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European Union (Amendment) Bill

I think that I am about to die. It is said that before an individual dies, their whole life flashes before their eyes. I have that sense now. For 11 of the 18 years we spent in opposition, I was Front-Bench Opposition spokesman for foreign affairs. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, and I used to parade around television and radio studios talking to diminishing audiences about the intricacies of European legislation. I therefore feel back home again in this desert of European-itis, hearing almost exactly the same arguments. They go back to 1981, when I became a junior foreign affairs spokesman under my noble friend Lord Healey. I had been sacked as a defence spokesman because the whole team was not unilateralist. I then became shadow Minister for the Navy, and was consigned to the foreign affairs team under my noble friend Lord Healey. My noble friend Lord Anderson was part of that team and we were once asked how we divided up the work. I remember saying, ““It’s actually quite easy. Denis does everything and we do the rest””. However, my noble friend Lord Healey did not do Europe, so I got it almost from the beginning. From the Opposition Benches, I saw through the Single European Act—the biggest raft of Community legislation that these House of Parliament have ever passed. It was a most integrationist of Bills. I remember that the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, voted for the Second Reading of the Single European Bill. I know that he found himself absent for subsequent stages of the Bill, but he certainly voted for it on Second Reading.