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Foreign Affairs and Defence

I fear that the extension of qualified majority voting takes more and more decisions away from the people—not only the people of this country, but the people of the other countries of the European Union—by removing their veto, and that the progressive removal of decisions from national Parliaments and national Governments will ultimately create immense discontent with the functioning of the European Union across Europe. Our objection to that extension is therefore fairly fundamental. Third and most prominent on the list of concealments is the Government's faltering pretence that the European Treaty is not the constitution at all. In the summer recess, I tabled a written question to the Foreign Secretary, asking him to set out in full the similarities, differences, omissions and additions to the articles comprising the EU constitution and the new EU treaty. The European Scrutiny Committee produced a comparative table, and one might have thought that Foreign Office Ministers who wanted an open debate would do the same when asked to do so. Instead, the Foreign Secretary took well over a month to provide any answer at all, and then in effect refused to answer the question—that was long after Parliament had come back, so the recess is not an excuse—simply repeating instead the discredited mantra that the constitution concept is abandoned. That is an argument described by the European Scrutiny Committee as ““likely to be misleading””. In the words of Giscard d'Estaing on Saturday:"““You wouldn't be honest to tell the British voters the substance of the text has changed—because the substance has not changed.””"