European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Bob Stewart and Richard Shepherd

Monday 27th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Richard Shepherd]

No. We have a long way to go, as the Minister well knows. [Interruption.] I do not want to have a chit-chat with him outside the rules of the Committee. I am trying to give the Ministry backbone.

I cannot see how the measure is compatible with what the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) has said. We are in the beginnings of a negotiation. The Foreign Office is supposedly trawling to find the balance of competences and whether it is right. By and large, surprisingly—my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) has made a study—it has found that it is about right so far. That is all tosh, and hon. Members know it.

We are playing out a shadow boxing match over what are said to be small sums of money. Governments get very grand. No sum of money is small to those who do not have it, but to Governments, no sum of money is too large to tax people. I am not making a case for not doing good things; I am making a case that was made formidably by the hon. Members who have tabled amendments, which the Committee should support.

Hon. Members are here to represent the British people. As the hon. Member for Vauxhall and I have pointed out, the House agreed that we were to be citizens of the EU, with all the assurances of no essential loss of sovereignty. “Citizens of the EU” is a hollow expression, because the relationship comes from who we are, what we feel and the context in which we grow up.

[Bob Stewart]

When I was a new MP, I seem to remember coming to the Dispatch Box and swearing loyalty to Her Majesty the Queen. We are citizens of this country first—[Interruption.] Forgive me. We may be subjects of Her Majesty the Queen, but we are equally citizens of Europe. I know which one takes priority.

[Sir Richard Shepherd]

I am with my hon. Friend on these matters.

The dissolution in the sense of ourselves in the past 30 years that I have been in Parliament is not entirely down to me. The disillusionment is partly down to the grinding of the EU; its false prospectuses; its lies, lies and lies; and its belief in the objective of creating the dream of a Monsieur Delors or a group of European politicians of the earlier part of the second half of the last century. It is not my dream. It was undoubtedly the dream of a part-generation of British politicians. It has been so encompassing and encased in bonds of steel and iron that Ministers and shadow Ministers sit on the Front Benches not even thinking it necessary to say, on a small matter such as the Bill, “Why? Stop it. No. Don’t go on.”

I urge hon. Members not to pay the Danegeld or to support that message. They should reject it. They should let the Government know that the purpose of Parliament is to ensure a proper negotiation on competences and what we are about. Do not give money to the Danes because they will only come back for more.