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European Affairs

If the hon. Gentleman behaves, I will give him a chance to intervene towards the end of my contribution. [Interruption.] We will make a deal. In other words, the charter can be circumvented. Once again, another Government red line is exposed as more cosmetic than effective. On justice and home affairs, the Committee reiterates the important point that"““the powers of the Commission and the ECJ are considerably increased when matters move from the Third Pillar to the First””. " It gives more details and, doubtless, other hon. Members will deal with that subject at greater length. In the interests of time, I will desist from doing so, but it is a fundamental point. It was one of the most important features of the original Constitution that criminal and civil justice and policing would no longer be intergovernmental matters, and the red line does not change that effect in any way. The Foreign Secretary will be aware of the Committee's stringent criticisms of the Government's failure to ensure that, unlike Denmark, our position vis-à-vis existing agreed measures is secure. The Committee concludes that"““under the system to be established by the Reform Treaty, a Member State will lose the ability finally to determine its own law””" on justice and home affairs—"““to the extent that measures are adopted at Union level””." These conclusions must be taken seriously. They come from a Committee that has a majority of the governing party in the House. Each of the Government's red lines is in turn exposed as weak or worthless. The last of Ministers' arguments that the treaty is significantly different from the EU constitution has been demolished. In any other field of policy, it would be thought perverse to hand more responsibilities to a body that cannot properly manage those that it already possesses, yet that is what Ministers propose to do. This is the 13th year that the Court of Auditors has refused to sign off the EU's accounts. Year after year, the European Union fails to look after taxpayers' money to the standard that taxpayers have every right to expect. It is time Ministers took more action over that than they have in recent years. The abolition of national vetoes—69 by one account, and 50 by the Government's latest tally—is another important issue. It is astonishing that Ministers are so blithe about it when they are even now fighting a desperate rearguard action on the temporary workers directive, whose red tape would, according to the CBI, endanger 250,000 jobs. The Government are finding it very hard to keep a blocking minority together, but they need a blocking minority only because this area is an EU competence and subject to qualified majority voting, both of which are a direct consequence of the abandonment of our opt-out from the social chapter in 1997. On the single market, the reform treaty—in this context, surely an ironic name—is not just a step back from the current treaties, but even a step back from the constitution as it was drafted. The EU has some great achievements to its name. Enlargement is one, and the success of its competition laws is another. But by allowing the French Government to downgrade, for the first time, undistorted competition in the internal market from one of the EU's chief objectives to a mere protocol must be one of the most remarkable examples of a British Government being asleep on the job at a summit since we joined the European Union. As a report by the Centre for European Policy Studies, which is hardly a Eurosceptic outfit, states,"““far from being a minor technical adjustment . . . the excision of the competition principle from the front of the Treaty is likely to have a number of damaging consequences for EC competition law. There is a real danger that in future EC competition law will be cribbed, crabbed and confined.””" That is not a proud achievement by the British Government. I give way to the hon. Member for Preston (Mr. Hendrick).