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National Referendum on the European Union

I am grateful for the opportunity to follow the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone). He made a point about the European convention on human rights and was corrected by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty). The convention has nothing to do with the European Union and we should not confuse our concepts. The hon. Gentleman also talked about a membership fee. I do not know why he considers our contribution to the European Union to be a fee. The European Union is a political, geographical and economic area, and we play a part in all three aspects. The Foreign Secretary was quite right to say that because of our involvement in the European Union, we have influence with Syria, are able to negotiate with Iran and have greater power. I am glad that the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter) has stayed in the Chamber, because he was perfectly right in his short history lesson. He used the eloquent phrase that the European Union, starting with the Common Market, began from"““the embers of the second world war””." He was perfectly right about that. He also talked of sovereignty, which keeps popping up in this debate. The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) referred to sovereignty shared. When Ted Heath took us into the European Community, he talked of a ““pooled sovereignty””. That is as true today as when he said it. The right hon. and learned Gentleman also talked about various aspects of the European Union, such as Ireland and Austria being neutral states. The essence of the European Union is unity in diversity. We may have different views and perspectives, but we are united in that economic, political and geographical space. We have talked about trade and the single market. The Conservative party is a party of trade and of the single market. The Prime Minister mentioned saying in his discussions on Sunday that the single market would always stay with the 27 member states. He was perfectly right to say that. I have to take issue with the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who is no longer in his place—that is not his fault because he sat here for long enough. When I heard his arguments about the deficit and Europe, I wondered what he was talking about. Does he want a McKinley tariff wall? Does he want to stop people buying Volkswagens, Audis, Fords made in Germany, or iPads, which are made not in America but in China? What does he want in a free-trade area, where there is the free movement of goods and people? How can we go back to the era of tariff walls?