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European Union (Amendment) Bill

I follow the hon. Member for Stone (Mr. Cash) with some trepidation. I have sympathy with some of his points. He has made almost a lifetime's study of European institutions and I respect that amount of learning. I do not agree with the hon. Gentlemen's reflections on the state of the national Parliament and the national Government. Decisions that affect the daily lives of our co-citizens cannot be controlled totally by a national Parliament, given the way in which economic and social powers are subject to global, certainly multinational, forces. With some reluctance but also realism, I accept that there must be a European transnational dimension to our politics. Without that, we cannot attempt to control the forces that are now at play, or prevent them from being further unleashed. Those forces can contribute to the general welfare of mankind if properly controlled, and for those reasons, one accepts that there must be transnational co-operation between Parliaments and Governments.