Orders of the Day — European Community (Aircraft Noise)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 19 June 1979.

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Photo of Mr Eric Deakins Mr Eric Deakins , Waltham Forest Walthamstow 12:00, 19 June 1979

I am pleased to have my hon. Friend's assurance, but I know from experience in different Departments—I think he will admit this—that once a work programme has been undertaken it rolls forward and there is increasing pressure on member States to see progress made. We all know—those who do not should know—the pressure on the President of the Council of Ministers at the end of his six-month presidency, which will not recur for several years. Presidents are under great pressure to tie up a package of concessions and agreements to crown their tenure of office with glory. It is at such times that the concessions are made. We are opening the way to that.

The third reason why we are opposed to Community competence in this area is that it means the transfer of powers once more from national Parliaments to the Commission, not in a way envisaged in the Treaty of Rome. The more power given to the Commission, the greater the temptation—as the Commission operates in a political vacuum, under the broad supervision of the Council of Ministers—for the directly elected Assembly to try to step into the breach.

I can summarise my feelings and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends about the extension of Community competence with an analogy that I hope will not be considered too farfetched. The Community is like a railway system, with a number of stations on the line. The first station, the Treaty of Rome, is long past. The last station—we do not know how many stations there are—is a federated United States of Western Europe. Some hon. Members may support that. Others do not. There is no disputing that those stations exist and that the Community's destination is the station at the end of the line, the federation of Western European States.

It is a rather peculiar railway. There are two lines running from the first station to the last, going through every station, but, unlike passengers on normal railway systems, passengers at any station can take a train only in one direction. [HON. MEMBERS: "Order."] I am sorry if hon. Members do not like my trying to show why Community competence is so important for the future of this country and the House. I am sorry that they do not care about sovereignty. If they do not care about sovereignty and the work of the House, they should not be here. They should be outside Parliament.

The trains on the system go in only one direction, and the train that we are considering is marked "Air transport". We have seen only one part of it.