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European Affairs

Although I am tight for time, I am delighted that I took that very pertinent intervention. I shall not attempt to compete with my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary in defending sterling, as there could be copyright issues there. All I will do is ask the Minister to clarify the exact position of Her Majesty's Government on the euro and to make it clear which Ministers, if any, were talking to President Barroso about the possibility of giving up the pound. That brings me neatly on to the Lisbon treaty, which a number of Members mentioned this evening, including my hon. Friends the Members for Stone (Mr. Cash) and for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans). Thanks to the assiduous research of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), we have at our disposal an English translation of the draft conclusions of the forthcoming EU summit. Interestingly, under the heading ““Lisbon Treaty””, there are only two letters—PM. I find it amazing that Lord Mandelson manages to get into just about everything to do with Europe at the moment. He somehow appears to have snuck into the draft conclusions of the European summit. In our last debate on Europe, I had the pleasure of congratulating the Irish first on being allowed a referendum and then on having the courage to vote no in that plebiscite. Unfortunately, as some predicted at the time, they were not to be allowed to get away with that show of blatant democracy. The chair of the European Parliament's constitutional committee, Mr. Leinen, said recently:"““A second No would be a No, and then of course you could forget about the Treaty. But a first No is volatile, let's say, because it's not a clear No against Europe. Here you have a diffuse coalition of Nos. We respect it, but we have to respect as well the Yes of the other member states.””" In other words, when it comes to European integration, a yes means yes and a no also means yes. However, there are some senior people in Ireland who have begun to realise that the Irish people should be listened to. Ireland's own EU commissioner, Charlie McCreevy said:"““The Irish people said No—and that decision has to be respected by our European partners as well… Over 53 per cent. of the Irish electorate turned out, and a considerable segment of them were people who hadn't voted in the 2007 Irish General Election. So therefore, people did take the issue very seriously. That has to be respected.””" The Irish, however, are not being respected by the British Government, and if the British Government will not respect the outcome of a democratic referendum in Ireland, that should come as no real surprise, because the Government have gone to incredible lengths to deny the British people a vote of their own. As you will recall, Mr. Speaker, all parties, including the Liberal Democrats, promised a referendum on the EU constitution, which is, in effect, the present Lisbon treaty. Of those, the Conservative party is the only one to keep its promise and vote in the House for a referendum. It would be utterly undemocratic of Gordon Brown to insist that the Irish people must vote twice, while denying the British people the chance to—