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BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 15 (Exempted business),
Mr. Hayes:
I was grateful for that interruption to gather my notes and thoughts.
The social chapter is also in that category. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe drew attention to Jacques Delors's admiration for our opt-out, and his acceptance that, in areas such as inward investment, it gave us a significant advantage over our European counterparts.
It is worth returning briefly to the issue of copyright. The resulting agreement from the treaty on copyright seems to have been decided by qualified majority voting. If so, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has not noticed that yet. It remains to be seen what long-term effect that will have on the importance of the German-based European copyright centre at the expense of the national office in the United Kingdom. I suspect that the London office will go out of business, and that will be another item of bad news for Great Britain.
The single currency has also been mentioned in the debate. I do not want to indulge in repetition. The hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) said that repetition added nothing to the debate. I was reminded of how spiteful and vicious people in the centre of politics often are. People with strong, committed opinions on the left and the right are often accused of those vices, but some of the most vicious people are in the political centre. I do not want to be unkind to the hon. and learned Gentleman, but I had to remind him of that truth.
Mr. Blunt:
My hon. Friend has perhaps chosen the one Liberal Democrat in the House who does not merit such a description.
Mr. Hayes:
Indeed, I can add little to that.
Much has been said about the economic consequences of the single currency, whereas little has been said about the symbolism of the single currency and the transfer of Britain's gold reserves to Frankfurt.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that we are discussing the allocation of time motion, and not these wider issues.
Mr. Hayes:
Absolutely. Had we not had this restriction of time, we would have been able to develop these issues more fully. It is because the debate has been curtailed in such a ruthless, cavalier fashion that we will not have time to explore these matters more fully.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton:
The Foreign Secretary referred time and again to the guillotine motion
Mr. Hayes:
I can tell my hon. Friend that hon. Members and the wider public take a dim view of such a technique. When Parliament is scrutinised independently and empirically by the electorate, it is that sort of technique which tends to attract most criticism and contempt. As my hon. Friend suggests, Governments with large majorities and Prime Ministers with dodgy advisers--I see that the Minister without Portfolio is in his place--sometimes run to excess. I would not say that about the previous Government, but it may be a general principle.
I shall deal with the single currency and its symbolism in terms of time. We should not undersell, underplay or undervalue the principle of national identity. It is inclusive in that it brings a nation together and ensures that what unites us is greater than what divides us. We toy with national identity at our peril because, to use Blairite rhetoric, to do so would disempower the British people, not all of whom are winners or at the pinnacle of society or can reach the apex of their chosen profession or pursuit. However, they can share in the success, glory and progress of the country as a whole because they share a common national identity. We give that away in the treaty at great loss to those people especially.
Mr. William Cash (Stone):
Some debates on this subject are becoming a little too friendly. There is a sort of convention in the House to the effect that, "Well, these things happen. Sometimes we put on guillotines and sometimes it happens the other way round. We do not need to worry too much about it. We can go through the formalities of debate but allow the whole matter to drift along." I do not feel at all friendly towards this guillotine
I have heard my hon. Friends describing the history of the guillotine. It is crystal clear that the Foreign Secretary refused twice to reply to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) as to why, in relation to the Single European Act, he--the Foreign Secretary--was opposed to the idea to a guillotine, along with the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House, yet, in relation to this Bill, the Government assume a degree of hypocrisy. They know perfectly well that the Single European Act was primarily about trade and a single market, whereas this Bill is about government.
The Bill is about the extension of those parts of the Maastricht treaty that raise the question I frequently asked during the Maastricht debate: who governs Britain? As I said to the Minister of State in the opening debate on the Bill, anybody with even a semblance of knowledge of the European Union knows perfectly well that the Amsterdam treaty is a gross extension of the integration of Europe and our absorption into a process that the Government intend will lead to the extinction of the sovereignty of the United Kingdom. They know that, just as they know their devolution Bills fall into the same category: they are all part of a continuing process of the creation of a federal Europe and this Bill is part and parcel of that process. Therefore, the Bill is, on an accumulative basis, a Bill of the highest constitutional importance and under no circumstances can the precedents for a guillotine lead us to any conclusion other than that it should not have been imposed.
The comparison between the Single European Act and the Maastricht treaty is irrelevant, because the Maastricht treaty was about government. The only positive thing I can say about the previous Government's attitude and their record on the Maastricht treaty is that the one thing they did right was not to impose a guillotine on the debate on that treaty. Now, because we had those debates and went into the issues thoroughly, people can form a judgment about who was right and who was wrong. There is a deliberate conspiracy to prevent the people of this country from knowing the full extent of what is contained in the Amsterdam treaty. That is why the guillotine is being imposed.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton:
I have immense regard for my hon. Friend and his knowledge of all the legislation relating to the European Union, but is he not being a little generous in his comments about my party--our party--when in government and its action in imposing a guillotine on the Single European Act, which limited discussion? At that time, we accepted assurances from the leadership of our party that the light of experience shows were not worth the breath with which they were uttered. We have been saddled with a reduction in sovereignty, which the then Prime Minister assured us would not happen. Surely guillotines prevent the sort of discussion that is necessary if we are to explore in detail precisely what is involved in legislation.
Mr. Cash:
I am bound to say that I have believed for a long time that the single market arrangements have not worked as intended. There were some profoundly
I have noticed that, of the amendments selected for debate, some 60 per cent. are in my name. It was essential to have a significant number of groupings in order to have a proper debate. I am absolutely clear that that debate is being frustrated despite the fact that there has been no filibuster. The Minister knows that he has not accused us of a filibuster; I have not picked up in the Lobbies any suggestion that there has been one. No serious commentator has suggested that we have made any attempt to frustrate proper discussion of the Bill.
In the Amsterdam treaty, the Government signed a protocol, which is binding on the Government, to provide for proper scrutiny by national Parliaments. As a member of the Select Committee on European Legislation--which has been extremely critical of the manner in which national parliamentary scrutiny has been conducted--I find it unbelievable that we should be discussing a treaty that itself contains provisions for the improvement of national scrutiny, yet applying a principle that will deprive us of the opportunity of doing so. That is disgraceful. I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about it when he replies at the end of the debate. There is no filibuster; we are seeking to have proper national scrutiny--yet the Government are denying us even what is contained in the Amsterdam treaty as a matter of principle.
It is astonishing that the Committee proceedings have been almost literally unreported in the media by any newspaper or television or radio programme. It is astonishing that a matter of such importance should be ignored by the media. There is no proper means of communication. As I said in the first debate, the best way to keep a secret is to make a speech in the House of Commons. There is evidence of that with the proceedings on this Bill.
We forced the previous Government--I make no apology for it--into serious debate of the Maastricht treaty. In fairness to the Government of the day, they gave us the debates we wanted. I tabled about 210 amendments to ensure proper discussion. However, because there was a relatively small majority and because, I think, there was a feeling in the country that huge issues of constitutional principle were involved, those debates were reported on a continuous and daily basis.
If we were to compare the governmental functions transferred under Maastricht--vital and massive as they were--with, for example, the extension of the legal area and the vast new powers being conferred on the European Court of Justice, we could conclude only that it is an absolute disgrace to hear hon. Members and Government spokesmen suggesting that this is not an important Bill. If they were to claim that they had not suggested that,
I would have to ask why they would want to impose a guillotine on something they have now admitted is important. There is an inherent contradiction in their position.
As other hon. Members have said, the treaty is intended to be irrevocable. It is intended to become part and parcel of our legal framework. It is beyond belief that we should not be renegotiating the treaty. I know that my right hon. Friends had it in mind that at some time we would have a referendum on the treaty. I believe--I think that the huge majority of people in this country share this view--that we should have had, and should yet have, a proper referendum on the Maastricht treaty and, indeed, on the consolidated treaty on European Union. To confine a referendum to the single currency is to duck many of the arguments to which the British people are entitled to give their consent.
I am particularly concerned that my new clause on renegotiation should be discussed. It says that the Bill shall not come into force until there is a new European conference, at which the state of the EU would be discussed and appropriate amendments would be tabled to determine the nature and extent to which renegotiation is necessary. From listening to what Labour Members said when they were in opposition, I know that many of them believe that aspects of the consolidated treaty on European Union, the Maastricht treaty and now the Amsterdam treaty require renegotiation.
Earlier today, we had a debate on fisheries policy. I heard people talking about reform of the common agricultural policy. How the hell is it possible to argue that we must reform those policies, which are subject to treaty arrangements, and then say that we are not going to renegotiate them? Are we to engage simply in a cherry-picking operation and renegotiate only things that are unimportant? Should we not consider the state of the EU as a whole?
In the light of today's discussions, I am driven to consider which are the subjects covered by the groups of amendments that remain for the Committee to debate. After qualified majority and the co-decision procedure, which is what we are currently on, is institutional change and flexibility.
As I said to the Prime Minister when he returned from Luxembourg the other day, is there not an inherent contradiction between his claiming that he should be included in all the discussions on this strange committee entitled Euro X and the fact that the Amsterdam treaty contains provisions on flexibility, which is why he is being excluded? As the Commission said some years ago, economic and monetary union is the best form of flexibility yet devised--and it is applying the principles of flexibility to exclude us from the discussions.
I do not have any truck with monetary union, but there is a fundamental contradiction between the Government's position on Euro X and the flexibility provisions. When the new grouping comes up shortly, we should have the opportunity to discuss flexibility with respect not merely to monetary union, but to all the other matters in the treaty on European Union. Flexibility is a generalised concept. It is intended to apply across the board, but I calculate that hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber will be given only one and a half hours to discuss that flexibility, the institutional changes and the free movement of persons and citizenship.
That is an outrage. The people of this country are entitled to know the views of hon. Members, who have been elected to represent them in Parliament, on fundamental questions that affect their freedoms. I am not asking for much. I ask for something small: that we be given a chance to have a proper discussion of matters that are of fundamental interest to our constituents. It is outrageous that the Government should have introduced a guillotine motion on a Bill of this constitutional magnitude, deliberately to deceive the British people into thinking that it is not as important as it really is.
There is a substantial irony in the origins of the guillotine procedure. Hon. Members may remember--or may at least have read--that it was introduced to deal with the Irish question. It was brought in to crush Parnell, who was seeking to obtain home rule for the Irish. The then Government were seeking to impose amended criminal law in Ireland, which Parnell and others opposed. Now, by an extraordinary irony, the procedure is being used to prevent us from retaining our sovereignty, which is effectively our home rule. It is being used to frustrate our sovereignty rather than enhance it. That is outrageous.
That, at this day's sitting, the European Communities (Amendment) Bill (Allocation of Time) Motion may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour.--[Mr. Robert Ainsworth.]
Question agreed to.
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