---

Treaty of Lisbon (No. 7)

If that is the case, why have the Government been struggling so hard to retain blocking minorities on those two directives? I am afraid that is a question that he has not been able to answer. In relation to qualified majority voting, the treaty marks a major shift in the EU's way of working. For the first time, the system whereby the Commission proposes legislation and the Council votes on it in co-decision with the European Parliament becomes, in the words of the treaty, the ““ordinary legislative procedure””. As the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee has also said—I follow his words very closely—the fact that co-decision with the European Parliament under the treaty will now apply in some 95 per cent. of cases represents another ““fundamental, massive change””. He is right, and it is because of such fundamental changes that the treaty has an importance that merits the referendum we were promised. My right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks referred to the language in which the treaty sets out the EU's competences, which is copied almost word for word from the EU constitution. Let me develop one point further. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin) observed, it is an innovation for the conservation of marine biological resources to be set out as an exclusive competence in the treaties. Such an entrenchment of case law is, in this instance, an illustration of the failure of what is described as the ““EU reform treaty”” to tackle areas in which the EU needs to undertake real reform. So far, the common fisheries policy has been less an area of EU competence than one of EU incompetence. Far form conserving marine biological resources—or fish, as they are usually called in English—the common fisheries policy means that our seas have fewer of them. The direction of policy travel should be the opposite direction. Let me end by making some observations about the passerelle or ratchet clauses. We shall have further opportunities to discuss them next week, but the new, almost all-embracing simplified revision procedure marks one of the treaty's most important innovations. I think it is a sign of the draftsmen's intent that it makes it so easy for the EU to get rid of remaining vetoes in this way. It must be a matter of regret that there is no comparable simplified revision procedure to reverse the ratchet. There is such a provision, incidentally, in the new ordinary revision procedure, for which we have the Czech Government to thank—which I do—but the hurdle is very high. If the House is to exercise any real control over the development of Britain's future in Europe, it is therefore vital for us to have the safeguard that the simplified revision procedure, or ratchet clause, cannot be used without primary legislation. Important Committees of the House have argued for that in examining the treaty, and we support their contention wholeheartedly. The treaty does not make the EU more efficient, or improve the quality of decision making. It sets institution against institution, and diminishes the role of member states. It fails to respond to the EU's crisis of the democratic deficit—the crisis which, as those with long memories will recall, the whole treaty process was launched to address at the Laeken European council meeting in December 2001. Throughout that process the Government's approach has been reactive, not proactive, favouring damage limitation over strategic vision. How often the Government have tabled amendments that have been defeated, and then described them to the House as searching questions. Why did they not search further, and insist that those amendments be made? Instead of real change, we are offered an intensification of existing centralising tendencies. It is for those reasons that the treaty should be rejected and, ultimately, put to the British people in the referendum that they were so solemnly promised in the first place.