---

Business of the House (Lisbon Treaty)

I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash). I congratulate him on the quotations that he used to show the development of our parliamentary democracy over the years and on his reference to ““Erskine May””. I have great respect for the Minister for the Middle East, who will reply to the debate. May I request of him that he heed the contributions of some of the longest serving and most experienced Members of the House? I refer to the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), who is one of the most outstanding Labour parliamentarians. Her long service in the House and the outstanding service that she has given her constituents in two constituencies in her parliamentary career are greatly appreciated. I also refer to the impassioned and outstanding speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd). He shares with me a true love of Parliament and a belief that this mother of all Parliaments is critical to the success of our democratic system. Unfortunately, the House no longer carries the authority or power that it should because it has been undermined by the Executive. It has been said that the Chamber is now irrelevant because the Executive of the day—currently the Labour Government—are likely to get their way, through the use of Whips and other means, even in a debate such as the current one, on a business motion, unless sufficient members of the Government party are prepared to put this country’s interests ahead of their career and possible preferment. I do not make my next remarks immodestly. I took a decision nearly 37 years ago that I believed in Parliament, the integrity of Members of Parliament and the important independence of this place in a democratic system. Consequently, as has been said by one or two others, I have never had the benefit or advantage of preferment. I do not care about that. I can sleep soundly at night, because whenever I took a decision against my party, I did so because I believed that I was right and that what I was doing was in the best interests of those whom I served. There have been others, such as the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich and, from time to time, my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack). Again, will the Minister appreciate the clearly illustrated experience and length of service of a number of those of us who have contributed to this debate? I am totally opposed to this business motion, because it betrays everything that the political parties in the House said at the last election. I shall not speak at any length on the referendum. However, it would have been appropriate for all the parties that said at the last election that if there was a constitutional treaty—albeit not necessarily the constitutional treaty that was defeated in referendums in France and the Netherlands—they would put it to the people of this country in a referendum to do just that. However, the parties are failing to do so. I greatly and sincerely regret that decision, because people in this country no longer trust Parliament. Whereas in the old days Members of Parliament, perhaps because of their independent means, would take an independent position and vote accordingly, irrespective of their party, today that occurs less and less. Yes, we have those such as the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich, as well as some in the Opposition, too, but there are far too few of them. This motion is misguided and is an abuse of the House. I would normally hesitate to say this, but to my mind this sort of tactic would not have been untypical of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Such a tactic is shameful and an abuse of the House. The Government have conceded that there are provisions in the general language of the treaty that could be damaging to the United Kingdom. However, although they claim to have secured protection for this country, through special protocols and opt-outs—the then Prime Minister Tony Blair set out the red lines to the Liaison Committee on 18 June 2007—they will not allow sufficient time for such matters to be debated. There are serious doubts about the effectiveness of the safeguards in each of those areas, and I do not need to say that the European Scrutiny Committee, among others, has drawn attention to them. It is utterly wrong that foreign and defence policy should be taken together in this business motion, because the potential role of the EU in shaping and implementing a common foreign and defence policy is being hugely extended under the treaty. Indeed, that was a major objective for many who support the new treaty. The Government claim that they have preserved the requirement for unanimity, enabling the UK to maintain its own independent foreign policy. However, there is no doubt that the intention behind the treaty is increasingly to bring EU members, including the United Kingdom, into line behind a common EU policy, with common representation gradually subsuming the independent national positions of the countries that comprise the EU. This treaty matters. It will lead to a fundamentally different European Union from the one that the population we represent in this place has signed up to. There is no evidence that this direction has popular support. Indeed, polling evidence shows consistently that the vast majority of the population would prefer a much looser relationship with Europe, with roughly half opting for the type of relationship that would preserve the benefits of free trade and intergovernmental co-operation while opting out of the project of economic and political union. These important issues cannot be adequately debated in the time proposed. If we consider the length of some of the speeches that we have heard today, it is difficult to see how we shall properly be able to scrutinise and debate the large number of amendments that are going to be tabled after the generic debate that will take place each day that these matters are to be debated in the House. The Government have been dishonest. They let it be known last October that there would be 20 days of debate. That figure was leaked in the national broadsheet newspapers. The figure then came down to 15 days, and we now know that it is to be 12. Even then, there will be limits placed on the length of the debates. Is this the proper way to handle a critical issue of constitutional importance? I cannot better, or even come anywhere near, the oratory of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills. Now that the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich is back in her place, I should like to say that she did a huge service to the House in the debate today. Her experience is legendary, and I believe that she meant every word she uttered this afternoon about how the House is now operating and how it should be operating. I know her well, and I greatly respect her. In this place, we have many common interests and a great deal of common ground. We want this place to work, and we want the people out there whom we represent to trust us and to have confidence in the House of Commons and in Parliament as a whole. At the moment, they do not, because those who are here are, in the main, unable to exercise their own view, their own opinion or their own experience. They are told what to do by Government Whips. I have to say that, on many occasions, my party has been just as responsible for that as the Labour party that is now in government. They are destroying the integrity of this place and the independence of our country, and I want none of it. I will vote against the business motion tonight. Yes, I will support the Opposition amendment, because it is a little better—although, as several people have said, only a little. We should have nothing to do with this. We are here to represent this country and its interests, and the interests of our constituents. Poll after poll has indicated that the people do not want this treaty. I make a plea to Members of the House to honour their own instincts and experience and vote properly and independently when we vote later this evening.