I fully support the substance of the views expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe (Mrs. Dunwoody) that the accession of Greece and the two Iberian countries to the Community will have the most significant effects for us in Britain and for the Community. However, I follow what the hon. and learned Member for Thanet, West (Mr. Rees-Davies) said—that it would be quite wrong if any decision were to be made here to vote against the accession for quite extraneous reasons. I am confident that there will be broad all-party support for the accession of Greece to the Community. Indeed, I could not support new Clause 1 or new clause 2, for reasons that I shall outline, although basically I follow the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe.

My guiding principle is that we either accept the fact of Greek accession or we do not. Whatever the arguments for and against that accession—they have been ventilated in previous debates in this Chamber—we have to come to terms with the fact that we are beyond the point of no return and that Greece will become a member of the Community. If we accept that, we must do so, and be seen to do so in Greece and elsewhere, wholeheartedly and without reserve, in no way giving the impression that Greece will be put under greater scrutiny than any existing member of the Community or that she might be regarded in any way as other than a full member of the Community.

I say in passing that my view is that Britain as a whole has not taken on board the full implications of enlargement, including the accession of Greece, and much will be against our own economic interests. Indeed, it could plausibly be argued that the accession of Greece will have a destabilising effect on Greece itself, because of the considerable internal Opposition to accession from PASOK, and it could have a destabilising effect on the eastern Mediterranean because of relationships with Turkey.

As my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) said, the accession will probably have major effects which have not yet been fully thought through by this country or the Community on the machinery of the Community. I shall not detail the technical points that my hon. Friend made relating to language, interpretation and the Com missioners. However, it will clearly be important also for the budget. We know that there will be a major crisis in the budget in the near future, in any event. If it is unlikely that, say, the proportion of the budget devoted to regional aids will be increased, that, on any basis of fairness, must mean that less cash will be available for disadvantaged areas in Britain when one compares their economic health with that of disadvantaged areas of Greece.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian also set out the possibility, given this new opening to the south, of the development of olive oil lakes, as we have had with wine lakes, and the effects on United Kingdom industries such as shipbuilding and textiles. All those things, however important, are in this sense things of the past. They have been overridden because of the Government's view—and the Labour Party's view when in Opposition—that the accession of Greece must be accepted and welcomed for political reasons.

We know that a different EEC will emerge from enlargement. The vision of the founding fathers of the EEC, Jean Monet and his colleagues, an ever-closer union of the European peoples, will become that much less attainable as a result of the accession of these countries, whose economies are less powerful than our own. They will add further destabilising factors to Community development. But that development in itself, the fact of cohesion being much less attainable, will be welcomed by many people in Britain as being the sort of view of the Community that they had in any event and that is being brought about now as a result of these developments.

I return to the question whether we should have an audit of the effect on Britain of the accession of Greece, and no doubt similar demands in respect of Spain and Portugal. This would be to treat Greece differently. In any event, the information is available from Community sources. There is no case for treating Greece separately, as if it were an unwelcome addition to the Community. Greece will not be a second-class member; it will be a full member, as we are. To treat Greece in any other way would be seen symbolically by our friends in Greece as a most unfriendly act.

I certainly would not support either of the new clauses. I add my voice to those who, in spite of all the difficulties and the adverse economic consequences that we shall have to face, welcome Greece as a full member of the Community.