Clause 6 — Parliamentary control of decisions

Part of Orders of the Day – in the House of Commons at 8:15 pm on 4 March 2008.

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Photo of William Hague William Hague Shadow Secretary of State (Foreign Affairs) 8:15, 4 March 2008

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's statement that he will be with us in trying to ensure that there can be proper parliamentary scrutiny in these areas. On his point about the Government's position in December 2003, I am not sure whether their position changed between November and December 2003. The quotations to which I referred were drawn from November and October 2003. It may be that the Government changed their mind at that time. Until then, or until some time a little after that, they had always opposed the creation of a self-amending treaty.

Let me remind the Committee what the treaty means by the ordinary legislative procedure. It means not just qualified majority voting but giving the European Commission the sole right to initiate legislation and the European Parliament a role of co-decision, which will mean that it will have equal rights to national Governments to amend or block EU law. The procedure maximises the role of the EU's central institutions in making EU legislation.

The care and thoroughness with which the passerelles have been inserted into the treaty tells us a great deal about the mindset of its drafters. No clearer signal could be given that in ratifying the treaty we are being invited to join a continuing process of a further reduction in the powers of nation states, exposing the assertions of the Prime Minister that the treaty marks the end of a period of institutional change. If he genuinely means that, that assessment is almost pathetically naive.