Jacob Rees-Mogg: I apologise if I implied that I thought the Bill was pointless. I was concerned that if it did not lead to anything else, it would be pointless, and therefore I thought it needed to go on to the subsequent events.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: May I come to the support of the Minister, and on a constitutional issue, which may surprise him? Our consideration of the earlier legislation on the alternative vote, parliamentary boundaries and fixed-term Parliaments was desperately rushed, and therefore its measures were not necessarily very well thought through, which is a great shame. In contrast, the progress we are making towards...
Jacob Rees-Mogg: The Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) is tremendously important because the West Lothian question is the constitutional question of the day. That question and reform of the House of Lords are the two issues with which politicians and parliamentarians have wrestled since just before the first world war, although no great solution to either...
Jacob Rees-Mogg: My hon. Friend makes an important and valid point. The West Lothian question is serious, but the answer is not necessarily one that we have been given so far. Just because the question is right, it does not mean that an answer to it would necessarily work. My hon. Friend is correct to say that if the majority of English seats had been won by Conservatives but we had ended up with a rainbow...
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, but I was rather hoping she would not, because there is a desperate tendency on Fridays towards motherhood-and-apple-pie Bills that say nothing very much about anything in particular. If her Bill is that type of Bill, what on earth are we doing discussing it? If it just says that the Minister, out of the kindness of his heart, will say a few words...
Jacob Rees-Mogg: The French?
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that illuminating point. I always thought that the Auld Alliance meant that they were rather keen on the Scots, but that may be a slight diversion. What ought the Government to do and to think about as they approach a solution to the West Lothian question? They have to think about the practicalities. We have had learned discussion already today about how...
Jacob Rees-Mogg: rose-
Jacob Rees-Mogg: The right of shires to send people for address of grievance pre-dates Simon de Montfort. It is the boroughs that came in at that point.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: The knights of the shires came much earlier than that-they come from the reign of Richard I. That is attested thoroughly.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I am not quite sure how we get from my hon. Friend's Bill to the legislative programme that she is suggesting. Is the idea that this would be done exclusively through the Standing Orders of this House, and that we would therefore change the structures of the passing of legislation purely on our Standing Orders?
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. King Alfred was a good Somerset man who did his duty to rescue us not only from Vikings, but from high taxation.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: In the time available, I shall try to speak without hesitation, deviation or repetition. I want to deal with one point, EuropeAid, and draw a conclusion from it. EuropeAid was found not to be perfect by the European Court of Auditors. The ECA noted a high frequency of non-quantifiable errors due to the lack of formalised and structured demonstration of compliance with payment conditions. It...
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way in his brilliantly enthusiastic speech, but he is not being his usual even-handed self, because he accuses the Conservatives of allowing people to come from eastern Europe, but it really was the last Labour Government who let in most of them.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: New clause 11 is extremely interesting and worth looking at with care, because it comes out of a mix of genius and anger. The genius of it is that it has succeeded in initiating a debate on the question of an in/out referendum, which is clearly not the purpose of the Bill. I know that deft parliamentary draftsmanship was required to have such a proposal selected for debate, and I am full of...
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, but I think there is a slight confusion. If we have an in/out vote, and it is won by the pro-Europeans, it is a vote for the EU as it exists and with all the powers that it has. Those of us who support this referendum lock Bill do not want further powers going to the EU or to get accidentally into a situation in which we sign up to things we...
Jacob Rees-Mogg: My hon. Friend always puts his finger on the nub of any European matter. I agree that the new clause is a device concerning a strong principle-that is the genius and anger I was talking about. The problem is that in its anger, it could achieve the wrong result. We do not want to set our firm principles on a weak base and a new clause that would actually undermine what those of us who are...
Jacob Rees-Mogg: If the Bill were simply to say that Anthea McIntyre were elected, it might be in danger of becoming hybrid legislation.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I thank the Minister for giving way once more. Would he be kind enough to clarify this point about the coalition? Can we take it that the Conservatives do not wish to opt in wherever an opt-in is available, so that whenever we do so, it is because we have been bullied into it by the Lib Dems?
Jacob Rees-Mogg: I thank the Minister for giving way and for his patient responses to so many questions. I wonder whether it is necessary for the EU to sign up to the ECHR, because we have already debated the question of how EU law comes into effect in this country, which is by Act of Parliament. Therefore, any decision made by the EU can come into effect here only under our own laws, which are of course...