1 January 1999? What about the arrogance of the proclamation that it was irreversible?
  There is also the arrogance that purports in the treaty to transfer for ever economic and monetary power from democratically elected countries to a non-elected Commission and a non-elected central bank. I suppose that those who took part in the congress of Vienna or in writing the treaty of Versailles also thought that the decisions that they took on Europe were irreversible, and proclaimed as much to the world.
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  This same arrogance decreed that elected Governments, even in stage 2, be pilloried, hounded, and coralled if they did not meet certain economic indices written into the treaty. They have to keep within a ratio of Government borrowing to gross national product of 3 per cent., for instance. Why 3 per cent.? Why a ratio of 60 per cent. for Government borrowing and GDP? We pride ourselves on our debates here, but I have not heard the 3 per cent. figure debated at all. Where did it come from? Why not 3·5 per cent.—or 3·99 recurring per cent.? Who decreed these figures? Are they the distillation of centuries of human wisdom, now written into the treaties?
  More arrogance is to come with stage 3. The elected Governments of member states are to be fined for transgressing certain economic indices and statistics. Monetary policy is to be transferred, and with it control over economics, to a central bank whose president or governor shall sit for eight years-the equivalent of two terms of office for an American president. In that time, he cannot be sacked or replaced, whatever he does and whatever effects his decisions have on millions of people in Europe.
  No doubt he and his colleagues will enjoy marvellous Euro-salaries and pay low Euro-taxes. They will also enjoy diplomatic status and immunity and all the trappings. If there are any members of Brezhnev's politburo left, they must be drooling at the mouth at the thought of such non-democratic perquisites. If these bureaucrats put curtains in their stretch limos and reserve the central lanes of the autobahns for themselves, the picture will be complete.
  It is arrogant to transfer power to non-elected people. It is arrogant to subjugate politics to economics and to subordinate democracy to bureaucracy.
  The treaty says nothing about the unemployed. It has plenty to say about price stability and debt, about borrowing and monetary policy—all good things in themselves—but there is nothing about the unemployed or about poverty. The treaty says that member states should avoid excessive budgetary deficits, so why does not it say that they should avoid excessive unemployment?
  Sir Russell Johnston: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to arrest his wonderful Welsh Periclean rhetoric for a moment, I must tell him that the social charter is about precisely the topics he has mentioned. It tries to create prosperous conditions for all the citizens of Europe.
  Mr. Davies: No one is defending opting out of the social chapter. Monetary matters are at the heart of the social chapter, however, and if we lose control over our economy, high hopes for the social chapter cannot be fulfilled.
  Why does not the treaty stipulate that member states shall keep unemployment below, say, 5 per cent?
  Ms. Short: Absolutely.
  Mr. Davies: In that case, I do not understand why my hon. Friend, and many other members of my party, support the idea of a central bank, which will entrench monetarism in Europe for ever.
  Mr. Christopher Gill: Is it not obvious to the right hon. Gentleman that the reason why unemployment is not mentioned is that it will inevitably rise dramatically as a result of a single currency?
  Mr. Davies: It seems that none of these matters should be mentioned. Debt, unemployment and price stability, for example, should not be mentioned, but if we mention some economic indicators, why not others? We are entrenching money and finance—they will be declared king. The poor, the underprivileged and the disadvantaged have always understood that money was king, but they have always had the hope that, somehow or other, Governments could dethrone the king; that democratic action could dethrone the king and that they could change the idea that money always controls everything.
  Very often, that hope did not materialise, but they then hoped that the next generation would be able to do it. By entrenching money in the treaty, we are taking that hope from people—from the unemployed, the underprivileged and the poor of Europe. We are taking political choice and ideology away from them, together with the chance of their opting for a different monetary and financial system.
  Ms. Short: I know that my hon. Friend understands economics very well, but does he not agree that the capacity of a state such as Britain to look after the poor and its unemployed has gone? Our interest rates are controlled by Germany. Therefore, although I agree that the terms on which economic and monetary union are discussed in the treaty are deeply deflationary, is not our only hope to parallel the power of money with democracy, to try to civilise the power of money, so as to create the possibility of dealing with poverty and unemployment?
  Mr. Davies: But my point is that we are losing all democracy. We are losing even the little control that we have over money to the European bankers and financiers—and at a time of turmoil in Europe. Unemployment is extremely high at the moment in the Europe of the Twelve. The Europe of the Twelve will not be an economic panacea. In fact, Europe is no longer very productive. Perhaps the Europe of the Six was productive, but as it has moved to the Europe of the Nine and of the Twelve, so it is ceasing to be productive. Therefore, the problems of unemployment are built in.
  On top of that, people will be coming from the east, where there are worse economic problems, and they will swell unemployment in Europe. In addition, deflation has been enshrined in the treaty. What Europe needs in the next 10 or 15 years is flexible politics, not entrenched economics and finances, which is what the treaty will give US.
  I do not know where the conveyor belt is going and I suspect that many other people do not. Some people think that it will produce a great European consultative assembly, representing people stretching from Cape St. Vincent in the south-west of Portugal all the way up to the northern shores of the Baltic and even across, and perhaps beyond, the Hellespont. Who knows, it may stretch to Asia Minor. The very idea that such a huge assembly could, in any shape or form, be democratic is nonsense. It would be run by the imperial civil service, and the glue that attempted to keep it together would be some kind of currency—a latter-day Roman denarius. It would be impossible.
  The only way for the new Europe to progress is for it to be a Europe of democratic, pluralistic nation states, co-operating, acting and deciding together. That is the only way forward. I do not believe in a Europe of
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  bureaucracy or bankers. I believe in a Europe of democracy, but in this treaty we are moving away from democracy and towards bureaucracy and bankers.
  10.58 pm
  Mr. Toby Jessel: Like the right hon. Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) and my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst), I too was here in 1971. In October that year, I was one of the 39 members of the Conservative and Unionist party to vote against the motion:
  "That this House approves Her Majesty's Government's decision of principle to join the European Communities on the basis of the arrangements which have been negotiated."—[Official Report, 21 October 1971; Vol. 823, c. 911.]
  In 1986, I abstained in the vote on the Single European Bill and last month I abstained in the vote on the pre-Maastricht debate. I believe that I have been rather more consistent than the leadership of the Labour party, which has swung right across from one extreme to the other. As my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames) said, that has happened seven times. If it can happen seven times, perhaps it can happen eight. Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition believes, with Emerson, that
  "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds".
  The motion is in two parts. With the first part, which congratulates the Prime Minister on achieving all the negotiating objectives set out in the motion that was supported by the House on 21 November, I can agree. I can happily endorse that. Within the goalposts that my right hon. Friend set—which were rigorous—his tactics and those of his team, their persistence, sheer industry and application, were most remarkable. The Government have achieved, against the odds and courageously, a pause—an important and significant pause, but still a pause—in the seemingly remorseless process of swallowing up.
  What I question are the goalposts. I do not want just a pause, or just to keep the status quo; I should like to see the powers of the European Community drastically curtailed. Basically, the concept of the treaty is to see the European Community more and more as one unit. The documents are shot through not only with the original words of 20 or 30 years ago about "ever closer union", but with many more words with the same emphasis and of the same genre. We must ask what it really means.
  Let us take defence, and the references to the Western European Union and NATO. Defence is the first duty of any Government. The purpose of defence is, of course, to defend. It is not just some expression of foreign policy, but an end in itself, to keep our people safe and free.
  All through human history people have attacked each other. It would be a dangerous gamble to assume that human nature has somehow changed so much for the better in our generation, or will in the next, that we shall be immune from that risk. Even though the Soviet Union is breaking up, we cannot know where the next threats may come from.
  The Maastricht treaty upholds NATO as the main bastion of our defence, with the Western European Union within it, but its reference to the strengthened role of the WEU really means a strengthened role for the European Community. On page 114, we read that
  "Member States agree to strengthen the role of WEU, in the longer term perspective of a common defence policy within the European Union which might in time lead to a

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  common defence, compatible with that of the Atlantic Alliance…To this end, it will formulate common European defence policy".
  On page 115, it states:
  "The objective is to build up WEU in stages as the defence component of the European Union"—
  that is, of the European Community.
  "To this end WEU is prepared at the request of the European Union"—
  that is, the European Community—
  "to elaborate and implement decisions and actions of the Union"—
  that is, the European Community again.
  "To this end WEU will take the following measures to develop a close working relationship with the Union".
  The treaty then lists several measures, including
  "arranging…to ensure that the Commission of the European Community is regularly informed and…consulted on WEU activities in accordance with the role of the Commission in the Common Foreign and Security Policy as defined in the European Union Treaty".
  Mr. Garel-Jones: I am sure that my hon. Friend has been noticing as he reads that all of that makes it clear that the WEU is not subject to the union but is separate and independent from it. Our purpose, which was contained in the Anglo-Italian paper—as my hon. Friend, who follows these matters closely, will know—was to be able to build a European defence personality around the WEU, of whose parliamentary Assembly my hon. Friend is a member, to supplement and complement our role in NATO, which is the cornerstone of European defence.
  Mr. Jessel: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I accept what he says about NATO being the cornerstone. My point is that, for the first time, the European Community and its organs have the right to be consulted about European defence. In some sense, the WEU becomes answerable, through those procedures, to the European Community. I see it as the thin end of the wedge. The European Community will want more and more say on defence. It could have a real influence over defence in the end; and I believe that that will weaken our defences.
  When Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait, Britain—led by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister—responded robustly, as did two or three other states in the Community. Most of the other member states, however, were vacillating, craven and supine. Some of them were much the same when Argentina attacked the Falkland Islands. I do not see how we can ever rely on them, or their representatives through the European union, to respond quickly, certainly and effectively in the event of an outside attack. For years I have heard the way that they talk in the Western European Union Assembly. I believe profoundly that our defences and our security will be far sounder if the European Community has no link with them.
  Constitutions must reflect the public will, otherwise they will crack up as in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. We see centrifugal forces in Quebec, Kashmir and elsewhere. Within the European Community we see the growth of ugly forms of nationalism. In France, M. Le Pen is said now to be more popular than President Mitterrand. We see nationalism also in Belgium and Germany and Austria.
  Sir Russell Johnston: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Jessel: No, I must get on. I said that I would be no more than 10 minutes, and I have only three more minutes.
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  In our own country, there is a deep instinct for and a healthy streak of stubbornness, which I share. There is a refusal to be pushed around. Can anyone imagine that in the end Britain will be more docile than France, Belgium or Germany?
  The Community talks of "ever closer union", which means ever more ubiquitous interference. The European Community, in clasping the member states, or member nations, too closely is planting the seeds of its own destruction. I believe that some of the nations will break out. I do not believe that Britain will still be a member of the Community in 30 or 40 years' time. It is only a matter of time before small national or nationalist parties spring up in Britain. To occupy their ground and to stop their advance, both the main parties will have to become less Euro-centred and more national again. At some stage, one or other of the main parties will campaign on a European issue. It may be that we can no longer steer our own course between inflation and unemployment, or the issue might be immigration. There are any number of issues that might arise.
  In the end, I believe that one party or another will secure a majority in the House on the platform of flouting the European Community, its institutions and its courts. We shall then have a constitutional crisis, and it will be a question of who the army and the police obey. I would rather have a smaller constitutional crisis now than a big one later on.
  I recognise that some economic functions have to be pooled, but beyond that most of the British people do not want any power over, say, Italy or Spain. They certainly do not want the Italians or the Spanish, for example, to share in ruling Britain. That is what I feel deep in my bones. I feel that I have no sense of duty, owe no loyalty and have no sense of belonging to any of them. I believe that I speak for the majority of my constituents. That view is in stark conflict with the spirit of the treaty of the union. That is why I cannot endorse the latter part of the motion, which contains the words "warmly endorses" the Maastricht agreement. Despite my great admiration for the negotiating skills of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the rest of the team, that is why I cannot vote for the motion.
  11.9 pm
  Mr. Harry Barnes: The Government have complimented themselves on their achievements at Maastricht, but they concentrated their opposition on the wrong subjects. The obvious ones are the social chapter and economic and monetary union, but there are a number of others.
  The social chapter is a continuation of the social charter of 1989. We are outside the agreement on the social chapter that was reached by the other Eleven. By exercising our veto, we have ensured that shall be unable to influence the policy of the other 11 nations.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) suggested that the social chapter is unnecessary because a Labour Government could enact all the measures contained in it. He is mistaken. The social chapter is not a detailed programme for legislation but a hook on which a range of policies can be hung, which can then be taken up by the institutions of the Community.

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  My right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) correctly said that the social chapter should be used to tackle unemployment and poverty. Democratic socialists should be explaining their views on the purpose of the social charter and seeking to extend the bland provisions of EC treaties. It is the duty of democratic socialists to argue for social provision.
  Mrs. Dunwoody: Does my hon. Friend believe that it is the role of democratic socialists to consider economic planning, and particularly to exercise control over the taxation policies of their own Governments?
  Mr. Barnes: Democratic socialists should be concerned about such major economic matters, which is why the Maastricht treaty's provisions on economic and monetary union should apply to not only this country but other EC countries.
  We have an essential role to play in overcoming the democratic deficit in the European Community. My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) mentioned democracy in the House, but democratic provisions must be fought for on a European basis.
  The Government have complimented themselves on the deletion of the word "federal", which was only ever a pious goal mentioned in the original draft. Nevertheless, it is relevant to social provision and economic measures. The United Kingdom's initial democratic developments came within the economic field. Those developments came from the industrial revolution. As a result of the development of the railways, many small market economies became interlinked and developed into a national economy. Working people then had to struggle for the franchise which was granted first to various men in the 19th century and then granted on a universal basis at the beginning of the 20th century. The franchise was granted to women as a result of the suffragette movement. The development of democracy led to social provision and that is how we got the people's budget of 1909 and the welfare state from 1945 onwards.
  Democratic socialists should now impose that pattern on the developments in Europe. Social and democratic elements must be added solidly to the current developments in commerce and trade. We should not allow the EC to be merely a common market based on the principles required by the Government. Our agenda should be excluded because the struggle in which we engaged for democracy and social provision was also undertaken by the other 11 nations of the Community.
  It is disturbing that the Government believe that they also achieved a victory in that there are a number of pillars outside the provisions of the institutions which are part of intergovernmental conference decisions on defence and foreign affairs. Surely EC institutions should be involved in such matters, especially if those institutions operate through parliamentary democracy at European level with a federal division which allows us to act on our own concerns. If not, royal prerogative powers will be used by Governments in, for example, defence and foreign affairs and they will be kept outside any democratic checks and balances at either European or national level.
  The one thing that the Government have got right is that the European Community requires expansion and
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  that we should be outward looking and should seek to involve some of the new democracies in eastern Europe in that framework. If we do so, we cannot allow a situation to develop in which countries such as Czechoslovakia, which has just achieved democracy, become involved with us in a structure in which they will lose out on their democratic arrangements.
  The present structure of the European Community is a democratic disgrace in that its major decisions are made in secret conclaves by Ministers and there is no possibility of our knowing exactly what takes place. There is no possibility—even through the scrutiny arrangements in the House—of influencing the decisions made by Ministers on certain subjects. It would be preferable if the major decisions in Europe were made by a European Parliament with a European Government held responsible to us and if we had a clear separation of powers to say what areas we are to be involved in. Those areas can be significant because federalism can provide for considerable elements of decentralisation. It is folly to argue that getting rid of the word "federal" has improved matters and prevented a drift towards centralism.
  We have a European union and institutions which are geared towards the development of a unitary state. Federalism is a democratic argument and it can operate only within democratic areas. We have heard some nonsense this evening about Yugoslavia, Russia and other countries, but we should consider the example of the United States of America which has developed federal institutions but which is not in danger of breaking up.
  11.20 pm
  Mr. James Paice: I express my appreciation for having been called relatively early in the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker—at least, some of my hon. Friends may still consider this early.
  The European ideal was the reason why I originally came into politics. I spent much of the 1970s representing the British young farmers movement in Brussels soon after we joined the Community, and that experience made me decide that I wanted to go into politics properly. That desire was based on two fundamental perceptions about the future of Europe.
  The first perception was that the rest of the Community wanted Britain to play a full part in its organisation and development, and the second was that the Community would never really fulfil its primary purpose until there was a single currency. I have little doubt that the necessary degree of convergence will be achieved one day, but I do not believe that will happen quickly. It may take many years—indeed, it may never happen. If and when it does, if I am still fortunate enough to be a Member of the House, I shall vote in favour of Britain's becoming part of it.
  The speeches that we have heard tonight have displayed two distinct approaches. Some people want no part of a single currency and wish that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister had said from the outset, "No; no for ever." Such people, both among my hon. Friends and among Opposition Members, would like us to be able to buy short-term competitiveness by devaluing our currency when necessary. But where would that get us?
  When I was a boy—that was not too long ago—a dollar was worth five shillings, and not long ago a deutschmark was worth 25p. Values have gone a long way down since then, and we must ask where we are to stop, if we

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  continually use devaluation as a means of achieving competitiveness. What sort of people are we that we are afraid of the economic might of Germany? Have we so little faith in the ability of British business and in the skills of the British worker and the British entrepreneur? I f those people do not have the skills or the ability, this country is sunk, whether we are part of the Community or not.
  The sooner that we realise that the major advances of the past 12 years have been made because we have accepted that politicians are not good at running things—then perhaps we shall see the odd man out—and the sooner that the Bank of England is made independent, the better. That would be a useful major staging post towards the goal of a central European bank. I should like such a bank to be as independent as possible, too. Much has been said about its political accountability, but I am not sure whether I want a bank that is controlled by politicians. If we can achieve our aim, it will give us the conditions for business to prosper—the stable exchange rate and the low inflation that it needs.
  The other group of hon. Members that has emerged this evening is to be found almost entirely on the Labour Front Bench. I have great sympathy with the Labour spokesman who will have to wind up for the Opposition, because he is almost without friends, judging by the speeches that we have heard from his Back-Bench colleagues tonight. I do not say that he has no friends, but few speeches from Back-Bench Members have supported their leadership.
  The second group would like to say yes to a single currency today, regardless of what may happen. That is a cavalier approach to our future. How can those people be certain that, by 1999, the extremely severe conditions of convergence will have been achieved? Of course they cannot be. I wonder how they—and other states—will try to extricate themselves from an agreement. When it comes to the crunch, they may not be able to fulfil the conditions.
  Do Belgium and Italy really expect to get their deficits down, or will the rules have to be slackened? In either event, something will have to give; somebody will have to backtrack. It is far better now that we should hold back and say that we shall decide when the time is right rather than have to go through the application for derogation so that we do not have to fulfil what may not be achievable.
  I believe that economic and monetary union will become a necessary development, but that a commitment now would be gambling on an outcome later this decade that no one can prophesy. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said, a commitment to a single currency would be unthinkable without a prior decision by the House.
  Political union is a matter of many strands; it is a complex issue. Primarily, it is a matter of vision. There is the vision of a uniform Europe, and that is the path down which we appear to have been headed for the past few years. Such a Europe would consist of the EC standard European—a BSI standard, although BSI standards would not be allowed. That is the Europe in which harmonisation means uniformity, from the content of a sausage to dictating the day of the week on which we should rest.
  It is small wonder that, when Mr. Delors told the Labour party conference two or three years ago that only through Europe could Labour's dreams of socialism be fulfilled, the Damascene conversion was outshone by the red star that beckoned Labour Front-Benchers to Europe. They dream of a continent controlled by Brussels, where
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  every human activity is dictated, controlled, regulated and harmonised by Brussels. The only amazing thing is that it has taken Labour so long to realise that.
  There is another vision of Europe—a far more exciting, colourful and progressive vision. That is the vision that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister brought on to the stage of Europe at Maastricht last week. In that vision, each nation and state maintains its own traditions, cultures and practices, in which individual Governments work together for mutual benefit and in which decisions are taken on a European level which are best taken at that level. Those decisions may be not necessarily taken under the umbrella of the treaty of Rome, but by other agreements.
  That vision also encompasses the emerging democracies of central and eastern Europe. That vision will allow businesses to prosper, with fewer and not more regulations. There will be less intervention, and from that prosperity will flow benefits to all the peoples of Europe. That vision will, sooner or later, be seen as the better way for Europe and it is a vision whose time has probably now come.
  Mr. Spearing: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Paice: I will not, because so many hon. Members wish to speak tonight.
  I welcome the many measures that we have already adopted through the social charter, especially those which affect competition, such as health and safety regulations. They should be dealt with at European level, and once dealt with, and almost more importantly, they must be implemented, monitored and enforced at European level. One of our major achievements at Maastricht is a system of far better enforcement of agreed directives with heavy penalties for those who flout them.
  The other side of the coin is the clear definition of the many policy areas in which European competence is unnecessary and undesirable. If, for example, we get the details of our education policy wrong, that is our problem. If the Greeks get theirs wrong, it is their problem. In a single market, with full free-trading opportunities, those chickens will come home to roost. Central regulation will not be needed, because economic pressures will bring the necessary changes in policy. The market effect will come to bear on policy.
  The proposed extension of the social affairs function, as proposed in the social chapter, shows unacceptable aspects. Our primary role here is to stimulate prosperity through the economy. Prosperity will provide the public revenues for all our vital services. Profitable businesses will provide better terms and conditions of employment and many trade unions on the continent recognise it. Sadly, many of our trade unions do not recognise it. That is why our trade union reforms are as important today as when they were first begun more than 10 years ago.
  It would be bad enough if a Labour Government here abolished that legislation so that restrictive practices and picket lines were free to flourish. However, it would be far worse if that was forced on an unwilling Britain by a majority vote in Brussels.
  Mr. George Robertson: How can that be forced?
  Mr. Paice: If the hon. Gentleman reads the treaty he will discover that article 182 clearly states that working

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  conditions are to be dealt with by a majority vote. "Working conditions" is a pretty all-embracing heading. Mr. Delors and Mrs. Papandreou intend to use the health and safety majority voting procedure to deal with the working time directive. If they can wangle that, what can stop them wangling under "working conditions" virtually anything that they want to bring in?
  Mr. Robertson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Paice: No, I will not give way.
  It is rubbish to suggest that it is not possible—although I accept that it is not certain as the details are not clear—for what I have described to happen.
  As a result of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister forcing into the treaty the provision for fines on member states that flout agreements, particularly on health and safety, my right hon. Friend has done more to help the work force of Europe than could have been achieved by signing the social chapter. That is crucial for the safety and welfare of workers throughout the Community.
  However, the storm warnings are out. As I have said, Mr. Delors and Mrs. Papandreou want to use the majority voting provisions on health and safety to force through that directive. That would be an abuse of the rules. That is exploitation of a possible loophole, and I hope that, when my hon. Friend the Minister replies, he will make clear that the Government will resist and if necessary will take the matter to the European Court to make the choice of article under which that directive is pursued absolutely clear.
  My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has exhibited brilliant leadership to our country in the way in which he has handled himself over Maastricht. He laid his criteria out clearly to the House, he went to Maastricht, and he has delivered. He should be proud of that record. He stood up to the pressure and to the bullying, and, significantly, he has retained his composure throughout the proceedings. That is a rare contrast with the Leader of the Opposition and to the "sign anything" brigade on the Opposition Benches.
  The Maastricht agreement will go down in history as the turning point, when the Community began to turn away from drab uniformity towards a future in which it will be a kaleidoscope of individual peoples stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals—a kaleidoscope of peoples that are unique, with their own traditions and practices, but working together under a variety of arrangements and agreements for their mutual benefit. I believe that I saw that future coming nearly 20 years ago, and I am delighted to have been able to speak about it tonight.
  11.33 pm
  Mr. Derek Enright: On the 30th anniversary of the signing of the treaty of Rome I was the European Commission's delegate to Guinea Bissau and we were given a small amount of money to celebrate the fact—[Interruption.] Hon. Members may not know where Guinea Bissau is, but they might learn something if they listen. I used that small amount of money to buy a football cup because it gave pleasure to all the people and not just to a few diplomats from the Foreign Office and elsewhere. That is what the signing of the treaty of Rome was about. It was about people.
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  Throughout my 37-year membership of the Labour party, I have believed in what Jean Monnet said. I have believed that Europe is for the citizens of Europe, and not just for the economics of Europe. Jean Monnet made an important point—I hope that the Foreign Secretary pays attention and remembers it—when he said that we should not just look to negotiations, negotiations and negotiations; we should prepare the common task beforehand and then work out how to achieve the common task of all the peoples of Europe. That is precisely what the Government have not done in the negotiations.
  The Government have talked, often long, about sovereignty. My right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) also talked about sovereignty. What are the sovereignty and arrogance of which my right hon. Friend talked? It is arrogant of the Government to talk about sovereignty when they cannot even control their own civil servants. Anyone who has been in local government and who knows how latter-day viceroys—regional civil servants—work knows that there is no subsidiarity there. Local government is controlled centrally by Ministers, whether it be in Yorkshire, Scotland or Wales. As I discovered last week, regional civil servants are authorised—indeed, they are told—by Ministers not to reveal road plans to local councillors and to reveal them only to officials. That is a negation of democracy.
  Let us consider the word "federal". The Foreign Secretary went to a decent school, so he should know the origins of the word. Its origins are in foedus. The treaty served the peace. The induciae led to the cessation of war for a time. The federation was under an agreement. The federated allies were treated more fairly than anybody else. That provided greater democracy at the very lowest level. That is a long historical tradition on the continent of Europe—indeed, it stretched to part of the United Kingdom. That point should be remembered.
  Essentially, we are pooling our sovereignty in getting rid of the national egoisms that I have heard expressed on several occasions, so that we can have more control over our affairs. Time and again it has been said—it was also said by one of my hon. Friends—that we cannot control our currency unless we have a say in other people's currencies. That is precisely what economic and monetary union does.
  The Government have not yet said, and probably will never say, why they have set up, helped to set up or gone along with methods of adopting a common currency without committing themselves. If the conditions that they lay down are reasonable, it is reasonable to go along with them. The hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) mentioned that matter, and I commend him on his splendid speech.
  I now refer to the social chapter. Europe is not about supply and demand—it never has been. It is clear from the treaty of Rome and from the writings of those who had the foresight to set up the European Community that Europe is about the social side of life as well as the economic side of life. Economics is only the handmaiden of society. Economics is not the end of a society. That is why it is important that social legislation be integrated into the economic demands of the Community. The Government are strangely ambivalent. Let us take RECHAR as an example. Some Government Departments are enlightened on it. Thank heavens that the Department of the Environment is one. But the Treasury is not. What is more, the Department of Trade and Industry, as I heard in the

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  early hours of Friday morning, is far from enlightened on RECHAR. It is cheating on European rules and it should do something about it.
  Then I hear that on no account will we let these nasty foreigners control our hours of work, which are for us to decide. But that is not the case when it comes to the repeal of the Coal Mines Regulation Act 1908. The Secretary of State for Energy, who made a fleeting appearance in the Chamber tonight, said on that subject:
  "The proposed new European Directive, which would regulate the working hours of industry throughout the Community, would necessitate the agreement of new working arrangements for British Coal's workforce. The repeal of the 1908 Act would be an essential part of that process."
  Those are the two voices of the Government. There is no cohesion whatever.
  The Government do not look at the European Community as a market in the traditional sense. In the traditional sense, the market is a social market in which there is social intercourse between people, as well as buying and selling. That is not for this Government. They look on the Community as a hypermarket which must be open on Sundays. They go dashing around with a trolley. They have no sense whatever of culture, coming together, amity or a social dimension. That is truly appalling. They say, "Get on your trolley and go round but do not look to the quality of life." But it is the quality of life that is important. The right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) can smirk for all he is worth. He applauded the Prime Minister's statement. The Prime Minister said that we have longer maternity leave than any other country in the Community. That is true. Women in the United Kingdom are allowed longer maternity leave than women anywhere else in the Community, but we pay the lowest amount. We pay less than any of the Twelve, including Eire, Portugal and Greece. That is a damning indictment of the Government.
  We need to fight unemployment and inflation and renew the industrial structures of Britain. To that end, in cohesion with Europe, we can pursue research and development that will start to put us on the right way. It will not be the solution to everything—I would not dream of suggesting that—but it will be a start.
  As some hon. Members have said, we must look outwards. I ask the Minister of State to consider one issue that has not been mentioned tonight. We tend to look at the Community as if it is the Community looking back at us. We consider how we are affected by the Community. But the Community looks outwards. The general agreement on tariffs and trade talks are an obvious example. The development and co-operation section of the Maastricht agreement was an absolute disgrace and should have been tightened. The budget for the Lome convention is still not transparent. That is undemocratic because what results is a gang of twelve who come together to pursue their ideas in secret. That mirrors the institutional reform that we need in the Community.
  The right hon. Member for Chingford said that nothing functions unless there are decent institutions. He is right that we must examine our institutions all the time to tone them and make them better. The one truly awful institution in the European Community is the Council of Ministers. It meets in secret. It is not open. It does not tell us what is happening. For example, we see John Selwyn Gummer, to name but a few, on television having just come out of the Council of Agricultural Ministers. He says
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  what has happened and how he has won the battle of agriculture for the United Kingdom. If one is in Brussels, it is even better. One can watch the Ministers from member countries come out of the Council and say how they won for France, Italy or wherever. There is no cohesion because the Council of Ministers is egotistic and nationalistic. It would be much less so if Ministers were more open about what happens.
  Ministers go off without consulting the House, make an agreement—they may have consulted the Cabinet—come back and say, "This is the agreement". Then the Government put a three-line Whip on it and there is an end to the matter. That is not a party-political point, as the Labour party did the same. There is no examination of what the Council of Ministers do. That means that we must give more powers to the European Parliament.
  I have strained your patience for too long, Madam Deputy Speaker, as I have spoken for longer than 10 minutes, which I did not intend to do.
  The people who have no vision will perish. The Government have no vision. In Europe they have been like porkers with their snouts in the trough all the time. We need to have an ideal and a vision of Europe which will also be a vision for the rest of the world. The Labour party is capable of doing that.
  11.46 pm
  Mr. Tim Rathbone: This is not too late an hour, as some hon. Members have pointed out, compared with the late hours that we spent here discussing Welsh and Scottish assemblies years ago—and this debate is just as important, if not more so.
  I welcome and endorse the motion. I believe that the Maastricht treaty is a further step in our efforts to avoid the damage of another territorial war in Europe, or harm between the nations of Europe, and to embrace the need for and have the fortitude to seek common ground, common goals and sensible common methods to achieve them with our European partners.
  Britain's prosperity and security depend on working more closely with the very Europeans whom, for too long, too many people in this country have been trying to ignore or even disdain. Even our trading relations with the rest of the world are important and demand greater coherence—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Sir R. Luce) said at the beginning of the debate-in the pan-European position on the general agreement on tariffs and trade.
  I welcome confirmation of Britain's full involvement in shaping the European monetary system and the disciplines attached to the adoption of a single currency. I should have liked greater British commitment to be expressed on meeting the established criteria, and a firmer desire to adopt a single currency at the earliest opportunity. However, there are strong indicators—not only in the House—that sufficient doubts about swift monetary and financial coherence remain in many people's minds in our island kingdom. Buying further time to consider, to persuade and to study developments towards greater convergence must be a wise approach. Our Prime Minister is to be congratulated on obtaining that time, not only for Britain but for other European countries. There is an old Sussex saying, "We won't be druv." He obviously espouses that.

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  In foreign affairs, a system has been established for better co-ordination and better joint action where possible, although a Community approach to the problems of Yugoslavia in the week after Maastricht—as well as before it—shows how difficult that process may be.
  On defence, I welcome the reinforcement of the Western European Union so that it may become the ever-stronger European defence pillar within NATO. The WEU must and will become stronger and more important. It was described by Mr. Genscher as being at the service of all Conference of Security and Co-operation in Europe member states.
  I must put in a plea to our Government. The value of the democratic element within WEU—its assembly—must be better appreciated and better supported. It is of paramount importance. The assembly is made up of representatives from the democratically elected Parliaments of member states. It requires proper funding to perform its increasingly important role, just as our Parliament could not function properly without appropriate funding. Yet Governments, including our own British Government, have not granted the necessary funds to the WEU Assembly year after year. Already, its ability to function properly is undermined, and that does not bode well for its enlarged future role. That must be corrected, and I hope that the Government will respond more positively to operational suggestions and budget requests when they are next made.
  I welcome the steps agreed for further co-operation in combating international crime, including most particularly drug trafficking. This builds on the considerable achievements of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, in his present and previous offices, and of other British Ministers in the Pompidou group of the Council of Europe and elsewhere. There has been a growing need for a European drugs intelligence unit, and the European police office will provide that.
  In social policy, it is correct and important to re-accent that Britain has already signed up to the social provisions of the treaty of Rome, and shares with Germany the best record for implementing European Community social measures. That is quite the opposite of what has been said by the Opposition. There is much further to go in adopting the Community's existing social action programme before extending further the social dimension of the Community. Greater support for the reasonable, pragmatic and yet important social charter of the Council of Europe could be valuable as well.
  Even though this is outside the treaty of Rome, I hope that Britain can still influence the extent and direction of broader Community social policy. If evolution of the social charter goes too far too fast, it will create even greater difficulties in developing special relationships with, or eventually membership for, the emerging democracies of central and eastern Europe. That would be going against the grain of history.
  Britain must still play a part in the process, not least through its Members of the European Parliament. Will it be able to play a strong part as a gap is created between them and the representatives of other countries? Will British parliamentarians in Europe still play as strong a role in the committee work and the debates there? That point requires clarification.
  Mr. Dykes: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. Rathbone: If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I shall not, as other hon. Members wish to speak and time is short.
  This is all the more the case since giving the European Parliament additional powers. Increased control of the Commission and of the way it spends our money is to be welcomed. Each Member of the European Parliament does not yet carry equal political and constitutional authority, because of the varying methods of national elections to the European Parliament. Greater coherence in this is also long overdue. That is not to say that electoral systems in all countries must be identical, although that would be ideal, but they should be as similar as possible, so that all are reasonably uniformly represented.
  Reform of the British electoral system for the European Parliament must be part of post-Maastricht planning. The British pragmatism that we have applied to all representative bodies in the United Kingdom, with the sole exception of our Parliament, should be applied to the choice of electoral systems for the European Parliament. Even more than in English and Welsh districts or in Northern Ireland, the European parliamentary chamber is not one in which executive decisions have to be taken, so a system such as we have for our House of Commons, which is biased to give an overall majority most of the time, is infinitely less important than it is here. Better and more even representation everywhere is all the easier. That nettle must be grasped.
  That does not mean, nor does anything in the Maastricht treaty mean, that we have denied or should deny the forces of nationalism or individualism. The power of a nation and of individuals in a nation to harness human spirit and encourage endeavour is undoubted, considerable and extremely valuable. No lasting union could ever be built on a desire to submerge individual and national characteristics, identity and culture. Nothing in the Maastricht treaty threatens in that way. It is therefore to be welcomed.
  My right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary, the Foreign Office Ministers and their teams deserve our complete support on the treaty and in the Lobby tomorrow.
  11.55 pm
  Mr. Alistair Darling: I shall resist the temptation to follow the hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) down the road of electoral reform in the European Parliament, or I shall be in trouble.
  This is certainly the first, and I hope the last, occasion on which I shall make a short speech that spans two separate days. Those who talk of our Parliament as though it were somehow a perfect institution compared with those in Europe might reflect on the fact that we are discussing an important issue quite literally in the middle of the night.
  The question before us in this two-day debate is whether we are to be part of the development of Europe over the next 10 to 20 years. I deliberately make the point that we are talking about a process spread over a number of years. We are talking not about a momentous decision that must be made today and that will irrevocably change the face of Europe, but about gradual development. The difference between Labour Members and most

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  Conservative Members is that we believe that our future lies in Europe and that we must be at the heart of the development of Europe.
  If we are not at the heart of Europe, we will have to sign up for something that others have devised to suit their national needs. That has been the history of the British attitude to Europe over the past 20 to 30 years. We have always come to Europe after the European institutions have been established by others. We have therefore always found that those institutions were not ideal and not set up in the way that we would have set them up had we been in Europe from the start.
  It is precisely because of that attitude that we fear that the Prime Minister, because of his concern to keep the Tory party united between now and the general election, has relegated Britain to the second division in Europe. Britain has now opted out of two crucial matters—the social chapter and the terms of the development of EMU. I believe that that will lead us to be regarded by our partners in Europe—and, perhaps, just as importantly by outsiders—as having committed ourselves to the second division, the slow lane, of Europe, all because the Prime Minister felt that the most important job that he had to do in Maastricht over the past couple of weeks was to keep the Tory party united.
  I also believe that the question of a federal relationship is a bit of a red herring. I know that federalism has different meanings in different parts of Europe. I do not think that Europe is ever likely to have a proper federal relationship such as that in Germany or the United States. I certainly do not envisage that happening in the foreseeable future. I know that some of my hon. Friends envisage such a possibility, but I do not think that one central Government attempting to govern the whole of continental Europe from Greece to the Baltic, from the Hebrides to southern Portugal, could really be effective. The worst forms of centralisation that we complain about in Britain would be writ large if that system were ever to be established in Europe.
  I believe that a gradual convergence of interests will mean that there will be a confederation—a coming together, a convergence of policies—which is different from a formal federal relationship. To some extent, the Government have set up the straw man of federalism simply to shoot it down to show that they have had some success. I do not believe that a formal federal relationship is on the cards now or will be within the next 10 years. This red herring has enabled the Government to bring some of their anti-marketeers within their ranks.
  I would settle for the definition in the treaty—"an ever closer union" among the peoples of Europe. We need to keep the constitutional changes in Europe under review. There is bound to be organic change.
  If the United Kingdom is to be part of Europe, we must play a full part in it. The irony is that, next July, the United Kingdom assumes the presidency. In a year's time, the summit will be held in Edinburgh, in my constituency. It is absurd that, at that summit, the United Kingdom will have to leave the room when the others discuss social policy and when they start to discuss developments in monetary union. Our Ministers will not be in the palace of Holyrood house; instead, they will be huddled together in Princes street while the others get on with discussing the main business of Europe.
  Mr. Garel-Jones: Will the hon. Gentleman be kind enough to explain on what basis he says that the Government will not be able to take part in any of the discussions on economic and monetary union?
  Mr. Darling: I am glad that the Minister does not dispute what I have said about the social charter. On monetary union, the Prime Minister has made a virtue of saying that we will decide in 1996 or 1997 whether to opt in. That means that we will decide whether to opt in to something designed by others, because we have abdicated our responsibility to draw up the plans for EMU, should it come to that. It is perfectly clear from everything said to pacify the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) and others that Britain has no intention of being in at the start.
  Mr. Garel-Jone rose——
  Mr. Robertson rose——
  Mr. Darling: I shall give way to the Minister. Perhaps he will have more success explaining this than the Chancellor did earlier today.
  Mr. Garel-Jones: The House will have noted that the hon. Gentleman declined to answer my question. Where does the treaty mention the non-participation of Britain in any aspect of stage 2 or in the transition to stage 3, should it come to pass?
  Mr. Darling: I shall draw the attention of the House to the answer to that, but first I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson).
  Mr. Robertson: Should my hon. Friend wish to prove to the Minister that, in the unlikely event of his being re-elected, he will find himself standing in the windy and probably cold Princes street offices, he could draw his attention to the protocol on social policy, which states:
  "The United Kingdom shall not take part in the deliberations on and the adoption of Commission proposals relating to fields covered by the above-mentioned Agreement."
  Mr. Darling: That is an extremely good point. If the Prime Minister is still in office—I do not think that he will be-he has said that we will have to decide in 1996 or 1997 whether to opt into a phenomenon that we had no part in creating. If I am wrong, perhaps the Minister will explain how we are committed to the development of EMU and whether we are to be allowed to participate in building the structures of the central bank and even in bidding to house it in this country. That is definitely not what the right hon. Gentleman said earlier today and on previous occasions.
  Mr. Garel-Jones: Great Britain will certainly take part in all discussions relating to stage 3. I ask the hon. Gentleman to point—if he cannot, perhaps he will withdraw what he has said—to a single reference in the treaty which excludes Britain from any discussion related to stages 2 or 3 of economic and monetary union.
  Mr. Darling: I have made my position clear. The whole thrust of what the Prime Minister said this afternoon and last week was that Britiah reserves its position, leaving others to develop policy; and that we will not take part in drawing up the plans to set up a central bank. If the Minister says otherwise, he should have listened more carefully to what the Prime Minister said last week and this week. It is clear that the Government do not intend to play

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  a central role now, although they may do after the election, if they win. They are staying out of those discussions now to hold their party together.
  I want to deal with four matters that cause me concern. I turn first to the fact that foreign affairs, justice and home affairs are regarded as matters for intergovernmental discussions rather than as part of the treaty. I do not disagree with that in relation to foreign affairs, but it does not seem a satisfactory basis for decision-making on home affairs, especially for this House. We do not have the opportunity to question Ministers effectively. It is clear, for example, that Ministers go to the Trevi talks and hold intergovernmental discussions there, but are not properly answerable to this House because we do not have the structures in place properly to question them. I ask hon. Members to reflect on that.
  Although I accept that every country, including our own, has to have a system of immigration that is suited to its own needs and traditions, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) said, there will be more and more matters of common interest. With the prospect of the breakdown of the former Soviet Union and its satellite countries, we could face a large-scale movement of refugees into western Europe. It may therefore make sense for us to have a common policy on immigration and asylum. But if that is the case, why was that matter not considered suitable for inclusion in the treaty?
  Perhaps it was because the Government did not want the European Court to have any influence on that matter, especially in the light of the Home Secretary's unfortunate experiences in the past few weeks. The right hon. Gentleman seems to have been up before the courts more regularly than any Minister ever. If matters are to be decided on an intergovernmental basis, we should look at our own procedures because they are not effective at present.
  I have looked at the definition of "subsidiarity". The only matter on which I agree with the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) is that it is an interesting definition. Its meaning is not entirely clear, but the Government should give some attention to subsidiarity, especially within the United Kingdom. If we are to build on the advantages and developments in Europe, we should consider devolving more power to the regions and nations of this country. Brussels already recognises the English regions for various purposes, so perhaps we should let those English regions have more direct dealings with Brussels.
  We should certainly do so for Scotland and Wales. Indeed, many people believe that, in the years to come, Scotland will develop a more federal relationship with the rest of the United Kingdom, but there are no structures at present to allow Scotland to deal directly with Brussels. That is ironic, given that much of Scottish industry, especially its financial sector, has bypassed the City of London, yet we do not have the corresponding structures. It is not surprising that the Government have ignored that matter, but they must turn their attention to it if we are to benefit from the advantages that Europe can bring.
  It has been said many times today that the social charter or chapter that was discussed at Maastricht is not about strikes or bad industrial relations. It is about extending many of the things that other European
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  countries can accept, and I do not see why we should not accept them. It is no great advertisement for this country for the Government to say that we shall benefit by staying out of the social chapter because we will have cheaper labour costs. That means that, Britain is, to use the common word, a sweatshop. It means that companies will come here because we have lower standards than the rest of Europe.
  Given the performance of economies in the rest of Europe, the Government are not in any position to say that Britain has been a success story. The Germans, however, can say that their performance has outpaced ours, but they had no difficulty in accepting the social chapter, so why did we have such difficulty? Because, for 12 years, the Government have opposed just about everything in the social chapter—and it is no wonder that they oppose it now.
  The argument that, with the social chapter, the Japanese and other investors will not come here does not stand up. The Japanese who have invested here, ICI and other such companies that are already here are good employers, and precisely the sort that we should be encouraging.
  Turning to inward investment, I do not know whether the rest of Europe will sign up to a single currency. We shall have to wait and see. As everyone knows, the economy will not stand still in this or any other country. If the Community expands to bring in other countries—particularly members of the former eastern bloc, which are much less developed than western European countries—I am not sure that the convergence that is envisaged will be achieved in 1997, or even at the end of the decade.
  If, however, the other countries—or, at least, the major ones—can sign up for a currency, it is inconceivable that we shall be able to stand aside and say that we will have nothing to do with it. We shall end up having to shadow that European currency; we shall be a satellite country on the fringe of a massive economic power bloc. The Chancellor's failure to answer the questions put by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition shows that many Conservative Members realise how futile Britain's position would be if that happened. I do not believe, however, that we shall ever be in such a position; I do not think that the Prime Minister believes it either, and I suspect that, if he won the next election, he would change his tune promptly thereafter. We should be alive to the fact that, if there is to be a common European currency, there is no alternative to Britain's being a part of it.
  I believe that Britain is part of Europe. Everyone must have known—certainly after 1986—that a single European market will have certain inescapable consequences. I do not believe that, at this stage, we are in a position to sign up for any system along the lines of federalism or monetary union; but I do believe that we should be in there, at the heart of things, arguing for institutions and systems that will suit the British economy and British political arrangements.
  If we do not do that, I fear that history will repeat itself again and again. We shall sign up for an arrangement that we did not make, which does not suit Britain, and we shall be dragged along at a slow pace that will be thoroughly unacceptable not only to Europe but to our own country.
  By the actions that he has taken over the past week, the Prime Minister has put Britain in the second division. He has failed to take the opportunity of allowing Britain to catch up with the rest of Europe. That is because he is not

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  master in his own house; he is a slave to the Tory Members who are holding him back. The right hon. Gentleman may have done a good job for the Tory party, but he has failed the people of this country. They will not forget that when they have an opportunity to express their views in a few months' time.
  12.12 am
  Sir Anthony Meyer: I must say that that was not one of the better speeches that I have heard from the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Darling).
  It has been a particular pleasure to an avowed and unabashed federalist to discover four more on the Opposition Benches. I knew already that one could be so described, because he, like me, is a member of the British section of the European Movement; but I was pleased to find that the hon. Members for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) and for Norwich, South (Mr. Garrett)—and even the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes)—admit to accepting the doctrine to some extent. I take that to mean two things: first, that relations between states should be governed not by their ability to push one another around by force but by some framework of law; and, secondly, that there should be some element of subsidiarity. By that I mean that decisions are made at the centre only when they have to be.
  I praise my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary—and also the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones), who has sat patiently on the Front Bench throughout our debate. I hope that he will not object to my calling him the Talleyrand of the Conservative party, although I doubt whether Prince Talleyrand would have submitted himself to the ordeal that my hon. Friend has endured tonight.
  The achievements of my right hon. Friends are a tribute to the trust and, indeed, affection felt by their European Community partners—and, of course, in this country—and, in particular, to the special relationship that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has established with Chancellor Kohl. Without that factor, I do not think that it would have been possible for my right hon. Friends to secure a settlement that would enable them to claim that Britain was still at the heart of Europe, while preserving considerable freedom of manoeuvre—or, at the very least, a substantial reprieve for our country.
  The effect here has been all that my right hon. Friends could have desired. There remain a mere handful of the rugged individualists on both sides of the House—but, none the less, outside the mainstream of politics—who wanted Britain to sabotage the conference by using our vetos. How ineffectual the veto would have been. I think that that has been demonstrated—[interruption] I am having some difficulty hearing myself because of the interjections of the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) and others. How ineffectual the veto would have been has been demonstrated by the decision of the other 11 members to press on with the social charter.
  I know that there are some who still cling to the theory that the 11 are dismayed at finding that Britain is no longer there to block progress on the social charter and think that the entire edifice will collapse from overweight. I must remind them of a gentleman called Russell Bretherton, whose name may not be familiar to everyone in the
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  Chamber. He was the senior official at the then Board of Trade, who was sent by the British Government as an observer to the Messina conference in 1956, at which there was talk about setting up a common market. He reported back confidently that the negotiations would probably come to nothing, and would certainly do so if Britain stayed out of them. The British Government took his advice. It turned out to be a rather expensive mistake.
  Mr. Wareing: That was the Administration of Sir Anthony Eden.
  Sir Anthony Meyer: Yes.
  It would be almost equally mistaken to assume that we shall be able indefinitely to insulate ourselves from social developments in the rest of the European Community, or that we shall be able effectively to influence events from outside the room in which the discussions are taking place and from which we have excluded ourselves. I know that on this matter the Government have the support of the overwhelming majority of Conservative Members and of British industry and business. I find it astonishing, however, that a party that numbers Disraeli and Lord Shaftesbury among its heroes should refuse to contemplate limits on hours of work. I spent last Saturday evening at my local post office, where postmen were heroically working long hours of overtime. I asked how many temporary workers were taken on for the Christmas period, and the answer was none. I was told that the workers wanted the overtime. That attitude does not seem a recipe for creating more jobs.
  Mr. Garel-Jones: I agree with my hon. Friend that the party that produced Shaftesbury and Disraeli needs lectures from no one about the social dimension of life in this country. Does my hon. Friend agree that many of the practices that we are seeking to defend are national characteristics, and that it just happens to be the case that in Britain many people have a working week of 42, 46 or 48 hours, and they rely on overtime for as much as a third of their income? That happens to be the way in which labour relations have traditionally been structured in this country. Does my hon. Friend agree also that as the United Kingdom is the only country in Europe that pays a pension to a spouse, even though that spouse has not been a contributor to the fund, we need no lectures on social dimensions from others in Europe? Surely we need subsidiarity in these matters.
  Sir Anthony Meyer: We have things to learn from one another. God forbid that the social charter should be a way of enabling trade unions to recover the ability that they previously enjoyed of being able to hold us all to ransom, but had we been prepared to negotiate throughout on the social charter, I do not believe that that would necessarily have been a consequence.
  I always knew that I would be slightly disappointed by the outcome of the Maastricht negotiations. Of course I am disappointed. That is because I wanted the moon. I shall, however, be voting to support the Government's motion at the end of the debate as, I believe, will pretty well all those Members whose views are diametrically opposed to my own. Those who call themselves Euro-sceptics no longer have the brazen trumpeter—my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher)—to lead them into battle. They have to rely on

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  the rumblings from the deep of that Kraken of the modern political world, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit).
  I think that the Euro-sceptics are probably right when they say that the movement towards a single currency is a movement towards a federal Europe, but not for the reasons that they adopt. Neither the rigid timetable nor the complex procedure laid down for the movement to a single currency will take us in that direction. The solution advanced by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister of the hard ecu was the best way of achieving a single currency.
  However it is achieved, once the movement towards a single currency gets going, the City of London will want to be at the centre of things and British industry will want to be in the single currency. Those hard material considerations will soon overwhelm reservations based almost entirely on an ideological concept of sovereignty which is beginning to look distinctly quaint.
  The somewhat excessive attention that has been focused on the two areas where Britain has, as it were, opted out—or chosen to opt in—has distracted interest away from the substantial agreements that were reached on other matters. The skills of British diplomacy were freely acknowledged by all other participants, and it is right to pay tribute to the much maligned Foreign Office officials.
  I am delighted at the strong declaration on the urgency of widening the Community and bringing in the newly free countries of eastern Europe, but it would have been vain to embark on a widening of the European Community without having first taken the decisions that were taken at Maastricht to strengthen it.
  Amid our preoccupations with the economic aspects of Europe, we must never forget that the Community came into being to ensure that the nations of Europe could never again resort to slaughtering one another or reducing their cities to rubble. They bound themselves to accept certain rules and to set up institutions to enforce and adapt those rules as the need arose. The rules have to be binding, enforceable and freely accepted, not imposed.
  That is the priceless gift that the European Community has to bestow on an unstable half continent to the east of it. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have contributed notably to the renewal of that by far the most important of the European Community's qualities, and they deserve the thanks of the House and support in the Lobby tomorrow.
  12.22 am
  Mr. Ron Leighton: All sensible people want the maximum co-operation in Europe, especially when we remember the horrific wars our continent endured. We want the maximum unity, friendship, co-operation and trade to raise the standards of living and prosperity of all our peoples. The questions are: how do we achieve that and what sort of an alliance and what model of European unity do we want? Do we want to create a megastate or a union or commonwealth of democratic, self-governing countries?
  Once again at Maastricht, Britain appeared as the odd man out. Throughout this story, Britain has often appeared to be the odd man out. On one issue, we said no,
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  but on another we said maybe. We should ask why, time after time, Britain seems to be the odd man out. One of the main reasons is that our system of democratic parliamentary self-government is incompatible with the Brussels machine, which has an unelected Commission with the sole power of initiative and right of veto, a Council of Ministers which legislates in secret, the so-called Parliament, which is not really a Parliament, has no roots in this country and will never be the focus of the hopes, aspirations and loyalties of our people, and a Community court, which in many ways is a political court and engine of federalism, standing above Parliament. That apparatus does not fit with parliamentary self-government. It already makes us do things that we do not want to do and stops us doing things that we want to do.
  A second reason is perhaps that we have not obtained many of the much-trumpeted benefits that we were promised from the original Common Market. We were told that there would be substantial benefits to our balance of trade, but, in fact, we had a multi-billion pound deficit inflicted on us. There has been no reform of the common agricultural policy and the average British family now pays about £17 a week extra for its food.
  This year we are paying into the Common Market budget about £2·5 billion more than we receive in order to subsidise richer countries. We give more money to the Common Market budget than we give in aid to the third world. What sense is there in that? Let us think what we could do with that £2·5 billion in the health or education services.
  Another possible reason is the deceit. Our people have often not been told the truth. Our political leaders have always moved in a crab-like fashion, saying one thing but doing another. Let us cast our minds back to the referendum. In the Government's manifesto which was sent to every household it was clearly stated that there would be no political union. The manifesto also said that there had been a threat of economic and monetary union which would have brought unemployment, but that that threat had been removed.
  We often hear talk of trains. We were not told where the train was going, but we were told that we must all clamber aboard or we should be left behind. I always objected to the idea that everything is predetermined and that we have no choice. That is a fundamentally undemocratic argument. Maastricht has brought us some clarity, because we now know where the train is supposed to be heading.
  The original draft treaty spoke blatantly of a "federal vocation". Those words have been taken out and replaced by "an ever closer union" but what is the difference? There is none—it is merely semantic juggling. The people who inserted those words have not changed their minds. They made great strides at Maastricht and moved the train or conveyor belt a long way forward towards federalism. Of course, they did not get all that they wanted, but they will be back for more. Already, there are plans for another intergovernmental conference in 1996 and they already have a timetable for economic and monetary union. The mythical train has not only a destination but a timetable.
  We are told that federalism means different things to different people, that it is a benign arrangement which does not centralise but pushes power downwards to the people and the regions and that it is based on subsidiarity. I think that that is another deception. Let us consider economic and monetary union and a single currency.

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  What happens to economic and monetary policy, to interest rates, exchange rates, budgetary policy, taxing and spending which are the substantial bread-and-butter issues of our politics? Where do they go? Do they go downwards? Of course—not they go upwards. All those vital issues are to be rigidly centralised and that is the crux of the matter.
  All of our economic life is to be decided by an unelected, unaccountable single central bank. That is not democracy or power to the people—it is all power to an autarchy of unaccountable conservative central bankers. That might be the heart of Europe, but it is certainly not the heart of socialism. The highly centralised single bank will be a law unto itself. It will be beyond the reach of the ballot box. Governments would have to undertake solemnly not to seek to influence it. I cannot conceive of anything more objectionable, more retrograde or more reactionary. If such highly centralised decision-making——
  Mr. Quentin Davies: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Leighton: No, because we do not have time.
  If we had such highly centralised decision-making it would not matter who won elections or who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, because such issues would be decided elsewhere. The electorates of each country would be stripped of their powers. There would be no subsidiarity in monetary policy. Short-term interest rates would be uniform—identical throughout the area. Regardless of local circumstances, they would be the same in Glasgow as in Naples; the same in Lisbon as in Berlin. There would be no local flexibility.
  We already have the first stage of economic and monetary union—the exchange rate mechanism—and it is already doing great damage to Britain. Everybody agrees that the present rate of inflation would justify a cut in interest rates—British industry is crying out for one. Yet we cannot have a cut because interest rates are now set, not according to the needs of our domestic economy, but for the sole purpose of propping up the pound in its ERM band, thus prolonging the recession. That will do great damage, but even after all the pain that it will inflict, it will fail. It is always dangerous to prophesy, but I am prepared to do so and say that it will not be possible to hold the pound at DM2·95.
  Our inflation rate is now coming down to approach German levels—but any fool can do that by recession, by knocking the economy flat on its back and by causing mass unemployment. That is the economics of the graveyard. We are also told that wage increases have to come down to German levels, and there has been some movement in that direction.
  The important factor, however, is unit labour costs, and they are decided by productivity. As a result of deflation, productivity in Britain went down last year, whereas in Germany it went up. So while unit labour costs in Germany increased by 3 per cent., in Britain they increased by 11 per cent. With a fixed exchange rate, that means that Britain loses competitiveness, and will continue to do so on a cumulative basis.
  That all means that we pretend that the pound is worth what it is not. To see what happens when people pretend that a currency is worth what it is not we have only to consider Germany's monetary union. The Germans
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  pretended that an east mark was worth the same as a west mark. At a stroke, overnight, east German industry was knocked out, and the work force was made redundant.
  The exchange rate mechanism benefits the stronger economies, especially the German economy. It builds in and reinforces their dominance, but it damages the weaker economies.
  The Select Committee on Employment took evidence from a variety of sources on the effect of ERM on Italy and France. It found that the system had inflicted an extra I million unemployed on Italy and more than half a million on France, and had slowed both countries' economic growth. The ERM is a high-unemployment club, with a slow growth rate. Already it is having the same effect on Britain. We have high and growing unemployment, and under those policies that high unemployment is built in for the whole of the 1990s, along with recession and slow growth.
  Our public services are crumbling, our schools are rotting, our health service waiting lists are growing and our railways are not working—all because our economy has not produced the growth to pay for them. The ERM means that that situation will be perpetuated throughout the 1990s.
  While we have separate currencies a poor economic performance will show up as a balance of payments deficit—but with a single currency that warning signal would disappear, and a poor performance would show up by whole regions or countries becoming depressed and blighted areas afflicted with mass unemployment.
  As my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) explained, at Maastricht not a single word was spoken about full employment. Full employment is no longer an aim of economic policy. Everything-growth, employment and prosperity-is to be subordinated and sacrificed to pegging the exchange rate of the pound. That means that people-human beings, flesh and blood-are sacrificed to an arid, dogmatic, mistaken theory of money. Money is to be the master, not the servant. The Labour party's role should be to bring those matters under democratic control and not to surrender them to remote, unaccountable central bankers.
  What we had at Maastricht was old hat; it was living in a time warp. Since the Delors committee reported, the whole world, especially Europe, has changed. The Berlin wall has come down. We have had the collapse of the totalitarian regimes. New democracies have been born, struggling against appalling odds to find their feet, with hyper-inflation and national rivalries. Those are the new issues, priorities and dangers. What was the response to all that at Maastricht?
  Half our continent is an area of instability and need. There are a dozen states asking to join and participate in an all-European economic and political arrangement. That is the great historic opportunity. What did we do? What happened at Maastricht? The whole issue was virtually ignored. Instead, they want to waste the next decade poring over the details of economic and monetary union rather than dealing with the real issues confronting Europe. The more we deepen—to use the jargon—the Community, the more obstacles we put in front of eastern Europe. How do we imagine that the Poles could put the zloty in the exchange rate mechanism? How could the lev or the rouble be put in the ERM? We are building new obstacles and barriers.

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  Our experience of multilingual and multinational federations has not been very good. There was one in central Africa, which collapsed. There was one in the Caribbean, which collapsed. Even in Canada, there are problems in Quebec. After the recent elections, even Brussels cannot govern itself and it looks as if the multilingual state of Belgium is about to collapse. There
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  are the problems in Yugoslavia and in the Soviet Union, where a federation is moving towards some kind of commonwealth of independent states.
  Maastricht was not the last word on the development and future of Europe. It was the wrong agenda. In the next decade—and let us bear in mind the next intergovernmental conference—there will be different Ministers who may have different ideas. They will learn from experience. I am convinced that the prospect held out at Maastricht will not be the prospect that we shall have at the end of the 1990s.
  12.36 am
  Mr. Bowen Wells: I hope that the Maastricht treaties will be the high water mark of federalism in Europe. That will be proved to be so because of the dogged, persistent and brilliant negotiating work by the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and his two Ministers of State, especially my good friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones). They have persistently insisted that the treaty we signed contained agreements to enhance democracy within Europe, within the Commission and within the European Parliament, and at the same time embraced closer European union by means of getting agreements between the Governments of the Twelve on foreign policy, security matters and matters connected with home affairs.
  The means of negotiation has profound implications for our democracy, for the accountability of Europe to the electorates of Europe and for the accountability of Ministers to their national Parliaments. It is right that we should consider tonight the question how we enhance the democracy, responsibility and accountability of the European institutions and of our own Ministers to the national Parliament.
  On European monetary union, it seems to me that it has long been the cherished aim of Conservative Governments to find a means by which we could control the value of our currency—to make it predictable in its exchange rate, as it was for much of the 19th century. In that time, we were tied to the gold standard, which we found to be inadequate and inflexible, especially as it depended in part on the mining activities in the gold mines of South Africa and the Soviet Union. We abandoned that after the war for the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates. We did not at the time think that we were sacrificing sovereignty to join that system. It ushered in a period of expansion over the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s the like of which the world had rarely seen.
  It is essential that we should find a way to control our currency and to make it stable. I believe that joining a European monetary union with a single European currency would be a good way to achieve that. However, we should not do that if we joined at the wrong exchange rate—as happened, as the hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) explained, with eastern Germany. We should have the right not to join when the timetable date is reached in respect of the present European monetary union treaty.
  We would be foolish to join if that meant serious dislocation of our social, economic and unemployment situations. I wish that all members of the Community had reserved a similar power not to join, but that was not to be. We have an extra lever in the establishment of European monetary union, because, in contradiction of what the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) and the Leader of the Opposition said, we are going to be fully involved in the negotiations for the establishment of the central bank and the way in which it will operate.
  I hope that we will now discuss how to make that central bank responsible and accountable. That must be achieved not simply through ECOFIN, but through all 12 national Parliaments involving the Finance Ministers and Prime Ministers of the 12 countries. The decisions taken in the three pillars to which I have referred—security, foreign
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  affairs and home affairs—should come back to this place for a decision whether the policies adopted at those Councils are correct.
  We must pay particular attention to the declaration at the end of the treaty about the role of the national Parliament. We in this House have a serious point to address in that respect. In addition to the three pillars that I have mentioned, we must consider the accountability of the European Council that will be the principal means of establishing policy.
  The Council of Heads of Government meets without a published agenda that we can discuss before meetings are held, and it meets in absolute secrecy. At the moment, we in the national Parliaments simply receive the press releases that the Heads of Government decide to release after the events have occurred and policies have been made. That is a thoroughly unsatisfactory way of calling our Heads of Government and that Council to democratic account for their actions to this House and to our people.
  The increased qualified majority voting in the Council of Ministers, to which we have agreed in the treaty, means that we must have a way of keeping our national Parliaments better informed than they are at present. The word "federalism" is seriously misinterpreted and misunderstood. It is an example of the ability of the Twelve to misunderstand one another. Only if delegations from this House regularly meet delegations from other national Parliaments will we be able to understand the arguments, appreciate them and become sympathetic to the problems facing other member states. In that way, we will generate the consensus that is absolutely essential in a democracy ruled by a democratically elected Parliament and, indeed, by an executive in Brussels.
  As soon as we can after the next election, we must consider how we are able to carry out those essential functions if the European union is to be democratically accountable. That means bringing members of the European Parliament into the House and into our Committees. Members of the European Parliament receive warning of matters that are to be discussed by the Commission and by the various pillars and councils that have been established by the treaty.
  The treaty has advanced Europe, but it is a Europe of nations which is on trial. Unless the European union works properly, democratically and accountably, we will begin to revert to the horror of a supranational federal Europe which we all fear, and which the majority of people in this country and most hon. Members will reject.
  12.46 am
  Mr. John Home Robertson: As one who joined the Labour party to support my predecessor John Mackintosh as a great European enthusiast, I take great pleasure in the position that has been taken by my party in recent months on this important issue. I passionately favour the increased co-operation within the European Community and the developments that are taking place. However, I am very sad that the Government—for the next few months, anyway—are trying to drag their heels and opt out of so many important aspects of what the Community is doing.
  The hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) said that he wanted more democratisation of the institutions of the Community. I heartily agree with him, and I suspect that that is really an argument in favour of

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  federalism in due course—I would not necessarily be too frightened of taking that course. It probably will evolve, but no doubt slowly. However, the hon. Gentleman cannot expect me to agree with his preface, in which he said that his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister had negotiated brilliantly. If the Prime Minister was brilliant, he was certainly spectacularly outshone in the opening speeches. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition wiped the floor with the Prime Minister, and never has that been more spectacularly done.
  The Prime Minister must be a considerable disappointment to his hon. Friends. He is certainly a bitter disappointment to people in this country. He will be labelled the drop-out Prime Minister. He is dropping out of progress for our people in the European Community. It is worth dwelling for a couple of seconds on what he has dropped out of.
  It is a great shame that the social chapter has been excised from the treaty. Annex IV of the draft treaty on European union refers to the
  "Agreement concluded between the member states of the European Community with the exception of the United Kingdom."
  It goes on to state:
  "The undersigned eleven have agreed"
  to article 117, which states:
  "The Community and its Member States shall have as their objectives the promotion of employment, improved living and working conditions, proper social protection, dialogue between management and labour, the development of human resources with a view to lasting high employment and the combating of exclusion."
  That is what the Prime Minister went to Maastricht to exclude Britain from.
  It seems extraordinary that a British Prime Minister can represent such a betrayal of the interests of millions of people in Britain as a victory for British interests. Yet that is the giant con that has been peddled in the Conservative press in recent weeks. It will not stand up to examination by the electorate in the coming election campaign.
  One aspect of Britain's opting out of the social charter is that it must surely undermine the single market. The Prime Minister says that it is an advantage to have low wages and longer working hours and that that will attract investors who want to take advantage of bargain basement labour. If that is so, presumably costs to industry will be that much lower here than in the rest of Europe, so there will not be equal competition with enterprises in the other 11 nations of the European Community. There will no longer be a level playing field and the single market will be undermined.
  Mr. Quentin Davies rose——
  Mr. Home Robertson: The hon. Gentleman should perhaps concentrate on feeding his sheep rather than intervene in the debate at this stage.
  Mr. Quentin Davies: The hon. Gentleman has obviously recognised that the Prime Minister secured for us a major competitive advantage at Maastricht. The hon. Gentleman said so himself. We have a different regime from the other 11 member states, one which is more competitive. Is it not a considerable tribute to our diplomacy that we were able to persuade our Community partners to allow us to gain an advantage over them?
  Mr. Home Robertson: The hon. Member for Stamford and Spalding (Mr. Davies) seems to want to treat the work force of the United Kingdom in the same way as he treats his sheep. Yes, the Prime Minister has negotiated a set of circumstances in which it will be possible for employers in Britain to pay lower wages and work their employees for longer hours in worse conditions than their competitors on mainland Europe. That may be the competitive advantage that the hon. Gentleman wants for his constituents, but I do not want it for mine.
  It is important that we should recognise that Britain's opting out of the social chapter will create difficulties because the European single market will no longer be a level playing field. There will be a downside to that. We cannot expect our competitors on mainland Europe to put up with such discrimination. We are building up problems for ourselves. It must be a matter of concern that Britain will become a semi-detached part of the European Community. In this debate, we are confronted with a squalid abdication by the Government of responsibility to the British people. The Government deserve to be condemned by the electorate, as they surely will be.
  However, I am confident that the European Community will continue to progress in the direction in which it has been driving—and rightly so—for the benefit of all our citizens and citizens on the mainland of Europe. I am confident that the Labour party will put Britain back into the main stream of Europe as soon as a Labour Government is elected. That will be a good thing for our citizens and for business and enterprises in the United Kingdom.
  We keep hearing comments tonight—we also heard them in the debate before the Maastricht summit—about sovereignty. People talk about the great sanctity of the sovereignty of Parliament. Who is kidding whom that a middle-size country such as the United Kingdom is sovereign in the modern world? Are we sovereign in defence, in our dealings with multinational corporations or in any significant matter? No, we are not. The only way in which we can achieve sovereignty is by sharing it. By sharing our sovereignty with our partners in the European Community, we can begin to achieve some realistic control and influence over events. I say that with the most heartfelt ——
  Mr. Richard Shepherd: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Home Robertson: The hon. Gentleman must forgive me: I want to be fair to other hon. Members who have been here for a long time.
  As a Scot, I speak about shared sovereignty with great feeling. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst), who acknowledged that there was shared sovereignty within the United Kingdom. The sovereignty of the people I represent has been shared with the English since 1707. It has not necessarily been a good thing in all ways, and there has certainly been a downside. We have lost a lot, and there are ways to improve the structure of the United Kingdom which would improve democracy and accountability in our government. That is why I am passionately committed to establishing a Parliament in Scotland, and home rule for Scotland within the United Kingdom and within Europe. However, it has surely been to the mutual advantage of the people of

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  Scotland and England that we have had that union for the past two and a half centuries. It has been of considerable economic advantage to both countries.
  I am sad to say that some Conservative Members and one or two of my hon. Friends seem to have a little Englander mentality. The narrow nationalism expressed by people who want to cling to total sovereignty for the United Kingdom is rather like the arguments we hear from Scottish and Welsh nationalists—unrealistic and out of date. It is wrong for any realistic person to pursue such outmoded attitudes, especially anyone in government.
  I am sad that the Government, in their dying months, have decided to cop out of the main stream in Europe. I look forward to the day, in a few months' time, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kin nock) will be getting back into the main stream of that debate and participating fully in the European Community for the benefit of all our citizens.
  12.56 am
  Mr. Robert G. Hughes: Thank you for calling me, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I know that the winding-up speeches have to start soon, so I shall be brief and leave out much of what I wanted to say. I can cover the issue by associating myself wholly with the speeches by my hon. Friends the Members for Saffron Walden (Mr. Haselhurst) and for Crawley (Mr. Soames), who said precisely what I think. European idealism brought me into politics in the first place. I fundamentally believe in Britain as a part of Europe. Therefore, I welcome the tone and scope of the treaty that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister negotiated at Maastricht.
  I shall home in on the social action programme arid the declaration on racism and xenophobia, which was separate from the main treaty, but was signed at Maastricht. As background, there is no doubt that many black, Asian and Jewish British people are deeply concerned at racial attacks in the United Kingdom and even more concerned about what is happening in continental Europe. They ask what 1992 means for them.
  They are especially worried about the success of the Vlaams Blok party in the elections last month in Belgium, about the rise of the Deutsche Volksunion and Republikaner parties in Germany and by the high opinion poll ratings of the national front, led by the odious Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. They will welcome enormously the steps forward that have been made in the signing of the new declaration on racism and xenophobia, especially the penultimate paragraph, which states:
  "The European Council asks Ministers and the Commission to increase their effort to combat discrimination and xenophobia, and to strengthen the legal protection for third country nationals".
  Although the declaration was proposed by the Dutch presidency, British Ministers were its main friends during the discussions. They stopped it being watered down and prevented the part about combating discrimination from being taken out. I also welcome the role that the British Government played in this important new move.
  There is no doubt that Britain does lead, in the sense that it is the only country with a comprehensive framework of race relations law. Our reputation is high on this, as is that of the Commission for Racial Equality. However, freedom of movement is limited to EC nationals only, and a significant proportion of Britain's ethnic
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  minorities have citizenship of their country of origin and therefore will not be able to move freely within the Community.
  There have been some moves forward on this. The Commission, the European Parliament and the International Labour Organisation have discussed extensively the possibility of extending freedom of movement to third-country nationals. My concern is that the single market simply will not be able to operate effectively while one important part of the labour force lacks mobility.
  I look forward to a directive under the social action programme. I welcome the declaration, which is a big step forward, but, given British experience and law, we could have had a directive in which we could have taken the lead. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to look at that. Britain has set the European Community on a course that I wholly applaud—an ever closer union of nation states. We have set the tone for the future, and that is to be greatly welcomed. I have been looking for that ever since I first became involved in politics.
  1.1 am
  Mr. George Robertson: This has been an interesting and wide-ranging debate, in which some notable contributions have been made. It is unfortunate that some speakers in the debate—for example, the Prime Minister—have cast doubt on the quality of the debate on these momentous issues in other European Community countries. We have had more debates on these issues, but it is insulting to suggest that our partners do not give them sufficient attention. A debate that starts at 3.30 in the afternoon and goes on until 2 o'clock in the morning is hardly an advert for open government. It would have been better to hold the debate during the day, when television coverage would have taken the views of hon. Members to a wider public.
  Mr. Andrew Hargreaves: The hon. Gentleman has referred to what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said. However, to take an example at random, how many times does the hon. Gentleman think that the Bundestag discussed the Maastricht agreement before it was signed?
  Mr. Robertson: Regularly. If the hon. Gentleman had been in earlier, he would have heard the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) saying that last week he had attended a debate on this subject in the Bundestag. The hon. Gentleman would do better if he chose his targets with more precision. Much discussion took place in both the Bundestag and the federal German Bundesrat about the content of the intergovernmental conferences. Although our debates on this subject have attracted a flurry of interest, attendances at debates on the European Community are not noted for their large size.
  Among the outstanding speeches made today, I have to mention that of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. I hear from those who have not been imprisoned in the debate for a long time that the electronic media have reported well the exchanges that took place. The political reporters on all stations have paid tribute to the outstanding contribution made by my right hon. Friend, and the way in which he trumped the sporting aphorisms of the Prime Minister, used in the orchestrated

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  triumph that we have had to live through in the past few weeks from a Government rocked on their heels by the assault from the Opposition today.
  I start on the same note as the Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend—by recognising the historic nature of the events through which we are living. Last night—or was it the night before?—I was in the House of Commons Library when a number of hon. Members commented when the Ceefax screen put up the headline
  "Soviet Union to end on 31st December."
  We can now believe that nothing is impossible in politics. Everything is changing rapidly and beyond all recognition.
  That is why the Maastricht summit was always going to be important well beyond its paper agenda. It represented a unique western European opportunity to grab control at that supreme moment of time and to consolidate the structure of what is one of the few secure fixtures in this fast-changing continent that we inhabit. In many senses Maastricht did just that. Deepening the foundations of the Community represented a quantum leap forward in the integration and the internal strengthening of what is the most successful voluntary grouping of nation states.
  What happened at Maastricht last week—and I am not passing judgment; hon. Members have expressed differing views today—was the start of the European common foreign and security policies, with their structures established in the treaty. There are to be powers of co-decision for the European Parliament. Although they were called negative assent procedures and now they are called article 189b procedures, the fact is that there has been agreement on areas where the European Parliament will share with the Council of Ministers the power to make legislation. They will have a veto that will allow them to complement, but not to rival, any of the powers that exist in this national Parliament.
  The principle of qualified majority voting has become the norm rather than the exception in decision making and in European law making. The scope of the Community's interest has now been extended, whether through the treaty or through intergovernmental co-operation, into home affairs, health, education, research and development, trans-European transport and communication networks, industry and even culture.
  The principle of creating a European Community defence arm has been conceded and is included in the treaty. Given the nature of the reply that the Minister gave earlier to one of his hon. Friends, it is worth reminding the House of precisely what the treaty says about defence. The Government moved dramatically from their previous negotiating position. The treaty says in the declaration on page 114:
  "WEU will be developed as the defence component of the European Union and as the means to strengthen the European pillar of the Atlantic Alliance. To this end, it will formulate common European defence policy".
  In article A3, it states:
  "The objective is to build up WEU in stages as the defence component of the European Union. To this end, WEU is prepared, at the request of the European Union, to elaborate and implement decisions and actions of the Union which have defence implementations."
  All that was agreed to and signed by the Government in Maastricht last week. However, all that happened despite the Government. All that was signed up, yet every
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  one of those items was opposed by the Government. Their role in Maastricht was only in obstruction, in an attempted dilution and in a vague and futile effort to stop it all.
  Mr. Garel-Jones: The hon. Gentleman has been fair up to now in what he has said. Surely he will recall that it was my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary who, more than a year ago, first proposed that the WEU should be developed into a European defence personality. He will also recall, because I know that he wants to be fair in these matters, the paper that was produced by the United Kingdom and Italy. The wording in that paper is what is reflected in the final treaty.
  Mr. Robertson: If the Minister looks back slightly more than two weeks, he will find that the Government set themselves firmly against the idea of the European Community having a separate defence identity. The Government moved through the Anglo-Italian proposals and edged their way, crab-like, towards what came out of it, but, as with all these other areas, it represented a retreat.
  I offer one example of many that I could give the House. No doubt my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) will give more tomorrow. The Foreign Secretary said on 6 December last year:
  "We are not persuaded by the case…for adding again to the legislative powers of the European Parliament."—[Official Report, 6 December 1990; Vol. 182, c. 483.]
  That is not what the Government signed up to in Maastricht last week.
  There has been a comprehensive series of cave-ins. And what was obtained in return for all the concessions made as grudgingly as possible by the British Government? The two words "federal vocation" were surgically removed from the treaty and replaced by the words "ever closer union". In addition, the Government got the two opt-outs —on the central, pivotal issues of monetary union and on the social provisions in the draft treaty. Some triumph for the Government; some negotiation breakthrough; some game, some set, some match.
  No wonder the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the principal conservative newspapers in Germany, described the Prime Minister as
  "the winner of empty victories".
  No wonder Mr.Ian Davidson, the distinguished correspondent of the Financial Times, probably the most influential newspaper in Europe today, described Maastricht as
  "a hollow victory for the Prime Minister".
  From the point of view of the British people and of those of us who put their interests above the convenience of the unity of any party, the saddest aspect of the isolation of our Government last week was not just the pig-headedness on display or the defensive and negative posture that they always seem to strike but their inherent dishonesty. At the very core of the Government's attitude to the negotiations is a fundamental and deliberate deception. On economic and monetary union the Government have no intention of exercising the opt-out clause about which they make so much noise. They may still resist saying that they accept the principle of the single currency. They may still avoid telling the people of this country of any advantage that there might be in being part of the single currency regime. They may go on pretending

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  that the calculation on whether to go into the third stage of EMU is exactly equally balanced, with no real penalties involved in staying out while everyone else is in.
  The policy is based not on an economy of the truth but on a complete absence of truth. That is an accusation of some seriousness, but it is necessary to make it and I make it neither lightly nor alone. The right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) made the same accusation earlier this evening.
  The Government know—the Minister knows—that Britain must he in if everyone else is in: that we cannot possibly afford to be outside an economic and monetary union with the other 11 inside it, while it is driven in every detail of policy by those who have fully signed up to it. It is just that the Government cannot admit this. They will not admit it; they dare not admit it, lest they offend or alert some dissident elements on the Benches behind them—and we have heard several of their voices this evening.
  The Government are frightened; they are running away from this admission. They hide behind the right of Parliament to make the final decision. But the Prime Minister announced in the debate last month that the final decision on the ratification of the treaty—the European Communities (Amendment) Bill that will be necessary to enact the treaty of Maastricht—will come in the new Parliament, after the election, so Parliament will have a decision to make even then. There is no real question about the Government needing to hide behind the figleaf of a parliamentary vote because we know that that is not the reason. However, some members of the Conservative party have the honesty to say things outright. In the European Parliament last week, Sir Christopher Prout, the leader of the Conservative MEPs, said:
  "I do not believe that my country will wish to remain outside this arrangement when the moment for decision comes".
  Mr. Garel-Jones: I am interested to hear the hon. Gentleman describe this House as a "figleaf". Not today but in our previous debate, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said to the House that, if the conditions were met, a single currency could bring advantages to this country, but if those conditions were met, political sacrifices would need to be made. If that situation arose, the House would have the right to consider whether it wished, in the balance of advantages, to make those political sacrifices. Is the hon. Gentleman telling us that the Labour party is prepared to commit itself now to a single currency and to say that it is not prepared to give this House the political choice that it should have?
  Mr. Robertson: I did not say that the House was a figleaf; I said that the Government's hiding behind the right of the House to make a decision was a figleaf. That is not in question. The House will make its decision in the new Parliament. When the Government have the courage and the guts to ask the people to choose a new Government, this Parliament will make its decision. We are not scared of Parliament making a decision. Parliament must and does have the right to make such decisions. We are clear—as are all other 11 countries—about where we intend to be—and that is in the first division of Europe. We intend to be among the top countries in Europe. In exchanges earlier this afternoon, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was unable to answer the question that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked him time after time. In every living room
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  in the country, people saw that exchange and saw that the Chancellor was unable to answer the question: if our country satisfied the convergence conditions, under what circumstances would he recommend that we should be outside?
  As I have said, other people are more honest. In the European Parliament, Conservatives were willing to speak out last week. Sir Christopher Prout is not an obscure Back-Bench MEP; he is the leader of that fighting force of Euro-Tories who want to join up with the European People's party, the federalist organisation in the European Parliament. That group of Euro-Tories carry the Conservative party's limited flag in that Parliament. In last week's debate, Mr. Ben Patterson said:
  "One of the areas of light is clearly the economic and monetary union decision. Indeed, the most important decision taken at Maastricht was that there will be a single currency for Europe by the end of the century. This is an objective which the European Democratic Group—which is 99 per cent. made up of British Conservatives—has supported from the very start."
  All the Prime Minister's praise last week, meticulously orchestrated from the boardrooms to the editorial floors, was predicated on exploding the Prime Minister's explicit view that we can still make that choice, without penalties.
  Mr. Ashdown: I have been listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman and agree with most of what he is saying, but surely the point that was not raised when his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition was speaking was that there is nothing in the treaty as it stands, without the opt-out clauses, to insist that Britain will eventually join a monetary union if the convergence conditions were met. Even if we were a nation that conformed to those convergence conditions, the Government could still choose not to join. In other words, the opt-out clauses for which they argued so much are completely unnecessary as that provision already exists, but they place a real question mark against this country's good faith and against the certainty that will be necessary in future. Surely that is the point.
  Mr. Robertson: That is absolutely true, and it illustrates the fact that the opt-out clause exists for the purpose of patching up Conservative unity rather than doing anything for the country.
  Last Friday, 23 leading bankers and industrialists—including the right hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger), who is the chairman of a bank as well as, temporarily, a Tory Member of Parliament—signed a letter to The Times. Those distinguished people, who wrote to support the Prime Minister's view, made their feelings clear. They said:
  "The City of London, as Europe's leading financial centre, contributed over £14 billion last year to the United Kingdom's invisible earnings. The idea that the City can enjoy separate laws and regulations outside, or only partially inside, Europe and still maintain its pre-eminence is untenable."
  In that letter, the Government's friends were telling them that their position, and the current prospect, were entirely untenable.
  No wonder the Chancellor of the Exchequer was exposed this afternoon as he sat mumbling, unable to answer the question put to him by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. Time and again, the same case has been made by people who ostensibly support the Government; as it has done before, the Conservative party has shamelessly puts its interests before those of the British people.

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  Then there is the social dimension. Here we see another deception—another contrived pitched battle, designed not to make a point or to protect Britain's national interest but to serve as another figleaf to cover the splits. Today, someone handed me a document that had been found in one of the well-known Westminster photocopiers. It is headed:
  "From: Lawrence Vince, Sir Teddy Taylor's Office. To Members and correspondents of the Conservative European Reform Group."
  The hon. Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) has a long history of voting against the Government in every European debate since 1973. If, as he says, he is going to reverse that tomorrow night, it will be an historic moment. All Conservative briefings must, it seems, be phrased in the form of questions and answers. The document asks:
  "What about the Social Chapter?"
  The answer is:
  "Again from a constitutional standpoint, this is a major point. We have never before had a situation when one member state has opted out of a common policy. The 'two tier' principle or twin track principle has been established."
  No wonder the hon. Member for Southend, East was given a knighthood. He has hit the nail on the head. We shall be on the twin track, in the second division and moving at a slow speed.
  Britain alone opposed the social chapter in the treaty. Britain alone opposed even the diluted compromise that was offered on Tuesday morning by the Dutch President. Britain is isolated and alone, with 11 out of 12 Governments and 12 out of 12 Oppositions taking the opposite view.
  Among all 12 Community nations and all seven EFTA members, John Major and Jean-Marie Le Pen of the French national front stand alone, opposed to the concept and practice of providing for basic minimum rights for employees in the new single European market. That is some company for the right hon. Gentleman. As I intended to say this afternoon, I have found a new companion: in the whole of Europe, we have John Major and Jean-Marie Le Pen, but we also have the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown). Remarkably, he is in the same company.
  I was glad to receive some support earlier; praise sometimes makes people uncomfortable, as I found when the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) praised me in our earlier debate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gorton, the shadow Foreign Secretary, almost sacked me on the spot. In an interview with Brian Walden, the right hon. Member for Yeovil said
  "the social chapter in the Maastricht agreement it seems to me is a really worrying attempt by Europe to try and rebuild in Britain the things that we have dismantled over the last twelve or fifteen years."
  That was a fascinating interview. Apart from that small treasure—which gives Mr. Le Pen and the Prime Minister some company—there was a remarkable interchange between the right hon. Gentleman and Mr. Walden, which I think that I should share with the House. I crave your indulgence, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because I wish to read it out to you. A breach of parliamentary protocol is involved, but I must read the script as it stands. The passage reads:
  "Paddy Ashdown: Look, you describe it …
  Brian Walden… between nation states…
  Paddy Ashdown…you describe it to me then.
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  Brian Walden:…but the…
  Paddy Ashdown: Describe the Britain to me that you think could be prosperous safe and secure if the other 11 go ahead and we're outside, describe it to me.
  Brian Walden: Don't, you tell me why it's wrong.
  Paddy Ashdown: No come on Brian I've said to you…
  Brian Walden: No come on, now I'm asking the questions
  and you're answering.
  Paddy Ashdown: Ah, you don't, you don't like it when I turn it on you. But that's the whole question…
  Brian Walden: I don't mind it, but I…
  Paddy Ashdown: But, but, but, that's …
  Brian Walden:… and if you want to interview me …
  Paddy Ashdown:… No, no no, I think …
  Brian Walden:…I'll certainly agree to that …
  Paddy Ashdown:… I think if you were to ask me questions …
  Brian Walden:…it seems a silly idea…."
  The document reads:
  "This transcript is the property of London Weekend Television and Walden who must be credited if any part of it is used."
  I am glad to do so.
  There are some amazing dissidents when it comes to the social charter, and even inside the Cabinet. There is not unity on the opt-out from the social charter or on the social charter. One of the great absentees from any of these debates—they range across the whole area of space—is the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), the Secretary of State for the Environment. The right hon. Gentleman resigned from the Cabinet on Europe and crusaded through the country on Europe. He challenged the previous Prime Minister on Europe and after that he became a member of the Cabinet. Since then we have not seen hide nor hair of him on Europe, and small surprise that is.
  In an article in the Daily Mail in November of 1989, the right hon. Member for Henley, who is now the Secretary of State for the Environment, was quoted as saying that
  "the growing success of European companies will gradually enable them to buy up more and more of our industries, and their social charter will come here—not because the British Government wanted it but because our companies were not strong enough to resist it. I would rather be at the conference table, setting the terms, than at the receiving end of a process others had designed."
  When did the big Cabinet argument take place that led to the position that the Government took at Maastricht last week? If the right hon. Member for Henley still holds the views that I have quoted, it must have been a fairly colourful demonstration of debating styles that took place in the Cabinet. Or has the right hon. Gentleman been forced to change his mind as other Cabinet members were over the poll tax? Deep inside the Cabinet and the Conservative party there are these divisions.
  Mr. Tebbit: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Robertson: I regret that the right hon. Gentleman has come in, as it were, only at this stage in my speech. Only one or two minutes are left to me to reply on behalf of the Opposition. I resist the temptation and forgo the pleasure that I would derive from crossing swords with him.
  Mr. Tebbit: I want only to help the hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. Robertson: I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman wants to help. I bet that he can help me, but he cannot help his right hon. and hon. Friends on the Government Front Bench.

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  The reality is that the opt-out on the social charter means that we shall be locked out from influence, from decisions, from the moulding of policies and from institutions that will yet determine the future of our country. The Maastricht summit was a rare opportunity for Britain to make a positive contribution to momentous discussions. We had a new or newish Prime Minister, who came to power on the ruins of a Prime Minister who failed to read the British people' thinking on Europe. It is sad that the right hon. Gentleman has fallen into some of the traps of the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher). Instead of ideas we had bluster. Instead of initiatives we had threats of vetoes. In the place of constructive dialogue we had obstruction. The saddest feature of the "tennis match", as the Prime Minister trivialisingly called the occasion, was the sheer lack of ambition for Britain that the Government displayed.
  We have no need of empty seats and opt-outs to make Britain's impression on fast-flowing events in Europe that will affect us all. When the Prime Minister stops talking, lecturing and preaching about democracy and the will of the British people and their Parliament and gives the people a chance to choose a new Government, we shall grasp the chance to lead this country in Europe because we are ambitious for Britain in Europe.
  1.29 am
  The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Tristan Garel-Jones): Few spectacles are less attractive than the House in self-congratulatory mood. Nevertheless, it is right to say that we have had a good debate. About 40 Back Benchers have spoken and substantially more will speak tomorrow.
  To deal with the point that the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) has just made, I do not think that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was saying other than what he and many other Conservative Members have said—that these matters are debated not only in the House but in the press and among the general public in a way which goes much wider and deeper and generates much greater passion than in other Community countries.
  Mr. Enright rose——
  Mr. Garel-Jones: Will the hon. Member allow me to continue?
  That point is made not only by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister; European partners frequently comment on the standards of debate in the House. I think that that is right. I was particularly pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) noted the declarations at the end of the treaty, which refer to the House's further involvement in the workings and institutions of the Community and the exhortation—it can be no more than that—to other Parliaments in the Community to emulate the scrutiny of the Danish Parliament and of this Parliament and the Select Committee on European Legislation under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing).
  We need not apologise, either as a Government or as a party, for the attention that we have given to the opinions of hon. Members, because it is to the House that the Government must give the results of the Maastricht treaty
  420
  and it is in the House that the legislation giving effect to the treaty will be considered. The House remains the cornerstone of our democracy.
  I was particularly pleased that the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) spoke because these debates are read and followed in the Community with some fascination. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not reply to the legal points that he made about Libya and the terrorist atrocity at Lockerbie. He pointed out that there is a declaration on the matter in the treaty, so his comments were perfectly in order. He rides a high hobby horse and has the respect of hon. Members for doing so. He made the startling admission that he was not prepared to refer my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) to Colonel Gaddafi's courts for trial, so his attitude is obviously softening.
  Mr. Dalyell: Having exercised that restraint, and as the learned Attorney-General is present, may I ask for an official statement to be made soon on the legal basis for the request for extradition, because if military action is not ruled out it is terribly important?
  Mr. Garel-Jones: I assure the hon. Gentleman that he will receive a reply on that point.
  My hon. Friends the Members for Carshalton and Wallington (Mr. Forman), for East Lindsey (Sir P.Tapsell), for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) and for Hertford and Stortford and my right hon. Friends the Members for
  Selby (Mr. Alison) and for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) referred to intergovernmental co-operation.
  It is worth saying that the first stone, as it were, of intergovernmental co-operation was laid in the Single European Act by my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley. I was especially pleased that in her remarks to the House on 20 November she should have taken credit for it. She said that the important thing to remember was that that agreement
  "was never made a part of the treaty of Rome-and quite rightly not."
  She reminded the House:
  "There are two ways to go—the treaty of Rome, with the European Court's interpretation of it, which is quite different from ours, or an intergovernmental agreement which is binding upon us but which does not have to enter into our law and is not part of the treaty of Rome."—[Official Report. 20 November 1991; Vol.199, c. 293.]
  What has attracted a number of my hon. Friends to the success that the Prime Minister has had is the way in which he has built on that aspect of intergovernmental co-operation.
  I think that many hon. Members are about the same age as me—I am just 50. I was 16 years old when the British and French Governments went into Suez. Hon. Members will recall that there was a passionate debate in this country at the time about whether that was a wise thing for our Government to do. For a 16-year-old boy, that debate was not of great consequence. I simply supported the British troops in Suez and I remember feeling rather disappointed and let down when it began to dawn on me that we had not won in the traditional sense of the word. I also remember a growing feeling of anger as I became aware that one of the reasons why we had not won in the traditional sense was that someone had picked up a telephone and told us to go home. For me, and for many others at that time, that was something of a turning point in the political history of this country.

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  My right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Sir R. Luce) and. I think, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Thompson) referred to the remark made by Dean Acheson that Britain had lost an empire and failed to find a role. For me, that circle was closed this very year when my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister arrived at the European Council with his proposal for safe havens for Kurds. The proposal was approved by the Council and we could claim within a week to have picked up an important international issue, to have influenced the policy of the United States of America and of the United Nations and, through our membership of the Community, to have shaped an international event. That is the reason why my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley was right to claim credit for having laid the first foundation stone of what will shortly be the common foreign and security policy, now known as European political co-operation.
  My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has achieved what is called the pillared structure of the European union. I shall deal first with that structure, beginning with the common foreign and security policy. It remains outside the competence of the Community. All decisions on key issues within that policy will be taken by consensus. There is an explicit recognition—and this was raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford—of the United Kingdom's responsibilities as a member of the United Nations Security Council under paragraph 4 of article E.
  On defence, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and many of us realised—beginning with a speech made about 18 months ago by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary—that the changes in the world in the past two to two and a half years meant that not only the United Kingdom but all our allies and NATO itself had to reconsider strategic and defence postures. It was the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs who first proposed that it should be the Western European Union that formed the nucleus of the developing European defence personality built on the Western European Union. Of course, the WEU must remain autonomous, and the European defence dimension must not be under the aegis of the European Council. That European pillar must reinforce and complement the cornerstone of our defence, which must remain NATO.
  Mr. Tebbit: I have read carefully paragraph 4 of article E, in page 110, and it does not seem to say clearly that it overrides the Declaration of the Conference at the foot of page 106, at the end of article C. Is my hon. Friend the Minister telling me that that declaration has no applicability to the United Nations? Or is he saying that it has no applicability to the Security Council? I find it difficult to read either of those interpretations into paragraph 4 of article E.
  Mr. Garel-Jones: Paragraph 4 of article E refers to
  "Member States which are also members of the United Nations Security Council"
  —that is, to France and Britain. As my right hon. Friend has correctly seen, it ends with the following words:
  "without prejudice to their responsibilities under the provisions of the United Nations Charter."
  I think that that is sufficiently clear.
  Mr. Tebbit rose——
  Mr. Garel-Jones: I hope that my right hon. Friend will forgive me, but I am not giving way to him.
  Mr. Tebbit: I have misinformed my hon. Friend by saying——
  Mr. Garel-Jones rose——
  Mr. Tebbit: The passage was actually at the foot of page——
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Order.
  Mr. Garel-Jones: My right hon. Friend has addressed the House at considerable length, and also intervened in the speech of one of my hon. Friends to explain why he voted for the Single European Act. As I hope to answer as many as 40 hon. Members who have taken part in the debate, I hope that he will forgive me if I continue.
  The other pillar of intergovernmental co-operation is the inferior and justice pillar, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Mr. Rathbone) referred. The House and the country are aware that many of the problems that we face—such as crime, drugs and terrorism—call for transnational solutions. European co-operation in that area is right, and is widely supported on both sides of the House.
  Those aspects of intergovernmental co-operation have been well received—certainly by Conservative Members. Many of my hon. Friends see it as a way forward for co-operation within the European union.
  I must refer, too, to the treaty of Rome and the Community proper—in particular to the enforcement of the rule of law. The House and the country can take some pride in the fact that our record in enforcement and compliance has been described by the European Court of Justice as exemplary. Alas, the record of many of our Community partners is not, perhaps, as exemplary as our own. The action taken by the Government under article 171 of the new treaty, which enables the European Court to fine non-compliant nations, will be not only a good thing in itself but will ensure that many such nations are rather more careful in future before undertaking obligations—as we have to be.
  Mr. Robertson: I have heard the Minister's script about the United Kingdom's exemplary record before. However, the latest Commission report, published in the past few weeks, says that the United Kingdom is now in third position in terms of overall compliance. For directives applicable to the customs union, Britain is in eighth place —only Greece, Spain, Italy and Belgium are worse than us. For directives applicable to the environment, the United Kingdom is in seventh place—only Greece, Italy, Ireland, Belgium and Luxembourg are worse.
  Mr. Garel-Jones: The hon. Gentleman refers there to implementation, and not to compliance. It is true that generally Denmark is a bit ahead of us, but that we are normally in the first three in terms of implementation. Implementation is not the most important point, important though it is. Compliance with the European Court of Justice is the most important point. We have only one European Court of Justice decision uncomplied with; one member state has 38.
  Other areas in which the United Kingdom has taken initiatives within the treaty of Rome, an area to which the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) referred, is in improving the institutional arrangements of

  423
  the Community on fraud, on financial accountability, on rights of inquiry and on setting up a European ombudsman.
  In the area of legislative powers, the House will be aware that the original and more ambitious proposals from the Federal Republic of Germany and the European Parliament were for what was called co-decision, which sought to give to the European Parliament an equal status with the Council of Ministers. That was not acceptable to us or to some other member states. We have ended up with what is called the "negative assent" article 189b procedure, which has been well received by Conservative Members and by many Opposition Members.
  Subsidiarity, which has been mentioned by a number of hon. Members, was principally pressed by the United Kingdom and by the Federal Republic. The subsidiarity text appears under article 3b of the treaty and is also referred to in a further two articles, articles A and B, in what is called the chapeau of the treaty. My hon. Friends the Members for Carshalton and Wallington and for Hampshire, North-West (Sir D. Mitchell) and the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) laid particular stress on subsidiarity.
  It will not surprise hon. Members when I say that subsidiarity will not be a catch-all which will resolve all the problems that we see of the Community seeking to exceed its competence and seeking to extend its activities into what my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has called every nook and cranny. Nevertheless, a strongly worded article on subsidiarity such as we now have will certainly be taken into account by the European Court in any decisions that it makes, and it will begin to shore up the principle of subsidiarity to which the House rightly attaches considerable importance.
  Mr. Spearing: I raised this matter directly with the Prime Minister in his opening speech this afternoon. I pointed out that the wording in the treaty is:
  "In the areas which do not fall within its exclusive jurisdiction, the Community shall take action, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity."
  The article goes on to give two tests, which are a little difficult to understand. Can the Minister give us a quick definition of "exclusive jurisdiction", which I should have thought was a pretty wide term, or does he have to leave the definition to the European Court? Will he tell us now or later what it all means?
  Mr. Garet-Jones: The hon. Gentleman should look at the last sentence of article 3b. He has rightly focused his attention on the main body of the text in the second paragraph. The last paragraph says:
  "Any action by the Community shall not go beyond what is necessary to achieve the objectives of this Treaty."
  That is a catch-all which answers the hon. Gentleman's point.
  Mr. Wigley: The Minister rightly referred to the fact that the Federal Republic of Germany, as well as Britain, laid a lot of emphasis on subsidiarity. Will he confirm that the Federal Republic sees subsidiarity as going considerably further than just the relationship between the so-called "national" Governments and the EC government, and as taking in the Lander level and other levels? Will the United Kingdom apply the same approach?
  Mr. Garel-Jones: No, because the Federal Republic of Germany, as its name indicates, is a federal state. We are
  424
  not a federal state and our reasons for supporting subsidiarity may be different from those of the Federal Republic of Germany.
  Mr. Harry Barnes: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Garel-Jones: No, I want to make more progress.
  My right hon.Friend the Member for Chingford, my hon. Friends the Members for East Lindsey, for Chichester (Mr. Nelson), for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) and for Hertford and Stortford and the right hon. Members for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) and for Ashton-under-Lyne referred to economic and monetary union and to stages 2 and 3 of that process. I will not try to answer all their points in detail because my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will reply to the debate tomorrow and will no doubt wish to pick up many of those points.
  However, it is not the case, as the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) pointed out, that the United Kingdom will not be participating in those decisions. We have participated in the negotiations on the treaty and in the chapter referring to stage 3. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley originally explained, we are not prepared to accept an imposed single currency in this country.
  My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has negotiated strict convergence criteria. If they are met—and they may not be—my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made it absolutely clear to the House that some benefits could flow from a single currency. However, if we were to go down that route, substantial political sacrifices would have to be made, not least by this House. Therefore, it is right that this House should be given the final decision if and when that stage is reached.
  Mr. Darling: I am sure that the Minister will accept that it is common ground that every country in the Community will be able to decide whether to move to the third stage and proceed thereafter. Does not the Minister accept that paragraphs 1,7 and 10 of the protocol, which this country signed, were clearly designed to flag up the fact that the United Kingdom was setting itself apart from the other EC members simply to placate Conservative Back Benchers, possibly including the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit)? Because of that, Britain's commitment will not be taken seriously and that is a very serious point.
  Mr. Garel-Jones: That is not the case.
  Mr. Ashdown: If, as the Minister claims, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) is not correct, perhaps the Minister will consider the following point. Let us imagine a position in which at one or other of the two prescribed dates a sufficient number of countries voted for a single currency to go ahead because a sufficient number had reached the terms of convergence, and let us suppose that Britain had reached the terms of convergence but did not vote to go ahead. Would there then be any compulsion on this country to join a single currency? If not, what on earth is the opt-out for?
  Mr. Garel-Jones: In the circumstances that the right hon. Gentleman describes, of course there is no compulsion on this country.
  I do not wish to be quite so partisan as the hon. Member for Hamilton, but I think that I should refer to Labour's attitude to these matters, not least because many

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  Labour Members have spoken in the debate. Most fair-minded observers would agree that the Labour party has steered what might charitably be called a wayward course in respect of this matter over the past 10 years. We heard public confessions from the hon. Members for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) and for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short) that they have finally seen the light.
  Perhaps the most interesting speech was that made by the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey). He said that everyone had a short memory, but I do not think that the memories of Conservative Members are that short. We well remember the right hon. Gentleman's last intervention on a foreign policy matter when he described the likely outcome of events in the Gulf war. I do not think that he did himself or his party any credit with that speech. The right hon. Gentleman—I told him that I intended to refer to him—is a good example of a good mind serving a bad cause for a very long time. The Labour party's record, not just on Community matters but in general, is that it has been wrong about almost every issue relating to foreign policy and defence, certainly throughout my political lifetime.
  I am bound to say—this point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames)—that I very much hope that, for the country's sake at least, this latest change in policy is the last that we shall see. However, there is one partisan point that I am entitled to make, and I can put it very simply and in the way that members of the British public would put it. My political point is this: Hurd-Kaufman, Kinnock-Major. That point is understood on both sides of the House.
  My right hon. Friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary is listened to with respect not only in the House but in the country and in the Community. The House will judge whether the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), with his customary sheaf of press cuttings in his hand, is the kind of person who will be listened to and command respect in the chancellories of Europe.
  I have spent 18 months doing little other than Community business. I cannot claim to know the treaty and its provisions as well as some of my officials do, but at least I am moderately familiar with it. When I take part in European councils, I am surrounded by well-briefed officials who give me every piece of advice that I can possibly need. European councils do not work like that. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, accompanied by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, and sometimes alone, has to sit alone and negotiate alone. To do that, he not only has to command the respect of colleagues—he must also command a very complicated brief.
  Mr. Enright: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Garel-Jones: I will not give way at the moment.
  Again, the House and the country will have to judge whether the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock), who is noted in the House for his attention to detail and for his choice of and enthusiam for the use of words, would be able to serve the interests of Britain with the same skill and authority as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.
  My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that the union treaty is a challenge as well as an opportunity.
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  However, he rightly warned the House that the argument about the future and whether we are to have a united states of Europe—what we would call federalism, which the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume) and my hon. Friends the Members for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) and for Clwyd, North-West (Sir A. Meyer) support—or whether we are to proceed with a Europe based on intergovernmental co-operation as well as co-operation within the treaty of Rome is not yet settled. We have to win that debate.
  I was particularly pleased to hear the speeches of my hon. Friends the Members Thanet, South and for Southend, East. If we are to win the debate, we need the support not just of my hon. Friends who have always been committed to the Community but of hon. Friends such as my hon. Friends the Members for Thanet, South and for Southend, East and, I hope, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford too, who are sceptical about the Community. They need to join us in making those intergovernmental pillars work and in making sure that the sort of Europe that we build is not only based on a single structure through the treaty of Rome but enables the Community to develop through intergovernmental co-operation in foreign policy, defence and interior justice to which Conservative Members attach such great importance. Part of the great achievement of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is that he has kept the debate open and laid the foundations for us to move forward together and win it.
  Like every hon. Member here, I am intensely proud to be a Member of the House, but I am not so proud as to believe that the House is without fault and cannot learn things from our European partners. Nor am I so faint-hearted as to believe that if the House, and especially the Conservative party, unites behind the vision of Europe that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made possible through the negotiations at Maastricht, we cannot win the debate and provide a European union that will enable us to develop under a common European roof with respect for all our traditions and the democratic basis on which we run the House of Commons.
  It being Two o'clock, the debate stood adjourned, pursuant to Order [13 December].
  Debate to be resumed this day.
  Mr. Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Attorney-General has most courteously attended this debate late at night. Before he goes, I wish to make a perfectly serious House of Commons point.
  I was lucky enough to be called before half-past six. I would not dream of suggesting that Foreign Office lawyers should he pulled out of their beds at this time of the night. However, with respect to the Minister, when a Member of Parliament is fortunate enough to be called by Mr. Speaker at a reasonable hour and asks for a reply on specific legal questions some reply should be forthcoming. My questions about Libya cannot have been exactly unexpected by the Government.
  In the hearing of the Attorney-General, I ask for some statement tomorrow on the matter that I raised. If military action is not ruled out, for heaven's sake we must know the legal basis of what we are up to in asking that alleged criminals be extradited from a country with which we have no diplomatic relations.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not a matter for the Chair, but I am sure that what the hon. Gentleman has said will have been heard.

  Dangerous Buildings
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Wood.]
  2.1 am
  Mr. Robert Litherland: I welcome the opportunity, even at this late hour of the night, or early hour of the morning, to raise my chosen subject for the Adjournment debate. It may seem small beer, sandwiched as it is between the two days of the Maastricht debate, but it is of great significance to many of my constituents and of special priority to one family.
  I promised my constituents, Mr. Brierley and his wife, that I would do my utmost to draw attention to an event that will have an everlasting effect on their family life. Regrettably, it has taken the forfeit of a young life, that of seven-year-old Mark Brierley, who plunged to his death in a derelict building which his parents and local residents refer to as a death trap, to create an awareness of the number of dangerous, dilapidated buildings in inner-city areas.
  With the decline of manufacturing industry in Manchester, many empty buildings are a temptation to youngsters. They present a challenge to youngsters and are seen as adventure playgrounds. Such buildings also entice vandals, who enter, cause damage and increase the possibility of accidents and further deaths such as that of Mark Brierley.
  Those who have knowledge of the inside of the mill in which Mark died tell me of the dangers which are not apparent to youngsters who may venture inside out of curiosity. Vandals have caused fires. There is a great deal of debris scattered around. Floorboards are missing. Holes in the roof allow some light into the upper floor, but the ground floor is in complete darkness, and torchlight or other artificial light is needed to move about in that area.
  In this case, the building in question is Victoria mill in Miles Platting, Manchester—a grade 2 listed building, which was purchased privately. Permission was granted by Manchester city council planning department in October 1989 for conversion to residential and commercial use. Unfortunately, that proposal has been left in abeyance, and the mill still stands, structurally sound but in an extremely sorry state for the want of a commitment and support from the people who can bring about the required transformation.
  Rumour has it that the owner purchased the property in the hope that Manchester would be awarded the Olympic games and it would be a profitable investment. Regrettably, last time we were not awarded the Olympic games. We may be more successful next time. The other theory is that the owner is a modern philanthropist and that it is some sort of expensive hobby. The person in question buys interesting architectural gems and converts them to pristine condition, to conserve them for posterity.
  I do not know whether either theory is correct. All I know is that the collapse of the venture has resulted in a dangerous, unsightly, dilapidated building, which is detrimental to the neighbourhood. I am informed that the owner is spending about £300 a week to try to secure the property, in an attempt to keep it in its present condition.
  One of two things can be done with such buildings: refurbish or demolish. A revised scheme is being drawn up by a church-based organisation named "Linking Up". With the aid of city council funding, it has made a study

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  into the re-use of the old mill. I am informed by the planning department that the overall objective is to link the owner with community leaders and private sector finance to provide housing for rent, community facilities, offices and small commercial uses. The viability of such a scheme for such a large site will depend on grant assistance and a housing association to provide the housing element. The commercial section would require a city grant. The scheme proposed is estimated at £12·9 million, and I am aware that it has been presented to the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment for consideration and assessment.
  It is refreshing to know that the Under-Secretary has visited the area. He knows of the mill, has taken an interest in it and knows exactly what I am talking about. I appreciate his personal interest.
  The line of action presented to the Minister is supported by residents in the area, who recognise that the mill could offer an amenity and revitalise the area. While the city council supports in principle, the objective of the Miles Platting Community Development Trust to re-use the Victoria mill, due to the nature of the proposals it is not in a position to fund the bulk of the redevelopment and has little or no control over the grant aid required to ensure success.
  However, there are other derelict buildings in my constituency which do not have the potential of Victoria mill. They have gone to rack and ruin, and no one appears to be accepting responsibility. Under the Acts relating to derelict buildings, the owners are responsible for securing their safety—that is, when they are aware or have reasonable grounds to believe that a danger exists on the premises. The onus is on the owner to take the necessary precautions. That can be a continuing and costly activity in the case of large buildings. Regrettably, many of the properties are allowed to deteriorate until they are in a dangerous state and concerned people or organisations draw the attention of the local authority to them.
  An order on dangerous building, requiring the owner to carry out the work so as to obviate the danger, or to demolish the buildings or part of it, can be obtained by application to a magistrates court. If the owner fails to comply, the council can undertake the necessary work itself, and under normal and urgent procedure any expense incurred by the authority may be recovered from the owner.
  That sounds good in theory, but the practicality is something different. For example, can the owner be located? I can remember, when I was a member of Manchester city council, that we had to deal with many small properties that had missing owners and absentee landlords, all of which hindered local authority modernisation schemes. Some of the absentee landlords were eventually traced to somewhere in Australia.
  For dilapidated buildings such as the Victoria mill, the procedure is by requiring the owner to carry out the works of repair or restoration. This procedure is subject to special appeal and enforcement provisions. The owner is permitted to challenge the notice by way of appeal, so this can be a long-drawn-out process, and if the local authority has to do the work because the owner has not complied with the notice, where does the finance come from? There is not the local government finance to undertake such
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  major operations. Manchester city council has difficulty with its own properties. Blocks with deck access, their tenants long gone, still stand there blighting whole areas because there is no money to demolish them.
  The father of Mark Brierley is a good, honest and sensible man. I am supporting his endeavours to ensure that no child suffers the fate of his, and no family suffers the trauma of that experience. George Brierley is not bitter, but, like many of us, he would like to see the problem of derelict buildings accorded proper attention. If they cannot be refurbished and are of no architectural merit, they should be demolished, and the local authority should be given the resources to undertake a survey of all these properties, and the financing to take the appropriate action.
  On the other hand, if the building is worth refurbishing, a serious scheme can be presented, as in the case of the Victoria mill. The scheme for that will transform a derelict eyesore into the amenity envisaged by Linking-Up Enterprises Ltd., and described by it as a major opportunity for far-reaching change in the economic and social life of east Manchester. The mill is structurally sound. The project is viable and the local community is enthusiastic but, most of all, there is the energy and the will to succeed. Mr. Brierley supports this action, as do his neighbours, the constituents in the area.
  In a deprived inner-city area, this scheme encourages community involvement and participation. It moves away from the traditional, commercially led schemes. It talks of community ownership—an ingredient that the Minister has espoused in recent times. I implore him to become involved, and to do something constructive. I want his interest to help to bring about this dream for the people in my area.
  I sincerely hope that Mark did not die in vain, and that his sad death will exercise our minds and act as a catalyst so that, one day, this depressing, dilapidated and dangerous building can be transformed into an amenity of which we can all be proud.
  2.14 am
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Robert Key): I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Litherland) on his success in winning the opportunity to initiate this debate. I only wish that it was not being held in such sad circumstances. Fainter hearts might have fled the Chamber at 2·15 am, but he and I have serious business to do.
  I was in Miles Platting only 10 days ago—before I knew that this debate would take place—and I visited the Victoria mill area. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman said that I had been in the area a number of times during recent months. I acknowledge that his constituents are well served by him. I recognise the difficult circumstances that have led to him bringing this subject to the House. I also recognise, as he put it, the everlasting effect of the death of Mark Brierley on his family, not least his father George, and also on the whole community.
  I am a southerner, but I have come to know the people of Manchester over recent months. I know that they are courageous people and will undertstand when I say that courage and patience are both qualities that will be needed if we are to make progress. I listened to the detailed points that the hon. Gentleman made, and I should like to

  431
  consider them in depth at a more civilised hour. I am sure that I will be in touch with him frequently in coming weeks.
  First, I shall deal with the bones of the hon Gentleman's argument about the building. It is a grade 2 listed building, it is a fine example of architecture, but it is seen by some as a danger to the community—a target for crime and vandalism and, especially now, an object of fear. The listing itself does not prevent necessary work being carried out or even the building's demolition. Demolition or work that would alter its character would require consent. If an application for consent to demolish were made, all the relevant circumstances would be taken into account. Demolition of a listed building is regarded as very much of a last resort, and would he unlikely to receive consent if alternatives to retain the building were reasonably available.
  It is for the owners or the local authority to carry out any necessary work and to seek consents that may be required. As the hon. Gentleman said, responsibility for the building rests primarily with its owners, and it is for them to do whatever is necessary to render it safe. The local authority—in this case, Manchester city council—also has a role to play, in that it has the power to take action where a building is in such a defective state that it is prejudicial to health, a nuisance or dangerous.
  Sections 76 to 78 of the Building Act 1984 enable local authorities to take steps in relation to premises that are in a defective state and are prejudicial to health, a nuisance or dangerous. It is for the local authority to judge whether the use of that power is appropriate in a particular case. I acknowledge the further points that the hon. Gentleman made, and I will consider them.
  For those who are not familiar with the area, it is important to set the building in its context. I have spent a good deal of time in the area, and I have come to know it quite well. Victoria mill is situated in Miles Platting, which forms part of east Manchester—or, as I was told shortly after I first began visiting Manchester, "Don't talk about east Manchester, it doesn't exist; talk about the villages and the communities to the east of Manchester." It is a broad area to the east of the city, covering about 3,000 acres and with a resident population of more than 50,000 people in seven local communities.
  The area used to contain much of the city's heavy engineering, chemical and textile industries. Victoria mill is a reminder of the scale and the importance of the textile industry to the city. However, it now has large tracts of derelict land and many vacant buildings.
  Past attempts to tackle the area's problems have been piecemeal. The worst of the dereliction has been removed, and programmes are taking shape to deal with the rest, but there remains a great deal to be done. The city action team in Manchester and the city council regard east Manchester as a main priority area. The thrust of the regeneration proposals for the area is to consolidate the vacant and derelict land and bring it forward for redevelopment in partnership with private sector owners.
  There are proposals to develop major sporting facilities, to which the hon. Gentleman referred. Should Manchester be successful in the bid for the 2000 Olympic games, east Manchester will be the focus of the facilities to be provided. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has now agreed to provide £2 million to support detailed
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  studies of the stadium, velodrome and arena. I have been closely involved in this from the start, and I will continue to be so.
  The regeneration of east Manchester will be greatly aided by the steering arrangements, focused through the evolving east Manchester partnership, a widely drawn group from the private sector, chaired by Terry Thomas, the managing director of the Co-operative bank.
  Partnership with the private sector is likely to strengthen the regeneration efforts in east Manchester, but a further encouraging sign is the growing strength and participation of community organisations. In February, I was privileged to attend, with the Bishop of Manchester, a meeting inaugurating the Miles Platting development trust. There was discussion of the problems facing communities in east Manchester and a commitment to taking positive action. Following that meeting, I was pleased that my Department was able to fund a feasibility study into the future of Victoria mill, and that further talks are being covered by the bishop, with the support of local Church organisations, to enhance community organisations in the inner city.
  During my visits to Miles Platting, I have been impressed by the grandeur of Victoria mill. It is a most imposing Venetian-style building. Victoria mill is privately owned. The building, although structurally sound, is badly run down, and in need of complete refurbishment. I know that the owner is eager for the mill to be refurbished and re-used. He is, however, unable to find funds for such works himself. To this end, my Department provided £65,000 of urban programme grant to enable the feasibility study to be carried out by linking up an ecumenical and national organisation. It investigated a mixture of uses which would be both commercially viable and of major benefit to the community.
  The preferred option for redevelopment provides for mixed commercial, community and residential uses—possibly with housing association involvement. A scheme of this nature would provide a valuable resource for Miles Platting and east Manchester and assist its regeneration. I know that the owner is actively seeking investors and that the Housing Corporation is considering its priorities for investing in the city.
  As with any major scheme, careful planning is vital to ensure that the final scheme is both practical and viable. Where support from various sources is required to ensure that the project meets a mixture of uses, there is a need to ensure that every part is in place—that there is demand from the market for those parts which depend on the private sector and that the community elements will be welcomed. However, the recent tragic accident at the mill has reinforced the need to act urgently in the interest of public safety.
  There are various programmes available with which to tackle dilapidated buildings and render them safe for the public. The urban programme makes a significant contribution to the renewal of the inner cities. I am keen to make people realise that the creation of healthy local economies and communities is the key to urban regeneration. The main emphasis should be on sharply targeted and self-sustaining economic and environmental improvements, with a social and community dimension.
  The objectives of the urban programme reflect the wider objective of the Government's efforts of urban regeneration. Those in particular which are relevant to this case reflect the need to make the inner cities more

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  attractive to residents, as also to businesses—by, for example, tackling dereliction, bringing buildings back into use, preparing sites and encouraging development; but also more specifically, and more importantly in human terms, by making inner cities safe and attractive places to live and work in. Together we must fight crime, including vandalism, improve education and community and health care, and develop better facilities for recreation, sport and the arts.
  It is envisaged that this kind of self-sustaining regeneration might best be achieved by targeting tightly drawn geographical areas. East Manchester is one of the targeted areas in Manchester.
  This year, Manchester city council's urban programme includes support of nearly £2·5 million for schemes in east Manchester, to be used primarily to bring forward large sites for redevelopment, as well as continuation of environmental upgrading and substantial remodelling of Beswick district centre. In the past the urban programme has been used to great effect in supporting housing refurbishment for the large Miles Platting estate, with environmental and security measures. It is likely east Manchester, or part of it, will be the subject of Manchester's bid for city challenge in the coming round. The focus will shift from the Hulme estate to east Manchester. If successful, the concentrated application of resources could make real sustainable impacts on that area— I hope that that will happen.
  Derelict land grant is available for the reclamation of land which is so damaged by industrial or other development that it is incapable of beneficial use without treatment. Land in this context includes buildings and structures, factories, mills and chimneys which have become so dilapidated or decayed that they are structurally unsound. The rate of grant for most of the derelict areas in the north-west is 100 per cent. for local authorities and 80 per cent. for the private sector.
  In the current financial year, Manchester city council shares an allocation of £2 million with Tameside metropolitan borough council, of which £264,000 has recently been approved by my Department for the demolition and clearance of a dangerous goods shed on a site known as Ardwick east goods yard, in east Manchester. The building is in an unsafe condition and is a hazard to local children who are attracted to play on the site. After clearance, the site will be marketed for commercial and office use. The hon. Gentleman has
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  referred to the fact that many such buildings still exist. I acknowledge that, and we want to find them and will do so together. Where we can help, we shall seek to do so.
  Another derelict and unsafe building in greater Manchester which has been demolished with the aid of derelict land grant was Times mill in Rochdale council's area. That was a privately owned four-storey mill which was vacant and vandalised. Because of the visual value of the site arising from the reclamation, a private-sector grant of only £4,000 was all that was required to secure the removal of a dangerous eyesore.
  City grant is another mechanism that the Government use for returning derelict sites and buildings to full economic use. The grant is provided to support private-sector capital projects which benefit run-down inner-city areas and which, because of their inner-city location, cannot proceed without assistance.
  In the north-west region, my Department has approved eight city grant projects which involve either the refurbishment or conversion of redundant buildings. Grant of £4·6 million has attracteld private sector investment of nearly £15 million towards the regeneration of those sites. We shall continue to assist the Victoria mill project where possible. I cannot offer any funding until we have explored soundly based proposals for the whole scheme, but I have no doubt that they will be forthcoming.
  The hon. Gentleman has raised a topic that is important not only to his constituents but in the wider context to enable people to begin to understand what we are trying to do in inner-city regeneration. So far, we have considered bricks and mortar alone but, like the cities that have accepted city challenge, we recognise that, if we are to succeed where perhaps we have failed for too long, we must engage the attention, enthusiasm and commitment of whole communities.
  What we are about is improving the quality of life for everybody living in our cities. We want to make our inner cities places where people want to stay and to which those people who have left want to return, not places that people want to get out of as soon as they can. We are beginning to see a dramatic change. Manchester is a good example. Indeed, we can see those dramatic changes at many sites, not only in Manchester and Salford, but in Liverpool, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and many other places.
  At the heart of all this, Government, the private sector and local authorities must all bear in mind the quality of life of the people living in the city. We have learnt a tragic lesson from the hon. Gentleman's constituency—a lesson that will not be lost.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes past Two o'clock.

HEALTH

  Adoption
  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list the information available to him on the range of charges levied by local authorities on couples wishing to adopt from abroad.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  This information is not held centrally. The Department has advised local authorities that there is no objection to prospective adopters being asked to meet such charges as the authorities consider reasonable for work associated with intercountry adoption.

  General Practitioners
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much general practitioners in the United Kingdom have been overpaid under their last year's contract; what is the average overpayment per general practitioner; how much has been reclaimed; how much has been written off; and if he will make a statement.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State gave my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Mr. Butler) on 7 November at columns 259–60.

  In 1990–91 estimated gross payments to GPs in Great Britain, under the terms of their contract, exceeded the intended level by approximately £178 million. The average overpayment per GP was £5,951.

  As an interim measure, an amount of £7·5 million—£250 per GP—was reclaimed from GPs' remuneration in 1991–92, in accordance with the recommendations of the Doctors and Dentists Review Body in its 21st report.

  The Government decided this autumn to waive recovery of £63 million of the overpayment, or £2,100 per GP, which was attributable to special factors unique to the first year of the new GP contract. Further decisions will be taken on the handling of the remaining sum in 1992, when we have further information.

  NHS Trusts
  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list all the non-executive directors of the Freeman hospital trust and the Northumbria ambulance services trust, and give the remuneration presently received by them.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  The non-executive directors of the Freeman hospital trust are:

  Mr. Richard Middleton

  Mrs. Marion Border

  Miss Hilary Goodworth

  Mr. John Ward

  Dr. Roger Freeman

  The non-executive directors of the Northumbria ambulance services trust are:
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  Mr. Alan Ferguson

  Mr. Peter Moth

  Mrs. Jacqueline Higson

  Mr. Albert Knight

  Mr. Douglas Smith

  All non-executive directors currently receive £5,000 per annum.

  Northern RHA
  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health on what date the services of the chief executive of the Northern regional health authority ceased.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  Mr. Douglas Hague stood down from the post of chief executive of Northern regional health authority on 13 November 1991.

  Mr. Cousins
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list the present non-executive directors of the Northern regional health authority; what recent resignations or new appointments have been made and when they became effective; and what remunerations are currently received by non-executive directors.

  Mrs. Virginia Bottomley
  The non-executive members of the Northern regional health authority are:

  Mr. Tony Brown

  Professor Michael Rawlins

  Mr. Peter Reay

  Mr. Roger Spoor

  There has been one vacancy since 31 October when Mrs. Anne Galbraith resigned her position to become chairman of the Royal Victoria infirmary and associated hospitals NHS trust on 1 November 1991.

  All non-executive members receive £5,000 per annum.

  Mental Health Hospitals (Liverpool)
  Mr. Alton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people were committed under the terms of the Mental Health Act 1983 to care in mental health hospitals in Liverpool during each of the past five years.

  Mr. Dorrell
  The latest figures of patients formally admitted to NHS hospitals and units in Liverpool district health authority under the terms of the Mental Health Act 1983 are shown in the table.

  Year

  Formal admissions Liverpool DHA

  1987–88

  129

  1988–89

  141

  1989–90

  162

  Source: 1987–88 onwards—Korner aggregate KH15.

  Comparable figures are not available centrally for the period before 1987–88.

  Mental Health
  Mr. Alton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list the percentages from each ethnic group of patients committed under the terms of the Mental Health Act 1983.

  Mr. Dorrell
  This information is not available centrally.

  St. Thomas's Hospital
  Mr. Bowis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health if his Department has considered an application for an exhibition relating to St. Thomas's hospital to be displayed in the Upper Waiting Hall.

  Mr. Dorrell
  I understand that under procedures agreed by the Services Committee, arrangements have been made with the authorities of the House for the exhibition to be held in the Upper Waiting Hall from 10 to 14 February 1992.

  Small Firms
  Sir David Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many schemes his Department runs to provide help or finance for small firms; and if he will list them.

  Mr. Dorrell
  The Department supports a link line telephone service which provides guidance to small firms wishing to know how to do business with the national health service, and has published a guide "Businesslinks: A suppliers' guide", which was revised in January 1991, a copy of which is available in the Library.

ENERGY

  Piper B Platform
  Dr. Michael Clark
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy whether he has considered an application for an exhibition relating to the Piper B platform to be displayed in the Upper Waiting Hall.

  Mr. Wakeham
  I understand that, under the procedures agreed by the Services Committee, arrangements have been made with the authorities of the House for the exhibition to be held in the Upper Waiting Hall from Monday 20 January to Friday 24 January.

  Orimulsion
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what assessment he has made of the studies carried out by National Power and PowerGen by Mr. G. H. Hadley on orimulsion; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  None. The type and quantity of fuel used by the electricity companies is an operational matter for the companies concerned, subject to emission limits imposed by Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution under the Environmental Protection Act 1990.

  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what information he has on the level of subsidy being offered to the United Kingdom generators by the Venezuelan Government in relation to sales of orimulsion fuel oil; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  We have no evidence of any subsidies being offered by the Venezuelan Government in relation to sales of orimulsion.

  Home Energy Labelling
  Mr. Evennett
  To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what steps have been taken to develop and encourage schemes for home energy labelling; and if he will make a statement.
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  Mr. Heathcoat-Amory
  Home energy labelling tells householders, Iandlords and those responsible for housing stock how energy efficient their housing is. The Government have been considering how to promote the take-up of energy labelling in the United Kingdom and how best to ensure that the existence of different labelling schemes does not confuse the consumer.

  With the co-operation of the National Energy Foundation and MVM Starpoint, two organisations at the forefront of home energy labelling, the Government have decided to introduce a standard assessment procedure—SAP—for rating the energy performance of homes. This will provide consumers with a reference point and so enable them to make comparisons between labels, such as those issued on the MVM Starpoint scheme and the national home energy rating—NHER—scheme. Like MVM Starpoint and NHER labels, the Government's procedure is based on the Building Research Establishment's domestic energy model. It will be published as a BRE paper.

  The Government will require any labelling scheme wishing to use the SAP to meet certain quality standards. They will therefore only authorise organisations to use the SAP only if they undertake to:
  obtain a BS5750 certificate of quality assurance based on a Government quality statement. The quality statement will be designed to ensure reliability and consistency of SAP ratings, for example through a requirement that the labelling schemes deliver ratings within a specified number of points in the SAP scale in a specified proportion of cases. The required quality statement will be published after further consultation
  obtain confirmation from the Building Research Establishment that their computer software properly incorporates the new standard assessment procedure;
  provide the Government with certain statistical data.

  In view of their proven record and in order to avoid any disruption to the activities of the existing labelling schemes, the Government will give interim authorisation to MVM Starpoint and the National Energy Foundation to use the Government's SAP, upon confirmation by BRE that their software properly incorporates the SAP. This authorisation will be for 12 months, during which period they will be expected to seek certification under BS5750.

  The Government hope by this initiative to expand the market for home energy labels by reducing the risk of confusion arising from an inability to compare ratings. They will be keeping developments under close review and will further refine these arrangements should that prove desirable. They will in due course bring forward proposals for consultation on the incorporation of the SAP into the requirements of building regulations.

WALES

  Bats
  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if the European bats agreement is now binding on local planning authorities in Wales; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Nicholas Bennett
  It is hoped that the agreement on the conservation of bats in Europe, which was signed by the United Kingdom earlier this month, will come into force next year. The agreement will be binding, on the national Governments who are parties to it and not on local authorities. The United Kingdom already meets its
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  potential obligations through the provisions of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which apply where relevant to local authorities.

  Political Initiatives
  Mr. Geraint Howells
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales whether he has any plans for new political initiatives in Wales; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. David Hunt
  I have plans for several new such initiatives for Wales which I shall announce at the appropriate time.

  "The Rural Initiative"
  Mr. Barry Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what was the cost of publishing "The Rural Initiative"; and how many copies were printed.

  Mr. David Hunt
  The rural initiative publication cost £18,444. A total of 1,750 copies were printed in English and 750 copies in Welsh. Printers and designers were selected as a result of competitive tendering.

  Housing Revenue Accounts (Subsidy)
  Mr. Gwilym Jones
  To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he has completed his consideration of his 1992–93 housing revenue account subsidy proposals; and when he expects to make his subsidy determinations.

  Mr. Nicholas Bennett
  The housing revenue account subsidy determinations for 1992–93 have been made today following consideration of the responses to consultation. I am placing copies of the determinations in the Library of the House.

  For rent guidelines the proposal for an average increase of £2·14 is confirmed. As usual, guideline increases for individual authorities vary according to the capital value of their stock.

  For management and maintenance allowances, the proposed average increase from £712 per dwelling in the current year to £766 per dwelling in 1992–93, an average increase of 7·5 per cent., is similarly confirmed. Under targeting arrangements, increases for individual authorities take account of the condition of their housing stock.

  The rent guidelines and management and maintenance allowances are the assumptions to be made for subsidy purposes. It is for councils to set their own rents and to decide how much to spend on managing and repairing their housing stock within their legal obligations.

DEFENCE

  Pensions
  Mr. Barry Field
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what are the differences in percentage terms between the outright annuality anomaly for 31 March 1976 and 31 March to 1 April 1991 for(a) a brigadier's pension, (b) an air commodore's pension, (c) a senior naval captain's pension; and what steps he intends taking to remove these anomalies.

  Mr. Archie Hamilton
  Scales of retired pay for brigadiers, air commodores and senior naval captains are the same. For officers in those ranks retiring on the 160
  maximum point on the scale, which is achieved by 34 years reckonable service, the retired pay currently received expressed as a percentage of the rate awarded for retirement on 1st April 1991 is as follows:

  90·3 per cent, where retired pay first came into payment on 31 March 1976.

  84·7 per cent, where retired pay first came into payment on 31 March 1991.

  Initial awards of retired pay are derived from rates of military salary in force at the date of retirement. They are subsequently increased through index-linking arrangements which take into account movements in the retail prices index. The Ministry of Defence has no plans to adjust rates of retired pay previously awarded in accordance with normal rules, other than through the normal index-linking arrangements.

  National and Wildlife Parks (Military Use)
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how much has been paid in each of the last five years to the Duchy of Cornwall for permission to use land in the Dartmoor national park for military use.

  Mr. Archie Hamilton
  The information is commercially confidential between the Duchy of Cornwall and the Ministry of Defence.

  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what grants were paid to Dartmoor hill farmers in each of the last five years as compensation for restricted grazing as a result of live firing in the National Park.

  Mr. Archie Hamilton
  Compensation is paid to registered commoners. Over the last five years the amounts approved for payment as a result of live firing are as follows:

  Year

  £

  1987

  81,576

  1988

  81,101

  1989

  81,101

  1990

  91,668

  1991

  91,668

  Empty Property
  Mr. Soley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how long the 24 houses between 2 and 48 Nyland road, Swindon, have been empty.

  Mr. Archie Hamilton
  The Ministry of Defence houses in Nyland road have been vacant since they were handed back to the Ministry of Defence by the United States Air Force. The houses were handed back in three stages in December 1990 and in April and September 1991.

  Mr. Soley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence (1) if he will enter into a management agreement with a housing association or the local authority to use the 24 empty houses in Nyland road, Swindon, for rented accommodation;

  (2) if he will transfer immediately the ownership of the 24 houses between 2 and 48 Nyland road, Swindon, to a housing association or local authority.

  Mr. Archie Hamilton
  No. A number of the houses are being retained for use by the Ministry of Defence and will be occupied in January 1992. Those houses which are
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  surplus are to be offered for sale through the scheme to sell surplus married quarters at a discount to service personnel.

  Royal Marines
  Mr. Mans
  To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what plans he has to introduce opportunities for the employment of women in the Royal Marines; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Archie Hamilton
  It is intended to extend the employment of women in the armed forces to include service in the Royal Marine band service. The recruiting process will be started shortly with a view to receiving the first female recruits at the Royal Marine school of music in the autumn of 1992. Women will serve on the same terms and conditions as male bandsmen. They will receive the same training, including weapons training, and will be expected to achieve the same standards as their male counterparts. Studies into the feasibility of women serving in the corps as commandos are continuing.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL

  "Juliette"
  Mr. Hind
  To ask the Attorney-General what consideration has been given to the prosecution of Arrow, publishers of "Juliette", by the Marquis de Sade, under the Obscene Publications Act 1959; and if he will make a statement.

  The Attorney-General
  The question of prosecution is a matter for the acting Director of Public Prosecutions and is at present under consideration by him.

HOME DEPARTMENT

  Northumbria Police Authority
  Mr. Nicholas Brown
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what factors he takes into account when allocating resources to individual police authorities; and how these factors apply to the Northumbria police authority.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  I will write to the hon. Member.

  Car Crime
  Mr. Nicholas Brown
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what guidance is given to chief constables on cautioning or arresting young people caught taking away other people's motor vehicles; and what guidance is given to magistrates concerning sentencing policy for these offences.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  Guidance on the decision to caution is contained in Home Office circular 59/1990, a copy of which is in the Library. There is no guidance about the exercise of the power of arrest.

  Within the statutory powers provided by Parliament, sentencing in individual cases is for the courts to decide.

  Mr. Nicholas Brown
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what initiatives he plans in sentencing policy related to young offenders and(a) car crime and (b) house breaking.
  162
  Mr. John Patten
  Sentencing in individual cases is a matter for the courts within the powers given by Parliament. The Aggravated Vehicle-Taking Bill now before Parliament strengthens courts' powers to deal with the unauthorised taking of motor vehicles where there is dangerous driving, damage or injury. Courts have the power to impose a custodial sentence of up to 14 years on offenders convicted of domestic burglary.

  Immigration
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people have been admitted for settlement in the United Kingdom for each year since 1979 from(a) India, (b) Pakistan and (c) Bangladesh.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  The number of citizens of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh accepted for settlement in the United Kingdom in the years 1979–90 is published in tables 22 and 14, respectively, of the 1987 and 1990 volumes of the annual Home Office Command Paper "Control of Immigration: Statistics United Kingdom"—Cm 415 and Cm 1571). Copies of these publications are in the Library.

  Government Security
  Mrs. Gorman
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what information he is able to give on the cost of Metropolitan police security operations around the Palace of Westminster, parliamentary outbuildings and Departments of state located in and around Whitehall.

  Mr. Peter Lloyd
  It is not the practice to give details of security costs.

TRANSPORT

  Harbours (Accounts)
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will list, for each county, the statutory harbour undertakings which are required by section 42(2)(b) of the Harbours Act 1964 to send him a copy of their annual accounts, stating in each case, the names of the harbour or harbours covered by the undertaking, and the financial year for which accounts were most recently submitted.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  I am writing to the hon. Lady with this information.

  Tees and Hartlepool Port Authority
  Mr. Devlin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he expects to announce his decision on the recommendation put to him by the board of Tees and Hartlepool port authority concerning the sale of its undertaking.

  Mr. Rifkind
  Under the provisions of the Ports Act 1991, it was for the THPA board to arrange for the sale of shares in its successor company and to recommend to me which bid should be preferred, having regard to the provisions of the Act and objectives of the sale which were agreed with me.

  The agreed objectives included encouraging disposal to managers and staff of the whole or a substantial part of the equity share capital; seeking best open market price

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  subject to the other objectives; continuing operation of the Port in ways which are beneficial to the local economy; maintenance of a viable and competitive port operation; maintenance of the port as a separate entity with day to day management and control located in Teesside; use of THPA's assets for the development of the port business and for the promotion of developments which are locally beneficial.

  My Department and its advisers kept closely in touch with the THPA board as it carried out the sale process. I am satisfied that the board discharged its responsibilities in a fair and proper manner. In particular, I am satisfied that it considered carefully each of the bids in relation to the agreed objectives of sale.

  The key issues which the board included in its evaluation were: independence, long-term stability, benefit to the community, contribution to the port, credibility, acceptability, employee participation and price. Having thoroughly scrutinised all the bids, the THPA board concluded that the bid by Teesside Holdings Limited, although not the largest in monetary terms, was the most consistent with the authority's privatisation objectives and, taken overall, the most beneficial to the port, its employees and the Teesside community generally. As regards employee participation, the Teesside Holdings bid includes provision for 475,000 shares to be reserved for THPA employees, who will receive one free share for every share subscribed for—that is, 5 per cent. of the proposed equity share capital. Accordingly, the THPA board has recommended to me that its successor company should be sold to Teesside Holdings Limited.

  I have considered the THPA recommendation carefully. In particular, I have noted that the price of £180 million offered by Teesside Holdings is at the top end of the range of an independent valuation carried out by THPA prior to the sale. I have also noted the THPA board's view that the Teesside Holdings' bid makes the most convincing plans for a prosperous and growing future for the port, including specific capital expenditure proposals. The bid is also considered to demonstrate the greatest commitment to the long-term development and stability of the authority's undertaking for the benefit of Teesside.

  I am satisfied that the THPA board's recommendation best meets the agreed objectives of the sale. I have therefore written to the chairman of THPA to say that I am minded to give my formal consent to the sale of the authority's undertaking to Teesside Holdings Limited as soon as I am able to do so. This will be possible only after the scheme of transfer submitted by the authority under section 9(1) of the Ports Act 1991 and the order providing for a levy on disposals of land to be made under section 17 of the Act have come into effect. The latter is subject to an affirmative resolution of the House and is expected to be debated immediately after the Christmas recess.

  RMS St. Helena
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make a statement on the operation and management of the RMS St. Helena with particular reference to the proposed working conditions of the officers and ratings.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  The working conditions of the officers and ratings of the RMS St. Helena are properly the concern of the managers—the St. Helena Shipping 164
  Company Limited. They are currently negotiating new terms in line with current practices throughout the shipping industry.

  Small Firms
  Sir David Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many schemes his Department runs to provide help or finance for small firms; and if he will list them.

  Mr. McLoughlin
  The Department of Transport provides guidance on transport matters to any business requiring it, whatever its size. Such financial assistance as the Department provides to businesses, for example towards the costs of transporting goods by rail rather than by unsuitable roads, under section 8 of the Railways Act 1974, is available to eligible businesses whatever the size of the company.

  The Department's procurement unit encourages small firms to supply the Department, mainly through the pamphlet "Selling to the Department of Transport". The Department selectively vets the suitability of individual companies in accordance with the Department's particular needs, not the size of the company.

  Exeter Bypass
  Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he expects(a) Acer Consultants to deliver their report on a hypothetical Exeter northern bypass to his Department and (b) when he expects it to commence Ministerial consideration.

  Mr. Chope
  [holding answer 12 December 1991]: I hope to receive the report on whether there is a need for a bypass to the north and west of Exeter in January 1992 and to give it consideration then.

  M20 Widening
  Sir John Stanley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport when he proposes to withdraw his 200 notification requirement on the planning authority for land charges searches in relation to properties between junctions 3 and 5 of the M20, following his announcement of the line of his Department's widening scheme.

  Mr. Chope
  [holding answer 13 December 1991]: Pursuant to an agreement between themselves and the Law Society, local authorities will be required to reveal the existence of the proposals for widening M20 between junctions 3 and 5 in response to searches by prospective purchasers of properties within 200 m of the scheme until such time as the widening is implemented.

  A27
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will undertake to conduct a full environmental impact assessment of the proposed routes for improvement of the A27; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Chope
  [holding answer 17 December 1991]: Public consultation is taking place at present on the Lewes-Polegate section of the A27. Consideration of the environmental effects of this road scheme has been a continuous process throughout the planning and design

  165
  stages. An appraisal of environmental effects of all the A27 consultation routes is outlined in the consultation brochure and at the local consultation exhibitions. Further detailed environmental appraisal will be carried out as the proposals develop.

NATIONAL FINANCE

  Spirits
  Mr. Colvin
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the revenue yield to the Exchequer of duties and taxes on spirits in the last financial year.

  Mr. Gillian Shephard
  The revenue yield in 1990–91 was estimated to be £2·4 billion, of which duties accounted for £1·7 billion and VAT accounted for £0·7 billion.

  Oil and Gas Production
  Mr. Hardy
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what was the yield received by Her Majesty's Government from oil and from gas production in the United Kingdom in each year since 1979 both in terms of actual amounts and by current valuation.

  Mr. Maude
  Annual revenues to the Exchequer from the North sea, at current prices and at 1991–92 prices, have been as follows:

  £ million

  Current prices

  1991–92 prices1

  1979–80

  2,313

  5,349

  1980–81

  3,743

  7,305

  1981–82

  6,492

  11,564

  1982–83

  7,822

  13,007

  1983–84

  8,798

  13,973

  1984–85

  12,035

  18,197

  1985–86

  11,348

  16,276

  1986–87

  4,783

  6,630

  1987–88

  4,618

  6,076

  1988–89

  3,168

  3,880

  1989–90

  2,368

  2,729

  1990–91

  2,498

  2,673

  21991–92

  1,200

  1,200

  1 By reference to movements in the GDP market prices implied deflator.

  2 Forecast.

  Departmental Relocation
  Mrs. Currie
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what plans he has to relocate part of Her Majesty's Treasury out of central London.

  Mr. Maples
  The Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency—the Government centre for information systems—is part of HM Treasury and is currently located partly in central London and partly in Norwich. I have decided that, with the exception of a small London base, it should be wholly located in Norwich. The move will involve a little over 200 posts and will be phased over the next three years; I expect the greater part to take place in 1993–94.

  Business Investment
  Mr. Nicholas Brown
  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will publish a table giving business investment measured in current prices as a percentage of 166
  gross domestic product, measured in current prices for each year since 1974, including quarterly figures since 1988, and the average for periods 1974 to 1979 and 1979 to 1990.

  Mr. Mellor
  [holding answer 16 December 1991]: The latest estimates are available on the CSO database which may be accessed through the House of Commons Library. Business investment is defined as private sector and public corporations gross domestic fixed capital formation, excluding purchases less sales of land and existing buildings and private sector investment in dwellings. The database identifier formula for business investment at current prices is DECR minus (GGAG + DFHV + AAUC + AAUG + DEET). The identifier for gross domestic product at current market prices is CAOB.

THE ARTS

  Arts and Disability
  Ms. Walley
  To ask the Minister for the Arts when he received a copy of the Arts Council directory on arts and disability; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Renton
  I received a copy of the arts and disability directory when it was issued by the Arts Council. I warmly welcome this initiative and commend the directory to individuals and organisations seeking information or wishing to extend their work in this important area of arts and disability.

ENVIRONMENT

  Climate Change
  Mr. Flynn
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he has received a copy of the recent study entitled "The Potential Socio-Economic Effects of Climate Change", produced by the environmental change unit of Oxford University.

  Mr. Baldry
  Yes.

  London Docklands Development Corporation
  Ms. Gordon
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what discussions he has had with the London Docklands development corporation about provision of sporting and leisure facilities within the LDDC area.

  Mr. Portillo
  The promotion of facilities for sport and leisure forms part of the LDDC's agreed strategic aim to improve the social infrastructure of London docklands. The development programmes relating to this aim are set out in the 1991 corporate plan which I discussed with the corporation earlier this year.

  "Options for Change"
  Mr. Bill Michie
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will provide funds for ex-service housing associations and other bodies to help meet the demand for additional houses from the service men and women leaving the armed forces as a result of "Options for Change".

  Mr. Yeo
  The Government are making available substantially increased resources for housing associations
  167
  to provide for people in priority need. This programme will be of benefit to the generality of families in high need of subsidised rented housing, who may include some households leaving services accommodation.

  Meadow Well Estate, North Shields
  Mr. Nicholas Brown
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list the projects and programmes that he has specifically targeted at the Meadow Well estate, North Shields, Tyne and Wear since 1979; and how he evaluates their outcome.

  Mr. Yeo
  The local targeting of expenditure under the urban programme and estate action is primarily the responsibility of the local authorities which bid for and deliver these programmes.

  Since 1979, the Department has funded an annual urban programme in North Tyneside, for expenditure on projects related to the defined inner area, which includes the Meadow Well estate. In 1988 an estate action scheme was approved for part of the north Meadow Well. The authority has very recently been given the go-ahead to work up estate action proposals to the rest of north Meadow Well.

  In addition, the work of the Tyne and Wear development corporation includes activities of benefit to the Meadow Well estate.

  In each of these programmes the local authority, or the UDC respectively, are required to monitor projects, and sample monitoring of a selection of projects is carried out by the Department's regional office.

  Waste Regulation
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how much was spent on advertising material to alert waste carriers to the requirement to register with waste regulation authorities; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Baldry
  The Department of the Environment, in conjunction with the Scottish Office and the Welsh Office, issued a free explanatory leaflet entitled "If you carry waste, this will affect you". The cost of printing and distributing 250,000 copies of this leaflet was £17,751. A further 100,000 copies are being printed, at a cost of £2,109.

  Uniform Business Rate
  Mr. Steen
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many appeals against assessment of uniform business rate for 1990–91 are awaiting completion; if any extra staff have been employed to speed the progress of such appeals; and when he expects all appeals against assessment of uniform business rate for 1990–91 to be completed.

  Mr. Key
  Ratepayers had six months from 1 April 1990 in which to make proposals to alter their 1990 rating assessments and valuation officers then had a further six months to settle the proposal before the matter became an appeal. Most proposals were not received as appeals to tribunals until the latter part of that financial year.

  At the end of September 1991, valuation and community charge tribunals in England had outstanding some 597,000 non-domestic rating appeals, following the
  168
  clearance of 90,000. The tribunals have recruited extra staff and were provided with computer systems. Staffing levels are kept under review. The speed at which appeals are cleared is primarily a matter for the individual tribunals.

  Small Firms
  Sir David Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what aspects of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 will affect small firms; and when the regulations will come into effect.

  Mr. Trippier
  Many aspects of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 will affect businesses, large and small; They include:Part I
  Integrated pollution control (applies to new processes and substantial changes to existing processes from 1 April 1991; being phased in for existing processes over five years).
  Local authority air pollution control (the final stage of introduction is 1 April 1992; parts were introduced on 1 April and 1 October 1991).
  Part II
  New and extended controls on waste management (the duty of care together with associated Regulations and a Code of Practice come into force on 1 April 1992; we propose to bring into force other measures governing the collection, treatment and disposal of waste and the waste management licensing system by April 1992).
  Part III
  Statutory nuisance including emissions from premises of dust, smell, effluvia, noise and non-dark smoke which are prejudicial to health or a nuisance; improvement of existing legislation (came into force on 1 January 1991).
  Part IV
  Package of measures to deal with litter, including powers for local authorities to tackle litter problems caused by certain businesses (an order specifying types of firms affected came into effect on 1 July 1991).
  Part V
  Introduction of cost recovery for regulation of premises under the Radioactive Substances Act 1960 (started from 1 April 1991).
  Part VI
  Genetically Modified Organisms (it is intended to make regulations that could come into force in 1992).
  Part VIII
  Miscellaneous; including the introduction of licensing for dumping waste at sea within UK Continental Shelf Limits; and, of greater relevance to small firms powers to make regulations prohibiting or restricting the importation, supply, use or storage of harmful substances or articles and to require their disposal, as well as to require manufacturers, importers or suppliers of chemicals specified in orders to provide information on their properties and use and to carry out testing to obtain such information.

  The Department of the Environment has prepared a publication entitled "A Guide to the Environmental Protection Act 1990", which is available free to small firms and others.

  Environmental Research
  Mr. Simon Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list details, at 1991 prices, of expenditure by his Department on environmental research and protection for each available year since 1979–80.

  £ million

  Planning, local government and countryside

  Environmental protection

  Water

  Radioactive waste

  Total

  1979–80

  12·4

  10·2

  6·1

  11·1

  39·7

  1980–81

  10·7

  7·0

  8·6

  18·0

  44·2

  1981–82

  9·0

  8·5

  6·5

  15·6

  39·7

  1982–83

  6·7

  7·4

  5·9

  13·3

  33·3

  1983–84

  4·8

  6·6

  5·7

  13·4

  30·5

  1984–85

  4·6

  5·6

  5·0

  12·8

  27·9

  1985–86

  5·5

  7·7

  4·6

  15·1

  32·9

  1986–87

  4·7

  9·3

  4·6

  14·2

  32·8

  1987–88

  4·5

  8·9

  4·8

  13·9

  32·0

  1988–89

  4·7

  10·7

  7·0

  11·0

  33·5

  1989–90

  4·0

  14·2

  9·8

  7·9

  35·9

  1990–91

  4·9

  20·4

  4·5

  8·6

  38·4

  Compiled figures for my Department's expenditure on environmental protection before 1985–86 are not readily available. Overall expenditure by my Department on environmental protection in 1991 prices from 1985–86 to 1990–91 is as follows. Details of this expenditure are given in figure 6, page 11 of the Department's 1991 annual report.

  £ million

  1985–86

  89·9

  1986–87

  118·3

  1987–88

  167·7

  1988–89

  73·3

  1989–90

  145·1

  1990–91

  218·5

  Development Plans
  Mr. Robert G. Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he will lay before Parliament the new regulations on development plan procedure; and if he will make a statement.

  Sir George Young
  My right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for the Environment and for Wales today laid before Parliament the Town and Country Planning (Development Plan) Regulations 1991—SI 1991/2794. The Departments are also issuing today a circular describing the arrangements for handling the transition from the current development plans system to the new.

  The regulations take account of the responses made to the proposals issued for consultation in September. Overall, the response to our proposals has been positive, with those responding welcoming the standardisation and rationalisation of the different arrangements currently applying to different types of plan. A list of the responses to the proposals, and to the consultation draft planning policy guidance issued at the same time, will be placed in the Library of the House; copies of individual responses may be obtained through the Library.

  All the responses have been carefully considered. As a result, we have made some changes to the published proposals. The main changes are:
  170
  Mr. Baldry
  My Department's expenditure in 1991 prices on environmental research broken down by main policy areas since 1979–80 is as follows:
  a new requirement for local authorities to have regard to environmental considerations in preparing their plans, and to indicate what regard they have had to such considerations;English Nature, the Countryside Commission, the Countryside Council for Wales, English Heritage, the National Rivers Authority, and the Secretary of State for Transport to be added to the list of those who must be consulted by authorities on all plan proposals before they are put on deposit; and authorities to put on deposit, along with their plans, a statement of the publicity and consultation they have carried out in formulating their plan proposals. The statement should list those whom they have consulted, in addition to the prescribed consultees, and any steps they have taken to publicise their proposals and to provide an opportunity of making representations on them.
  A number of those responding expressed concern about our proposal to leave pre-deposit publicity and consultation to authorities' discretion, subject to the list of prescribed consultees. Clearly, authorities should ensure that there is adequate publicity for and consultation on their plan proposals before they are put on deposit, but rather than prescribing such an approach in regulations, we believe that it is right to let authorities use their judgment to determine what degree of publicity and consultation is appropriate. This will give authorities the flexibility to tailor their approach according to circumstances. For example, they may conclude that proposals for a new or replacement plan warrant much wider publicity and consultation than proposals for a relatively minor alteration to an existing plan.

  Nevertheless, we intend to make it clear in guidance how important it is for authorities to give their plan proposals adequate publicity and to give people an adequate opportunity to comment. Authorities should also consult organisations with a particular interest in the proposals, including coservation and amenity groups and business, development and infrastructural interests. The knowledge that they will have to prepare a statement of publicity and consultation should encourage authorities to consider carefully those whom they will need to consult at the pre-deposit stage.

  It is important that local people and other interested bodies should be able to let authorities know what they think of plan proposals from the earliest stages. In this way

  171
  they can be fully involved in decisions about the pattern of development in their area. We shall keep the flexible approach to publicity and consultation under review to ensure that it is working satisfactorily. We shall remind authorities that the Secretary of State has reserve powers to direct an authority to carry out further public participation, which he will be prepared to use if he considers that to be necessary in any particular case.

  Today's announcement represents another important step in the development of our planning system. The new development plans process, as part of a plan-led system, will require a positive and constructive approach by all those with interests in development and conservation. We hope all those concerned will rise to this challenge.

  Coalite, Bolsover
  Mr. Andrew MacKay
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when the results of testing for dioxins in emissions from the Coalite works, Bolsover, carried out by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution, will be available; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Baldry
  Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution today released a report on its investigation into dioxins in emissions from the Coalite chemical works incinerator and the Coalite smokeless fuel plant.

  The maximum emission of dioxins to atmosphere, calculated on the basis of the measurements made, from the stack on the Coalite Chemicals incinerator was 18 nanogram/m3 (toxic equivalent). The maximum measured emission of dioxins to atmosphere at Coalite Fuels was 1·2 nanogram/m3 (toxic equivalent)

  Based on the maximum emission level recorded during the sampling, calculation of the atmospheric dispersion of dioxins from the two Coalite plants gives a maximum predicted concentration in air at groundlevel of 0·05 picogram/m3 and an associated rate of deposition of 0·0006 picogram/m2/s. The calculation suggests that these air concentrations and deposition rates would occur in the vicinity of the farms that currently have restrictions placed upon their milk. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has concluded from the results that such emissions from the Coalite Chemical incinerator would probably account for only a part of the dioxins which have been found in the milk on the affected farms. The atmospheric discharges from Coalite Fuels contribute only a few per cent. of the values reported.

  Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution is to test for dioxins in soil samples taken at various distances around the Coalite plants, to complement the work already being undertaken by MAFF. The work is expected to begin in the new year and will take six months to complete.

  The incinerator at Coalite Chemicals was closed down by the company during November, to allow substantial modifications to it. When it has been redesigned it will be regulated by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution under the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which requires control on releases to all media.

  Deposit Refund Systems
  Mr. Roger King
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he intends to publish the study commissioned by the Departments of Trade and Industry and the Environment on the subject of deposit refund systems.
  172
  Mr. Baldry
  The study, carried out by the consultants Environmental Resources Limited, has been published today in a report entitled "Deposit Refund Systems for Beverage Containers and Batteries". Copies have been placed in the Library of the House. The report is available on sale from HMSO book shops.

  The Government had indicated in the last year's environmental White Paper that this work would be undertaken. The report's finding are now being considered, and will be taken into account during the further formulation of the Government's waste minimisation and recycling policy. We would welcome any comments that interested parties may have on the report.

  Halons
  Mr. Andrew MacKay
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what information he has on the use of halons as fire-fighting chemicals in the United Kingdom; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Trippier
  My Department considered a study, from C. S. Todd and Associates, on halon use in the United Kingdom, which is published today. A copy has been placed in the Library of the House. The report shows that consumption of halons has fallen by about 25 per cent. since 1986, and that most uses of halons, particularly in portable extinguishers, could be substituted now. It gives a clear indication to industry of the areas where more work is needed to find alternative means of fire protection.

  Halons have a very high ozone depletion potential, and therefore we have proposed to other European member states that production and supply of virgin halon should be phased out by 1 January 1995, subject to provisions for essential uses, when we revise the Montreal protocol next year.

  Environmental Assessment
  Mr. Gerald Bowden
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he will be replying to the European Commission's letter of 17 October 1991 alleging infraction of directive 85/337/EEC on environment assessment.

  Mr. Heseltine
  The United Kingdom responded on 17 December within the two months requested by the Commission.

  Local Government Finance
  Mr. Blunkett
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will publish a table showing for the years 1979–80 to 1991–92 for each service control total a comparison between actual local authority outturn expenditure and the relevant grant-related expenditure assessment or standard spending assessment.

  Mr. Portillo
  [holding answer 12 December 1991]: The service expenditure control totals used in the rate support grant settlements from 1982–83 to 1989–90 are shown in the table. Information on expenditure control totals is not available for years prior to 1982–83.

  It is not possible to construct comparable figures for outturn expenditure on the basis of the available returns from local authorities.

  The standard spending assessment service control totals used in the 1990–91 and 1991–92 revenue support grant settlements together with budgeted expenditure by local authorities on these services are as follows:
  173

  £ million

  1990–91

  1991–92

  SSA control total

  Expenditure

  SSA control total

  Budgeted expenditure

  Education

  14,753

  15,725

  17,137

  17,198

  Personal social services

  3,592

  4,119

  4,418

  4,521

  Police

  2,125

  2,163

  2,342

  2,451

  Fire and civil defence

  877

  964

  1,021

  1,058

  Highway maintenance

  1,578

  1,705

  1,786

  1,782

  All other services

  4,502

  5,631

  5,933

  6,360

  Capital financing

  2,380

  2,922

  2,951

  2,973

  Total revenue expenditure

  29,805

  33,229

  35,587

  36,345

  1982–83 to 1989–90 total grant related expenditure for the main groups of services

  £ million

  1982–83

  1983–84

  1984–85

  1985–86

  1986–87

  1987–88

  1988–89

  1989–90

  1. Education, arts and libraries

  10,217

  10,349

  10,624

  11,093

  11,618

  12,576

  13,939

  14,354

  2. Personal social

  1,943

  2,085

  2,205

  2,366

  2,553

  2,756

  2,913

  3,269

  3. Law and order

  1,649

  1,785

  1,890

  2,008

  2,152

  2,363

  2,555

  2,846

  4. Transport

  1,373

  1,398

  1,487

  1,733

  1,929

  2,045

  2,024

  2,140

  5. Employment and consumer protection

  107

  110

  115

  118

  127

  148

  159

  174

  6. Housing

  591

  536

  514

  628

  826

  825

  816

  872

  7. Environmental services

  2,405

  2,507

  2,520

  2,652

  2,926

  3,000

  3,137

  3,620

  8. Financing items

  203

  461

  527

  622

  660

  29

  464

  386

  All services

  18,515

  19,231

  19,882

  21,221

  22,790

  23,742

  26,006

  27,662

  Move-on Programme
  Mr. Fearn
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many young people have been housed under the move-on programme.

  Mr. Yeo
  [holding answer 16 December 1991]: A total of 1,550 people aged 16 to 25 moved on from hostels, shared housing, bed and breakfast or other similar temporary accommodation into permanent housing provided by housing associations between 1 July 1990 and 30 June 1991.

  Under my Department's rough sleepers initiative in central London, some 600 people aged 16 to 25 had been housed in hostels, flats and houses at the end of September 1991.

  Air Pressure Gauges
  Mr. French
  To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will introduce new standards for the maintenance of air pressure gauges on garage forecourts.

  Mr. Leigh
  I have been asked to reply.

  My Department has no plans to introduce requirements relating to the maintenance of air pressure gauges on

  Full time employees on adult rates whose pay was unaffected by absence and whose gross weekly earnings (excluding overtime) were below the folowing specified amounts

  April 1991

  £130

  £140

  £180

  £190

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Total in sample

  Greater Manchester

  Manual men

  153

  230

  600

  716

  1,741

  Non manual men

  73

  103

  280

  325

  1,916

  All men

  226

  333

  880

  1,041

  3,657

  Manual women

  163

  211

  318

  332

  386

  Non-manual women

  205

  299

  715

  815

  1,621

  All women

  368

  510

  1,033

  1,147

  1,007

  174
  garage forecourts. The testing of hot tyres can produce misleading or inaccurate readings however accurate the gauge might be. Tyres should always be tested cold.

  Motorists should therefore use their own gauges to check their tyres when cold. This is why my Department has approved British standard 4613 on portable gauges for the purposes of the general safety requirement under section 10(3) of the Consumer Protection Act 1987.

EMPLOYMENT

  Earnings
  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will publish the information from the 1991 new earnings survey data on respectively, the numbers of full-time employees on adult rates in(a) greater Manchester, (b) Merseyside, (c) Cheshire, (d) Lancashire and (e) the north west region, whose weekly earnings excluding overtime were less than £185, less than £140 and less than £130 per week for (i) manual males, (ii) non-manual males, (iii) all full-time males, (iv) manual females, (v) non-manual females and (vi) all full-time females, giving the total sample size in each case.

  Mr. Forth
  The information available from the 1991 new earnings survey is given in the table.
  175

  April 1991

  £130

  £140

  £180

  £190

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Total in sample

  Merseyside

  Manual men

  50

  70

  262

  303

  791

  Non manual men

  39

  58

  150

  172

  861

  All men

  89

  128

  412

  475

  1,652

  Manual women

  56

  69

  112

  118

  146

  Non-manual women

  116

  156

  381

  432

  849

  All women

  172

  225

  493

  550

  995

  Cheshire

  Manual men

  51

  66

  229

  277

  758

  Non manual men

  16

  22

  79

  90

  767

  All men

  67

  88

  308

  367

  1,525

  Manual women

  54

  64

  111

  116

  148

  Non-manual women

  68

  96

  250

  287

  609

  All women

  122

  160

  361

  403

  757

  Lancashire

  Manual men

  71

  108

  346

  410

  878

  Non manual men

  27

  47

  144

  160

  869

  All men

  98

  155

  490

  570

  1,747

  Manual women

  96

  118

  184

  191

  213

  Non-manual women

  117

  167

  367

  403

  755

  All women

  213

  285

  551

  594

  968

  North West

  Manual men

  325

  474

  1,437

  1,706

  4,168

  Non manual men

  155

  230

  653

  747

  4,413

  All men

  480

  704

  2,090

  2,453

  8,581

  Manual women

  369

  462

  725

  757

  893

  Non-manual women

  506

  718

  1,713

  1,937

  3,834

  All women

  875

  1,180

  2,438

  2,694

  4,727

  Source: New Earnings Survey

  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will publish the information from the 1991 new earnings survey data on the numbers of part-time employees on adult rates in(a) greater Manchester, (b) Merseyside, (c) Cheshire, (d) Lancashire and (e) the north-west region whose hourly earnings excluding overtime were less than £5, less than £4·50, less than £4, less than £3·50 and less than £3 per

  Part time employees on adult rates whose pay was unaffected by absence and whose gross hourly earnings (excluding overtime) were below the following specified amounts.

  April 1991

  £3·00

  £3·40

  £3·60

  £4·00

  £4·50

  £4·80

  £5·40

  Total in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Greater Manchester

  Manual women

  92

  204

  237

  298

  341

  350

  361

  373

  Non-manual women

  76

  177

  230

  321

  400

  429

  462

  596

  All women

  168

  381

  467

  619

  741

  779

  823

  969

  Merseyside

  Manual women

  62

  144

  160

  202

  229

  234

  241

  253

  Non-manual women

  40

  106

  122

  157

  203

  224

  249

  326

  All women

  102

  250

  282

  359

  432

  458

  490

  579

  Cheshire

  Manual women

  53

  89

  100

  123

  131

  138

  144

  153

  All women

  85

  177

  213

  259

  295

  318

  343

  394

  Non-manual women

  32

  88

  113

  136

  164

  180

  199

  241

  Lancashire

  Manual women

  57

  128

  149

  188

  207

  211

  214

  225

  Non-manual women

  53

  115

  134

  166

  203

  220

  258

  333

  All women

  110

  243

  283

  354

  410

  431

  472

  558

  176
  week under the following headings, giving total sample size in each case: manual males, non-manual males, all part-time males, manual females, non-manual females and all part-time females.

  Mr. Forth
  The information available from the 1991 new earnings survey is given in the table. The information is not available for part-time male employees.
  177

  £3·00

  £3·40

  £3·60

  £4·00

  £4·50

  £4·80

  £5·40

  Total in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  Numbers in sample

  North West

  Manual women

  264

  565

  646

  811

  908

  933

  960

  1,004

  Non-manual women

  201

  486

  599

  780

  970

  1,053

  1,168

  1,496

  All women

  465

  1,051

  1,245

  1,591

  1,878

  1,986

  2,128

  2,500

  Source: New Earnings Survey.

  EC Social Charter
  Mr. Hardy
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he proposes to introduce legislation to implement the EC proposals under the social charter in addition to those which relate to the working hours of miners in British collieries following the proposed repeal of the Coal Mines Regulation Act 1908.

  Mr. Forth
  Matters relating to the repeal of the Coal Mines Regulation Act are for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy.

  Many of the proposals in the European Commission's social action programme are still being considered or have yet to be published. Where legislation is required to implement directives already agreed, proposals will be brought forward within the timetable for implementation set out in each proposal.

  Small Firms
  Sir David Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many schemes his Department runs to provide help or finance for small firms; and if he will list them.

  Mr. Forth
  The Department runs or supports three schemes providing help or advice for small firms as well as local schemes through training and enterprise councils. These are:

  Information counselling and consultancy

  Locally tailored schemes through Training and Enterprise Councils.

  Training

  Locally tailored schemes through Training and Enterprise Councils.

  Finance

  Enterprise Allowance through Training and Enterprise Councils.

  The Loan Guarantee Scheme

  Loan Funds of the Prince's Youth business Trust/Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust.

  Informal Investment projects.

NORTHERN IRELAND

  Electricity Supply
  Sir Gerrard Neale
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what progress has been made since publication of the Government's White Paper in relation to the development of proposals for the introduction of competition in the supply of electricity; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Needham
  Proposals for the introduction of competition in the supply of electricity have now been drawn up. They provide for a staged transition from the present situation in which Northern Ireland Electricity enjoys a monopoly position, to the creation of a market in which generators and suppliers will be able to compete freely, with consumers benefiting from the resultant downward pressure on costs. Faster progress to full supply competition is prevented by the physical constraints of the Northern Ireland Electricity system.

  This transition is likely to be achieved in three distinct phases. In phase I, immediately following privatisation, authorised alternative suppliers—second tier suppliers—will be able go compete with NIE (Transmission, Distribution, Supply) in the supply of electricity to end users. This will allow consumers choice between suppliers or, in the case of large consumers, allow them to make arrangements to supply themselves under licence.

  Phase II will be an intermediate step and will establish a partial electricity trading system which will permit direct trade between some generators and suppliers. The Director General of Electricity Supply will be responsible for the development of this arrangement, in consultation with all interested parties, and, as a further spur to the growth of competition in supply, the Director General of Electricity Supply will have powers to cancel selected power purchase agreements between NIE (TDS) and the generators in tranches between November 1996 and 2010. Appropriate safeguards for NIE (TDS) and the generators will be incorporated in the licences.

  Phase III will achieve full supply competition in which generators and suppliers will be able to trade freely. thus allowing consumers to derive the maximum benefit from competition in this market. This will probably necessitate the introduction of some form of pooling and settlement arrangement. No date for achieving this has been set.

  Cross-border Terrorism
  Mr. Maginnis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many arrests have been made in the Irish Republic in connection with Republican terrorist incidents with a cross-frontier element which have occurred in Northern Ireland since 1 January 1990; what charges have been brought; what convictions achieved; and if he will give details.

  Dr. Mawhinney
  [holding answer 17 December 1991]: This is a matter for the authorities in the Republic of Ireland. Records are not kept in a way which enables statistics of arrests, charges, and convictions in the Republic of Ireland to be linked meaningfully to terrorist incidents with cross-border element. However, statistics on extraterritorial prosecutions in the Republic, which involve a cross-border element in the sense that the offender has fled to the Republic, were given in replies by
  180
  my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General to my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) on 19 December 1988, Official Report, column 94; to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) on 14 May 1990, Official Report, column 280; and by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington on 11 November 1991, Official Report, column 352 and 2 December 1991, Official Report, column 13.

PRIME MINISTER

  EC Social Chapter
  Mr. Dewar
  To ask the Prime Minister if he will list the propositions in the social chapter of the treaty on European Union which(a) have not already been implemented in the United Kingdom and (b) would have to be implemented if the United Kingdom were a signatory to the social chapter; and what is his assessment of the effect on British industry of each of the propositions in (b).

  The Prime Minister
  The treaty on European union confirms that the social provisions chapter within the existing treaty of Rome will be maintained without change. The chapter contains no propositions, but establishes the basis upon which the Community may support member states in the pursuant of their objectives. It is, and will remain, the basis for the development of a sensible social dimension respecting national diversity and subsidiarity and consistent with the priority of employment creation.

FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

  Kashmir
  Mr. James Lamond
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what plans he has to visit Kashmir in the near future.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has no plans to visit Kashmir.

  Brazil
  Mr. Loyden
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he has any plans to meet the President of Brazil to discuss relations with Brazil.

  Mr. Garel-Jones
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has no such plans.

  Abu Dhabi
  Mr. Vaz
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many British citizens remain unable to leave Abu Dhabi until they receive their passports.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  Our embassy in Abu Dhabi knows of four such British passport holders. There may be others who have not informed the embassy.

  European Community (Presidency)
  Mr. Thurnham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what specific plans he has for when the United Kingdom next has the presidency of the European Community; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Garel-Jones
  Detailed plans for the United Kingdom presidency will be made nearer the time in the light of progress during the Portuguese presidency. Among the issues likely to be at the top of the United Kingdom's agenda are completion of a liberal single market by the end of 1992 and preparations for the future enlargement of the Community. There will be a number of events connected with our presidency including a European organ festival in Bolton.

  East Timor
  Mr. Tony Banks
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what steps he is currently taking to make clear Her Majesty's Government's position to Indonesia in respect of its occupation of East Timor.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  The Indonesian authorities are well aware that we do not recognise their annexation of East Timor.

  Mr. Wigley
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he is now in a position to make a further statement on the incident at Santa Cruz cemetery, Dili, East Timor, on 12 November.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  We have condemned the killings in Dili. We will discuss with our EC partners what further action, if any, might be appropriate when the contents of the report of the Indonesian national commission of inquiry are known.

  Mrs. Mahon
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he expects to receive a report of the investigation into the recent killings in East Timor.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  We expect the draft report to be available soon.

  Mr. Dunnachie
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations Her Majesty's Government has made in the United Nations about the situation in East Timor.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  We continue to support the efforts of the UN Secretary-General to bring about a solution to the problem of East Timor.

  Maastricht
  Mr. Squire
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what advantages he expects to flow from the Maastricht summit.

  Sir Teddy Taylor
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the outcome of the discussions at Maastricht.

  Mr. Hurd
  I refer my hon. Friends to the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 11 182
  December. In the ways which my right hon. Friend set out, the Maastricht agreement will equip the Community and its member states to work more closely together, organising each aspect of their work in the most effective way rather than forcing it into a single pattern. We believe that this will add to the strength of the work.

  Mr. Patrick Thompson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the outcome of the Maastricht negotiations.

  Mr. Garel-Jones
  I refer my hon. Friend to the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 11 December. The agreement reached at Maastricht is good for Britain and for Europe. It provides for strengthened intergovernmental co-operation in the field of foreign policy and in combating cross-border crime, drugs trafficking and in other areas of interior and justice policy. It will make the Community more efficient and accountable. The Community is now in good shape to face the challenges of the rest of the 1990s, including enlargement.

  EC Foreign Policies
  Mr. Knox
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he next proposes to have discussions with his European Community partners concerning the development of common European Community foreign policies.

  Mr. Hurd
  I meet my European Community partners regularly. The common foreign and security policy agreed at Maastricht will strengthen intergovernmental cooperation and joint action with our partners in agreed areas of policy.

  Ukraine
  Mr. Stevens
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will make a statement on political and commercial relations with the Ukraine.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  We are developing an active political and commercial relationship with Ukraine. A British official is based in Kiev to establish a permanent British mission. The British Council also is establishing a prescence. A senior Foreign Office official held talks in Kiev with the Ukrainian leadership on Saturday. Earlier this month a Ukrainian delegation visited Britain, including the deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament and the chairman of the national bank. The know-how fund has sponsored a food distribution project and is looking at projects in banking and privatisation. There are several joint ventures and a number of British companies have offices in Ukraine.

  Sir John Farr
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will take steps to recognise Ukraine as an independent state.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  Ukraine and the other republics of the Soviet Union are discussing among themselves their future relationships and their approach to the union's international obligations. We therefore have not taken a decision on recognition, but a British representative now based in Kiev is working to establish a full diplomatic mission there.
  183
  Mr. Shersby
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he expects to meet the President of Ukraine to discuss the establishment of closer relations following the outcome of the recent referendum.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  We actively are developing closer relations with Ukraine. A British representative now based in Kiev is working to establish a permanent British mission. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs very much looks forward to meeting President Kravchuk in due course.

  EC Association Agreements
  Mr. Mans
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what progress is being made towards EC association agreements with Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

  Mr. Garel-Jones
  I am delighted to be able to tell the House that the European Community's association agreements with Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, which were the result of a United Kingdom initiative in 1989, were signed in Brussels on Monday 16 December 1991. The agreements contain a variety of measures designed to bolster the economies of these countries and bring them closer to the Community and its member states. They include trade liberalisation provisions to promote economic development through the gradual establishment of a free trade area. The agreements will also help prepare them for the eventual membership of the Community which they seek.

  Burma
  Mr. Eastham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what efforts Her Majesty's Government are making to increase the pressure on the military Government of Burma to hand over power to the National League for Democracy.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  We have repeatedly called on the Burmese military junta to respect the results of the elections in May 1990 which the National League for Democracy won by a landslide. The EC suspended all non-humanitarian aid to Burma in 1988 and in 1991, at British initiative, imposed an embargo on defence sales to Burma. On 30 November, we co-sponsored a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for an improvement in the human rights situation and for progress towards democratic government in Burma.

  Tibet
  Mr. Wray
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on Her Majesty's Government's policy towards Tibet.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  We regularly express concern to the Chinese authorities about reports of human rights abuses in Tibet and press them to provide an acceptable degree of autonomy there.

  Indonesia
  Mr. Wareing
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he last met the ambassador of Indonesia to discuss human rights issues; and if he will make a statement.
  184
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  My noble Friend, the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs summoned the Indonesian ambassador on 13 November, to express our grave concern about recent human rights abuses in Indonesia.

  Our position has also been clearly set out in EC/Council of Europe declarations and in the presidency statement to the third committee of the United Nations on 19 November.

  Soviet and Yugoslav Republics
  Mr. Anderson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on Yugoslavia.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The tragedy of Yugoslavia is one of my main preoccupations. We and our EC partners are devoting great effort to working for a settlement. We hope that the conditions necessary for the deployment of a United Nations peace-keeping force can be met soon. A long-term solution will be possible only when the Yugoslavs themselves show a genuine political will to reach a peaceful settlement.

  Mr. Gareth Wardell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when the United Kingdom will recognise Croatia and Slovenia.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  EC Foreign Ministers agreed on 16 December to recognise those Yugoslav republics which meet certain conditions. A final decision on implementation will be taken on 15 January after advice from the arbitration commission of Lord Carrington's conference on Yugoslavia.

  Mr. Bowis
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is his current policy on recognition of the Soviet and Yugoslavian component republics as they seek or achieve independence.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  The republics of the Soviet Union continue to discuss among themselves their future relationships. We therefore have not yet taken decisions on recognition.

  On Yugoslavia, we fear that recognition now would increase the danger of civil war spreading and undermine current international efforts to negotiate peace. This position is under constant review.

  Mr. Alton
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what information he has about the total number of casualties in Croatia.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  Conflicting reports and an absence of reliable independent sources mean that it is difficult to give precise figures for casualties in Croatia. Most estimates fall between 5,000 and 10,000 deaths.

  Afghanistan
  Mr. Robert G. Hughes
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what progress is being made towards a solution of the conflict in Afghanistan.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  The United Nations, in line with the United Nations Secretary-General's peace proposals of 21
  185
  May continues to play a key role in seeking a political solution. The United Nations is hoping to convene a meeting of representatives of all significant Afghan opinion in the near future to discuss the establishment of a transitional administration.

  The United States and Soviet Governments have agreed to end their supply of arms to all sides in the conflict by 1 January 1992. Furthermore, a mujaheddin delegation recently reached a substantial measure of agreement with Soviet leaders on principles regarding transitional arrangements within Afghanistan and the return of prisoners.

  All these developments represent encouraging progress towards a resolution of the conflict in Afghanistan.

  Middle East
  Mr. Grocott
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he has any plans to meet the Israeli Foreign Minister in order to discuss the middle east conference.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs saw the Israeli Foreign Minister in September. He has no plans at present to meet him again, but we have frequent discussions with members of the Israeli Government about the middle east peace process. I met Mr. Netanyahu on 26 November.

  EC Union
  Mr. Gill
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what definition of subsidiarity it is his policy to accept in the context of EC union.

  Mr. Garel-Jones
  We strongly endorse the definition of subsidiarity agreed at Maastricht. This is a clear, justiciable definition which states that the Community shall take action only if the objective cannot be sufficiently achieved by the member states.

  Cuba
  Mr. McAllion
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he next intends to meet with representatives of the Cuban Government to discuss that country's role in the security arrangements for the central American region.

  Mr. Garel-Jones
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has no such plans.

  Cyprus
  Mr. John Marshall
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement about relations between the United Kingdom and Cyprus.

  Mr. Garel-Jones
  We have close and friendly relations with Cyprus. We continue to work actively in support of the United Nations Secretary-General's efforts to promote a comprehensive, just and lasting settlement of the intercommunal dispute.

  Iran
  Mr. Simon Coombs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on Anglo-Iranian relations.

  Mr. Douglas Hogg
  We restored diplomatic relations with Iran on 27 September 1990 on the basis of mutual respect and non-interference in each others affairs. We are grateful for the role the Iranian Government played in securing the release of British and other hostages. We hope that the relationship with Iran will continue to evolve in a positive direction.

  Congo and Gabon
  Sir David Steel
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what administrative arrangements following the closure of the British embassies in Brazzaville and Libreville have been made for the citizens of the Congo and Gabon to acquire visas to visit the United Kingdom.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  Citizens of Congo and Gabon may apply to the British embassy in Kinshasa, which now has responsibility for diplomatic relations with Congo and Gabon, or to British diplomatic missions on their travel routes, for example, Paris, Amsterdam or Rome.

  Spain
  Mr. Latham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will instruct Her Majesty's ambassador in Madrid to request that the Spanish Government investigate the circumstances in which the defective water heater, held by a British inquest to be the cause of the death of Petty Officer John Black, disappeared from the apartment in Sabinillas, Spain, in which he died.

  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  No. Both Spanish and British investigations concluded there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding Petty Officer Black's tragic death. The second inquest held in this country in April this year returned a verdict of accidental death.

TRADE AND INDUSTRY

  Thanet
  Mr. Gale
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if his Department has considered an application for an exhibition relating to Thanet: Gateway to Europe in the Upper Waiting Hall.

  Mr. Leigh
  Yes. Arrangements have been made for such an exhibition in the Upper Waiting Hall to take place from Monday 17 February to Friday 21 February.

  European Postal Services
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when he expects to publish the Green Paper on European postal services.

  Mr. Leigh
  I understand that the EC Commission currently expects to publish its Green Paper on European postal services early in the new year.

  Textiles and Clothing
  Mr. Anthony Coombs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what contacts he has had with the European Commission about the framework for control of state aids in the Community in the fibre, textile and clothing industries; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  My Department maintains contact with the Commission on all state aids matters, including the rules affecting the textile and clothing sectors. The synthetic fibres discipline which has served United Kingdom industry well was renewed on 11 July 1991 for a further year. The Department will continue to monitor its application.

  Mr. Anthony Coombs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether the European Commission has yet succeeded in enforcing the repayment by the Beaulieu carpet group in Belgium of illegally granted subsidies; what information he has on other instances where textile and clothing companies in EC member states have not yet complied with Commission decisions that illegal aid must he repaid; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  I fully share the hon. Member's concern that in a number of cases in the textile and clothing sector illegal aid has not yet been repaid. The Beaulieu case referred to by my hon. Friend is at present before the Belgian courts for resolution. The Department takes every opportunity to press the Commission to remedy this unsatisfactory state of affairs. As a result of the treaty agreed at Maastricht the European Court will in due course have the power to fine member states not complying with its judgments. I hope that this will ensure swifter compliance in future.

  Defective Water Heaters
  Mr. Latham
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry whether he will make a statement on the introduction of European Community directive 90/396/ EEC, relating to appliances for burning gaseous fuels; and whether he will draw it to the attention of Her Majesty's consuls in Spain and Portugal, following the deaths of British subjects as a result of defective water heaters in their holiday apartments.

  Mr. Leigh
  The European Community Directive 90/396/EEC relating to appliances burning gaseous fuels was adopted by the Council of Ministers in June 1990 and will shortly be implemented in United Kingdom legislation and that of the other member states of the Community. However, transitional arrangements will not give mandatory effect to the requirements of the directive until 1 January 1996. It is the responsibility of the Spanish and Portuguese authorities to implement and enforce the directive in their territories.

  Government expenditure on regional preferential assistance to industry at 1989–90 prices1 5

  Region

  1979–80

  1980–81

  1981–82

  1982–83

  1983–84

  1984–85

  1985–86

  1986–87

  1987–88

  1988–89

  1989–90

  1990–91

  Northern

  296·8

  256·9

  273·0

  228·7

  177·9

  161·1

  117·8

  164·1

  125·3

  143·2

  117·3

  78·8

  Yorkshire and Humberside

  64·5

  89·3

  95·2

  76·3

  49·1

  55·8

  44·1

  49·8

  44·6

  53·7

  32·5

  27·3

  East Midlands3

  8·2

  8·0

  13·3

  19·6

  23·3

  13·4

  10·3

  12·6

  10·7

  9·4

  9·5

  5·1

  South West

  20·7

  21·4

  22·9

  23·7

  16·4

  18·7

  14·9

  27·3

  17·0

  15·7

  10·7

  8·3

  West Midlands4

  0·2

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  8·0

  12·0

  22·3

  28·3

  20·0

  16·7

  North West

  6179·5

  6233·1

  6268·6

  6178·6

  6142·2

  136·5

  107·0

  154·8

  90·5

  87·9

  74·5

  53·3

  Cosmetics (Animal Testing)
  Ms. Quin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he has met representatives of the Body Shop to discuss their campaign for a ban on animal testing of finished cosmetic products within the EC; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Leigh
  The Department's consumer safety unit is considering with the industry's trade association what can be done to reduce animal testing of cosmetics. It has informed the Body Shop that when the unit has the views of the industry as a whole they will be pleased to talk to individual companies.

  Ms. Quin
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when he expects discussions to take place within the EC Council of Ministers on the draft Cosmetics and Toiletries directive COM (96) 488; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Leigh
  The European Parliament is expected to give its opinion on the proposed sixth amendment to the Cosmetics Directive in February. Meanwhile work has been continuing in the Council working group to agree a draft for submission to the Council of Ministers which is expected to be taken forward in the new year under the Portuguese presidency.

  Bicycles
  Mr. Alex Carlile
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will make a statement concerning the effect on the United Kingdom bicycle manufacturing industry of the importation of cheap bicycles manufactured in the People's Republic of China.

  Mr. Sainsbury
  [holding answer 11 December 1991]: I am well aware of the concerns of the United Kingdom bicycle manufacturing industry. Last September, import duty was reimposed on imports into the Community of bicycles from China for the remainder of 1991.

  The European bicycle industry has made an anti-dumping complaint against bicycles from China and this is currently being investigated by the European Commission.

  Regional Assistance
  Dr. Kim Howells
  To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how much was provided for regional preferential assistance in constant prices for each year, by region, for the period 1979–80 to 1990–91.

  Mr. Leigh
  [holding answer 16 December 1991]: The amounts spent on regional preferential assistance in Great Britain for the period 1979–80 to 1990–91 are set out in the table. The values are all expressed in terms of 1989–90 prices.
  189

  Region

  1979–80

  1980–81

  1981–82

  1982–83

  1983–84

  1984–85

  1985–86

  1986–87

  1987–88

  1988–89

  1989–90

  1990–91

  England2

  569·9

  608·8

  673·0

  527·0

  409·0

  385·5

  302·1

  420·7

  310·4

  338·2

  264·5

  189·5

  Wales

  226·7

  297·1

  305·3

  262·8

  165·5

  193·8

  172·4

  181·3

  151·3

  157·7

  131·7

  124·0

  Scotland

  271·5

  329·7

  359·4

  533·0

  315·3

  245·9

  245·3

  291·7

  175·1

  160·9

  144·6

  147·6

  Great Britain2

  1,068·1

  1,235·6

  1,337·6

  1,322·8

  889·8

  825·2

  719·8

  893·7

  636·8

  656·7

  540·8

  461·1

  1 All figures are gross and include payments to Nationalised Industries.

  2 The totals do not always equal the sum of the component parts because of rounding.

  3 Includes some minor expenditure in West Midlands in respect of Oswestry TTWA which ceased to be an Assisted Area in 1982–83.

  4 Certain TTWAs in the West Midlands were designated as Assisted Areas on 29 November 1984.

  5 Expenditure on a 1989–90 price basis for each year is calculated by applying the appropriate deflator to expenditure at current prices.

  6 Includes expenditure in Cumbria, otherwise shown within the totals for Northern Region.

  The items included in the expenditure are Regional Development Grants, Regional Selective Assistance and Regional Enterprise Grants; expenditure on Land and Factories by the English Industrial Estates Corporation, the Scottish and Welsh Development Agencies, the Development Board for Rural Wales, and the Highlands and Islands Development Board.

AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD

  Poultry
  Mr. Andrew Welsh
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what are the differences between tests applied in the United Kingdom and in other EC countries with regard to frozen and fresh poultry presented for export.

  Mr. Maclean
  I am not aware of any tests specifically required within the European Community with regard to frozen and fresh poultry presented for export, although individual third countries may impose their own requirements.

  Eggs
  Mr. Gill
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what labelling or other requirements exist to enable United Kingdom consumers to exercise informed choice about the bacteriological standard of the eggs they purchase.

  Mr. Maclean
  The labelling of eggs is governed by the European Community Egg Marketing Regulations. These contain no provision for labelling on bacteriological quality. However, all food, including eggs must comply with the requirements of the Food Safety Act 1990.

  Badgers
  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make it his policy to place in the public domain full details of all licences issued under section 4 of the Badgers Act 1991; if he will ensure that such information specifies the named persons to whom licences have been issued, to which setts they refer, for which purposes they have been authorised, and the duration for which they are valid; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Maclean
  It is intended that cumulative information on licensing under section 4 of the Badgers Act 1991 will be made available, but it is not Government policy as a general rule to release information on individual licences under wildlife legislation.

  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will include provision in the section 4 licensing scheme under the Badgers Act 1991 for the return of a written report from each licensee stating the circumstances and outcome of each case of sett interference; and for such reports to be made public.
  190
  Mr. Maclean
  It is intended that licence holders will be required to submit a report on actions taken under the authority of their licence, but these reports will not be made available to the public.

  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will ensure that any licences issued under section 4 of the Badgers Act 1991 take into full account the codes of practice of the Masters of Fox Hounds Association forbidding fox hunts, dogs from entering or digging into badger setts.

  Mr. Maclean
  I refer the hon. Member to the reply given on 12 December 1991,Official Report, column 550.

  Tobacco
  Mr. Redmond
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what is the current tonnage and value of the EC tobacco mountain; if he will list the places where it is stored; what will be its eventual destination; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Curry
  The European Commission's most recent figures show 36,480 tonnes of tobacco in intervention. Definitive figures for intervention of the 1990 and 1991 crop are not yet available. The tobacco is held in a number of intervention stores, mainly in Italy and Greece. Its market value depends on the state of the market when it is put up for sale by tender by the Commission. Destination is a matter for the purchaser who is not obliged to inform the Commission.

  Fishing Industry
  Mr. Onslow
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what consultations he has had with the chairman of the National Rivers Authority about the implementation of the recommendations of the report on the north east drift net fishery, with particular reference to the conclusion that this fishery should be phased out; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Curry
  On the day this review was presented to Parliament, my right hon. Friend the Minister wrote to the chairman of the National Rivers Authority explaining the Governments position and seeking the authority's response. He has discussed this issue, among others, with the chairman; and his officials have also been in close contact with the NRA. The phasing out of the north-east coast salmon drift net fishery is one of a number of recommendations made in the review. The NRA will let us have its proposals for implementing the recommendations as soon as they are able.

  Small Firms
  Sir David Mitchell
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food how many schemes his Department runs to provide help or finance for small firms; and if he will list them.

  Mr. Maclean
  Nearly all farms are small firms and the wide ranging help and finance available from the Department is set out in the booklet "At The Farmer's Service" available in the House of Commons Library. In addition marketing and other help is provided, under various schemes, to businesses, many of which are small firms, in the food and drink sectors, through Food From Britain, and also in the fisheries sector.

  Slaughterhouses
  Mr. Ron Davies
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement on the extent to which papain is currently being used in United Kingdom slaughterhouses.

  Mr. Maclean
  I understand that about 2 per cent, of cattle are treated with the enzyme Papain before slaughter. Single market rules on the production and marketing of fresh meat, Directive 91/497/EEC, due to come into effect on 1 January 1993, will prohibit such treatment. The Government welcome this.

  Pesticides and Herbicides
  Sir Patrick McNair-Wilson
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will publish details of the number of prosecutions by his Department under the Health and Safety Legislation of importers of unregistered pesticides and herbicides for the past calendar year; and how many were successful.

  Mr. Maclean
  The Department has taken enforcement action against a number of importers, but there have been no prosecutions.

  Regional Panels
  Dr. David Clark
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will list the members of each of his regional panels currently in existence; if he will give the remit of these panels and the criteria for membership; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  The membership of my five existing regional panels is as follows:

  Eastern region

  Chairman

  Mr. R. C. Bloomfield

  Members

  Mr. P. Allenson

  Mr. D. Barker

  Mr. D. Black

  Mr. A. K. Bowes

  Mrs. R. Eady

  Mr. R. F. Horrell

  Mr. E. W. Faure-Walker

  Mr. S. Hemington

  Mr. R. H. Kerkham

  Mr. B. E. Newton

  Mr. R. Paynter

  Mrs. M. Skinner

  Mr. J. Taylor

  Mr. M. Thomasin-Foster

  Mr. R. J. Watts

  192
  Midlands and Western

  Chairman

  Mr. H. Salway TD

  Members

  Mr. P. A. Atkinson

  Mr. W. H. Bainbridge

  Mr. B. E. Boot

  Mr. C. Briscoe

  Mrs. J. Davies

  Mr. D. Harper

  Mr. A. A. Hignett

  The Hon. David Legh

  Mr. A. D. Lewis

  Mr. R. Marston

  Mr. J. J. Molyneux

  Mr. W. J. B. Taylor

  Mr. M. E. Twidale

  Northern Region

  Chairman

  Mr. A. Jackson

  Members

  Mr. W. D. Avery

  Mr. C. A. F. Baker-Cresswell, OBE

  Mrs. J. Bell

  Mr. J. C. Cooke

  Mr. J. H. Dixon

  Mr. D. A. Howard

  Mr. J. Howson

  Mr. M. D. Pollard

  Mr. S. P. W. Redgate

  Mr. A. H. Sanderson

  Mr. J. Sheard

  Mr. A. P. Shirley

  Mr. W. S. Towers

  Mr. A. Watson

  South Western Region

  Chairman

  Sir Peter Mills

  Members

  Mrs. R. Berry

  Mr. J. M. Eustice

  Mr. P. Fielden

  Mr. R. Holland

  Mr. R. A. Law

  Mr. R. Lawton

  Mrs. A. Petch

  Mr. M. Retallick

  Mr. D. Scott

  Mr. G. Trehane

  Mr. A. E. Webb

  Mr. J. Whetman

  Mr. H. B. Wright

  South Eastern

  Chairman

  Mr. R. J. Cyster, OBE

  Members

  Mr. C. P. Boswell

  Mr. D. R. A. Brazier

  Mr. G. W. Butler

  Mr. E. Humphrey

  Mr. J. D. Jenkinson

  Mr. R. Jones

  Mr. P. Lowater

  Mr. M. Lowry

  Mr. D. G. L. Monnington

  Mr. H. Oliver-Bellasis

  Mr. A. E. Redsell

  Mrs. R. Titterington

  Mrs. S. Ward

  The regional panels are non-statutory advisory bodies and provide an independent two-way communication link between my Department and the agricultural and food

  193
  industries and consumers. The panels can also be called upon to advise on matters in dispute between farmers and officials, for example on decisions on grant and subsidy schemes. Panel members act in an entirely independent capacity, not as the Ministry's agents.

  The composition of the panels is designed to reflect the farming systems and food and farming industries in the various regions. Members include farmers, Iand owners, farm workers, a trade union official, representatives of the food industry and consumers.

  Dr. David Clark
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will make a statement about the nine regional panels he intends to appoint, to which he referred in his answer of 23 July 1991,Official Report, columns 455–56, to the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Irvine), including the remit of the panels, the criteria of membership and the numbers of members who will be appointed; when he expects them to be in operation; and whether he will appoint people who are currently represented on his regional panels.

  Mr. Gummer
  The new regional panels will have the same remit as the old ones. They will provide an independent two-way communication link between my Department and the agricultural and food industries and consumers. They will also be available to advise on matters in dispute between farmers and officials, for example on decisions on grant and subsidy schemes.

  The new panels will come into operation on 1 April 1992. Their composition and membership are currently under consideration.

  Regional Reorganisation
  Dr. David Clark
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will list the current regional and divisional offices which deal with his Ministry's grant, subsidy licensing and other work that are due for closure prior to the regional reorganisation; how many staff in each are to be made redundant; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  As a result of the restructuring of my Department's regional organisation, grant and subsidy work, licensing and other administrative functions will be transferred from the following regional and divisional offices to the new regional service centres:

  Regional Offices

  Leeds

  Wolverhampton

  Divisional Offices

  Beverley

  Chelmsford

  Gloucester

  Guildford

  Huntingdon

  Lincoln

  Maidstone

  Newcastle

  Norwich

  Oxford

  Preston

  Taunton

  The location of the regional service centre for Devon and Cornwall is still under review. Meantime grant and subsidy processing and other administrative work will continue to be carried out at the divisional offices at Exeter and Truro.
  194
  It is projected that the regional reorganisation will result in a net loss of about 150 posts across the country as a whole. Where posts are to be lost every effort will be made to find staff alternative jobs. We shall be doing all we can to avoid compulsory redundancies.

  Chemical Residues
  Dr. David Clark
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will give the levels of maximum daily intakes of Di-(2-ethylhexyl) adipate, acetyltributyl citrate, epoxidised soya bean oil and polymeric plasticisers; the method used to calculate these maximum daily intakes and any assumptions used in the calculations; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  Estimated maximum daily intakes of the four plasticisers referred to are as follows:

  Di-(2-ethylhexyl) adipate 8·2 mg/day

  Acetyltributyl citrate 1·5 mg/day

  Epoxidised soya bean oil 1·0 mg/day

  Polymeric plasticizers 0·4 mg/day

  The assumptions and method of calculation used to obtain these figures are described in detail in food surveillance papers Nos. 21 and 30, copies of which are available in the Library of the House.

  Dr. David Clark
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food whether he has introduced regulations under the Food Act 1984 to ban the use of mineral hydrocarbons as food additives and in food processing; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  We have consulted widely over amendment of the current regulations on mineral hydrocarbons in food. This consultation has brought to light a number of complex issues and further research has been requested. I shall make a further announcement as soon as possible.

  Veterinary Investigation Centres
  Dr. David Clark
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food if he will give the closure dates for the veterinary investigation centres at(a) Bangor, (b) Cambridge, (c) Lincoln, (d) Norwich, (e) Reading, (f) Worcester, (g) Wye and (h) Truro; and what is the latest position in plans for the new VICs at Bury St. Edmonds and in Warwickshire; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Gummer
  I refer the hon. Member to my reply on 21 October 1991,Official Report, column 415. As far as the Truro Centre is concerned, I refer the hon. Member to my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) on 23 July 1991, Official Report, column 454. The latest position in respect of the two new centres at Bury St. Edmunds and Luddington in Warwickshire is that planning approvals have been obtained for both sites, detailed design work has almost been completed, the tender for enabling works at Bury St. Edmunds has been let and the main contracts for both sites are expected to go out to tender early in the new year. Completion is scheduled for both projects in mid to late-1993.

  Veterinary Medicines
  Mr. Gill
  To ask the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food when he intends to introduce further measures to ensure consumers are protected from residues of veterinary medicines; and if he will make a statement.
  195
  Mr. Gummer
  New regulations under the Food Safety Act to strengthen existing controls on veterinary residues have been laid before the House today. These controls include the following main features:to make it an offence to use unauthorised drugs in food producing animals;
  to enable animal carcases found to contain residues of illegal drugs, or residues of authorised animal medicines in excess of certain prescribed maximum residue limits (M R Ls), to be condemned as unfit for human consumption;
  to make it an offence to sell for slaughter animals containing unauthorised drugs or medicinal residues in excess of the prescribed MRLs;
  to make it an offence for shops to sell meat containing such residues;
  to require farmers using authorised animal medicines to observe specified withdrawal periods prior to slaughter;
  to give new powers to Ministry veterinary officers and other officials to detain and check animals or meat if misuse is suspected.

  Our record of surveillance on residues in meat is an excellent one. The Ministry carries out a comprehensive programme of sampling checks on animals at slaughterhouses and farms and on meat and meat products obtained from retail outlets and elsewhere. The results tell a good story, but consumers of British meat can now be doubly sure that harmful residues of animal medicines are not being passed on to the food chain.

  The new controls provide a mechanism for firm action to be taken, should this be required. Consumers have every right to demand the highest standards. These additional controls will help ensure that British meat stays safe to eat, and at the top of the quality league.

EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

  School Meals (Durham)
  Mr. Steinberg
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will list the school meals census for the Durham area or equivalent statistics for each year since 1980.

  Mr. Fallon
  A table showing school meals information for maintained primary, secondary and special schools within Durham local education authority, for each year from 1982 to 1989, follows. Information prior to 1982 and for 1985 is not available. School meal information by school type prior to 1989 is not available for every year. I would refer the hon. Member to my reply given on 11 December 1991,Official Report, column 450, which gave the school meal information for 1990 and 1991.

  School Meal Arrangements

  Durham LEA

  Paid meals

  Free meals

  Own food

  Other arrangements

  Total

  11989

  40,618

  14,437

  13,983

  25,576

  94,614

  1988

  37,914

  13,349

  13,780

  17,513

  82,556

  1987

  32,244

  21,565

  10,799

  18,954

  83,562

  1986

  33,335

  21,820

  10,337

  20,874

  86,366

  1985

  —

  —

  —

  —

  —

  1984

  34,647

  25,243

  9,315

  21,949

  91,154

  1983

  38,666

  21,101

  8,922

  24,642

  93,331

  1982

  42,106

  19,482

  10,091

  24,515

  96,194

  1 Includes pupils in nursery schools and pupils absent on the enumeration date in January. Previous years do not include such pupils.

  Small Firms
  Sir David Mitchell
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many schemes his Department runs to provide help or finance for small firms; and if he will list them.

  Mr. Eggar
  The Department has no specific schemes to provide help or finance to small firms. However, the Department operates a purchasing policy including small firms on tender lists where appropriate.

  Natural Environment Research Council
  Mr. Anthony Coombs
  To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether he has received the annual report of the Natural Environment Research Council for 1990–91; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Alan Howarth
  The annual report of the Natural Environment Research Council has been submitted to my right hon. and learned Friend, under the requirements of the Science and Technology Act 1965, and a copy is being placed in the House today.

  I was most interested to read the report of the council's 25th anniversary year. The report highlights research concerned with detecting and understanding changes in environmental systems, the enhanced collaboration between NERC institutes and the higher education sector, and the work of NERC scientists in the forward planning of important international programmes on the environment. I was particularly impressed to learn more about:

  (a) the urgent response on environmental issues connected with the Gulf war including development of a model which successfully predicted the fate of oil released into the sea and of environmental impact assessments.

  (b) the launch of a new terrestrial initiative in global environmental research—TIGER—to provide data on the carbon cycle, trace greenhouse gases and water and energy balances on land, and on ecosystem impacts, including the monitoring of environmental change.

  (c) the expansion of the universities global atmospheric modelling programme, to concentrate on two main themes: natural variability of the atmosphere and its response to greenhouse forcing; and stratospheric chemistry, dynamics and prediction of ozone depletion.

  (d) the completion of the 15-year main run of the fine resolution Antarctic model integrated on the research council's Cray X-MP supercomputer. This is the first eddy-resolving model of the southern ocean and represents an important first step in the running of sophisticated, coupled ocean-atmosphere models needed for climate prediction.

  (e) the receipt by NERC of the Queen's award for technological achievement, jointly with VG Elemental, for the development of the inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer, which is of particular value to earth and hydrological scientists.

  (f) the countryside survey 1990 undertaken by NERC's institutes of terrestrial and freshwater ecology and the joint NERC/ESRC land use programme at the university of Newcastle upon Tyne, which will, for the first time, use field survey accompanied by satellite remote sensing to produce a digital map of land cover for the whole of Great Britain

  I congratulate the Council on these and its many other achievements, and I commend its report to hon. Members.

SCOTLAND

  Forestry Commission
  Mr. Wilson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) how much land has been sold by the Forestry Commission in each year since 1989; and what was the amount of revenue raised thereby;

  (2) if he will list the areas of land, planted and unplanted, which have been sold by the Forestry Commission in (a) 1989, (b) 1990 and (c)

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The information is as follows:

  Area of land sold (hectares)

  Year ended 31 March

  Planted

  Unplanted

  Total

  Receipts (£ million)

  1989

  3,786

  3,889

  7,675

  12·6

  1990

  4,509

  3,342

  7,851

  13·0

  1991

  3,273

  4,155

  7,428

  12·1

  Mr. Wilson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what safeguards for the rights of access are normally incoporated into the terms of sale of land by the Forestry Commission.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The Forestry Commission gives advance notice to local authorities of intended disposals of woodlands under its management, and offers to enter into legal agreements with them which will provide for continued public access to the woodlands after sale.

  The Forestry Commission has drawn up guidelines on these arrangements, in consultation with the countryside commissions and the local authority associations, a copy of which is in the Library.

  Evening Betting
  Mr. Wilson
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he has any plans to permit the opening of off-course bookmakers shops during evening hours.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  The Government are considering the various responses to our consultation document, issued on 14 October, on whether licensed betting offices should be open in the evenings and, if so, at what times.

  Bail (Re-offenders)
  Mr. Andrew Welsh
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many people have re-offended whilst out on bail under the terms of the Bail (Scotland) Act 1980.

  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton
  In 1990, 2,742 persons were proceeded against where the main offence was under section 3(1)(b) of the Bail Etc. (Scotland) Act 1980, which includes re-offending while on bail.

  Fishing Industry
  Mr. Maclennan
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many United Kingdom fishing vessels have been reported to the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland as having failed to notify the Department before crossing the 4 deg. west line as required under the Sea Fish Licensing Order 1989, as amended; and how many masters of such fishing vessels have been(a) warned, (b) cautioned and (c) charged under the relevant Fisheries Acts.
  198
  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The requirement for certain United Kingdom fishing vessels to contact a designated office of the Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency before crossing the 4 deg. west line was introduced in March 1989. Since that time the agency has taken action on 734 occasions where there have been reasonable grounds to believe that the reporting-in arrangements have not been complied with. These suspected infringements have been dealt with as follows:

  Number

  Warnings issued

  538

  Cautions issued

  196

  Charged by prosecuting authorities

  7

  Mr. Onslow
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what steps his department takes to monitor transhipments of fish to factory vessels in Scottish waters; and what breaches of the regulations have been detected as a result of these checks in each of the past five years.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  The Scottish Fisheries Protection Agency restricts both the number of ports where transhipments may take place and the hours during which such operations may be carried out to assist in the control of transhipments of fish to factory ships. This allows for a high degree of monitoring. Fishery Officers have in 1991 inspected some 1,900 catching vessels before they begin to transfer fish to factory ships. This accounts for 95 per cent. of transhipment activity. Full monitoring of quantities while fish are being transferred to factory ships takes place in selected cases. This was undertaken in 336 cases in 1991. Monitoring of documents and returns submitted by catching and receiving vessels further assists in controlling transhipments.

  The number of offences detected as a result of the above procedures in each of the last five years are:

  Number

  1987

  6

  1988

  13

  1989

  8

  1990

  3

  11991

  4

  1 To date.

  These detections relate mainly to attempts to understate the quantities of fish which are being transhipped.

  Items in Lieu of Tax
  Mr. Bill Walker
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if any works of art accepted in lieu of inheritance tax have been allocated since he last made an announcement.

  Mr. Lang
  My right hon. Friend, the Minister for the Arts, announced on 26 April 1991 at column 594 that the following works had been accepted in lieu of inheritance tax.
  199

  Item

  Amount of Tax satisfied

  The C. H. Brackenbury Memorial Collection of Wind Instruments

  £126,956

  I am pleased to announce that I have decided to allocate these works to the University of Edinburgh where they have been on loan since 1980.

  Local Government Finance
  Mr. Douglas
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list by local authority area in Scotland the proportions of local authority finance derived from central Government, business rates and poll tax for 1990–91 and the estimates for 1992–93, including the estimate for the replacement of poll tax with community tax for 1993–94.

  Mr. Allan Stewart
  [holding answer 17 December 1991]: The information for 1990–91 is given in the table. It is not possible to provide figures for 1992–93 and 1993–94 in advance of local authorities setting their local taxation levels for these years.

  (1)

  (2)

  (3)

  Central Government grants 1990–91

  Non-domestic rate income 1990–91

  Community charge income 1990–91 (provisional outturn)

  Per cent.

  Per cent.

  Per cent.

  Borders

  71·8

  12·5

  15·7

  Central

  53·9

  25·6

  20·5

  Dumfries and Galloway

  67·4

  15·4

  17·1

  Fife

  49·9

  27·5

  22·5

  Grampian

  60·1

  23·9

  16·0

  Highland

  66·5

  19·0

  14·5

  Lothian

  42·9

  29·4

  27·7

  Strathclyde

  60·0

  21·8

  18·1

  Tayside

  60·1

  20·3

  19·5

  Berwickshire

  53·1

  21·0

  25·9

  Ettrick and Lauderdale

  39·0

  31·0

  29·9

  Roxburgh

  48·0

  22·9

  29·1

  Tweeddale

  48·4

  20·1

  31·4

  Clackmannan

  18·7

  35·6

  45·8

  Falkirk

  19·7

  53·7

  26·6

  Stirling

  15·7

  42·7

  41·6

  Annandale and Eskdalc

  31·1

  28·3

  40·6

  Nithsdale

  29·4

  35·8

  34·8

  Stewartry

  38·9

  25·9

  35·2

  Wigtown

  50·6

  20·0

  29·4

  Dunfermline

  15·5

  49·0

  35·5

  Kirkcaldy

  14·6

  46·1

  39·4

  North East Fife

  32·5

  25·6

  41·9

  Aberdeen City

  17·1

  47·3

  35·7

  Banff and Buchan

  25·3

  39·6

  35·1

  Gordon

  49·9

  19·3

  30·7

  Kincardine and Deeside

  56·1

  23·5

  20·4

  Moray

  39·1

  33·6

  27·2

  Badenoch and Strathspey

  39·4

  34·1

  26·5

  Caithness

  47·4

  32·2

  20·4

  Inverness

  27·5

  53·1

  19·4

  Lochaber

  31·3

  42·2

  26·5

  Nairn

  62·9

  15·8

  21·3

  Ross and Cromarty

  47·6

  28·5

  23·9

  Skye and Lochalsh

  61·7

  21·0

  17·3

  Sutherland

  76·9

  13·4

  9·8

  East Lothian

  16·7

  45·8

  37·5

  Edinburgh City

  17·6

  41·2

  41·2

  200

  (1)

  (2)

  (3)

  Central Government grants 1990–91

  Non-domestic rate income 1990–91

  Community charge income 1990–91 (provisional outturn)

  Per cent.

  Per cent.

  Per cent.

  Midlothian

  43·2

  23·5

  33·3

  West Lothian

  29·4

  36·0

  34·6

  Argyll and Bute

  31·7

  34·1

  34·3

  Bearsden and Milngavie

  43·6

  16·1

  40·3

  Clydebank

  39·3

  29·7

  31·0

  Clydesdale

  32·6

  27·1

  40·3

  Cumbernauld and Kilsyth

  28·9

  37·9

  33·2

  Cumnock and Doon Valley

  47·8

  19·7

  32·5

  Cunninghame

  22·1

  45·8

  32·1

  Dumbarton

  21·4

  34·4

  44·3

  East Kilbride

  12·9

  34·8

  52·4

  Eastwood

  51·1

  16·0

  32·9

  Glasgow City

  31·9

  46·5

  21·6

  Hamilton

  30·4

  32·5

  37·1

  Inverclyde

  44·6

  23·5

  31·9

  Kilmarnock and Loudoun

  37·3

  31·7

  30·9

  Kyle and Carrick

  24·5

  33·6

  41·9

  Monklands

  38·4

  25·7

  35·9

  Motherwell

  34·1

  34·0

  31·9

  Renfrew

  25·9

  34·0

  40·2

  Strathkelvin

  42·8

  18·4

  38·8

  Angus

  37·8

  28·5

  33·7

  Dundee City

  25·9

  40·9

  33·3

  Perth and Kinross

  33·6

  34·7

  31·7

  Orkney

  66·0

  26·2

  7·8

  Shetland

  59·8

  37·5

  2·7

  Western Isles

  83·9

  8·8

  7·3

  Notes:

  1 Central Government Grants shown in Column 1 consist of Revenue Support Grant and Specific Grants.

  2 The Community Charge Income proportions are calculated from provisional outturn amounts taken from the Provisional Outturn/ Budget Estimate returns made to The Scottish Office by local authorities.

  3 The Non-Domestic Rate Income proportions are calculated from outturn amounts taken from returns made by levying authorities to The Scottish Office in September 1991.

  Foresterhill Hospital
  Mr. Stephen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland (1) what representations from the public he has had in favour of Foresterhill hospital's application for trust status;

  (2) what representations from the public he has had (a) in favour (b) against Foresterhill hospital's application for trust status.

  Mr. Lang
  [holding answer 16 December 1991]: As I indicated in my statement on 3 December, representations, both for and against Foresterhill applications, were made during the public consultation period. I very much welcome the comments made since the announcement by many associated with Foresterhill pledging themselves to ensure the success of the trust in the interests of improved patient care.

  Mr. Stephen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the value of the Foresterhill site claimed by the proposed trust as part of its application for national health service trust status.
  201
  Mr. Lang
  [holding answer 16 December 1991]: The total value of property assets declared in the trust application was £119 million. This will be revised as at 1 April 1992, the date the trust comes into operation, to reflect the situation then prevailing.

  Mr. Stephen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make it his policy to ensure that standards of education and training at Foresterhill hospital are maintained when it becomes a trust.

  Mr. Lang
  [holding answer 16 December 1991]: Trusts, like directly managed hospitals, will be required to participate fully in national education and training arrangements. This obligation was reflected in the Foresterhill hospital's trust application.

  Mr. Stephen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will address a public meeting in Kincardine and Deeside to discuss the Foresterhill hospital complex following his approval of the trust application.

  Mr. Michael Forsyth
  [holding answer 16 December 1991]: I expect to undertake a number of public engagements in Grampian in the coming months.

  Mr. Stephen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland whether the Raeden complex is to be part of the Foresterhill trust.

  Mr. Lang
  [holding answer 16 December 1991]: As was made clear in the decision letter sent to the trust sponsors on 3 December, a copy of which was placed in the House Library, the Raeden centre will not form part of the Foresterhill trust.

  Mr. Stephen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will publish the business plan and details of the application for trust status for the Foresterhill hospital complex.

  Mr. Lang
  [holding answer 16 December 1991]: Copies of the detailed application and of the executive summary were readily available throughout the public consultation period. Grampian health board reports that 639 copies of the former and 956 copies of the latter were issued.

SOCIAL SECURITY

  Community Charge
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will estimate the cost of introducing a 100 per cent. rebate for community charge payers on income support and equivalent incomes in 1992–93, assuming that no compensatory reduction is made to benefit levels.

  Miss Widdecombe
  Expenditure on community charge benefit is affected by the community charge levels set by local authorities. The latest estimate is that the cost of introducing 100 per cent. rebates for people on income support or equivalent incomes in 1992–93 would be around £500 million. A maximum community charge benefit of 100 per cent. of the liability would affect all people receiving community charge benefit, including those on income support and equivalent incomes.

  Source: Expenditure modelled using data drawn from the 1986–87–88 Family Expenditure Surveys at 1991–92 prices and benefits.
  202
  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) if he will carry out a review of the present income maintenance system for pensioners;

  (2) whether the review of the present income maintenance system for pensioners will include the removal of direct and indirect negative discrimination on grounds of age and sex.

  Miss Widdecombe
  We have no plans to carry out such a review. The discussion document "Options for Equality in State Pension Age" published today, sets out information on equalising pension ages.

  Invalid Care Allowance
  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will ensure that invalid care allowance will be paid at the same level as other long-term income maintenance benefits.

  Mr. Scott
  We have no plans to do so at present. Unlike most other income maintenance benefits, invalid care allowance is subject to neither contribution conditions nor a means test. The cost of increasing it to the level of basic retirement pension or invalidity benefit, for example, would be £126 million and would need to be considered in the context of other demands on available resources.

  Pensions
  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will bring forward proposals to decrease the time between the announcement of pension increases and their implementation.

  Miss Widdecombe
  I refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on 7 November at column 240.

  Carers Allowance
  Mr. McGrady
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will introduce a flat-rate carers allowance which is not meanstested and is disregarded for means-tested benefits.

  Mr. Scott
  Invalid care allowance (ICA) is a flat-rate non means-tested social security benefit specifically for carers. The number of people in Great Britain receiving the benefit at any one time has increased from 5,000 in 1978–79 to about 155,000 in 1991–92 and the amount spent has increased from £4 million to an estimated £260 million over the same period. We introduced a carer premium (currently £10·80 a week) into the income related benefits in October 1990 specifically to help the less well-off carers. ICA is an income maintenance benefit and to disregard it for income-related benefits would result in double provision from public funds.

  Tax/Benefit Model Table
  Mr. Tony Lloyd
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security (1) if he will publish figures similar to those in his Department's tax/benefit model table, showing net weekly spending power for a lone mother with two children aged four and six years working four hours a day, five days a week for £2 art hour(a) under the 1991–92 benefit system and (b) under the benefit system as proposed for 1992–93, with Family Credit being paid for work of 16 hours or more a week, at 1991–92 rates;
  203
  (2) if he will publish figures similar to those in his Department's tax/benefit model table, showing net weekly spending power for each of a single wage married couple (a) with two children aged four and six years and (b) with three children aged three, eight and eleven years working four hours a day, five days a week for £2 an hour (i) under the 1991–92 benefit system and (ii) under the benefit system as proposed for 1992–93, with Family Credit being paid for work of 16 hours or more a week, at 1991–92 rates;

  (3) if he will publish figures similar to those in his Department's tax/benefit model table, showing net weekly spending power for a single wage married couple with no children working four hours a day, five days a week for (a) £2·00, (b) £2·50 and (c) £3·00 an hour (i) under the 1991–92 benefit system and (ii) under the benefit system as proposed for 1992–93, with Family Credit being paid for work of 16 hours or more a week, at 1991–92 rates.

  Mr. Jack
  Anyone in receipt of income support at the moment of change in the rules at the start of 1992–93, will retain entitlement to income support and, therefore, their income need not change. Families with children can obtain advice from the Benefits Agency as to whether or not it would be better for them to claim family credit. Couples without children are not entitled to family credit.

  The following table shows the net weekly spending power for people at 1991–92 rates (a) in 1991–92, and in 1992–93 if they choose to remain on income support and (b) for those newly claiming in 1992–93.

  It should be noted that the results in the tables remain arbitrary. They cannot reflect, except by chance, the actual circumstances of particular people and cannot claim to be representative of the population at large. The tables use hypothetical rents so they do not reflect the full range of housing costs which people can pay.

  The figures in column (b) do not include the increased benefit rates coming into effect from April 1992, when child benefit will be increased by 4·1 per cent. and income-related benefits will be increased by 7 per cent.

  (a)

  (b)

  Gross pay

  Net weekly spending power

  Net weekly spending power

  Family type

  £ per hour

  £ per week

  £ per week

  Lone parent (as specified)

  2·00

  99·33

  111·55

  Married couple with two children (as specified)

  2·00

  106·54

  107·54

  Married couple with three children (as specified)

  2·00

  129·57

  128·25

  Married couple with no children

  2·00

  65·37

  38·12

  2·50

  65·37

  48·12

  3·00

  65·37

  56·35

  Concessionary Coal
  Mr. Allen
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what are the current arrangements for converting a concessionary coal allowance into cash when a house is no longer heated by coal; and what impact this has on entitlement to benefits.

  Miss Widdecombe
  British Coal is responsible for the arrangements for converting concessionary coal into a cash allowance.

  All payments in kind, including the value of concessionary coal, are ignored in the income-related benefits. Payments of cash made in lieu of concessionary coal are available for normal living expenses in the same way as a retirement or occupational pension and are therefore taken fully into account. However, where a person's income is above the level of his or her applicable amount, the operation of "tapers" in housing benefit, community charge benefit and family credit enable the person to keep some of that extra income.

  The tapers are applied to any income above the applicable amount and the answer offset against the maximum benefit payable. In housing benefit the taper is 65 per cent., in community charge benefit it is 15 per cent. and in family credit it is 70 per cent.

  Heating Bills
  Mr. O'Brien
  To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what help is now available to people on low incomes for paying their heating bills; and if he will make a statement.

  Mr. Jack
  [holding answer 16 December 1991]: The rates used in the assessment of the income-related benefits are to cover normal day to day living expenses, including heating.

  In addition householders in receipt of income support, family credit, housing benefit or community charge benefit may be eligible for a grant towards the cost of loft, tank and pipe insulation and draughtproofing under the home energy efficiency scheme. The Government also have a number of programmes designed to help local authorities improve the condition of their housing stock, including the heating and insulation.

  In the event of exceptionally cold weather, social fund cold weather payments are available to people who receive income support and either have a child under five or receive a pensioner or disability premium. Improvements in this scheme were set out by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State on 18 November at columns 4–5.

Preamble
The House met at half past one of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Bristol.

Air-to-Surface Missile System
Lord Mayhew Lord Mayhew asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their estimated cost of the proposed air-to-surface nuclear missile system.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (The Earl of Arran): My Lords, we are considering several options for a replacement for the WE177 free-fall bomb, but no decision has been taken.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, does the noble Earl agree that whatever system is chosen, it will be very expensive? As the Trident submarine can be made to fire a single missile or even a single warhead with pinpoint accuracy, why do we need to spend large sums of money on a different extra nuclear missile system?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, the noble Lord is right. Trident is certainly a flexible system which is capable of a limited as well as an all-out strike. I make two points: first, any use made of Trident for sub-strategic purposes will lessen our strategic last resort capability. Secondly, even the firing of a small number of missiles will risk giving away a submarine's position and exposing it to the other side's anti-submarine warfare forces. Neither of those consequences is at all desirable.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, does the noble Earl agree that the Government would be better employed in spending their time just now in considering the general nuclear position in the world at large rather than extending their own nuclear capacity?
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, that is exactly what we are doing. We are considering the world nuclear situation. That is why we are keeping our minimum deterrent force available.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, will the noble Earl think again about the two answers that he gave me? His first point was that if we had Trident in the sub-strategic role, we would not simultaneously be able to use it in a strategic destructive role. Is he seriously envisaging a scenario in which we use nuclear weapons in two different roles against two different enemies? That makes no sense at all.
The Earl of Arran: My Lords, as the noble Lord knows full well, we live in an extremely uncertain world and we must be prepared for and expect the
1328
worst in some circumstances. Furthermore, a separate system also provides the Prime Minister with a greater range of options in a crisis.

London Underground Plan: Effects
1.40 p.m.
Lord Molloy Lord Molloy asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they consider that the proposed staff reductions on the London Underground are consistent with the safety and efficiency of the service.
The Minister of State, Department of Transport (Lord Brabazon of Tara): Yes, my Lords. The aim of the plan is to make the underground system more efficient. London Underground is confident that this will enable it to raise safety standards, improve quality of service, cut costs and increase revenue.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply. Is he aware of the considerable consternation among the travelling public in London as to whether London Underground, let alone the bus system, is all that safe any more? Is he further aware that dismissals have already started in the outer regions? When one travels, for example, from East Acton all the way to Ruislip, as I did this morning to check this out, one sees not one single member of staff. They have all gone. The only people one sees are bill-stickers, pasting up bills on behalf of London Transport saying that fares will be increased next month. Does the Minister believe that we can sacrifice safety in order to save a few thousand pounds through the dismissal of important staff?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, there is no question of safety being sacrificed by the measures proposed in the London Underground plan. Among other things, the plan will bring about by 1995–96 a 75 per cent. reduction in peak cancellations, a more regular and reliable train service and a 40 per cent. reduction in the number of escalators out of service.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, will the Minister confirm that the most important improvements in safety are as recommended in the Fennell Report, and that London Underground has been quite good in carrying those out? Will he also confirm that a great many closed circuit television cameras are now in use in Underground stations? Those may be replacing visible station staff, but the screens are being watched by staff situated elsewhere in the station.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that London Transport has been assiduous in implementing the recommendations of the Fennell Report. In addition to more video coverage of stations, there will be an increased staff presence on the platforms and at stations.
Lord Grimond: My Lords, have the Government seen the notices from London Transport that the escalators at Victoria will be out of action for nine

1329
months? That is a third of the time it took to build the whole Central Line. Can they do something to expedite the matter?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, that very question was raised in the House on Monday. The noble Lord may have noticed London Transport's advertisement in the Evening Standard last night. That explained why that was necessary.
Lord Underhill: My Lords, is it not the case that the Monopolies and Mergers Commission inquiry into London Underground concluded that the major deficiencies in London Underground were due to lack of investment? From looking through the business plan and the company plan, I find that we are talking of a reduction in personnel from 21,000 to 16,000. Having looked through these documents, I find it very difficult as I do not have a research assistant to ascertain exactly where the reductions will take place. As my noble friend Lord Molloy has said, it may be that the reductions that are due to take place will imperil the position on safety.
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, the report of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission made two main recommendations. It called for both increased efficiency and higher investment. The Government are already providing the higher levels of investment that are needed. It is now up to London Underground to implement increased efficiency. That is what it is planning to do with the company plan.
I turn now to safety and safety measures. Any changes made will be subject to consultation between London Underground, the railway inspectorate and the London Fire and Civil Defence Authority.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the Minister aware that people are gravely apprehensive, and that they do not want to see another incident, like King's Cross, in which people lost their lives? Further, can he say whether an American organisation has put £4.2 million into London Transport with the condition that the number of staff must be reduced? Why do the Government think that the answer to all our problems is to create more and more unemployment and cause great unhappiness to people with mortgages?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, that is certainly not the purpose of the plan; its purpose is to produce a more efficient and effective Underground system for the people of London.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, how can the system be more efficient with fewer staff? Is the noble Lord aware that in the depths of the Underground, in the Tube, one sees no one, except beggars and itinerant musicians?
Lord Brabazon of Tara: My Lords, it is perfectly possible to be more efficient with fewer staff. As I said in an earlier reply, the noble Lord will be pleased to know that passengers will see an increased staff presence. There will also be more frequent patrols of platforms, and transport police will be more effectively deployed.

EC Member States: Armed Forces
1.45 p.m.
Lord Monson Lord Monson asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they expect that the armies and air forces of the Twelve member states of the European Community will be replaced by a single army and air force; and, if so, what will be the language of command and to whom will any oath of allegiance be sworn.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (The Earl of Caithness): No, my Lords.
Lord Monson: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his reply. It seems to indicate that the Conservatives at Westminster and the Conservatives at Strasbourg are at cross-purposes. Is he aware that the Conservative MEP for Lincolnshire, Mr. William Newton Dunn, has been enthusiastically forecasting for many months now that within a relatively short space of time there will be a single unified European army and a single unified European air force? If that should happen, will the noble Earl agree that whereas British servicemen may be prepared to die for family, friends, Queen and country, very few of them are prepared to die for M. Delors or his successor—or indeed for an entity such as the EC which commands the instinctive loyalty of virtually no one?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, whereas the noble Lord, Lord Monson, may prefer to deal with forecasts, I prefer to deal with agreements. The noble Lord will have read—I hope with considerable pleasure—the results of the Maastricht agreement.
Lord Mason of Barnsley: My Lords, although the Western European Union has in recent times been given some prominence, can the noble Earl assure the House that NATO still remains supreme to defend Western Europe and the United Kingdom?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, a decision was taken by all the allies at Rome and at Maastricht on the primacy of NATO in European defence.
Lord Richard: My Lords, I should like to say that I positively agree with the noble Earl's negative.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord will also be agreeing with us all afternoon. I am most grateful to him.

Business
1.47 p.m.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to say a word about the length of speeches in today's debate standing in the name of my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal to which your Lordships have agreed to apply a six-hour time limit. Following discussions through the usual channels, who have informally agreed on a limit of 15 minutes for all Front Bench spokesmen, with my noble friend Lord Caithness rising to reply not less than 25 minutes before the scheduled end of the debate, all other

1331
speeches should not exceed seven minutes. Your Lordships will recognise that, in agreeing to this new time limit of six hours, we have collectively moved into somewhat uncharted waters. I hope that this agreement will provide a good structure for the debate. I may say to your Lordships that I am sure that the Procedure Committee will be reviewing the success of this afternoon's procedures in due course. Having said that, I need hardly say that if any noble Lord should speak at greater length than I have indicated, he would be doing so at the expense of other speakers in the debate.
There are two further items which I suspect will be of interest to your Lordships. First, I must apologise for the recent arrival of the speakers' list. However, I have to tell the House that a case of electronic indigestion took place in one of the vital pieces of equipment in the Whips' Office, which delayed its arrival. Secondly, I hope that your Lordships will have observed that there are two new electronic Clocks in the Chamber. I should point out that it was not possible to supply the third Clock for the end of the Chamber. A new system in its entirety will be arriving shortly. However, we do have two Clocks and, symbolically, they are in the colours of your Lordships' Chamber.

Business of the House: Debate this Day
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Waddington): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That so much of the order of the House of 16th December limiting the debate on the Motion in his name this day to five hours be discharged and that the debate be limited to six hours.—(Lord Waddington.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Maastricht Agreement
1.49 p.m.
Lord Waddington Lord Waddington rose to move to resolve, That this House warmly endorses the agreement secured at Maastricht, and congratulates the Prime Minister on securing all Her Majesty's Government's negotiating objectives.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, when I spoke in our debate on 25th November, I commended to your Lordships' House the Government's negotiating position in the intergovernmental conferences on monetary and political union. It is a measure of the Government's success at Maastricht that I run the risk of repeating myself this afternoon.
On 25th November I said that Europe's future developments should be based both on co-operation as a Community under the Treaty of Rome and intergovernmental co-operation outside. I said that when there was action within the treaty, the Community should respect the principle of subsidiarity; that there was no need for Community action when the objectives could be achieved by member states acting alone; and that there should be no
1332
unnecessary or inappropriate measures of harmonisation. I said that there should be better enforcement and implementation and compliance with Community legislation. I also gave the Government's view on any extension of the legislative powers of the European Parliament and emphasised our belief in the need for closer involvement of national Parliaments. I spoke of the need to make preparations for the enlargement of the Community.
I did not expatiate on our views on EMU because those were well known. We now know the outcome of the negotiations. The United Kingdom remains free to decide whether to join a single currency and if so, when. A number of years from now a future Parliament will be able to weigh the benefits and disadvantages of joining and make a decision about where British interests lie. But Britain is and will continue to be fully involved in the discussions on shaping EMU—and has played a leading part in ensuring that there are rigorous convergence criteria which have to be observed by any member state before it can move to a single currency.
So our objectives so far as European monetary union is concerned have been met. So have all other objectives of which I have reminded the House today; and I submit that the Prime Minister and his colleagues, the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, deserve the congratulations of us all.
Perhaps I may now expand on what I have said in some of the key areas, reminding your Lordships that there will be further opportunities to discuss those matters when legislation is introduced in the next Parliament.
First, I shall deal with subsidiarity. We stressed from the start the need for a strong commitment to subsidiarity to be written into the treaty and this view has been accepted. The treaty now makes it clear that the Community will take action only where objectives cannot be sufficiently achieved at national level. That is a legally binding provision which should also prevent over-regulation from Brussels in the areas where Community action is justified.
The agreed treaty provides for some extensions of Community competence but these are confined predominantly to areas of existing Community activity. There is a sensible extension of qualified majority voting so far as the environment is concerned. But we retain the final say on tax and energy matters relating to the environment where a unanimous vote will be required.
I do not think that there are many who do not believe that there should be new powers to monitor and scrutinise the activities of the Commission—I know that is felt strongly by my noble friend Lord Bethell and the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington—and under the new treaty the European Parliament will be able to establish committees of inquiry, receive petitions from individuals and appoint an ombudsman to investigate maladministration. Furthermore, in future the European Parliament will also have the right to approve the appointment of the Commission.
The Government attach great importance to the financial management and accountability of the

1333
Community. The Court of Auditors is the body with the power to scrutinise how the Community spends the taxpayers' money, and ensures that the money is spent lawfully and properly. The Maastricht Summit agreed, largely at our instigation, that its role should be enlarged.
As to the legislative powers of the European Parliament, the treaty allows the Parliament a right to block certain types of legislation, but only if an absolute majority of its members turn out to vote down the particular proposal. The introduction of a negative assent procedure does of course fall far short of the full-blown co-decision which many of our partners wanted and national Ministers in the Council retain the ultimate right to determine the content of Community legislation.
It was a British initiative too that led to member states agreeing a conference declaration on the role of national Parliaments. Closer contact between national Parliaments and the European Parliament is vital for the democratic fabric of the Community and I am confident that this declaration will encourage such contact to develop further.
I should now like to come to the Social Chapter. The first point I would make is that the existing Social Chapter in the Treaty of Rome remains; and that chapter has undoubtedly provided the basis for action on social affairs by the Community and it will continue to provide a basis for such community action.
We should like such action in the future to pay more respect to national diversity, subsidiarity and employment practices, but the existing treaty provisions have allowed 19 out of the 33 measures in the social action programme to be agreed, with Britain blocking none of them.
As the House knows, we have one of the best records for the implementation of Community legislation. We have of course no reason to be on the defensive about social provision in this country. In a number of areas—such as the National Health Service, minimum income through social security, health and safety at work and employee share ownership—we are ahead of our partners. But national traditions vary widely and in some areas where we do things differently harmonisation is from our point of view highly undesirable. We could not therefore agree to the substantive provisions of the Social Charter being incorporated into the treaty itself, with the possibility of far more extensive legislation affecting the way we run our industrial relations and arrange working conditions in this country, being imposed upon us by qualified majority voting. The Government were not going to see the competitiveness and efficiency of British firms harmed, and jobs put at risk through the imposition of damaging and misguided Community legislation. We were not prepared to see the enormous improvement in industrial relations, which has come about in the last 12½ years, put in jeopardy by Community laws incompatible with this country's needs.
The abuse of union power was the dominant issue in British politics from the publication of In Place of
1334
Strife by the Labour Government in 1968, right through to the end of the miners' strike. The British people remember the anarchy which in 1979 resulted in the loss through strikes of 29 million working days. Last year, only 2 million were lost and the British people would think that we had taken leave of our senses if we had signed up to allowing those hard won advances to be reversed.
Turning now to foreign policy and defence, we have, first of all, secured an important new commitment to a stronger common foreign and security policy, and the influence of the Twelve, which is already considerable, will increase further as a result. That was a key British objective. We have preserved co-operation on an inter-governmental basis and we have ensured that the common policy will be based on consensus. Majority voting can occur only if we and all of the member states agree that in a particular situation it should occur; and when we need to respond in a situation of urgency our freedom to act is safeguarded.
Throughout all the discussions this year the British Government's aim has been to see a stronger European contribution to common defence, organised through the Western European Union, and our view has been accepted. The Western European Union will not be subordinate to the European Council and retains its independence. Above all the treaty provides that a European defence effort must be compatible with NATO obligations.
I think all of us look forward to the day when there will be a wider community embracing the states of Eastern Europe who have thrown off the shackles of communism and other European countries. At Maastricht it was agreed to consider new applications earlier than originally planned and as soon as the review of our own resources is completed in 1992. The European Community has guaranteed prosperity, stability and democracy for the states of Western Europe. It is right and proper that others should be admitted to share those benefits as soon as they are able.
Maastricht was an undoubted success. It has paved the way for closer co-operation between the countries which form the Community and has laid the basis for further progress.
I believe the Prime Minister accurately captured the mood of the British people. They do not want us to lose our national identity and they do not want to see even more power go to a centralised bureaucracy. But they do want us to be at the heart of Europe. They do want us to build a Community which is outward-looking, prepared to accept as members others who share the same ideals and whose new-found democracy the Community can reinforce and able to work even closer together to tackle international problems with which we are faced. That is the kind of Community we are building. It is a Community good for Britain and good for the world.
Moved to resolve, That this House warmly endorses the agreement secured at Maastricht, and congratulates the Prime Minister on securing all Her Majesty's Government's negotiating objectives.— (Lord Waddington.)
2.1 p.m.
Lord Williams of Elvel Lord Williams of Elvel rose to move, as an amendment to the above Motion, to leave out all the words after ("House") and insert ("sees no reason to congratulate Her Majesty's Government on the outcome of the Maastricht Summit.")
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the amendment standing in my name on the Order Paper. I wish to start on a conciliatory note, although your Lordships will recognise that what I have to say at a later stage may, I am afraid, be somewhat more contentious. I start in this manner because there are many points on which we can agree with the position that the Government argued and the European Council at Maastricht accepted. I propose to acknowledge those first. Of course, as will appear later, there are also areas—upon which I shall comment—where we disagree with the approach of the Government. And there are other matters which we believe could and should have been more fully discussed at Maastricht but which apparently were not raised or not raised in any substantial measure. I shall be asking why.
Underlying everything, of course, are fundamental questions. Given the internal disputes within the Conservative Party, what is the real attitude of the Government towards the European Community? What signal are they trying to send to our Community partners or indeed to our own country? Are we, in their view, to be at the heart of Europe—as the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal said—on the edge of Europe, or an offshore archipelago? Those questions are at the centre of our debate today.
Let me start with the points of agreement. On defence policy, we support the conclusions of Maastricht that the primacy of NATO has been confirmed. We welcome too the treaty text on political union which provides for enhanced co-operation on foreign and security policy, the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking and other crimes which know no international boundaries.
Further, we agree with the principle of what is known as subsidiarity by which Community competence should only extend to those areas in which member states cannot reasonably act on their own. We also support moves to extend membership of the Community—as the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal mentioned—to the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe, as and when they are ready. Finally, we support any extension of Community-wide measures on educational and cultural exchanges, the environment and the promotion of research and development.
So far, so good. In all those matters we welcome the outcome of the Maastricht Summit. But that is about as far as I can sensibly go. I move now to the points of disagreement between ourselves and the Government which, I am afraid, largely outweigh the points on which we can agree.
First, as we all now know, the Government demanded and achieved the right to opt out of the proposed single currency arrangements. That was apparently a great triumph. But when I heard about it—and it was almost impossible not to, with all the Government's propaganda batteries going full blast
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—I was left with the feeling that something was not quite right. Was this really what we were originally supposed to be dying in the trenches for? I looked back at some previous ministerial speeches. I found, as I suspected, that the Government had—on I do not know how many occasions—proclaimed their unremitting hostility to the whole idea of a single currency. A single currency, we were told, was simply not on the agenda. The most we would be prepared to accept was the gradual emergence through market forces of a common currency parallel to the national currencies which might, in the course of time, through market forces, become a currency acceptable throughout the Community. The so-called hard ecu scheme, which your Lordships may remember from the past, was designed to be precisely that.
What, then, happened at Maastricht? We have done what Ministers said we would never do. "We shall use our veto", they said. But they did not. We have signed up for a treaty which sets out explicitly the objective of a single currency. Whatever happened to the poor old hard ecu? Whatever happened to the unshakeable conviction of Ministers that Europe would be lost, the world as we know it destroyed in monetary götterdämmerung, if we allowed a single currency to replace the national currencies in the Community?
Not only did the Government sweep under the carpet their previous rooted objections to a single currency, but by the very act of openly demanding an opt-out arrangement they forfeited any negotiating strength that they might have had on the timetable for the moves towards that single currency. Once we had proclaimed our intention to opt out, none of the others even bothered to listen to us on the timetable; and when a very tight timetable was proposed by the French on the Monday, Britain had nothing to say.
"Ah", I hear some of your Lordships say, "you have got it all wrong. By means of the opt-out arrangement, Britain has reserved the right to stay outside the single currency bloc for ever and the Queen's head will for ever be on the pound coin". Theoretically, of course, that is true. But only theoretically. Consider the situation, say, in the year 2000. We must assume that Germany, France and Benelux, at least, will be in the ecu bloc. What happens if Britain remains outside that bloc, even if we meet the criteria for entry? Do we stay in the exchange rate mechanism, within narrow bands, as the Chancellor recently promised? Is there one single noble Lord in this House who believes that in those circumstances we will have any control at all over our domestic monetary policy, or that it is a tenable situation? Of course not.
The fact is that the market would force us to enter the ecu bloc, assuming the criteria are met, whatever the Government or Parliament might think. It would be intolerable for British industry, let alone the City, to be outside because the transaction costs would be too much of a disadvantage. To coin a phrase, the single currency would be imposed on us. That is the truth.
I turn to the matter of the Social Chapter of the political union treaty which the noble Lord the Lord

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Privy Seal raised. It has been pronounced again as a great victory that Britain has stayed out. But what in reality is so obnoxious about the Social Chapter? The principle is unexceptionable. The Community and its member states,
"shall have as their objectives the promotion of employment, improved living and working conditions, proper social protection, dialogue between management and labour, the developing of human resources with a view to lasting high employment".
What is wrong with that? There is only one specific proposal in the chapter and that is a commitment to equal pay for male and female workers for equal work. I note that the Government have not signed the Social Chapter.
For the life of me, I cannot see why the Conservative Government—or any Conservative Government—could not subscribe to these principles and to this chapter like their Christian Democrat allies in other member states. I should have thought it was something of which Disraeli—I mention him just to name a name—would have approved.
What about the matters that were not fully discussed at Maastricht? Again, I should have thought, looking at it from the outside, that the Government would have made the centrepiece of their campaign the whole issue of the common agricultural policy and the massive fraud that accompanies it. I should also have thought the Government would have brought forward as a major issue the Uruguay Round of the GATT. I should have thought the Government would have insisted on proper accountability for the actions of the European Commission and would not have been satisfied with the weak declaration that has resulted. I should also have thought that the matter of nuclear proliferation in what was the Soviet Union might have managed to climb on to the agenda, given the serious danger that, as a result of the break-up of the Soviet Union, we might all be inadvertently incinerated. But apparently none of these matters were considered by our Government to be nearly as important as getting the word "federal" excised from the draft of the treaty. I know that sounds absurd, but it is the truth.
All this tells us much more about the current state of the Conservative Party than it does about Europe. Your Lordships are entitled to ask why the Government insisted on the single currency opt out and rejected the Social Chapter. Why did they embark on a course which was to create—whatever anyone may say—a two-tier Europe? Above all, why was all this claimed to be—as it was—game, set and match for Britain? The answers to those questions can only be found in the current state of the Conservative Party. To avoid a massive split the Government have been forced into a position with which even they cannot seriously agree.
The German newspaper Die Welt summed it up well last Friday when it stated:
"The British Government shows that, by comparison with other European industrial nations, Great Britain is a developing country in the fields of labour law, labour relations and social security".
That is true. Instead of earning our way by means of a highly educated and productive workforce and a
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properly financed transport and communications system, the Government are sending out the signal that they wish to try to restore our fortunes by a low waged, underprotected pool of labour that is available to any outside investor who wishes to take advantage of it. We are to become the bargain basement of Europe. That is the underlying message of Maastricht.
If that message is one that in the Government's view should give rise to the orgy of self-congratulation in which they are now indulging, so be it. They can take whatever view they like. Our view is that, instead, it is a message which should make them hang their heads in deep and bitter shame. I beg to move.
Moved, as an amendment to the above Motion, to leave out all the words after ("House") and insert ("sees no reason to congratulate Her Majesty's Government on the outcome of the Maastricht Summit.")—(Lord Williams of Elvel)
2.14 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead: My Lords, it is obviously my primary duty to speak to the amendment standing in my name even though I cannot formally move it until the end of the debate. The amendment endeavours to express both in substance and in tone the reaction of my noble friends and myself to what was brought back from Maastricht. We regard that as a good deal better than nothing and are glad there was no rupture. In addition, I paid tribute last week to the Prime Minister's good temper and nerve at the European Council. I retract nothing from that.
The Prime Minister avoided a disaster which threatened to occur at one stage due to the cacophony of conflicting European noises that the Conservative Party made. That is a different matter to presenting the outcome as an almost unprecedented British diplomatic triumph. That was the pre-election note conveniently struck by much of the press last Thursday and Friday. However, by the time Saturday and Sunday arrived a little reflection had led to the surfacing of a little more criticism.
What must be clearly understood is that almost everything Mr. Major achieved at Maastricht was negative and was dedicated to placing Britain not at the heart of Europe but on the edge of it. I treasure the reply of the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, last Wednesday afternoon to the interventions of the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, and myself. The noble Lord the Leader of the House spoke with unusual passion, absolute sincerity and complete incomprehension when we talked of a positive approach to Europe. He could not understand what I had meant by suggesting that the British appeal was negative.
Had we not ensured that Britain had a right to contract out of monetary union? Had we not kept foreign policy, defence and interior justice out of the treaty? Had we not enshrined the principle of subsidiarity? I happen to agree with that principle, but it can hardly be regarded as particularly positive. Had we not subjected the Commission to more severe financial control? However, it is nearly always the Council of Ministers rather than the Commission which has taken extravagant decisions, particularly on

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agricultural policy. Had we not eliminated the word "federal" from the text? Above all, had we not insisted that the Social Chapter must be without us, that the other 11 must be forced outside the treaty in order to implement it, and that there would consequently be great confusion as regards the future position of Community law and the role of the European Court of Justice?
I understand perfectly well there can be legitimate differences of opinion about all these issues. However, I cannot understand how anyone can imagine that the attitude of the British Government on those issues has not been negative and that Mr. Major's triumphs at Maastricht, such as they are, were not negative. It is not possible to imagine such a thing on any normal use of the English language.
There is another way in which this negativism constantly shows itself. Any hint of bad news on European unity, whether that be a suggestion that the Germans are cooling on monetary union or the French are having second thoughts on political union, creates tremors of excitement in Government circles and in most of the press. We flicker towards those rumours with all the unlearning compulsion of moths going towards flames. We do so despite the fact that we have singed our wings on such false rumours of disintegration for more than 35 years. That puts us out of step with almost every other country in Europe, whether inside or outside the Community.
We know the position of the other 11 but what is perhaps even more striking is the desire of almost all those countries that are outside the Community to get in. Austria, Sweden, even Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, the Baltic republics—perhaps soon even the Russian ones, too— want to enter the Community. Yet our desire, our triumph, it is suggested, is to secure as many opt-out clauses as we can.
What should have infused our attitude at Maastricht rather than that constant searching for the exit signs? First, we should base our thinking, and let it be seen that we do so, on a comprehension that in the world in the future the only realistic choice is whether there is to be a balanced tripod of power made up of the United States, Japan and a unified Europe, or whether the United States and Japan will stand alone in the front rank with an unanchored Germany, surrounded by a disorganised number of states on a lower rung, uncomfortably dominant in Europe but not, on its own, a fully effective competitor in the world league. That is the realistic choice for the end of this century and the beginning of the next century.
Secondly, we should appreciate that the widening of the Community, while wholly desirable, makes it more and not less necessary to deepen it. A Community of 20 members, possibly increasing to 25, must have very strong sinews of unity if it is not to lose itself in the incoherence of numbers.
Thirdly, there is the real problem of democratic deficit in the Community which cannot be resolved merely by always fighting a rearguard action on behalf of the Council of Ministers, which is in many ways a very unsatisfactory constitutional hybrid.
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In respect of the fourth point the Government were nearer to striking the right note. We need to bring off the difficult feat in foreign and defence policy of causing no loosening of North Atlantic links while the Americans are willing to stay in Europe while at the same time recognising that, without a cold war and with a westward tilt in the balance of the United States, the Americans will probably not remain until and into the 21st century. We have to prepare for that.
Fifthly, if the common currency comes about—which it now almost certainly will, and we gain nothing by constantly pretending that it probably will not—we have no option but to join it. Everybody at the core of the Government and at the head of business knows that that is so. To condemn ourselves to semi-detachment in the next formative five and a half years, believing that we are keeping open an option which does not exist, in those circumstances is pure perversity.
If those views had infused our approach to Maastricht I believe that other issues, including the Social Chapter, could have been dealt with more satisfactorily. I do not want to see excessive rigidities imposed on the British economy, but the Government's handling of the issue has been an extraordinary story. A great deal of what we would have committed ourselves to had been ratified by previous Conservative governments, starting with the Macmillan Government's signature of the Social Charter of the Council of Europe even before we applied to join the Community, continuing with what the Heath Government signed in 1972 at the time of the signature of the Treaty of Rome, and what the Thatcher Government accepted in 1986 with the Single European Act leading on to 1992.
The Government made a short term but a determined effort, which had echoes in the speech of the noble Lord the Leader of the House, to pretend that the Maastricht Social Chapter would have undone much of the trade union legislation of the 1980s. That has been shown to be untrue and was admitted to be untrue by the Secretary of State for Employment. The truth is that, for internal party reasons, the Government were determined to bring back from Maastricht a head on a charger. The Social Charter was chosen to be that head. At first it was pretended that it was a much more important head than it was, but at least it was a head. That is the gravamen of why it is impossible to give more than one small cheer for Maastricht. What the Government have brought back is not a map for Britain's future but a poultice for the Conservative Party.
In probably the most famous polemical index entry ever penned—for indexes are not normally places for polemics —Churchill wrote in The Gathering Storm:
"Baldwin, Stanley, confesses to putting party before country, p. 615".
I am not sure that that was entirely fair to Baldwin but it was sufficiently close to the truth to be devastatingly damaging. I hope that the Prime Minister will not go further down a path which would make such a reference to "Major, John" possible in the future.
2.25 p.m.
Lord Harris of High Cross: My Lords, I regret to say that nothing I have heard in the three eloquent opening speeches alters my Cross Bench view that it is easier to vote against the amendments than to support the Government's claim to have secured all their negotiating objectives.
I ungrudgingly congratulate the Prime Minister on a doughty fight for damage limitation in the teeth of a threatened mugging, if not a gang rape. However, even without seeing the final details, it is quite clear that further damage has been suffered from both the political and monetary treaties.
I shall stick to the monetary principles which I best understand. I do not want to dwell on the folly of monetary union, which, in company with other leading students, I regard as unnecessary, undesirable, uncertain of outcome and unlikely to be established. The latest verdict delivered by Harvard professor Martin Feldstein, President of the National Bureau of Economic Research, was that:
"An artificially contrived European Monetary Union would almost certainly increase the average level of unemployment over time".
Turning to the revised treaty on political union, it is plain that most extensions of what is called the Commission's competence—which I prefer to call the Commission's incompetence—fly in the face of the economic requirements of a single market. Free trade calls for the elimination of subsidies and the removal of restrictions, not the imposition of fresh regulations disguised as harmonisation or, most deviously, as the "social dimension". My overriding concern continues to be that extensive politicisation will weaken the single market, which for me is the jewel in the European crown. The Social Charter may have been fought off for the moment but it will return again and again to haunt us.
I believe that the Prime Minister deserves special congratulations for withstanding a good deal of bullying and bluster from Monsieur Delors and Herr Kohl. Like union-programmed parrots, they keep repeating a wholly bogus claim. They say that, since the single market gives capitalists the benefit of increased efficiency, it is only fair to give employees the protection of the Social Charter. There is nothing in that. How can producers alone be said to benefit from the enlarged market when keener competition will compel them to minimise costs and prices or go out of business? The logic of free trade is not to make life easier for producers, whether capitalists or workers. Rather, free trade compels producers to serve the wider interest of consumers. And who are the consumers that benefit? Why, none other than the great body of workers and their families. I am tempted to add, "QED".
The second argument for the Social Charter is that minimum wages and uniform conditions of work are necessary for what is called a "level playing field". There is nothing in it. The big idea is to prevent what union spokesmen call "social dumping", which simply means competition from lower cost production.
Any analysis of international trade must start from differences in comparative costs of production
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between countries in differing locations, with differing natural or acquired endowments, and at differing stages of development. Wherever labour is abundant in relation to capital or raw materials, it will command a lower wage. The boon of a dynamic free market is that it progressively increases demand for cheap labour, thereby reducing its comparative abundance and raising its market price.
Nor can all that be dismissed as mere theory or, worse still, shopkeeper economics. History confirms the benevolence of competition in action. I recall trade union leaders in my youth denouncing "unfair" competition from Hong Kong and Japanese workers who were said to be paid in handfuls of rice. The predictable socialist clamour was for protection to prevent low-wage foreign labour from undercutting our civilised standards. As your Lordships may have noticed, without any nonsense about social charters but through the magic of imperfect international trade, wages and working conditions in Hong Kong, Japan and other Asian oases of private enterprise have now caught up or overtaken those in many European countries.
That experience leads on to the third spurious argument for a European Social Charter. It is surely transparent special pleading for trade union leaders and their Labour apologists to claim that if Germany can prosper so wondrously with high social protection, it cannot be bad for the rest of us. There is nothing in that. It is a vulgar error much practised by a reincarnated Monsieur Kinnock in another place. It puts the cart of bigger benefits before the workhorse of higher production. By an extension of such logic, sufficient cosseting of African labourers would enable them all to drive around in Daimlers.
Even today's occupants of the Liberal Democrat Benches might agree that the marvellous spread of prosperity since the war has come from opening up national markets to the competition of international trade and investment. Why have China, India, Africa, the former USSR and much of South America lagged behind? They lagged behind largely because their myopic leaders pursued short-term, national protectionism inspired by the same narrow, collectivist cult that now obsesses the ruling political elite in Europe.
In conclusion, we should ponder deeply what kind of madness impels people in Brussels who prattle earnestly in nine languages about subsidiarity, even to contemplate keeping our morning paperboys tucked up in bed at the edict of the Brussels bureaucrats. How can politicians, who choose to work 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week, have the gall to try enforcing on their constituents a maximum 48-hour week? I am prompted to say that it would be much better for the rest of us if politicians throughout Europe were restricted to a 48-hour month. Is it not a precious part of the free society that all of us should choose for ourselves the mix of income and leisure that we prefer?
Whatever our doubts on the Maastricht compromise, let us at least vote down these shady amendments by Europhiliacs who would barter even more of our precious personal freedoms for a place at the Napoleonic court of that dreadful, dreaming, dotty Jacques Delors.
2.34 p.m.
Lord Young of Graffham: My Lords, I must congratulate the Government on the outcome of the Maastricht negotiations. I do not wish to deal with all aspects of the final agreement this afternoon, but I should like to concentrate on two items, one briefly and the other in more detail. At this time I must offer an apology that, although I shall hear almost the entire debate, I may not be able to stay for the final summing-up speeches.
It is a matter of history that we are now in the exchange rate mechanism. I fear that I lost count of the number of times that I came down to your Lordships' House to say that we would enter when the time was right. Well, one fine day that time arrived. But was it then right? This is not a simple matter to judge, and it takes time to measure the consequences. For example, have the results of our entry been that interest rates have been held too high and the recovery delayed, or the alternative—is our great reduction in inflation a direct result of the new system? Instead of being given time to assess the outcome, we were rushed by our partners headlong into a new, untried system of a single currency. That was a vast experiment across an entire continent and the Prime Minister has saved us from all that. I look forward with great interest to see just how many of our neighbours and partners in the Community qualify in 1997, or whether there will even be two countries ready, able and willing to start in 1999. A healthy dose of scepticism is in order when dealing with matters that go to the very heart of our economic existence. It may well be that we shall join one day; but, if we do, we shall know by then that it works.
However, the real disaster averted at Maastricht was the Social Chapter. I was afforded the privilege of serving in the Government during the last decade, part of that time as chairman of the Manpower Services Commission and in the Department of Employment. My job, day after day, was concerned with the evil of unemployment and the need to create jobs. Part of my task was then to defeat what was known in those days as the Social Charter. We did that, and then it re-emerged into the light of day in the new Social Chapter.
There is none in Europe to challenge our credentials as good Europeans. Of the 18 directives in the social field, Germany and ourselves alone have implemented every single one. My noble friend referred to the social action programme where 19 of the 33 measures published have been agreed or adopted by the council or the Commission with our support. Those measures cover health and safety, freedom of movement, equal opportunities, training and employment law.
What was it that we objected to? It was a maximum 35-hour basic working week, not even the 48-hour week. What would that have done for our productivity? It would have introduced restrictions on an employer's right to recruit the best qualified person. Why? Workers' representatives would be imposed—yes, my Lords, imposed—on company boards, and works councils on an EC model would be imposed on us all. There would be new trade union
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powers to represent individual workers. It is little wonder that those noble Lords opposite so wanted that chapter included. We would be back in the 1970s when many said that this country was no longer governable.
Finally, in many ways even more serious would have been restrictions on part-time employment which would affect over 5 million jobs in this country. It is not simply by accident that unemployment is a European disease. It is not by chance that France—I shall give but one example—has employment protection for part-time workers and at the same time the lowest proportion of part-time jobs or that we, on the other hand, who do not have that so-called protection, have the highest proportion of part-time jobs.
It was the president of the Commission who, in a well-publicised remark, gave the game away when he complained that all inward investment in Europe would go to the United Kingdom if we refused to sign the Social Chapter. Let us examine just for a moment what that remark means and what it says to each and every one of us about the prevailing attitude in the Commission. To say that we achieve level playing fields in Europe by adopting the highest burden of any member displays an insularity in the heart of the Community that is frightening and bodes ill for our economic future. Does Europe as a whole have a God-given right to enjoy our comparative affluence in this world? No, my Lords. We have to earn it. Our forefathers did so, and we must ensure that our children still can. If Europe cannot be competitive with the rest of the world, its relative standard of living will fall. It is as simple as that.
Perhaps I may give some examples. We use a firm of management consultants in this country. It has a branch in Sweden. Because of excessive social costs, its hourly charges in Sweden are 25 per cent, higher than they are in this country on the same basic salary and overhead costs. In the present conditions, do industry and commerce need that extra burden? Thanks to our Prime Minister, we shall not have it. I believe that a vote of thanks should go from all those employees whose jobs are more secure today than they otherwise would have been.
During my time at the DTI, we were fortunate to attract three major Japanese car manufacturers to these shores. That alone will radically transform our balance of payments before the end of the decade; for instead of importing over a million cars a year, by then we shall be exporting half a million. We persuaded Nissan to double its production, and it was agreed that both Toyota and Honda should establish both an assembly and an engine plant. I know full well the reasons that attracted them to our shores. President Delors was quite right; the excessive regulations and, in the end, the uneconomic burdens in Continental Europe made them choose us. It would be a grave breach of faith if we subsequently imposed those unnecessary costs in the name of an outdated socialism. Would we continue to export cars to Japan? I rather doubt it.
My time is up. I agree with those who accuse us of creating a two-speed Europe. I give thanks to the

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Prime Minister and to his colleagues that we shall be in the fast lane—and long may we stay there! I say to the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, that I shall be proud to be part of the developing country. My fear is that the rest of Europe may not be developing at all.
2.44 p.m.
Lord Murray of Epping Forest: My Lords, opting out of a difficult situation is not necessarily disreputable or to be condemned in all circumstances. There are times when it makes sense to reserve one's opposition; for example, if the future is unclear or if one is not sure of winning support for a particular policy from those you represent. Both those elements were present in the Government's decision to opt out of the EMU and the European currency. They knew that they could not unite their members behind them.
Many people have been in that position. But Maastricht is hardly something for which one can claim a great victory. Whether it is a tragedy will be shown further down the line as events shape the new Europe. It is not a victory and not a tragedy. It bears all the characteristics of a good old-fashioned fudge.
On the other hand, the decision to opt out of the development of social policy is a different matter. That was a decision of principle. I have reservations about the social charter. I certainly do not see it as solving all our industrial relations or social problems. So far as concerns pay, I take it that the best place to settle pay and conditions is as near as possible to the point of production through collective bargaining at plant level. But that is not always possible.
There is a place for national legislation—here I part company with the noble Lord, Lord Harris—to generalise good practices and to stop unscrupulous employers from competing unfairly by low pay and bad conditions. I suspect that I shall have on my side many noble Lords opposite and certainly the noble Lords on this side of the House. There is a case for action at an international level to secure fair competition and what has been rather lightly dismissed as a level playing field—a concept to which the Government have paid lip service but which is held in some regard by the nations of Europe. There is a need for limited international action.
That is why employers from nine countries in the economic and social committee voted for the social charter whereas UK employers—with a couple of Portuguese employers and Spanish employers—were the only ones to vote against it. What company we keep these days! I have no doubt that German employers and the German Government are averse to the broad sweep of their social policies being determined in Brussels. So am I. But they supported, and support, the social charter. So why is Britain the odd man out?
The arguments have been rehearsed in this Chamber this afternoon. They are at best ambivalent and at worst contradictory. We have heard both arguments in the course of the debates during the past week. The first is that the UK is superior to most of Europe and let us stay that way. The noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal advanced that argument this
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afternoon. The second argument, which has also been heard this afternoon, is that the UK has a competitive cost advantage, so do not jeopardise it.
When we speak of Britain being in the lead obviously we cannot mean that pay is higher, nor indeed that the legal provisions are better. We have only to look at basic information given to work people at times when their companies are being taken over; at the rights of disabled workers and the rights of women workers; at child care provision, which is the lowest in the EC; at comparative redundancy provisions; and at protection against unfair dismissal. In all those respects we are below the average in Europe.
Where the UK is ahead of the field there is the imposition of legal limits on the right of association which has been condemned within the International Labour Organisation. Certainly we are well behind in excluding work people from real influence over the decisions made by their companies. I shall return to that point later.
We come to the core of the Government's belief; namely, that Britain's competitiveness can best be guaranteed by low pay. That crudely is where they stand. If low pay determines the wealth of a nation, Detroit would be a desert and Delhi a paradise. If we compare ourselves with Germany, on the one hand, where unit labour costs are lower but wages are much higher, or with Greece, on the other, which has half our rate of pay but where unit labour costs are higher, it underlines the nonsense of relying upon low wages.
Of course better performance is necessary if we are to improve pay and social conditions. We need more and better training. I should have been happier had the noble Lord, Lord Young, spoken about the need for that. We need more and better investment, and more and better involvement of work people through their trade unions in accepting their responsibilities in industry. That is the answer to industrial disputes. Give people responsibility and they will tend to act responsibly.
There are certainly problems in moving from a low pay, low productivity, economy to a high pay, high productivity, one. But the solution to those problems will most certainly not be found in opting out of the social partnership approach of our fellow EC members. Nor, in the medium run, will our fellow EC members tolerate that Britain alone should be allowed to opt out of its obligations to compete on the basis of fair employment practices.
2.49 p.m.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, I shall not detain your Lordships for long when so many wish to participate. On these Benches we agree that the Prime Minister achieved his objectives. Our reservation is a simple one; namely, that the objectives that he set himself were inappropriate for this country and inappropriate for a proper development of the European Community of which we are members.
What Maastricht demonstrated for all to see was the absence of vision and the absence of leadership shown by this country. That absence of vision and leadership, so disappointing and in some respects so humiliating, arose from the decision of the

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Government to appease their Euro-sceptics. and led to the negative posture to which my noble friend Lord Jenkins of Hillhead referred. The culmination was what I regard as the disastrous tactic of opting out.
The result has been gravely to diminish the influence of this country in the development of the Community. The great victory announced by the British press has not been reflected or noticed on the Continent, as noble Lords will be aware, although if one reads the Murdoch press one would not believe that there was an opinion on the Continent. However, if one examines the opinion and the Continental response to Maastricht, it was not so much that the United Kingdom was isolated but that it was ignored. It played no part in the constructive process of what was going on. That will continue until we change our attitude to the venture to which we are committed.
We cannot continue in this rather ignominious, negative position, not least because our presidency is shortly to come up and because the European Community itself is on the edge of transformation. From the Six of the past, the Twelve of today will become a much larger body in the next decade. It is essential in our own interests, as well as in the interests of the Community, that this country contributes more positively to those developments and to the process of enlargement than we have done in the past. It is time that we considered matters afresh and gave a lead to our colleagues on the Continent in the development of the institutional structure of the Community and of the criteria of membership which should be applied to those joining. We should be trying to assess the digestive capacity of the Community to absorb new entrants. Those are the issues that face us rather than the pettifogging negative which marked our posture at Maastricht.
A set of institutional arrangements devised for six countries—largely consensual and where voting hardly mattered—is put under great strain when there are 12 When there are 15 or more the arrangements will be totally unmanageable. Unanimity on legislation where there are 17 or more members means, virtually speaking, no legislation. If we are to play our part in this crucial development, which will occur during our presidency, we must play the European game. You do not play it by opting out. One would have thought that we might have learnt that lesson by now.
It has been said on occasions that one definition which distinguishes human beings from animals is that human beings learn from other people's experience. It appears that this country does not even learn from its own experience. We opted out of Messina, and we opted out of the Treaty of Rome. The common agricultural policy was devised in our absence. We opted out of the European exchange rate mechanism. And at Maastricht we repeated the folly. It is folly, my Lords. It is folly in connection with monetary union; and it is folly in connection with the Social Charter.
I do not propose to dwell at length on the Social Charter or its contents. It is perfectly legitimate to disagree with some of its items or proposals. But does one improve it by not being there, by allowing decisions to be taken by the very people of whom one
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disapproves, and by failing to support those who support one? Is it not better to fight from within, rather than to observe from without and be presented with a fait accompli which, if the past is any guide to the future, we shall in due course accept? That has happened not once, but again and again, in our relationship with the European Community. We said that it would not work; and it did work. We said that we would not play; and others did play. We were finally forced to accept rules made by others in our absence in which our interests naturally were not taken into account.
That is the lesson which we might have learnt. It is the lesson that we have not learnt. That is why we cannot congratulate the Prime Minister.
2.55 p.m.
Lord Selsdon: My Lords, I do not know why I detect an aura of duplicity and nervousness among members of the parties on the Benches opposite. I wonder whether that is because—with the exception of the Liberal Benches—they have arrived on the European scene rather late. I arrived many years ago when my noble friend Lord Jellicoe appointed me to serve on a committee which was to discuss Conservative strategy and policy for Europe. That was long ago; I forget how many years. I went to committee meetings and made the mistake of once speaking rather forcefully and giving my views. I was told politely, "Look, old chap, you're on this committee because the European racket will take a long time to get off the ground. We need someone who will be alive at the time when it comes to fruition".
I was then given the useless task of trying to promote the EC in Europe: the Conservative group for Europe endeavouring to raise money for a hopeless cause. With our Liberal friends we co-operated very well; but with members of the Labour Party there was nothing but cold water and distress. As we know, they refused to send a delegation to the European Parliament. They said that there was no future in Europe. Now, having done too little too late, they are trying to do too much too soon in some form of amazing technicolour dreamcoat. Perhaps I may quote from Revelations. It is almost as though:
"Because thou art … neither hot nor cold I will spue thee out of my mouth".
The Conservative Party has been committed to Europe for many years. The Government have been committed to Europe for many years. We have been in the European Community for many years. There are a few points of difference but that is understandable if one considers the relevant history and geography.
Industry and commerce do not want the Social Chapter or Social Charter. It is not in their interests. For governments to seek to impose it upon them would be disastrous. If we discuss EMU and convergence there are a few geographical problems that we have not necessarily considered. With the exception of Northern Ireland we are the only member of the EC which has no land frontier with other nations. It is logical that those who have two land boundaries—or in some cases three—are more eager for common currencies than we are. The noble Lord,

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Lord Williams of Elvel, said that there is no future for the hard ecu which I support. However, before very long there may be so few hard currencies in the world with which to trade that someone will have to devise new mechanisms.
It is not on the monetary side of the Social Chapter to which I wish to address my remarks but on the political and trade fronts. We are committed to Europe. Attacks have been made against us that we are not playing our full part. Who are "we"? Is it Parliament? In that case I agree that until recently one of the major parties has not given a commitment to Europe. Is it business, trade or commerce? They have been, and are, fully committed and already regard many of those markets as a home market.
When we launched the strategy to support the referendum the phrase used was, "Britain in Europe. It's our business to be there". The businessmen assumed that logic would take place and that our trade would shift, as it has done. We are now at an interesting time; almost a generation has gone by since we began our planning. We have been in the Community for a long time. There is a real chance to take initiatives rather than to look back at the past.
When we speak of the future, not of the European Community but of Europe itself, I believe that in foreign affairs and diplomacy this country can and does lead Europe. Our own Prime Minister has fulfilled a remarkable role in recent weeks. Perhaps we may recall the late John Arlott, who was much respected and revered, by saying that it was undoubtedly a winning innings, backed by a safe pair of hands in Douglas Hurd. We are competent to lead Europe in political matters, whether to the west, the east or to the north. Backed up behind that, we find that in the defence field alone we are probably pre-eminent above all our European neighbours.
Europe is not about economics or geography; it is about people who could be united or who could tear themselves apart. If the Tartars or the Slays were to look at their own history, or if Members of your Lordships' House were to look at their own ancestry, they would see the dangers of the past and the dangers that could arise in the future. It is not for us but for our successors that we must plan, lead and take initiatives in the future.
This morning I had the privilege of attending a service in Westminster Abbey and of sponsoring a lunch in this House for "Children of Courage". A group of Rumanian orphans wanted to see the abbey but were not allowed in. Then the Dean said to them, "You come in, you are children. Come and join our service". Many children and many nations have been torn apart and others may be torn apart in the future. We have a great role to play. I am sorry that the debate should be so extended and I wish your Lordships a happy Christmas.
3.1 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, I am afraid that I have some sad news for the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon. His notion of a Britain leading Europe may be shared by Members on his Benches but it is not
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widespread in Europe. Even in this country many people take the view that the role played by Mr. Major was not the kind of "Gung-Ho" business with which he was greeted when he returned. It was in fact a trailing role, or a failure to trail, rather than a leading role.
One of the better summaries of the proceedings at Maastricht was contained, oddly enough, in the Financial Times. An article written by Mr. David Buchan concluded with these words:
"While it may be the biggest step in Community integration in 34 years, the Maastricht treaty will take some selling, even to the most hardened of European enthusiasts".
Noble Lords on the Liberal Benches have already demonstrated that to be the case as far as they are concerned. I am bound to say that if it is hard to sell the treaty to them it must be even more difficult to sell it to a hardened old anti-marketeer such as me. Nevertheless, one must realise that circumstances have changed since, in another place—sometimes faced with a nine-line Whip—we went into the Lobbies and discovered ourselves as one-tenth of each party —at that time that counted as one Liberal, if I remember correctly—and voted against the common market as such.
At that time alternatives were available. When one surveys the scene today one is bound to ask the question: where are the available alternatives? Is going it alone really possible in the world in which we live today? One might even be driven to consider the possibility suggested by the noble Viscount, Lord Tonypandy, that we might become the 51st state of the United States of America. That might be a better alternative to a hardened old anti-marketeer than becoming involved in something like Europe. Even that possibility may exist. Indeed, as has been pointed out, this country is nearer to New York than is Honolulu.
However, if that were not a possibility there were others. I was an EFTA enthusiast, but now its countries are already on their way to agreeing the Maastricht treaty, so EFTA has gone. There was also the Commonwealth, but that is now less of an economic unit than it ever was. I hope that it will always remain a unit in the sense of bringing together countries of different nationalities, colours and creeds. The Commonwealth has a role to play. However, it is not possible to say that it has a role to play of the kind that is now being attacked in Europe.
One must therefore ask oneself what we do in these circumstances. Do we face the fact that the dream of a different, competitive organisation outside the EC is a possibility, or must we go along reluctantly and carefully into an agreement that we do not like? I have never been fond of the Treaty of Rome; as a matter of fact, I do not like it one little bit. At the time it appeared to me to be a recipe for prolonging capitalism beyond its natural life, but the situation has turned out to be the opposite, has it not? Therefore, we must face the condition that exists today rather than the condition that we might wish to be in.
In those circumstances, do we totter along carefully and gently saying, "Well, let us see whether we can pitch a few holes in it"? To some extent that is the role of the Government. In particular, it is the role that

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they have played in refusing to adopt one of the few aspects of the treaty which will engage most Members on this side of the House; that is, the Social Chapter. It is that which suggests to me that the Government have been altogether wrong-headed.
I come to the conclusion that in international relations it is necessary to be enthusiastic. Half-heartedness is not on. If the situation is, as I believe it to be, that in today's circumstances no alternative role is available to us, if we go in to Europe we should do so wholeheartedly. That is where the Government have failed.
That brings me dangerously close to supporting the amendment tabled by members of my own Front Bench. I hope that they will not take that as a precedent. However, I am bound to say that on this occasion, by different courses, we have reached the same conclusion; that we must say to the Government that they have been insufficiently enthusiastic. If we want to join and to make the new organisation in Europe more in accord with our own wishes we must do so enthusiastically, from the inside. For that reason I find myself in total support of the amendment tabled by my noble friends on the Front Bench.
3.8 p.m.
Baroness Elles: My Lords, I must confess that I warmly welcome some of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney. I now understand that he is a most convinced European marketeer. In fact, he might come under the heading of a Europhiliac, a term used earlier in the debate. We have been part of Europe for more than 20 years and would have been grateful for the noble Lord's support during that time. However, converts are always welcome.
I endorse the Motion proposed by my noble friend Lord Waddington congratulating the Prime Minister. I congratulate too the Foreign Secretary, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and all the civil servants who have worked so hard during the past months in order to obtain a satisfactory agreement. We have gone through the democratic process of consultation and negotiation. The triumph has not been in the negotiation but in Britain and the 11 other countries reaching a satisfactory agreement at Maastricht. It will direct the future of the whole European Community. It is not only a victory for Britain but for the other 11 member states. The comments of the noble Lords, Lord Williams of Elvel and Lord Bonham-Carter, that we were outside and not totally taking part contradict everything that I have read and heard about events at the Maastricht Summit and those which occurred previously. Every time I travelled to Brussels, my fellow passengers included civil servants, government officials and Ministers going there to speak for Britain and Europe. It is nonsense to say that we were outside the negotiations: we were at the heart of them.
A great tribute was paid to my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in an extremely federalist report published daily which stated that his diplomatic skills and political ability saved the situation for Britain and enabled the conclusion of a satisfactory
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agreement. At the end of the negotiations my right honourable friend was respected, admired and—I use an ordinary word—liked by all the people of the 12 member states with whom he worked. That is a triumph worth recording. It will be the basis on which the future negotiations and the process of the EC take place.
Westminster benefited from an open debate and discussion in another place on 20th and 21st November when my right honourable friend set out his objectives as regards the objections to the draft treaty. Interestingly, we hear now that in a number of other countries there is considerable disquiet and anxiety because they did not have such discussions. They are suddenly discovering what their Ministers and governments signed on their behalf without any consultation. We must take that into account when noble Lords opposite say that we have been outside the discussions. Not only have we been part of the discussions but the people of this country were consulted before the Government took part in the negotiations.
Over and over again one reads in the French, German and Italian press that there have not been consultations. I believe that 97 per cent. do not wish the D-mark to turn into the ecu and over 50 per cent. of the French do not want a federal future for Europe. Therefore, we can be doubly grateful to our Prime Minister because he had the courage—indeed, the guts—to discuss in Parliament his objectives and to gain the endorsement of the British people.
The Opposition Front Bench has spoken about opting out but equally we are opting in to a single currency. We have an opportunity when the time comes to decide whether or not it is right to adopt a single currency. We are included in those discussions; we are not excluded, as some noble Lords like to imply.
Thanks to the British Government, there was insistence on criteria for convergence so that member states which join will know that they are economically and financially able to bear the strains and difficulties if they decide to adopt a single currency. It is typical that many European bankers are now extremely anxious about the way in which the treaty has been set out in regard to EMU. I have heard that because of the general federal declarations of the Italians in European politics, Italian Ministers are now desperate because Italy is one country which will almost certainly not be in a position to join a single currency in 1999. It has said already that it will take at least two parliaments to reduce its public deficit. In Italian terms, that is 10 years. Therefore, let us be thankful to the British Government not only for saving our position but also that of other member states.
Should the Labour Party by any extraordinary chance come into government at the next general election, are its members prepared or do they intend to renegotiate what that party calls opting out? The Opposition seem keen to opt in and to inflict a single currency on the UK without any consideration of whether or not the country is ready for it. If the Labour Party does not propose to renegotiate, should it form the next government, is it proposing to table

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draft legislation before Parliament supporting the present text of Maastricht; that is, supporting the fact that there is an opt-out clause or an opt-in clause, however one likes to regard it, in the treaty? Of course, that will be the task if Labour is in government.
Noble Lords have referred to the Social Chapter. I endorse totally what my noble friend Lord Young of Graffham said. However, there is one further question which I should like to ask the Labour Party. Would it have supported a federal goal? It has attacked my right honourable friend the Prime Minister saying that he fought against the use of that term. Would it have supported it? We need to know.
Let us stop this party bickering and recognise that the European Community, as the world's largest trading bloc, has immense influence that it can bring to bear on the future not only of our Continent but of the world. It has a duty to influence the future of that world. Our debate today has so far consisted of an attack on my party. It has been said that it is divided. I suspect that this side of the House will show that it is totally united both behind the Motion of my noble friend Lord Waddington and my right honourable friend the Prime Minister.
3.15 p.m
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, it is because the Conservative Party has the views which have just been expressed by the noble Baroness, for whom I have a great deal of respect as a former Member of the European Parliament, that the Christian Democrats will have nothing to do with it. It is absolutely right in that regard.
However, the representations by the Government and their sycophantic supporters in the press about what resulted from Maastricht—in particular on the issues of the common currency and the Social Chapter—have been garbled and inadequate where they have not been simply false. They have sought to foster an illusion of Britain's inviolate sovereignty while evincing no vision, as the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, said, of the role that Britain could positively assume in moulding the new Community. They have an invincible incomprehension—almost a Van Gogh's ear—about appreciating what the Community really stands for. They have preferred, as they did under the previous Prime Minister, to sterilise real progress, albeit less stridently. That Mrs. Thatcher should have said that the results at Maastricht had "thrilled" her, says it all.
Conservative efforts to avert or at least to delay an EC commitment to a single currency have failed despite the risible protocol to the treaty. Of course it is sheer fantasy to imagine that Britain could be left out of those developments. However, the price of the Government's negotiating stance could, if they remain in office—which seems unlikely—be excessive. Notwithstanding what the noble Baroness has just said, they will have lost all bargaining leverage as regards the shaping of the timetable for monetary union and its institutions. They will certainly have forgone the possibility of the City of London as the site for the central bank.
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As regards the Social Chapter, this Government are replete with charters about this, that and everything but never the Social Charter. Their plan was to veto any extension of social policy in the Community. Their ideological posturing has simply led to the other members states creating their own framework of social policy. They refuse to see those issues in the crude and exaggerated terms perceived by this Government. A low-wage, poorly skilled and declining manufacturing base is rejected as a design for an efficient, competitive and exemplary Community. Those other member states have no appetite for modelling themselves on Britain, which has the highest proportion of low-paid workers—including many women and young persons —in the Community. They see the Community as a true community based not only on refining markets but also on improving the quality of life. That is what the social dimension and the environmental parts of the treaty are all about.
How valid are the Government's claims about Maastricht? I remind the Leader of the House that the original treaty sets out the objective of the Community as harmonising the standard of living for workers and it envisages legal or administrative action to secure that goal. Perhaps the noble Lord will look at Article 117 of the treaty.
The Commission is invested by Article 118 with the duty to promote close co-operation between member states in, among other things, matters relating to employment, labour law and working conditions, social security and the right of association and collective bargaining between employers and workers. That has been completely ignored by the Leader of the House.
There is also a duty on the Commission to promote dialogue between both sides of industry, and that appears in Article 118B of the Single European Act. The principle of equal pay for equal work is contained in the original treaty. The articles are not and never were confined to health and safety at work, as the Government constantly pretend. The Tories signed up to all that in 1972 and, to give him credit, the Prime Minister of the day has never shirked that issue. But they also signed up in 1986 for the Single European Act. That is a true case of selective amnesia.
Maastricht will see the further development of all those ideas and Britain cannot remain unaffected by those issues. We should not be excluded from the deliberations. I do not believe that the noble Baroness is right in the optimistic and rosy view she takes in that regard. We cannot say on the one hand that we will have nothing to do with the Social Charter and then expect to be taken into the counsels of the rest of the member states. Multi-national enterprises will operate right across the Community. I therefore do not believe that it can be right that employees should be denied the opportunity to bargain over wages and conditions on the entire European stage. My last point in that respect is that the Government have, by adopting their extraordinary position on the Social Chapter, rendered the United Kingdom vulnerable to attack under European Community competition law for providing illicit state aids.

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I want to say something in regard to law enforcement; the Government often talk of law and order. I agree that no Community can operate properly without respect for the law. But, in the Community context, what do the Government say about it? In his Statement to the House of Commons on 11th December the Prime Minister said,
"The Commission has often brought forward proposals using a dubious legal base, and the Council has found it difficult to halt that practice in the European Court".—[Official Report, Commons, 11/12/91; col. 861.]
In other words, the court did not find the Commission's choice of legal base to be dubious. It found against the Government; the Government lost. When the Government have broken European Community law, particularly environmental law, they assert that others do the same. That is not a respectable legal argument. The Government broke community directives on bathing and drinking waters, on the protection of precious habitats and almost certainly on environmental impact assessment. That is perhaps not surprising from a Government that boasts a present Home Secretary who has been condemned by the courts for being in contempt.
The Government say that they are the prime movers in conferring on the European Court of Justice the power to fine aberrant member states. However, they have only done that to avert the much more radical measures which are clearly needed to uphold the law, particularly environmental law.
3.23 p.m.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, if the Prime Minister is to be congratulated on anything, it is on his good humour persistence and skill in achieving a result in Maastricht which was capable for the time being of substantially reconciling the profound differences within his own party. Those differences are between those who genuinely look forward to an "ever-closer union" of European states and those who do not conceal their detestation of the whole idea. Let us look for a moment at the chief features of this remarkable achievement.
First, the successful omission from the treaty of the word "federal". But that was a meaningless triumph. I suggest we would have done better to let it stand, at the same time explaining that, in our view at least and giving our reasons, it did not imply the emergence of anything like the United States of America and the transformation of Great Britain into the equivalent of New York or Pennsylvania.
Next, the recognition of our right to "opt-out" of an eventual monetary union. However, it seems that by 1996, (unless I am wrong) only those who achieve the necessary degree of "convergence" of their economies—and they will no doubt be a majority of the Eleven—will necessarily go along with the idea in the event. If, as is devoutly to be hoped, we qualify on "convergence", it would surely be madness for us not to go along also.
It is true that no Parliament can bind its successor; but what prevented us from saying that we accept the present plan for gradually achieving monetary union by the end of the century, and that we will do our best to see that one day it comes about? By definitely
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opting-out we give the impression, as the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, has just said, that we are opposed to the whole conception. We therefore prejudice, when it comes to the point, as it surely will, the selection of London as the site of some sort of European Central Bank or Federal Reserve.
Finally, we had the equivalent of an opt-out of the whole Social Chapter, by agreeing that it should not form part of the treaty and that all who wished to do so should in some way work together to see that something eventually comes of it. That is a curious and legally doubtful arrangement. As is known we accept around three-quarters of the Social Charter but find difficulty in accepting a few other clauses, notably that regarding employment.
However, our attitude on that admittedly rather vital matter may change, more especially if the recession continues and we come to see more virtue in the German labour policy, which incidentally, we persuaded them to adopt in the years following the war. It would have been wiser therefore to have signed the Social Chapter but attached a note to the effect that we could not guarantee that some future British Parliament would necessarily accept all the eventual emerging legislation
Generally speaking, we must all surely admit that recent events have changed all the prospects for European union—perhaps for the better, perhaps for the worse. We cannot yet be certain that there may not still emerge some rather sinister power in the East. But assuming that it does not, can we really contemplate without alarm some close association with Western Europe of 15 ex-Soviet (including five or six Moslem) republics? Not even Europe, "from the Atlantic to the Urals"—which could itself scarcely have an identity —but Europe, "from Lisbon to Vladivostock"!
For this century it will, I suggest, suffice for the Twelve to be joined by the five or six EFTA countries, and even that will probably imply a rather different form of association than that which presently exists. For the rest we can certainly welcome some progress in regard to European defence, some increase in the power of the European Parliament, and in certain other matters duly mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel. We can also welcome the general atmosphere which bodes well for the success of the next major conference in a few years' time—the world economic and political situation permitting. But that is about all that can be said for Maastricht. It was certainly not that great advance towards European union that friends of the latter hoped, and its enemies feared, would be accomplished.
3.30 p.m.
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, I am very glad to speak after the noble Lord. I did not hear particularly well what he said, but I look forward to reading what he said tomorrow. He spoke from great and wide experience. My noble friend Lady Elles said that we had not taken enough part in what was happening in Europe. When France was in real difficulties, what did we do?—
Baroness Elles: My Lords, I apologise for intervening, but I said the opposite.
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, very well. When France was in real difficulties it was Winston Churchill who, with Mr. Attlee and Sir Archibald Sinclair, went down to Portsmouth, got into a boat and thereafter offered to make an indissoluble union with France. We did that when it was really necessary. I, and I believe many others, have been confused at the way things have gone. It is strange to me that the problem started with Jean Monnet's interest in dictatorship. He said that that must be stopped. I believe that that is a view which everyone in this Chamber would endorse. We should try to work out what he thought could be done through a large area of unanimity in Europe.
Jean Monnet was a merchant who did a marvellous job of the highest order for this country during the war. Properly and rightly we gave him the highest award that we were able to give in recognition of what he had done. In fairness I must say that he was not a politician. He had not experienced personally democracy as such. Curiously enough, I discovered only yesterday that the book he wrote called Les Etats Unis de L'Europe is not available in the Library either in English or in French: neither is there a copy in the Commons Library in either English or French. Alas, I cannot say I have read what exactly he had in mind.
However, it is clear what he had in mind. There should be the highest degree of unity which can be gained by ourselves. Perhaps I may comment on that. We have had democracy in this country for 700 years. We also have what we call the Commonwealth consisting of 50 countries, all of which, as far as I know, are democractic. Should we not offer to give those who are in charge (I do not know exactly who they are) some advice not only as to the theory but the practice which we have had over centuries in this particular form of government? We should not take it for granted because democracy is a very difficult form of government. It needs experience and men of high quality and I say that willingly to my noble friend the Leader of the House. It is right that we should make that contribution. I am aware that we have done a great deal already in the European Parliament, but we have to try to do more.
We have to go ahead with our share and contribute. Now is the time to make the shape before a united Europe starts. It is no good waiting until everything has taken form. We must make our contribution now when it really counts.
3.32 p.m.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, it has not yet been possible to go through all the documents that have resulted from Maastricht. There are a vast number of pages and clauses. It will take some time before one is able to assimilate the amendments that have been made. I wish to confine myself therefore to two aspects of the treaty which may not be of so much interest to the banking and financial institutions and the large conglomerates of the United Kingdom who
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expect to derive some benefits from what has happened. I wish to dwell on the effects on ordinary people.
As I went through the documents, at page 21 of the summary which was issued, I found the heading "Agriculture". There it says,
"Articles 38 to 47 unchanged".
I am occasionally guilty of being in complete agreement with my own Front Bench. I agree entirely with the observations that fell from the lips of my noble friend Lord Williams of Elvel. Here we had an inter-governmental conference with, presumably, everything to play for; everything on the table. The Treaty of Rome, as amended by the Single European Act, contains Articles 38 to 47 of the treaty on the common agricultural policy, and they survive. Now, once again, we find that, despite the unprecedented opportunity to effect some change in the common agricultural policy, no effort was made at all. It is quite inexcusable that at any inter-governmental conference where such a chance is presented no action is taken.
We are talking now not of the bankers, the financial institutions and the large conglomerates, but of the ordinary people of the United Kingdom. It is common knowledge, on the basis of the Government's own figures, that the CAP is costing every family of four anything between £12.50 and £16 a week extra. That is a burden on all the people of the United Kingdom and it bears particularly heavily on the poorer sections of our community.
In addition, we are all, including the poor, taxpayers. Taxpayers do not merely include, as a matter of convenience, income tax payers; but they also include VAT payers. The country as a whole has to bear an extra £2 billion a year net, after all receipts, by way of contributions, together with Germany, to the European budget. Was it too much to expect the Prime Minister to raise the matter and to seek for some changes on the common agricultural policy to be incorporated into the treaty? I understand that the CAP has very few friends outside the present Minister of Agriculture. It has very few friends even within the Tory party.
Why, at an inter-governmental conference, was this subject not dealt with? I make no imputations. But it is a fact that members of the Government themselves are direct recipients of money under the common agricultural policy by reason of the set-aside provisions. Many instances were given in the Sunday Times a fortnight ago. I repeat that I am not suggesting that that fact had any influence on their judgment. But it might be wise occasionally for such interests to be declared so that we know exactly where we are.
The next point as regards finance relates to fraud. That is intimately concerned with the common agricultural policy. Therefore, I would have expected some changes to be made in the whole function, powers, and financing of the Court of Auditors. In his opening statement the noble Lord said that its powers had been enlarged. I am quite willing to give way to the noble Lord. I have the text of the documents in front of me. Perhaps he will point out where the

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powers have been increased because they have not. One new, innocuous paragraph has been added and the words,
"in the form of special reports"
have been inserted in Article 206 a 4.
The Court of Auditors was instituted in 1977. It is very poorly financed. It should have its own budget and be completely independent of the Commission or anybody else. It should have its budget approved by the Council of Ministers. That is not the position today. Moreover, a situation in which the auditors' annual report has to wait for publication before the Commission replies delays it by six months. That is an intolerable position and should be altered. It would be like a board of directors in the United Kingdom having the right to incorporate in its report and accounts its own observations on the auditor's report. I warned the noble Lord about this a long time ago. The matter ought to have been insisted upon by the United Kingdom as a condition of its support.
Those are two matters only, but they are matters that should be attended to, particularly the finance matter. The Court of Auditors needs double the resources that it has at the moment. The Council of Ministers, with the agreement of the UK, approved a special grant of £30 million to the Commission in order to establish some financial control. That ought to have gone to the Court of Auditors. Those are matters which the Government should have raised and insisted upon but they chose not to do so. I cannot therefore endorse the results of the Maastricht conference.
Lard Waddington: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, surely he would concede that Article 206a is a new article which strengthens the powers of the Court of Auditors.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, I do not so concede. If the noble Lord refers to the article, on page 91, he will find the only new item. It states:
"The Court of Auditors shall provide the Council and the European Parliament with a statement of assurance as to the reliability of the accounts and the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions".
That is the only amendment to Article 206. It confers no new powers.
3.41 p.m.
Baroness O'Cathain: My Lords, it is right that this House should warmly endorse the agreement secured at Maastricht and congratulate the Prime Minister on securing all Her Majesty's Government's negotiating objectives. It would also be right to include in the congratulations, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, the other Ministers and officials. I am afraid that too often we tend to forget the hard, detailed, concentrated work and long hours that such agreements involve.
I am probably not the only member of your Lordships' House who viewed the prospect of Maastricht with concern, foreboding and, indeed, irritation. The first two emotions are acceptable, the third not. But irritation was, I feel, inevitable when we listened to the endless criticisms of what was likely to be the outcome even before the Prime Minister and his
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team had climbed the aircraft steps en route to the Netherlands. We had pages and pages of dire speculation in the newspapers, endless hours of punditry on the TV and radio and, indeed, in both Houses of Parliament. To stronger mortals probably none of this mattered—to me it was depressing. Yet, at the end of the meeting and reading the extensive coverage of the details the following day, I felt moved to thank God that vision, commonsense and co-operation appear to have been restored to the European issue.
In the mid-1950s I spent some time at a school in Brussels; it was a time of amazing hope in Belgium. The outward appearance of Brussels was dingy and drear; the places we went to on school outings—for example, Dunkirk—were more than dingy and drear, they were still littered with bomb sites, broken bridges and depressing decrepitude. Yet the spirit of the mainland Europeans was contagious. They had embraced the idea of the European Coal and Steel Community and were well on the way to the beginning of the wider alliance—the European Economic Community.
To an impressionable teenager, the concept of a Europe where there would be no more Germans killing French, Belgium being occupied and innocent children like Anne Frank hiding in an attic for all that time in Amsterdam, was something that had to be right; it had to work. It was a vision of the future that appealed, and appealed enormously. So much so, I subsequently chose my degree subjects of economics and French with the deliberate target of working for the EEC—it did not happen. I, too, became a victim of the in/out/in débacle of the 1960s and 1970s.
We all know what happened. The vision lost its lustre. At a time like this when congratulations are in order there is no point in stating why the vision lost its lustre nor, indeed, who or what was to blame. Suffice it to say I fear that all of us were in part to blame. I, a hard-working businesswoman, in the course of my career have had what seems like endless years of niggling discussions and negotiations in the Berlaymont and have fallen into the trap of sometimes wishing the European Community had never been dreamt up in the first place. Many is the time I travelled to Brussels not as a visionary but as a hired hand with the objective of making sure that my particular special interest was not going to be done down. I made the age-old mistake of allowing my immersion in the detail to cloud my judgment of the whole.
To me the most exciting result of Maastricht—and I use the word "exciting" advisedly—is that once more the sense of vision has been restored. Whatever the problems in the past we can now play a constructive role in the fashioning of the European Community of the future. This is vitally important at a time when we want to welcome the EFTA countries; when we want to welcome those countries who have so courageously thrown off the communist yoke. All member states have to be flexible, accommodating, and prepared to see the other person's point of view.
The European Community has achieved a great deal for the citizens of the member states but there is

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a great deal still to be done. Reference has been made today to the common agricultural policy. I have already spoken in the House on what matter and I am aware that people are going to try to ameliorate that situation.
Doubtless all the many speakers in today's debate have very specific issues on which they want to comment—causes of concern or just issues of congratulation. Lest it be thought that I am euphoric about the outcome to the extent of not seeing any problems, perhaps I may voice just three points.
First, the spectre of the Social Chapter caused a great deal of grave concern in business, probably not wholly justified but a serious problem nonetheless. Even since Maastricht I have heard that "Brussels"—noble Lords will probably know that "Brussels" is shorthand for the Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers or just "them over there"—is getting the nastier bits of the Social Chapter introduced "through the back door" under the guise of health and safety regulations. All who have responsibility for organisations that employ large numbers of people with the objective of satisfying customer demand are once more likely to be thrown into despair and adopt an anti-EC attitude.
If rules governing working hours come into effect through this back door method, I wonder how my customers will cope with the situation where Slava Rostropovich plays the first two movements of the Elgar cello concerto but as he has just clocked up 48 hours in practice, rehearsal and performances since the beginning of the week, has to hand over for the final movement to Yo-Yo Ma. Or, if Anne-Sophie Mutter plays the first movement of the Beethoven violin concerto and is replaced by Nigel Kennedy for the remainder of the work, what would be the reaction? I fear I would not have too many sold out concerts at the Barbican Hall.
Surely those of us who want to work beyond 48 hours per week —and it must include everyone in this House—should be allowed to do so. That point has already been well made by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross. I am raising the same point not as a matter of detail but to implore those who have the responsibility to negotiate on a continuing basis to use their best offices to ensure that we do not lose one of the major achievements—no pun intended—of Maastricht; namely, a greater understanding of the hopes and needs of each citizen.
My second point is triggered by the use of that word "citizen". I rejoice in the fact that we will all be citizens of Europe while maintaining our separate national identity. But my rejoicing is somewhat reduced by the realisation that there are so many people in the United Kingdom who have chosen to make their home here, who have chosen to bring up their families here and have, in effect, chosen our way of life and lead lives of good law-abiding citizens, paying taxes, yet who are deprived of voting rights. I refer to Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians, among others. My Australian friends feel even more
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isolated now. Is there not something that could be done to eliminate their feelings of being "second-rate"?
My third and final point is that progress on the development of the British role in the European Community will not have been fast enough for some, yet too fast for others. Is it inconceivable that party differences could be consigned to a lower level of importance while we all use the Maastricht agreement as the basis for a going forward together? I thank your Lordships for your attention.
3.50 p.m.
Lord Boardman: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for reminding us briefly of the history of the events leading up to Maastricht, right back to the days when a Community was first a thought in the minds of some Europeans. I join her also in the congratulations which have come from her and from noble Lords on this side of the House to the Prime Minister and his team on the quite splendid job that they have done. It is a splendid job not just for the United Kingdom but, as my noble friend Lady Elles said, one which I believe is for the benefit of Europe as a whole. It has stopped, or checked at any rate, the rush to a federal centralised Europe, which indeed the early draft treaties were leading towards. I do not say that we shall not have a federal Europe in due course or that we may not be part of a European central bank and so on, but that must come about as the result of evolution. We may be involved in creating those kinds of structures and may join them but this should not follow in response to demand or dictation by leaders of other nations or indeed by the president of the Commission. Each had his own purpose for wanting the structure which was first put forward. None of them has been elected on that platform. It is interesting to note that, apart from Denmark and the United Kingdom, none of those leaders seem particularly concerned about consulting their own electorate or, in some cases, their own Parliament.
Criticisms have been made about the UK having the right to opt in. Certainly I do not believe any criticism can be made by our partners in Europe, because it has no effect upon them. It is not like the situation when France opted out of NATO, which, as was mentioned in The Times yesterday, caused great disruption throughout the whole of Europe. I believe that we were entitled—indeed we were right—to achieve that option. Some Members on the Benches opposite have said that we are the losers as a result of the agreement reached at Maastricht. But, as my noble friend Lord Young of Graffham reminded us, it was Jacques Delors who said how much we would gain by the attitude we took at the time.
On the question of monetary union, I believe that we have the best possible position. We shall be fully involved in all the discussions and the shaping of the EMU. We shall help to design it. We shall be able to see what effect its development will have. Then, and then only, need we decide whether we wish to join. What position could possibly be better than that? I wonder whether the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of

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Hillhead, has read what was agreed at Maastricht. He referred to our being committed to join without having an opportunity to consider the terms. The position is just the reverse. I commend to the noble Lord a reading of what was agreed at Maastricht.
If the Labour Benches had been in a position to secure, and had secured, such terms as were achieved by the Prime Minister at Maastricht, I believe that they would be jumping with joy. I do not believe that the Government should accept any criticism from the Labour Party on the negotiations. The Labour Party has changed its mind on Europe six times in recent history—from opting in and from opting out altogether. Its position on the agreement is, I believe, unfortunate. Each time it has changed, it has done so with the misguided expectation that perhaps there were votes involved. That was wrong. It is very sad today that Members of the Benches opposite are adopting something of the same tactic with the amendment which has been moved.
The latter is a most insipid amendment. It represents, I suppose, very much a "willing to wound and yet afraid to strike" attitude. I can only speculate as to whether the noble Lord was reluctant to put into an amendment where the Labour Party really stands; it is matter that I shall leave to him. Surely, if he felt that we should have signed up and signed up for a single currency there and then, he would have said so.
Electorally, in this particular case, I believe that Members on the Benches opposite are wrong. If they had recognised that the Prime Minister's team did a first class job in Europe—and had had the honesty to say so (I think that many of them, if not the noble Lord. Lord Williams, believe it) and if they had had the graciousness to praise the Government on their quite exceptional achievement, I believe that it would have done them good. They would have gained from it. I hate doing them good on that score, but that is what I believe. They should have done that instead of confining themselves to a whole range of nit-picking criticisms. That exposes them to being seen as jealous of the Government's success and of the skill of the Prime Minister.
Those who criticise the Government and the agreement reached at Maastricht should read what was agreed. From the different speeches that I have heard from the Benches opposite, I do not believe that the agreement has been read. If they read what was proposed, not only in the treaty that was agreed, but in all the various drafts before that, which would have gone through but for the firm stand taken by the British Government, they will see to what we should have been irrevocably committed had we accepted the line of the Liberal Democrat Benches and signed without qualification. We should have been committed to joining a European central bank with all that would flow therefrom; for example, the powers handed over from the Treasury to the Bank of England to six men appointed for eight years by the Council of Europe. To me, those are quite unacceptable conditions.
We live in a rapidly changing world. There will be the expansion of the Community. I hope that it will be an expansion which will come about in the relatively
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near future. We are going into a new world scene, certainly a new European scene. We owe thanks to the Prime Minister and his team, who have wisely and well safeguarded our position.
3.56 p.m.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, I find all debates on the Common Market, and our part in it, acutely disappointing. Some of us have been at it for the past 25 years and here we are, 18 years after our accession to the Treaty of Rome, still undecided as to where our path lies. Sometimes I think that, if Britain had the spirit, the determination, the talent, the resources and the guts to stand alone, it would be better to try to do so. We should be happier that way. We were happy when it happened. However, we revel in the Dunkirk spirit in the Common Market as in the European conflict. We have had the brake on all the time since we joined it. The other members want to go too far too fast and we want to hold them back. In the end, I believe that we shall probably wreck the Community or we shall find ourselves left alone on the beach.
The speech of inspiration to me this afternoon was that of my noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis. It mixed the practical experience we have had with a vision of what we were hoping for, from the point of view of the workers of Britain and the economic health of the country, in joining the European Community.
I view with grave dismay what has happened about the Social Contract. That is far more serious than our check upon the single currency proposal. That will last out the century. We have encouraged a movement in the Community which bids fair to break up the formal structure of the Community and create side activities outside of it. It is difficult to see how agreements reached between 11 nation states will ultimately be channelled into the Community system, either comprehensively or in instalments. Where are we going? What do the Government envisage as the part that Britain will play in the conversations which will be held by the 11 who want the Social Contract? Will we take part in them? Will we have any say in how the others formulate their attitude towards that matter, which is an important one for the whole of the Community? I want to know where our trade union movement is. We have heard nothing from it.
The Earl of Caithness: Oh yes you have!
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, the CBI tells us all the items with which it is in agreement and how far it thinks it has obtained its negotiating objectives. What about the trade unions? How do they feel about it? I remember, as does my noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis, the setting up of the Bullock Committee to study the structure of industrial relations in Europe. It published a report. It had dissenting voices from employers, but it laid the foundations of the big debate on the future of our negotiating machinery and the place of the trade unions in industrial activity and management. It all withered away. The unions did not want anything in place of strife. They did not get anything in place of strife.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: They wanted strife.
Lord Houghton of Sowerby: My Lords, they have been subdued by the Conservative Government during the past decade. They have not been pacified. They have not been offered a larger role in the nation's affairs; they have just gone sullenly quiet due to a mixture of repressive legislation and widespread unemployment.
Yet those of us who studied the European system closely, as I did in 1973, found there the foundation for co-operation which the Germans started in 1919, and which has become the general pattern of European trade union and industrial activity. We nearly achieved it in Britain. We nearly achieved it in the Whitley Council report of 1919, but the trade unions were as apathetic then as they were later. There was something then in the system—probably the political divide as between the concept of a socialist society and a mixed economy—which held people back from wanting to co-operate.
Now that we have rejected socialism as a panacea for all the evils of society, where do we go? What is there? Who is putting it there if there is anything? At present there is a complete void on how we will harness the workers of Britain to the new movement that is necessary to improve our competitiveness and get us a place in Europe. There is no sign of anything happening at the moment that will give us any satisfaction.
I watched a programme at lunchtime on Sunday about Japanese investment and the foreign control of industrial development in Britain. It was frightening. We are becoming an occupied country. There are a number of other countries which will become occupied. Australia will finish up an Asian republic. That is just as inevitable as it is that Britain will have to finish up in Europe if it is to exist at all.
Great events are happening in the world through the migration of industry and capital, springing in some measure from the spread of oil revenues and the tribute exacted from the petrol users of the world by the Middle East suppliers, which has undoubtedly put a great many nations into serious financial difficulties.
I said a little while ago that the three growth industries in Britain were fraud, charity and lending money; and that is about it. There is no comfort to Britain in the Prime Minister's negotiating objectives which he took to Maastricht. That is how I see the position. We need a big shake-up in Britain today. Our trade union movement should become alive to the opportunities that are waiting to be taken.
4.4 p.m.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to listen to the noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, who speaks with remarkable oratorical skill, a fund of memories of past experiences, and deals in a forthright manner with present events.
There is no doubt that the treaty which we are considering today is of historic importance. That is clearly stated in Article A of the draft that we have. That states:
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"The Treaty marks a new stage in the process of creating an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe, where decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizens".
That is the basis upon which the whole negotiation took place.
We are in this debate especially concerned with the negotiating posture and objectives of the British Government. From my experience over many years in the Community, I have found that whereas our Continental friends see things in a visionary and idealistic way, we tend to see them in a much more practical way. Our big contribution has been to bring practicality to their vision. In some respects, that has been achieved in the treaty.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, I should like to start with the matters that have been positive due to our intervention and then move on to areas where I believe that our interventions have been less positive. There are three areas upon which I am pleased that we placed considerable emphasis. The issue of subsidiarity is one that has cropped up for many years in our discussions in the Community. It is something which needs careful definition. As a broad statement, everyone will agree with it; but we are worried that Brussels might go beyond what we would normally consider to be the bounds of subsidiarity and decide things there which would be better decided at a lower level. However, when we talk of subsidiarity, I do not see why we should look at it in European terms only. I should like to see the principle of subsidiarity applied in Britain. Should we not be having a look to see whether central government in Whitehall, let alone Brussels, do more than they should do?
In the forthcoming review of local government, should not one of the instructions to the Commission be that it should have regard to the principle of subsidiarity? We have a great deal to learn from that; and I am glad that we placed emphasis upon the greater definition of that issue.
Secondly, I am pleased that we emphasised the importance of enforcement. It is generally agreed in the Community that we are one of the countries which does most to enforce Community regulations once they are issued. I happen to be closely involved with the trading standards administration. We have some of the best trading standards in Europe. We apply them the most effectively. I was involved in a discussion in Brussels recently where we put that point to the Commissioner concerned. He accepted that the enforcement of standards was something that was lacking in many countries in the Community; and so I believe that we were right to emphasise that aspect.
Thirdly, I believe that we did well on the principle of convergence. The concept of economic and monetary union is one that has been debated in the Community over many years. It is not a new concept. It was at one time thought that if we had a single currency, it would automatically lead to the convergence of economies. But we, together with the Germans, have persuaded the rest of our Community colleagues that that is not so and that we must have convergence first. That has been accepted. It is written into the treaty. I regard those as three positive aspects of our negotiations.

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What I find unfortunate is, that having achieved so much—those are just some of the areas; there are others as well —we then spoilt the whole thing by putting too much attention on our reservations about the single currency and the Social Chapter. I find it difficult to understand our reservations on the single currency, having convinced our colleagues that convergence was an essential pre-condition. I do not know whether your Lordships are regular readers of the Economist. In it last week a table was shown indicating which countries are at present most convergent—that is, most in line with the conditions laid down in the treaty. In fact, Britain scores three out of four points already. It is most likely that, if present policies that the Government wish to pursue and Opposition parties also wish to ensure—low inflation, not excessive budgetary deficits, and so on—are achieved in the year ahead, we would be totally in conformity with convergence. At that date, if others were going ahead on the single currency, and if we had achieved convergence ourselves, what British government would stay out? I find that quite incomprehensible and I hope that we shall receive elucidation on it later when the noble Earl replies.
As concerns the Social Chapter, in introducing the debate the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, referred to the Government's anxiety about the need to preserve different policies and to have regard to different methods of dealing with industrial and social relations. However, the fact is that that is precisely what is indicated in the appropriate section of the treaty. In the preamble to Annex 4, in Article 117, talking about the Social Chapter, the treaty says:
"To this end the Community and its Member States shall implement measures which take account of the diverse forms of national practices".
That is precisely what I thought we wished to guard against.
In conclusion, and looking at the whole of the Maastricht negotiation, I am unfortunately left with the uncomfortable feeling that while Britain may have scored a tactical victory, the strategy has been left in the hands of others.
4.12 p.m.
Lord Aldington: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, has done a great deal of work with me on the Committee Floor of the House. He has just made a speech which seemed to me to show that in his heart he fully supports Maastricht, but because today he stands in support of his Leader, who has told us he will move an amendment, the noble Lord has to produce some artificial reasons to object to Maastricht.
I am a great admirer of the noble Lord. I liked his earlier arguments and I shall come back to some of them. However, first I warmly support the Motion and very much admire the way in which it was introduced into the House. I am rather disappointed in what should be a great debate that the two parties opposite; should have put down amendments which I can only describe, in my most courteous phrase, as artificial party hype.
The key to the Liberal Democrat amendment is the phrase that we are not,
"at the heart of Europe",
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as my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said he wished to be and as he has been and is very much today. I cannot understand how, on the two matters that have been adduced to support this extraordinary proposition, noble Lords opposite can think that we have abandoned our influence. My noble friend Lady Elles made the point clearly. Far from being ignored, we are and have been listened to. On EMU, we have obtained agreement that we are in Stage Two. We are wholly parties to all the arrangements that are involved in Stage Two and part of those arrangements is the preparation for Stage Three, which may or may not be important to us. I believe that the preparations are important, and it is quite clear that we are a party to those preparatory procedures.
Furthermore, we have been a party to the settlement of the convergence principles which are of extreme importance to the qualification rules to the single currency. So on EMU I dismiss altogether the idea that we have got away from the centre.
As to the social dimension, we have confirmed over and over again—my noble friend and my right honourable friend the Prime Minister have confirmed —that we are committed to Articles 117 and 118 which are in the original treaty, plus what was agreed in the Single European Act. We are a party to those. We practise them. There have been 18 regulations under them which have been adopted. We are one of the few countries that have implemented all of them. So it is nonsense to say that we are outside the centre of the acceptance of the social dimension in the treaty.
More important to me are the positive steps which the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, mentioned in the first excellent part of his speech: the adoption of a definition for subsidiarity in the terms that we want it, not in the rather woolly terms that were at first suggested; the foreign policy, justice, drug and terrorist pillars; the provision in the new articles for increasing and improving the effectiveness of the Community as a whole; the articles about implementation and the penalties for enforcement by the European Court of Justice; more powers to the European Parliament; the recognition of the importance of national parliaments; more powers to the Court of Auditors.
I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, is not here. When he was confronted by my noble friend the Leader of the House reading out the important new article, his response reminded me of the old proverb that the cow that makes the most noise gives the least milk.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: Touché, my Lords.
Lord Aldington: My Lords, for the future the really important point about Maastricht to me is the establishment of the pattern of progress towards closer union, which now includes not only collective action through the Community but co-operative action through the two pillars which could be added to. I regard that as an inheritance for the future which the Community will greatly value when it comes—as it certainly must—in a few years to review its

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institutions and its further progress against the background of enlargement, which there certainly will be.
I close by saying that in my opinion Maastricht was a great success for Britain, particularly for the Prime Minister. But it was also a success for the Community. It is one of the prime interests of the United Kingdom that the Community should be successful.
4.19 p.m.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I have already protested twice at this debate being held today and being restricted to six hours. I do so once again and I believe that the Government are holding the debate on the same day as the House of Commons simply and solely because they wish to bounce both Houses into giving approval to the deal that they struck at Maastricht before the implications can be properly considered. Nevertheless the debate is taking place and I had better get on with it.
The fact is that the deal at Maastricht is being hailed as a triumph for the Prime Minister, who has said that he has obtained game, set and match. There has been a game, set and match but in my opinion it went to Kohl, Mitterrand and Delors, if they are to be believed. Kohl has said that the deal represented an irreversible process towards European unity. Mitterrand has said that Europe will now affirm itself as the world's greatest power. The French still have their delusions of grandeur and they now want to attach us to that power too.
Our dear friend Delors announced that the process towards a federal Europe was right on course. Who has achieved game, set and match? It would appear that the Germans and French in particular think they won game, set and match at Maastricht and not the British Prime Minister. That seems to be the position as far as I can see it. Although the Prime Minister is trying to pretend he has won a great victory, in fact he has won nothing of the kind.
It is quite clear that in spite of the removal of the word "federal", we are well on the way to establishing a western European superstate. Article A states:
"Every person holding nationality of a member state shall be a citizen of the union".
In other words, such a person will be a citizen of a new country. The article continues:
"Citizens of the union shall enjoy the rights conferred by this treaty and shall be subject to the duties imposed thereby".
In other words we now have a duty to this new superstate. Some people consider a duty to a state to be an allegiance to a state but perhaps we have not gone quite that far yet.
The British people, without being properly consulted in any way, are to be made citizens of and subject to a new state under the treaty. That is called the European union. Europe now appears to be a continent of only 12 nations. Do we now have a Europe within and a Europe without? What about the other 19 nations that are supposed to be members of the European continent? As I have said, we seem to be trying to form a western European superstate from which the others will be excluded.
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Whatever the Prime Minister may claim has happened, to try to disarm the Euro-sceptics in his own party, the treaty undoubtedly and effectively undermines the status of Britain as a self-governing state. The treaty extends the powers of European decisions over a wide field including foreign policy. Majority voting will be applied for the implementation of foreign policy decisions. That will apply also to defence, economic policy, health, consumer protection, immigration, culture, law and order and other matters. That is what the document will mean. Over a wide area our powers of decision will be constrained.
The EC will now be involved in every nook and cranny of our national life in spite of what the Foreign Secretary says. Even on monetary union, where the United Kingdom has secured the right to defer a final decision until 1997, the Government have given a lot of ground. The United Kingdom is now committed to giving reports to Europe on progress towards economic convergence and is committed to limiting budget deficits. What is even worse, this country, in spite of the so-called opt-out clause, will contribute large amounts of money to the new fund for poorer regions. Thus our already underfunded services will be further starved of money so that the begging bowls of nine of the EC countries can be topped up with taxpayers' money. Furthermore this, together with the restraints of the ERM, will bring home to the British people very sharply indeed that the price for the new European order is their jobs, their businesses and their social services.
There is a proposal to fine states that do not acquiesce and accord with decisions of the EC. I have asked before how on earth one fines a state. If a state will not pay its fine, how does one tell taxpayers and national parliaments that they must pay? The situation is absurd. It will soon be clear to the people of this country that the House of Commons has wilfully given over the governance of its country to a group of foreign potentates. Respect for Parliament is bound to diminish as a result. My time is now up. I fear I cannot support the Government's Motion. The amendment that has been tabled by the Opposition is framed in such a way that even I can support it.
4.26 p.m.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, I support my noble friend's Motion. When I went into the Whips Office to ask for a brief for today, one of my friends there said, "Of course, I think it is filed under M for Maastricht". Another said, "No, it is M for marvellous". I suggested it was filed under M for Major triumph. But of course the first girl was absolutely right. It was filed under M for magnificent achievement and surely the right involvement—close, heartfelt togetherness. That togetherness is close but not cloned. We keep our own sovereignty, our own Parliament and our own laws. We do not get pushed into a common currency willy-nilly. We are not issuing a blank cheque for the future. We retain our options to come in if we decide at a future date that it is right for Britain.
We do not subscribe to the Social Chapter, which means that, although we share many of the same ambitions—for example, good terms of employment,

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fair pay and hours and equal opportunities for minority groups, senior citizens, the Scots, Welsh and hereditary peers—we reserve the right to implement all this from our own Parliament and not from an imposed diktat.
On defence we continue with NATO while also building up the Western European Alliance, though neither on defence nor in foreign affairs can any decision be taken on a majority vote. Communication is between governments and Ministers and is not imposed by the Commission or by the European Parliament. We are all Europeans. My husband and I have a French son-in-law and a German lodger and I have Italian cousins. If we go far back enough, we realise that many of my noble kinsmen were French, Dutch, German and Hungarian.
When I was a child there were three ideas for the future which seemed to me of paramount importance. The first was the preservation of the countryside and the environment. At the age of five I mapped out grandiose plans for national parks and for keeping things green—usually my face, fingers and clothes. At six my preoccupation was the use of plants and natural remedies in healing. I had a small cupboard downstairs where I brewed herbal teas and remedies to try on my family and unsuspecting guests. Your Lordships will be relieved to hear that none of them died young.
At seven, rather before Munich, I felt strongly that Europe should combine closely together as a united family of sovereign states. Like a family, each was to be an individual and to have his own room and living space Like a family, agreements had to be reached from within, and on personal and individual concerns there should be no nanny-like imposition from above. That is the principle of subsidiarity. In your own room you do not all have to have white sheets and blue blankets and keep your socks in the top left-hand drawer. Some people have red sheets and khaki blankets and use the floor for storage space. That is their own concern. Also, like a family, the success and prosperity of one is shared and enjoyed by all, just as misfortune and disaster for one are mitigated by the other members.
Let us unite in congratulating my right honourable friends the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the whole of their team on their success at Maastricht. It is a magnificent achievement and surely the right involvement—close, heartfelt togetherness.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, within the past 24 hours we have learnt that from 1996 onwards the speed of coaches, buses and lorries operating entirely within the United Kingdom and not crossing any national frontiers is to be restricted, by order of Brussels and against the wishes of the British Government. What could demonstrate more forcibly that the euphoria in the government camp over the excision of the dreaded F-word, federalism, is entirely misplaced? It is misplaced because its excision is no triumph; it merely acknowledges reality.
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The reality is that the excessive centralisers in Brussels are hell-bent on creating not a federation— because in a true federation such as those in the United States, Canada and Australia individual states are entirely free to set their own speed limits and to decide a thousand small matters which Brussels, if they had the misfortune to be members of the EC, would not allow them to decide—but a unitary state. The allegedly preferable phrase, "ever closer union", is, in other words, being taken literally rather than symbolically by Brussels, to use the latter term in the sense in which my noble friend Lady O'Cathain used it.
Perhaps I may break with precedent and at this early stage in my speech put two questions to the noble Lord who is to reply. The first is, can the phrase "ever closer union" be interpreted in any way other than as implying a drive towards ultimate total fusion, with the individual characteristics of the component nation states being relegated to those the French would term folklorique?
My second question concerns subsidiarity, under which, according to the noble Lord the Leader of the House, Brussels will interfere only when objectives cannot be achieved sufficiently at national level. Who will decide where the decision is best taken? Will it be taken at local or national level, or by the European Court, with its notorious bias in favour of centralisation and harmonisation? I fear that we know the answer but it would be good to have it confirmed.
By way of illustration, we learnt yesterday that even Smithfield market, which has been sited in London for 800 years, is under threat from the Euro-meddlers. The conventional response from apologists for our yielding to Brussels in these matters is that it is all a trade-off and that in return for concessions—for example, on the single currency or the Social Chapter—we in turn have to give ground to other countries on issues about which they feel passionately. That is a superficially plausible argument but one which is based on a totally false assumption. In reality not one Frenchman, Dane, Spaniard or Portuguese in 10,000 has any desire to interfere in the internal affairs of the United Kingdom, any more than the ordinary Briton has any desire to interfere in the internal affairs of continental nations. The trouble stems from a tiny minority of middle-class meddlers and social engineers who, in their zeal for harmonisation, whether they realise it or not, create disharmony among the peoples of the different nations of Europe.
The extension of the Commission's competence into a variety of new fields—health, culture, transport and education—coupled with the extension of majority voting, provides a form of indoor relief for under-employed ideologues who, we note incidentally, are to be granted further privileges and immunities. If the Government had made greater efforts to oppose those corporatist, dirigiste and paternalist proposals they would have earned the gratitude of ordinary people not only in Britain but right across Europe. It is to their discredit that they did not do so.
More alarming still are the implications of the cohesion fund. When speaking of the Maastricht

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agreement a week ago today the noble Lord the Leader of the House said (at col. 782 of the Official Report):
"we have reached no agreement to pay any more than we are already pledged to pay".
However, whether via the small print of the agreement or otherwise, every economic commentator is agreed that we shall end up paying a great deal more. It is an open-ended commitment.
The taxpayers of the United Kingdom, as well admittedly as the taxpayers of Germany, France, Denmark and Holland and other northern EC countries, will have to pour money into a CAP-style cohesion fund, with all the opportunities for waste, fraud and misallocation of resources which funds of that nature inevitably imply. This is all for the benefit of countries whose standard of living is between 57 per cent. of our own, in the case of Portugal and Greece, and 83 per cent. of our own in the case of Spain. Yet in Eastern Europe there are countries whose standard of living is only 20 per cent. of our own, and in some cases only 10 per cent. of our own. There is real poverty, hardship and even hunger in those countries. Where is the morality in obliging taxpayers to contribute to comfortably off countries such as Spain in preference to the desperate countries of Eastern Europe? Where is the common sense in it, given the possibility of civil war, a revival of dictatorships and the probability of mass immigration to the West by people in their millions, frontier controls or no frontier controls?
Writing in the Independent last Monday (on page 17) the noble Lord, Lord Rees-Mogg—who I am sorry to see is not in his place—who is the author of books on the Gold Standard and other economic works, said:
"The Maastricht agreement was the stupidest economic decision for 50 years".
He may well have had what I have just described in mind.
When all is said and done and however imperfect the Government's achievements at Maastricht—and I pay tribute to the hard work put in by the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary and their advisers—one knows that Mr. Kinnock or Mr. Ashdown would have done far worse. My noble friend Lord Harris of High Cross spoke of gang rape. Most members of the Labour Party and almost every Liberal, when faced with the prospect of Euro-violation, take the attitude, relax and enjoy it and some benefits may follow. This Conservative Government, on behalf of the British people, have put up a most vigorous struggle. While they have by no means emerged unscathed by indecent assault, for the most part their honour remains intact. For that reason I cannot support either of the Opposition amendments.
4.37 p.m.
Baroness Park of Monmouth: My Lords, I join noble Lords in welcoming the signal success at Maastricht which we owe to the professionalism and courage of my right honourable friends the Prime
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Minister and the Foreign Secretary in the fields of foreign policy and defence. I should also like to pay my tribute to the back room boys and girls.
However, we are approaching a most dangerous period in which the instability and precarious hold on order in what used to be the Soviet Union is only too likely to come to a head. We are also confronted with a Russian state which gives every sign of combining considerable Greater Russian chauvinism with the same failure to deliver or to be accountable in the key areas of defence and the economy as its predecessor. Mr. Yeltsin seems about to assume the same central responsibilities for the armed forces and the KGB, together with finance and the economy, as Mr. Gorbachev had. The question is whether he will succeed in exercising any effective political control, if indeed he wants to, over the realpolitik of the army and the KGB.
In a revealing outburst in September, Rutskoy, the RSFSR vice-president at that time, said:
"Germany has transferred about 60 billion roubles to us in the last 5 years. Where have they gone to? Take the USSR-Italian treaty concluded in 1989. The Soviet side has not fulfilled a single paragraph of the treaty. The credits granted to us have not been used. The time is coming to pay them back. The money disappears as a result of mismanagement and irresponsibility, plus an element of money being stolen".
On 7th November it was being stated that the country's foreign debt was 47 to 48 billion foreign currency roubles and that between 17 and 18 billion roubles were owed to the former socialist countries. According to Yakovlev on 18th November, over a period of one-and-a-half months five tons of gold and platinum were shipped abroad by unknown persons.
Meanwhile, the Soviet media carry regular references to the privatisation of the defence industries. A typical report stated that a stock exchange had been set up which would specialise in trading in radio, electronic and computer equipment as well as in communications technology. Among the 35 sponsors of that commodity exchange were a number of defence plants accounting for about 85 per cent. of all Soviet radio electronic equipment output. The privatisation bill in July ensured a state share in such joint stock societies of 30 to 50 per cent. in transport, fuel and defence enterprises, and 50 to 70 per cent. in communications.
In June last Mr. Gorbachev told the Military Academy that the doctrine of reasonable defence sufficiency is a response to the combat power of the industrially developed countries which is constantly growing and improving. He said that it is necessary to bring arms production into line with the doctrine of their organisation of the army. In the same month, Mr. Yeltsin said:
"Taking into consideration the fact that the main defence sites are on Russian territory, we (and the Americans) could jointly do a great deal by attracting intellectual capacity which is geared towards the military-industrial complex".
We must be watchful. The Russian leadership has not changed its spots. The army and the KGB now look to Yeltsin, but their aims have not changed. Like a good ju-jitsu operator, they are turning apparent weakness into strength. They need and want a leaner, more sophisticated army and a weakened adversary.

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As a distinguished Sovietologist, Mr. James Sher, has pointed out, they want to eliminate the image of the enemy. Their new thinking,
"aims to create the political conditions which will force NATO to transform itself defacto into an organisation whose first business is disarmament rather than defence. NATO's survival will in turn reassure Europeans that 'new thinking' is in their interests".
That is part of the doctrine of reasonable defence sufficiency.
Meanwhile, on the economic front, the Soviet—now Russian —leadership, is doing an excellent job convincing us that they are at risk unless we help them. Communists think long and Mr. Yeltsin is no less a product of their thinking than was Mr. Khrushchev. They are hard at work convincing us that what they most need, apart from open-ended aid without ring-fencing fencing or accountability, is technological partnerships with the West. The Western partner can then front for the defence establishment in securing all those valuable secrets which CoCom has denied them and which the KGB has hitherto had to steal. It is no coincidence that General Kobetz, who is in charge of the military reform committee and stands close to Yeltsin, has a KGB background. The one thing that the Russians can produce without any help is confidence tricks.
We must look to our position after Maastricht and we must, first, assess clear-sightedly where our interest and that of the Community lies rather than that of the Soviet Union. Shall we be able to negotiate effectively with the Russians? They will be able to manipulate Germany and France. We should apply our own skills and experience for the common good and, incidentally, for the good of the recently liberated countries. Secondly, we must do that within the framework of NATO whenever possible. That, rather than the Community, is the Russians' chosen point of serious contact with the decision-making world. It is where we and the Americans have most at stake and far more in common than with the Germans and French. Countries like Poland will have little reason to join and trust the Community when they see such examples of its collective wisdom as the German initiative on Croatia.
What was the Soviet Union now presents two distinct dangers. The short-term danger is its volatility. A spark may light the tinder internally. The long-term danger is that we might lower our guard and forget that the leadership of the army and the KGB—the continuity men—will think long, have clear objectives and know how to manipulate us and to separate people in the Community one by one. They are past masters of what the Russians call maskirovka—deception. The price of our freedom is eternal vigilance, professionalism and a good, sound defence capacity.
4.45 p.m.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate which is perhaps one of the most important that we have held in this House for many years. I was a member of your Lordships' Select Committee on the European Communities which reported on the draft Social
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Charter back in December 1989. We produced our report in an attempt to influence the then Prime Minister prior to the European Council meeting in Strasbourg that year. However, we were unable to persuade the Government that their outright opposition to the charter was counter-productive, even from their own point of view, as they would lose any opportunity to amend by negotiation those items to which they took exception. The advice was not taken. We see today that the policy of isolationism has continued. Nothing appears to have changed.
It has been an essential part of this Government's policy that regulation in the employment field inhibits job creation and therefore should be opposed. That was repeatedly stated to the European Select Committee by Government spokespersons and it has been reiterated today. Yet we have over 2.5 million unemployed in the country at present. The real figure is probably nearer 3 million as the basis of calculation has been altered so many times since 1979. We have less regulation in the employment field than ever and certainly less than our European partners. If ever there was proof that regulation does not of itself inhibit job creation, it is here in this country.
Moreover, the Social Charter seemed at that time a fairly anodyne document. The intention was, and still is, to create a single market in which all citizens feel that they will derive some benefit. What is wrong with that? The charter stipulates that in each member state workers are to receive fair remuneration, sufficient for a decent standard of living. Improvements in living and working conditions are to be sought. There must be equal treatment for men and women. There should be an entitlement to annual paid leave and social protection, including social protection for the unemployed. There should be a right to training, including vocational training. Rights of association and to collective bargaining are also to be guaranteed. It should be said here that the Government are themselves in any event already a signatory to International Labour Office Conventions 87 and 98 which guarantee much the same kind of rights anyway. So why do they jib at this provision?
However, the underlying philosophy is perhaps even more important than the specific provisions. Our European partners accept the concept of social partnership. Trade unions are referred to as social partners. It is accepted that unions not only have a right to exist but that there should be a fair framework within which they may represent the interests of their members, and that they should have the right to consultation and negotiation in order to do just that. It is only Britain, led by its present Government, that wants to opt out of all that. Our attitude in that respect is simply not understood by our partners in Europe who, for decades, have accepted the whole notion of social partnership.
Because Britain has opted out, the other 11 have agreed an entirely separate protocol dealing with the social issues. It is worth reiterating that the 11 have committed themselves to,
"the promotion of employment, improved living and working conditions, proper social protection, dialogue between

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management and labour, the development of human resources with a view to lasting high employment and the combating of exclusion".
I emphasise the point about dialogue between management and labour. In other words, our social partners believe in social consensus and see that as the only way in which we shall ultimately make progress. Action is to be taken by qualified majority to support and complement the Government's activities in the fields of improving the working environment, the protection of health and safety, working conditions, information for and consultation of workers, equality between men and women and the integration of persons excluded from the workforce.
The Government have opted out of all that, which means that we shall be excluded from involvement in developing European social policy. We shall be excluded from developing the Social Chapter, but we shall ultimately be bound by it. I do not believe that the exclusion will hold. Perhaps even the 11 do not think that they will have to wait very long for Britain to opt in. We shall certainly do so if there is a Labour government. Anyhow, multinational employers will have to apply those conditions to their employees who are employed in the rest of the European countries.
Meantime, the political message being sent out by the Government to our own electorate and the world at large is a deeply depressing one. It says that we shall not sign up for basic rights for individual workers because we want to have a low wage economy instead of a high wage, high skill, high tech economy. It is not surprising that over the weekend a leading newspaper gave its article on Maastricht the headline "Welcome to Mr. Major's wonderful bargain basement". Is that what we should be saying to the large section of our workforce, many of whom are women, which is already low paid? A large part of that workforce is part time—part-time workers who work on poverty pay. Should we say to them, as the Government say, that we value them less than the governments in the rest of the Community value their own workforce? I do not believe that we should say that.
I think that the Government have a nerve to come before your Lordships this evening and ask for congratulations. I hope that this House will refuse. I support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Williams of Elvel.
4.52 p.m.
The Earl of Bessborough: My Lords, I shall not repeat all that I said on European union on November 25th and on many previous occasions over the years. Unlike the noble Baroness, I want to endorse what my noble friend our Leader said in warmly endorsing the agreement secured at Maastricht and to congratulate the Prime Minister on securing HMG's negotiating objectives. Indeed, I consider that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister's highly skilful handling of those complex problems was remarkable inasmuch as he managed to reconcile the views of enthusiastic Europhiles such as myself with the views of those who may be less enthusiastic about further European integration. I repeat what other noble
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Lords have said: our Foreign Secretary, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and their officials should also be mentioned.
I am glad that the new treaty strengthens foreign policy co-operation and broadens the areas in which we work together to include crime, immigration and asylum. The EMU negotiations were of great importance. Although I have been advocating monetary union for some 20 years, ever since the Werner Report in 1972, and would have been happier perhaps if by now we had achieved monetary union and a single currency, I am glad that the Government will continue to be fully involved in the discussions on shaping EMU. If the arrangement agreed means that we have been able to agree with others to accept it, I go along with it.
With regard to defence, I am glad that all 12 governments are agreed on the need for Europe to do proportionately more in our defence. I entirely agree that the vehicle should be the Western European Union, but we must not exclude from participation the other European members of NATO. A European defence effort must be compatible with our NATO obligations.
On the industrial front I am glad that the arrangement may further increase the attractions for Britain as a host for inward investment inasmuch as we already receive into the Community some 40 per cent. of Japanese and American investment. I am glad too to learn that we are not opposed to a social dimension, for the Community, but it is clear that we must not return to the chaos in industrial relations which characterised much of the 1970s. The number of working days lost through strikes has been reduced from 29 million in 1979 to 2 million in 1990.
I am very glad to learn that there was a good atmosphere characterising the negotiations. I also endorse what my noble friend the Leader said on subsidiarity. I have always said that doing everything that can be done nationally or even by local government is the best solution and only major international questions of the environment and other cross-frontier issues should be a matter for the Community.
On the broad field of European co-operation I like to recall the "mission statement" by the founder of the Royal Society of Arts in the 18th century. He said that union,
"emboldens enterprise, enlarges science, refines art, improves our manufactures and extends our commerce".
I agree that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has brought back from Maastricht a fine package. I end by saying only Vivat Regina! and also Vivat Europa!
4.58 p.m.
Lord Jay: My Lords, I am happy to give one cheer for the Prime Minister. It seems to me that he has avoided, or at least postponed, some of the worst follies that might have threatened us in the original Maastricht agreement. But that does not mean that he has not endorsed the further abandonment of control

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and authority over our own internal economy, which in effect is taken out of the hands of the British electorate and Parliament by the agreements.
I shall make only one point on the Social Charter. Some people seem to assume that because, rightly or wrongly, we have not accepted the charter, we ourselves are therefore not entitled to introduce reforms of that kind. That is nonsense. We have not yet reached the point where we cannot positively do things ourselves without having the express permission of Mr. Delors beforehand.
On the political and constitutional side, I believe our central aim in the Community should be to ensure that as many decisions as possible are taken by the Council of Ministers and that the British Ministers taking them are responsible to the British Parliament, including this House. However, the worst fears that I have and I believe the worst damage threatened, come from the economic and monetary proposals. In the very elaborate and verbose charter or code which the central bankers have set for themselves in the independent central bank there is not a single mention of employment or unemployment. Those monetary men seem hardly to have heard of the real economy.
I know that the unbalanced infatuation with monetary values is not just the product of rational economic argument; it is in the minds of the German central bankers the result of the long-standing German obsession with the inflation of the 1920s. However, the most important decision any modern state has to take on internal policy is the balance between rising prices on the one hand and unemployment on the other. Any economy ruled by the language of the German central bankers would inevitably slide into chronic high unemployment and low production. The weaker economies in a single currency would have even more unemployment than the stronger. Already under the ERM, Britain, France and Italy have about 10 per cent. unemployment, which has been rising in this country ever since we joined the ERM. For the UK to join a single currency at present exchange rates with the deutschmark would in any circumstances that one can imagine as probable condemn the UK to a chronic 3 million or 4 million unemployed. It would repeat the mistake that we made in 1925.
Central bankers of course are very worthy and distinguished men. I believe that I am to be followed by the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold. But to hand over total control of the entire economy to central bankers would be like giving chiefs of staff the power to declare war or the board of Inland Revenue the power to alter the rate;; of income tax. I do not believe that noble Lords opposite would like that.
We are told that there is to be something called | convergence. But there is no such thing as economic convergence. Economies do not converge; for most of the time they diverge in many ways, and they always will. The only sign of convergence in the Community at present is that Britain, France and Italy are all suffering from 10 per cent. unemployment.
We also now find that the word "irreversible" has crept into Mr. Delors' text. "Irreversible" is a Marxist word, much beloved by Mr. Tony Benn. But in politics
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nothing is irreversible. One of the great blessings of our system is that if Parliament makes a mistake it can be reversed. Let us consider the poll tax. Just imagine if the poll tax had been irreversible!
However, to be as cheerful as one can, I see at least one chink of light in this Maastricht compromise. In the text of the agreements there is a slightly more liberal attitude to those countries outside who may wish to join the club. So long as we are members, expansion of the club—if it cannot eliminate all the present internal absurdities—may yet abate them. Incidentally, it will be much easier for countries outside to join if the Community is looser rather than tighter in its various operations. Let us therefore make it one of our central objectives that any nation, including the EFTA nations, may join, or indeed leave, the club when it wishes to do so by its own free choice.
5.5 p.m.
Lord Cobbold: My Lords, it is impossible not to have some sympathy with the sincerely held views of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, on the iniquities of central bankers. I am sure he will understand that I cannot entirely share them. I do share his anxiety on unemployment.
Undoubtedly the Prime Minister had a personal success at Maastricht. I should like to add my recognition to that given by the noble Baroness, Lady Elles, of those who carry out the preparatory work behind the scenes. I believe that at the official level our participation in negotiations has often been more positive than at the political level. However, like other noble Lords, I deplore the Prime Minister's use of the phrase, "Game, set and match". My feelings were of relief that common sense had prevailed over party squabbles.
I shall confine my remarks today to the treaty on European economic and monetary union and to the single currency. Happily for the Government, the foreign exchange market has so far chosen to ignore the celebrated opt-out clause, no doubt believing that no British Government would be foolish enough to invoke it. I hope that that situation will remain and that credibility in our full participation in the process of monetary integration will not be damaged.
Probably the only practical consequence of the opt-out clause is that we have denied ourselves the possibility of having the headquarters of the future European central bank sited in London. Under the terms of the treaty, the decision on its location has to be made by the end of next year. I do not believe that such denial is too serious, or indeed that a location in London was ever a likely possibility. Perhaps the obvious place for the headquarters of the European central bank is Frankfurt where it can readily inherit the mantle of the Bundesbank. The important thing for London is that we should have the principal operating arm of the system, the equivalent of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That can still be achieved and may even come about de facto through market forces following the introduction of the single currency.

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Perhaps we may look forward. I believe that the time has now come for the Government to abandon its foot dragging and to begin in earnest the job of selling the idea of a single currency to the public. The benefits are not just the saving of transaction costs. Far more important are the potential rationalisation of investment decisions, the economies of scale to be won, the fusing of total European savings into a single capital market, more competition and more choice for Europe's 340 million consumers.
The vexed question of loss of the pound—or, for the Germans, of the deutschmark—has to be addressed. Is it beyond the imagination of the architects of the system to devise parities for the ecu that bear some sensible relationship to the principal existing currencies, allowing some of the best known names to survive alongside? Perhaps I may give a simple example. The current parity of the deutschmark against the ecu has five decimal places at 2.05586. If it were adjusted to a straightforward 2.0 with similar rounding out of the decimal points in other parities, the effect on the external market value of the ecu would be marginal but the mark would become the half-ecu coin. The benefits in consumer acceptance and ease of transition could be considerable.
With the ecu equal to two deutschmarks, it would be possible for the Bundesbank to design and issue joint deutschmark/ecu notes before the beginning of stage three, thus encouraging acceptability of the ecu and familiarity with its value. The deutschmark is the key currency in the system. Fixing the ecu parity against the deutschmark and establishing the ecu as a currency rather than a basket could be brought forward to stage two when the currency composition of the basket is in any case due to be fixed.
The ecu comes up for its next quinquennial review in late 1994. That would seem the ideal time to make final adjustments to ecu parities and to establish a fixed link with the deutschmark. The other currencies would then have their two-year probation period, as defined in the convergence criteria, before the final fixing at the beginning of stage three.
There are a number of other possibilities for convenient whole number parities. However, much depends on whether existing relationships are maintained or whether in the interests of greater employment a more general realignment is necessitated in the intervening period.
One problem not adequately addressed in the treaty is the minting of coinage. We are told by the Commission that it will take five or six years to mint the necessary 64 billion new ecu coins. How can they possibly be ready on time for stage three in 1997?
The treaty is also not clear on what happens to the currencies of member states who fail the convergence tests and do not participate in the single currency—the so-called "member states with a derogation", including the United Kingdom if it should choose to exercise its opt-out clause or if it should fail the convergence test. Would their currencies remain in an exchange rate mechanism with the new single currency or would they be left to float freely?
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These and other problems need to be addressed in the next round of negotiations. The British Government will be able to take an active lead during their presidency in the second half of next year. But it will be a new British Government.
I should like to see the new British Government bringing forward legislation to accelerate the process of granting independence to the Bank of England, which under the new treaty is due to start only in stage two in 1994. I should like to see specific measures to encourage the use of the ecu; for example, permitting companies to compute and pay their tax bills in ecu. I should like to see an end to the language of not wanting a single currency to be imposed and the beginning of a positive campaign to promote the advantages of monetary union and its practical implementation. I hope that these and other such proposals will be included in all election manifestos; they certainly will be in ours.
An element of faith is required in any great enterprise. I believe that it is easier to have faith in this country's future prosperity as an active participant in the single currency than it is to have faith in our ability to prosper if we opt out.
5.12 p.m.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, I join with my noble friends in warmly congratulating my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and his team for their achievements at Maastricht. My right honourable friend said what he planned to do. He persevered in the run up and achieved what he set out to achieve. Few statesmen have managed an international deal so well. Very few would ever have dared to spell out their intentions so fully and publicly beforehand for fear of failing.
The sad little amendments tabled to my noble friend's Motion are just mean and cheap when measured against the bold actions of the Prime Minister. It is also sad that the noble Lords, Lord Williams of Elvel and Lord Bruce of Donington, were reduced to attacking the Government for not including in the agenda issues that were never planned to be there.
The achievements were not only what the UK Government wanted but what British industry wanted. The CBI states that Maastricht matters and the agreements reached represent almost exactly what business needs. It welcomes subsidiarity. I am not sure that I do; I wish another name could be found not only because the word is difficult to pronounce but because one has to look it up in the dictionary and it is not there.
The CBI welcomes subsidiarity because it will be harder for the Community to intervene on subjects that are better handled nationally. It welcomes the improved enforcement of community legislation and new fining powers to the European Court in respect of people who do not comply. It welcomes the new sensible balance on environmental issues. It welcomes the setting up of a framework programme for research and development. It welcomes a decision on industrial policy which limits Community intervention. It welcomes, and is surprised at, the agreement for the

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enlargement of the Community. I must confess that I, too, welcome that agreement. The sooner that we bring in the other countries in Europe when they are ready to join, the better. The CBI also welcomes the protocol which will go a long way towards removing the threat of retrospective application of the Barber judgment on occupational pensions. That could have cost British industry a great deal of money.
The CBI welcomes the decisions taken on the Social Chapter. I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, went a little far in suggesting that if those decisions had not been taken the British working man would have been much better off. I am afraid that he would not; the reverse would have been more likely to apply. The CBI consistently urged the Government to oppose any extension of qualified majority voting in the labour and social affairs field. The Government did so in the interests of British competitiveness. Industry's opposition to the Social Charter and to Mrs. Papandreou's social action programme should not be misunderstood. Where the CBI challenges the objectives of directives it does so shoulder to shoulder with those representing all other Community employers. But often the debate is about the means whereby objectives are realised.
In that respect the UK, through no fault of its own or anybody else's, could be relatively disadvantaged because of, first, a legal system which interprets the letter of the law; secondly, multi-union workplaces; thirdly, largely decentralised industrial relations; and, fourthly, a fragmented labour market with growing emphasis on new forms of work. Our working conditions and employee relations at least match the very best of EC standards. The law properly enforced defines the boundaries of acceptable conduct at the workplace. However, the detail is worked out between individual employers and their employees. The decision taken at Maastricht will help to ensure that that remains so.
The CBI and industry also welcome the decisions taken on economic and monetary union. The key to that is obtaining sufficient economic convergence before a single currency is even considered. What has been achieved is that people have been invited to think and to wait before going ahead with a plan which in any event is not intended for another four or five years. I suggest that those who have sought to portray the UK as being, so to speak, left behind and in a second track, have not correctly interpreted our best contribution to the Community to date, and as it can be in future.
In the early 1970s, before we went into the Community, I managed to join a delegation which was going to the Commission building in Brussels. I wished to find out what it was all about and how it was organised. In an interesting portrayal of the way in which the Community planned its work we were told, among other things, about harmonisation. harmonisation means different things to different people but on the whole, in the right place and for the right activities, it is a good thing. I am talking about 1971 or 1972 when the Community had been operating for
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about 14 years. I believe that they had 100 potential harmonisation projects and had achieved only about 10.
I said to the people who were talking to us, "That is not a very big achievement. You are not doing very well with your great Community". A very wise German said to me, "Well, no. We do not think that we can achieve a solid community of purpose if this organisation seeks to hurry matters like harmonisation faster than the peoples of the states can accept them". I said, "Well that means that it will take you a long time to achieve anything very much". He said, "Well, we think there is really no hurry. We are all together and we shall achieve a much greater degree of solidity if we take this slowly". I asked what he meant by that. He said, "I should be surprised if we have anything very firm by way of a community of purpose for 50 years"—which would have taken us to 2020 —"but it could well be the middle of the next century before we are a proper force to be reckoned with in the world community". That was an interesting statement by a German, not an Englishman. There were no Englishmen, or, if there were, they had been hired as expatriates because that was before our entry.
I am sure that what we are now doing and our great contribution to the development of the Community is to encourage measured, steady progress without too many fancy ideas, just along the lines which the German told me about 20 years ago. I believe that our achievements at Maastricht were just that.
5.21 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, it is the first time that I have spoken on foreign affairs in this House and I take the opportunity of the freedom of the Back Benches to do so. I speak with some temerity but with deep feeling because I am extremely worried about the attitude taken by our Government and, indeed, by many of our people in relation to those crucial negotiations which have taken place.
I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone, about the importance of the enlargement of the Community. It presents us with a challenge. However, I do not agree with his conclusion that time is on our side; we can let matters move slowly and by the middle of the next century we may be able to cope. The fact that that view was given to him by a German says something, because the Germans are moving much faster than we are. Not only the Germans but most of the Continentals recognise that time is not on our side. They recognise that they have been held up and often we have held them up. We should not look at this as a nice, leisurely, gentlemanly talk. I am deeply anxious about the events which led up to Maastricht and the media hype during Maastricht and the days which followed it.
It seemed to me that the main aim of the Prime Minister was to achieve some sort of spurious consensus within the Tory Party rather than to work out and pursue the best interests of Britain. Over the years and perhaps under successive governments Britain has missed opportunity after opportunity. I

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have never thought Britain should always be in the lead but I certainly do not believe that we should be lagging behind.
The noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, said that after Maastricht he felt a certain sense of relief. I do not share it. I feel that once again an opportunity for full British involvement had been lost.
Those who support the Motion on the Order Paper will no doubt do so because of party loyalty, which I understand because I have such loyalty for my party; or it may be because—and the speeches suggest this —they accept that the Prime Minister's objectives were almost entirely negative. But that is in conflict with the best interests of the country. He wanted to see that certain things should not happen. He wanted to ensure that we were given the opportunity to opt out and that all decisions would be left to a British Parliament. I do not believe that that is in the best interests of the Community or the country.
For the other 11 countries it was a victory for they are able to proceed to a common currency and to build an ever more powerful Europe on the foundations laid over the past 30 to 40 years. If the Prime Minister's objective was to persuade them that we should be allowed to opt out of the process and to move forward at our own snail's pace in a second tier, slow track routine, then he pulled that off. However, I do not believe that that was a triumph for Britain.
What an objective that is. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, referred to leadership and vision. There seemed to be no leadership or vision in the role played by the Prime Minister.
I believe that that was to the regret of our partners. I do not believe that any of them is happy that Britain put itself as twelfth on the list. I have spoken to several Continental friends in the past few days. Not only do they appear to regret what they saw as our negative approach but in a sense they despise the cocksure, game, set and match attitude and the macho approach to success which have been taken since. I do not look upon it as that, but I do not believe that the majority of people in Europe any longer feel happy or respect Britain.
There is nothing to celebrate in an empty chair. I see that Britain is isolated from the mainstream. It is condemned to a kind of European economic, financial and social second division.
As regards the Social Chapter, the Prime Minister seems to have rejected or postponed what most countries regard as good practice in industry and commerce. The social action programme under the Social Charter has covered such issues as equal status for 6 million British part-time workers, most of whom are women, improved maternity rights, rights to consultation in European-wide companies, protection for young people at work, minimum holiday entitlement and limits on working hours. All those are issues which the other 11 accept as part of their agenda. They feel that those issues should be dealt properly by Europe. We have decided that that is not for us. Only the British Prime Minister said that that was not an agenda for Britain.
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It is not a joke that that has happened but a very sad situation. The Government have been short-sighted, negative, petulant, petty minded and unimaginative in their approach to a conference which may go down in history as one of the most important opportunities for Britain. Britain should have been able to seize those opportunities. The Prime Minister has said he wants to see Britain at the heart of Europe. No one can seriously say now that Britain is at the heart of Europe. It is on the fringe and it is on the fringe by its own decision, by the decision of the Government and the Prime Minister. Those who wish to celebrate that ignominious defeat, as I see it, know which is the opt-out lobby this evening. I expect that they will be there in large numbers. I think that it is a tragedy that once again an opportunity for a powerful British role in Europe has been lost.
5.30 p.m.
Lord Bethell: My Lords, I cannot agree with the previous speaker. I spent this morning in Brussels where debate rages hotly on these issues. While I speak only for myself in this House, I can say that Members of the European Parliament of my party agree wholeheartedly with and applaud what the Prime Minister achieved in Maastricht last week. Apart from that, there is a wide understanding among Members of the European Parliament of all parties regarding what was done and the arrangements that were made.
A former president of the European Parliament, Mr. Piet Dankert, now a Dutch Minister, put his finger on it when he said that there are certain cultural differences between the way that Britain and the Continent look at the question of Europe. It is true that there is an element of vision, of faith and of dream about the Continental approach to what is being built. It is often seen in a pejorative way by commentators in Britain on that account. On the other hand, we congratulate ourselves on our practicality and careful approach to progress in Europe.
I say that there is room for both in the building of Europe. We need the practicality of the British. We also need a little of the vision of many of the Continentals who see Europe as the way forward for the future. The danger arises when practicality turns past scepticism—there is of course room for healthy scepticism on the issue—in some British intellects or expressions into a form of arrogance and xenophobia. There is no Continental equivalent of Mr. Ridley. We spend a lot of time apologising not so much for what he says but for the way in which he says it.
On the other hand, we find in Brussels and Strasbourg a great appreciation of the careful analysis of European progress made by British Ministers, British civil servants and, I hope, British parliamentarians. It has been said to me that if the British in Europe did not exist, something would have to be done to invent us. We are the ones who often go for the detail of points which have been agreed across the board by others—not that there is not room for both.
I should therefore like to say that I applaud what the Prime Minister achieved over the single currency, though I shall be surprised if we do not have a single currency by the end of the century. I applaud what he

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achieved in defence and foreign policy. On immigration I believe he struck the right balance. In that respect I should like to say how much I applaud the improvement in the arrangements made at Heathrow Airport to allow millions of people to pass every year with the minimum of fuss, bother and delay. It is far better than at most Continental airports; I say that as someone who uses them perhaps more than most. I only hope that the immigration arrangements at Dover can be made as simple and painless as those at Heathrow.
Subsidiarity was a great achievement by the Prime Minister and his advisers. Gone, I hope, are the days when the Commission will start telling us what to do about the Winchester by-pass. On the basis of subsidiarity, that matter will probably be dealt with by the Winchester borough council, not even by the Department of Transport, and certainly not by the Commission in Brussels. The points agreed on implementation are an important British contribution to the Maastricht agreement and one that is well recognised by Continental colleagues.
On the Social Chapter there are many debates and disagreements between us. But I believe that the Prime Minister was right to do what he did. Under the new arrangements Britain will attract investment from Japan and the United States and allow the evolution of better industrial relations by agreement rather than by legal enforcement. As a result, unemployment will be kept at a minimum.
I should like to make one or two comments in regard to the European Parliament. I am pleased that it was found possible to make the term of the Commission coterminous with that of the European Parliament—a five-year rather than a four-year term. That will enable us to control, confirm and advise on the appointment of commissioners. However, it is a pity that the Commission still maintains the monopoly on initiating legislation. I believe parliamentarians should initiate legislation. It is a pity that the Commission retained the right to approve or reject the Parliament's amendments on first reading as it wishes. That is not a proper relationship between a parliament and a bureaucracy. We must insist on the fact that the Commission, eminent though its leaders are, is a civil service, a bureaucracy. It should be properly supervised and controlled by an elected parliament.
It is not right that in the long term the European Parliament should be mainly advisory over legislation. While I approve of the negative assent procedure given to the Parliament on some rules, I believe that will eventually be expanded as well. But there should certainly be greater powers given to the European Parliament over the Commission. We could be helpful to national parliaments in that matter, not take away their powers. We could be helpful to your Lordships and to another place if we had the right to control the Berlaymont, Brussels civil service.
I conclude by saying that, although there have been disputes and disagreements in the past week on these points, the show is on the road. We are still in business. Britain is in Europe. Despite what the last speaker said, I believe that Britain is still in the heart of Europe. I hope that we will not see Europe—some
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of us—merely in terms of lawnmowers or bacon-flavoured crisps. One must take time off for a little vision about the Europe that there will be in future decades. I shall be surprised if there are fewer than 25 members of the European Community 10 years from now.
A European union must be built if Europe is to be kept free of poverty, disunity, war and chaos. That is perhaps better understood on the Continent than here. A European union is in Britain's interests. We should insist on that and proclaim it from the rooftops, perhaps more than we do at the moment. These are not far-away countries of which we know little dragging us kicking and screaming under their control. They are countries which have good reason to fear dictatorship and the results of disunity. We have seen the results of disunity in Yugoslavia in past weeks. Let us pray to God that we do not see them in their appalling forms in what was once the Soviet Union. Therefore let us applaud an agreement that will benefit us all and congratulate the Prime Minister on helping to give us in Britain, having lost an empire, the beginning of a role.
5.38 p.m.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, as is often the case, I agree with much that the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, says, not necessarily his last sentence, but most of the peroration before that. At the beginning of his speech he said that he had recently returned from Brussels and found there that many Continental politicians thought that if we did not exist it would be necessary to invent us. That is an interesting observation. To my mind it shows a mild degree of the insularity which has now become characteristic of the Benches opposite—perhaps the mildest degree shown today.
It would be truer to say that if we were not the last to accept the step-by-step integration of Western Europe, somebody else would be. But—and here is the point—the difference between them and the rest would not be as wide as it is between us and the rest now. When one looks at that in another light it is not too surprising. After all, we are the only island in Europe. One would expect an island to be the last on integration moves. If it had not turned out like that, we could have been astonished.
Another case of mild tunnel vision came from the noble Lord, Lord Mottistone. Quoting his wise German, he said that he thought it would be 50 years before there was any real sense of community in the European Community. He then let slip that that would be in the 2020s. It would be in those years if one thought that the Community had begun in 1973, but it did not; it began in 1957.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, I was talking to the German, as I said, in 1972. So the year would be 2020 because he was speaking about 50 years from then.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord. I had understood him to mean that the sense of community would be achieved 50 years from the foundation of the Community, which we tend to forget was a good long time before we joined it.

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My noble friend Lord Clinton-Davis pointed out strongly, and entirely correctly, that the distancing of Britain from the Social Chapter was a paradoxical affair. Articles 117 and 118 have always been there and we have subscribed to them. In detaching ourselves from that chapter now, we are, as it were, "unsigning" part of the original Treaty of Rome. The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, shakes his head. Perhaps he will go further into this matter when he winds up. Those articles have been there all the time. What is new in the new Social Chapter is very small indeed compared with what was always there. As has been observed so often in the press and in the debate today, what is new is not at all terrifying. It is mostly about the Commission having the right and duty to facilitate contacts, understanding and negotiations between what the Germans call the two sides of industry, and making services available within the national societies of member states. It is also about assisting workers in international Community companies to negotiate with those international companies. It is very obvious that they need assistance, because the workers are not international and the companies are. It is hard to see how anyone can be so steamed up about that.
What about the mechanics of the Social Chapter as time goes on? Let us look at the situation now. Next time the Council of Ministers discusses matters under the Social Chapter, that would include proposals which might or might not come under that Social Chapter or the proposals might concern matters which come half under the Social Chapter and half under another chapter. What happens then if Britain leaves the room or stays silent? That is fairly easy to imagine. But when we next hold the presidency of the Council, presumably we shall be unable to chair a debate about a matter which is not going to affect us. That might be difficult. Would the President be required to retire from the room or what? What about the frontier questions between that chapter and others? I see at least two past commissioners having a discussion about the matter already. I hope that they may have a solution.
I return to an earlier matter which the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, a former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, put forward with such raw force. I refer to his pride in the fact that we shall be able to offer to foreign investors worse conditions of employment—that is to say, more profitable, more old-fashioned and rougher conditions of employment —than apply in other Community countries. That is a shortsighted object of pride. To begin with, it is not going to be a very popular situation for very long in this country when it sinks in that that is what is happening. To go on, a rational deployment of inward investment in the Community, which is as desirable as a rational deployment of self-generated investment, can only be achieved if the conditions are roughly equal throughout. That is an extreme case of the blinkered vision of the Benches opposite of which I have presented two minor cases.
Having said all that, what has happened is not a disaster by any means. In a few decades' time, the name of Maastricht will not be remembered for any of
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the matters that have been talked about so far and that this debate has been concerned with. I believe that the name of Maastricht will be remembered because that was the time when the European Parliament was finally given full and formal power to appoint the Commission. It strikes the eye at once that this power goes far deeper than it says. It will be open to the Parliament, if it can achieve a consensus in advance, to refuse to appoint any Commission which is not committed to doing the things that it wants during the next four years.
That has, in fact, long been the case. The Parliament could have dismissed the Commission and refused to reappoint another until it had the commitments that it felt the Commission ought to have made to it. It will certainly be easier now for it to use that power. The fact that it has taken so long to achieve, and that the earlier and lesser power was never used or even considered, we must attribute largely to the relative isolation of the Parliament in Strasbourg over the years. Now that it is no longer so isolated, and meets more often at committee and party group level in Brussels, and has this perfectly explicit power in its hands, we may hope to see the Commission falling, as it should, under the control of the elected Parliament. Here we have—
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, nine minutes!
Lord Kennet: My Lords, the word has gone round that we may relax, though I do not know on what authority. We have here a true parallel with the development of our national democracies. Gradually, governments fell under the control of the elected parliaments and a new government had to be so constituted as to satisfy the elected parliament. We now see that beginning to happen in the European institutions.
5.50 p.m.
Lord Sherfield: My Lords, about 40 years ago Her Majesty's Government were confronted with what would now be called an ambush in the conclusion of the Schuman plan without previous warning or consultation. Jean Monnet came over to persuade us to accede to it. It contained a commitment to federalism and that ensured its rejection. We, and I believe also M. Schuman, were prepared to negotiate. M. Monnet, working through Adenauer, dissuaded him from doing that; so there was a fait accompli. Nevertheless, Her Majesty's Government played a full part in managing the Coal and Steel Community without making a political commitment.
So on the federal issue the attitude of Her Majesty's Government has not changed in 40 years. The difference today is that as we were in the negotiations we were able to get the wording altered. We might have done the same thing in 1950 if we had had the opportunity.
It is interesting to compare the roles of Jean Monnet in 1950 and Jacques Delors in 1990. Monnet was motivated by the desire to join France and Germany indissolubly together to prevent a further conflict. Delors seems to be motivated similarly. But

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their styles differ as much as do those of the Prime Minister and Mrs. Thatcher. Monnet worked behind the scenes. His only ambition was to achieve his objectives. Delors seems to prefer the limelight and not to conceal his ambitions. Both those unelected officials have profoundly and equally influenced the conduct of policy.
After the Schuman plan came the Messina conversations which led to the EEC treaty. I was in Washington at the time, and I have never fully understood why we withdrew our representative from Messina. But whatever the reason, and the course of events would have been different had we not done so, the negotiations must surely have broken down on agricultural policy as they did when the Government tried to negotiate an industrial free trade area with the exclusion of agriculture. After all, even from the inside we have had little luck in curbing the excesses of the CAP.
Historians, and indeed others, are fond of telling us how often the Government have missed a bus, but more often than not these buses were not really there, or, if they were, their destination was one to which the Government, with full contemporary public support, were not prepared to go. The big milestone has been the Single European Act. That was a bus which we were prepared to take and which has led us to the present conjuncture. The great difference from past years is that the Labour Party has now boarded, not perhaps the same bus, but one with a destination marked "Europe".
One more thing has not changed. As the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, said, the attitude of the United Kingdom and most of our European partners to commitments still differs fundamentally. The difference is sometimes called—I think the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, used the expression—a cultural one, though I am not sure that that is the right word. Most of our European partners are all too ready to subscribe in writing to principles which they have no serious intention of applying, while we, with the Danes, are reluctant to put our names to anything which we are not prepared to carry out with the minimum of delay. The result is a rush to set distant objectives before the first objective has been reached, and so, in my opinion, the Prime Minister was quite right to try to apply the brakes at Maastricht. For better or for worse, this has been the British role in all the international negotiations that I can remember.
Perhaps I should know the figures, but can the Minister tell us this evening, first, how many of the required steps towards the single market have now been agreed by all 12 EC members? Secondly, what prospect does he see of completing the process by the end of next year or even by the end of 1993? Only yesterday I read that the Financial Services Directive, so important to the United Kingdom, had been stalled for six months owing mainly to French intransigence. Should we not harp more often on this theme?
There are other issues which demand settlement here and now rather than in 1994 or 1999. One is the conclusion of the Uruguay Round; the other is the expansion of the Community. They both, especially
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the former, require urgent action. On both issues, however, I believe that the Minister could confirm that the Government are doing their best.
5.55 p.m.
Lord Marlesford: My Lords, as a newcomer to your Lordships' House I rapidly became aware that there is a convention that party politics intrude rather less here than they do in another place, where I spent some time observing but not participating in the debates. On the other hand, given the amendment put down by the Labour Party and given what the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, has said, I shall allow myself to make some political comments. After all, not only are we entering a highly political point but the decisions made at Maastricht were taken in a highly political context.
I found remarkable—it may be unprecedented— the extent to which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister was prepared to reveal precisely, accurately and fully his negotiating hand when he spoke in another place during the debate before Maastricht and the extent to which he actually achieved the objectives that he set out to achieve. Whether or not one likes them, it must be admitted that the objectives he set himself appear to have been achieved—although, if the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, is to be believed, the French think that they have won. However, M. Jacques Delors, by his denunciation of Britain's failure to sign up to the Social Chapter, seems to think otherwise.
The position of the Labour Party is very difficult. I appreciate that and sympathise with it. For many years the Labour Party was strongly opposed to membership of the Community on the perfectly sound and consistent ground that it saw the Community as an obstacle to the achievement of socialism. Now the Labour Party appears to be prepared to endorse full participation because it sees the Community as a bulwark against economic liberalism. But the Labour Party wants, where it can, to go further, in areas like the Social Chapter, forgetting, as the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, told us, that it is in favour of subsidiarity. If ever there were a case for subsidiarity I would suggest that it is in most of the matters covered by the Social Chapter. After all, Britain's own position on many of these policies is well in advance of our Community partners; for example, the National Health Service. I doubt whether any noble Lord would deny that we have a much finer health service than any other country in the European Community.
As a result, I find the position of the Labour Party less consistent and therefore less credible than it was 20 years ago. One does not want to say things that are in any sense disrespectful or unkind about very nice people. However, do noble Lords who support the Labour Party really believe in their hearts that when a crucial moment comes on 1st July when Britain accedes to the presidency of the Council of Ministers our national interests would be as well served and protected by Mr. Kinnock and Mr. Kaufman as they would be by Mr. Major and Mr. Hurd? I really do not believe it.
Lord Williams of Elvel: I believe that the noble Lord has not read the Social Chapter.
Lord Marlesford: Well, I would exclude my friend Mr. John Smith from that particular stricture because I note that as recently as 24th November he said:
"We should not commit ourselves now, in advance of 1997, to enter a single currency".
If the Labour Party really believes in subsidiarity, perhaps its leader could apply the principle to allow Mr. Smith to lay down the economic policies. Clearly Mr. Smith took a sound approach at that time.
Perhaps I may move on to what is a crucial issue, especially so to the Liberal Democrats. I refer to federalism. The Liberal Democrats and the Liberal Party have always, I suppose, been well ahead of public opinion in European matters. That is a prerogative of a party that does not expect to form a government. But it can be dangerous. I believe that federalism can itself result in political danger if it is created in the wrong way. For example, if a federation is created organically and naturally by centripetal forces, it is sustainable. But if it is created by confining centrifugal forces from the outside, then as soon as that confinement is removed the structure is likely to fall apart.
We have seen that in the Soviet Union dramatically day by day, and tragically in the case of Yugoslavia. But there have been cases in Britain's recent history where, in achieving decolonisation, we tried to impose federations which seemed very neat but which were not actually viable. For example, the federations of both Central Africa and the West Indies flew apart and Malaysia did not last very long. My noble friend Lord Selkirk will remember the problems that he had at the time as Commissioner General in South-East Asia in trying to persuade Mr. Lee Kuan Yew to accept federal union with Malaya. I see federation as being like a glue. If one is trying to glue something one can hold it together for a while but, if the glue is tacky and never solidifies, whenever one removes one's hands it once more separates.
Probably the best example we know of a federation which has really worked is the United States of America. That has been truly organic. I think that we should marvel at the wisdom of the Founding Fathers who wrote a constitution which has lasted for 200 years with only 26 amendments. They anticipated many of the problems about which we are talking in connection with Europe. Let us take, for example, subsidiarity. The first 10 amendments in December 1791, as your Lordships know, formed what is now shortly called the Bill of Rights. The tenth of those amendments reads as follows:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people".
You could not have a clearer statement of subsidiarity than that.
I believe that the British people need time to take on board the future developments of Europe. They are very cautious. We have long traditions; longer than those of most of the other countries in the Community. After all, we are a much older country than most of the others. We surrender our traditions reluctantly. Sometimes not very important matters are
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involved. For example, some still find it strange that in the weather forecast the temperature is now given in centigrade rather than in Fahrenheit, and some of us find it difficult to reduce our acres to hectares. However, gradually we take all these changes on board.
The brilliant negotiations by and achievements of our Prime Minister at Maastricht have given us time. Over the next five years or so all our options are open. We shall be able to move with others, or not, as Britain's national interests then dictate. That is why I believe that we should be giving a hearty endorsement to what I am sure will go down in history as a considerable achievement last week.
6.4 p.m.
Lord Desai: My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford. I especially liked his image of something held together with tacky glue which may fall apart if one removes one's hand; my concern is for the unity of the party opposite, which has been held together by the tacky glue of the Maastricht agreement.
However, if we examine Maastricht and ask ourselves what has been achieved, we shall come to correct the current feeling of euphoria. Let us first look at the protocol which has been the great victory won at Maastricht. The protocol excludes the United Kingdom from certain conditions which have to be met if a country is to join the single currency union. Article 109F lays down four conditions. They are price stability, sustainability of the financial position of the government, no excessive fluctuations of the exchange rate and low interest rates.
Do the Government not like those objectives? Do they no longer like price stability? Do they love excessive fluctuations in the exchange rate? Have they abandoned their principles about deficit? Do they like high interest rates? Further, are the Government saying that the conditions laid down in Article 109F are so bad for the country that we do not want them and that we want something different? Surely that cannot be the meaning of the protocol which we have signed.
All the protocol says is that countries should not have inflation or excessive fluctuations in the exchange rate or large deficits. If the Government say that they do not think that by 1997 they can achieve those conditions, and if they think that we shall not have low inflation, stable exchange rates or low deficits, then they should say so. We should then know that they are admitting that they have utterly failed over the past 11 years to achieve all the aims that they said they would achieve. They came to power promising financial probity and saying that deficits were bad. If they are now asserting that deficits are good, as the Financial Times said, then Mr. Major has won the right to devalue. If they have won the precious right to devalue, then let them say so. If that is the case, perhaps they would like to congratulate themselves, but I wonder whether the country will congratulate them.
But perhaps that is not the position. We know that the protocol is not actually a meaningful document in

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terms of national interests; it is really a sop for the Back-Benchers in the Conservative Party. It cannot be the case—in fact, I find it hard to believe—that the Government are promising us lots of inflation, lots of devaluation and large deficits.
We must ask ourselves what is going on. If there are no obstacles to achieving the convergence conditions in the treaty, what is all the fuss about? Normally, one cites the example of Sherlock Holmes and the story of the dog that did not bark. But I have a surprising story about a chancellor who spoke when he had no need to speak. Last week the Chancellor of the Exchequer promised unprovoked, that the Government are committed to the exchange rate mechanism, that they wish to move within the narrow bands and that they will not devalue. I ask myself: why would a chancellor, unprovoked and not under any pressure, suddenly say such things?
On reflection, I think that a secret protocol was signed at Maastricht. I believe that Mr. Major said to the other 11 countries, "You understand my difficulties. Behind my back there are people who are likely to do anything. So, if you let me sign the protocol saying that I will not join, in return I shall promise to do everything and more so that that eventuality does not arise: I will move into the narrow bands and I will promise not to devalue". That promise, given so soon after Maastricht, tells me that the Government have said one thing to their party and another—the more correct thing, I am glad to say—to the other 11 countries. That is why this meaningless protocol has been signed. It will have no effect. I am sure that a decent interval will pass after Thursday's vote and that the Government will sign up and forget about the protocol.
The great achievement at Maastricht was to keep the man from Essex and the woman from Grantham quiet. The Government may have triumphant support within the party. However, we have all been diverted from a true appreciation of the challenge that we face.
I have read and admired the works of my noble friend Lord Jay. I have to say to him that I was against the decision not to devalue which was taken in 1964. Like Lord Keynes, I believe that the 1925 decision was wrong; but we live in a different world today. Today, one country within a multinational context where there are free capital movements cannot afford to pursue unilateral devaluation. That is the way to ruin.
There are no eventual universal truths in economics. One must study the situation in which one finds oneself. If we want high employment and prosperity we must have a strict financial discipline. I, who was an unreconstructed Keynesian—I still consider myself to be one—still say that we should wait until we have a single currency, and then I shall revert to my unreconstructed habits. In the meantime, the UK, as a single region within a large multinational economy, cannot afford to be anywhere else than within the ERM, and the sooner we get into the narrow band the better.
The Government have adopted various financial theories and policies. We have had monetarism and abandoned it; we have had Keynesism and abandoned it; and we joined the ERM after having said that we
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should not join it. I hope that the same thing will happen over the Social Chapter. After lengthy protests that we will not join it, there will I hope be the same change of heart that there was over the ERM and we shall sign up like good boys and girls. I hope that, by the time the Community presidency passes to the United Kingdom in July, Mr. Kinnock and Mr. Kaufman will have signed up to the Social Chapter. The sooner that happens, the better.
6.12 p.m.
Lord Rochester: My Lords, it would be wrong for this important debate to end without a rather more detailed contribution than has so far been possible from these Benches about our attitude to the Maastricht protocol on social policy and the agreement reached by 11 of the 12 member states on the Social Charter.
In the past we have argued consistently that the European Community should have a social dimension. We supported the principle of the Social Charter when it was introduced in December 1989. We are critical of the then Prime Minister for not signing it. However, where the charter was basically a declaration of principle only, the draft Social Chapter which eventually reached Maastricht went further.
My party believes in the principle of so-called subsidiarity, and considers that it should apply in a social area as much as in any other. At the same time, we wish the Community to develop a common framework of minimum entitlements for its citizens; of employee involvement and share ownership; and of minimum standards of health, safety and employment protection. The Commission should not however, in our view, hand down from above detailed prescriptions on such matters. On the contrary, member states should be left to determine how those entitlements should be applied at lower levels and in some cases within individual companies.
Those considerations caused us a number of anxieties about the draft Social Chapter. For example, Section 3 of Article 118 of the agreement concluded by all the member states except the United Kingdom, gives the Community competence with regard to representation and the collective defence of the interests of workers and employers, including co-determination. There is a danger that that provision may give the representatives of employers and trade unions too privileged a position in the legislative process.
I shall take the opportunity to add that, arising from my industrial experience, I am also worried about the draft directive for the arrangement of working time, especially in relation to the provision regarding night work and shift work which may soon become part of the social action programme. Those provisions do not form part of the Maastricht social agreement, but we may still be faced with them because they stem from the Treaty of Rome, as amended by the Single European Act. If implemented in the United Kingdom, they would prove damaging to companies, for example, in the chemical industry,

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which relies heavily upon continuous-process work, and has to compete not just in Europe, but with its American and Japanese counterparts.
Having said all that, I do not believe that the noble Lord the Leader of the House was justified, after having repeated the Statement on Maastricht last Wednesday, to claim:
"We could not accept a text which would allow the Community to adopt measures which would drive a coach and horses through our trade unions reforms of the past 12 years".—[Official Report, 11/12/91; col. 779.]
Today, he has said much the same thing, albeit in rather more moderate language.
Nothing in the Social Chapter would have required the Government to repeal their trade union legislation. Section 6 of Article 118 of the agreement reached by the other 11 member states provides that the article should not apply to pay, the right of association and the right to strike or to impose lock-outs. Even the section of that article to which I referred earlier requires the Council to act unanimously on a proposal from the Commission: so the British Government could effectively have vetoed any proposal coming forward under that section if they so wished.
I conclude that it is a cause of great regret that instead of continuing to be in a strong position to fight this country's corner within the Community, the Government have committed Britain to exclusion from the agreement on social policy. We are now barred by the protocol from taking part in further deliberations in matters covered by that agreement. We shall therefore be severely handicapped in seeking to influence the future development of European social policy to ensure that it is suited to conditions within the United Kingdom.
It will be ironic indeed if, in the end, we find ourselves obliged to subscribe to the agreement on social policy which we have rendered ourselves powerless to shape.
6.19 p.m.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, we have been placed in some difficulty in our debate this afternoon—this was referred to earlier by one of my noble friends—as a result of the absence of a substantive Motion from the Official Opposition. Many noble Lords may have been wondering why. I can now offer them an explanation, having done a little detective work. It was apparently decided that there should be a substantive Motion, and a sub-committee was set up to draft it. That sub-committee consisted of the noble Lords, Lord Clinton-Davis and Lord Stoddart of Swindon. Regrettably, they failed to find a form of words which their Front Bench could accept.
The same cannot be said for noble Lords on the Benches opposite me. They have no hesitation in explaining their withholding of congratulations. They have a commitment which has just been repeated, even in the moderate and interesting speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, to a form of European state. Again looking for parallels, they remind me of the executive directors in the late Robert Maxwell's companies. We are told that they would have pieces of
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paper put before them and would sign them without reading them. It seems to me that noble Lords on the Liberal Benches will take anything that comes from Brussels and sign it. They may think it is nonsense, but that is the impression one derives from speech after speech—from the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, who, alas, is not in his place and from the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, who, perhaps wisely, is not in his. They continually repeat that it is all necessary to reach, not merely something so contemptible as higher standards of living or greater security but paradise itself, provided that we agree that M. Delors is the prophet of the day.
It seems to me that the great problem faced both by noble Lords on the Liberal Benches and by many— though not all —noble Lords on the Labour Benches is that they talk about a world which, if it existed, might be very nice; but it does not exist at all. They live in a world of the imagination. The noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, extols the hostile comments made by Commissioner Di Meana on the British environment. But Commissioner Di Meana is the nominee of a government who do not even pretend to carry through the decisions of the Community. They are a government—
Lord Clinton-Davis: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Is he not aware that, on the very day when action was precipitated concerning the United Kingdom, similar action in respect of other matters relating to environmental impact assessment was taken against the Italian Government by the gentleman whom he now reviles?
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I do not revile the gentleman, I am sure he is an honest man; "misdemeanour" is perhaps a more honest description of his actions. The point is that, though he takes, or initiates, measures against his own government, he must know as a citizen and politician in Italy that that does not have the same effect as when directives are accepted by this Government and this Parliament. He knows it perfectly well and therefore whether or not he brings an action is, from the point of view of what happens, largely irrelevant.
The noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden, said that Europe for some decades now had had the tremendous and inspiring policy of a social relationship between capital and labour. One would imagine that it had had benign effects. No doubt in Germany, and perhaps one or two other countries, there has been remarkable progress in relations within industry. However, is the noble Baroness aware that in France, for example, we now see a constant succession of strikes at a period of massive unemployment? Does this principle, to which no doubt the French have acceded on paper, give them the kind of social stability which it is assumed we should have if we were to take the same verbal formulation to our hearts?
I believe that it is important for people who talk about this serious subject of European unity not to confuse vapid aspirations in words with deeds. I say this because, although most noble Lords have taken the view that Maastricht is very important and has been a great event and although the Prime Minister is

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to be congratulated on a perfectly valid defence of the United Kingdom's positions, it is by no means the most important event happening now. The most important event is the break-up in Eastern Europe and the transformation of a continent.
We live in a dangerous age. It is all very well going to Maastricht and reaching a compromise as to how we are to have a common foreign policy. Then we find the Germans using their undoubted and understandable muscle in the Twelve, forcing the rest of us to adopt a policy towards Yugoslavia which we all know, and which everyone who knows about Eastern Europe is convinced, can bring nothing but further death and suffering. If the Germans believe that Croatia should be defended—and the Croats have a case against the Serb aggressors—let them be active in their defence. But merely to say that everyone will recognise them, to assert "We have brought Europe round to see the justice of your cause", and then to leave the Croats under Serbian bayonets seems to me to cast doubt on whether we are yet ready or can be ready for some time for the degree of unity which is assumed.
It has been suggested that one of the advantages of Maastricht is an opening towards enlargement. I believe that my noble friend the Leader of the House suggested this and I hope that it is the case. I am sure that Her Majesty's Government will press for it to be the case, but the text assumes that, in relation to voting power and so on, there will be no enlargement in the lifetime of this revision of the treaty.
When we discuss these matters I implore noble Lords—and I repeat what I said before—let us realise that Europe is on the brink of a possibly appalling catastrophe. As we speak, people in Yugoslavia are being massacred, subjected to bombardment from the air. We have a cultural chapter in the Maastricht treaty. I hope that our colleagues will help us to live up to it in the protection of that gem of European architecture, Dubrovnik. I implore the House: take this seriously and not as a matter of party politics, which seems to be the only matter which concerns the noble Lord, Lord Desai.
6.28 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, not surprisingly, I shall confine my comments to that part of the debate which has involved much discussion from this side; that is, the rejection of the Social Charter and all that it entails. I shall not go down the same road as my noble friends Lord Murray and Lady Turner because they dealt with a difficult situation more adequately than I could.
I wish in passing to point out to the main speakers on the other side who defended the rejection of the Social Charter and all it entailed that the Government's case depends on the fact that it would impede and retard a recovery if one started to take place. It would destroy the favourable conditions under which we operate.
I commence by referring to the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter. Unfortunately, he is not here today and I make no criticism because he is one of our most avid attenders and one of the most consistent contributors to our debates. He referred to the theme
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in a statement last week that we would be jettisoning the favourable position from which we are now able to operate.
The noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, a former Secretary of State in your Lordships' House, was responsible for introducing a shoal of trade union legislation into your Lordships' House. That legislation is now on the statute book and the Government are frightened they may lose it. I accept that much of the trade union legislation was necessary. I have always believed in ballots for certain courses of action, as does my union. However, we must remember that the legislation that sought to remove the wages councils had nothing to do with productivity. That legislation hit the weakest section of the workforce. Those people have no muscle anyway. I should remind the House that some of the wages councils were established at the request of Sir Winston Churchill, who could hardly have been accused of being pro-trade union. He realised the weakest people in our society needed protection from some of the worst bosses in our society.
It has been suggested that we in this country are prospering because we have the advantage of certain legislation on trade unions. However, that myth was completely debunked in another place by the Leader of the Opposition, despite the interventions of four Cabinet Ministers who tried to destroy his argument. When he had finished speaking. Members on the Government Benches were totally silent. He said that most of the legislation on the statute book concerning the trade union movement in this country could not be altered. It is totally free from any interference on the part of the Commission. I believe this matter has been referred to today.
The right honourable Michael Howard is, in my view, an anti-trade union Secretary of State for Employment. Both he and Mr. Major have said that our trade union legislation cannot be interfered with by the Commission and yet they are still trying to justify their rejection of the Social Charter.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, will the noble Lord give way?
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, the noble Lord is taking up my allotted time. I will not give way to him as my time is too tight.
Let us consider how well our economy is faring with the so-called advantageous legislation that has been passed as regards trade unions. The Engineering Employers Federation has just produced an economic assessment which shows that in engineering—that is the biggest sector of manufacturing in the country— some 170,000 jobs were lost this year. The federation predicts another 70,000 jobs will be lost in the near future. Article after article appears in the press to contradict our supposed state of prosperity. A headline in the business section of The Times of 17th December states:
"Factory output falls for third month running".
The latest published employment figures reveal the true situation. A press notice of 14th November from the Department of Employment states:
"The number of employees employed in manufacturing industry in Great Britain at 4,693,000, is estimated to have

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fallen by 18,000 in September 1991. Employment in manufacturing fell by 348,000 over the year to September 1991, compared with a fall of 68,000 in the previous twelve months".
Therefore nearly a third of a million jobs have been lost in the manufacturing sector between September 1990 and September 1991. Yet we are told favourable conditions for industry have been created in this country through the Government's anti-trade union legislation.
It is about time we were told the true facts. Then we could get the position in perspective. As I have already said, some of the trade union legislation was necessary, for example on ballots for selecting officials and on strike ballots. One cannot argue against those measures. Nevertheless I maintain that it is unfortunate that some of the legislation that was introduced in this House by the noble Lord, Lord Young, constituted an attack on the standard of living of the lowest paid people in our society. It is a tragedy that to give the appearance of having cemented a crumbling party together, the Prime Minister has removed from the poorest people in our society—they have no one to fight for them—the right to a reasonable wage. I hope the electorate will take note of that. I believe they will as the policy has not been successful.
6.36 p.m.
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Earlier in the week I considered adding my name to the list of speakers but I noted that there were already a large number. Therefore I decided not to add my name at that stage as today I have a party of visitors from Italy with me who are en route to Scotland. Fortunately, thanks to the way noble Lords have kept to their time limits, there is a gap into which I have been parachuted. My visitors who are en route to Scotland from their workplaces in Italy have listened to parts of the debate today on two occasions. They were most impressed.
During the debate I have occasionally had cause almost to pinch myself to keep awake. I believed I was dreaming when I heard members of the party opposite say how impressed they are and how they applaud the European Community. I thought I was dreaming because twice in my political life I recall acting in favour of the European Community. I cannot remember that on either occasion I was stampeded by members of the party opposite in their haste to be on the same side. The first time I acted in favour of the European Community was at the time of the referendum on Europe. I can certainly recall that some members of the party opposite and some members of the Liberal Democrats extolled the virtues of the European Community at that time. The referendum was successful.
The second time occurred when, in another life down the Corridor, I voted in favour of the Single European Act. I cannot recall seeing vast numbers of the party opposite in the same Division Lobby. However, I am pleased to hear them talking in pro-European Community terms today. I am pleased
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at that because it is important that we should be in favour of our membership of the Community and that that should apply across the whole political spectrum. However, I take it rather hard when noble Lords opposite complain about what this party is doing as we have had such a long and honourable record on the European Community. They complain that we are somehow not pulling our weight in Europe. That is not the case. We are simply saying to people in the European Community that we should act in sensible ways that enable us to achieve things. It is terribly important that we should not make the European Community an inward-looking Community. Let us not build around the European Community huge barriers to trade and other matters.
A week or two ago in your Lordships' House we discussed the GATT. That was an excellent debate in which we explored the need to free up world markets and trade. However, what worries me a little sometimes is that there is a danger that the European Community may become an inward-looking organisation and may erect large trade barriers. The common agricultural policy is certainly an example of that. Such a process would be contrary to the interests of this country, of Europe or of the world.
In his speech a few moments ago my noble friend Lord Beloff reminded your Lordships of all the other events which are happening, not in the rest of the world but in the rest of Europe. Occasionally during the Maastricht Summit I became a little worried that we in the Community were discussing matters relating to Maastricht while there was mayhem in Yugoslavia and dramatic changes were taking place in what was the Soviet Union. Those changes are such that, if two years ago I had suggested in this House that they would take place, your Lordships would definitely have asked for the gentlemen in white coats to come to take me away. Those events have happened and are happening.
Therefore I was worried, as I have been during much of the discussions on the Community, that we have become so inward looking that we are ignoring the great events which are taking place on our own continent. We should be making sure that our Community is able to react to those events and to draw in all those new countries—not only the well-off countries of Northern Europe which are waiting at the door to come in but the countries of Eastern Europe which need the help and support which we in the European Community can give them.
That is why I believe that what my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has achieved in Maastricht is in the interests of the Community as well as in the interests of the United Kingdom. He got the others to agree to what we are now embarking on. Listening to the debate I sometimes wonder whether the others agreed; but everybody, the Prime Minister and all the other leaders, signed the treaty at the end of the day.
There are two or three very important aspects of that agreement. One is the EMU. However, the importance of convergence cannot be overlooked. It is not guaranteed and it is not automatic. It is only sensible that we should say, "Yes, let's proceed, but let's leave the final decision until a lot nearer the day

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when the final decision has to be taken". That seems to me to be entirely sensible because convergence will not be an easy matter. One just has to read of the kind of economy they have in Greece or Spain to see that there is huge divergence between many of the countries of Europe. That divergence may well increase if the Community is expanded. Therefore we should be careful. That is what I believe my right honourable friend the Prime Minister recognised in his negotiations in Maastricht on the subject of convergence.
All that I would say to your Lordships on the subject of the Social Charter is that I believe that subsidiarity—that dreadful word—should apply. I believe that issues covered by the Social Charter and many other aspects of Community life are best decided by the individual member states and the individual member governments. It is very important that we ensure that subsidiarity occurs and that there is no interference from the centre. There is interference from the centre but the centre must try to resist interfering.
I understand that recently in connection with environmental matters bureaucrats in Brussels said that pressure groups go to them and plead with them to intervene. I say to them that they should resist the temptation to intervene. If subsidiarity means anything it means that the people in Brussels will often have to resist that temptation and allow individual member states to do what they believe is best in the interests of their people.
I believe that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has done the United Kingdom and the Community a service by his work at Maastricht. I hope that tonight the House will give him an overwhelming endorsement.
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, on the subject of Yugoslavia, perhaps I may say that I do not believe that anyone could have done more than my noble friend Lord Carrington.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish: My Lords, I do not disagree.
6.48 p.m.
Lord Barnett: My Lords, I apologise for having missed my slot on the speakers' list and I am grateful to your Lordships for allowing me to say a few words now.
I understand why those who have always opposed Britain's closer integration with the European Community are opposed to what the Government have done. I find it little more than astonishing that others who have always opposed our closer integration with the European Community have now accepted the propaganda and find it all marvellous. For myself, I have always taken the opposite view. My credentials are quite clear. In 1971 I voted against a three-line Whip, together with some of my noble friends, in favour of our entry into the Community. In 1983 I made my maiden speech in your Lordships' House in favour of our full entry into the exchange
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rate mechanism, which took a little longer for us to achieve. On the other hand, from an entirely different standpoint, I want to make it clear why today I too oppose what was agreed at Maastricht. Perhaps I may explain.
The opt-out, or opt-in, protocol to the third stage of economic and monetary union and a single currency is quite meaningless, as the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said earlier. I believe it to be damaging to Britain's interests. One has only to imagine 1997 or 1999, when the third stage is intended to become irrevocable under the terms of the treaty. The noble Lord, Lord Jay, was quite wrong to say that convergence is not possible, because the form of convergence is spelt out very clearly in the protocol. We are not talking about wide convergence but about four specific issues. There is a possibility of convergence. However, let us assume that there is no convergence. In that case there is no single currency and there is no third stage of economic and monetary union. However, if, as is much more likely, a majority of the 11 are able to find a satisfactory convergence and enter the third stage so that there is a single currency, does anyone imagine that. Britain will be able to stay outside it?
Yesterday, in reply to a question from the noble Lord, Lord Monson, on the exchange rate mechanism, where a similar situation applies, a Minister said that even if we were outside the exchange rate mechanism we would still be compelled to abide by many of the rules which we abide by now. That would apply, one might say with knobs on, if we were outside the third stage of economic and monetary union. Those who do not accept that make a totally unrealistic assessment of the UK's economic position both now and as it is likely to be in 1997 or 1999. It is nonsense to imagine that we could stay outside.
While I am dealing with the meaningless part of what was achieved and what was called a great triumph, perhaps I may ask the Minister when he winds up the debate to answer a specific question. I have read the protocol and the details of the areas from which we are excluded. Will the Minister confirm that, despite the protocol giving us the right to opt in or opt out and the other exclusions from the treaty, the Government will still seek to meet the convergence criteria spelt out in Article 109F? If the answer is no, we shall not be in a position to opt in in 1997 or 1999. I should be grateful to the Minister if he would explain that point. While he is about it will the noble Earl also confirm that we go along with sustained convergence as set out in Article 103? That is equally important because it also includes a monitoring element. Although the exclusions are very difficult to interpret, my understanding is that the Government are also committed to that.
It is precisely because the so-called triumph will be meaningless in practice that I believe that we have achieved nothing at Maastricht. In the process we have done ourselves considerable damage. We have been seen to be spending months niggling over something which makes little or no difference. Even if the Government are right and we remain at the heart of what is happening in the Community, our influence

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on the run-up to full economic and monetary union is inevitably bound to be reduced. As an example, I believe it was the noble Lord, Lord Cobbold, who pointed out that there is no chance whatsoever of a European bank being based in the UK, preferably in Manchester. More importantly, we could have had a major voice in determining the powers of the Council of Ministers over an unelected Commission and an unelected central bank. That is what we should have been negotiating at Maastricht.
Quite wrongly in my view the Government—and the Opposition—have conceded without a peep that the Council of Ministers will have virtually no control over an unelected Commission and an unelected central bank. Under the protocol we are specifically excluded from the right to appoint the president of the bank, the vice-president of the bank and all the executive members who will be appointed for eight years. That is what we have excluded ourselves from. To say that we shall have all the influence that we would have had whether or not we had signed the treaty is frankly untrue. We shall simply not have that degree of influence. Instead of giving ourselves what Ministers have called freedom of choice, we have given ourselves the worst of all worlds.
6.50 p.m.
Lord Thomson of Monifieth: My Lords, the Maastricht Treaty, which has been the subject of this important debate, is a massive document. It has emerged during the debate that a great deal in it commands general support and that a good deal of the Government's approach to what is in it is not a matter of dispute across the Floor of the House. No one who has spent a good deal of his life in the rough trade of politics would begrudge the Prime Minister his personal success at Maastricht, nor the style and tone with which he achieved it.
However, in the time that is available to me I want to concentrate on the two main issues of controversy which have emerged during the debate and which are reflected in the two amendments that stand on the Order Paper: the Government's attitude to the single currency and particularly their attitude to the Social Chapter.
The Government are triumphant—the Leader of the House was triumphant earlier this afternoon—that they have, to use the words on the Order Paper, secured their negotiating objectives on these matters. So they have, but the real question is, were those objectives the right ones in the first place, and now that we have an opportunity to judge, is the political price likely to be worth paying? Because the Maastricht result seems good for the Prime Minister and his party, it does not follow that it is also good for Britain and the Community. Despite the robust assertion of the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, and, I believe, the noble Lord, Lord Aldington, that we remain at the centre of discussions about the future of EMU—I accept that that is so—it is not to be believed that we can now continue to have the influence over those discussions that we would have had if we had not taken the opt-out formula.
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We on these Benches believe that the Government's policy has been seriously damaging to British interests in the Community for a very simple reason which I may perhaps explain in personal terms. When I had the task in a long-ago Labour Government of preparing British negotiations for entry, and again as a European commissioner—an experience shared by a number of my colleagues who have spoken today—I found an albatross continually hanging around Britain's neck. In the jargon of Brussels it was the aquis communautaire—the accumulation of decisions already taken by the member states of the Community in their own interests—which we were compelled to accept as a condition of entry. Those decisions were taken when we were not there to influence them. The origins of that go back to our absence over the Schuman plan and over Messina, as has been mentioned in the debate, but we certainly could do little or nothing about President de Gaulle's two vetoes on our entry.
However, this time—this is the point that I want to make with all the force that I can command—in the social field in particular we are deliberately counting ourselves out. The 11 will go ahead to create a new aquis communautaire in their own interests on social matters, which will undoubtedly create future problems for Britain. That extraordinary 11 to one formula which the Government forced on their partners at midnight means that the British social Ministers will have to sit in voteless silence while their colleagues operate that curious social sub-community on their own in their own interests.
I shall be interested to know what will happen during the British presidency. Will a silent British chairman preside over the matters that come under the Social Chapter? What about the role of the British Conservative MEPs? Are they to go on exercising their undoubted right to speak and vote, perhaps occasionally swinging critical votes in the European Parliament on social policies from which their own constituents are to be exempted by the Government in this country? I can see Mr. Tam Dalyell's famous Lothian question about Scottish MPs, once they have a parliament of their own in Scotland, continuing to vote down English policies being replaced by the Strasbourg question. What will the European Court make in due course of the Government's effort to turn itself into a European version of a third world, cheap labour country by avoiding obligations regarding working conditions that even the poorer members of the Community are prepared to accept?
We agree with the Government that the Commission sometimes seeks to intervene in the social field in unnecessarily intrusive ways. I give the Government full credit in that respect. The Leader of the House mentioned the way in which we have enacted the various directives under the social action programme, but surely the lesson from that argument is that we shall best look after our interests by being inside the social arrangements in order to influence the decisions that are made.
I commend a thoughtful article in the Independent last Thursday by Mr. Peter Kellner. He showed arithmetically how under qualified majority voting

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Britain could have modified proposals that it did not like or even have had them dropped. Without Britain, the arithmetic will be very different. The social policy enthusiasts in the Community will have their own way and, when Britain finally signs up, as one day we will do, we will be forced to obey laws that we could otherwise have blocked or amended.
The argument that M. Delors, armed with the new Social Chapter, would put Arthur Scargill back on his throne is hardly worth considering. It is simple electioneering and not very plausible electioneering. The most cursory glance at the small print of the Social Chapter shows that the structure of Conservative trade union law is untouched by what will be enacted under the new Social Chapter.
Maintaining party unity in the face of an impending general election has clearly emerged as the main motive of the Government's policy at Maastricht. In this House we all understand the compulsions of election politics and one must not become too self-righteous about the matter. Nevertheless, it remains sad when a Government feel it necessary to give party considerations priority over the country's national and international interests.
The Prime Minister's remark that he wished Britain to be at the heart of the European Community has been widely quoted in the debate. He has instead emerged from Maastricht at the heart of his political party, but standing on the sidelines of the Community on the major issues of building a united Europe. The noble Lord, Lord Young, who is not now in his place, made the rather curious remark that our policy at Maastricht put us in the fast lane of the Community. That took our breath away on this side of the House. The Prime Minister is a football fan. I have no doubt that at his favourite football stadium of Stamford Bridge, the linesman is in the fast lane of the game, but he is still on the sidelines. We would much prefer that the Government were there in the middle of the playing field, battling both for British and European interests.
Like other noble Lords who have spoken, we hope that in one way or another, after the election Britain will take a more positive and enthusiastic approach to the Community. My noble friend Lord Bonham-Carter made the important remark that the enlargement of the Community, which is the next stage that will face us, will demand some hard and fresh thinking to which some of the old habits of thinking inside the Community will not be wholly appropriate. One hopes that we in Britain will have a large role to play in that.
There have been the usual remarks in the debate, sometimes of a rather patronising character, suggesting how pragmatic and commonsensical we are in this country and how up-in-the-air, unprincipled and slightly unscrupulous are our partners on the mainland of Europe. Those distinctions can be greatly overdrawn. The Prime Minister might do well to remember that we in Britain are not all total pragmatists all the time. I commend to him that great English poet, Browning:
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?".
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So far the Prime Minister, and through him the Government, have not yet quite understood what goes on at the heart of the Community. Certainly they have failed at Maastricht to put Britain at the heart of the Community. For that reason we have tabled the amendment that stands in our name on the Order Paper.
7 p.m.
Lord Richard: My Lords, I do not propose to reiterate many of the points that have been made. I think it fair to say that over the hours the seams between the two sides of the House have emerged fairly clearly. I shall say but one word to the noble Lord, Lord Beloff. He accused this side of the House of playing party politics. That was, I believe, the phrase he used. I must reply that it is not our Motion on the Order Paper to congratulate the Prime Minister; it is not our debate. The Motion came from the Front Bench on the other side. Indeed, I understand that congratulations are supposed to be in order in the other place as well. Faced with such an overtly party political, congratulatory Motion to the Prime Minister, it is hardly surprising if those on this side of the House who do not feel that he deserves much congratulation should react. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, at least sees that point.
As I said, the seams of the debate have become perfectly clear. The Government apparently firmly believe that they deserve to be congratulated because the Prime Minister has negotiated a strategic sidestep at Maastricht. We feel that he does not deserve to be congratulated for precisely the same reason; namely, that what he and the Government succeeded in doing at Maastricht was and remains a sidestep. They withdrew from two crucial areas of Community policy. I shall be examining some of the possible effects. But having negotiated the withdrawal in what I am told by the other side of the House was an extremely skilled, polished, effective and diplomatic way, the Government cannot then pretend, once they have sidestepped, that they have not sidestepped. The fact is that, having withdrawn from those two crucial areas of Community policy, our capacity to influence what takes place there is bound to be less.
We have seen some of the effects already. First of all, as my noble friend Lord Williams of Elvel pointed out, we were unable at Maastricht to play any meaningful part in the negotiations over the timing of stage three. When the French produced their proposals on the timing, it was hardly open at that stage for the British Prime Minister to say, "We do not agree with those timings". He was open to receive—I gather that he did receive—the inevitable response: "If you are not yet prepared to tell us whether you are going to be involved, we do not think you have much to say to us over the timing of stage three itself." That was hardly surprising.
The second effect of our withdrawal is that we shall have little, if any, influence on the course of events leading up to and into stage three. The noble Lord, Lord Boardman, disagreed and said that we should have a great deal of influence. He seemed to think that our influence would not be lessened at all. One

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Foreign Office Minister, Mr. Garel-Jones, recently said, "The devil is in the details". Not only is the devil in the details; a revelation is in the details. I therefore commend the noble Lord, Lord Boardman, to look at the treaty and in particular at the protocol on certain provisions relating to the United Kingdom at pages 80, 81 and 82.
It would be superfluous and indeed exhausting to read out the number of articles set out on page 81 which no longer apply to the United Kingdom as a result of our withdrawal. I shall read out only one, referred to already by the noble Lord, Lord Barnett:
"The United Kingdom shall also"
note that "also"—
"have no right to participate in the appointment of the President, the Vice-President and the other members of the Executive Board of the ECB under Articles 109A and 109H, paragraph 1 of the EEC treaty".
The next paragraph on that page gives a whole raft of articles which will no longer apply to the UK.
I cannot give way at this point. I have studiously avoided interrupting anybody in the course of this debate and, if I may say so, from time to time it has meant that self-discipline of an unusual character has been imposed upon me. If noble Lords will forgive me, I shall avail myself of the same privilege and protection that they have had; namely, relative silence.
Thirdly, I do not think anyone believes that, if stage three goes ahead and we get to the verge of a single European currency, Britain will remain outside it. I have not heard anyone from the other side of the House advocate that we should not join a European currency if we reach that stage. The argument has been: let us preserve the option.
Let us preserve the option to do what? Is it the option to withdraw at a time when the others are going ahead? That is inconceivable. It would be economic disaster for this country. Dare I say that in terms of the Community it would be almost political suicide? So why do we go through the charade of pretending that by the opt-out to the treaty we are preserving some real, hard, economic and political right which we might exercise if a single currency is to come into existence? I do not believe that. Not only do I not believe it; frankly, I do not think that Europe believes it either.
What is wrong is that we are giving the impression yet again that we shall go along with something as and when it emerges if and when the time is right. I can hear government Ministers now. No doubt they will reiterate the same rather dreary formula—if they are still there, which I doubt—in relation to joining the third stage as they did in relation to joining the exchange rate mechanism. They will say, "When the time is right, when conditions are relevant". One knows all the phrases. Those phrases will come out and yet at the end of the day we shall join. Unfortunately, we shall join reluctantly, unenthusiastically, sluggishly and grudgingly. The result is that we shall lose even more power and influence over events in the Community than we have already lost. It is very sad. It is achieving the worst of both worlds.
If our approach to a single European currency seems insincere and self-defeating, our approach to
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the Social Charter is almost incomprehensible, even on the narrowest of political grounds. I do not propose to bore the House by going into too many details but again it is important that we should see what is happening in terms of the treaties.
The EC has a long history of legislation and activity in the field of social policy. The Treaty of Rome itself covers a wide range of social issues. I trust that I do not hear any suggestion that we should not continue to adhere to those articles. Indeed, the noble Lord the Leader of the House told us rather proudly today that our withdrawal from the Social Chapter of the new treaty did not affect any of the existing provisions of the Treaty of Rome itself. Let us see what those provisions are.
"Measures relating to the free movement of workers and the self-employed under Articles 48–66".
That is there; it is being used and no doubt will continue to be used.
"Under Article 118 the Commission has powers of, co-ordination"—
I commend that to the House, signed on the dotted line by this country and now complained about bitterly by the party opposite—
"in relation to employment policy. It has powers to 'promote close co-operation' between various member states"
in this field.
Under Article 118A the Council has
"legislative powers relating to health and safety. Article 118B (added by the Single European Act) deals with the Commission's role in developing a dialogue between management and labour".
That is not new, and not in the Social Charter itself for the first time, but in the Single European Act, agreed to by this country and signed up by the party opposite.
"Equal pay for equal work. Precise and enforceable rights are granted under Article 119".
They are accepted by the United Kingdom.
"Financial measures under the European Social Fund. The Council's powers to adopt a common policy on vocational training under Article 128".
Article 54 relates to the issue of harmonisation of company law. That also covers issues relating to worker participation. Those already exist. I had thought that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, was about to interrupt me.
Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone: My Lords, no. Please continue.
Lord Richard: My Lords, let us consider to what extent the Social Charter is a great new innovatory policy—a marvellous wheeze thought up by these terrible bureaucrats in Brussels—which it is necessary for the United Kingdom to resist at all costs.
What is the inspiration behind the Social Charter? As I understand it, there are three basic ideas, each of which I hope that this House would find unexceptionable. First, it was felt that there was a need to add a social dimension to the business dimension of 1992. It has been expressed from time to time as the need for a social consensus. The argument is self explanatory. If one has a social consensus, the chances are that the transition that is bound to take place and the changes that are bound to come will be that much easier if they are introduced by agreement rather than by confrontation.

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Secondly, there is the agreement on the need to avoid social dumping. That is the maintenance of lower labour standards in some parts of the Community in order to attract industry. One of the most unattractive arguments put forward by the party opposite today was that somehow or other this country is in a better position if our wage rates are so reduced that we become more attractive for inward investment—in other words, if we participate in precisely the social dumping which the Social Charter is designed to avoid.
Thirdly, there is a general desire for a greater degree of some form of social justice. I accept that the Social Charter is an odd mix. It is certainly a distinct mix. It consists of statements of matters already achieved by or under the EC treaty. It includes provisions already found in other international instruments. It is also a programme of future action. It is drafted in rather general and somewhat vague terms as a statement of principle rather than as a set of legally enforceable rights. It is a political document rather than a legally binding document.
Two basic threads run through the charter. First, it does not entail any extension of Community competence. That has two consequences, does it not? As a principle of interpretation, everything within the charter must fall within the terms of Community competence and implementation procedures must follow the pattern established by the EC treaty. The second principle in the Social Charter has been referred to often today; namely, the principle of subsidiarity. That is a principle which I am perfectly delighted to accept.
Those were the strands of the principles. What does the charter ask for? We have been told that it is so damaging to the British economy and industrial relations that it has to be resisted in the way the Prime Minister resisted it. What does it call for? It refers to freedom of movement for workers. I have no problem with that. It reiterates Article 48 of the treaty. It refers to employment and remuneration. All employment should be fairly remunerated; there should be an assured equitable wage.
I refer now to the Social Chapter. Even that has been watered down considerably. It refers to improvements in living and working conditions and social protection. The aspect that caused the most problem was freedom of association and collective bargaining. Let me read it to your Lordships' House. The Social Chapter refers to the right to resort to collective action. It states:
"In the event of a conflict of interests [it] shall include the right to strike, subject to the obligations arising under national regulations and collective agreements".
A furore arose when that was published. It was alleged that it went to the heart of good industrial relations in this country. Perhaps noble Lords will forgive me if I give one other quotation:
"The contracting parties recognise the right of workers and employers to collective action in cases of conflict of interest including the right to strike subject to obligations that might arise out of collective agreements previously entered into".
That same wording and the same principles were accepted by a Conservative Government in 1961 in the European social charter of the Council of Europe
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subsequently ratified by our Parliament. If it is so terrible in 1991, why did not the same principles apply in 1961? Have we moved on? Are we so much more perceptive now? Are the Conservative Government of today more perceptive than the government of 30 years ago? With great respect it does not make sense to resist the principle on that ground.
The charter called for vocational training, equal treatment for men and women, information, consultation and participation; I could go on. It is a modest document. It is a statement of principles and aims rather than a fully legally binding document.
What happened? At Maastricht when the Social Chapter was put before the heads of government, what did the United Kingdom do? Page 137 of the protocol on the social policy in the draft treaty on European union, states:
"The high contracting parties"—
including Britain—
"agree to authorise those eleven Member States to have recourse to Institutions, procedures and mechanisms of the European Community for the purposes of taking among themselves and applying as far as they are concerned the necessary decisions".
What is the effect of that? It is to say that the 11 member states—excluding the United Kingdom—shall have the right to behave in relation to the Community as though that 11 were 12. There can be no clearer indication in our submission that the result is to create a two-tier Europe and to put Britain in the lower tier. It states:
"The United Kingdom shall not take part in the deliberations on and the adoption of Commission proposals relating to fields covered by the above-mentioned Agreement".
I commend to your Lordships one other part of the document. Perhaps noble Lords will be kind enough to look at Annex IV of the treaty. The test of how dangerous the Social Charter or Social Chapter is, and was, is to be found there. The annex gives details of how the 11 propose to implement the Social Charter. If one merely reads that and asks, "How is that so dangerous? What is so terrible about that?" I believe that the answer will be that it is not so terrible. It is a statement of principles and a course of action for the Community which this country should have accepted.
I find Maastricht very sad. Like others in this House, I do not need to establish my credentials in relation to the European Community. However, the idea that in relation to major developments in the Community, Britain should find itself deliberately, of our own decision, on the sidelines looking in again at the way in which the Community is developing is sad. I hoped that I would never see that. For those reasons I cannot accept the Motion.
7.9 p.m.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, this has been another high quality debate on this important issue. We have again heard a number of fine speeches, including the wisdom of some noble Lords who have personal experience of the Community and its institutions, and those who have experience in British government. We will, of course, have further opportunities to discuss the detail and the implications

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of the treaty agreed at Maastricht later next year when the Government introduce the necessary legislation to allow ratification by the end of 1992.
My noble friend the Lord Privy Seal, in opening this debate, paid deserved tribute to my right honourable friends the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor for the way that they have conducted these difficult negotiations and for the results they have achieved.
From my personal experience I should like to pay tribute to the tremendous work of officials in both the Foreign Office and the Treasury. Those officials have often been criticised in the past. But when it came to seeing the whites of their eyes we proved yet again that we are the best in Europe. I am glad that this praise has been echoed by a number of your Lordships. It is well merited. As my noble friend Lord Marlesford reminded us, in a debate in this House only three weeks ago the Government clearly set out their objectives for the Maastricht Summit. All those objectives have been met. Thus, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, that his Motion is a little late. It is a little late to be questioning the Government's negotiating objectives.
The agreement at Maastricht represents a consensus involving all 12 member states. I would say that it is better by some margin than a rupture and most commentators would agree. We played a prominent role at the heart of the negotiations. We shall continue to play such a role in the future, not least during the UK presidency next year.
I am surprised that the noble Lords, Lord Williams of Elvel and Lord Bruce of Donington, did not raise the question of the common agricultural policy during our earlier discussions. That would have been the appropriate time to have done so. I remind the House that discussion on the CAP reforms are in progress. Revised proposals were tabled in July by Commissioner MacSharry. All are agreed that reform of the CAP is needed.
The agreement that we have reached is not only a gain for Britain but it is a major advance for Europe. Once the reforms, policies and new directions that the treaty envisages come into effect in 1993 we shall see that the Community has put itself into a position to face the new challenges of the 1990s resolutely and effectively. The challenge now is to make the reforms that we have agreed effective in practice. That is something to which we are committed. This is especially important given the growing demands to enlarge the Community during the next few years. At British initiative the Maastricht European Council gave further impetus to this process. In its conclusions it recorded that,
"any European state whose systems of government are founded on the principle of democracy may apply to become members of the Union".
It is good to have the support of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, for that.
To make that possible in practice we need a union which has both the flexibility to absorb new members and the stability which attracts them and which provides the basis for continued prosperity and democracy. It is with that end in mind that the Prime
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Minister has placed Britain at the heart of Europe, looking with confidence to the future but not losing sight of the problems and practicalities of the present.
The agreement at Maastricht covered both political union and economic and monetary union. Perhaps I may first deal with the financial aspects. The United Kingdom has been one of the leading member states in implementing Stage I. The process was completed by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister when he took sterling into the ERM in October last year. Stage Two of EMU is due to start on 1st January 1994 in accordance with Article 109c of this treaty. It will involve the setting up of a new institution, the European Monetary Institute (EMI) which will seek to increase co-operation between national monetary authorities and will make the necessary technical preparation for the adoption of a single monetary policy and a single currency.
Regrettably the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, appears to have misunderstood the treaty. I agree with my noble friend Lord Boardman that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, has also misunderstood the treaty. Perhaps I may make it abundantly clear. The United Kingdom will participate in the EMI on exactly the same basis as other member states. The Governor of the Bank of England will be a member of its governing council. Why is that important? It is for this very reason: the preparation for Stage Three is to be done in Stage Two by the EMI. There is no question of the UK being exempt from Stage Two and we shall be full members of the EMI. Therefore, the noble Lord, Lord Richard, can rest assured that we shall be involved in preparing the rules for the single currency. We shall be there at the heart of the negotiations; we shall not be excluded.
During Stage Two the ecu will be hardened and there will be increased co-ordination of economic policy with the introduction of a special procedure to discourage excessive budget deficits. The central feature of Stage Two meets an important Government principle—that monetary policy responsibility will remain firmly in national hands.
Stage Three is due to begin in the late 1990s. Member states' entry to it will be subject to strict and quantified convergence conditions; that is another British initiative approved by the noble Lord, Lord Ezra. It is interesting to note that only three countries —that is, France, Denmark and Luxembourg—would be allowed to move Stage Three if these rules were in force now. Belgium would have to halve its outstanding public debt relative to GDP in order to qualify, while Italy would have to cut its annual rate of state borrowing from 10 per cent. of GDP to 3 per cent. In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, I say that the Government are confident that the UK will be able to meet the convergence criteria and so be able to move to a single currency if Parliament so decides at the time.
It was clear right from the start of the negotiations on EMU a year ago that the Government could not accept the imposition of a single currency; that is, the UK could not agree a treaty which bound it to move to a single monetary policy or a single currency without a separate decision by Government through

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Parliament at the appropriate time. There can be no doubt that the treaty meets the Government's requirements on no imposition. The protocol on pages 80 to 82 of the EMU treaty makes it clear that,
"unless the United Kingdom notifies the Council that it intends to move to the third stage, it shall be under no obligation to do so".
If the United Kingdom decides not to opt in to Stage Three it will be then, and only then, that it will be exempt from all the obligations relating to the single monetary policy and single currency.
What is certain is that we cannot predict now what the circumstances of Europe in the late 1990s will be. I am certain that future parliaments will be grateful for this Government's safeguarding of their right to take this critical decision at the appropriate time in the full knowledge of the facts.
I listened with care to the two economists on the Labour Front Benches—the noble Lords, Lord Jay and Lord Desai. I was not surprised to hear two completely contradictory arguments. However, I was surprised—and to judge from what has been said clearly I was not the only Member of this House—to see the extraordinary amendment tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel. My noble friend Lord Aldington kindly referred to it as "party hype". I should have understood if it had been tabled in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, because he can vote for it with a clear conscience. Through all the twists and turns of Labour policy on Europe the noble Lord has remained consistent in his dislike for the Community. For that he has the respect of the whole House. However, I must say that not even the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, enlightened me about why he had tabled the amendment. He began by giving almost a dozen items on which he agreed with the Government and then struggled to find two with which he disagreed. One was the opt-in clause, which I have just described. The noble Lord does not like the opt-in clause and would therefore sign up for a single currency now. Straightaway he puts himself in direct conflict with his Shadow Chancellor, for Mr. John Smith said it was right not to commit ourselves in advance of 1997 to the single currency. He went on to say that that was something that would be agreed by all sensible people.
I now turn to the part of the treaty concerning political union. Here there is a wider range of issues. The noble Lords, Lord Monson and Lord Stoddart of Swindon, suggested that in spite of the fact that the word "federalism" no longer appears in the treaty on European union the Government have in effect signed up to the concept, or something worse. That is a mistaken view on two counts. First, one need look only at the structure of the treaty. The principle of strong and effective co-operation between the member states acting on an inter-governmental basis is now given firm expression in the treaty of European union. That co-operation will take place outside the Community and outside the trappings of Community confidence, the jurisdiction of the ECJ and the Commission's sole right of initiative. It is none the poorer for that.
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Secondly, perhaps we may look at the principle of subsidiarity. This essentially decentralising principle is now reflected in the body of the treaty as we wished it to be. There is a clear justiciable definition in Article 3b of the agreed treaty which draws a clear distinction between areas where Community activity might be justified and those areas where an objective is better pursued by member states acting alone. This will have the effect of keeping the Commission out of the nooks and crannies where the British people rightly feel the Community should have no role.
It was interesting to note that so many noble Lords opposite signed up to the subsidiarity principle and promptly went on to expound the cause of further centralism. Initially I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, was singing a different tune to that when he was Commissioner, but he has not changed. After supporting subsidiarity he went on to demand further centralisation, this time in the social field. His speech reminded me of a batsman going in second wicket down when both the openers had failed, taking two steps down the pitch, taking a cow shot at a ball which he missed only to find himself stranded between the wickets, or perhaps more appropriately between the Front and Back Benches.
I must tell the noble Lord that the ball which he missed was that the European Council confirmed that Articles 117 to 122 of the treaty's Social Chapter will remain the basis for essential Community action to protect the health and safety of workers and equal pay. The noble Lord, Lord Houghton of Sowerby, can be sure of that as can the noble Lords, Lord Murray of Epping Forest, Lord Kennet, Lord Ennals and the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden. Therefore, most of their arguments were based upon a misapprehension. For them it is not so much a question of a level playing field but the wrong pitch entirely.
Rather differently from that which the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth, implied further action will be possible where necessary under other articles of the existing treaty. That has been the basis of a sensible and affordable social dimension for the Community. The UK expects to participate as fully in the future as it has done in the past.
What has it done in the past? Nineteen of the 33 proposals of the Community's social action programme have been agreed including important measures on health and safety, employment contracts and pregnant workers. The United Kingdom has vetoed nothing and, with Germany, is the only member state to have implemented all 18 measures due for implementation before the social action programme. That is perhaps a better measure of the real commitment to an effective social dimension than the advocacy by some member states of grandiose plans which they cannot implement.
If other member states feel the need to commit themselves to a more far-reaching centralised Community social policy, we shall not stand in their way. The inter-governmental agreements signed by other member states allow them to do that, although it remains to be seen whether they will exercise their right to opt out from the treaty's social affairs

1417
provisions. The Government hope that they will not. If they do, they will sacrifice their ability to determine their employment conditions, their systems of informing and consulting employers, their provision for unemployed people according to the needs of their economic performance, social traditions and experience. They will accept the imposition of Community level collective agreements through Community law irrespective of the choices made by employers and employees in their own countries. As the noble Lord, Lord Harris of High Cross, said, they will pay a heavy price.
The Government were not prepared to put UK jobs and competitiveness at risk by accepting those provisions. It was not surprising to hear so many noble Lords opposite decrying the Government's stance. History tells us why that is so. In 1966 to 1970 we saw a Labour Government in office with responsibility for diminishing power over their actions. From 1974 to 1979 we witnessed a Labour Government with responsibility but without power. That had been ceded to the British trade unions. In 1991 we see a Labour Opposition keen on becoming a government but wanting neither the power nor the responsibility. That will be abdicated to the Commission and the European trade unions.
The Government believe that there is no need for such centralisation and that European industry, which is already saddled with higher labour costs and greater labour market rigidities than its main world competitors, can ill afford it.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, criticised the Government for not agreeing with what others proposed in the Social Charter. The noble Lord takes a diametrically opposite view from that of Mr. Ashdown, the leader of his party. Mr. Ashdown agrees with the Government that it would be wrong to dismantle the achievements of the past 12 years and he believes also that the Social Chapter failed the test of subsidiarity and may well lead to a form of Eurosclerosis. He understands the treaty.
I must draw to the attention of the noble Lords, Lord Rochester and Lord Dean of Beswick, Article 118.1 of the Social Chapter. As a result of that provision only the right whether or not to join a union and the right to strike and impose lock-outs would be excluded from qualified majority voting. Therefore, there is a real risk that our own laws on such issues as collective agreements could be changed, even if we voted against it but the other 11 member states were in agreement with it.
The CBI and other leading British industrialists have supported the Government and their stand, as my noble friend Lord Mottistone reminded us. Prior to the European Council European employers made it clear that centralised decisions on working conditions were not the path for Europe to follow. That path would lead to subsidies and protectionism, which the Government reject. I make it clear that we shall participate fully to construct a sensible social dimension for the Community based on those existing treaty powers which the European Council confirmed.
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I turn now to foreign policy. The provisions for a common foreign and security policy in the Maastricht treaty represent a good outcome for Britain. From the start we made clear the need for a stronger common policy which would operate in all our interests, putting the combined weight of the Twelve behind shared objectives. We argued for a stronger commitment to formulate and abide by common positions, as Britain already does. The treaty provides just that. My noble friend Lord Bessborough will be pleased to know of the importance that we attach to the Western European Union.
The noble Baroness, Lady O'Cathain, raised the important matter of citizenship of the union. That is an important new concept which was introduced at Maastricht for the first time. Luxembourg European Council conclusions recognised the importance of establishing union citizenship as a fundamental element in the construction of Europe. The Government agree with that view. Union citizenship will give people a sense of their identity as Europeans but it will not deprive them of their national identities. Union citizenship will complement and not replace British citizenship. Australians and other Commonwealth nationals have the right to vote in all elections here so long as they are resident on the date of registration.
As I have said before in this House, the Government recognise that the European Parliament has an important role to play in Europe's future development. That is why my noble friend Lord Bethell will be pleased with what we agreed at Maastricht both in the legislative and non-legislative fields as regards that parliament.
Defence is another important area. My noble friend Lady Park will be pleased to know that at Maastricht the Government secured an outcome which is good for Britain, good for Europe and good for the Alliance. We have kept the Western European Union and NATO at the heart of our affairs.
The noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, took issue with my noble friend the Lord Privy Seal about the extra provisions in the Maastricht agreement as regards the European Court of Auditors. It is a new requirement for that court to provide the council and the European Parliament with a statement of assurance on the reliability of the Community's accounts and the legality and reliability of the underlying transactions. That is why it was a major step forward and why we have supported the noble Lord, Lord Bruce of Donington, on many occasions in debates in this House.
My noble friend Lady Elles drew an important point to our attention; that is, how open we have been in consulting Parliament on the Maastricht treaty. We are the only country which had a pre-Maastricht debate, a post-Maastricht debate and a post-Maastricht Statement to Parliament. We are one of six countries which had a pre-Maastricht debate in which the president or prime minister took part. We are one of five countries which had a post-Maastricht debate in which the president or prime minister took part and we are one of two countries which had a debate separate from the Statement.

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The party opposite has never been strong on consistency. Far be it for me to dwell for too long on their seven different stances on the subject of Community membership. That would be ungenerous. Only three weeks ago it solemnly set out its conditions for supporting a single currency. To no one's great surprise none of those conditions received support at Maastricht and they do not appear in the treaty. Does the party opposite now recant its enthusiasm for a single currency—not a bit of it. The script prepared by its public relations advisers says that the party must be more European than the Government, and so it continues to read the script regardless.
What my right honourable friend the Prime Minister achieved at Maastricht was by any standards remarkable. We are full participants in the discussions which will shape the development of a single currency and yet we alone have not tied the hands of a future parliament. Our influence in the discussions is eloquently demonstrated by the emphasis in the treaty on economic convergence. The United Kingdom will he able to make its decisions about whether or not to join a single currency in full possession of the facts, weighing the economic and political advantages and disadvantages on the basis of fact rather than aspirations. That is a position of real benefit to our nation.
Maastricht represents a significant and important step forward for Europe. It was not the romantic leap desired by some of our partners, but it was none the worse for that. Looked at in the historical perspective, the late of development in European unity is astonishing. But to be durable European union must command the continuing consent and support of the great majority of people in all of its member states. A ruthless rush for integration driven by political elites would ultimately be counter-productive.
At Maastricht Britain played a full and central part in shaping the treaty. The sections dealing with defence, accountability, subsidiarity, crime, the rule of law, the enhancing of the role of national parliaments, and indeed the treaty structure itself, stemmed from British ideas. We now need to build on that achievement. As my noble friends Lord Beloff and Lord Mackay reminded us, we must look forward to the wider horizon.
In 1992 during the Portuguese and British presidencies we must conclude a new GATT agreement and complete the single market programme which is 80 per cent. agreed. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, that we are still on target for completion by the end of 1992. We must implement a further tranche of reforms on the common agricultural policy, intensify the dialogue between the Twelve and the United States, Japan and the ASEAN countries, and lay the foundations for the further enlargement of the Community's membership. Above all, we must concentrate on the awesome changes taking place in the eastern half of our continent in what was the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. We cannot expect a smooth or effortless path to democracy and a market economy. They face perilous and formidable challenges. The Community is the foundation for European stability. It was a British
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initiative which led to the signing this week of association agreements between the Community and Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
We who have enjoyed freedom for the past 45 years have responsibilities to those in our continent who do not. Maastricht will make the Community stronger and, I believe, better able to shoulder the responsibilities which must inevitably fall upon its shoulders. I commend the treaty to the House.
7.42 p.m.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, it is not for me at this hour of the night or indeed by convention to make any wind-up speech. I only want to make three brief points. The noble Earl should beware of making cricket analogies in front of me because I think I am the one person in this House who was a first class cricketer—I hope noble Lords recognise that—and the noble Earl may find that he is hitting his own wicket or bowling a series of rather short-of-the-length deliveries just on the leg stump, which makes for boring cricket.
The noble Earl said, "When we saw the whites of their eyes". That sums up the debate. The Government seem to think that we are in perpetual confrontation. I thought we were partners in Europe; that was my understanding, but the noble Earl says that we are fighting against the Zulus.
The amendment which surprises the noble Earl is simple. I am not prepared to congratulate the Government on the outcome of Maastricht. I have no quarrel with my right honourable friend Mr. John Smith. We all agree that there must be convergence before we come to a single currency. I have not said anything different and the noble Earl is wrong if he accuses me of that.
Many noble Lords on the opposite Benches are assembled in order to vote in the Division. I should hate to disappoint them. I commend the amendment to the House.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Mackay of Clashfern): My Lords, the original question was that this Motion be agreed to, since when an amendment has been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Williams of Elvel, to leave out all the words after ("House") and insert ("sees no reason to congratulate Her Majesty's Government on the outcome of the Maastricht Summit."). The question is that this amendment be agreed to.
On Question, Whether the said amendment shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 86; Not-Contents, 184.

Division No. 2

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Listowel, E.

Barnett, L.

Longford, E.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Birk, B.

McIntosh of Haringey, L.

Boston of Faversham, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Callaghan of Cardiff, L.

McNair, L.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Mallalieu, B.

Carter, L.

Mayhew, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Meston, L.

Clinton-Davis, L.

Milner of Leeds, L.

Cobbold, L.

Monkswell, L.

Cocks of Hartcliffe, L.

Morris of Castle Morris, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Ogmore, L.

Desai, L.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Donoughue, L.

Prys-Davies, L.

Dormand of Easington, L.

Rea, L.

Ennals. L.

Redesdale, L.

Ezra, L.

Richard, L.

Falkender, B.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Falkland, V. [Teller.]

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Fitt, L.

Rochester, L.

Gallacher, L.

Russell, E.

Gladwyn, L.

Seear, B.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Sefton of Garston, L.

Grey, E.

Serota, B.

Hampton, L.

Shackleton, L.

Hamwee, B.

Stallard, L.

Harris of Greenwich, L.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Hilton of Eggardon, B.

Thomson of Monifieth, L.

Hollick, L.

Tordoff, L. [Teller.]

Hollis of Heigham, B.

Turner of Camden, B.

Holme of Cheltenham, L.

Underhill, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Varley, L.

Howie of Troon, L.

Wedderburn of Charlton, L.

Jeger, B.

Whaddon, L.

Jenkins of Hillhead, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Wilson of Rievaulx, L.

Judd, L.

Winchilsea and Nottingham, E.

Kennet, L.

Winstanley, L.

Kirkhill, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Abinger, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Aldington, L.

Butterfield, L.

Allenby of Megiddo, V.

Butterworth, L.

Ampthill, L.

Caithness, E.

Arran, E.

Caldecote, V.

Ashbourne, L.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Astor, V.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Astor of Hever, L.

Carnock, L.

Balfour, E.

Carr of Hadley, L.

Beaverbrook, L.

Cavendish of Furness, L.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Charteris of Amisfield, L.

Beloff, L.

Clanwilliam, E.

Belstead, L.

Coleraine, L.

Bessborough, E.

Colnbrook, L.

Bethell, L.

Constantine of Stanmore, L.

Blatch, B.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Blyth, L.

Craigavon, V.

Boardman, L.

Craigmyle, L.

Borthwick. L.

Crickhowell, L.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Cross, V.

Braybrooke, L.

Cullen of Ashbourne, L.

Bridgeman, V.

Dacre of Glanton, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Davidson, V. [Teller.]

1424

De L'Isle, V.

Newall, L.

Denton of Wakefield, B.

Norrie, L.

Derwent, L.

O'Cathain, B.

Digby, L.

Oppenheim-Barnes, B.

Eccles of Moulton, B.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Eden of Winton, L.

Oxfuird, V.

Ellenborough, L.

Park of Monmouth, B.

Elles, B.

Pearson of Rannoch, L.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Pender, L.

Elton, L.

Penrhyn, L.

Faithfull, B.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Ferrers, E.

Platt of Writtle, B.

Flather, B.

Plumb, L.

Forte, L.

Plummer of St. Marylebone, L.

Fraser of Carmyllie, L.

Pym, L.

Gainford, L.

Quinton, L.

Gardner of Parkes, B.

Radnor, E.

Geddes, L.

Reay, L.

Gibson-Watt, L.

Rees, L.

Gisborough, L.

Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Renton, L.

Goold, L.

Renwick, L.

Gray of Contin, L.

Rippon of Hexham, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Romney, E.

Ryder of Warsaw, B.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Sainsbury of Preston Candover, L.

Harris of High Cross, L.

Harrowby, E.

St. Davids, V.

Henley, L.

Salisbury, M.

Hesketh, L. [Teller.]

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Hives, L.

Sandys, L.

Holderness, L.

Seccombe, B.

Hood, V.

Selborne, E.

Hooper, B.

Selkirk, E.

Howe, E.

Selsdon, L.

Huntly, M.

Shannon, E.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Sharples, B.

Inchcape, E.

Sherfield, L.

Jenkin of Roding, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Johnston of Rockport, L.

Skidelsky of Tilton, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Soulsby of Swaffham Prior, L.

Kinnoull, E.

Stedman, B.

Knutsford, V.

Stevens of Ludgate, L.

Lane of Horsell, L.

Stodart of Leaston, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Lindsey and Abingdon, E.

Strange, B.

Long, V.

Strathclyde, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Strathcona and Mount Royal, L.

Lyell, L.

McAlpine of West Green, L.

Strathmore and Kinghorne, E.

McColl of Dulwich, L.

Terrington, L.

Mackay of Ardbrecknish, L.

Teviot, L.

Mackay of Clashfern, L.

Thomas of Gwydir, L.

MacLehose of Beoch, L.

Thorneycroft, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Torrington, V.

Malmesbury, E.

Trefgarne, L.

Mancroft, L.

Trumpington, B.

Marlesford, L.

Tryon, L.

Masham of Ilton, B.

Ullswater, V.

Merrivale, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Mersey, V.

Vinson, L.

Milverton, L.

Vivian, L.

Monson, L.

Waddington, L.

Montagu of Beaulieu, L.

Wade of Chorlton, L.

Mottistone, L.

Westbury, L.

Mountevans, L.

Wharton, B.

Mountgarret, V.

Whitelaw, V.

Munster, E.

Wilberforce, L.

Murton of Lindisfarne, L.

Wise, L.

Napier and Ettrick, L.

Wolfson, L.

Nelson, E.

Young, B.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
7.54 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead Lord Jenkins of Hillhead rose to move, as an amendment to the above Motion, to leave out all the words after ("House") and insert ("while being prepared to accept the Maastricht agreement as better than a rupture, cannot endorse the Prime Minister's negotiating objectives, and regrets that the agreement failed to place Britain at the heart of Europe.").
The noble Lord said: My Lords, no one believes that the second speech is likely to be more persuasive than the first, particularly at this hour. I therefore beg formally to move the amendment standing in my name.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, the original Question was That this Motion be agreed to, since when an amendment has been moved by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, to leave out the words after ("House") and insert the words ("while being prepared to accept the Maastricht agreement as better than a rupture, cannot endorse the Prime Minister's

1423
negotiating objectives, and regrets that the agreement failed to place Britain at the heart of Europe".)— (Lord Jenkins of Hillhead.)
7.55 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 81; Not- Contents, 185.
8.5 p.m.
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, the Question is that the original Motion be agreed to?

Local Government Finance Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.
City of Edinburgh District Council Order Confirmation Bill
Read a third time, and passed.
Strathclyde Regional Council Order Confirmation Bill
Read a third time, and passed.

Clackmannan District Council (Vesting of Central Regional Council Land) (Scotland) Order 1991
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Scottish Office (Lord Strathclyde): My Lords, I beg to move that this order be approved.
Moved, That the order laid before the House on 28th November be approved [5th Report from the Joint Committee].—(Lord Strathclyde.)

Non-Domestic Rating (Appropriate Fraction and Rateable Values) Order 1991
8.7 p.m.
Viscount Astor Viscount Astor rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 27th November be approved [5th Report from the Joint Committee].
The noble Viscount said: My Lords, this is a technical draft order under the Local Government Finance Act 1988 which sets the maximum amounts by which the non-domestic rates bills will fall next year for those on transition to lower bills under the new system. The order has to be approved by both Houses. It was agreed in another place yesterday.
The transitional relief scheme is a self-financing arrangement designed to ease the change to the new non-domestic rating system for those who would otherwise face large changes in their rates bills. It operates by limiting the amount by which bills can change from one year to the next in real terms until the ratepayer's full bill is reached. Because it is self-financing it limits reductions in bills as well as increases. The limits on gains come from a calculation driven by the number of properties needing protection from increased bills next year and the amounts of protection they will receive. Separate limits are set for England and Wales next year because non-domestic rate income is paid into two separate national pools before redistribution to all local authorities.
In England the proposed limits are 19 per cent. in real terms for properties with rateable values of £15,000 or more in London or £10,000 elsewhere and 24 per cent. where values are below these thresholds.
1426
They appear as 81 and 76 in the draft order. In Wales the new limits are 9 per cent. in real terms for properties with rateable values of £10,000 or more and 14 per cent. where values are below there thresholds. They are 91 and 86 in the draft order. Taking account of inflation, English ratepayers on downward transition will see maximum cash reductions in their bills of 15.7 per cent. for large properties and 20.9 per cent. for small ones. Welsh ratepayers will get a 5.3 per cent. cash reduction in a large property in transition and a 10.5 per cent. decrease in a small one. These are all bigger cash benefits than ratepayers received this year.
The order also amends the formulae for determining some of the rateable value assessments of the industries with prescribed assessment. These are the so-called formula rated industries, including most of the utilities. For those industries, formulae are used to achieve a transitional path for those who occupy property where there was a big change of rate liability in 1990. The formulae work by adjusting the rateable values of the property until such time as the full bill is reached. Only certain properties in the electricity, telecommunications, railway and water industries are moving to lower bills. That property gets the same maximum reduction as a large property would: in England a 19 per cent. real terms of 15.7 per cent. cash reduction and in Wales a 9 per cent. or 5.3 per cent. cash reduction. I commend the draft order to the House.
Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 27th November be approved [5th Report from the Joint Committee]. —(Viscount Astor.)
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, it is fortunate that it is the convention of this House that we do not oppose such secondary legislation, otherwise I should have been debarred from speaking by the fact that as a non-domestic ratepayer it is the limit in my reduction, as I understand from the noble Viscount, which is being reduced; in other words, I am worse off as a result of the order.
I only want to put on record the fact that this is the last time that the Government will have the opportunity to introduce such an order. We shall of course restore the national non-domestic rate to local government finance.
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I am grateful for the noble Lord's half couched support for the order, if I may so describe it. However, some ratepayers will be better off under the order.

Bingo Bill [H.L.]
8.11 p.m.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
The Private Members' Bill procedure under which this Bill falls is a very valuable part of the legislative process which we go through to arrive at our law. It is well used because it plays an important part in dealing with things for which the Government and normal

1427
business cannot always find the time. It is a way of improving things and removing unpleasant and unnecessary provisions without having to take up formal parliamentary time as one has to with normal Bills which are introduced by the Government as part of their policies.
In my experience in both Houses, a Private Member's Bill may be used in one of two ways. First, it may be used by people who want to grab a topic which is very much in the public eye and want to get their name associated with it but not with any idea of letting it get through all the procedures to become effective legislation. Secondly, it may be used to rectify matters which have been brought into law but have proved to have certain inadequacies or omissions which can be put right. That is the purpose of this Bill.
I remember when the Gaming Act was brought into being in 1968. It was intended to deal with hard gambling. We were allowing casinos to run where hard and big money was the order of the day. We knew from experience in other countries that if the Mafia or similar people got hold of the business it could be dangerous. Therefore when we in this country agreed to legalise casinos we surrounded them with all sorts of proper restrictions in the nation's interest to prevent them being misused.
Unfortunately—it is rather surprising that it was not foreseen—while it was absolutely correct to do that and to be stringent in the restrictions placed on the hard gambling that went on in casinos, for some reason the bingo halls, which are really social centres, were brought into the same package by one of those oversights which are quite understandable when one is dealing with such matters. All or most of the restrictions which were correct when designed to deal with the possible dangers arising with casinos also surrounded the very innocent bingo halls. The situation was best put by the Royal Commission on Gambling, which in 1938 described bingo as a pastime where people, mostly women and often the lonely or elderly, can meet in a neighbourly way to enjoy an agreeable flutter. That is indeed what it is.
Those of us who are familiar with social habits in most parts of the country know that the local bingo hall has proved to be a haven for people who want a friendly night out. They can meet at a place where they are not committed to taking part in heavy gambling and where they can become members provided they have given 24 hours of their intention to do so. Bingo halls cannot advertise generally in newspapers the events which include the "flutter" part of their activities. That situation innocently and inadvertently came under restrictions intended to deal with something much bigger and with much more potential danger than bingo halls could ever cause.
It was seen very early that the restrictions which were inadvertently put around the bingo social clubs were a mistake. The process had gone too far. That fact was generally recognised. I know that that is so because this is my third Bill which, like the others, is intended to remove the unnecessarily restrictive parts of the gambling legislation which are interfering with the proper use and development of the bingo halls. I have no doubt that there will be other Bills which may
1428
be put forward as we learn from experience the need to be a little more helpful in removing such restrictions.
In the 40 years that I have been in one or other of the Houses of Parliament I have moved many Private Members' Bills. The advice that I give—and it is advice that I have taken—is that one should never use the procedure to do any of the big things—the things that are in the public eye. One should use the Private Members' Bill procedure to effect the small changes to rectify legislation. That is the purpose of this Bill.
In addition to the various unnecessary restrictions which have been imposed since we moved the Gambling Bill, this Bill is another step to help the people who organise bingo halls, which I believe are social service centres. If the Bill is passed—I hope that it will be—it will mean that one or two of the restrictions hampering those people will be removed. There are not many restrictions involved; indeed, they do not add up to a great deal. But it is another step in the direction of giving people the freedom that I believe they deserve.
If these organisations are playing a useful and helpful part in society generally, as the Royal Commission seems to indicate, we ought not to overlook the fact that since 1974, when we had 1,600 licensed bingo clubs, the number has fallen to only 980. Moreover, the actual membership is falling rapidly. In the eyes of the Bingo Association of Great Britain, which has looked at the matter with great care, the reason for that is the absence of advertising indicating where such clubs are and what activities are taking place in them. We are not asking that a big step be taken. We are merely asking that one or two extra local newspapers should be allowed to publish advertisements for bingo halls so as to encourage their use.
There may be those who in principle believe that anything that entails any form of gambling, however innocent or small it may be in a bingo hall, should not be allowed. To them I say that on this occasion what we propose is based upon experience. If by any mischance—I do not believe that noble Lords will find that we have been precipitate in introducing these proposals—something should need to be altered, Clause 1(11) provides,
"The Secretary of State may by regulations amend the provisions of this section for the purpose of imposing such additional prohibitions",
and restrictions which may be necessary.
Although I claim with confidence that we are not asking the House to take a great step forward, the Bill gives the Secretary of State power to rectify any marginal mistake that we may make. No further parliamentary time will need to be taken up.
The Bingo Association of Great Britain has not sprung this proposal on us out of the blue. Talks have been going on with the Home Office for three years. The relationship between the Bingo Association of Great Britain and the Home Office is friendly and positive. The Home Office has been firm in that it wants to see the main points of the original Act retained. That is its duty. The friendly relations are a result of the talks. There is hardly anything in the Bill which has not been discussed and virtually agreed by

1429
the Home Office. That point should be borne in mind if there is any reluctance to take this tiny step forward which will allow freedom to what is a desirable social service enjoyed by ordinary, often lonely, people who do not have easy access to other forms of entertainment. We do not want to interfere with them.
The negotiations with the Home Office are continuing. I have learned within the past hour or so that there are one or two points in the Bill about which the Home Office has reservations. If that proves to be the fact—I believe that it will be—I shall be eager and delighted to move the necessary amendments to my Bill to meet those points should the negotiations show that that is the right thing to do.
It is with confidence that I suggest that to give the Bill a Second Reading will be moving in a direction which is generally accepted. It will be a tiny but significant step if we wish to preserve an amenity which has been well received in many parts of the country. It is with the confident hope that we shall do just that that I commend the Bill to your Lordships.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time. —(Lord Harmar-Nicholls.)
8.23 p.m.
Lord Butterfield: My Lords, I strongly support and sympathise with the thoughts that lie behind the Bill. There is no doubt that bingo is an important social service and event for many people in middle and later age. I shall remember the word "flutter", because that is what bingo is. It is probably one of the least expensive evening's entertainment that can be found in this country. In the winter it provides warmth and a great deal of social contact and opportunities. Many matters are sorted out at the bingo club.
8.24 p.m.
Lord Morris of Castle Morris: My Lords, I do not speak on this matter for, or on behalf of, the Labour Party, since on all Private Members' Bills we stand neutral. I speak for myself. Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all our Bills away. Your Lordships may recall that we have debated the game of bingo, and the necessity for any advertising of it to be most carefully regulated, on previous occasions—most recently on 25th March 1991 in the context of a Bill presented, once again, by the noble Lord, Lord HarmarNicholls.
On that occasion, I felt obliged to remind your Lordships of the not inconsiderable body of evidence which exists of the danger of addiction to bingo clubs and to commend the Government's cautious approach to any attempts to loosen the strictures contained in Section 42 of the Gaming Act 1968. I pointed out then the basic premise which underpins the whole of Section 42 of the Gaming Act—that advertising to stimulate a demand for gambling is in itself undesirable. I pointed out that gambling is widely felt to be an ineluctable fact of life, but is not in itself a moral or social good. In certain cases it is demonstrably disastrous; it has some real dangers; and we should not be patently worse off it it did not exist.
1430
My concern on that occasion was echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Reay, who said:
"One of the basic features of long-standing government policy in this area is that gambling should not be positively encouraged… One of the principal methods of encouraging people to take part in certain activities is by advertising. It follows that advertising controls are at the very heart of gambling policy and any proposals for change need very careful consideration".—[Official Report, 25/3/91; col. 922.]
There seems to be general agreement between us.
I do not now wish to retract anything I said then, but in considering the Bill it may be possible to give weight to two arguments which underline the case made by the Bill's supporters and by the industry itself. First, it is reasonably clear now that bingo is a shrinking industry. The noble Lord, Lord HarmarNicholls, gave the figures. Since the peak in 1974, there has been a consistent and marked decline in the number of clubs. At that time, there were some 1,600 licensed bingo clubs; there are now no more than 980. Admissions to all the clubs has gone down in the same way. The diminution is felt most particularly by the small operators—one must bear those people in mind —the number of whose clubs has almost halved since 1974. The decline seems inexorable. The introduction of the national game through the Gaming (Bingo) Act 1985 was in response to, and sought to address, that decline. However, despite that, the number of clubs continues to fall.
Secondly, it is difficult for anyone—let us be clear —to lose a vast amount of money at the game. Bingo is different from other types of gaming in that a player is not subject to the continuing opportunity to place further bets in cash bingo sessions. One cannot chase one's losses in bingo. The level of participation is also limited by the number of cards or books that anyone is physically capable of handling in one session. Nevertheless, I should point out that I have seen certain ladies at bingo sessions perform feats of prestidigitation which would not have disgraced a first class concert pianist in moving from one card to another with remarkable skill and accuracy.
These constraining facts, taken with the extraordinarily carefully worded restrictions in Clause 1(2), (3A) and (3B), which are bewilderingly close in drafting and which in my suspicion go a long way to meet the reservations which we expressed when we debated the matter last March, lead me to the conclusion that the modest concessions which the Bill seeks are so small, careful and regulated that we might almost say, if we were minded to put it in that way, de minimis non curat lex; the law does not concern itself with trifles.
I cannot believe that the moral fabric of our nation would be rent in twain from top to bottom if we were to give this modest measure a fair and following wind. I hope we shall.
8.31 p.m.
Viscount Astor: My Lords, it may be helpful if I indicate the Government's view of the Bill which my noble friend Lord Harmar-Nicholls has introduced. As he himself indicated, this is the second occasion this year on which he has introduced a Bill to amend the provisions of the Gaming Act in order to allow

1431
licensed bingo clubs to advertise more freely. My noble friend will be pleased to hear that we can now endorse the overall aims of his Bingo Bill which was not the case when we were discussing his Gaming (Bingo) Bill in March.
However, although the Government are prepared, in principle, to accept some relaxation of the controls on bingo club advertising and have agreed outline proposals with the bingo industry, I have to say that we have considerable reservations about how this Bill seeks to put those proposals into effect. We should like to see these reservations addressed, perhaps in Committee, before we can give the Bill our wholehearted support.
Before I come to the drafting I should like to say something about the overall aim of the Bill. As your Lore ships may recall, during the Second Reading debate on the Gaming (Bingo) Bill last March, my noble friend Lord Reay indicated to the House that the Government were not then ready to endorse proposals for relaxing the controls on the advertising of licensed bingo clubs. At that time we were still considering whether there was a case for partial relaxation and, if a case could be made, what form the amendments to the law might take.
We have now completed our consideration of the case for partial relaxation of the advertising controls and reached agreement with the Bingo Association of Great Britain on a package of proposals. Before outlining that package, I should explain why we have concluded that some relaxation is justified.
The controls on the advertising of bingo clubs, and other premises where gambling takes place, are one of the principal manifestations of our long-established policy that demand for gambling should not be stimulated. In the case of gaming, including bingo, Section 42 of the Gaming Act 1968 forbids advertisements informing the public about any premises in Great Britain where gaming takes place or inviting them to take part in such gaming or to apply for information about it. Section 42 is not, however, a catch-all provision. For example, the game of bingo and the level of prizes may be advertised provided the locations of specific licensed clubs are not identified. Such advertising of bingo, as with all betting and gaming advertising is, however, prohibited on commercial television and radio under the broadcasting authorities' advertising codes.
We are satisfied that of the three principal types of premises where commercial gambling is permitted— namely, casinos, bingo clubs and betting offices— bingo clubs are in an altogether different category from the other two. Licensed club bingo is by intrinsic character a lesser form of gambling, both as to the amount the punter may risk and, with the exception of the national game—which has a top prize of £50,000 as to the size of prizes which provide the inducement to risk money. In contrast, there are no statutory or practical limitations on the amount the betting office or casino punter may hazard or gamble. The risks of excessive gambling are therefore considerably greater.
Aside from the nature of the gambling that takes place, licensed bingo clubs are also to be distinguished from casinos and betting offices by their overall
1432
character. Although gaming undoubtedly forms a major part of the activities and purposes of bingo clubs, they also perform a valuable social function. For many people, a weekly or twice-weekly visit to their local bingo club provides an important form of recreation or, as the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, said, a flutter is also a form of recreation. Because casinos and betting offices provide for "harder" forms of gambling, there are significantly more restrictions on the facilities they may offer and they cannot be said to fulfil the same social function as bingo clubs.
Given the nature and character of bingo clubs, we believe some partial relaxation can now be supported. In coming to this conclusion, we were mindful that in 1978 the Rothschild Royal Commission on Gambling, and more recently the Gaming Board for Great Britain, have been prepared to support a measure of deregulation.
Turning now to the proposals themselves, the bingo industry wanted greater freedom to advertise on local radio and in print. We do not consider that any relaxation of the prohibition on broadcast advertising can be justified. So far as print advertising is concerned, we are content to allow bingo clubs to advertise their locations and the facilities they offer, and to invite applications for membership.
However, to ensure that this concession does not lead to undue emphasis being placed on the gambling rather than the social aspects of bingo clubs, we believe that the freedom to advertise premises should be counterbalanced by tough new restrictions on the advertising of bingo prizes and of inducements which are offered to attract members. The Bingo Association of Great Britain—the industry's trade association— has agreed to such restrictions. In particular, it has agreed that, with one exception, all advertising of prizes away from bingo club premises should be prohibited. The one exception relates to prizes in the national bingo game.
I have given your Lordships a fairly brief summary of what is in fact a complex package of proposals. The package requires some amendments to be made in a complex area of the law. We and the bingo industry are in complete agreement on the principles. Unfortunately, the Government are not entirely satisfied that the Bill, as drafted, actually achieves what has been agreed. We shall be discussing further with the Bingo Association of Great Britain the points on which we believe changes are needed and how these might be formulated.
I am glad that my noble friend Lord HarmarNicholls has agreed this evening that it is important to ensure that the Bill does what we want. I hope it is clear from what I have said that the Government are not unsympathetic to the aims of the Bill; but more work needs to be done on it before I can wish the Bill a successful passage through this House and in another place.
8.37 p.m.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for the sympathetic reception to the Bill. I anticipated that there would be one or two minor

1433
details to sort out, but these are now in the process of being agreed and will be incorporated in the Bill. That is gratifying.
I was particularly pleased with the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Morris of Castle Morris. The last time he spoke on this subject he was a little more stringent than he showed himself tonight. When we return for the next step—and I can see from my noble friend's reaction that there will be yet another step —it could well be that the names of the noble Lord, Lord Morris, and myself will figure together as sponsors. With that in mind, I commend the Bill to the House.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time. —(Lord Harmar-Nicholls.)

Specialist Hospital Units
8.39 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton Baroness Masham of Ilton rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what action they propose to take to safeguard specialist hospital units, which provide centres of excellence within the National Health Service.
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, at Christmas time we think of goodwill towards each other. I hope that the Government will have a satisfactory reply to the Question I now bring to your Lordships.
Many countries envy our National Health Service. Some of our centres of excellence provide the only lifeline patients have. Some conditions caused by accidents or illness need exceptional centres. They need specially trained doctors, nurses, therapists and technicians who have come together and, with their common interest and discipline, have found ways of treating conditions which are difficult and often cause insurmountable problems and run into complications if the only choice is that of a general ward in a district general hospital.
These centres of excellence have been built up over the years by dedicated teams of trained hospital personnel. They are not only treatment centres for patients; they are also centres of post-graduate teaching and centres of research and development in respect of health care and the monitoring of new drugs and techniques. It would be a tragedy if the marketing of health care turned into the fragmentation and downgrading of our centres of excellence.
I am most grateful to all noble Lords and noble Baronesses who will speak in the debate tonight. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, on having visited the spinal unit of Stoke Mandeville Hospital while she was on an official ministerial visit to another part of that hospital. She took the time and trouble to visit the spinal unit. The noble Baroness was shown a horrific pressure sore, the sight of which will no doubt remain with her for ever as a vivid memory. Those terrible pressure sores are common occurrences if paraplegics and tetraplegics who lose
1434
sensation from a point of injury are treated in general hospitals that do not implement a routine turning procedure.
I have seen many people whose lives were saved due to the treatment they received in many different centres of excellence. My life was saved in a specialist unit. Many other Members of your Lordships' House have had similar experiences in centres such as St. Mark's Hospital in City Road. That hospital is world famous for treating the gut. I do not believe that Government Ministers want to see such centres disappear. However, unless some safeguards are established forthwith, Ministers, along with everyone else, may be impotent to do anything about the position.
If the money runs out and districts do not transfer patients, units may have to close down. It would be a tragedy if the only solution remaining to patients, their next of kin or voluntary organisations was to resolve the lack of correct treatment through the courts. If the supra-regional funding is to stop at the end of March, there is not much time left.
The many voluntary support organisations that represent various patient groups know what correct treatments should consist of. Many of those organisations are concerned that the recent Patient's Charter omits any mention of the right to a tertiary referral. That omission was one of the reasons I felt there was an urgent need to bring this matter to the attention of your Lordships.
There are many complicated disabling conditions which need specialist treatment, not only when they reach an acute stage but throughout the lives of the patients concerned. The expectations of the public are growing all the time. I am sure that if the late Lady Lane-Fox had been with us this evening she would have spoken in the debate. Across the river at St. Thomas's Hospital is the Lane-Fox unit. That unit is unique in Great Britain. It cares for people who suffer from high respiratory conditions. It is a lifeline for a small but important group of people. If noble Lords were to visit that unit, they would be amazed at what treatment can be offered by people who know how to offer that treatment.
Eighteen years ago, as I had dealt with some desperate cases of people with spinal injuries who had not been sent to spinal units—most of those patients came from social class 5, medically speaking—I, with colleagues, founded the Spinal Injuries Association. I now have the honour to be the life president of the association.
During the passage of the National Health Service and Community Care Bill I raised on behalf of the association a number of points of concern regarding the Government's proposals on supra-regional specialties. Although we received assurances from the Government that the specialties would be protected, it is now over a year since those assurances were given. In less than four months the new contracting system will begin in full. Our concerns are as great as ever.
In Committee on that Bill the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said:
"In short, regional and supra-regional specialty units are likely to be in a stronger position under the proposals in this Bill than they are now".—[Official Report, 24/4/90; col. 520.]

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The evidence is that this is not the case and there are fundamental problems with the proposals. The Spinal Injuries Association is in constant and close contact with the spinal injuries units. I wish to highlight our main areas of concern.
I shall deal with the matter of the new contracts. Of fundamental concern to units is the Government's decision to change their status from supra-regional to regional units from April 1992. That will mean a loss of central government funding with serious consequential difficulties for units. It flies in the face of assurances given by the noble Lord, Lord Henley, again in Committee on the National Health Service and Community Care Bill when he said that,
"spinal units and, for that matter, all supra-regional services will be protected by a proportion of the costs being met centrally and the balance regionally".—[Official Report, 3/4/90; col. 1385.]
Although many units take a large proportion of their patients from within their own regions, some take a significant proportion of clients from outside their regions. Stoke Mandeville Hospital, for example, takes 80 per cent. of its patients from outside its region and the Midland Spinal Injuries Unit takes 35 per cent. of its patients from outside its region. Even where the figures are not so high, there are always ex-patients and a handful of new patients requiring the services of the specialist unit who come from outside that unit's region.
There is great concern that any lull in income while contracts are negotiated with the districts will have devastating consequences for some units. The lack of contracts may also prevent future and existing clientele from receiving the specialist care provided by a spinal injuries unit. One unit received official notification of the new arrangements for contracting only last week. Another unit estimates a three year time lag while the districts sort out their simpler, more routine and less expensive contracts.
The Spinal Injuries Association's recommendation to the Government to prevent units from closing under the consequent financial shortfall is that central funding should be provided for at least an interim period of, say, three, years. The continuation of central government support should be reviewed after that period.
There are difficulties in costing treatment for clients. Due to the large variation in the extent of each individual's injury, it is difficult to cost out a standard package for individual patients. Apart from the initial diagnosis of cord damage and neurological sparing, factors such as the previous state of health of the person, the delay in referral, the presence or absence of complications and associated injuries and the provision of support in the community afterwards affect the total cost of providing for each person.
Hospital stays can vary from an initial period of two months to six months or longer. How do the Government envisage such variations being accommodated in the drawing up of contracts? The Spinal Injuries Association recommends that assured central government support is provided to cushion any shortfall.
Units have developed as centres of excellence and offer a policy of "crash to coffin" support that enables
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patients to live in the community. It is essential to the future health of a person with a spinal cord injury that he or she is able to return to the specialist unit for regular check-ups. Lack of expert assessment can lead to unnecessary complications. There is considerable anxiety that ex-patients will be required to go for check-ups at their local district hospitals, which lack the necessary expertise but which are cheaper in the short term until complications arise. The result is that complications arise for individual patients, causing a significant shortfall in funds for the spinal unit. One unit estimates that 35 per cent. of its clients and funds are at risk from such a policy.
There is real anxiety in specialist units that districts will not refer new patients to spinal units because of the additional expense. That may well lead to inappropriate and poor treatment, resulting in long-term complications for the patient concerned and an on-going drain on financial resources. It can take months in hospital to repair an avoidable pressure sore.
There is significant evidence that some district health authorities are considering the possibility of establishing their own centres for treating people with spinal cord injuries. It is clear that they will not be able to provide the necessary expertise which is provided by the specialist units. The Spinal Injuries Association would like unreserved assurances from Ministers that new and former patients will have readily available access to specialist units. We are fearful that unless those issues are addressed now there will be insurmountable problems in April 1992, with devastating consequences for units and future and existing patients with spinal cord injuries.
As this subject is not understood fully by many people who have not had first hand experience of spinal cord injuries, I should like to summarise the position. The modern treatment of spinal cord injuries was pioneered at Stoke Mandeville Hospital. The principle of early admission to a specialised spinal injuries centre with comprehensive rehabilitation and lifelong follow-up was adopted by all the spinal injury centres in the United Kingdom and has now been copied in many countries worldwide. The network of dedicated spinal injury centres in the United Kingdom is the most advanced and comprehensive in the world.
Because of the rarity of spinal injuries—one new case per 100,000 of the population per annum—it is not possible to provide functional spinal injury centres on a district or regional basis. It was for that reason that spinal injuries became one of the first supra-regional specialties. The sudden removal of spinal injuries from supra-regional funding poses grave threats to the continuation of the service although in the long term it gives spinal injury centres an opportunity to develop further. The market which has been introduced into the health service is barely capable of coping with routine large specialties. There is a grave danger that spinal injuries, a small specialty necessarily organised on a supra-regional basis, may suffer in the next year or two. It is essential that adequate interim measures are introduced to ensure the continuation not only of the admission, of the newly injured patient to the spinal injury centre but

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also the continuation of the essential lifelong follow-up. The spinal injury service is one of the great successes of the National Health Service and should not be sacrificed and lost for the sake of new reforms.
The Spinal Injuries Association wrote to all the spinal injury units before the debate. One unit commented:
"None of our potential purchasers have any knowledge of the proposed de-supraregionalisation of spinal injury units. We have been having regular meetings at a hospital level with the purchasers of our services. I have raised the spinal injury unit issue with each of them. None of them have had prior information and all of them say that they cannot handle this matter at district level".
Another wrote:
"Frankly, the whole matter seems to have been handled with much haste and little planning … postponement of the proposals for de-designating spinal injury units would undoubtedly help to avoid what is likely to be chaos next year".
Another unit said that its greatest concern was that former patients would be unable to return to the unit for specialist treatment. That has already occurred.
I should like to obtain more information and send it to the Minister.
As Christmas draws near it is difficult not to think of the many children who will be in hospital. One has only to look through the directory of Contact a Family to see how many specific conditions and rare syndromes there are with long-term consequences, such as juvenile chronic arthritis. There is nothing so frustrating and worrying for parents as not being able to reach the services of experts who can give their child, who is suffering from a complex condition, the best available treatment. There are many people in all parts of the country raising money and striving to help provide equipment for hospitals so that patients can have the best possible treatment.
Not to have the centres of excellence with their concerted team approach, driven by a special interest in a specific condition, would mean the fragmentation and watering down of treatment. The expertise comes from seeing and treating many cases of a similar condition, knowing what the patient responds to, the benefits of treatment and how to achieve success. The aim of a centre of excellence is to understand how to overcome what seem insurmountable problems. A general ward so often cannot achieve that because the staff lack the specialised training and the dedication to find a cure for, or to alleviate, a specific condition.
It would be a tragedy if we were left with no national or supra-regional units. Not to have the freedom to send patients to the centre where their condition can best be treated and understood will only cause immense problems for everyone concerned in the long run. It cannot be allowed to happen. We should be rightly proud of our centres of excellence in the National Health Service. They are not only of paramount importance to the patient; they are cost effective in the long run for everyone.
8.58 p.m.
Lord Butterfield: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, on her strong statement about the need for the maintenance and
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continuity of our specialist units. I find it hard to believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, could possibly have a hard enough heart to jeopardise the future prospects of those important centres. I like to believe that when it comes to her turn to speak she will be able to give us encouragement that there will be some funding so as to ensure that the dreadful prospect that the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, has put before us can be dispelled. It is most important that the people who work in those units are helped by such encouragement as we can give them, particularly at this time.
I do not need to convince the House that some of our most important innovative and pioneering specialist units are concerned with the so-called NHS supra-regional specialties, and not only those that are so designated. Others which used to be supra-regional specialties, such as renal transplantation units, have now been absorbed in the warp and weft of the health service.
I understand that at present about £76 million a year is spent on supra-regional specialties which include chorion carcinoma services, cranio-facial surgical services, heart transplantation, liver transplantation and specialised liver services, neo-natal and infant cardiac surgery, primary bone tumours, psychiatric services for deaf people, spinal injury units, to which the noble Baroness made important reference, retinoblastoma and stereotactic radio surgical units. I have no doubt that the people in those services will need protection and, I suspect, more money. I hope that we shall hear that they will be cosseted.
However, there are diseases that produce disabilities which can be seen out and about and which are also helped by specialist research units. These are the specialist research units for heart disease, strokes, rheumatism and diabetes, about which I shall speak for a short while. Those special units for more widespread diseases are to a considerable extent supported by funds from the medical research charities, of which the most powerful and influential are those concerned with the study, treatment and, we hope, prevention of cancer.
However, there are many charities, ranging from those large ones—for example, the Heart Foundation and the British Diabetic Association, with which I have been associated—right down to quite small charities that have been established by citizens, frequently from their wills. I am conscious of the importance of those small charities because, when I did a survey in Bedford with my colleagues from Guy's Hospital in 1962, the only reason that we could proceed with and fund that survey was that a solicitor in Bedford discovered a charity which had been established by a patient with diabetes who had gone blind and wanted her residual estate to be spent on diabetic research. We were fortunate enough to receive a grant from the charity to help us go ahead.
That survey in 1962 showed that about 2 per cent. of people in this country have diabetes. That is a million people in round numbers. Of those, about 130,000 are paid up members of the British Diabetic Association which each year raises between £6 and £7

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million. It has a policy of putting 40 per cent. of that money into social and educational services. It has a strong education service to teach children to inject themselves with insulin and to provide summer camps for them. It has a strong research grant system which distributes funds to specialised units of the kind to which the noble Baroness referred which are scattered over the country, from Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Manchester, Sheffield and Nottingham, down into the South and London. Those units are almost exclusively located in university settings because that is where one can attract people to take time in a career to become familiar with a disease and to make a research contribution.
I am anxious to take the opportunity created by the noble Baroness to ask the Minister to consider a point about charitable dispensations for medical research in specialised units. So great is the generosity of our people that the medical research charities can spend over £100 million on all the different diseases that are represented, including muscular dystrophy and diabetes.
However, a problem arises in that in future, because of the new arrangements, it is inevitable that the hospitals that carry the specialist units will have to charge overheads. The research councils have a dispensation from the Government to the effect that the Government will carry their overheads. University centres receive £60 million to £80 million a year from the Medical Research Council and, I understand, will have their overheads met from central funds.
Our worry is that the £2.5 million that is spent in the units to which I have referred will be reduced by 20 per cent. due to the need for overheads to be paid under the new arrangements. Let us be quite honest about it: in the past a large amount of research was done on the NHS without anyone noticing it. When I was Professor of Experimental Medicine at Guy's Hospital, I did trials of new medicines and new techniques under the NHS. We did not ask for money because no one did any accounting. We would now ask for funds from pharmaceutical companies, particularly the 40 per cent. overheads from overseas pharmaceutical companies. However, to date the men who work on charitable research units have been able to carry that work forward and hospitals have been pleased to have them in their midst and to support them and find ways and means of losing their expenses. That cannot happen any more.
I should therefore like to ask the Minister whether she will give sympathetic consideration to phasing in the imposition of the overheads to be loaded on the specialist units which do the research that is the lifeblood of the specialist units. If one takes a period of five years it would mean £4 million extra next year, then £8 million and so on, until £20 million was found.
I believe that the charities will be able to absorb that but it would be a nice gesture to the public, to the people working there and to the young people who give up their jobs mid-career to work in the units if they have some expectation of security over the next five years while those changes are coming about. I realise that the noble Baroness cannot give assurances tonight but I am sure that she will give sympathetic
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consideration to the matter. It is one of the ways in which the public is able to make sure that they receive the best possible treatment through research in the specialist units to which the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, referred.
9.8 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I want first to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, for raising this issue. She can always be relied upon to raise urgent medical issues. We are much indebted to her once again.
I want to support in general terms what she said on behalf of the Spinal Injuries Association with which I am concerned and to which I have a commitment. I also want to echo the disquiet expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, and add that I fear that it will not be just the units which are supported by large charities that suffer. I believe that there are a number of cases in which small units are now very much in peril.
Before I go on to specifics, I should like to ask the noble Baroness whether her department would he prepared to look at the situation in which some specialist units now find themselves on the brink of closure. Once a well established unit is forced to close for financial reasons and the team of doctors and researchers involved with it is broken up, it becomes very difficult to get that particular research going again.
I want to mention a particular research project with which I happen, in a sense by accident, to be involved. In the 1960s the B-12 research laboratory was established at the Westminster Children's Hospital. Rapid diagnosis and treatment of B-12 disorders in children were made possible by a new method developed by the laboratory. A dozen serious diseases of B-12 metabolism are now recognised and many young lives have been saved by timely intervention and B-12 treatment. One might ask why single out B-12? Vitamin B-12 is vital for the proper functioning of every cell in the human body. The total amount of B-12 in an adult would probably do no more than cover a pin head. A minute quantity in every human cell is able to control cell functions, the growth and development of nerves, muscles, the brain and every vital organ.
In 1982 that work was in peril. 1982 was a time when university funding was reduced, as the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, may well recall. I remember visiting the unit in the Westminster hospital and being told by the doctor in charge that unless a charity was established that could raise funds, the unit would simply disappear. I remember saying, "It will disappear over my dead body". Ever since 1982 I have remained alive.
The children's medical charity was established to help save the lives of sick children by the better understanding of disorders such as diabetes (which was referred to by the noble Lord), cot death, malnutrition and leukaemia, which have clear or possible links with Vitamin B-12. The charity has sustained the work for nine years now. It has been able to do so because of generous donors, to whom I am very grateful.

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The B-12 unit in Westminster Children's Hospital is the only specialist, diagnostic and research unit in the United Kingdom that can estimate active Vitamin B-12 in tiny new born babies for rapid diagnosis and treatment of those crippling diseases. Over 400 premature babies and sick infants have been referred to the unit in the past decade. The closure of that unit will have grave implications not only for the lives of children now at risk but in the future for many others.
Recent pioneering research in the unit has shown that there may be other diseases of childhood in which Vitamin B-12 may play an important role. There are already positive links between the vitamin and diabetes, cystic fibrosis and cancer. Unless the closure of the unit is averted, further work on those important developments is unlikely and some parents will suffer hardship and needless distress.
I emphasise that this unit is one of only five comparable units in the world. It has world-wide recognition and approval. Three years ago the researchers in the unit organised an important seminar. The work of the unit is now at risk. I have written to the Secretary of State for Social Services, Mr. Waldegrave, to ask whether the department can consider the project because unless funds are raised in the next three months the work will stop. I believe that it is not in the interests of the country or children, let alone the department, that this work should go by the board. I therefore hope the Minister will look into the matter to see what the department can do to help.
I shall continue to do what I can, as will many other noble Lords in this House. The noble Lord, Lord Walton, was president of the charity. The noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has been associated with it. I am very proud of the response. However, there is now a grave danger that the unit may close.
I wish to refer too to the Hilda Lewis House at the Bethlem Royal Hospital which is now threatened with closure from January 1992. It is a money saving operation. The money saved will be used to buy a scanner. If Hilda Lewis House is closed there will be no place at Bethlem Royal Hospital for children with severe learning disabilities. Hilda Lewis House provides an intensive short-term in-patient assessment and intervention service for children with severe learning difficulties and extreme behavioural problems such as extreme aggression to others or injuring themselves so severely that they cause permanent damage. The aim is to help those children to live as normal a life as possible. Interventions are aimed at discouraging dangerous and difficult behaviours while fostering the development of constructive and less harmful behaviours. Treatment needs to be carried out consistently throughout 24 hours. That requires among other things a very high staff ratio.
The unit is well respected. It is a unique national resource offering residential treatment to children up to 16 years of age who have such severe problems that they cannot be helped in the community and whose needs local services cannot meet.
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On 6th August 1980 the then Secretary of State, Mr. Kenneth Clarke, acknowledged Hilda Lewis House's international reputation as a centre of excellence. He stated,
"I am confident that Hilda Lewis House will continue to provide the unique service which it offers".
He continued:
"There is absolutely no intention to close the unit".
I suppose that the use of those words means that there was no intention then. But there is an intention now. Despite the assurance given by Mr. Clarke, Hilda Lewis House is to be closed to buy some equipment which the health authority cannot otherwise afford. Such a choice is grossly unsatisfactory.
I hope that the Minister will also consider that project. The great benefit of the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, having moved such a debate is that it enables those of us with specific experience to bring forward projects that are in danger. I know the thoughtful and caring approach of the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper. I hope that she will consider the two units that I have brought to her attention.
9.18 p.m.
Lord Wise: My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, described forcefully the work of the special units and their problems, especially in relation to spinal cord injuries. As a layman I have no great knowledge of the work of the units. However, one of my sons leads a special unit and from time to time I have had discussions with him. Perhaps I may tell the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, that my son worked for a period some time ago at Manchester Royal Infirmary. That was under a university appointment. He conducted much research then into diabetes.
As with all the National Health Service's problems, the main difficulty relating to the safeguarding of the special hospital units is the need for continuing and adequate finance. I believe that the Government may wish to encourage an area of competition between the specialist units. I feel a little unhappy about that. The inevitable consequence would be the closure of some units. That surely cannot be good for patient care. Could that involve a desperately ill patient having to travel many miles for treatment at another specialist unit? Money has to go with the patient. I do not understand what will happen if a district authority has overspent and does not have the money to send with the patient. Could such a situation arise? If so, what will happen to the patient? Who makes the decision? Will he receive inferior treatment, the best that can be provided locally or elsewhere, or will he merely suffer through lack of treatment? Who makes the decision? There is bound to be a conflict of interests and possibly acrimonious arguments between the consultant who is dealing with the case and knows what the patient needs and the administration which is having to try to find the money. The poor patient is just the pig in the middle who is suffering.
I suppose that if the patient has the money to pay there will be no problem; he will receive the treatment that he needs and his suffering will be alleviated. However, if neither he nor the district authority has the money, I presume that he will not receive the treatment. Surely that must not be allowed.

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District health authorities can be short of money for all manner of reasons. They may even be badly managed, who knows? However, the number of our truly excellent special units must not fall. They are in jeopardy if there are insufficient funds to send patients to them. How will the Government ensure that district managers have enough funds to refer patients to special units whenever that is needed? If the patients do not get to them, the units must fold as a result of lack of cash.
9.22 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, for raising this important issue. I also congratulate her on her moving and extremely well-informed speech. The internal market involving the separation of purchaser and provider, which is the central change brought about by the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990, was based on an idea put forward by Professor Alan Enthoven, the economist of Stanford University. His monograph was based on a study that he carried out on the National Health Service. It was not meant to be incorporated into legislation, as it has been, in one tranche and applied throughout the National Health Service. Indeed, he has since expressed in an interview and to relatives, friends and colleagues his embarrassment that his ideas were not introduced gradually in stages in different areas and at different levels with evaluation at each stage. He, among many others, has pointed out that the market in health care has sometimes had disastrous effects in the United States.
We must accept that the internal market is now here, al least for a while, and we must make the best of it. The principle of having a purchasing authority assessing and buying health care for the needs of its population is to me theoretically attractive. If it can be shown to work it is likely that it is here to stay. However, I say that advisedly because we have yet to see the internal market working in its full force. Until now it has been a cushioned operation of the system.
The type of units to which the noble Baroness's Question refers cater for the needs of a small and rather fluctuating proportion of the population of any single health district. It is very difficult to predict on a district or even regional level how many spinal injuries, rare bone tumours, or cases which need special psychiatric units because of deafness there are likely to be in any one year. Thus, referrals to specialist units at regional or supra-regional level will in most cases be extra-contractual—ECRs. Other noble Lords have pointed out that those ECRs are the bêtes noires of district purchasing managers, the more so because of the difficulty in specialist cases of costing each admission or referral since each case may be different in complexity and length of stay required.
I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to explain whether and how regional reserve funds will be created and operated to help or bail out district health authorities which have overspent and which cannot afford as many extra-contractual referrals as they would like. Are those funds to be set up and how will they be administered? Is it known how large will
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be the funds at their disposal and whether the funds will be subtracted from the sums allocated to districts, or will they be earmarked for legitimate overspends on ECRs hours when the regions are funded centrally? The specialist hospital units, as many noble Lords have pointed out, need more secure funds than they can expect from fluctuating extra-contractual referrals.
As the noble Baroness pointed out extremely clearly, anyone who has been a patient in a specialist hospital unit or has had a relative treated there, or who, like myself, has treated patients who have received care in such a unit, will be very much aware of the extremely high level of expertise which has been built up in those units over many years. As my noble friend Lord Ennals and the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, pointed out, those centres of excellence use their unique experience to train teams of doctors, nurses and therapists. That training cannot be obtained elsewhere; nor can the research which is often conducted on very rare conditions, as has been explained in some detail by those noble Lords, be carried out so well elsewhere. The staff trained at those units can spread their expertise when they take up jobs in other units, quite apart from forming part of a team in the units themselves. For example, they can help to teach others to avoid the kind of unpleasant experience, which the noble Baroness described, of the badly neglected pressure sore. There are many other examples of different conditions which can go wrong if not given special care.
We are all anxious to hear from the noble Baroness how the Government intend to safeguard these unique units from the vagaries of the market system. Can she assure the House that the units will be able to rely on earmarked secure funding for at least the next two or three years until we see how the internal market settles down?
The Patient's Charter does not include the words "patient choice". That is rather strange when the National Health Service and Community Care Bill was preceded by a White Paper called Working for Patients. The units which we are discussing are the enthusiastic choice of those who use them. The system at present does not assure those units of a secure future. I hope that the noble Baroness can provide them with that assurance.
9.30 p.m.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, for introducing this topic to the House tonight. I have always supported supra-regional hospitals from the time when I was on the board of the Brompton National Heart Hospital. This House listened to the problems that existed then and did much to help solve them. Now, like all other postgraduate hospitals, it will again face problems of funding. However, again like other special health authorities, it is standing back waiting to see what happens. Therefore tonight I do not intend to speak about that hospital but about the Royal National Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital, which is in a slightly different position.

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I must declare an indirect interest in that my husband is the chairman of the hospital, which was one of the first wave national health hospital trusts. It is interesting that it is mainly postgraduate. However, it does not come in as a special health authority in the same way as the others—the Royal Marsden, the Brompton and the Hammersmith. There are so many that are special health authorities. A general practitioner said to me the other day that one is allowed to send patients to any of those special health authorities and the cost does not come out of the district health authority's allocation.
Unfortunately, the Royal National Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital does not have the benefit of being in that position. The cost of sending a patient there comes out of the district allocation and therefore it has to be in a competitive position in regard to funds. It is doing quite well in that it has run efficiently for almost its first full year. It lived within its means, it improved the waiting time on the waiting lists, it is continuing a high level of valuable research and it has introduced a master's degree in audiological science which the first students will take in 1992. There is already a master's degree in audiological medicine.
The difficulty arises from the fact that all the money given for undergraduate teaching is separate from the money given for postgraduate teaching. There is a lack of funds for postgraduate teaching. This year, it being its first year as a national health hospital trust, it was perceived that it would have special difficulties and it was given an unnaturally high amount of undergraduate teaching money. That provided £1 million, plus the £.3 million postgraduate funds. On that £1.3 million it managed well.
I was particularly interested in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Rea, when he explained that the proposer of those ideas believed that they should be introduced gradually. We are seeing many things introduced gradually in this new restructured National Health Service. But it certainly must be a gradual process. It is only as it goes along that little difficulties appear which previously no one realised existed. They make themselves apparent and suddenly one realises that something must be done about them. The Government assured us that they will allow the changes in the health service to evolve. They are not planning to destroy the system. I believe that the changes are working well. But that is one of the difficulties that has become apparent.
The audiology department is unique in the country. There is also an excellent standard of ear, nose and throat treatment. One may receive ear, nose and throat treatment in other areas, but the audiology department is unique. The hospital includes the Institute of Laryngology (throats) and Otology (ears). I point that out because there is nothing worse than reading all those names in Hansard and thinking, "What on earth was that all about?" It has the National Chair in audiological medicine and also a Chair in audiological science. It is therefore of importance to people with hearing difficulties.
Some Members of this House—I feel I am rapidly becoming one of them—are aware that time produces
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hearing difficulties for many of us. Perhaps nowhere could we be speaking about a subject more dear to our hearts.
I appeal to the Minister to put to the Secretary of State and the department that the same formula for funding for postgraduate hospitals should be introduced in the same way as in the undergraduate hospitals. There should not be the great difference that exists now.
While thought is being given as to how that can be done and how to recognise the special needs of postgraduate teaching —because that must be recognised—can the Minister assure us that the status quo will be maintained and that at least we shall not see any reduction in funding to these hospitals which are conducting postgraduate teaching but which are not in the position of special health authorities? Because they are not in that category they are more visible than the other postgraduate hospitals which are waiting and watching to see what happens. Will the Minister assure me that she will look carefully into the position as regards postgraduate teaching? It is vitally important.
I strongly support all the supra-regional and highly specialised hospitals. We all wish to see our centres of excellence continued. We hope to see good hospitals doing routine work everywhere so that people can have treatment close to home. It would never be in the national interest to have highly specialised units everywhere because one would not have enough cases requiring that kind of work. Therefore, there would never be the degree of expertise that exists when the units are retained as supra-regional centres of excellence.
9.37 p.m.
Lord McColl of Dulwich: My Lords, I too would like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, for raising this issue and also apologise for not putting my name on the list of speakers. I believe that what we are talking about tonight is the problem of bringing in any kind of change. Changing anything in this country is an uphill task: changing anything in the National Health Service is even more of an uphill task. All changes inevitably bring problems. Changes have to be modified, as has already been said, when unforeseen difficulties arise.
The Government have taken a great deal of trouble to try to ensure a smooth take-off of these reforms. Perhaps noble Lords remember the dire warnings that were given in this House a year or so ago as to how the NHS would collapse on 1st April 1991. It is interesting to note how smooth the take-off has been. It is perfectly natural for hospitals like Stoke Mandeville with its spinal injuries unit to be worried about what is going to happen in April of next year. The patients are taken from about six or seven different regions. The hospital could have £4 million to £5 million to collect in extra-contractual referrals. In the first year that could lead to instability.
It has been proposed—it is perfectly reasonable and within the bounds of possibility—that a unit like Stoke Mandeville could negotiate with the four Thames regions in the way that it has already

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negotiated with the Oxford region and have a contract with them. If that were done with those five regions it would ensure between 75 per cent. and 80 per cent. of its income. That would seem to be a reasonable proposition, certainly in the first year.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, said that she was worried that the district health authorities would not refer the needy, paralysed patients to the proper place in order to save money. If a hospital within a district health authority were to do that it certainly would not save any money; it would increase the total expenditure. An average district health authority will see only five new paralysed people a year. There is no way that a hospital will set up a unit to treat just five patients, so that is very unlikely to occur.
The spinal injuries unit takes patients from British dependencies such as the Falklands Island and Gibraltar, and no doubt some system will be put in place to make sure that money follows patients there. The unit also takes quite a number of patients from Her Majesty's Armed Forces. Clearly, that factor too will have to be catered for. The Stoke Mandeville unit is one of the front windows of the National Health Service on the world scene. It has done marvellous work in the past and I know that the Government are anxious that that work should continue undiminished.
9.40 p.m.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, for raising this subject tonight. We have: heard some excellent speeches, in which concern has been expressed about the future of specialist units. I am delighted that we are able to discuss this subject coolly and calmly and that there is no political angle attached to it. We are all taking part in the debate because we feel desperately concerned.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, referred to problems that will in a way increase from now on. When the contract system, if one can call it that, between purchaser and provider was introduced last April it was based completely on historical facts. There was no proper costing in the sense that there will be from 1st April 1992. The specialist units will be faced with a proper contractual programme and their status will be changed from supra-regional units to regional units. Both those developments worry them deeply. They are worried, as the noble Baroness said, that the districts and regions will deal first with the simpler, general, standard services. The districts and regions have problems to face too. It will not be easy for them to get the contracting system working properly on the right economic basis. The specialist units are therefore feeling threatened. As the noble Baroness said, they would like central funding to remain at least while this transitional period is going on.
The noble Lord, Lord McColl, said that the Stoke Mandeville Hospital, having made a contract with the Oxford region, could make a contract with the other regions and that its income would therefore be safeguarded. I find it difficult to see how a specialist unit can make a meaningful contract when its patients may be there for a week, a month or two months, or
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may even be there for between six and 12 months. Under those conditions, entering into a contract with a district health authority is a complicated process. The specialist units will have to rely largely on extra-contractual arrangements. That must put them in a most frightening situation at present, as they do not know what their income will be and how they will plan their services for the next one, two or five years. That feeling of instability is what worries all of us, together with the danger that it presents in itself that some of the units may go to the wall.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, referred to the unit at St. Thomas' Hospital which deals with high respiratory conditions, and to our late friend, Lady Lane Fox. I knew her from 1952; indeed, I knew her for most of her life. I know how delighted she was when that unit finally got off the ground and how important it was to her. Her visits on a regular basis to it enabled her to function in this House and to live a normal life.
Many people use the Lane Fox Unit. I talked to Dr. Spencer, who runs it. He told me that the number of referrals has not gone down, because he accepts patients regardless of whether there is a guarantee of payment. He said that about 97 per cent. of his patients are extra contractual and, so far, 30 per cent. of them are not paid for. That is the situation this year but it will be even more difficult next year when the financial constraints will become meaningful.
I am sure that all of us would hate to see that unit, which is unique and which serves so many people all around the country, run into difficulties. It not only helps people in the unit itself; it also provides technicians who visit people's homes to ensure that the breathing machinery which they have there and which prevents them from taking up a hospital bed—for example, artificial lungs—is kept in good order. It is a most valuable unit which should, in my opinion, be safeguarded especially carefully. I know that Dr. Spencer is most concerned about its future.
The other point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, was that postgraduate education was of the greatest importance. If specialist treatment is to be provided, it is dependent upon appropriately trained staff. Among the most important members of the staff in such units are the nurses. Tragically, we know what happened when there were not enough specialist, trained nurses when we had the problem with the Birmingham babies in 1987. The planning as regards the number of special paediatric care nurses who were needed went wrong.
As the Minister knows, because we discussed the matter when we debated the Nurses, Midwives and Health Visitors Bill, we are still concerned about ring fencing for postgraduate training. It is important that adequate investment is made in post-registration education. Therefore, it is important that the Government should, so long as it is possible and especially as regards postgraduate education, ring fence that sum of money.
I sincerely hope that, as a result of this debate we shall receive some guarantees about the future of all the specialist units. There are many of them—not just the spinal injury or respiratory units—around the

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country. They contribute enormously to the well-being of people who are much less fortunate than we are. I should like their future guaranteed.
9.50 p.m.
Lord Desai: My Lords, first let me join all other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, for having brought this Question to our notice. She speaks on the subject with knowledge and passion. I welcome the opportunity to speak on the subject. Let me also join the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, who said that this is not a party matter; it is a matter in which we all wish to do the best that we can. My contribution will be made in that spirit.
Many noble Lords have spoken with great knowledge—a knowledge which I lack—as doctors or users of the services. Let me start by emphasising certain points about which we all agree. There are many specialist units, not just the spinal injuries unit which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Masham. They are unique. They make a great contribution which is appreciated. We all agree that we should save as many of them as possible. We are also agreed that we are currently going through a period of reform. As the noble Lord, Lord McColl, pointed out, there are always difficulties in implementing reforms. We should learn from experience what to do.
I am sure that no one, including the Government, wants the organisational problems involved in getting money from here to there to stand in the way of good treatment being meted out to patients. If there are any institutional problems to be smoothed out we should try to do so. In that respect I note the remarks of my noble friend Lord Rea, who pointed out the principles involved in the new NHS reforms relating to purchasers and providers.
Economics is a subject about which I know something. As so often happens, the bulk of the services provided by the NHS can be taken care of by the purchaser/provider arrangement. To give an analogy, that is like off-the-shelf buying. We know about the cases which are not routine. We know roughly what they cost and what the length of treatment is likely to be. One can estimate the costs of such treatments within a certain range. The specialist units—as we have heard there are many of them—operate what I shall call made-to-order or Cinderella technology. Something has to be fitted separately to each patient. Patients, as has been said, may need different kinds of treatments and different lengths of stay. Those specialist units cater for treatments which are hard to cost routinely. The market for them cannot be the same as the market for what I call standard routine illnesses.
Another problem is that because the institutions are unique their markets are national. Their catchment area is national rather than district. Any financing arrangement that looks at the district only cannot cater for institutions that have a national market. Without wanting to criticise what has been going on, I urge the Government to consider whether a
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distinction can be made in the structural reforms between matters that can be taken care of at district level through the purchase/provider arrangement and matters which need a wider geographical coverage and a different kind of financing. As we have noticed this evening, district budgets or GPs' budgets are overstrained by the one-off, odd or difficult to estimate large expenditure. The difficulty is one of transition in reforms. The bulk of problems can be taken care of in the purchaser/provider arrangements, but these units have a different kind of problem.
In the light of these observations, I should like to ask the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, whether there is any prospect of interim funding for, say, three years while we iron out the problems which arise both in the implementation of the new reforms and in the specialist units. That is one kind of problem. There are obviously individual cases of specialist units, as has been pointed out by other noble Lords. They should be examined in detail.
A further problem is that the specialist units produce not only health care and health cure but also research and training. Those are vital ingredients for future health care and health cure. I know from the university sector that there are problems in financing postgraduate training and research in any case. They seem to be heightened by the fact that the National Health Service is going through these reforms. Teaching in that sector has problems of financing education and health.
It may be that the postgraduate education provided by the specialist units needs some other kind of special treatment, some other kind of arrangement. Without in any sense disrupting the flow of change, it will enable the units to preserve their essential contribution. I know from my experience that good research units are hard to build up; they are easily destroyed and hard to rebuild. It takes many years to build up good research teams and they are important.
I do not wish to delay the House any longer except to say that I am sure there is much good will on all sides. We desire the preservation and enhancement of the specialist unit, ironing out the problems of transition. Let us hope that the comments expressed by noble Lords are taken on board by the Minister.
9.57 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Hooper): My Lords, there can be no doubt about the importance and value of the services which specialist units and centres of excellence provide. We have heard of some excellent examples of developing these services from the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, and the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, who spoke of the diabetic units and the work of the Lane-Fox Unit. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, mentioned the B-12 Unit.
I wish to emphasise that I believe that there can be no doubt about the Government's recognition of the vital role that the units play in providing for the overall well-being and health of the nation. It may be in service terms, providing specialist care to a wide catchment population; in research terms, as centres in pushing back the frontiers of medical advancement

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and achievement; or in educational terms in developing and training the future generation of clinical specialists both at undergraduate and at postgraduate levels.
I realise that uncertainty can be created by change. As my noble friend Lord McColl said, people do not always welcome change. However, I would, not wish anyone to think that the effect of the reforms will be negative for these special units. On the contrary, the principles of the reforms have put in place the foundation which will enable such units to thrive. It may therefore be appropriate if I begin by referring to the reforms and then explain how the specialist services fit into them.
With the implementation of the reforms, district health authorities are now responsible for assessing the health needs of their residents and for securing access to a comprehensive range of services which aim to meet those needs. They are therefore becoming more aware and better informed about the health needs of their residents and they are in a better position to make judgments about what services are required and where to purchase them to meet the needs and wishes of their residents.
The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, referred to the system of contracting. The separation of the role of the DHA from hospitals and units providing services has given hospitals and units greater control over their own affairs. It has enabled them to manage themselves and organise their services in ways which are more responsive to patients' needs. The contracts provide the mechanism for securing and ensuring the delivery of a high quality, consumer-responsive health service. Hospitals will increasingly get paid for the number of patients they treat rather than, as in the past, being funded to provide access to facilities irrespective of usage. The principles which the reforms have put in place tackle the efficiency trap and units providing high quality services—such as the units we have heard about this evening—can only stand to gain.
Within this overall framework created by the reforms, we have been particularly concerned to ensure that proper funding arrangements are made for specialist services. Those arrangements will need to be flexible enough to reflect the diversity of services provided, and indeed who they are provided for. The breadth of the examples referred to this evening underline that need for flexibility.
Of course we have never pretended that all services could be contracted for on a local DHA basis. Because of their catchment population, or because of research or teaching aspects, there will be specialist services which need to be funded on a regional or national basis. Indeed, the White Paper Working for Patients underlined the importance we attach to the continued existence of specialist services and our commitment to secure an environment which will enable them to prosper in line with their popularity and the need for them.
The framework under which the majority of specialist services are currently delivered therefore reflects their particular characteristics. Special Health Authorities continue to be centrally funded by the department. There are also services which are only
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available in a small number of units throughout the country. These supra-regional services are also funded centrally. There are too services where it is sensible to continue funding on a regional basis and those where DHAs have a role to play in representing the interests of their residents more closely.
There is no centrally dictated straitjacket that the Government are imposing. However, the department's management executive, together with the regions concerned, is keeping these issues under review as part of its ongoing review process. Our policy in implementing the reforms has always been one of managing change in a planned and sensible way. The continued provision of specialist services is no exception to this policy.
The London Postgraduate Special Health Authorities—eight in all—are just one example of the way in which we have sought to provide a sound base for centres of excellence to function. These national centres of clinical excellence provide the foci for research and development, medical education and training, and non-medical education and training within their fields. We have recently reconfirmed our commitment to the special health authorities as national centres for research and development and we intend to maintain central funding and management for the next two years.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, raised a number of anxieties concerning the supra-regional services and those anxieties were echoed by other speakers. The department's funding of supra-regional services is another example of the importance we attach to the provision of specialist services. In the current financial year we have provided central funding worth £100 million. I can therefore correct the somewhat lower figure quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Butterfield. In those cases the department is acting directly to secure care through contracts and all residents are able to benefit from the services. The contracts cover the provision of high profile services such as heart and liver transplants together with less well known but equally pioneering services such as cancer services for eye and bone tumours.
Where services develop to the stage where they are largely provided on a regional basis—spinal injury services are an example—it is only equitable that designation as a supra-regional service ceases and that health authorities contract for their provision in the same way as for other mainstream health services. De-designation has been planned and prepared for. It is clearly important that the transition from supra-regional service status is handled in a managed manner.
Funding will no longer be from the centre but will be distributed to regions to secure services for their residents. However, regions will be expected to use that funding in 1992–93 on a "smooth take off, no surprises" basis. We would not expect any major changes. Therefore, contracts will be entered into on a historic basis but there will be scope for amending and improving them as time goes on.
In coming to its decision to recommend de-designation of spinal injury services the supra-regional services advisory group noted that in most cases the

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services are provided largely to patients from the host region. The group believes that it would be in the best interests of units and their patients for the service to be organised on a regional rather than a supra-regional basis. Districts and regions have adopted a number of approaches to ensure that similar valuable services continue to prosper.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham, raised a question about assurances given by my noble friend Lord Henley during the passage of the National Health Service and Community Care Bill. He gave an assurance that spinal units would continue to be funded in part by central government. It was later decided that supra-regional services would not be part funded but would be 100 per cent, funded by the centre. That was a change for the better.
It has always been the case that supra-regional services are de-designated when the case for designation has passed. One example which was welcomed concerned the end stage renal failure services for children in 1988. Spinal units are now in that firmly established position in which designation could not and need not continue.
Another point raised by the noble Baroness concerned the difficulties in relation to the continuation of contracts because costs are so variable. A contract already exists between the Department of Health and the spinal injuries units. For next year, the money will pass to regions to make appropriate funding arrangements for the services. The approach to contracting will be evolutionary as better information on costs and quality becomes available. Therefore regions are well aware of the importance of ensuring a smooth transition.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, perhaps I may ask a question. What happens if there is a large train crash in one region and 10 people break their necks and have to stay in hospital for a year? Is money transferred from a region which may have no patients to that region with 10 new patients? The matter is complicated because you cannot tell what will happen.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, it is complicated, but there are special arrangements for major emergencies of that kind. I believe that sufficient flexibility is built into the system to enable such a case to be well covered.
The noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Desai, both asked for a delay in implementing those changes. I believe that the noble Lord suggested a three-year delay. In February of this year the Secretary of State announced that spinal units would transfer to the regions next April. All health authorities were informed at the time, so there have been many months to plan for the smooth transition and regional health authorities are leading discussions with units in a number of cases. Obviously, the Department of Health's management executive is following the matter keenly and it all appears to be proceeding satisfactorily. We have issued guidance on contracting and specialist guidance on this particular area of contracting.
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The supra-regional funding has allowed spinal units to develop firm foundations of quality, expertise and, above all, the universal reputation for their services—underlined by the noble Lord, Lord Rea. All are safeguarded. Any new unit trying to start a service would need to be confident of at least matching the existing standards.
The Stoke Mandeville spinal injuries unit is a shining example. I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, gave us the background to the unit. I thank her for ensuring that on my visit I was able to see all that I should see, both to appreciate the needs of the patients and the scope of the services there. The Oxford region is well appraised of the importance of the issue and is working with other regions. I understand that, historically, four regions in particular have used the services of the Stoke Mandeville unit and they are working together to agree on appropriate funding arrangements.
As I said, the management executive is also in close touch with regions on this issue, but I do not believe that there is anything to be gained by exaggerating any anxieties that might exist about a system that we have every reason to believe will be in place and working smoothly from April next year. There is no reason to suggest or believe that patients will not have as good or better access to those specialist services.
Contracting on a national basis is not sensible for services which are provided in a number of units around the country. Those who are closest to patients are inevitably more informed about their needs and more able to reflect the variations in demand in their contracting arrangements. Regions and districts have, therefore, developed their own approaches to contracting for specialist services which reflect their local needs. We expect developments to continue in that evolutionary way.
Some regions continue to fund regional specialties through regional contracts. Others have taken a more developmental approach whereby funding comes from both the region and those districts whose residents are using the service. That allows districts a greater say in ensuring that the needs of their residents are reflected in the agreement with the unit, while providing that unit with a greater degree of security as to its funding.
There are a number of examples of ways in which the regions and districts are using the contracting process to achieve improvements in the care available to their residents. I quote an example in which one region—the West Midlands—has taken a two-fold approach to contracting for specialist services. Some of those services are being funded through regional contracts while others are being funded through what they call a subscription service. That is where each district pays a proportion of the cost of providing the service to the district in which the unit is located. That district acts as manager on behalf of all the purchasers. It negotiates and agrees the terms of contract and monitors the service being delivered. That means that the unit has a guaranteed income and clear quality standards to aim for. For purchasers it provides an effective way to fund often unpredictable and high cost referrals.

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The noble Lord, Lord Rea, was concerned that contracting for specialist units does not work because of the small number of patients from each district. I welcome the noble Lord's support for the idea of districts and regions securing health services on behalf of their residents. But we have always made it clear that they cannot contract for all services at district level, especially the specialist services where there are just a few referrals from each district. That is why we have the supra-regional services in place and have provided the £100 million funding to which I have referred. We have made clear the responsibility on regions to ensure that residents have access to all appropriate specialist services.
My noble friend Lord Wise was concerned about the money question and we have to recognise that demand for health care will always exceed the money available. In acting on behalf of their residents to secure access to a comprehensive range of services, districts have to make decisions on priorities. But I hope that in the course of this evening I have given him sufficient evidence of our appreciation and keenness to ensure that the appropriate range of specialist services continues.
The noble Lord, Lord Butterfield, asked a particular question about research. I reaffirm the Government's commitment to the importance of research and the need to ensure that units facing extra costs as a result of collaborating with the medical charities' research programmes are not disadvantaged by doing so. It is an important issue and perhaps I could write to the noble Lord in a little more detail.
I have also noted the point made by my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes about the Royal National Ear, Nose and Throat Hospital. I am not aware of any problem about funding in respect of that unit but I shall look into the matter and come back to her.
With regard to Hilda Lewis House, which was an example raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, of a centre of excellence in postgraduate research and teaching which caters mainly for mentally handicapped children, the special health authority, the
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Bethlem Royal and Maudsley Special Health Authority is considering the future of the unit and must ensure that its decision reflects both its overall strategic direction and other opportunities for priorities for research and service. But the future of the unit is being given very serious consideration.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am grateful. Does that mean that the unit will not close in two weeks' time?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, certainly not so far as I am aware.
We are confident that effective arrangements are being developed and indeed are in place to enable specialist units to thrive and flourish in the reformed National Health Service. I believe that, as experience and expertise in contracting grows, other innovative ideas about how these services are best secured and delivered will evolve. We shall see money following patients more and more clearly so that units are properly funded for the work that they do. Where there is a need and a demand for specialist services, they will continue to play an important role in providing for the health and wellbeing of the nation.
I may not have answered all the points raised in the course of the debate. However, I shall look closely at Hansard and write to any noble Lord to whom I have not replied. Again, I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, for giving me the opportunity to provide some reassurance.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, will she say that she will at least look into the second urgent case that I raised? The B-12 unit in Westminster Children's Hospital is gravely threatened at present.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, yes. In saying that I shall look into all the points raised by noble Lords, I certainly include the noble Lord's B-12 unit.
House adjourned at twenty-two minutes past ten o'clock.

  IRAQ: UN HUMANITARIAN AID MANDATE
  IRAQ: UN HUMANITARIAN AID MANDATE
  SOVIET UNION: HEALTH CARE ASSISTANCE
  SOVIET UNION: HEALTH CARE ASSISTANCE
  HOUSING BENEFIT SUBSIDY AND LOCAL AUTHORITY RENT INCREASES
  HOUSING BENEFIT SUBSIDY AND LOCAL AUTHORITY RENT INCREASES
  UK CITIZENS IN CANADA: PENSIONS
  UK CITIZENS IN CANADA: PENSIONS
  DUTY SOLICITOR SCHEME: COVERAGE
  DUTY SOLICITOR SCHEME: COVERAGE
  MR. GEORGE EDWARD TOMPKINS
  MR. GEORGE EDWARD TOMPKINS
  PROCEEDINGS REQUIRING DPP's CONSENT
  PROCEEDINGS REQUIRING DPP's CONSENT
  NORTHERN IRELAND: CONVICTIONS BASED ON CONFESSIONS
  NORTHERN IRELAND: CONVICTIONS BASED ON CONFESSIONS
  HOME ENERGY LABELLING
  HOME ENERGY LABELLING
  KING'S CROSS UNDERGROUND WORKS AND THE BRITISH LIBRARY
  KING'S CROSS UNDERGROUND WORKS AND THE BRITISH LIBRARY
  DEPOSIT/REFUND SYSTEMS: STUDY
  DEPOSIT/REFUND SYSTEMS: STUDY
  LEICESTER DIOCESAN AUTHORITY AND SI 1991/1254
  LEICESTER DIOCESAN AUTHORITY AND SI 1991/1254
  GLC RECORDS: TRANSFER TO SUCCESSORS
  GLC RECORDS: TRANSFER TO SUCCESSORS
  DEVELOPMENT PLANS: NEW SYSTEM
  DEVELOPMENT PLANS: NEW SYSTEM
  HEVENINGHAM HALL
  HEVENINGHAM HALL