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Lisbon Treaty (No.1)

The hon. Gentleman has asked a very acute question, to which I am sure he knows the answer. In the few moments left to me to sum up a truncated but, in my opinion, orderly and fascinating debate, I want to pull together some of the themes that featured in it. I am afraid that I shall not be able to pay the tribute that, had time allowed, I should have paid to the Home Secretary's speech. It deserved rather more analysis than I have time to give it, and even, perhaps, more than the House is prepared to hear. What I will do is congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) on doing what the Home Secretary was either unwilling to do or incapable of doing: analysing the issues with which we must deal this evening and during the remaining days of the Bill's Committee stage. Let me say in parenthesis that it is perhaps a surprise, and yet no surprise, that the Lord Chancellor has awarded silk to my hon. Friend. Although he will not take up the initials until March, his approach to the debate demonstrated why the award is so suitable, and why we all share in the delight at his success. As I said, I do not have time to analyse the Home Secretary's speech and, unfortunately, nor do I have time to deal in depth with the speeches of the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), of the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), who is Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, and of many other Members. However, I should pause to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash). He spoke on most nights during the Maastricht debate, although at rather greater length than he spoke tonight, but he was every bit as clear in his one-sentence contribution to today's debate as he was in his longer speeches on previous occasions. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) on his European Scrutiny Committee's work on the Lisbon treaty and associated matters and on his speech this evening, which was a model of a Select Committee Chairman's speech on such an occasion. There has been a parallel debate during our discussions. We all agree that good things can be achieved by international co-operation, but we differ on how to achieve those worthy aims. Some Liberal Democrats and the former Minister for Europe, the right hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Hoon), and some of his Labour colleagues, believe that they should be achieved through greater co-operation within the structures of the EU. Many Conservative Members—I think particularly of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory)—believe that that co-operation should be achieved, if not more bilaterally, then at least with greater retention of independent power in Parliament, because otherwise what is the point of us? There is a perfectly legitimate distinction between the two philosophical standpoints, and I do not impugn the motives of the Government and nor do I claim that we have right entirely on our side, but I do say that the issues involved are of sufficient seriousness that we should have much longer to debate them. One of the problems we will face as we advance through our current proceedings is a growing perception of democratic irrelevance. It is all very well for the Home Secretary and her colleagues in the Government to return from Lisbon or whichever international conference they have attended and say that they have achieved something or other, but if the British public feel that they have played no part in that—if they feel that they have no leverage on the decisions taken on their behalf—their dissatisfaction with what has been achieved, whether for good or ill, will grow. It was said in the weekend papers that this Government are now beyond satire; I suggest that they are also beyond parody, but they are not beyond the reach—or the contempt—of the British people, so I urge them to think extremely carefully before they push the British public further than they are prepared to go. It seems that what according to the Government is good for us is what we will get, and an element of condescension enters into Ministers' thoughts as they present to Parliament and the public what they believe is good for us. What the Government believe is good for the public is the wholesale transfer of the third pillar aspects of home affairs and justice into pillar one. Issues such as drug trafficking, terrorism and serious and organised crime, and Europol and Eurojust, which are currently subject to the third pillar so that decisions on them require unanimity among member states, will be elided into pillar one. As a result, national sovereignty and parliamentary scrutiny will increasingly be eroded. The 27 November 2007 report of the Committee of the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk said it was concerned about the effectiveness of the UK opt-in arrangement on first pillar matters. The report noted that while it was clear that the UK was free to decide whether to opt in, it was less clear whether the UK had a right to opt out of a proposal should negotiations produce an unacceptable text. We have not yet received a decent answer to that troubling question. It is a key question, but the Home Secretary did not find time to grapple with it this evening. The reform treaty will move the remainder of the third pillar—police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters—to the first pillar with the consequence that qualified majority voting and co-decision will apply as the general rule to justice and home affairs. Legal migration policy will no longer be agreed via unanimity, but will be subject to QMV and what is nowadays called the ordinary legislative procedure—the new name for co-decision within the European Parliament. When matters move from the third to the first pillar, the powers of the Commission and the European Court of Justice are considerably increased. My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield rightly alighted upon that, as did other Members. The public prosecutor, Eurojust, Europol and minimum standards in criminal proceedings might all be good things in themselves, but the process, the mechanism and the accountability system is as vital as the end result. Let us consider the safeguards that the Government have promised us: the emergency braking system. As far as I remember, emergency braking is applied during times of panic and is likely to lead to skidding and, beyond that, possibly fatalities. The reform treaty produces the alleged safeguard of the opt-in arrangements, which are available to us. The transitional provisions will be of deep concern to our public, yet the Government seem to be utterly reckless of—to disregard totally—the legitimate worries we express this evening. My time is up. The British public will, however, probably have a further 18 months or two years to reach the conclusion that I have already arrived at as to the worthiness of this Government to continue in office. If they needed any further evidence about their unsuitability for government, tonight is the night that they will have found it.