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European Union (Amendment) Bill

That was a telling intervention. I tell my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk that the answer is yes. I am happy for those countries to do what we should be doing, which principally is protecting their key services. One does not have to be completely against the single market—although I am, in principle—to see that health services, post offices and other key national services should not be part of the wider European competition. By saying that we understand why such countries want to protect their services, we put ourselves in a much stronger position to argue without fear or favour—and certainly with no threat of legal action—that we should see such services as different and worthy of particular protection. Otherwise, where will it all end? The process will inevitably undermine the national health service, which will become the European health service. Our health service is very different from those that operate in most of the rest of Europe, so it is inevitable that ours will have to follow the European model. We already face that problem with postal services.