Can our constitution coexist with continuing membership of the EU?
Can our constitution coexist with continuing membership of the EU?
Leolin Price
This is an edited version of a speech given by Leolin Price CBE QC in the Palace of Westminster
Keywords European Union, Politics
I. The essentials of our constitution
Government in Parliament - our Parliament's supremacy - authority given by the electorate - accountability to the electorate and, between elections, to our representatives in Parliament - our liberties protected by Parliament and by the Law.
Some may think that affection for our constitution is merely romantic; that it is not working as well as it should; that:
For forms of government let fools contest;Whate'er is best administered is best.(Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle III)
Bureaucrats everywhere, and many who are impatient with politicians and politics, may rejoice in the view so expressed by Alexander Pope more than 250 years ago, but they deceive themselves if they think that efficiency can be managed without the sort of checks and balances that are and ought to be built into the constitution.
The essentials of our constitution include a number of important and distinctive things – first of all, for us, government in Parliament is a term which expresses the vital part of our constitution. Our government must in Parliament explain itself, must expound its policies, must answer questions,must look to Parliament for any extension of legal power which it needs. It cannot do without Parliament. Of course, from time to time people form the opinion that Parliament is not performing as it should and that some epoch-making changes, usually introduced piecemeal, are needed in order to make things work better. The reality, I believe, is that no changes should be made unless it is demonstrated that the machinery that we have for government in Parliament cannot work. And that depends in turn on saying that whatever the lobby fodder in Parliament – MPs who neglect the duty which they owe to all of us – may do and say slavishly at the direction of party or whips, the machinery of Parliament is there and is capable of being worked efficiently. If the people there are not working it properly, they should be thrown out and the electorate select in the usual way other people to represent them. Government in Parliament depends on the will of the people we send to Parliament to take their place in the Council of the Nation and do their job properly, first in the interest of the nation as a whole, second in the interest of their constituents,not just those who elected them but all of them, and third, and very much lower in the priorities that membership of Parliament in the House of Commons, and indeed in the House of Lords, commands, for the party which they support,whether in government or not.
With those essentials in mind, I was happy to sit next one day at dinner in 1993, at about Easter time, to a man who, according to the label in front of him, was a Mr E. George. I introduced myself and said, "I'm Leo Price. I'm very happy to sit next to you. Were you by any chance the expert in the conveyancing of freehold flats whom I called as an expert witness in a case some 15 years ago?" "No", he said with some asperity, "I'm the Governor elect of the Bank of England". "Well, I was only teasing you,Mr George. I realised that but I'm very pleased to sit next to you". He responded, "And I'm very pleased to sit next to you". "But you can't have heard of me. I must be a total stranger to you". "Oh no", he said, "six months ago a letter from you which The Times had published was one which I decided should be circulated throughout the Bank of England"."Good gracious me", I said. "That letter, if I remember rightly– 26 August 1992 – said two things. I imagine that you agreed with one of them and disagreed profoundly with the other". He said, "You remember well. What were the two things?" "The first was that the Exchange Rate Mechanism was at the end of August 1992 working desperately against us. Whatever its intention, whatever its virtues, we should get out of it at once without waiting, before serious damage was done. That, I imagine, Mr Governor designate,you agreed with". "Yes", he said, "that's why I circulated the letter and, had we immediately done what you said on 26 August, the saving of national reserves would have been enormous because, in the next three weeks before the ERM exploded or imploded or whatever is the correct expression for such a thing, the loss from trying to protect our position in that protectionist exchange control mechanism was simply outrageous. We should have stopped at once. The second thing?", he said. "Well", I said, "the second thing you perhaps disagreed with because, remembering what was being prepared for Maastricht, I said we should not listen to siren voices who, unreasonably and improperly and, from our point of view, unconstitutionally, urge that we must have an independent central bank". He responded: "Why do you disagree with that? Why do you propose that?" I said, "Because in our system, under our constitution, all governmental decisions are made by people who must in Parliament justify them, must in Parliament respond to questions about them, must in Parliament face monitoring of the way in which their decisions affect us; and there is no substitute for that". He said, "Why does that stop us having an independent central bank?" Answer: "Because decisions made by a central bank are governmental decisions. They direct the course of the economy and of the polity and the people who make those decisions must be able to stand up in the House, perhaps in the House of Lords but primarily in the Commons, and there they must perform, account and justify; and if our representatives lose confidence in that member of the government, then either he must resign or, if it is serious enough, the whole government must resign. You, Mr George, don't face that position in Parliament". "Will it do, then", he said, "if I go to a Select Committee?" "No",I said, "it won't do at all. You can go to a Select Committee as often as you like. The Select Committee can report but you will not be in the position that anyone exercising governmental power under our constitution ought to be in".
That essentially is – or can be – as true today as at any time in the past; and it is very important indeed in considering the way in which our government and constitution interact with, and we react to, what I have for so many years described as the irresponsible and unaccountable governmental institutions of the European Community. Those in government, those exercising governmental power, those making laws for us, those administering the law for us, the bureaucrats who serve the government, as well as the members of the government themselves, are accountable to us through Parliament. And, of course,the authority of Parliament itself and the government of the day derives from the electorate. They are there as the Council of the Nation for us. Their accountability is very real; it is an accountability which means that there must, every now and then, be recourse to an electorate which can vote the government out of power. The electorate must have and be able to exercise, and not be interrupted in the exercise of, that important right. It provides the authority for our Parliament and our government. We, as the electorate, expect from Parliament and Government a jealous and particular safeguarding, promotion and pursuit of our interests.
This is realistic, self-regarding without being selfish, accepting and not denying our nation's proper share of wider, international responsibilities. We respond undeferentially to those to whom we give, from election to election,power to govern. We recognise that power is delightful and addictive. Our constitution entitles us to expect our representatives in Parliament to be persistently undeferential and constantly calling on our government to account,to explain and expound, to justify and never to mislead.
A further essential of our constitution is that our liberties are protected by our Parliament and by our law. All sorts of things happen in that connection. I hardly need mention Wilkes and liberty but everyone, including members of government, bureaucrats, everyone concerned with our constitutional affairs and with the relationship under our system between the governors and the governed,is subject to the law. John Wilkes discovered that the judges of the day accepted the proposition that there was no special right for the government, or members of the government, to go into the Englishman's castle – his home– without a warrant of sufficient particularity to justify the invasion of the privacy, the liberty, the freedom of the individual. That freedom, protected by habeas corpus and other quite ordinary things which we take for granted, is not matched in countries which do not derive their attitude to the relationship between the governed and the governors from the common law and the history of the development of our constitution.
II. Without reform of the Treaty of Rome's system - incompatibility
Under the Treaty of Rome a dangerously different system of government and of law-making.
Without reform of the Treaty of Rome, without reform of the whole system established by and under it, there is an essential incompatibility between membership of the European Community and our constitutional position and rights. You note that I say "European Community". The curiosity which many people forget is that the expression "European Community" became part of proper jargon only after the Treaty of Maastricht, not before. Before, there were three communities sharing a common administrative (well, was it only administrative?) machine. The same Treaty of Maastricht, of course, also introduced the concept of the European Union. But under the Treaty of Rome, as amended particularly at Maastricht and Amsterdam, pursuant to the summit meetings at Maastricht and Amsterdam, the arrangements under which we are governed increasingly include arrangements under which our government has no control over laws that are made. In answer to questions in Parliament, Ministers are very reluctant to acknowledge that what they appear to be imposing on us is an imposition in respect of which they have no power to dissent. We are ruled to an increasing and already very large extent by the administrative and law-making bodies of the European Community. How can that be compatible with government in Parliament? Those who make those laws, those who administer the law and government under the Treaty of Rome, do not sit in Parliament, are not there to be monitored by questions, are not there to explain and justify themselves,their administration and the new legal powers that they want when they want them. That is an incompatibility, for us a constitutional absurdity, up with which we should not put. But, largely because there has been no real general understanding, we have not shouted loudly against the "Roman" system. Not only is that so, but we do not even see and understand the way in which under the system ideas are generated and processed and become new law. There is not the openness in the arrival of new laws that there can be, and ought to be,under our constitutional arrangements.
The law-making body, the primary law-making body, under the Treaty of Rome is, of course, contrary to common impression, the Council of Ministers. Their law-making powers are circumscribed in that the Commission has the initiative but the initiative sometimes comes from the Ministers and sometimes from the governments of Member States. In our system you can buy Hansard and read what your representatives say in Parliament, what those in the House of Lords as well as the House of Commons say. There is no Hansard which tells you what has been argued in the Council of Ministers when considering the adoption of some draft directive and converting it into a directive. There is none. A Minister of the Crown, when I put that into a letter to The Times a long time ago, said, "Don't be silly, there isn't a verbatim record of what goes on in Cabinet here"; but that Minister of the Crown was another illiterate not understanding and therefore not capable of judging any relationship with our system. Our Cabinet is not a legislative body and the Council of Ministers is. Moreover, and worse, when we vote in a general election, we cannot dismiss that part of our government which comes from the governmental institutions of the Community. They are not accountable to us. The government that they constitute cannot be dismissed by us. How has that come about and why should it continue?
III. Disempowering Westminster
Relentless transfers of governmental power – relentless pressure for greater and greater transfers– the single currency question – and what is really at issue.
There is, moreover, in the years since 1 January 1973 a relentless transfer of governmental power from Westminster to those unaccountable, irresponsible institutions of the European Community. Westminster continues to be disempowered and almost disestablished – slowly, relentlessly. It has been happening since 1 January 1973. It was there for those who bothered to read the Treaty of Rome. It was there in the Preamble and in the content of the Treaty of Rome, as it was already in 1972 when Parliament was debating whether to join the European Community. As a side comment, it is most astonishing that Mr Blair and his "cronies"are apparently enthusiastic for the continuation of that process of transferring governmental power and disempowering Westminster. We have a party in power with a magnificent majority so that, until it is necessary to go to the electorate,Mr Blair has power which Lord Hailsham once described as the power of an elective dictator, or dictatorship. Mr Blair has that power. Why does he, why have successive governments, wanted to transfer any part of that power away from, and to disembowel and disempower, Westminster? It is a great puzzle and my own view is that it is because nobody ever thought it through in 1972; nobody ever really bothered to look ahead in 1972, except perhaps that small number of self-deluding enthusiasts, of which our then Prime Minister, Edward Heath, was the conspicuous exemplar, who wanted a United States of Europe. They denied it constantly in debate in the House of Commons and did not acknowledge that we were set, then as also at referendum time in 1975, on what they hoped would be an inevitable course, were in fact federalists or uniting and integrationist people.
Perhaps the answer is that in turn Government Ministers go to Brussels or elsewhere to meet in the Council of Ministers or for other purposes and they receive, at your expense and mine, magnificently flattering treatment. They are the grandees, the VIPs, the very very important people; and it is marvellously flattering for them and, of course, they then get the impression, for which hubris will exact its reward, that they can be the great men on a larger stage than this country provides. That illusion is the temptress to whose wiles they gladly (gladly?, gladly I think) submit, or they appear to do. So, we have today, currently, in its acute form, this disempowering of Westminster.
Our Government says that in principle it is in favour of the euro as a single currency for the whole of Europe. It must therefore be in favour of economic and monetary union. And the timing depends on the national economic interest! What a disgraceful, what an unhistorical, what an irresponsible and illiterate view that represents. Economic! The euro is not about economics, it is about economic and monetary union; but above all it is about union. It is about politics and the constitution. Once we are members (if we ever become and I hope we will not)of the economic and monetary union, the distance from there to government by,total government by, the dreadful institutions of the European Community will be tiny and there probably will be no stopping it. So it is political, and it has always been political. From the very moment when the Common Market was pressed upon us, it was political and not just economic; and political in a sense which remains in retrospect the subject of the greatest astonishment by any informed observer.
How did we come to persuade ourselves as a country that we should join the most selfish, protectionist and inward looking polity that this world has ever seen? The European Community with its enormous hedge around agricultural products, around iron and steel products and over its internal market. We subscribed to that and destroyed our economic connections and impaired our friendships with – let us name them – Argentina, which suddenly was not able to provide us with 17 per cent of our beef; Australia, which suddenly was not able to supply us with what had been, I think, 19 per cent of our beef and lots of butter and fruit; New Zealand subjected to a quota, with the absurd nonsense that, in considering the future of that quota at the various stages on the way to a single market, the European Union, the European Communities, would have the interests of the New Zealanders at heart. What absurd and meaningless language.
IV. A persistent but absurd belief
Can the principal actors in the Community be persuaded to reverse or abate the process of creating a State called Europe with its own powerful, interventionist, bureaucratic, autocratic, inefficient central government? Of course not.
There is also, and this is one of the tragedies of our politics now and for nearly 30 years past, a persistent but absurd belief that the principal actors in the Community can be persuaded to reverse or abate the process of creating a state called Europe with its own powerful, interventionist, bureaucratic,autocratic, inefficient central government directly ruling us. All those adjectives are cumulative and realistic. How is it that we believe and successive governments tell us that it is their policy to cause the European polity to be a polity consistent with our views and that, oh no, there is not a chance without an act of will that it will turn into a State called Europe. We are told that there has never been any chance of our just letting it advance towards that State, but still the steps have been taken and closer and closer we get.
In 1975, during that referendum campaign in which the money was absurdly weighted in favour of Yes and not on the No side (and there is every sign that that pattern will pertain in future on a referendum about the euro or any other European topic), I went into lunch with those eminent members of our society,the benchers of the Middle Temple. Because the courts were not sitting on that particular day, there were only a few benchers there in the benchers' lunch room, but those who were there were very distinguished lawyers, one of them a Member of Parliament, eminent judges and very experienced and eminent lawyers,for whom the term "establishment" might be expected to have some relevance. "Look who's come in", said one of them, "I saw him on the box last night on the wrong side of the argument". And another, a Law Lord,"On page 2 of the Financial Times is a photograph of him, on the wrong side of the argument. Shall we let him sit with us?" So I turned to them (this was all very cheerful), I turned to them and said, "I want all ten of you to answer two questions. Have you read the Treaty of Rome? Have you even looked at it?". To each question the ten important people said "No". Incredible, you might think, at a time of such epoch making importance for the constitution under which they played an important and vital part. So I said,"Well, I'll come and sit with you. Your opinion is much more important and influential than mine, but mine, unlike yours, is well informed". The trouble with that was, and is, that it was not only comical. What speaks out so loudly from that exchange is the tragedy of inattention to the realities of the European Community and its relation to us and the gradual undermining of our constitution and our freedom, which has been and is involved. There is now at last – but near to midnight – less of that inattention, but not yet sufficiently less. Not nearly!
We had been going slowly as it seemed; but in the 1980s under a new President, Jacques Delors, what had been slow but sure became, in the late 1980s and the 1990s, a galloping process of accumulation of power in the institutions of the Community: more power for those institutions, more power for the bureaucrats and less and less power for member states.
V. Obstacles at Westminster
Heads in the sand – Heath, Howe, Hurd, Clarke, Blair, Brown, Cook and others – "Work along with our partners and by magic they will see things as we do and mould the State of Europe to a pattern we could accept" – Tempere, Helsinki, Feira and, soon, Nice – Prodi and his Euromen.
Whose heads are in the sand? During the years – Heath, Howe, Hurd,Clarke, Blair, Brown, Cook and lots of others. "Work along with our partners",they have said, "and by some magic everyone will see things as we do (as they, the ostriches, do) and the State of Europe will be got into a pattern which we can accept". This is nonsense and has always been nonsense. It persists as nonsense. Look, for example, at proposals which have caused strife between the attitude of those on the other side of the Channel, the political glitterati of the other 14 states, and political glitterati in our Palace of Westminster. A withholding tax was to be levied, and if levied, would have certain advantages proposed for it. If a German citizen or an Italian citizen or a Spanish citizen or a Frenchman places his money in this country, perhaps by an indirect route via the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, he may fail to declare in his income tax return the income which he derives from that placing of money or investment. The remedy is to make sure that each country's law applies effectively to its citizens. But this proposal was for a Europe-wide harmonisation, designed to make one step more towards, one platform more for,the European State. But why should the responsibility for charging and collecting tax be that of the country from which the income comes and not stay with the country which wants the tax? If that country's citizens are willing to underdeclare their income for tax purposes, they would of course, as soon as this proposal came into operation, move their money to Panama, to anywhere but the European Community. So this sledgehammer to crack a nut would not work.
What was our reaction to this? For more than two years Dawn Primarolo had been presiding over a foolish committee to identify tax arrangements which are inimical to the operation of the single market and that sort of thing and are otherwise unfair as between one of the member states and another. But it is not just two years; the harmonisation movement has been going on for longer than that. And our servants in Brussels, using up the time and energy of civil servants here and in other member states, have been considering this mad harmonising proposal and looking into it in detail. As we have seen in relation to what has happened about mismanaged government of Northern Ireland, the momentum that is created by preparatory work done by well informed officials,however blinkered their eyesight, has its own compelling force. What is then the reaction of the critics who now turn on "ball-and-chain" UK? Mr Prodi has said, and others in Germany and Finland have said "You can't have one country standing out for its own interests against the will of everybody else. Somehow this impasse must be broken". To those impatient integrationists,anxious to impose if they cannot persuade, we should say "Not on your nelly". That is a good way of putting the point. Not only "Not on your nelly",but "Not at all" and "Not ever".
The newspapers, if one reads them carefully, will tell you that, because of all the work that has been done, we (that is to say our masters in Westminster)are prepared to consider certain parts of the proposals for a Community-wide withholding tax on investment income. We might not have minded, it seems, if the new Community's withholding tax that we would have to collect was applied to small private investors; but on no account must it apply to other major actors in this field. How did such an absurd inversion of what is sensible ever get into the heads of anybody? The right course was never to have taken part in the discussion and never to have explored any part of it and never to have considered modifying any part of it, not even any special new exchange of information.
What is then said is that, as in many horsetrading situations in the European Community, we may find that if we did not to some extent accept some part of the proposal, then when it comes to things like the right of establishment of financial services and businesses throughout the European Community, that liberation will not happen. They say that we cannot expect our will to prevail. The threat is: "Agree to this, which will damage you hugely; otherwise other things of less importance to which you attach considerable importance will never happen in your favour". It is not the mark of a partnership of nations. It is not the mark of friendliness. It is a mark of this: the people who planned that, and it started in the Commission – a Commission heavily populated by UK-trained civil servants, our bureaucrats as well as bureaucrats from other nations – started there and from the outset it must have been obvious to everybody that the imposition of this withholding tax would destroy a very important slice of the profit making machinery of the City of London, of this country. Nothing like that machinery in Paris, Frankfurt, not even in Amsterdam or Rome or Madrid or anywhere else. Nothing like it. So harmonisation could happily over-ride our economic interest.
The history of the business worth trillions of pounds of year which, until Helsinki, was under attack (and probably remains under attack) goes back to a time when in the 1960s the Americans imposed something similar. Immediately money left New York and the skills of London invented the euro-dollar and attracted that huge amount of business which deserted the USA. If the withholding tax proposal or any variant of it were to be brought into operation,that business would surely desert London and go not to Frankfurt, Paris, Rome,Madrid or any other part of the European Community, but would go outside. Analysed, either the people who formulated this totally undesirable new European enterprise were ignoramuses, or they did not mind or care that inevitably it would destroy an important slice of hugely prosperous business of this country and would achieve for the other members of the European Community no sharing of that business. They did not care because they did not have it. They still think it disgracefully wrong and not at all "communautaire" that we failed to take part in the creation of that destructively levelling playing field. And harmonisation of taxes has not gone away!
There it is. I hope the lesson of that is not going to be lost and, if Mr Blair, if Mr Brown, if the egregious Mr Cook, a man whose attitudes to policy and indeed to constitutional responsibility I have always failed to admire, come to their senses they will recognise that talking about having European interests at heart, talking about creating a new atmosphere between this country and Europe involves, if it is to have any effect on the other actors in Europe,sacrificing interests of our country. Are they tough enough? Are they clever enough? Are they determined enough in our interest to take the obviously right course and refuse to give up any slice, however small, of our continuing sovereignty and control over our own affairs?
I have in front of me several papers. One is the Conclusions of the Presidency after that preliminary meeting at Tampere in Finland which preceded the meeting of the summit in Helsinki. Another is the statement which emerged from that summit. For anyone who reads them one message or assumption is that nobody needs to spell out the benefits of the European Community. But what good has it done us? Nobody has ever answered, nobody is willing ever to answer, that question. The assumptions come without any explanation, any rationalisation and,if you put it to the people who make those assumptions they pour scorn on your attitude as that of a little Briton or a little Englander. They are shocked that you cannot see but still they do not come clean and explain. And they ignore the evidence. So far as this country is concerned there is the destruction of the fishing industry; the absurd and desperate situation in agriculture where farmers with quite a lot of land now have an annual profit, if any, less than the average wage, and under that crazy set-aside arrangement, hundreds of thousands of pounds are paid to arable farmers who, in return for it, keep their land in a state in which no self-respecting landowner would want the land to be. And there is the distressful nonsense about abattoirs in which we now have a system in which local abattoirs increasingly disappear because they cannot bear the cost of complying with regulations that derive from the Common Market. "Oh",say the bureaucrats of Brussels, "that's only the way the UK Government implements the requirements of the European Community". But that is not really the case. The fact is that we do comply and Spanish ladies who happen to have veterinary qualifications appear, at the expense of an abattoir, without very good English and without ever having seen an animal slaughtered before and without knowing anything about butchery, and their word matters and they are there at the expense of the abattoir owner. That is nonsense, the nonsense of cloud-cuckoo-land. No, it is worse than that, it is a madness which is imposed on us. If you look at this, it is imposed on us by a system which arrogates to itself increasingly all the power that power-accumulating people want to attract to themselves.
Now there are Food Safety agencies. We have one. And there is a superstate European Food Safety agency as well. Destructive and expensive rules are imposed on all sellers of food; and the cost must fall on them. Corporatism and bureaucracy triumph; and Euro-madness is so persuasive that we – Ministers of the Crown, businessmen and people – regard it with resignation and submission.
It is self-evident, according to the Presidency's Conclusions after Tampere and what emerged from the Helsinki summit and in subsequent papers from people of importance and authority, that progress in the European "project"demands more and more power. We must have European-wide security and justice arrangements. If those happen to involve applying throughout the European Community standards which interfere with habeas corpus and our in-built liberties, never mind. The overwhelming interest of all of us in the creation of a European state so requires. And so the assumption that there must be "progress"of that kind, more and more power, more and more uniformity of law in all fields and directions, and a voice for "Europe" in the affairs of the world. Not a voice for the UK, not a voice for France, a voice for Europe – we must have single and united things of that kind. Oh dear, this really is astonishing and dangerous and I wonder how many people in Parliament or out of Parliament have bothered to read all the post-Tampere and post-Helsinki paperwork. Presumably some journalists have, but the enormity of what is proposed when contrasted with what we are told is astonishing; and the attitude of mind on the other side of the Channel towards our attitudes is truly terrifying.
One paper, "The institutional implications of enlargement", was commissioned by Mr Prodi, the would-be President of Europe, the man who thinks that the civil service role of the Commission must be converted into the real government of Europe and govern us and everybody in the irresponsible,unaccountable manner that we have seen for many years, at first in embryo but now an embryo which has grown very large. And who prepared the paper? Three wise Euro men – von Wiesacker, ex-President of Germany; Dehaene, the Belgian whom John Major would not have as President of the Commission because he was too centralising, too greedy to accumulate power in the Commission; and Lord Simon who, of course, as one who has commanded one of the great global empires in the commercial world, British Petroleum, has little time for small national considerations. Simon's whole attitude is one in favour of globalisation and, if we cannot achieve total globalisation, well let us see what we can do in relation to the institutional structure of the European Union. What this paper says is, "Enlargement is imperative". But it depends, does it not, on what the arrangements are for enlargement. The challenge as the Wise Men see it is to identify elements of reform which will enable an enlarged Union to perform effectively and, in performing effectively, to represent Europe – not to represent the member states, but to represent the State of Europe. The European"project" requires a substantial reform package and they even go as far as this: the way in which changes are made in the Treaty of Rome is that you have an intergovernmental meeting and agreement to change the Treaty of Rome and introduce new concepts and, having done so, the member states implement those concepts except so far as they have expanded the direct powers of the institutions of the Community. The Wise Men want to divide the Treaty of Rome into two parts; for those parts which are supposedly essentially constitutional titles or bits of titles in the Treaty of Rome as it now is, the agreement at an intergovernmental conference will require unanimity; but for the balance of stuff in the Treaty of Rome everyone should recognise that change within this separate category does not require unanimity to bring it into operation.
After Helsinki, we are now preparing for Nice. Will our representatives at Nice be strong minded enough to say, "If you want to change the rules you have to persuade us. You have to show that the changes you want to make in the Treaty of Rome are changes which look at and favour our interests or at least do not wantonly damage and destroy any elements of our prosperity. Moreover, there must first be changes of constitutional character which leave our British constitution undamaged and in working order so that our electorate in our elections can dismiss from power those who exercise governing power over them"?There are the ostriches of Westminster – my friend, Geoffrey Howe, who I do not believe had read the original Treaty; Hurd, who signed the Treaty of Maastricht without reading it; Clarke, who acknowledged that, so far as he was concerned, he did not need to read the Treaty of Maastricht; Blair, Brown and Cook: well I have no confidence in them. I have no confidence in their sensibly informing themselves about what matters in our relationship with the European Community and the structure that is required. They are constitutional demolitionists who make piecemeal changes for the worse in our constitution and,by calling them "modernisation" and "reform", mindlessly overthrow our history and our rights.
VI. Subsidiary submerged
Acquis communautaire constantly enlarged.
Remember what happened in preparation for Maastricht. A new principle was invented. Subsidiarity: everything that could be done at national level would not be done at Community level. Where has that gone to?As it was explained at the time, it has disappeared. There was to be a bonfire of directives and regulations. When did that happen? There was to be an abatement in the production of directives and regulations. That idea has disappeared. It has gone, submerged, it is not there any more. But the acquis communautaireis constantly enlarged. And remember about the acquis communautaire, that in the Treaty of Maastricht it was introduced into the Treaty of Rome in French,not translated into English; why? Because it meant different things to different people. It was like the sort of fudge that crept into the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland and the fudge was deliberate. At the time I asked friends who are ostriches and friends who are not and some people in France and Holland what they understood as "acquis" and they said different things. What was certain was that every new power added after Maastricht became immediately part of the acquis communautaire and was never to be handed back to member states. It was one of those absurdities: it was a brilliant piece of spin-doctoring and successful deception.
VII. Dismembering the UK
The disruptively dangerous Committee of the Regions.
Dismembering the UK. There is a thing called the Committee of the Regions,disruptively dangerous. What was its purpose? Its purpose was that the European Community – it was one of Jacques Delors' phrases – should operate closer to the people. Of course, that is not what it is for or does. What it is for is to create a direct line of responsibility from bits of member states to the institutions of the European Community; sidelining, bypassing, the governments of the member states concerned. It is not surprising that when we now talk of and have regions in England (not just Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), the boundaries of those regions first appeared on a map, if not in the Palais de Berleymont all those years ago, in the committee rooms in Brussels.
VIII. Disenfranchising us
Power to dismiss our Government?
Then there is this unacceptable – always unacceptable –disenfranchisement of us. We cannot accept, without betraying the whole of our history, any arrangements under which those who are governing us cannot be dismissed by us. Creating arrangements under which the Community's governmental institutions can continue without change of manpower after our election is unacceptable; and a Westminster government or parliament which contemplates that betrays the trust and misuses the power which we have given to it. Such betrayal and abuse of power surely cannot continue.
IX. Acceptable reform?
Member states as partners – the Community no longer attempting to be a state or nation with domineering, centralising, intrusive and unaccountable institutions of government - to persuade and agree – not to over-ride with qualified majority voting – the ECJ after such reform would have a different role, less like the manipulative "supreme court" which is has become.
There is room for acceptable reform, reform which I would accept although I am an inveterate opponent of our membership of the European Community. John Major published, and the lordly Hurd was the head of the department which published it, a paper which was entitled "A Partnership of Nations". The title represents something which, if it could be a reality, I would accept. What I cannot accept is that silly nominalism which obscures the reality. And the reality is that Community operation is a matter, not of partnership but of government, and government which includes things that are badges of the federal state, things like qualified majority voting. They are anathema. Of course,qualified majority voting frees people from the need to seek the assent of everybody. It reduces the area within which persuasion, political persuasion, is needed. As long as they can get a majority of the requisite kind to support what they want, persuasion is not necessary. It can go through by qualified majority voting in the Council of Ministers. That is not acceptable. The Community must,to be acceptable to me, no longer attempt to be a State or "Nation" with domineering, centralising, intrusive and unaccountable institutions of government. It must be a place where member states debate, discuss matters of their common interest and, if they reach agreement, go away and implement the agreement; a forum in which to persuade and agree, not to override with qualified majority voting. On that basis, the European Community could be acceptable. After that sort of reform, of course, the European Court of Justice would change. Its members were once described in a BBC radio series by Professor Craig, a don at Oxford, as "Our New Masters". Craig is basically in favour of the European "project". Our New Masters are now collectively an engine of unification, of harmonisation and all the other things of which I totally disapprove. If those reforms could be made, they would no longer behave like the manipulative supreme court which they have become, capable of overriding and overruling our Acts of Parliament, capable of telling us what our government must do - must do, not what our government agrees to do. There is here an opportunity for acceptable reform.
X. Frenzied midnight horsetrading and compromise
The unacceptable instrument for change.
One characteristic which should disappear in any case, whether the Community is reformed or not, is that frenzied midnight horsetrading and compromise should disappear from the scene. It is unbecoming. You did not have such frenzied horsetrading and compromise when the constitution of the United States was being fashioned in the eighteenth century. The manner and style of summitry is disgraceful as well as comical.
XI. Opportunity for reform
Now and at enlargement – no more government by the Community's ramshackle, incompetent, power-hungry institutions – disband the Committee of the Regions.
There is an opportunity for reform now because enlargement, which is in prospect, is not, in a sensible view, an opportunity for "deepening" and widening and strengthening the European Community and making it into more of a State. That is what Mr Prodi and most of the major actors on the other side of the Channel want. That is not a sensible objective for a community of 20 or 25 or more states with all their different languages, all their different traditions, all their different attitudes and, in many cases, they are only able to speak together in English (most of them speaking English very well, very often better than some BBC television interviewers speak their own language). Instead, the reality of enlargement is surely this: it will be impossible in an enlarged Community for a centralised government to operate efficiently. There will be more of a shambles if the unitary or federal state is the model, more of a shambles than the extraordinary shambles which already exists in the functioning of the European Community. The Community will, I suspect,disintegrate eventually if it tries to be such a centralised super-state after enlargement. The Community's ramshackle power-hungry institutions will no longer govern us if enlargement is sensibly addressed. The Committee of the Regions will just have to be disbanded because there is no region in Latvia, there is no region in some other small countries. Well, there may be small regions but some of the countries are themselves really no bigger than small regions. The Committee of the Regions will simply go and it ought to go because it is an engine for disempowering the governments and electorates of member states.
XII. A great illusion
Benefits never defined – injury and damage ignored or "explained away" – ERM forgotten.
There is a great illusion that benefits which have never been defined are benefits, that injury and damage when it occurs can be ignored or explained away. Remember what went wrong with the ERM. We joined at the wrong rate of exchange and everyone forgets that one of the great achievements of the Thatcher government was the achievement of my friend, Geoffrey Howe, who as Chancellor of the Exchequer simply ended 40 years of exchange control, disregarding the fact that advisers in the Bank of England, where 800 or more people's employment was at risk if exchange control was abandoned, all said, "You can't, the system is essential. It's imitated all over the world; they have copied us". But Geoffrey Howe ended it and that was one of the major causes of the economic success of the late 1980s. It gave us freedom from an economic hedge around our economy. The hedge was destroyed. The fence was taken down. Anyone who previously had small amounts of money to save had had to learn that, if you wanted to buy shares in an overseas company, you had first of all to buy "investment dollars" and those cost you 25 per cent more than the proper market exchange rate for dollars; and, when you sold the investment, you had to surrender a portion of the proceeds of sale to the Bank of England and that proportion was calculated by reference to an exchange rate from dollars that put you at a disadvantage. Merely calculating it was much worse than filling out a recent self-assessment income tax form.
XIII. The single currency
Our adoption of it would be the Great Prize for Euro enthusiasts.
Adopting the single currency and Economic and Monetary Union would effectively destroy our sovereignty and independence. Adoption would be a political step; a step which, because it abandons so much power and would make us part of the super-stateof Europe, cannot be taken without undoing so much of our constitution. Within EU itself it would be creating something not unlike what Geoffrey Howe ended in 1980. There would be no currency exchange rate fluctuations within the EU. Monetary policy would be taken away from Westminster. Fluctuations in economic prosperity could not be dealt with by changes in monetary policy at Westminster. We would be under the control of an unaccountable Central Bank. And as between us and the rest of the world outside EU we – and our businesses and commerce – would still have to accept and deal with fluctuating exchange rates. What folly to impose again that dangerous rigidity.
XIV. Another great illusion
Inevitability.
Another great illusion to be destroyed, to be shouted down, is that there is something inevitable already about the continuing "deepening", as they call it, of the European Community; inevitable that we must adopt the euro as our currency; inevitable that we must in the end be part of the economic and monetary union; inevitable that Westminster must become wholly subordinate to the government of the United State, the "nation", of Europe. A further great illusion, that there is no alternative place or role for us. When we discussed joining the European Community, the trade union reforms that Margaret Thatcher achieved when she came to power and the Heath government tried, rather ineffectively, to achieve, had not been put into operation, and what happened at Grunwick provided a disgraceful example of the way in which our law had got into an unsatisfactory state so that a great trade union could make an agreement and immediately disregard it with total impunity and threaten the stability and orderly life of the community. At that time some people were inclined to say we must join the European Community because otherwise this country is ungovernable. It was said to me quite frequently by important politicians, and by people who were not politicians, but despaired of this country. They were all,uncourageously, foolishly, mistaken. They led us by the nose into a system of government which became, as it has become, over-regulatory, interventionist,centralising and remarkably inefficient.
XV. Another great illusion
There is no alternative place or role for us.
The alternative to membership is simplicity itself – non-membership. The liberation achieved by ceasing to be a member if acceptable reform is not available is something to which I look forward and, while I have described what are the acceptable features of changing the state of the European Community, I believe that those reforms will not happen because the attitude and will are not there, however much the illusionists who govern us pretend that there is a possibility of changing the mind of the major actors on the other side of the Channel. Those who cherish our constitution and the liberties which our constitutional arrangements protect for us know that they are imperilled if increasingly different unconstitutional ideas prevail.
XVI. Danger at Westminster
What is our Government up to?
In February 2000, when the Commission produced its Opinion about what should be done at the Nice Summit, and Mr Robin Cook published a White Paper (CM4594)setting out the "British approach" to that intergovernmental conference. For those interested in the potential political and constitutional impact of the Nice Summit these papers are disappointing. There is discussion about re-arranging Qualified Majority Voting and the appointment of Commissioners. There is no discussion in Mr Cook's White Paper about the impact on our constitution. If we seek to create among other member states a belief that we will, after all, tie our country more and more firmly into constitutional arrangements which are, as those under the Treaty of Rome are, fundamentally opposed to our constitutional inheritance, our case and our interest will inevitably go by default. If we allow the general debate about adopting the single currency, joining EMU and establishing a European "government" to turn upon merely economic issues, the argument for our constitutional independence and rights will be lost. Emphasis on economics is itself a kind of deceptive spin-doctoring.
This is not the place for debate about other dangers which appear to multiply as weeks go by. There is the Corpus Juris; the "European" military capacity to be at the command of the "European" government; a greater voice in the world for that government; for more and more intervention in our affairs and less and less power for our Westminster government and Parliament and our electorate. The crucial weeks of debate are upon us. This Government will not fight for us.
