I beg to move amendment No. 5, in page 1, line 9, after "II', insert (except Article 128 on page 33 of Cm 1934)'.

With this, it will be convenient to consider the following amendments: No. 131, in page 1, line 9, after "II' insert (excluding Article G D(18) on page 16 of Cm 1934).'. No. 213, in page 1, line 9, after "II', insert "except Article 128(1)'.

No. 214, in page 1, line 9, after "II', insert "except Article 128(2)'.

No. 215, in page 1, line 9, after "II', insert "except Article 128(3)'.

No. 216, in page 1, line 9, after "II', insert "except Article 128(4)'.

No. 217, in page 1, line 9, after "II', insert "except Article 128(5)'.

No. 53, in page 1, line 10, after "1992', insert but not Article 128 in Title II thereof.

The purpose of amendment No. 5 is to enable the House to discuss article 128 of the treaty, which concerns culture and creates a new legal competence for the Community. Previously, the Community justified its actions on cultural affairs by reference to article 235 of the treaty of Rome.

If the amendment is put to the vote, I shall ask my right hon. and hon. Friends not to support it.

I regard article 128 as one of the most important in the treaty. It relates to the essence of civilised living, and it will lie at the heart of future developments in Europe. When Jean Monnet, the founding father of the European Community, was asked some years later what lessons he had learnt, he replied:

If we were to do it again, we would start with culture. I wholeheartedly support the idea of the Community's stimulating intellectual ideas, cultural activities and artistic creation. However, I can see some dangers ahead and I shall discuss them later.

Article 128 calls on the European Community to contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity". Paragraph 1 also talks about. bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore. I am not sure whether I know what a common cultural heritage is, but I suspect that it is grounded in the ideas and values of the Renaissance, in the Enlightenment Project and in liberal political thought. Certainly I believe that to be a better approach than seeing Europe's cultural heritage in terms of what the writer Ken Worpole described in a speech in Vienna last year as a spatially bound and historically continuous national cultural past". Culturally, history seen in those terms is on the one hand romantic and safe, but on the other illusory and dangerous.

I believe that the approach that I have outlined as a basis for European heritage is more likely to be useful and less open to abuse than that which seeks to define it in terms of ethnic origin, racial background or some spuriously defined European identity.

Having said that, it is important that cultural development within the European Community should act to some extent as both challenge and counterpoint to some of the shallower cultural developments in the United States which threaten to engulf the western world. Some of that culture is shallow and tacky. That is perhaps not surprising, as it is the product of commercial and private patronage as well as an expression of triumphalist capitalist values. While one may deplore snobbish distinctions between so-called high art and low art, we should not be afraid to contrast good and bad art and seek to build on the European traditions of good art.

Listening to the hon. Lady's somewhat surprising attack on American culture, one is bound to ask whether she has ever heard of jazz. Does she think that that is a product of unbridled American capitalism?

There are exceptions to every rule; I consider the hon. Gentleman's point somewhat unnecessary.

Paragraph 2 of article 128 calls for co-operation between member states in four specific areas: first, the improvement of knowledge and dissemination of the cultural history of the European peoples; secondly, conservation and safeguarding of cultural heritage of European significance; thirdly, non-commercial cultural exchanges; fourthly, artistic and literary creation, including the audio-visual sector.

Paragraph 3 calls on the Community and member states to foster co-operation with third countries as well as with various international organisations. No one should be surprised that Britain was adamant that any proposals under article 128 should have no effect unless they were agreed unanimously.

Returning to the overall aims of article 128, I begin by pointing out to our European partners that the public expenditure settlement for the arts in Britain next year shows that our Government are prepared to renege on both the letter and the spirit of its provisions. If the future of European culture and article 128 depend on the actions of this Secretary of State and this Government, bad times are ahead.

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most essential cultural provisions of any civilised country is the ample provision of libraries? Those of us who had the privilege of being educated partly in public libraries—and who make no apology for that—believe that it is deeply regrettable that so many libraries are closing and that existing libraries are open only on certain days. Indeed, it is now almost impossible to find libraries which are open every day from Monday to Saturday, and then only for restricted hours, through no fault of the staff.

Should not one of the first priorities be to reassure people that there will be adequate provision of libraries and books? Apart from all the rhetoric, such provisions have done so much in the past, and hopefully will continue in future, to give people the opportunity to read and to widen their horizons, giving them an understanding of events which otherwise they would not have.

That is a good point. There is tremendous concern about the future of British libraries. My hon. Friend is not one of the great supporters of the European Community, but he will notice as I proceed with my speech that I shall state that I hope that, when it comes to maintaining our culture and all that it means, the Community will press member Governments to make adequate provision for libraries, so that people may continue to enjoy what they enjoyed in the past under Labour Governments. They are worried because provision is diminishing under this Government. Perhaps the Minister will offer us assurances on that.

After the 1922 autumn statement the Select Committee on Treasury and Civil Service decided for the first time ever to question the Chief Secretary to the Treasury about the national heritage budget. It is to be congratulated on so doing. In its report, published on 16 December, the Committee points out that in real terms, using the Treasury GDP deflator, the spending of the Department of National Heritage will fall by no less than 5.4 per cent. in 1993–94 compared with this year. The Committee goes on to say that expenditure by the Government on the performing arts will fall in real terms by more than 10 per cent. over the course of the survey period, compared with 1992–93.

Judging by these figures which, to our European partners, are both shameful and pitiful, the future of music, literature, drama and the fine arts is far from safe in the Secretary of State's hands. It is no wonder that Peter Jones, the outgoing director of English National Opera, has described the figure as a killer blow for arts organisations big and small". He and others have quickly spotted that, at the first opportunity, the Secretary of State has broken the Conservative party's promise in its election manifesto to maintain expenditure on the arts.

It is a pity that successive Prime Ministers and Arts Ministers have not been able to match President Mitterrand and Jack Lang, the former French Minister of Culture, in providing inspirational drive and massive cash resources for the arts and culture. That being so, is it any wonder that, while Paris flourishes and threatens to become the cultural capital of Europe, London becomes ever more polluted and less pleasant to live in, with its culture on the verge of decline?

The hon. Lady tempts me too much. I noticed that there were no wails of anguish when the arts budget increased by 30 per cent. over two years in the previous two years. I noticed also that she still regards Paris as only a threat—quite rightly, because the artistic talent of this country is second to none in the world and will continue to be so.

I further notice the way in which the hon. Lady endorsed the comments of her hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) about libraries, which were astonishing. His views on public libraries are antediluvian and bear no relation to the excellent library facilities that we have. As a matter of interest, it is Labour libraries that have been closing, notably in Derbyshire, and it fell to me and to this Government to insist that some of them be reopened.

The Minister has not answered the main point of my attack. He has not denied that there will be cuts in expenditure on the arts in the coming year. His answer was a diversionary tactic. Nor does he have much to say about the future of libraries. He can only accept my hon. Friend's valid concept of the worth of the library service to the British people. I hope that the Minister will address the points that I am making rather than try to divert the argument.

It is fair for the hon. Lady to attack the Government's policies. If she were a member of the Council of Ministers and were considering applications for cultural funds from, say, Windsor castle to pay for repairs there and from the Coliseum in Rome, on what basis would she and her hon. Friends decide which was the more European proposal?

I appreciate the deep-rooted dislike that the hon. Gentleman has for the European Community, but I fail to understand the purpose of his question. One would make decisions as a Minister according to the priorities of the day, so it is impossible to answer his question. I should certainly not promise £60 million of public money to repair Windsor castle without making sure that the money was not available from elsewhere.

Several Hon. Members:

rose—

I shall give way later, when I have made progress with my speech.

News of the Government's incompetence over the British Library project, which has rightly merited comment from the Treasury Select Committee and the Public Accounts Committee, has long since reached Europe. The management of the project, which compares badly with the way in which, for example, the French manage their great national and international schemes, is making Britain a laughing stock.

Much of the world admires the best of European culture—Italian painting, German music, French literature and British drama—which, for the most part, have been liberating cultural forces in Europe and have helped to develop societies which are liberal, tolerant and civilised, but I am conscious of the fact that, in Europe and elsewhere, art continues to perform many roles. Governments and established institutions in Europe have often encouraged art to express national pride and identity.

Locating art and culture in that way in specific places at specific times may be no bad thing. The problem comes when art and culture are used to create a nationalism which is exclusive and threatening and when art and culture are used emotively to stir up national passions. In the years between the two world wars, Goebbels on behalf of Hitler used many art forms—films, radio, music, dance and sculpture—for such purposes. In that way and at that time, European culture became embroiled in—and debased by—a perversely destructive ideology.

I hesitate to interrupt my hon. Friend lest I bring down upon my head scalding denunciations of my lack of culture, of which I am aware. I do not disagree with much of what my hon. Friend has been saying about a lack of commitment or finance for important aspects of our national artistic development, but will she spell out why she thinks that there should be any commitment in the Community to make that good? I see no indication that the sums of money or commitment about which she has been speaking would be forthcoming from anywhere else.

I shall not pour scorn on my hon. Friend, who frequently makes valid points in debate. I am not certain of the point of her intervention, but I will give her one example of how the EC has assisted in providing money for cultural purposes.

When I became a Member of the European Parliament, one of the first actions of the socialist group was to insert a line in the budget to support less-used languages. I am glad to say that that line is still there and that it supports, among other languages, the Welsh language of which I know that my hon. Friend has some knowledge. Many activities in Wales depend on the money provided by that line in the budget. When it was suggested recently that the money might be cut, considerable lobbying ensured that it was sustained.

When I was a Member of the European Parliament, there was real awareness of the need to protect the diversity of culture and language in the European Community. I have no doubt that such sensitivities still exist and that money will be found when the need is established by Members of the European Parliament who, I hope, will be given more power by the treaty to influence the content of the budget.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I shall give way shortly, but for the moment I should like to proceed.

No one should doubt that, if fascism arose again in Europe, art would once again be contaminated and artists would be tempted to collaborate with evil forces. The recent discovery that Heine R. Müller, one of Germany's finest authors, was an agent of the security police and supplied words for Stasi files, is a grim reminder of how artists can betray values. If such a regime arose, there would, of course, be differences because a modern European dictator would almost certainly concentrate more on controlling pop art and pop culture and would make more use of advertising and communications agencies, which have a curious ability to act without regard to moral values.

I share the hon. Lady's concern about the perverted use of art for ultra-nationalistic purposes. Is she confident that the article that we seek to amend will not be used by European institutions and the Commission in particular as a vehicle for European propaganda for a European state with a European culture? To a certain extent, that would be a perversion of the use of art. Is the hon. Lady not concerned that the article might be used to exert pressure to rewrite European history books? Perhaps we would find out that Waterloo was an honourable draw.

The answer is that I am not in the least concerned about that prospect. I was taught no Welsh history in Welsh schools because that became part of the curriculum only comparatively recently. I sometimes wonder how I, as a person of distinctive nationality, could have been denied the history of my country within the United Kingdom. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to address that, rather than speaking about what the Community might do to rewrite history.

Despite worries in Europe about the rise of right-wing forces and an increase in racism, there is yet no sign that fascism is seriously on the march. However, concerns have been expressed, not least in the European Parliament, that the concept of European culture must not become an expression of fortress Europe, creating barriers to immigrants and propelling racist forces within the EC.

One of the principal reasons for setting up the EC was to prevent central Europe from developing in that way and to ensure that democracies, guided by pluralist principles, would become the norm rather than the exception. Those who would break up the EC and replace it by what President Mitterrand has called "tribal Europe" would risk loosing political and cultural forces which could destroy our democratic values. No one should be in any doubt that, in a tribal Europe based on competing nation states, cultural forces would combine for the worse with the new politics.

There is, of course, another and more hopeful side to what I have been saying. Art does not always serve the needs of Governments. It can be critical, questioning, unnerving, radical, and even revolutionary in intent and content. It can make Governments sweat and even blow them off course, sometimes by the power of simple explanation, sometimes by using irony, ridicule and satire, or it can, as in the case of films and television, embarrass Governments by the sheer power of its imagery combined with explanation. We know that that is true. It is one of the reasons, for example, why the Government have sought to interfere with the broadcasting authorities over programmes such as "Zircon", "Real Lives", "Death on the Rock" and "Tumbledown". Nothing, not even drama, is safe from interference from the Government.

The people of Europe know just how revolutionary art can be. Writers played an important role in helping to create the climate in which the French revolution could take place, a revolution which has been more written about than almost any other event in the history of the world. On the very morning that the revolution broke out, even Wordsworth—a reactionary poet—was forced to make the refreshing comment: Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive". Two hundred years later, the last Conservative Prime Minister, now Lady Thatcher—for whom notions of liberty, equality and fraternity meant nothing—made it clear to the House of Commons and to the French people that she could not understand what the celebrations were about.

More recent political upheavals, in Russia and Czechoslovakia, were given impetus by the work of writers such as Solzhenitsyn and Havel. Fortunately, oppression sometimes encourages creative art, and art sometimes inspires action through imparting knowledge, raising emotions, creating expectations and giving people courage.

Tomorrow, in the European Parliament, there will be a debate on the priorities identified in article 128. Perhaps I can make some suggestions to enlighten that debate by highlighting the following points. First, the Community laws, which have so far been adopted with a view to creating a single market, do not provide a genuine defence of pluralism. Unless we can act quickly, there will continue to be an alarming decline in the heritage of artefacts, traditions, styles and ideas which underpin Europe's pluralist identity.

I wanted to get in before the hon. Lady went on to discuss the views which may or may not be expressed in the debate tomorrow in the European Parliament. My point relates to the third paragraph of article 128, which refers to responsibility for co-operation with international organisations and specifically refers to the Council of Europe. There has been tacit agreement up to now that the European Community deals with a lot of things but that the Council of Europe has the lead position, as it were, in respect of culture. Does the hon. Lady feel that this article will change that balance?

Mrs. Clywd:

No. I am sure that the Council of Europe, UNESCO and other organisations will have a continuing role to play and that the one will not diminish the other in any way. I am sure that the hon. Member does not need further assurances on that matter: I have no doubt that that will be the case.

I should be most grateful if my hon. Friend would explain to me why the Labour party has taken the position that it has. Essentially, article 128 seems to be about encouraging national diversity. It is all about co-operation between member states and third-world countries. It is not about harmonisation. Why are we discussing this? Is it just because we have put down a probing amendment, or is it about extending the competence of the Community in this way? I should like to know.

Mrs. Clywd:

I thought that I had made myself clear at the beginning. I said that it was an opportunity to have a debate on this subject and not to vote at the end of it.

The second point that I should like to make is about language, which is perhaps the most powerful cultural influence. That being so, the EC must seek ways of protecting and promoting languages, including those spoken by minorities. The Minister and I have one thing in common: we speak the oldest living language in Europe—Welsh. He may now speak Spanish better than Welsh, but I know that he can speak the Welsh language, which goes back to the sixth century. Unlike Anglo Saxon, we need no help in understanding language that was written in the sixth century. I shall use a few words, which I shall spell out in detail afterwards: Gwyr a aeth Gatraeth oedd ffraeth eu llu That is part of a sixth century poem in Welsh, which everybody who speaks Welsh understands. The Minister, no doubt, will want to repeat those words. Unfortunately—

Order. Despite having a Welsh surname, I regret that the Chair does not know what that means. The House should know what it means.

It is difficult to translate poetry, as every hon. Member will know. It is a battle-cry about men going into battle at Catterick camp in Yorkshire. It does not sound quite as good in English as it does in Welsh. If Conservative Members press me, I will happily recite the whole poem in Welsh.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I should like to complete the point before giving way.

Unfortunately, less than a quarter of Welsh people now speak the Welsh language, but I have no hesitation in prophesying that the language will never die. It has lived next to a very strong culture and, despite the centuries of living shoulder to shoulder with that culture, has managed to survive. I am sure that the new Welsh language Bill will ensure that it will survive and that the European Community will recognise the importance of other languages and cultures and help to sustain languages such as Welsh. Special attention must be paid to translation, publishing, book distribution, promotion, reading, inter-library co-operation and, of course, broadcasting.

"a'r mwyaf o'r rhai hyn yw cariad".

I trust that the hon. Lady can translate that for hon. Members who cannot do so.

Order. I repeat that I cannot translate it. I had some difficulty passing O-level Latin, if that was Latin. It is important, and I hope that hon. Members will not abuse it, that we must know exactly what everybody is communicating. I must ask the hon. and learned Gentleman to be kind enough to translate it for the record.

It is slightly biblical. It is to do with charity:

"faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity"—

in Welsh.

I understood the odd word, although the hon. and learned Gentleman may need some help with his pronunciation. One or two words were quite clear.

The hon. Lady mentioned with great and justifiable pride the traditions of the Welsh language, but we are talking about the European dimension, and Hebrew is a much older language which has been in continuous use. Surely Hebrew is part of European culture and civilisation as well? It is the particularity of this—the direction of funds, the support of what and for whom, who controls it, and what are the democratically accountable elements—which determines part of this debate, and I hope that the hon. Lady will have regard, first, to Hebrew and, secondly, to who will democratically control these funds.

The hon. Member may be interested to know that Hebrew and the method of teaching it very quickly to people have been the foundation for some of the rapid courses in teaching Welsh. I thank him for that observation.

In many ways, the process of the European Community and the European Parliament in deciding priorities and budget lines is more democratic than in the House. When I was a Member of the European Parliament, it was possible to vote a budget line by line—something that is not possible under the procedures of the House. The hon. Gentleman might like to give the European Community and Parliament some credit for that.

Is it not also true that, having voted it point by point, the European Parliament may frequently see the whole of the budget overturned in a very short time?

Order. We are not discussing the European budget; we are discussing the deletion of culture, and the reasons why it should or should not happen.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) for making that point, and perhaps I can answer it another time.

The biggest problem facing the Community—and, thus far, the Community has done little to alleviate it—is the scourge of unemployment. It is the Community's biggest challenge. It is clear that the development of cultural industries across Europe could play an important role in both bringing down unemployment and enhancing civilised values. Here is a potential area of enormous growth, particularly where cultural industries link up with developments in information and communications technology. The Community has the ability to set up and maintain cultural networks and to create and strengthen cultural links.

The European Community is the ideal forum to create a European film industry, the creation of which would provide new and exciting prospects for Europe's film buffs. A successful European film industry would have important spin-offs for many art forms, as well as providing a boost for jobs. Britain has every reason to support such a venture because of the collapse of our own film industry. Both here and in respect of the cultural industries to which I have just referred, the EC should be prepared to give grants and loans for imaginative projects.

I am sure that the hon. Lady would not wish to leave the story half-told. This country has the benefit of some of the greatest film makers in the world. She will acknowledge the way in which, despite the very tight public expenditure round, we have joined Eurimages, the European film agreement, which will have an impact on the British film industry.

Despite the rosy picture that the Minister paints for us, I am afraid that not many people would share his view of the British film industry at the moment. Certainly film makers themselves would not do so.

The European Community should consider ways of making member states improve the quality of life by encouraging better standards of design in all areas, including public buildings and spaces. In Paris, Seville, Barcelona and elsewhere, design has been an important driving force behind inner-city regeneration. The EC should seek to ensure that national Governments and cities have coherent planning policies and access to good architects.

How could you do that?

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will let me tell him. It would be helpful if the European Community could set up across Europe "percentage for art" schemes through which a small percentage of new building costs is used to enhance the immediate environment with sculpture and other works of art. The European Community could ensure a level playing field in that sphere.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I am sorry, but I must proceed. I have given way many times.

Similarly, the European Community might draw up regulations on resources for public art projects. The object of such schemes would be to improve the local environment, the design of housing estates, waiting areas in benefit offices and out-patient departments in hospitals.

Britain should want to support such ideas. Last year, although the Government spent £3 billion on public buildings and works, they failed to use design and architecture to create a good environment. Perhaps the European Community has to set the standards.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

I have given way many times. I understand that some hon. Members may want to prolong the debate, but I wish to conclude.

The European Community should certainly see one of its roles as that of preventing Government interference in the arts and guaranteeing rights of expression and the freedom of the press in Europe. British legislation is notoriously deficient in that respect and, as we all know, the recently published Calcutt report said little that was worth while on the subject. The European Community also needs to prevent national Governments interfering with, or censoring, satellite television.

In times of recession, Governments—especially the British Government—often behave in a particularly philistine fashion and look to the arts for cuts in public spending. Governments secure those cuts not only through the direct control of central Government spending, but often by placing limitations on spending by local authorities. Britain is in precisely that situation now.

One way out of what one might call the philistine's dilemma would be for the European Community to set minimum percentage targets for public spending—national and local—in member states and on cities and regions within member states. That would be one way of ensuring that Britain recognises the crucial importance of the arts to a civilised society and shows that recognition by substantially increasing the resources devoted to arts and culture.

Thank you for calling me, Mr. Morris. I had come to listen to part of the debate, but not to participate, before going to chair a meeting. I had not expected to be provoked to get to my feet. I have the greatest personal regard for the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) and I am delighted to welcome her to her new responsibilities—I believe that this is the first time she has spoken in the House since she took her new position—but she made an extraordinary speech, and we should put the record straight on one or two issues.

Although we never have any cause to be complacent, we have cause for quiet pride in the arts in Britain in the past 20 years or so. I do not want to weary the House with innumerable examples, but I shall mention just a few. Let us consider the number of new art galleries which have opened in London in the past decade—the Sainsbury wing at the National gallery, the Clore gallery at the Tate and the Sackler galleries at the Royal Academy.

Capitalists paid for them.

As my right hon. Friend says, capitalists paid for them. I am not citing these examples to heap praise on the Government although I believe that the Government's record stands up fairly well. I am saying that we have cause for pride in this country in what has been achieved, just as we have cause to be proud of the fact that London is without doubt the theatre capital of the world. This very day there are far more theatres open here, with wonderful productions, than in any other capital city, not only in Europe but anywhere in the world.

Let me give a plug—if hon. Members want a wonderful, scintillating evening of marvellous British or English entertainment, let them go to the Globe theatre to see a stunning production of Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband" starring Michael Denison, Dulcie Gray and Hannah Gordon. That is only one example of the richness, diversity and quality of art available.

Order. I have been listening intently to the hon. Gentleman, but he must relate his comments to the Community.

I have every intention of doing so. You must forgive me, Mr. Morris, for being provoked by the unfortunate, snide and denigratory remarks of the hon. Member for Cynon Valley.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I hope that my hon. Friend will not be too long.

The hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) was, of course, disparaging London as against Paris, which gives a European dimension. Surely London is the musical capital of the world and Paris is not a patch on it. In London there is a great diversity of orchestral concerts and recitals. We have four or five great orchestras and, night after night, London is far superior to Paris.

In his inimitable style, my hon. Friend has made the very point that I was going to make in answer to your justifiable comments, Mr. Morris.

The hon. Member for Cynon Valley has considerable knowledge of Welsh Opera, but she was less than fair to our cultural richness. My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel) was justified in saying what he said. When we consider Britain in a European context, it is clear that we have every right to hold out heads high—and not only with regard to the performing arts. We have no cause for complacency, but we look after our great buildings far better than most other countries on the continent. Of course, there are things to be learned from other nations and it is right that we should do so. We should work together to enrich our common inheritance.

However, one has only to pass through the villages of France, where the upkeep of churches is vested in the state, to see romanesque church after romanesque church neglected because there is no local pride, feeling or contribution. Rome has already been mentioned in passing. It is a city to which we all look for so many of our common roots, but we can contrast the appalling neglect of some of mankind's greatest monuments with the way in which we in this country try to maintain our heritage. Sometimes it is only right for us not to be complacent or ridiculously proud, but we can take a quiet pride in some of the things that we have and in what we have done to ensure that we keep them.

The hon. Gentleman will recollect that he made it possible for some of us to go to Czechoslovakia, which was to our great intellectual advantage. That leads to the issue of art theft from which the British art market—and possibly the German and French art markets—benefits but to the detriment of the churches and wood carvings of Bohemia. It is an urgent European problem, even more so in relation to Russian icons. Will the hon. Gentleman endorse the seriousness of the problem, which he, like me, has raised with the Government?

I am glad to give the endorsement that the hon. Gentleman, whom I am glad to call my hon. Friend, seeks.

I strongly support not only our presence in the Community but the general terms of the treaty to which the Bill refers because it gives the Community the opportunity to enlarge. It is in the enlargement and greater enrichment of the Community, by bringing in not only the Scandinavian but the eastern and central European countries in the next decade, that we shall pay our greatest cultural and political service to Europe.

rose—

I shall just finish what I am saying in response to the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) who raised an extremely important issue.

A cultural heritage which is shared and treasured together is more likely to remain intact and to produce reciprocally acknowledged safeguards from the political institutions within the nation states than one which is diverse and scattered. I totally understand and utterly agree with the point that the hon. Gentleman makes.

I simply do not see how the glories of European or cosmopolitan culture have anything to do with the Government. There has been cross-fertilisation for years—the French in Russia, the Russians in Poland, the Swedes in Poland, and the Poles in Sweden. It is absolute nonsense to have governmental interference with culture. As my hon. Friend is a co-author of the most hideous, hippopotamic carbuncle that is to be built in Bridge street—a building which will do everything to harm the record of British architecture and British art—he is hardly in a position to be pompous.

I shall not take any lessons in pomposity from my hon. and learned Friend. Nor do I need any lessons in eccentric and ridiculous utterances. Whether one likes a building is entirely a matter of taste. I should, however, make the point that many people agree with me that, in selecting Michael Hopkins to design the new parliamentary building, the House of Commons made a very wise choice. Mr. Hopkins has produced designs for a building that promises to be one of the most distinguished of the second half of the 20th century—a century not renowned for its great buildings.

However, I shall not allow myself to be led astray any further. Although I have clashed with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn) on matters of taste, I totally agree with him about institutional interference in the arts. There is no art that is not diminished and impoverished by governmental interference of the sort that my hon. and learned Friend has in mind. However, it is very important to recognise the contribution that the arts of the continent make to our European identity, and we neglect them at our peril.

I shall never forget an experience that I had in Romania shortly after the revolution there three years ago. I went to talk to a group of young Romanians on the subject of democracy, and it was one of the most deeply moving experiences of my life. I met a great many young people who had never had an opportunity to travel—the opportunity to experience Britain or France or Italy or the bad manners of my hon. and learned Friend in his eccentric garb.

On a point of order, Mr. Morris.

I hope that this is a matter for the Chair. There seems to be a certain amount of revelry in the Committee.

Is it proper for my hon. Friend, whose manners are always appalling and whose dress is worse, to comment on the dress of other hon. Members? I understood that that was something one just did not do. I am properly dressed, nationally dressed and tastefully dressed. The fact that he is a squit is no justification for such comments.

Hon. Members are taking this matter much too far. Let us get back to the debate on the Commission and the Community. There must be no further insults. I ask hon. Members throughout the Committee to remember that.

I completely agree. In any case, any insult directed from that quarter I take as a compliment.

The young people I met in Romania had spent their whole lives under the most appalling of regimes, yet many of them spoke faultless English. When they were asked where their inspiration came from, almost all of them said that it had been derived from literature and music and through the maintenance of their part in a common European culture.

The Community has a role—much less intrusive than has been suggested by the hon. Member for Cynon Valley—to play in ensuring that the incomparable riches of European literature, music, drama and art are not only kept alive but promoted, and it is proper that Governments should inject funds to sustain them. I was provoked by the hon. Lady's critical comments about this country. We have reason to be proud. It is important that these points be made and acknowledged by those who care about such things.

The hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd), in introducing this debate, which has taken a highly entertaining turn—a turn hardly to be expected after her speech—said that she had some difficulty in recognising European culture when she saw it. She seemed to have some difficulty in recognising culture at all. It seems to me that she was curiously blind to the culture that has emanated from the new world, which has so greatly enriched the old world and, at least in so far as it uses the English language, is now probably among the more lively components of our culture. For instance, many of the great English language playwrights of the 20th century are from the United States. Arthur Miller is perhaps the greatest living writer of plays in the English language. The hon. Lady's remarks were cheap.

This debate seeks to focus on the role of the European Community and on the expanding part—even if the expansion is limited and gradual—that it is anticipated the Community might properly play. There are many ways of responding to the question, "What is European culture?" In the minds of some, European culture may be the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome, and all that stems therefrom. It may be a common awareness of the cultural framework which, regardless of national boundaries within Europe, enables us to adopt cultural references. Tilting at windmills may be a Spanish metaphor drawn from Don Quixote, but it is one that springs to the lips of politicians in this country not infrequently. At times I was inclined to think that the hon. Member for Cynon Valley, in attacking the Government, was behaving rather like Don Quixote with regard to the subject of the arts.

Similarly, only the most purblind cultural nationalist seeks to appropriate to himself a particular genius within Europe. How many people beyond those who happen to live in the small country of Austria, where Mozart spent most of his life, claim to appreciate his work? It is not because Mozart happened to spend a number of months in London composing his early symphonies that we share the Europeanness of his music; rather, it is because we appreciate his music as an integral part of the heritage to which we all belong and with which we have grown up.

Likewise, it would be absurd for the German people to appropriate Schiller as peculiarly theirs as so much of his material was drawn from other histories, other sources. I am thinking of his horrific play "Maria Stuart", which depends upon the history of my country, Scotland, and which formed the basis of an Italian opera by Donizetti.

These cultural influences are now so interwoven that the kind of cultural nationalism which we have seen sometimes advocated by junior Ministers from the Department of Education in promoting the reading of particular books in the common curriculum seems to me to be extraordinarily misplaced at the end of the 20th century. To suggest that all children under the age of 12 in this country should become word perfect in the St. Crispin's day speech in "Henry V" seems to me to be a peculiarly narrow view of the dramatic purpose of Shakespeare's play, and to seek to appropriate Shakespeare to this country in a way that is somewhat laughable.

5 pm

I accept the hon. Gentleman's point, as a person not quite of his high culture, but surely there is also a danger of a kind of universal culture, a mish-mash. Is there not a danger that it all gets confused, like a kind of mid-Atlantic television; like Muzak, a kind of culture-zak, which is rootless and meaningless? If we are to avoid that, people have to be grounded in the art, literature, culture and music of their own country as a starting point for going out and absorbing the culture of the world.

I give way to none in seeking to promote the culture of my own country, but, if we have to start off with "Greensleeves" in our appreciation of music and elevate it in importance ahead of Mozart because it happens to be of great antiquity and a much loved piece of English music, we are getting things slightly out of proportion.

To revert to the question of what is European culture, I accept that, in describing some of the high points of European art as the common heritage of all European citizens, there may be some risk that we fall into the trap of promoting some sort of mish-mash. But I must say to the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) that there is not a common framework of reference for ourselves and the Chinese, for example. There is undoubtedly a very highly developed culture in China, but it is largely foreign to people living in Europe. It may be that gradually that will break down and that gradually there will be a much greater awareness of these things, but that may take centuries; it will certainly not take less than many decades.

I am listening very carefully, but in this country in the 1700s very large numbers of artists were busy copying Chinese patterns, furniture and lacquer. It may certainly be true that the number of British people who read Confucius every day is limited, but the idea that somehow or other the gap between Britain and China is unbridgeable is not correct. We have shown the sincerest form of flattery, which is imitation, for some centuries.

Obviously, Europeans are aware of Chinese culture, and the Chinese were aware of European culture when they produced goods for export in the 18th century modelled on European designs for the English, and even the American, market. But there is not the same degree of comprehension of these discrete cultures as there is of the European culture. This is not to rank or rate cultures; it is simply to recognise that we grow up with the language of European culture, as we do not yet with other cultures, although no doubt, as communications improve and as the influence of our ethnic minorities grows within our own community and makes us more aware of some of these cultures which are not yet appreciated in the same way, this will change.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the way in which the English and the Scots acquired this European culture, in the course, particularly, of the 18th and 19th centuries, is extraordinary? We all know that it is only possible to acquire culture with the assistance of state grants. The way in which gentlemen went on the grand tour to try to acquire European culture was quite extraordinary. There was no Minister of Arts, no grants and no European policy for this. One might even say that it is impertinent of individuals to take upon themselves an activity which ought properly to be exclusively that of the state.

I was coming on to the central point of the interventionary speech of the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) about funding. This influence goes back a lot further than the 18th century. The university of Glasgow, the city in which I was brought up, was founded 500 years and more ago on the model of the university of Bologna. The patronage that made that possible was not that of the state; it was that of the Church and Bishop Turnbull.

There has always been patronage of the arts. In earlier centuries, it may not have been the state as currently organised, but it has certainly been as a result of the specific and deliberate fostering of what very often was a minority interest by those in authority. If one looks back to the Athens of Pericles, or the Florence of the Medici, one sees that those people were not only wealthy, they were also rulers. That, in effect, was the state funding of its day. The fact that we have somewhat different constitutional arrangements today in no way diminishes the importance of recognising the role of the state in fostering the arts.

The Community, in proposing to adopt article 128, in title 9, on culture, is taking quite modest steps forward in the development of this process. They are entirely desirable steps, for hitherto, although the European Community has been able to expend a modest amount of money on the arts—I believe some £5 million per annum, approximately—it has done so in the margins of other expenditure upon commerce, inter-state relations and promotion of the concept of the European identity, in a rather narrow, public relations manner. It has not been able to devote funds strictly to the fostering of the arts for their own value as such.

The provisions of the treaty which we are now debating—there is more than one provision linked together—enable the Community to develop with greater deliberation its cultural function and identity and to take into account its cultural needs in promoting other valued activity on a Community basis. I am thinking, for example, of the importance of taking into account cultural interests in the development of competition policy. It is important that it be recognised that the national heritage should be a consideration which may be taken into account in justifying expenditure which might otherwise be struck out under the provisions of article 92, but which is explicitly safeguarded by the proposed amendments to this treaty.

It seems to me that the European Community can help to promote the sense of citizenship, the virtue of citizenship, of this wider organisation by promoting the cultural identity of Europe and giving itself a competence which it has hitherto not enjoyed.

As I said, it is a modest step, partly because article 128 permits only unanimous action to be taken. It does not involve a great encroachment of national authority; it merely allows steps to be taken when there is agreement. I doubt whether that will prove to be an obstacle to the development of community funding and a common approach to the arts because such matters, as opposed to other areas of public policy, tend to be less controversial between nations. Therefore, I strongly welcome the changes made to the community law as they relate to culture. They recognise the common history, inheritance, and interest in the promotion of art in Europe.

Some 35 years ago, the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) played I believe, a violin in the Oxford university ensemble club in which I played a double bass. That is the only time that I have been in harmony with him, as I have not agreed with a single word or action of his since.

This debate is about culture, which is a wide concept. It is about what people are. It is not simply about their language, religion, art or heritage; it is also about their loyalties and to whom they feel they belong.

Paragraph 1 in article 128 of the treaty says: The Community shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member State, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore. I do not know what the "common cultural heritage" is, but I am sure that it should not be brought to the fore. I believe that it is the national and regional diversity which should be kept to the fore. So I disagree with the basic attitude which article 128 seeks to project. The hon. Gentleman said that article 128 was modest, but attitudes matter.

May I first refer to national cooking and cuisine, as that is an aspect of culture? I will be brief. The three greatest European cuisines are French, Turkish and Italian. French cooking is, of course, the glory of France and its identity perhaps taken with its language. It must not be blurred by some common European cultural heritage. It would be utter nonsense to expect the French to blur their cooking with fast foods, supermarket frozen foods, McDonalds and so on. We must uphold the national and regional diversity in France, Turkey, Italy, Scandinavia and the other sources of European identity as expressed in national cuisine.

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that perhaps the European Parliament or the national Government should ban McDonalds from entering their national heritage?

Yes; I think that those countries might seek to encourage that, because they want to put to the fore the idea of a European cultural identity. They should not do that; they should foster national differences and put them first and foremost. That seems to be what life is all about.

We all need to feel that we are part of something bigger than we each are. Life consists of interlocking circles. We are all part of our country, political party, village, firm, religion or whatever. Those are all natural units to which it is a reasonable human instinct to want to belong. However, it is not a natural human instinct to want to belong to a continent or to feel some sort of European identity. Attempts to bring that about artificially are doomed to failure. I hope that they are doomed to failure especially in the gastronomic field.

Is it possible to have different loyalties at different levels? Can people be loyal to a continentwide culture as well as to their own country? They can be loyal to the countries within the United Kingdom, their regions, towns and villages. Why do they have to be exclusive, one from the other?

We all feel loyalty to more than one of those units or circles which comprise the life in which we all participate. Some of those units, such as the family and the nation, are more natural instincts than others. If one tries to foster a cultural identity for a continent which is not natural, it will not stick, and something will give.

I have no objection to the hon. Gentleman feeling the loyalty which he has expressed so well, but I take exception to being told that I am in some way expressing something which he must define as unnatural if I feel a loyalty to Europe.

It is unnatural. Hardly anyone feels it. If institutions and people try to foster an unnatural instinct, it will crash and will not work. All over the world, there are groupings of nations, federations, unions, communities and so on. We have seen federations collapse in the Soviet Union, in Yugoslavia and in Czechoslovakia. There is friction in Kashmir and in Quebec. In Europe, the Ottoman empire crashed. The Austro-Hungarian empire crashed. If one forces nations together against instinct, it will not stick; it will crash in violence and blood, and it will end in tears.

I know that the hon. Gentleman is making an extremely serious point about federations and so on, and he used gastronomic examples to illustrate his point. Does he accept that he is on a hiding to nothing if he forces British or English people to eat toad-in-the-hole in preference to poulet à l'estragon?

Of course we all want to taste foreign cooking. I am proud of the fact that I am the chairman of the all-party Indo-British Parliamentary Group. I believe that there are more Indian restaurants in Britain than in India. That is a most remarkable thing, if it is true. I am delighted that there is an increasing consumption of Indian food in Britain, but that does not mean that we should govern India, or that the Indians should govern us.

Order. That subject does not come under this amendment. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will relate his point to the Community rather than to India.

Absolutely, Mr. Morris. I accept your rebuke. You are right; I was trying not to dodge the question of the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland.

I turn to the question of the arts in Europe. After 17 years' service, I have just resigned from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which is the 25-nation body on which you, Mr. Morris, have also served. You will be familiar with what I am saying. I was the rapporteur for the introduction of European Music Year 1985, which was the tercentenary of the births of Bach, Handel and Scarlatti who were all born in 1685. European Music Year, on which we did three years' work, was an instance of co-operation between the Council of Europe countries and the European Community. It would have been inconceivable to hold European Music Year without involving Austria—the country of Mozart—Norway—the country of Grieg—or Spain, which, as my right hon. Friend the Minister of State will know, was not then a member of the European Community.

At the outset of European Music Year, I arranged for the great Belgian violinist, the late Artur Grumiaux, to play an unaccompanied Bach partita in the hemicycle of the Palace of Europe. Incidentally, that building belongs to the Council of Europe and is rented part-time to the European Parliament, which sometimes pretends that it owns the building.

If there is a common cultural heritage within the wider Europe, it does not spring from the fact that it is European. The mainspring of the cultural tradition which is called European is either religion—mainly Christian, or it could be widened to Judaeo-Christian—or national patriotism and loyalty. The common heritage springs from those two factors. In no way does it spring from some European continental instinct.

Let us take the great movements in European art—for example, in painting. They include Italian religious paintings, Dutch interiors, the great Spanish school and English paintings such as those by Reynolds, Gainsborough, Constable and Stubbs. The latter are English. They are British. Their inspiration is English. In the context of the treaty and the debate, there is a bogus argument, with bogus logic. It is that England is in Europe; therefore, those English paintings are European paintings; therefore, they are part of a European cultural heritage; therefore, we shall bring a European cultural heritage to the fore. Yet there is no such thing. They are English paintings, and their inspiration is English.

Surely the hon. Gentleman realises that painting cannot be defined simply by its subject matter. The practice of oil painting spread from Europe. Our lack of awareness that technology, technique and ways of doing things are cross-frontier and universal has informed the whole debate so far. It is facile to describe such concepts as national. Paintings are as much about Europe as about Britain.

Usually a painting is of a person, an event or a scene. The context is a country and a school of painting. The inspiration of a particular painting is generally much more national than European, even if techniques have travelled across boundaries. [AN HON. MEMBER: "That is total rubbish."] It is not rubbish. Let us take Italian opera, German orchestral and instrumental music or the British choral tradition—there are three choral societies in my constituency—or the work of Elgar, which is purely English and British. The "Pomp and Circumstance" marches or "Land of Hope and Glory" are clearly patriotic music which evokes patriotic feeling about Britain, not Europe.

British people want to keep institutions such as the last night of the Proms, which are a British, not a European, tradition. British people certainly want to keep our tremendous tradition of British military bands, which are the finest in the world and are trained at the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall in Twickenham and are the envy of the world.

As a painter, may I say that nothing that goes on in Europe is likely to alter my style of painting or influence it. I do not regard it as European but as Fairbairnian. Dutch paintings, for example, is as it is because the light in Holland is different from that in France, Germany, Italy, Spain or Portugal. That is why painters from those countries all paint differently. God help us if we all try to make them paint the same.

Of course we must all accept that. No one would suggest that my hon. Friend is in any way the same as other people. Long may he remain that way. I hope that we shall continue to enjoy seeing his paintings in the Upper Waiting Hall.

Perhaps my hon. Friend could help me. Some time ago, I bought a painting by the hon. and learned Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn). It is of an Italian harbour scene. Is it an Italian painting, a Scottish painting, a Fairbairnian painting or a European painting?

Perhaps my hon. and learned Friend knew that my hon. Friend was a keen European and would be likely to buy the painting. [Interruption.]

Order. Do I understand that the hon. Gentleman has finished his speech, or is he giving way?

I have not finished my speech. I thought that my right hon. Friend the Minister intended to intervene.

There are several aspects of European culture which we do not want here. One of them is pornographic films, as broadcast on cable television. They are broadcast in increasing quantity. People are worried about the effect on the well-being of their children. Nothing is being done to stop the broadcasting of such films. Everyone has seen and perhaps enjoyed rude things of one sort or another from time to time, but people do not want this stuff to come into their houses by cable television. The European Commission seems entirely lacking in determination to stop it. The Commission is not carrying out the will of the people of Britain in that matter.

Does my hon. Friend accept that even all Members of Parliament together can do nothing to stop Europorn coming into Britain, because of the European broadcasting directive, which was referred to briefly at two o'clock in the morning one day in 1989? That is a fact. Even if 650 Members of Parliament said that we wanted to stop European porn such as "Red Hot Dutch" coming into Britain and being sold in Harrow and elsewhere, there is nothing that we could do about it. It is not the fault of the Commission but that of the directive, which was approved by the Council of Ministers [Laughter.] It is not a matter for Foreign Office Ministers to laugh about. Some of us care deeply about porn being sold in Britain as a result of a European broadcasting directive.

My hon. Friend is right. I am sure that my hon. Friends on the Front Bench heard what he said. I hope that they will say something about it when they reply.

I realise that my hon. Friend is about to start on another part of his speech, which I am sure is important. Before he does so, may I ask him a question? He will be aware that the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd), who moved the amendment, said at the end of her speech that she hoped that, under article 128, the great panjandrums of Europe such as Mr. Delors and his friends would be able to set a target for spending on culture of a certain percentage of Government expenditure for all European countries, including Britain. Is it my hon. Friend's understanding that the article is pregnant with such potential atrocities?

Yes. It is all part of the European Community institutions trying to tell us more and more what to do. It is all part of the concept of pooling the government of Britain with that of continental countries. The people of Britain do not want that in the arts, in culture or in any other field. Most of us have nothing against, for example, Spaniards or Italians, but the British people do not want to share in ruling Spain or Italy. They certainly do not want the Spaniards and the Italians to have a share in ruling us.

We want friendship and co-operation. In cultural matters there is already a tremendous amount going on by way of exchanges. Our great orchestras, singers, operas and ballets frequently travel on the continent. There is enormous international movement not only of the live arts but of exhibitions of the work of creative artists—so much so that some people have begun to worry.

rose—

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I must conclude.

Paintings are moved so often that some people are worried that they may be damaged as they are flown around the continent in aeroplanes. Many exhibitions are paid for by the British Council. I am all in favour of bilateral sponsorship, and some exhibitions are sponsored by American and Japanese interests.

The system is going extremely well. It does not need to be tampered with. We do not need bits of paper from the European Commission. We should remember that sound and sensible American doctrine: "If it ain't bust, don't fix it." Let us concentrate on diversity and cut out all the nonsense about bringing a common cultural heritage to the fore. We do not want it, we do not need it, we ought to have nothing to do with it, and we ought to throw out this terrible treaty.

As someone who considers the definitions of what constitutes good, or high art, and bad, or low art, to be problematic at best and irrelevant most of the time, it grieves me to have to beg to differ with my esteemed colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd). I suspect that the lyrics of Cole Porter and Bob Dylan explored and reflected the experience of contemporary life with at least as much veracity and insight as the very best librettist of a 20th century opera, and probably a lot better. It is not helpful to talk about the influence of culture in that way, nor is it possible to describe what is a great culture and what is bad.

So-called high or great art has appropriated modes of dance and speech which were—and are—developed in popular dance halls and on the streets, which are not necessarily recognised as the seedbed of great art by the people who are paid excellent salaries to tell us what does or does not constitute great art. I hope that article 128 will not result in a proliferation of salaried positions throughout Europe for culture vultures who, I am afraid, expropriate far too much of the money that is made available to artists, writers and musicians in Europe, and which should end up in their pockets, rather than with quangos from Dublin to Berlin.

The interesting aspect of article 128 is that it may make possible co-operation in film production throughout Europe. This country has a great, but aging reputation in film. We have watched our film industry decline rapidly during the past 20 years. Although we must be careful not to romanticise the French and Italian film industries, we have a good deal to learn from them about the way in which we fund films. It is important to emphasise that the British film industry—I say British because I want to differentiate between English and Welsh films—

What about Scottish films?

I shall discuss Scottish films in a different way.

We must understand the relationship between film making in this country, which is mainly English-speaking, and in America, as that is important if we are to understand our relationship with Europe. There has been a great flowering of European film making, especially after the second world war, and a parallel decline in British film making. Perhaps that has as much to do with the direct competition that we face from English-speaking film makers in America as it has to do with any decline in cultural talent and creativity in this country. I believe that it has much more to do with that competition.

During the past five years, the Welsh language channel S4C has been one of the great cradles of film making, albeit on a modest scale, and large sums of money have been made available to it. I understand that they run to about £45 million a year at the moment. Knowing the Government, it is a mystery to some of us why that generosity continues. I am glad it does, because it is an interesting and worthwhile experiment, which shows that it is possible to fund film, or at least to create a seedbed of talent and hope that it will develop.

That illustrates exactly what we mean by subsidiarity. The great benefit of article 128 in the treaty of Maastricht is precisely that it concentrates on what national Governments should do and does not seek to establish a grand European design. In the same breath, I must draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to what is happening in Scotland with the Gaelic language and the fact that, when talking about less-used European languages, it is important to understand exactly what we mean. We are not merely talking about languages spoken by a few score thousand people. The Danes are very sensitive about Danish being a less-used European language, as are the Germans in the context of publishing.

I thank the Minister for that intervention. I think that that is one of the easier examples of subsidiarity to understand. However, it must constantly be tested in this Parliament. We cannot take it for granted that next year's grant for Welsh or Scottish language film making will be automatic. I assume that it will not be, and that we shall have to fight that battle next year as we have done in the past.

May I point out to my hon. Friend that there is no hint of any application of the principle of subsidiarity in article 128?

Thank you. I understand that the article comes under the heading of those governed by subsidiarity—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] It is in the first sentence.

On the funding of film making in Europe, I do not for a moment believe that the future lies with some sort of Euro-film culture. Some examples of joint film production in Europe are excellent, but I am afraid that some are the filmic equivalent of the Eurovision song contest. As a fan of cowboy films, I think some of the awful spaghetti westerns that have been made on the prairies of Spain and at Cinecitta in Rome are an example. However, we should not be put off by that—and nor should we see it as the model for the future.

The interesting aspect of article 128 is the possibility that it offers for the movement of capital and the joint funding of films. For whatever reason, there have been many heroic attempts to raise large amounts of money to make films in Britain. One thinks of the successes of people such as David Puttnam in doing so.

Film making is a phenomenally expensive industry, if the films are to compete in an international market. I understand that the latest Steven Spielberg film cost about $55 million, and that the lead character—a dinosaur—cost more than it cost to make the film Casablanca. We must come to terms with how we can raise that amount of money. Whether because of Government policy or the backwardness of banks and financiers and their unimaginative policies, the money has not been forthcoming and our best talents have had to move across the Atlantic to try to find it. I hope that the opportunities presented by article 128 will make the Government take notice of the possibilities, and take a lead in seeking funds.

My hon. Friend mentioned the provision by the Community of money for the making of Welsh language films. Small amounts may be specifically allowable for what are patronisingly called "less-used languages"; but if the British film industry made a determined attempt to secure the fiscal and other support that other European countries give to their film industries, we should immediately be told that that would distort the pattern of trade. It simply would not be acceptable.

I cannot agree. This may sound like heresy, coming from an Opposition Member, but I do not believe that the future of films depends on state subsidy. The state cannot fund the film industry, regardless of who governs the state concerned. We cannot ask the taxpayer to put up $50 million, or the sterling equivalent. The role of the state is to create the seedbed for film talent—and, so far as I can see, nothing in article 128 will preclude that happening in this or any other European country. Indeed, we may be able to learn from the European example.

None the less, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) has raised an important point. What will happen, for example, if free competition across European frontiers requires the fair competition office in Brussels to investigate the £45 million given by the British Government to S4C, the Welsh language channel? Will it be seen as unfair competition, on the ground that it promotes the British film industry? I fear that this may spell trouble for many of our finest institutions which currently receive state funds.

I have hopes for article 128. I think that it may advance the film industry—not through the idea that we shall come up with a European image of film, which I consider hopeless nonsense, but perhaps through the idea that the individual creative talent which exists in each European region and nation can be helped by receiving funds.

I call the Minister of State.

Hon. Members:

Why?

I hope that it will be convenient if I speak briefly—[Interruption.]

The Second Deputy Chairman:

Order. It is for the Chair to select speakers, and I have selected the Minister of State.

Thank you, Dame Janet. Like other hon. Members, I am extremely anxious to hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) has to say.

The Committee will be grateful to the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) for making it clear that her purpose was to provide the Committee with an opportunity for debate. So far, we have engaged in an amusing and interesting debate, and we have enjoyed that; I must tell the hon. Lady, however, that—charming colleague though she is outside the House—her speech was, I fear, disappointing to all of us. My hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) rightly described it as an extraordinary speech, snide and denigrating in tone; the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) said the same.

The hon. Lady treated us to a tour d'horizon, but I fear that her horizons proved rather narrow for me, at any rate—and, I believe, for the Committee. Hardly a commonplace did not receive a mention. The hon. Lady's remarks about United States culture and renaissance values, her attacks on the Government and Baroness Thatcher—[Interruption.]

The Second Deputy Chairman:

Order. I do not expect to hear a seated commentary.

Thank you, Dame Janet.

Those remarks by the hon. Member for Cynon Valley were, I think, a disappointment to the Committee. They were not up to the standards that we expected. Moreover, in your absence, Dame Janet, she came out with some quotations in Welsh and invited me to follow her down the same route. I shall resist the temptation, as heaven above knows where it might lead me.

5.45 pm

The hon. Lady crowned her speech with a very silly proposition: that the European Community should set minimum standards of expenditure—and later on, no doubt, minimum standards of culture. As I have said, she came out with a number of commonplaces; even Dr. Goebbels got a mention. I think that it was Dr. Goebbels who said, "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver."—[HON. MEMBERS: "Goering."] I am bound to say that when I hear the hon. Member for Cynon Valley discussing this subject I tend to reach for my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Dicks)—who, alas, is not present today. I think that he would have dealt with the hon. Lady's remarks much more briskly and comprehensively than I could.

The article, as drafted in the treaty, responds to our concerns and provides a fully satisfactory basis for the development of cultural activity. It puts the emphasis where it rightly belongs—on national initiatives. It talks, for example, of the Community's "supporting and supplementing"—not replacing—co-operation between member states, and of the need to respect "national and regional diversity". It is also outward-looking in recognising the need for both the Community and member states to co-operate with third countries, the Council of Europe and others; and, in what is inevitably a sensitive area, it offers the safeguard of unanimity and specifically excludes harmonisation.

My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for National Heritage has supported me throughout today's debate. As the creation of the new Department of National Heritage has underlined, the arts and heritage are of growing importance in many people's lives. That is true both in this country and in other member states. In practice, EC Culture Ministers have been meeting for several years, and the level of Commission activity has tended to increase.

It is an obvious advantage to have a proper legal basis for the co-ordination of this activity, which previously took place in a rather unfocused legislative context. Even better is to have a clear definition of what it is appropriate for the Community to do in the cultural field. Thankfully, article 128 eschews the grandiose, and identifies some sensible areas, which member states can usefully work together.

Will the Minister explain why it is necessary to clarify the legislative basis on which Ministers have worked together towards co-operation if—as the right hon. Gentleman has told us—those Ministers do not intend to implement legislation at senior level? Surely Ministers cannot co-operate cheerfully and then suddenly say that they want a legislative base without giving the House a clear indication that they will do something with that legislative base.

There are two answers to the hon. Lady's perfectly fair question. First, in the past four or five years we have become increasingly aware that, unless the areas in which Commission activity is permitted are specifically defined and limited, the Commission in its enthusiasm—which is sometimes well placed and sometimes misplaced—will seek to involve itself in areas where we had not envisaged its intervention. We have become increasingly exposed to that possibility since the passage of the Single European Act. Some articles in the treaty would permit such involvement—by unanimity, I am glad to say.

Secondly, as taxpayers' money is likely to be spent, even though the sums involved will not be huge, I think it right to define, limit and clarify the areas in which the Commission can act.

The extent of cultural co-operation and interchange in Europe is growing all the time. It is already a practical reality that we have experienced in Britain and shared with our European neighbours. One recent example in the United Kingdom was the European city of culture programme and hon. Members, particularly those representing Scottish constituencies, will remember that Glasgow played a quite outstanding role, which has been of continued benefit not only to the citizens of Glasgow but to Scotland as well.

What is the Government's current position on the Council of Europe charter on regional and minority languages? Are the Government closer to becoming a signatory to that charter, or do Ministers still have serious reservations about it?

Yes, it is under active consideration. We hope to be able to respond to that question shortly, although I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a precise answer now.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) raised a point about Bohemian wood carvings. Several of our diplomatic posts in eastern Europe have reported details of stolen articles of this kind. An exercise is being co-ordinated in co-operation with the Department of National Heritage with the objective of establishing a register of stolen articles, including Bohemian wood carvings, which can be circulated to auction houses in the United Kingdom.

My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel) made an interesting and charming speech. At the end of that speech he said something which would have touched a chord with members of all parts of the Committee—

Hon. Members:

We cannot hear.

The Second Deputy Chairman:

Order. I remind the Minister that both for practical reasons and for reasons of courtesy it is better that he should point in the normal direction.

My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham was expressing a sentiment that will be shared by hon. Members on both sides of the House. We all need to feel a sense of belonging to our own nation. That is important to us in the expression of our national identity. One of the anxieties that many hon. Members have felt is that, for a number of years, the Community has been moving towards seeking to persuade us that the sense of belonging that we feel for our nation can be, may be or should be replaced and substituted by a sense of belonging to the greater European ideal. In my judgment, the treaty in which the article that we are debating appears gives the lie to that and, to the extent that it ever was true, arrests the process and begins to reverse it.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl said in a speech in Oxford on 11 November: We have not laid the foundation stone with Maastricht for a European superstate which will reduce everything to the same level and blur the differences. Rather we have committed ourselves to a Europe constructed on the principle of unity in diversity. I am confident that the Europe to which article 128, through the cultural dimension, will make a contribution, will be one in which my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham will feel at home and comfortable and in which his English identity is both respected and enhanced.

I am pleased to be following the Minister, as it seems to me that article 128 sums up precisely what is wrong with the treaty. It is really about time for the House of Commons to say plainly that the Community must stop imposing from above views that ought to grow from co-operation between nations. The article is a classic example of that.

The Minister told us that, because the Commission does not have a clearly defined role, whenever there is a difficulty it begins to expand into areas in which it has no business to operate. I can understand the Minister's wish to prevent those divisions from getting into administrative and legalistic problems, because they have no direct legal right to interfere in national affairs. But the reality is different.

The House of Commons gets into a frightful muddle when it talks about culture. We have heard one or two examples of that this afternoon. For example, the culture of my grandchildren, which to a certain extent involves the use of videos, books and paintings that are based on the use of computers and computer design, is not the culture from which I benefited many years ago, from teachers who had a far more formal way of teaching. I do not think that they necessarily gave me a more widely based culture—it was simply different.

We should be worried about accepting something that talks about a common culture and says that we should make money available for grandiose events that will look as if they are joint efforts, without asking precisely what that means.

My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells) was concerned about the diminishing British film industry. There are bilateral treaties, and over the past 30 years there have been attempts by the industry itself and by various cultural organisations to produce co-operative films, with varying degress of success, but the reality is that the Community allows enormous differences in national approaches, as it does on so many issues. Were we allowed to protect British films in the way in which the French protect their film industry, there would be some point in looking for a legalistic basis.

The French have always used every known barrier to protect French films, and they will continue to do so with impunity. They will think of a dozen different reasons. They will say that it is entirely a matter of protecting their language and culture, and that it is important to carry that culture to other nations. They use the money available for cultural budgets to go to Africa and other third-world countries to establish bases which are used, sometimes quite brutally, for the extension of trade—and good luck to them if they can get away with it.

If we tried to do the same thing, we should rapidly be told that there was no such protection available for English language films, because English is not a minority language. Not even in the House do we pretend that English is a minority language. From time to time, we might believe that we have the sole right to take control of it, but the truth is that, throughout the world, the film industry makes films in a language which is used commercially in a hundred different countries for a hundred different reasons.

The Community does not need such an article to get co-operation for cultural events. It is quite capable of that without any such definition. The Commission needs the article because it wants to extend its hegemony. That is the reality behind the clause, and that is my basic objection to it. Not all the affectionate or slightly esoteric commitments to the protection of the cultures of those using—that marvellous phrase that the Minister used—"less-used" languages will change the fact that the treaty is meant to "canalise", if we are making up words—[Interruption.] The Community makes up words all the time—its treaties could have been written by Lewis Carroll—so why cannot we all play the same game?

In any case, the Community is after a means of defining cultural pursuits and co-operation and the money available for culture. That is disastrous. The whole history of Europe shows that culture is the flowering of the arts created by individuals, not dictated by civil servants, by legislation or even by representative groups such as the House of Commons. Culture comes from inside people.

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Recently I saw the best piece of live theatre that I have seen for many years, in St. David's cathedral. It was an nativity play about morality, produced just before Christmas by mentally handicapped pupils of a school in the vicinity—young people who believe implicitly in the magic they create and who used that wonderful cathedral to the full, because they understood the connection between what they were presenting and that age-old marvellous church in Wales. That could not have been produced on a co-operative European basis. It grew out of the love and understanding of those young people.

Some hon. Members believe that the House of Commons has had its day, that we are moving to a larger theatre: a European theatre. So why, they ask, should we worry about an extension of the Community's powers? They say that this is a logical evolution, a normal development towards different political institutions. Not so.

Is it not interesting that, although some of the more enthusiastic pro-Maastricht Members think that the House of Commons has had its day, very few of them want to go to the European Parliament, but very large numbers of Members of the European Parliament, the moment there is a vacancy in the House of Commons, put forward their names and work hard to get here?

I am disappointed that my hon. Friend should adopt such a cynical approach to our colleagues' aspirations in the other European institutions. It is remiss of him to think that some self-interest might be involved—

In her absence, perhaps I might speak for my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie), who has aspirations to move on from this parochial gathering to a wider and nobler gathering in Europe. Perhaps she is an exception to the general rule.

I had hoped that the hon. Lady would be here in person tonight, because with her histrionic abilities, I am sure that she could define the difference between the theatre of the House of Commons and the theatre of the European Parliament.

To return to the article under discussion, some people think that it is possible to produce an entire programme, using taxpayers' money—taken from the taxpayers of the Community—to develop cultural and co-operative projects. The House is right to have deep reservations about this article. I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) made a warm and committed speech, but I am not sure whether she thought it a good thing that we should develop this European cultural co-operation, or whether, on the whole, she had reservations about it. I at least have strong feelings—

Is my hon. Friend saying that culture, as defined by article 128, is so narrowly described as to preclude the idea that the children who took part in that cultural event in St. David's cathedral will probably be able to remain in and around it because we have some European money to help to build roads out to Pembrokeshire? We have also managed to get some European money to build roads up to the valleys.

We are just getting our own money back.

That may well be so, but we should not assume that one lot of money is acceptable while another is not—or that the one is not related to culture and the other is. That is to take an extremely narrow view of what constitutes culture in Europe.

This is my day for being told off by my Welsh colleagues. As a humble woman, I accept that criticism with humility—but I must tell my hon. Friend that what he says is a load of baloney. Some road schemes in this country are announced on large notices emblazoned with blue and gold stars. Those schemes enjoy a tiny percentage of money from the Community and a very large percentage provided by the British taxpayer. If my hon. Friend is suggesting that we can develop cultural events only by obtaining money from the Community, I am not convinced. I should want to see a large budget, clearly defined and under the control of these, admittedly inadequate, Ministers before I was prepared to go along with such an idea.

One has only to read article 128 to realise the difficulties: The Community shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore". What a load of rubbish.

Read us some more.

I could read more of it in considerable detail. There has always been a common commitment to the beautiful. It was William Morris who said that one should have nothing in one's house that was not either useful or beautiful—and I think he meant, preferably both.

Those of us who want the lives of every citizen of this country to be enriched have always wanted access for those citizens to the best of our literature, translated or otherwise—even translations from Celtic enrich those who read them. We want access to museums, to art galleries and to the best of all real art. But the great dearth of culture in the lives of many of those who serve will not be filled by any of this nonesense. Their culture grows out of their interests and their views, and who are we to gainsay them? This article does not deal with that problem, and it does nothing about the dearth of money—money that is needed to help to create the essential arts.

In my constituency, a small unit teaches teachers to enrich the lives of small children using computers in fabric design, picture design and writing music. I have seen the children in question freed from the pressures of having to draw up staves and create tunes by working them out in their heads. They can use the keyboards and computers to compose music. That is the sort of project that we should be pursuing. Nowhere in the Community does it happen, because it would be regarded as beneath those in the Commission who are full-time cultural employees, concerned only with their manipulative powers to control from Brussels.

That is what this is about. It has nothing to do with culture. It is concerned with the extension of the powers of the Community. As such, I would go along with my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley and her fellow occupants of the Opposition Front Bench if they voted on removing the provision.

I would take that view not because I am against culture—even though my ex-husband always used it as a word of denigration; even I know that one must have an expensive public school education before one can be rude about culture—but because I do not see that we are discussing an area in which the EC has any right, legitimate interest or vision of what it is doing. It should not interfere where it has no business to stray.

It would be disgraceful if I spoke for long, because my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Walden), who was a distinguished Minister at the Department of Education, will undoubtedly have a unique contribution to make to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) is also anxious to speak, for he has a strong view about the expression of British identity which is endangered by the article that we are discussing.

We are aware of the vigorously authoritarian attitude that is being pursued by the Government in bashing the Bill through the House. They will do their best, by the means available to them, to prevent my hon. Friends from expressing their views. I shall not do the business of the Whips by speaking for too long, thereby excluding my hon. Friends who have distinguished contributions to make to this important debate.

In a long and important contribution, the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) demonstrated what can be described as the progressive force of the Community. She says of article 128, "My goodness, this is a jolly good little article. This is a provision by which we in the Labour party can encourage the institutions of the Community to use their power to subvert the will of the British people, as for the time being expressed in electing a Conservative Government to power.

"We," says the hon. Lady, "would like to see rather more money spent on the arts. We should also like to see local authorities interfered with by a Labour Government in imposing various architectural standards and standards of expenditure. Sadly, we have not been elected by the British people to carry out those proposals, so let us see if we can get them enforced on the British people by a European side wind."

The hon. Lady then uses article 128 as a way of subverting our constitution, and she suggests ways by which it could be extended. As we know, certain people in the Commission would support her in those aspirations. In addition, the European Court, sometimes called a progressive institution, would be pleased to support the aspirations of the Commission in extending the power of the European institutions. So it is easy to see how article 128 could be used for the purposes which the hon. Member for Cynon Valley suggests. For those and other reasons, it is important that we hear the views of the Committee before a vote is taken on the subject.

It is easy for the Minister to look at a narrow interpretation of article 128 and say that the British Government are not likely to agree to it being extended by the Commission or by any of those in the EEC with federal aspirations. But the most dangerous feature of the way in which business is done in the Community is the trade-off. Consider, for example, the trade-off which allows a British Conservative Government to applaud even the extension of cohesion funds and to pretend that that extension fits easily with the philosophy of the Government, in so far as they have any philosophy.

6.15 pm

I understand that the Government now pride themselves on having none. In the bad old days when we had a British Conservative Government with a philosophy, it used to be rather uncomfortable to return with proposals for rapidly increasing expenditure in the EEC. In the bad old days when Lady Thatcher was leading the Conservative party, she used to find it disagreeable to explain that she had agreed, as part of a trade-off, to increases in expenditure.

When it is said that we do not particularly want the soldiers of the Cheshire Regiment or, as it may become, the Staffordshire Regiment, unhappily risking their lives for European purposes in Bosnia; and when, as may be the case, this House begins to express its distaste for the European purposes of the Commission in the old Yugoslavia, it is likely that somebody will ask, "If you are going to take your troops away, do you think you could give us a bit more money for European culture?" So, rather than saying no to everything, the trade-off will be a slightly more progressive attitude towards article 128.

As I said, I shall be brief, because I am anxious that my hon. Friends are not excluded by the authoritarian attitude of the Whips from expressing their attitude towards the subject—[Interruption.] I hope that they will not only give their attitude but take action. Indeed, I am anxious that we hear the views of the whole House.

Article 128 is no insignificant matter, because it is to be considered a means of supporting and enhancing the identity of the European state. Why does any state subscribe money to the arts? In our modern democracies, money is sometimes given simply to buy support, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Dicks) is so crude as to point out—[Interruption.] He is a very good man, whose views I summarise by saying that he points out that sometimes the funds subscribed by working-class taxpayers are used to buy middle-class support for expensive shows for which the middle class would rather themselves not pay entirely.

That is state expenditure of a modern, democratic sort. Much reference has been made to state expenditure on the arts in the past. It is pointed out that the Medici spent a great deal of money. That happened not because the Medici were demonstrating, as they spent their money on art, that they had a particularly warm feeling for their citizens and were saying, "We must never poison another human being."

Perhaps my hon. Friend is referring to the Borgias.

Let us not go in for another assassination: let us respect the dignity of our citizens. The Medicis decided to put some cash into culture to demonstrate the power, the authority and the identity of their state. That is what article 128 is about: it is designed to allow those who wish to enhance the identity of the European state to give money to promote that aim.

I listened with care to the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells). I wonder what my attitude would be if I were a Welsh nationalist and there was before Parliament a measure authorising expenditure on the making of the Union Jack. I would vote against it, because the Union Jack is a symbol of the authority and identity of the United Kingdom.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I should like to finish this peroration, and shall deliver a second one when I have had time to draw breath.

Article 128 is designed to enhance the identity of the European state, and that is no more and no less than what every state has done throughout the ages. It has taken money from the taxpayer to enforce its power and enhance its identity.

I find my hon. Friend's picture more encouraging than the reality, which appears to be that organisations such as the European Community or the Arts Council spend far too much money encouraging extremely divergent cultures and do their level best to revive minority cultures that would be better consigned to oblivion.

In a democracy, Governments use cultural subsidies to buy the support of various groups. I shall give an example. Until recently, Wolverhampton council was for a long time controlled by the Labour party and used to buy the support of ethnic groups by offering subsidies to ethnic theatres. Of course, that is not much different from the Government offering to support the middle class and trying to buy their votes by giving enhanced grants to the Arts Council. That is an inescapable part of the modern democratic process, but it has been the practice throughout the centuries for the state to spend money on culture to enhance its authority. Of course, article 128 does not state the honest federalism of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) but slips it in slowly and surreptitiously, carefully and hypocritically, and deals with

bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore. I do not know when European cultural policy will have a new boost. Perhaps it will be in 1996, when there is a mark 2 Maastricht treaty or when, eventually, the true federal nature of the European institutions will be unclothed a little more. Article 128 is just as much an expression of European identity as the provisions for European citizenship. Those of us who are British nationalists want to reject it all.

Essentially, the article is about co-operation between member states and with the third world to encourage diversity. That is a wonderful aim, which I wholly support, because culture transcends national boundaries. The article extends the Community's powers to cover culture, and that is welcome. The private sector, not just the Government, has an important role in funding the arts and culture. I was devastated by the way in which the funding of the Royal Shakespeare Company meant that some important productions had to be terminated. There was no scope for cutting costs, other than by reducing quality, and joint funding was essential.

The co-operative involvement of all Community countries as outlined in the article will benefit culture not only in this country but throughout the Community. Some such structure is needed because current co-operation is far too limited and needs to be extended. The arts and culture involve minority interests that cannot be funded by the market, because insufficient money is collected at the kiosks of theatres and other establishments. Therefore, there must be some subsidy.

Article 128 contains some worthwhile elements, and I am pleased that my party supports it. My hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) said that we would not vote against it, but one's voting intentions on the treaty as a whole do not show whether one supports or is against an article. That is why I intervened on my hon. Friend.

The co-operative improvement of knowledge of European culture and its conservation would be excellent. The notion of exchanges of artistic and literary creations would strengthen the arts and culture. The article would encourage national diversity: if it did not do that, but sought to create homogeneous cultures, I would have great reservations about it.

Article 128 would give the Commission far more competence on cultural matters. Is my hon. Friend relaxed about such a development?

Yes, I am—for the main reason that, when it comes to decision-making, recommendations will be made but there will be a question of unanimity, so I believe that there is protection if one has a feeling of horror about the power of the Commission. That is a powerful argument.

We are not talking about harmonisation at all. We are not saying that each national Government has to have the same legislation on this and that we are going to create art and culture like sausage out of a sausages machine. I am convinced that the will will exist throughout the Community and in our own Government and Opposition to ensure that that richness in our society would not be swept away. I believe that, although it is easy to put over the cynical argument that this is the Commission with Delors marching through and tearing our paintings off the wall and stamping on them and carrying out all that kind of nonsense, that cynical argument does not stand up because of the importance of this whole thing.

We are talking of the whole character and personality of our country expressed through this medium. That is all I wanted to say. Article 128 is worth while if one looks at it in isolation, as we must do in Committee. It is comprehensive and encouraging. The notion of the countries of Europe co-operating in this way is something which I find exciting; I am convinced that it will enrich the culture of our society and of Europe in a shared way which is utterly exciting.

This culture article—article 128—reads like an article in the constitution of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It enjoys all the same sort of ad hominem goodwill, such as: while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore. It has a series of aspirational claims. However I am grateful to the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) who led for the Opposition in characteristic form, showing the true colours of this debate. She moved an amendment to remove article 128 from the treaty, and I intend to speak in favour of that amendment. The hon. Lady suggested that she was probing, but I could not identify one probing comment in her remarks. She indicated, however, that she did not intend to oppose the article. I am disappointed about that, and I will give my reasons.

My hon. Friend the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) gave the essential concept of the nature of what is stated: art and culture are often used for the purposes of aggrandisement. I am very conscious of that aspect because in some of the instances that have been mooted and floated around the House—the great ruling families such as the Hapsburgs and the Medicis—it was to be an adornment for the state. That brings me to the point that I think has informed these debates the whole way through the examination of the Bill in Committee—that this is a constitution that we are considering. The right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) tried, under title I, to identify whether this did not have the elements of the state, of the executive, of their powers and competetences and so on. One acknowledges that this small article 128 is an instance which lays claim to a common policy.

The hon. Member for Cynon Valley noted that the article added a new legal competence to the Community, and said that additionally it was under a single institutional framework. Why is this necessary? The Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones) was cautious under title I to say that this House need only legislate for that which is necessary. What is necessary about legislation within the United Kingdom to enforce the objectives of this article? What is wrong with working as we have always worked—intergovernmentally—to establish the objectives and ideals that we seek?

We can go through the words, but what is diversity of culture and "flowering of cultures"? What is European culture? I suggest that European culture is the sum total of all the constituent elements in it, no more and no less. When we say "culture", it includes all the elements of those things to which we respond. Opposition Members identify what is meant by the distinction that is often made in a popular sense: popular culture, high culture and middle-brow culture.

All these are competing elements, and many of the objects now identified as culture grew from the popular activities of the people of individual nations. Over the years, they fade or come into glory as they are: the insistent drum-beat, that everything now needs subsidisation or the transfer of funds from one area to another, is to keep what in being? I think of all the thousands of artefacts from ancient Greece that have been destroyed. Part of life is a remembrance of things past; part of it is the echo through the lines of culture that we have. What hon. Members have said is quite right: our culture is a common culture in one particular—that it draws from all the strengths and beacons of light, of intelligence, of spirit and soul that have illuminated the ages. Yet none of this has required a central European organisation to identify it.

Who is the best custodian of culture? If it will not flower from within ourselves or the people, surely it is the national Government who have the greatest regard. Has French culture failed to flourish because there is no European central commission initiating proposals for the survival of French culture? The proposition is ridiculous. France, vigilant as always to its honour, its integrity, and the regard in which it is held in the world, consigns a third of its public revenues to the maintenance of its cultural objectives. It recognises in culture that the prestige, the association and the grandeur which comes from that are part of its standing in the world as a whole.

It is because the French as a nation state within the European Community identify that, that others do so. We see in Germany the huge level of subsidies poured into state opera companies, and God bless them for it. They must direct their resources where they want and identify the elements of culture that are theirs.

The hon. Member for Cynon Valley opened by saying that she was in harmony with our Front Bench, thus emphasising that we are now living under a Con-Lab Government in respect of Maastricht and there is resentment clearly emanating from Labour Front-Bench Members that they are not sitting with their colleagues in this matter, on the Government Front Bench. That illustrates the tensions involved.

No one, not even the Minister of State, explained why the matter needed a single institutional framework, nor why it needed a legal competence. If I understood his rather dismissive argument, it was that the Community extends its competences anyway and that putting some new competence in and giving it a legal life would limit its natural instinct to expand into other areas. That is a most extraordinary argument and a very confused one. If we are saying that we are all at risk without giving greater competences to the Community, that it will have them anyway, and that by giving them greater competences we are limiting this one, that is a very curious argument. Yet that is the sort of low-level, shallow argument of lies and deceit to be forced on the nation to tide us through on this Bill.

There has been no candid examination of any clause that I have heard in terms of what it is intended to accomplish. Why does it require a single institutional framework? Why does it need adjudication by the European Court of Justice? How do we democratically effect the objectives? We have talked about subsidy. Opera is a particular identity of Italy. The Italian state and the regional governments pour sums into opera houses that we do not even begin to understand. Does that require subvention from the centre, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission"? Notice the insidious way in which the Commission must propose, because the proposer holds the agenda and controls the directions to which the Community looks.

That assault on such things as our culture has caused the Danes to pause and hesitate, because linked with culture is another matter that we shall debate later—citizenship and all the linking elements of the state. The treaty is driving us towards a conclusion that, of the whole Community, only the British Government—in association, of course, with Labour Front-Bench spokesmen—wish to hide and conceal from the British people. Ours is the only Government in the Community who do not believe that the treaty is a centralising treaty. Every other leader has said, "Hallelujah—we are now marching towards a more central, single identity."

rose—

I shall give way to my right hon. Friend, who would not give way to me.

I have given way to my hon. Friend on other occasions; I am sorry that I did not do so today. Does he think that the Dutch Government, whose unitary text was defeated, went back saying that this was a great success?

I said that every other Government believed that Maastricht is a centralising treaty.

rose—

Let me finish my point. If my right hon. Friend the Minister of State had had the courtesy to listen to the points and arguments advanced by Members across the Committee he would have been able to respond to them. It is difficult to put an argument when the response has already been given. The Dutch Government did not get as federalist and centralising a measure as they would wish. Nevertheless, they recognised that the treaty is a centralising measure and told their people that.

When?

Several times—press reports have shown that.

My hon. Friend is making a series of assertions. The fact is that the Dutch Government were openly disappointed about the defeat of their text. I am not aware—if my hon. Friend is so confident, perhaps he can give an instance—that they have said that they regard Maastricht as a centralising treaty.

It is a consolidating measure. My right hon. Friend will have to accept my recollection from press reports. I assure him that assertions have been made across the Community that Maastricht is essentially a centralising treaty, that the elements of the state are coming into place and that competences are being extended. The parrot chant of the new Con-Lab Front Bench is that the treaty is held back by a concept of subsidiarity, but no legal judgment has given flesh to confidence, in a juridical sense, in the belief that that means anything.

Has my hon. Friend noticed the insidious wording of paragraph 1 of article 128, which says: The Community shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore. Does my hon. Friend agree that, when there is conflict between the two, as there is bound to be, the Community will emphasise the common culture at the expense of the national culture?

My hon. Friend identifies one of the central concerns. I add the concern that a common anything is a homogenisation. The criticism of American culture made by many people on the continent of Europe is that it insidiously infects and diminishes European culture. The violence of American films and the crassness of American civilisation and culture are often cited. We all affect each other, but I fear that a central institutional framework will homogenise, reduce and diminish. Ministers have not argued why the French need protection for their diversity and the flowering of their own culture.

The second concept that has not been dealt with in the debate is Action by the Community shall be aimed at encouraging co-operation between Member States and, if necessary, supporting and supplementing their action in the following areas". The first is

improvement of the knowledge and dissemination of the culture and history of the European peoples. Again, I do not know what that means or why each individual nation, which is responsible for the custody and safeguarding of its historic traditions, cannot argue its own perception.

What is a European history with a common perspective? The one glory of life, civilisation and culture is that we stand on different hillocks, perhaps looking at the same distant horizon, but because the angle of perception is different, our interpretation of the view is also different. That is an intimate part of the culture and diversities of the people of Europe. The institutional framework set out in the article contradicts the objective that it claims to seek.

My hon. Friend may be living under some misconceptions, which the article will help to put right. For example, he may believe that King Harold was a great English patriot trying to keep the French at bay and that Edward the Confessor was a traitor because he asked those dreadful Frenchmen to come here. The reality is that Edward the Confessor was a great European patriot, and what he did when he ceded his kingdom to William the Conqueror was a precursor for the Maastricht treaty. When the Commission takes over the writing of the European history that our children are taught in school, that new reality will be very much the truth.

I am grateful for that. I am always in awe of the perspective from Northamptonshire.

The dissemination of the culture and history of the culture of European people is a major debate on what constitutes history and what is history. Every hon. Member reads—other than the Home Secretary in connection with this treaty and public interest immunity certificates. Aragon was asked, "What is history?" His response was, "First you have to invent it." That is the argument that I am trying to put. We look from different perspectives and each of us has a particular recollection: that of the nation state, by language, unites a view. We fight over the interpretation of history, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education has shown. We are very particular in our understanding of what it is. My fear is the homogenisation of all these matters.

The last thing that I want to say is about artistic and literary creation, including in the audiovisual sector". Let us remember what art and culture was about. It was a popular expression of who we are, but now we have to subsidise it. I recall a directive on the proportion of television programmes which could be devoted to matters emanating from the United States. The European Commission wanted to protect what it regarded as the European concept. We genuinely have a difficulty: English is our language. Churchill's "History of the English-Speaking Peoples" reaches around the world. We will always have a difficulty in that the accessibility of ideas, thoughts and spirit is communicated in a tongue that we understand. The United States will always be a great influence on us—and we, hopefully, on it—because of the commonality of our language. Our language reaches Canada, Australia and New Zealand. At the heart of all cultural, historical perceptions and so on, stands the fact that, no matter how rich or poor or what colour people are, we are united by our language. We speak the intimacy of our thoughts and experiences each to the other in our language.

All this nonsense, which is an endeavour to destroy the character of communities, of countries and of languages—all this tries to strike at the one great deception of Europe: it is not equal as regards public opinion, knowledge or understanding because it is not common in language. What do we do about that? Do we do something about it through this measure or through educational measures seeking some sort of Esperanto? In what direction are we heading?

Glory be to our diversity. What was it, that wonderful thing?

Glory be to God for dappled things. We are a "dappled thing". Let us have glory for what we are and reject the nonsense of homogeneity in this treaty insidiously undermining our institutions and opening up a gulf between both Front Benches and the people. How can the people have respect for the House when we are marched through the Lobbies and forbidden to speak? We cannot even return to a question. Every application for closure is accepted. We have had no free speech on this measure.

What do all the dumb journalists in the Hallelujah Chorus up in the Gallery think they do with their absurd commentaries on the British process of making and unmaking laws? Not one stays to listen to the detail of debate. "Yesterday in Parliament" is now in the business of mere sketch-writing. I listened to it this morning and I did not know what were the matters being discussed in Parliament in respect of the greatest constitutional settlement of the past 200 years, taking away our ability to change what Commission officials—Eurocrats—determine is in the interests or nature of European civilisation, culture and history.

We are it, we are part of it, and our constituents are part of it. So long as we can hold Ministers accountable for their actions, we can change the laws under which we live. We can direct all the funds that we wish to any objective that the British people deem appropriate. But by these arrangements, sneakily put through by conniving Front Benches, the Con-Lab alliance on this matter intends to try to take away that right.

If I speak passionately on this, it is because I feel passionate about it. If I hear people ask why we have not got through the debate, as some foolish hon. Members do, I will tell them that this was the method by which other countries of Europe lost their freedom: good men sat on their hands. Good men—and women, too—said that it would not work, that our fingerprints must not be on the treaty, and all the rest of it. Yet here are the fingerprints, embedding themselves into our very vitals, demonstrating what is the spirit of it.

Across the continent of Europe, there have been moments when each of us has had to turn to the other for the survival of things in which we believe. We have seen atrocities, but so long as there are beacons for freedom, so long as there are Parliaments such as this which can express the views and will of the people, we can stand against the tyrannies which face the ordinary person in this world.

rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.

Question put, That the Question be now put:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 296, Noes 257.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Question put accordingly, That the amendment be made:—

The House divided: Ayes 70, Noes 297.

Amendment accordingly negatived.

We come now to amendment No. 6.

On a point of order, Mr. Lofthouse. We have just heard a speech by the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) about the importance of Parliament as a democratic assembly. It was with some irony that the closure was moved immediately afterwards. It certainly gave rise in some people's minds to the view that perhaps there was some sort of timetable agreed with the Chairmen and Chairwomen of the Committee. I am sure that that is not true—

The First Deputy Chairman:

Order. The hon. Gentleman is fully aware that that is not a matter for the Chair.

On a point of order. I am seeking your advice, Mr. Lofthouse, on a matter relating to the amendment which we are about to consider. You will know that education and vocational training were never part of the original treaty of Rome, although the subject was mentioned slightly in the Single Act. However, we are aware that it now becomes very much part of what will be decided in this country, because it is very much part of the Maastricht treaty, which we are currently debating.

The House will be well aware of my interest in health matters, and I have to put this point to you because it affects the quality and standard of health in this country. Will we be obliged to accept diplomas, degrees and qualifications from European universities which are not of a standard equal to our own in this country, if we proceed with this Bill and ratify the treaty?

The First Deputy Chairman:

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is quite aware that that cannot possibly be a matter for the Chair.

The closure was moved at the end of the last debate at a disgracefully early time; it was less than three hours after the debate had started.

The First Deputy Chairman:

Order. The hon. Gentleman is criticising the Chair. If he wishes to do so, he must put down the appropriate motion.

On a point of order, Mr. Lofthouse. While appreciating the enormous difficulties and pressures that you face in present circumstances, I must draw to your attention the fact that amendment No. 131, which relates to a very important article on page 16 of the treaty, was not referred to in any way during the debate that we have just had.

If you take the trouble to choose an amendment, I wonder whether it is in order for the closure to be moved when that amendment, relating to article 18, title V, which I and some others think is a matter of considerable moment, is not referred to, directly or indirectly, in any way during the debate. Can you give any guidance to the Committee on whether it is in order for the closure to be considered when one of the amendments which you have selected has not been referred to?

The First Deputy Chairman:

Of course it is in order, or it would not have been done. It is a matter for the judgment of the Chair.

I seek to help the House, and I seek your assistance in doing so, Mr. Lofthouse. You are probably aware that, from about 6.35 onwards, there was a growing number, outside and inside the Chamber, of payroll Members. They seemed to be surging towards the Chamber at that stage.

We know how you respect the House and its procedures and are anxious to have proper debates. It has occurred to me and to many of my hon. Friends that the Government are desirous of getting two groups of amendments through before 10 o'clock, because they are fearful that, come 10 o'clock, if they want to move the 10 o'clock motion and the Labour party is here and the Irish Members are here, they might not get it. So there is concern—

The First Deputy Chairman:

Order. I have heard sufficient to know that this is not a matter for the Chair. Is it not a common occurrence that the payroll gathers before divisions? It has always happened since I have been in the House, and the hon. Gentleman must be aware of this. That was not a point of order.

On a further point of order, Mr. Lofthouse. Perhaps you can confirm that the Chair does not have to accept the closure when it is moved by the Whips—that there is a discretion in such matters.

The First Deputy Chairman:

It is a matter of judgment for the Chair, and there it stands.

On a point of order, Mr. Lofthouse. I think that I heard you say a moment ago that it is normal practice for hon. Members to be present at the time of a Division. The thing that worries me is how any of those Tory Members, the lap dogs of the Common Market, and everybody else—[Interruption.]—and them as well—manage to know that you would accept a closure.

Of course, all hon. Members will turn up at 9.30 or whatever if it is a 10 o'clock vote. However, if it is an unexpected closure, when the Chair has decided that it is the appropriate moment, how on earth do all those lap dogs know? Since you were not in the Chair when it happened, Mr. Lofthouse, it may well be that there was a nod and a wink in a certain direction from the Whips. If so, it is time that the gang was stopped.

The First Deputy Chairman:

The Chair is not aware of where hon. Members are at any given time. The point of order is not a matter for the Chair. I think that I have taken the points of order far enough.

On a point of order, Mr. Lofthouse. Recently, I went to the Library to ask how many amendments were grouped together during the passing of the Single European Act, and I was told that it was an average of three or four. This time, however, the number of amendments grouped together is nearly 10. Are you taking that point into account when you consider the length of debates and agree to accept a closure?

If we have an average of 10 amendments, compared to the usual three or four, it will be inevitable, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) has pointed out, that on some occasions, as in the previous debate, some amendments are selected but not mentioned at all. I wonder whether you will take that into account in the next two hours and 29 minutes.

The First Deputy Chairman:

The Chair takes those matters into account when it makes its decision.

On a point of order, Mr. Lofthouse.

The First Deputy Chairman:

Is it a different point of order from the previous one?

Yes, it is a different point of order. You heard the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) express concern about the coincidence of the timing of the vote with the presence of Government Members. I will not say anything about that, because my point of order is totally different. We all have a great deal of respect for the Chair, and we are conscious that we should help the Chair and continue to show respect for it.

If the Government are seen to want to get two votes on two groups of amendments, there might be a concern among hon. Members that they were getting their way at the expense of Back Benchers. That is obviously the Government's intention, because we feel that they would like to start tomorrow on a clean sheet of social policy.

The First Deputy Chairman:

I cannot see any point of order there. It appears that the hon. Gentleman is simply making a speech which borders on criticism of the Chair.

On a point of order, Mr. Lofthouse. In the conduct of business in Committee or in the House, when the Government wish to push such matters through, the normal procedure is to table a guillotine motion. This is no criticism of the Chair, because I accept that you, or whoever is in the Chair, must make a judgment based on the position when a motion of whatever sort is put to you.

However, is it not interesting that what we are seeing is beginning to look very much like a guillotine by motions being put to the Chair? I find that very worrying. I hope that you will take into account the perception and the impression which may be created outside if it does not stop. There is a guillotine working, although it was done without having had a debate on it.

The First Deputy Chairman:

There has been no guillotine motion whatever. We will now move to the amendments.

On a point of order, Mr. Lofthouse.

The First Deputy Chairman:

Order. I have taken the points of order far enough.

I spy strangers.

Notice taken, that strangers were present.

Whereupon The FIRST DEPUTY CHAIRMAN, pursuant to Standing Order No. 143, put the Question, That strangers do withdraw.

Question negatived.

I beg to move amendment No. 6, in page 1, line 9, after "II', insert (except Articles 126 and 127 on page 32 of Cm 1934)'.

The First Deputy Chairman:

It may be convenient to consider at the same time the following amendments: No 193, in page 1, line 9, after "II', insert "except Article 3(p)'.

No. 199, in page 1, line 9, after "II' insert except Article 57(2) on page 13 of Cm 1934'.

No. 212, in page 1, line 9, after "II' insert except Article 127(2) on page 32 of Cm 1934'.

No. 365, in page 1, line 9, after "II', insert except Article 57 as referred to in Article G on page 13 of Command Paper number 1934'.

No. 52, in page 1, line 10, after "1992', insert "but not Article 126 in Title II thereof'.

Despite a delayed start, I begin the debate on vocational training by simply saying that the new competence which would reside in the Community is something to which we attach considerable significance. That is why the Minister will understand that the amendment is a probing one. Perhaps I should not reveal the Opposition's hand too early but simply say that we do not wish to put it to a vote, whatever the intentions of others.

It is widely recognised throughout the Community that vocational training and education lie at the heart of the future, certainly of young people in Europe and more generally in terms of the economic future of the whole Community. I must begin by pointing out that, during the United Kingdom's recent presidency of the Council of Ministers, it is significant that the Government paid so little attention to vocational training that there was only one formal meeting of the Social Affairs Council during the six-month period, and that only one resolution was adopted which had any relevance whatever to vocational training.

I do not want to embarrass the hon. Gentleman, but he will be aware that it is the rule rather than the exception that there should be one Social Affairs Council. During the past five years, which is 10 presidencies, I think that I am right in saying that we have had more than one Social Affairs Council only twice during a presidency.

If we had a Government who took unemployment and employment issues seriously, it might have been appropriate to start the presidency with a full meeting of the Council of Ministers to discuss what most people in Europe recognise to be the dominant issue facing our economy. There is no argument that there could—and, indeed, should—have been more meetings.

The central point which I was establishing is that, during the six months of the presidency, only one resolution went through which dealt even vaguely with training and associated matters. That was a resolution on the transparency of qualifications.

The six-months presidency certainly did not demonstrate the Government's commitment to development of a Euro-competence in which adult training and education were involved. A European Community publication called "Skill Shortages: A Growing Problem in the Community" made it clear that the Community, the Commission and other institutions attach massive importance to the role of training. They argue:

In general, the level of adult labour-market training activity tends to be higher in Member states where economic productivity is above the Community average and lower in countries with lower productivity. Most importantly, they pointed out that there seems to be, effectively, a virtuous and vicious circle of economic development. Those countries which fail to train have low productivity and, having low productivity, fail to train. Those countries with high productivity have high levels of training and, consequently, continue to have high levels of productivity.

That is certainly the real history which we can observe between, for example, the United Kingdom and Germany.

Over the years, the Germans have put considerable effort into both increasing productivity and investing in training, whereas in the past 13 years we have had a Government who deride training and want us to move towards a low-wage, low-productivity economy—one with all the worst features of the vicious circle which the European Commission described.

When, as recently as today in the House, the Secretary of State for Employment described training as a burden which the Opposition want to impose on employers, she was very much out of step with the dominant view throughout the rest of western Europe, which sees training as the hub of any attempt to get the economies of western Europe off the ground and into full gear. For those reasons, it is lamentable that we have a Government who are so negative about training.

It is instructive to compare and contrast the records of different countries in the Community. In Britain, the Government's own working party said in a document which fell into my hands that, far from having a training policy, they had a policy which was effectively about massaging unemployment statistics. It said: It was agreed that there had been a clear policy shift away from National Education and Training Targets and that Training for Work was largely an employment measure rather than a skills training programme. Even the Government's friends recognise severe and real flaws in the Government's attitude to training.

Not only them.

As my hon. Friend says, not only them. Certainly those who have any knowledge or experience of training are disillusioned with the Government's efforts.

The Government's abolition of employment training and employment action, and their move towards the so-called training for work initiative represent a move away from skills training towards simply massaging unemployment figures. Those measures are simply a means of keeping the dole queues as small as possible in the statistical publications.

We know from recent parliamentary answers that the Government have systematically cut the finance available from central Government for training initiatives. Let us compare in constant terms the amount of money which the Government have planned to spend in 1993–94 with the estimated outturn for 1992–93. There has been a significant drop—more than 10 per cent.—in the training budget during that period.

Let us consider the number of participants in schemes such as employment training. The Government have cut the cost of those schemes which might suggest that more people could be accommodated. The reverse has happened. In 1989–90, 210,000 people were put through employment training schemes. The Government estimate that there will be as few as 150,000 people on the training for work scheme in 1993–94.

Those training schemes are designed for the long-term unemployed, yet unemployment has shot up dramatically and cruelly. The Government's response has been to cut the amount of money available for those schemes and to cut the number of places, so that fewer people have the opportunity to receive that type of training.

I do not particularly like making this point often, but I am astonished as I look across the Chamber to see that the hon. Gentleman is speaking to literally two other members of his party on a matter which affects policy on education and vocational training for the whole of the rest of Europe, as well as for the United Kingdom. I wonder whether he could encourage some of his hon. Friends to come along and at least listen to his pearls of wisdom.

You will understand, Mr. Lofthouse, that at this stage in the proceedings I would find it difficult to go out and perform the task that the hon. Gentleman invites me to perform. Even as I gaze at the Benches opposite, it is clear that, unfortunately, the debate has not attracted many listeners. That may be my fault. We shall see whether the numbers flood in later when the hon. Gentleman has an opportunity to speak.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the monumental and excessive windbaggery of the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) may have allowed word to get out from the Chamber that there is something marginally tedious about our proceedings on the Bill?

The hon. Gentleman makes his point in admirable style. The issue of training is vital to the future of Britain. The number of Members present certainly does not reflect the importance of training to the nation.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way on a relevant point. It is nothing to do with windbaggery or whether many Members are present on the Opposition or even the Government Benches. Under the treaty of Rome, education and training were not within the remit of the Commission of the European Community. Under the Maastricht treaty, education and training become very much part of the remit of the Commission. One of the Commissioners has recently said that he wants to become involved in education and training policy. The Commission will use money to do that.

Does the hon. Gentleman, who is leading for the Opposition in this debate, believe that the European Commission is better able to direct funds for education and training in Britain than the Westminster Parliament through the Department of Education and the Department of Employment? If he does, where will the money come from unless we pay a much heavier account to the European Community and allocate much greater resources to it, depriving the United Kingdom Government of funds which they can currently spend, I hope, from a position of better knowledge than the EC?

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. He is an opponent of long standing of most things that come out of Brussels, so at least he is consistent. However, his Government introduced the Single European Act and moved us towards the single market. Those of us who have had doubts about some areas of Europe's competence must also accept that there is no future for regions such as that which I represent if development of labour market activities does not take place in parallel with single market activities.

It is obvious to me that there is a paramount need for consistency in levels of training. I hope to demonstrate to the hon. Gentleman and to the House that the British Government, with their appalling record on training, stand in poor comparison with most of the rest of western Europe. To that extent, I would cheerfully exchange the levels of training which are provided in Britain for those, for example, in Germany or France. I look to the European Community to kick-start the British Government into doing things which they alone are unwilling to do. That is the answer to the nub of the question which the hon. Gentleman puts to me.

I am grateful for the constructive response which the hon. Gentleman has made to the points that I put to him, but he referred to Germany. I am sure that he will admit that the system of education and training in Germany has nothing to do with the treaty of Rome or the European Community. Historically, Germany has had a different education and training system from ours. I like Germany's technical education, which has stood Germany in good stead, but surely that has nothing to do with the European Community. If we had wanted to copy Germany, we could have done so many years ago, long before the European Community came into being.

The relevance of Germany's educational philosophy to the European Community is probably about the same as that of the hon. Gentleman's remarks to the debate. I suspect that he makes them for a different purpose, but I shall treat his comments seriously, because, he raises a valid point.

In Germany, there is an education and training culture, something which I fear has slipped enormously in Britain in recent years. We must redevelop it. I do not have confidence in the Government to achieve that. It cannot be delayed. We are losing the training race almost daily. We must begin to make some efforts to reinvest in training. As I said, I look to the Commission to provide a kick-start in the process.

If hon. Members will forgive me, I shall make some progress in the substantive points that I wish to make in the relatively small amount of time that the Committee will make available this evening.

Why? How do you know?

The hon. Gentleman knows something that we do not.

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

No, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me. I have given way several times.

On a point of order, Mr. Lofthouse. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) said from a sedentary position, the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) seems to know something that we do not know. Do you know it? Is it that the debate will not take long tonight?

The First Deputy Chairman:

I do not know anything about it and that is not a point of order for me.

If you do not know, Mr. Lofthouse, I can place it on the record that I am in even greater ignorance, although the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) may choose not to believe me.

By common consent, the Government have lost their way on training. There have been significant cuts in the numbers of trainees and the quantity of funding for Government-led schemes. Employment training is at the heart of the Government's training philosophy, but there has been a significant cut in the amount of finance, in constant terms, available to each trainee. For example, the real-terms value in 1992 constant pounds of the cost of an employment training course in 1989–90 was £6,504. By 1992–93, it had dropped to £6,074, which is a significant cut in real terms of about 10 per cent.

One of the real tragedies is that, while the Government have exhorted the private sector to train, they have listened with deaf ears because they have been beset with the problems caused by their very own recession. We know that the Department of Employment's Employment Gazette recently let the cat out of the bag with an analysis which showed that in Britain most people on employment and youth training schemes do not believe that they are receiving significant amounts of job-related training.

However, the amount of money made available by the private sector fell significantly, as did volumes of trainees. While it is true that things are a little better than they were in the early 1980s, the 3 million employees of working age in Britain who receive training are a far cry from the levels of training required for a labour force of about 20 million. We know that the Government and the private sector are failing the nation.

During the election, the Government made great play of the fact that the Opposition wanted to introduce a training levy, which would have kick-started the private sector into providing the sort of training that is needed. The Government said that that would be a burden on industry, would add to industrial costs and would wreck industry and shed jobs, but such an idea is viewed as ridiculous throughout the rest of Europe, where they prefer a virtuous cycle, in which high-quality training leads to high productivity and vice versa.

For example, in the year before last, more than 600,000 people used the vocational training places made available under Germany's dual system and 70 per cent. completed their courses. It is significant that 30 per cent. of the entrants were already educated to A-level standard.

The German concept of training, within the dual system, is seen to be important, as it establishes the training culture that allows such high productivity. German productivity is about 60 per cent. higher than in Britain, and wage levels are about 70 per cent. higher, and the two are interrelated. Britain has a low-wage, low-cost economy. Germany has a high-wage, high-productivity economy, which is in the interests of the German nation and its people.

The situation in France is different, but it is at least similar to that in Germany, in that, as long ago as the early 1970s, the French were struck by their lack of a training culture. I do not know whether I am allowed to mention Jacques Delors—the bête noir of many Conservative Members—who introduced a legal obligation for employers to participate in vocational training. When the scheme was introduced it required each employer to spend 0.9 per cent. of the wage bill on training. That figure has been increased to 1.2 per cent., but most employers spend considerably in excess of that amount, and some large companies spend up to 10 per cent. of the wages bill on training. In doing so, they are investing in the future of France and French industry.

The hon. Gentleman has referred to Germany, and I do not doubt his figures, as I know them to be accurate, but does he agree that some European countries are not embarking on comparable training schemes, and that one of the dangers of the article is that money will go from northern Europe—and this country—to enable southern European countries to embark on ambitious vocational training schemes which will compare with our own? That will make those countries more competitive in the new industries that they are developing, which could cause great dangers to our economy, especially if the Community continues to have a low-growth economy.

The reality is that all Europe will be dragged down by the concept of a low-wage, low-skill economy, which periodically chooses to shed labour, as has happened throughout most of western Europe—in the Community countries and beyond—in recent years. There is no future for the Community as a low-wage economy, and the whole Community must accept that. Social tensions have already been caused by mass unemployment in France, Germany and Italy. Unemployment has caused problems in Britain—for example, in my constituency, where a young boy was shot and killed recently.

I cannot accept a scenario in Britain or in the Community in which we accept the concept of a potentially redundant army of labour, which can be brought in or dispensed with at will—a scenario in which pockets of long-term unemployment become virtually permanent, and in which no hope is given because the Government have provided Mickey Mouse training schemes. We must develop a wider approach. I look to the Community to develop a coherent training philosophy, so that it becomes a way of life throughout Europe.

The hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Sir R. Body) asked whether I did not fear that we would end up having to prop up standards in Portugal. It may surprise him to learn that Portugal is already ahead of Britain in many aspects of training. Britain is third from bottom in the number of 16 to 18-year-olds who participate in education, and Portugal is one of the countries ahead of us. The days when Britain could look loftily down on the Mediterranean countries as despised nations are gone. The position has shifted during my lifetime, and perhaps a different generation has to account for that. The simple reality is that the Portuguese will not look to Britain for lessons on training.

The amount that various European countries spend on training is also significant. Germany is not the only country to spend more than Britain, as Ireland also does do. Ireland has long been regarded as an alternative labour market for the British economy. I come from a part of Britain where Irish people have lived for many years, and I know that they have been viewed as an alternative labour force in boom times, and that they have been expendable during recessions. It is especially significant that Ireland is spending more than Britain on domestic training, even though it has tremendous problems of labour emigration.

Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that one makes low-skilled people more productive by investing more capital in equipment and machinery, rather than by trying to give them additional training? Throughout the Pacific rim, where our main competitors come from, wages and skill levels are relatively low, but those countries are rapidly improving.

That is being done within the work process, without complicated Government training schemes, and we should aim to do the same here—never mind about Europe.

That is the way in which skills are passed on—by building on the shoulders of the former generation. The plans envisaged in the Maastricht treaty simply will not work. We cannot separate ourselves from that other part of the world, which contains 90 per cent. of the population, while Europe only has one tenth.

If that is the hon. Lady's view of the world, I find it almost immeasurably sad. Not only is she technically wrong; the flaws in her argument are precisely the kind that lead to the introduction of stupid policies such as those that the country has experienced for the past 13 years.

The hon. Lady suggested that countries on the Pacific rim considered education and training unimportant. Countries such as Taiwan and Singapore—which in my lifetime have been seen as the low-wage, low-skill nations described by the hon. Lady—are now investing a fantastic amount of national effort in the education and training of their young people: they are doing far more than this country in that respect.

The idea that such countries accept peripheralisation is born of an era that is rapidly disappearing. Suppose we told the Japanese that they should return to the days when they competed on the basis of volume rather than quality! The hon. Lady also mentioned the Koreans; they too are spending a considerable amount on training. She may be surprised if she looks at the comparative figures.

8 pm

The really sad aspect, however is this. The fact that the hon. Lady rests her case on bogus evidence suggests that she presses Ministers to provide bad training in this country. That is where the tragedy lies, and that is the reason for the anti-education, anti-training culture that has existed here for so many years. I believe that the Minister knows something about language training. In schools driven by the national curriculum—my children attend such schools—pupils are forced at the age of 13 to confine themselves to the study of a single foreign language, because of the needs of the curriculum. It is ridiculous, and atrocious, that they should be denied access to foreign languages. We are handicapping our young people: in France and Germany, for instance, that simply could not happen nowadays. The current state of affairs is almost uniformly barren; the Government's record bears no comparison with that of other western European countries.

As I told the Minister earlier, these are probing amendments, but we want him to respond in detail to our questions about why Britain's vocational training record is so bad. Under the treaty, vocational training and education will be governed by the terms of qualified majority voting; Britain—the anti-intellectual, anti-education, anti-training country that it has become—will no longer be able to hold to ransom not only the rest of Europe, but the British people themselves.

For those reasons, many people welcome this part of the treaty.

I hope that the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) will not mind my saying that I, for one—and, I am sure, every other Conservative Member—found his speech disappointing. I do not mean that personally; no doubt the hon. Gentleman was entirely sincere. I had hoped, however, that he would probe this part of the treaty more fully and carefully, given the immense implications that it could have for millions of people in the United Kingdom.

The hon. Gentleman quoted a number of statistics. As I said earlier, I do not doubt those statistics, but the hon. Gentleman would surely agree that they came from the public sector. They excluded the many schemes in this country—and, indeed, in the countries listed by the hon. Gentleman—which are privately funded by business enterprises. Those of us with some experience of such schemes would say that, more often than not, they are more effective and do more to strengthen our economy than publicly funded schemes.

My hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) referred to the Pacific basin. In numerous countries in that area which are now booming, effective training in the private sector provides the main body of recruitment. Only a week or two ago, I met a number of business men in my constituency who said that they deplored Government-funded schemes and that if they could only have half as much money for training, they would ensure that it was more cost-effective and more in line with the needs of industry. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay: we should support private-sector schemes rather than those funded by the Government.

This article will enable the Community to spend a great deal of money which is, in the main, obtained from the northern European countries—the principal contributors to European funds. We are well aware how some southern European countries—especially Spain—want the money to be spent. We know what Mr. Gonzales has been saying about cohesion funds; we know that he will be difficult, over and over again.

Yet again, my hon. Friend has drawn the House's attention to the way in which all these bits and pieces combine to produce another slush fund, which the Commission will be able to use. All right—the Government are not heavily committed, but money will be available—and majority voting will be possible. The fund will not deal with the content of educational programmes, but to an extent it will enable the manipulation of such programmes in a European direction, which some may want and others may not. It will also constitute a slush fund to be used in what Europeans call the regions—Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We know what they want to do with the regions; they want to divide and rule. Will my hon. Friend deal with some of those fundamental issues?

I will indeed. My hon. Friend, like me, represents a corner of England. I use the word "England" deliberately: those of us who represent English constituencies are aware that we do not get much out of the slush funds.

In an earlier debate, it was pointed out that cultural expenditure would be used for enticement purposes—to enhance the popularity of Wales, or other parts of the Community. There is plenty of evidence that a good deal has been spent in Wales—and whenever money is spent there, the famous flags with stars on a blue background is there to show that the money came from the European Community, although only a tiny fraction may have come from that source.

Under article 126, Community action shall be aimed at … developing the European dimension in education". That really means the European Community dimension. Taxpayers' money is being used to mount a propaganda drive to promote the claimed virtues of the Community. The adoption of the word "European", which belongs to a continent rather than to a political or economic organisation, illustrates the arrogance of the organisation which is promoting its ideas. This will be not education, but propaganda.

That applies to all 12 countries—to western Europe as a whole, and it is the overriding argument against the Maastricht treaty: the treaty will make it much more difficult for the Scandinavian countries, the alpine countries, the countries of eastern Europe—and, in due course, those further east in the old Soviet Union—to be part of a European Community or Commonwealth. My dream is a European Community which allows all Europe to take part in common policies which are in the interests of individual countries.

I apologise for intervening, but this is probably one of our more important debates on the treaty. The hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) and my hon. Friend spoke about the money that will be in the hands of the Commission and how it could be used.

Let me draw my hon. Friend's attention to a powerful revelation that we had today. The hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) is no fool. She is a very intelligent lady. She referred to things that have been done in her constituency with Community money. As we know, she is a fervent European. One of the reasons why she is in favour of Europe is that she perceives that these good things have dropped out of heaven from the European Community as if the European Community has a factory where it manufactures cash and with its generosity provides cash to her constituents. If we accept the article as it is at the moment, rather than take it out, there will be more money for more Eurocrats to spend in more constituencies so that more people can be seduced by the slush funds.

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. We have almost forgotten green shield stamps. The money that goes back to Wales can be likened to green shield stamps. The people of Britain, including the people of Wales, contribute a great deal more than what is coming back. I am sorry that the hon. Lady, who is not in her place, has allowed herself to be deceived by payments out of what my hon. Friend calls the slush funds.

Slush funds?

I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris) is with us. He has been travelling to Strasbourg and he knows nothing whatever about slush funds. He is always totally innocent of anything of that nature, as indeed are most of those involved in Europe. It is only a minority who dip their fingers into slush funds.

We are not criticising European Parliamentarians. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) was speaking about the opportunities which would be created by a further slush fund. We have debated the cultural slush fund and now we are discussing further funds to be allocated by majority voting, as the Council of Ministers may prescribe on the recommendation of the Commission as the article specifies.

On a point of order, Mr. Lofthouse. I am very disturbed to find on the Bench here an envelope which says, "Can you keep going until 10 pm? If so, they surely cannot close." You were in the Chair last night when there were allegations of collusion. Surely there cannot be collusion between my hon. Friends. I cannot begin to think who might have written this diabolical note—

Let me see the handwriting.

I do not know about that. It seems to me that there are some guilty people. It cannot be right that hon. Members are being egged on to filibuster to keep the debate going until 10 o'clock at night. Can you give your ruling on that?

The First Deputy Chairman:

It is not a matter for the Chair what notes are passed.

Further to that point of order, Mr. Lofthouse. I think that someone suggested that the only possible provenance of that dreadful piece of paper could be someone from the Whips Office as all my hon. Friends who take a similar view—

The First Deputy Chairman:

Order. I have just given a ruling that it is not a matter for the Chair what notes are passed. Sir Richard Body.

rose—

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I understand that we are attempting to implement article 126 this evening, but we have just given Scottish universities a fund to look after when that used to be a United Kingdom responsibility. As we have guarded our separate education system in Scotland, is it not nonsense to be faced with a proposal such as article 126?

I am sure that my hon. Friend realises that Scotland will be homogenised by what we are discussing tonight. As a mere Englishman, I concede that Scottish education is of the highest standard—much higher than that in England. Whether it will continue to be so is another matter. I hope that my hon. Friend will have the opportunity to put in a word for Scottish education, to prevent it from being contaminated—if that is not too unkind a word—by anything which may emerge out of Brussels.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we in Northern Ireland should pay particular attention to what is happening, as the more money that goes into the slush fund directly from the United Kingdom to southern Ireland threatens the development of our own education and training services in Northern Ireland?

The hon. Gentleman may well be right that there are moves that he knows only too well, if I may coin an awful word, to desectorise Northern Ireland education and require pupils to go to the same schools, whatever their background. It may well be that the European Community will use what they call incentive money to give money to such schools. That may or may not be a good proposal, but it is surely for Great Britain and particularly for the people of Northern Ireland to decide whether they want their education policy to take that direction. It should not be a matter for Brussels and, above all, it should not be a matter for majority vote in the Council of Ministers.

The hon. Member for Antrim, East (Mr. Beggs) made a wise intervention, but there may be people in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland who believe that they would do better through the Council regions and through the slush fund money for education. However, the whole system is based on the fact that we make a net contribution to the Community budget of £2,500 million a year which by grace of this treaty will increase to £3,000 million a year. If that were not passed to Europe as part of the mega-slush fund, we would have more of our own money to spend in Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland on culture and education in all parts of our country, but because of the structure and status that we have at the moment it goes to Europe, it goes to Brussels and it gets the stamp of Mr. Delors: it gets a European flag and we all have to bless the great and the good in Brussels.

The First Deputy Chairman:

Order. Some of the interventions are rather lengthy speeches. Sir Richard Body.

It is much worse than my hon. Friend describes when it comes to vocational training. This where the hon. Member for Stretford is mistaken. We shall be required to put a large sum of money into Community funds to enable vocational training to take place. We can try to ensure that there is—I hate to use the tired old phrase—a level playing field throughout the Community and equal opportunities for such training. Although the hon. Member for Stretford disputed this, we know that vocational training is not so advanced in southern Europe as in northern Europe, so there is bound to be a diversion of funds from the north to the south, to Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece.

And southern Ireland.

Indeed, although plenty of money is already going there—whether it can collar any more under the scheme, I do not know. At all events, there will be a massive transfer of funds to southern Europe from the taxpayers of northern Europe, to give the inhabitants of the south vocational schemes as good as those in the north.

One of the most exciting and useful aspects of all this is the way in which the Community represents a gathering of friends and colleagues—of Heads of State. It is such a pleasant thing to see the friendship between politicians as they extract money from their taxpayers and hand it over to their friends, the other politicians, so that the latter may bribe their respective electorates. This is always described in each country as a great triumph for its national self-interest. It would be churlish if we did not recognise the process and express our admiration for it.

My hon. Friend is right. We must admire it, but there comes a time when we should question it.

If my hon. Friend starts questioning it, he will soon find himself in the kind of difficulties that I faced recently, when the Whips Office started ringing up my chairman and suggested that it was not the role of a Back Bencher to question anything that the Government were doing or to cause as much trouble as possible. I warn my hon. Friend against that line of action. We are, after all, here to rubber-stamp the Government's actions—and the most important thing that we can do is to express our admiration for everything that the Government have done.

I fear that my hon. Friend will come to regret his impertinence. He should bear in mind the authoritarian behaviour of the Whips, as shown by their moving the closure and preventing many of our hon. Friends from expressing their admiration for the Government. Most of us feel an extreme affection for my hon. Friend and hope that he will not jeopardise his career by being so stupid as to express criticism of the treaty or of the Government. To do that would be to undermine loyalty to the Government—a crime of which I am sure he would not want to be found guilty.

I will try to take that advice. The only ambition I have ever had in this House was to work in the office of the Patronage Secretary. I am old-fashioned enough still to call the Chief Whip that. I imagined that I would learn a lot there. I see on the Front Bench the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Further and Higher Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell), who was once in the Patronage Secretary's office and who had me to deal with among his flock. I am sure that he will confirm that I never questioned anything and sought always to do his bidding.

If the hon. Member for Stretford was truly expressing the policy of the Labour party and if, as a result, unemployment rises, he and the rest of his colleagues will have a great deal to answer for at the next election. We cannot be certain that the European Community will enjoy a high growth rate from now on. The smaller countries of Europe outside the European Community have more favourable growth rates at the moment. Germany is in difficulties with a declining growth rate. The German Government are under intense pressure over their revenue and monetary policies—

I should very much welcome my hon. Friend's wisdom and advice, as I know that he is a great repository of knowledge. Is it not true that in Germany young people are trained on the job? At 16 they take up training courses in firms—bakers, butchers or plumbers—where they are taught the skills by those who have them and who can pass them on without the need for any slush funds or Government intervention. Is it not also true that those young people, knowing the value of their training, do not expect to be paid as much as adults while being trained? They are paid the sort of money that the Labour party would describe as appropriate to sweated labour or pin money. In fact, the process is part of a tradition that my hon. Friend and I would like restored to this country so that we can avoid the sort of mega-schemes envisaged under Maastricht, which would remove the training function from the people who know what needs to be taught.

Of course my hon. Friend must be right. As she was speaking, I remembered the old adage that those who can, do, and those who cannot, teach. I fear that some professional full-time vocational training teachers are those who have not done well in the occupation that they originally chose. That certainly applies to the building and engineering industries. Those who are good at those jobs go into firms and prosper; those who are not so good find themselves out of work and having to take up employment providing some form of vocational training.

The beginning of this article speaks of the Community contributing to the development of quality education. If the Community is to contribute to the development of education, even though it does not have the right to change laws in this area by means of directives, it is implied that the Community will be involved in everything at an early stage—for instance, in the geography and history syllabuses. The involvement will be indirect, but it will be effected by means of incentives, slush funds, and so on. Is my hon. Friend worried about that?

The article also mentions quality. My hon. Friend is a far greater expert on the English language than I am. What is meant by quality?

The First Deputy Chairman:

Order. I have recently drawn the attention of the House to the length of interventions. Experienced hon. Members should not need to keep being reminded by the Chair about this. They are making speeches, not interventions, and I shall use my office to enable the debate to take place within the rules of the House. I will not allow the near-abuse of our procedures.

I will, if I may, follow up what my hon. Friend said about quality education. I am troubled by that term. My mind goes back to the time many years ago when I began breeding pigs and contacted various butchers. I remember one outlet kept talking about quality meat. I realised that the person involved was not really looking for quality meat, but for meat that was cheap and nasty. I have no doubt that the education of which we are speaking will not be cheap, even though it may be nasty.

My hon. Friend is talking about quality meat. As we are talking about education, will he confirm that the word "quality" is a noun and not an adjective, so there cannot be anything called quality education? It is difficult to see how one can have a common view of what Germany did to Poland, Germany did to France, or Russia did to Poland as a common quality educational instruction.

As ever, my hon. and learned Friend is right. It is disturbing to find the word "quality" in any treaty and I suspect that this is its first appearance. To apply it to education is inappropriate and I would not rely on any Commissioners or group of officials in Brussels to decide quality in our terms.

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's reflections on a difficult adjective.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn) said that it was a noun.

I apologise—of course it is a noun. If I were subject to overall supervisory care by some European gauleiter, I should probably have a more normal way of speaking, though it might be less interesting.

I am pleased to see that the Chairman has returned, as I wish to support the First Deputy Chairman in his observations to my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) to the effect that a large number of Conservative Members wished to take part in the debate. My hon. Friend—

Order. The hon. Member has been on his feet since I entered the Chamber, which means that he has made an excessively long intervention. He is clearly preventing other hon. Members from making their speeches.

On a point of order, Mr. Morris. I was merely endeavouring to put a point to my hon. Friend the Member for Holland with Boston (Sir R. Body). So far as I could see, you had only just come into the Chamber, and I respectfully suggest that I detected—

Order.

—a degree of prejudice.